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Zhao watched the fight in front of him, aching to get into the arena and fight himself, to avenge Louise. Instead, he gripped his chair arms tight and tried very hard to stay objective.
The Black Tabarded Fae Warriors had retreated on some unheard signal from the Morrigan. The ghouls had stayed in one place, grinning and in the case of Andrew, slavering ferociously, toxin dripping from their fangs and staining the pale grey paving slabs of the plaza an obnoxious greeny-yellow.
The militia commander ordered the first unit in and the had moved forward to surround the ghouls, holding their assorted ancient weapons toward the creatures.
The ghouls made no move toward the soldiers, waiting.
“Maybe we should have sanctioned the use of modern weapons after all.” Zhao muttered.
“And risk a tourist being shot in the melee? Modern weapons are efficient, not showy.” Amin said, then he looked up and to the north.
“The sky is more interesting than a bloodbath in front of you?” Zhao gestured.
“I can hear something... different.” Amin muttered.
Zhao ignored him, “What are they doing down there? Get in and cut them to pieces!”
The crowd seemed to agree with him because they began to grow restless, shouting incoherently at the combatants. The noise level got higher and higher, until it was a growling, roaring shriek of frustration.
The ghouls, as one, glanced over at Morrigan.
She tilted her head to the right, paused for several long seconds, then nodded once slowly.
Andrew let out a howling scream that seemed almost wolf like, so wolf like that Zhao stared at him, “That was the surrender order! Quick, someone countermand it before any... too late.”
The werewolves in the militia had automatically dropped their weapons in response to the howl, and were now scrambling to retrieve them, having realised that it wasn’t real.
However, it was that few seconds of confusion that the ghouls were waiting for; they leapt on the nearest weapon - less militiamen, dragging them down and ripping at their limbs and heads.
The crowd roared with excitement and the noise seemed to spur the ghouls on. Andrew dragged the werewolf he was fighting into a headlock, pulled the werewolf’s helm off and bit deeply into his scalp, ripping hair and skin from skull as he pulled back and spat the scalp from his mouth.
The militiaman howled and changed into wolf form in an effort to escape. Andrew didn’t let him though and with one massive heave ripped the leg of the wolf he was holding from its body, before biting through it’s throat, windpipe, cartilage and all, blood flying and spurting around him.
Melanie laughed at her partner’s exploit while casually holding the militiaman she had chosen with her thighs around his throat. When he tried to bite at her flesh, changing his head into wolf form for the effort, she giggled, shook her head and reached backward between his thighs and ripping his balls from his body, complete with Kevlar codpiece and trousers. Blood flooded out of the wound, and he redoubled his efforts to bite her, but she stuffed what she was holding into his mouth, pushed both hands onto his face and tore out his eyeballs, which she dropped into her mouth and chewed on, while the militiaman shuddered and shook in his death throes beneath her.
The remaining militiamen, shocked by the ferocity of the attacks, backed away, giving the ghouls more time to select their next targets.
“Get that one with the sword over there!” A woman yelled at Andrew from behind one of the wushu clad SDOs. He turned and tried to make her move away, or to be quiet, but Andrew looked straight at her, grinned, blew her a kiss and jumped up, dashing toward the militiaman she had mentioned, a young woman that held her sabre uncertainly toward him.
“For my fans, I will do anything!” he yelled, “Up to and including my personal attention later...”
The woman looked abashed, and the SDO tried again to get her to move away, but the press of the crowd around them forced her into his back.
Andrew reached the young woman and pulled the blade out of her hands, “I’ll give you one chance my dear. I don’t like to kill women unless I am ordered to; get out of here or I will slice you to shreds and sup on every delightful morsel.”
She shuddered and pulled a pair of Wakizashi from their sheaths, “I shall defend these people and my city to the death.” She hissed, scales appearing around her eyes and her teeth becoming sharper.
“Oh my, a lovely Naga to play with. Come on then darling, let’s dance!” Andrew attacked.
Melanie had finished her snack and was looking for another victim. Her gaze alighted on a grey haired militiaman who seemed to be unarmed.
He grinned at her and gestured, “Come on then, Bitch, I’m not scared of you!”
She stood, flicked the blood and fluids from her hands and sashayed toward him.
“Don’t do that, you’ll get speared!” a tourist warned her from nearby, pointing at a pair of spear wielding militiamen stood either side of the area the grey haired man stood in.
She looked at the tourist and smiled seductively, “Oh I can handle these three in my sleep; I do love a good spit roast and my hands can deal with the other quite easily. Would you like to join us, sweeting?”
The tourist backed away from the arena, his face paling under the sunburn. A nearby SDO stepped between him and Melanie, obviously intending to defend the man.
