Starcrowe looked at the text again. “Starcrowe, Power Shift, Aries to coordinates 22.340 in Vibora Bay; assistance needed in warehouse.”
He looked up. No one was around. Maybe they already went into the warehouse, he thought angrily, figuring they were going to take all the glory. Well, not if he could help it.
He kicked in the door to the warehouse, and summoned his fiery blades to both cut up anything in front of him and light up the darkness. He could, with the powers of his ankh, see in the dark, but he felt more comfortable with the fire of his swords.
Starcrowe walked into the warehouse, his soft boots making barely any sound. He snuck around corners, finding nothing. No Trey Kings, no zombies, no nothing. Just empty bottles, some burnt out candles on the floor, piles of powder that he stepped over, not disturbing them.
He heard some yelling, chanting, really, but it was at the top of someone’s voice. Starcrowe went through the maze that was the warehouse, trying to get closer to the voice.
Then the chanting stopped. Starcrowe ran, outpacing his fiery swords which disappeared. He ran into a room that had a large space in the middle, and in the center was a thin black man in rags, a skeleton painted on him, wearing a top hat and a top coat. He waved his arms like a madman, and just as Starcrowe entered, there came a WHOOSH of fire and air from the area before him.
A hugely muscled creature, who looked cobbled together by pieces of flesh and double the bone, came out of the smoke, and Starcrowe could only stare.
The shadows came out of the smoke, and attacked – not the creature, but the man. Starcrowe turned around and ran smack dab into another black man, in fancier clothes. “Where you go, boy? You know Baron Cimitere needs you.”
Starcrowe stepped back and raised his hands, pulling forth the fiery blades. “Ah, Yes, Baron Cimitere needs you, Life Boy.”
“Never!” Then the creature grabbed Starcrowe, one arm around his waist, the other around his chest, and lifted him. Starcrowe screamed as the creature started lifting him.
Shadows came at the creature, and the other man laughed, a baritone. He flicked his hand and the shadows disappeared. He reached up, grabbed the ankh at Starcrowe’s neck. “I think I be takin’ this.”
Something knocked the black man off his feet, and an electronic voice said, “Not if we can help it!”
The creature lifted Starcrowe higher and higher, above his head. The man yelled something, and then the creature threw Starcrowe down, but didn’t let him go. He lifted him up again.
“Oh shit,” yelled Aries, running forward, his hands on surrounded by electricity. He ran up to the creature and grabbed it by its leg, but it was so rotted that his fingers went through it and hit bone.
“Ugh!” Aries pulled back, and the monster threw Starcrowe down again, cracking his head on the steel of the floor.
There was a loud hum and a CRACK! as Power Shift blew out a hole in the creature’s torso,rotting flesh and bone flying out from its back..
The creature lifted one last time, then collapsed, falling down, but its arms still moved downward, throwing Starcrowe again to the floor head first.
“Blast its arms!” Aries tried to grab the rotting flesh of the creature’s arms in his hands, but the arms kept moving up and down, like a toy wound up and knocked over, and the arms wouldn’t stop moving.
Aries zapped the muscles but that did nothing. Power Shift took the plasma cutter and he had in his hands and started to cut the arms.
By this time, the other black man had risen, along with an army of zombies. Aries turned to see them, and tried to electrocute them one by one, setting them on fire, but they kept coming. The creature’s arms kept moving.
Starcrowe was unconscious, blood pooling slowly at his head as his body was dragged along the steel floor by the moving arms of the creature.