Morning in the Dead Zone smelled like smoke and rot.
The raider bodies were still on the road.
Flies already owned them.
Some of the refugees avoided looking.
Others stared too long.
Maxruell stood over the corpses with his hands in his jacket pockets.
"Leave them," he said. "Let everyone see what happens."
Juvy snapped, "That's sick."
"That's survival."
Varkos crouched near the flipped truck. "They were part of the Razor Dogs. Big gang. This was just a scouting pack."
Juvy's face tightened. "So more are coming."
"Yeah," Varkos said. "A lot more."
By noon, a boy ran in screaming.
"TRUCKS! BLACK FLAGS!"
Razor Dogs.
They came loud ten vehicles, men in red bandanas hanging off the sides, mounted guns welded onto hoods.
Maxruell walked into the open again.
Juvy grabbed his arm. "Wait. Let me talk first."
"No."
He stepped forward.
A man with gold teeth leaned out of a truck.
"You the devil kid?"
Maxruell raised one finger.
Shadows exploded from the ground.
They grabbed wheels, doors, men.
Gunfire erupted.
Bullets hit black walls of darkness and vanished.
Juvy lifted both hands.
The air screamed.
Wind crushed engines. Lightning burst from crystal arcs around her body.
The ground cracked.
A truck slammed sideways into another.
Men burned. Men screamed. Men ran.
Maxruell lifted his hand.
Every shadow stretched toward him.
Thirty men dropped to their knees as if gravity changed its mind.
"Beg," he said.
Some did.
Some tried to run.
Their shadows ripped them backward and snapped their spines.
Juvy shouted, "STOP!"
He didn't.
He walked through them.
Shadow blades cut throats.
Dark hands crushed skulls.
Blood ran into the dirt.
The last man tried crawling away.
Maxruell stepped on his chest.
"Tell the gangs," he said quietly.
"This land eats kings."
Shadow closed.
Silence came after.
Only fire and crying.
The refugees stood frozen.
A woman whispered, "They're gods."
Juvy shook. "Don't say that."
Maxruell turned to the people.
"No stealing. No gangs. No killing unless I say."
They nodded like children.
That night, Juvy washed blood off her hands in rainwater.
"I didn't want this," she whispered.
Maxruell sat on the edge of the roof.
"I did."
She looked up at him.
"You're changing."
He didn't deny it.
Far away, inside a stone cathedral lit by candles made of bones, Mother Cain smiled.
"Good," she said.
"Let the boy grow teeth."