7. EDGY

I woke up when we had thirty minutes left of travel time. I went to check on Todd. He had a nervous twitch, like he had a bad drug trip, and one eye appeared red. We were running out of time. BG road into the room on his skates. He chose two pistols while I got the shotgun, a pistol, and blacklight launcher.

“Where’s my gun at?” Jeff asked.

“You’re staying on the ship,” I told him.

“Why me?”

“Because you suck in a firefight.”

“Hey!” Jeff objected.

“You missed a Union soldier at point-blank range with a shotgun,” I reminded. Still not sure how the hell he did that.

Dr. BG tilted his shades down and stared at Jeff and me, surprised by that statement. “How?” He asked.

I shook my head. “Dog, I don’t fucking know.”

Jeff looked down at his feet without a comeback. “I guess I’ll stay and fly the ship?”

“You’ll stay on the ship, but I’ll be damned if I let you fly it.”

“Then who else is gonna fly?”

I picked up the remote control unit and stuck it into a pouch on my hip. Thankfully, with the new psychic linker I bought a month prior, I didn’t need to use the buttons for some commands. So, Jeff wouldn’t be doing anything but helping Nina, just the way I liked it.

“Oh, and I got a favor to ask. I hope it’s not too much,” Dr. BG said.

“What?”

“If we kill Thory, can we get the body in cryo before it turns to ash?”

“Why?”

“It might help with my research with curing Night Fever. I’ve never gotten the blood of an elder vampire before. It could be the key.”

I shrugged. As long as the old bitch was dead, I didn’t care. “I’ll try, but no promises.”

“My man!”

BG then pulled out a small metal case about the size of his palm and opened it. Inside was a plastic bag full of purple-blue powder. He made a line of it and snorted it.

“What was that?” Todd asked.

“Don’t worry about it.” He said with a smile as he prepped another line.

“Stardust huh?” I muttered as I got a better look at it.

“Yeah, the pure uncut stuff.”

That explained a lot about his personality. Constantly dancing around all the damn time must take a lot of energy, and it must come from somewhere.

“You not gonna say anything man?” BG asked as he put his drugs away.

I turned back to him. “Dude, I kill people on a regular basis.”

BG laughed at that. I grabbed the harness with the robot arm and saw that Helena had included an instruction manual with a lipstick kiss on it. I smirked and shoved my arm through the strap. Jeff had to help me with my bad arm. I triggered the back-mounted arm, linked to my nervous system. I used it to help me attach all of my weapons to the magnetic holsters and then grab the launcher. BG changed clothes into a white suit jacket with a black collar and black platform shoes with built-in skates. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t going to question it. I was still wearing what remained of my red jacket.

We soon emerged from subspace and confronted a dark gray planet far from a star. I sent out some probes and expected the planet to be beyond freezing. It wasn’t. The planet had a breathable atmosphere with cold temperatures that didn’t require suits. Todd told us where the citadel was, and the long-range scanners gave me a readout.

“Where is Thory?” I asked.

“Top level of the citadel,” Todd said, while trying to sit up some in his seat.

“Something tells me it’s heavily defended,” Nina replied.

I went to the chair and activated the weapon systems. “Not for long.”

I powered up the heavy cannon and armed the twin missile pods and the dual underbelly laser cannons. I looked at BG, Jeff, Nina, and Todd. They nodded, realizing what I was going to do. I couldn’t hide the grin on my face as I grabbed the controls.

“Hold up a minute, amigo.” BG said, syncing his phone with the ship’s radio. “We gonna kick off this Saturday night right, with the Gee Jees.”

I had no idea what the hell a Gee Jee was, but it was some more funky disco shit with impressive falsettos. I won’t lie. The baseline was pretty good. BG started nodding his head in sync with the drums. I did the same.

“Not what I would roll with, but fuck it, it’s Saturday night.”

I sent the ship into a dive and entered the outer atmosphere. When the Vermillion broke through, I understood why the planet had warmth. The earth looked like a cracked eggshell, and I could see the piping hot magma beneath it. Nothing but black rocks made up the surface, and the dark city of spiky buildings. The citadel was the biggest building of them all and touched the clouds. Warnings flashed. They locked onto us.

“BG, what do you say we start the show?”

“Yeah!” He sang in a falsetto with his light clones matching key with the vocals in the song.

The ship auto-targeted their long-range AA guns. I fired the missiles, which struck the guns after branching out in unison. A ring of fire erupted around the citadel. More of their weapons came online around the tower. I fired the twin lasers, causing two beams of light to fire from the ship’s bottom. Whatever they touched caught fire and exploded. As I made another approach, their defenses retaliated.