“You Special Department lot are so boring...” she groaned and turned back to the grey haired man, saw that he was distracted by the movement of the SDO and pounced on him,
The spearmen rushed in but all they succeeded in doing was getting in each other’s way while Melanie and the grey haired militiaman wrestled and sparred.
Zhao groaned in frustration, glancing up at the sunset which seemed to have stopped moving, “We need the Vampires; the commander is going to end up with blood and body parts everywhere at this rate.”
Mackintosh was staring with a kind of shocked fascination at Melanie and the grey haired militiaman, who had proved to be a proper martial arts expert and was dealing out as many blows as the ghoul landed.
Amin had watched Andrew fight the Naga for a while, but when the ghoul managed to disarm and render her armless, he had looked back at the sky, muttering under his breath, “Come on Miss Riordan, I can feel that you’re up there, why are you waiting?”
The crowd really did not understand what they were seeing. The teenagers in front of him were discussing the action like they were watching a film in the cinema.
“How are they doing that without getting killed?” The girl asked, sounding worried. She shifted herself back from the barriers toward the wolves as the fighting ebbed and flowed in front of her, a melee between Andrew and four knife wielding militiamen spreading blood and toxin on the paving.
“Probably movie prop style weapons.” “The young man with his arm around her waist answered her, “No way would those be real ones.”
“Look at all that fake blood!” A teenager stood nearby yelled, sounding gleeful.
“Those ghoul costumes are awesome, they’ve got every single detail right, it’s like they stepped out of an anime!” his companion said, fascinated, “Right down to the fangs and the dripping toxin.”
Mackintosh retched and gasped as Melanie repeated her eye popping routine on the grey haired man and used her knife to cut his torso open, casually tossing aside the armour he wore. Then as she hauled a handful of intestine out of the gash, the SDO fainted.
“Damn, I was hoping that SDO’s would be a bit hardier than this.” Zhao said, as another SDO took Mackintosh’s place, and the fallen officer was picked up by a pair of first responders.
“Under normal conditions, Lord Black Dragon, I would have said that they were,” Amin said, still watching the sky, “But this is anything but normal.”
“Why are you staring at the sky, Amin?” Zhao growled, growing more irritated at his lack of inability at stopping the ghouls from their rampage, “This is going to get severely out of control soon; I either need the Vampires to join the fighting or the Jade Cat to bring whatever help she is preparing, in.”
The remaining militiamen had banded together and with the commander were attempting to pen the ghouls into one area in the middle of the arena, as far away from the tourists as possible. They managed to contain them when a small parade of gold uniformed fae wound their way around the arena and into the space in front of Zhao.
He stood up and stepped down from his perch to speak to the Phoenix, who emerged, accompanied by Faidren, Amira and Edward from the middle of them. The gold fae blocked any sight of the phoenix from the Morrigan on the other side of the arena.
“I thought I told you to stay hidden?” Zhao said.
“I brought her out, Lord Black Dragon. The Jade Cat requested her presence in the audience for this evening’s event. We are just waiting for the Vampires to join us.” Amira gestured at the setting sun.
Zhao looked up at the sky which was finally a dark blue, streaked with a lighter blue, gold, pink and red where high ice clouds caught the dying light. He breathed a sigh of relief, “Excellent. When is the show to begin? Our prologue is winding to an end.” He gestured at the arena where the militia men, all armed with spears and polearms, were holding the grinning ghouls at bay.
“You’d all better find somewhere to stand then. Phoenix, Priestess, would you join me up here?” he pointed to the stall which had had another two chairs added to it.
Phoenix nodded and Zhao handed her and Amira up onto the stall, phoenix taking the seat to his left and Amira to the right. Edward stood beside Amin, looking worried. Faidren stood in front of the stall and arranged the golden fae warriors with a swift series of instructions.
Zhao noticed a flood of locals joining the crowd as the streetlights and festive lanterns were lit against the gathering darkness. The neon signs flared as the owners of the businesses turned them on. The lights gave the scene in the arena the feel of a slasher movie, blood pooling around the bodies of the fallen.
The tourist crowd barely paid attention to the newcomers, too intent on the stand off in the arena. They jeered and shouted.
The Morrigan stood up and shouted across to Zhao, “Come on Black Dragon, are your men too cowardly to go one on one with my pets?”
“Yeah! Give them a chance!” someone nearby shrieked.
The ghouls grinned and bowed to the crowd.
“Maybe one of these fine souls would like to take their chances in a match with me, Mistress.” Andrew called out.
The Morrigan smiled and nodded, “why not.”
“I’ll do it, no one can beat me at home.” A huge hulk of a man, his accent marking him as being from South Africa, shoved his way toward the barriers. The SDO stood there, a werewolf almost as big as the tourist, laid one hand on the man’s chest.
“I’m sorry sir, but no one is allowed in the arena except the performers.” The SDO said.
