Scenes from an Unholy War Read Online Free Page B

wings above him. Though he looked up in fear, the beauty of it left the young man enraptured. Even after he was split from the top of his head down through the chin, his face still wore a look akin to yearning. Falling in a bloody mist, his body had been split in two. The man behind him had also tasted D’s blade. The body that lay on the ground was pelted by a bloody rain.
    Not even glancing at the other men who lay there in the stark sunlight, D went over to the young man’s corpse and used the tip of his sword to flick off the power switch.
    With a thin cry of pain, Lyra returned to her normal form. Staggering, she used her sword as a crutch to get to her feet, and then surveyed her surroundings. Looking at D, she said, “Seems I’ve been rescued by an invalid.”
    But the warrior woman’s eyes glowed with contempt when they focused on the mayor and his daughter, standing stock still where the stable had once been. Although they lived in a rough Frontier village, the pair had just seen a deadly battle played out that undoubtedly seemed like a waking nightmare.
    “Now, I don’t want to seem like I’m complaining or anything,” Lyra said, looking down at the corpses of the first man and the youngest one, “but wouldn’t we have been better off leaving one of them alive?”
    “Well, you had him right in front of you,” D said, turning his gaze to the crimson-stained young man. “But you didn’t cut him down. And it almost got you killed.”
    Lyra had no response to that.
    “Age has no bearing on what someone’s capable of. A fire dragon’s young will blow flames at its parents from the first second it breaks out of its egg. Out on the Frontier, even a child of three can stab somebody through the heart.”
    Choking down the emotion that was building in her chest, Lyra nodded. “You’re right. I screwed up.” Turning to the mayor, she asked, “Recognize them?”
    “No, they’re not from around here.”
    “Drifters. I’ll go check with the hotel.”
    From down the street, there was the sound of an engine drawing nearer. It was a skeleton vehicle, little more than a driver’s seat set on a bare frame with wheels that looked like three barrels lashed together. Not only was it capable of navigating even the roughest terrain, but it could also hit speeds of up to sixty miles per hour. It’d probably been purchased from a traveling merchant, and the rear seats had been ripped out and replaced with square missile launchers. The rockets’ yellow warheads poked from the circular launch tubes. Stretching back from the bulletproof tank beneath the driver’s seat like a fat silver serpent, the exhaust pipe was twice the normal size. It was fueled not by gasoline, but rather by a variety of fungus cultivated on a massive scale all across the Frontier.
    Halting the vehicle in front of the annihilated stables, the sheriff hopped down. On seeing the rooted group and the remains of the stables, he asked, “What have we here?” As the mayor was one of them, the lawman’s tone was rather polite.
    Lyra gave him a brief rundown of the incident. The hotel’s manager and bellhops rushed to the scene, informing them that the men hadn’t been patrons of theirs, but rather had been staying in tents at the campsite to the west of town.
    “Probably killers who move around from town to town. But who hired them, and who were they after?”
    After ordering the manager and his bellhops to bring the bodies back to the hotel’s barn, the sheriff cocked his head to one side. “At any rate, I’ll thank you all to head back to my office.”
    No sooner did he say this than out of the corner of his eye he saw the figure in black slowly and beautifully sink to the ground.
    —
    When D regained consciousness, it was just after noon of the next day—and he was in the sheriff’s office.
    “I heard about the bat incident at the hotel, too,” the sheriff said, gazing at the now-awake D with a strained look. But his eyes were only