The Deal Read Online Free Page A

tall black man with a large frame and demanding presence. I
was perfectly capable of fighting and had taken down foes larger
than myself but this guy was going to take a lot more time and
energy than I was in possession of at that moment.
    The hallway offered no means of
hiding. There were no recesses in the walls, no
shadowy nooks where I could sulk until I had formed a plan. Worse
still, there was no way of creating a distraction other than simply
walking up to him and that seemed like it was going to be my only
viable option.
    I was going to have to try and
hit him and hit him hard if I even wanted to just stun
him enough to grab his gun. I was just a few feet away from the
edge of the corridor where the hulk was waiting when an idea
suddenly occurred to me.
    Heart pumping hard in my chest, I
reached into my trouser pocket and tightened my grip on the golden bullet. If this thing was meant to destroy a demon
and no special gun was required then that meant there was something
in or on the bullet which could help me beat him without a
gun.
    Or it could just be the devils way of a cruel
joke. One last laugh at my expense before he came to take me away
and leave his so called friend free to be dispatched by a more
capable hit man than me.
    Only one way to find out, I reasoned as I drew
closer to the guard.
    ‘ Hey, man.’ I said, moving until I was less than a foot
away from the massive man beast of a guard.
    His huge head turned to look down at me and
for the briefest of moments his expression was one of anger but it
was quickly replaced by surprise as I slammed my fist with the
golden bullet encased in it upwards and into the underside of his
chin.
    There was a brief sound of skin being torn,
kind of like a sheet of paper being ripped from a writing pad, and
then the crack and squelch of bone, muscle and tendons being ripped
from their casing. Blood squirted in all directions from his
damaged arteries, soaking the walls, floor and even me, as his huge
head danced in the air for the briefest of moments before hitting
the ground with a thud.
    Stunned, I ignored the small river
of blood streaming down my face, and watched the remainder of the
guards’ body first drop to its knees and then fall flat onto the floor, blocking the way for anyone who could not climb
over him.
    I looked at the small, golden bullet in my
hand. It seemed to glow brighter than it had done earlier when I
took it from the man the world not only despised but respected out
of pure fear.
    It took a few moments for me to
recover from my awe of what had just happened, but the constant
reminder that I was on a time limit forced me back into reality. I had probably only minutes left before the deal
would be broken.
    Keeping that in mind I continued on down the
hallway, leaving the headless corpse of the security guard behind
for some other poor soul to discover, which I assumed in a busy
place like a hospital wouldn’t be long at all.
    Operating room three was situated near the
next corner of the hallway at the end, just before one could turn
left and carry on to the other rooms. The cacophony of noises,
desperate and angry voices demanding medical instruments and
medicines I had never heard of before, grew louder as I reached the
doors leading into the room.
    When I looked inside through the
lettered glass panels I could see at least four people milling
around this wrinkled old man with various tubes coming out of his
arms, nose and throat. There was a moment of doubt inside me as I
wondered if I had reached the right room, but when I noticed one of
the men inside, dressed in green scrubs, begin to cut along
the patient's forehead I felt more certain than ever that I had
finally recovered my target.
    In my awe at what I had done to
the security guard, a realization had dawned on me
just before I was about to enter the operating room: I had
forgotten to take the big guards revolver. I was still without a
gun, yet as I clenched tighter on the bullet in my