“Oh, come on. Would it hurt much to let just one of these lovely watchers take my beloved on in single combat, Black Dragon?” Melanie called over to Zhao.
He shook his head, “Out of the question. It’s too dangerous for a non-performer.” He emphasised the last two words.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck about the danger...” the man shoved back against the werewolf, made just enough room to clamber over the barrier and into the arena.
The militia around the ghouls held their ground while the militia commander walked over to the tourist to reason with him. The harbour laser lightshow began, painting the sky with light beams and almost drowning out the cries of the crowd with the music.
Zhao turned to Edward, “Where in all the hells is your employer? Surely, she can see that things are about to get out of hand here... from wherever she is.”
Edward shrugged, “It’s not the Jade Cat’s move, Lord Black Dragon. Ao Qin will only attack the ghouls if he sees them fighting and we arrived here after they had been penned. From the King of the South China Seas perspective, you have this under control, and he’s not needed.”
“How do you know that?!” Zhao snapped.
Edward tapped his head, “She told me to tell you.”
Zhao groaned.
The militia commander wasn’t making much headway with the South African tourist and the crowd were growing ever more restless. All around the arena, the SDOs were struggling to keep the crowd from pushing past the barriers.
Zhao stood up and activated his loudhailer, “Mò lǐgēn. Concede defeat and retreat. We have your Pets surrounded and will show no more mercy for the deaths that you have caused.”
The crowd calmed slightly and quieted to listen to the discussion. The militia commander returned to his men and went around them reassuring them.
The ghouls giggled and muttered to each other.
The Morrigan laughed, “But this is just the beginning, Dubh Raicleach. My pets have just been toying with your men, allowing the polite fiction of a show to be maintained because they are enjoying themselves. My plans did not include this entertainment of the ionróirí turasóireachta; merely their deaths.”
The crowds around the arena looked confused and some of the more intelligent began to move away from the arena.
Zhao gestured to Shen, “Provide an orderly exit for those who are leaving, so that they don’t cause a panic; take the SDO’s with you. Work out some kind of incentive to get more to leave. I don’t want to have to make it forced.”
Shen bowed and left, the SDO’s that had been the lions following him.
“So, the death of your pets will not upset you then.” Zhao clapped his hands, and the commander shouted an order. The militiamen pushed forward until the spears were actually piercing the ghouls’ bodies. Black and green fluids began to seep out around the blades.
Morrigan shrugged, “The souls are immortal, the bodies replaceable.”
Andrew grinned and giggled, but Melanie looked worried before they both contorted to turn and look at her.
More tourists began to leave, looking upset and worried. The SDO’s smiled and took names and hotels, and Amin heard a nearby SDO promising a goody bag in return for the information as a thank you for attending the festival.
He told Zhao about it, who gave the plan a rubber stamp by publicly suggesting that some of the more expensive designers could be inveigled into adding products. Tourists around them, including the teenagers sat in front of him heard and left, their fingers frantic on the keypads of their phones. He hoped for one long moment that it would start an exodus and he could deal with the problem more directly once the tourists had gone.
“Enough waiting and talking!” The Morrigan shouted, “Go forth, my Chǒngwù yòngpǐn, feast upon the bounty that has been provided and for every turasóirí that you kill, I will add two... no, five... no, ten drops of my blood to your next cumhachta!”
Andrew gave out a howl that Zhao interpretated as pure joy. Melanie didn’t seem as eager, but she smiled and the two of them turned back to their assailants.
In a flurry of movement too fast for anyone human to see the details of, the ghouls tore into the militiamen. Several dropped their weapons and tried to run but were caught and torn apart bodily before they had moved more than a few feet. The Militia commander drew his sword and attacked, trying to distract them from a nearby group of tourists who were hanging over the barriers trying to see what was going on.
His head was torn from his body and thrown toward the crowd by Andrew who had become a silent killing machine; no more giggling manically or making grand speeches. Andrew paused to drink some of the blood fountaining out of the arteries and then tossed the body aside, leaping toward the tourists.
The crowd had gone from excited and enthusiastic over the combat to silent horror. The commander’s head dropped down, bounced off the head of the south African tourist and landed with a bock-thud-smash on the paving. One woman screamed as blood splattered across her sandalled feet and with that, the panic began.
The ghouls revelled in the fear and confusion. Bodies of locals and tourists alike littered the plaza. The City militia were hopelessly outmatched.
“Will your warriors and attendants help to get the tourist out of here? The ghouls won’t touch them.” Zhao asked Tabatha. She nodded and looked at Faidren, who began issuing orders.
“Amin, get the SDO’s and any surviving militia to help.”
“He’s here!” Edward yelled over the noise in the plaza, pointing up into the sky.
Zhao looked up.