I steered the ship into a controlled spin. If I had two flippers or Todd could help, I could’ve dodged faster. I felt some of their weapons hit us, but the shields absorbed it. The citadel shifted. I broke off and flew low, using the buildings as cover. When I cleared a section of the city, I saw what it was doing. The top elongated, and large cannons extended. The rows of weapons opened fire.

I heard Todd hyperventilating behind me, and Jeff fell out of his seat. Thankfully, the mechanical arm helped me turn on stabilizers, so the ride became smoother. The shields displayed a warning and were taking a beating from those weapons. I charged up the heavy cannon. The ship rumbled as the structures on the top split open to allow the gun to rise. I watched the final charging sequence complete as I pulled up and tried to weave between their attacks.

As I got high into the air, the gun charged. I threw the emergency brake and flipped the ship upside down. When the Vermillion lined up with the tower, I fired the shot. A massive blinding column of blue-white energy shot from the giant rectangular barrel. The moment the beam collided with the structure, it erupted with fire and dust like a fireworks show on steroids. Huge chunks of it fell into the surrounding city. I smirked as I looked at the burning buildings.

I brought the ship closer to the citadel as most of the guns fell silent. Spying an intact platform near the top of the tower, I set the ship to remote and climbed out of the chair. Without a word to Dr. BG, I grabbed the cannon and left. He followed behind me, and we both jumped onto the burning platform. I grimaced as I hit the ground and felt a sharp pain in my arm.

A swarm of armored thralls rushed out of the single entry point to challenge us. Using the linker, the Vermillion‘s smaller guns sprouted from the arms, and the two clusters of four guns fired into the advancing horde. A storm of blue energy rounds crashed into them, killing most of them. BG fired into the survivors. The new handguns cut through their armor like they were tissue paper.

I took my flipper off the cannon, pulled out my pistol, and joined in mopping up the stragglers. There was just one problem: the vamps activated the blast doors to keep us out. That was easy to solve. I had the ship rip it open with two missiles once we were a safe distance away. They blew the doors to bits after the loud explosive roar and clouds of fire, electricity, and smoke.

More thralls poured out. I flipped the goggles on and fired the launcher. To say it worked like a charm would undersell it. The spinning disk became a violet light show of death, leaving piles of ash and smoke when it finished. The place smelled like a barbecue.

“Oh, that is nice!” BG said with a smirk as he tilted his shades down.

“She’s on the floor above you!” Todd told us through our coms.

“Got it.”

We entered a creepy, ancient-looking temple. The arched ceiling was incredibly high up and seemed crafted for giants. With all the jet black stone, it would be an awesome set for a metal music video. I heard a hiss from above us. More of them dropped from the ceiling. I fired the launcher again.

Three shots left.

Like before, the spinning purple lights burned them to ash. More approached us from the other side. Others sought cover behind the pillars as I launched another disk. Those untouched by the light died by my pistol. BG skated ahead of me and unloaded into what remained. I pulled up a readout of the ship. The vamps were deploying some sort of fighters after it. The ship’s new basic AI already marked them as enemies. I permitted it to use whatever weapons it needed to wipe them out.

“Over here, found a way up,” BG said.

We stopped to reload our weapons beforehand, knowing we’d be dealing with Thory again. In my condition, I doubted using my rage powers would be helpful here. It already took a serious toll and the meds were the only thing keeping me going.

“Nina, how’s Todd?”

“Not good, I’m afraid.”

I heard frantic muttering and gibberish from her communicator. “What do you mean?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, I heard her moving closer to the chanting: Todd. His voice was somewhere between a growl and a whisper. He spoke too fast. I couldn’t understand it, and it didn’t sound like any language I had heard. Todd repeated it like a mantra.

“Anything you can do for him?”

“I gave him another shot, but it’s not working. You need to hurry.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. As we started up the steps, I understood why Todd started chanting like that. I heard multiple voices, not just one. All of them repeated the same words. Candles lined the walls leading up to the well. Recesses in the walls housed strange artifacts and skulls of varied shapes and sizes. We faced a large room when we reached the top of the steps. Robed creatures stood in a half-circle across the room. They kept their backs to us. I looked up at the ceiling and remembered how Dr. BG described this place. They strapped hundreds of bodies to the ceiling with tubes plugged into them, and I could tell what they were extracting.

I looked at BG. He drew holy water grenades, and I followed his lead. We tossed the most dangerous water balloons we could at them. Not sure how they worked, but they exploded and sent water in all directions. The chanting cultists weren’t chanting anymore. They were screaming in pain. I fired another disk, and while it killed many of them, the others were true vampires.

We unloaded into them with stakes and easily defeated those who tried to attack us. With the room empty, I dumped the launcher on the floor and reloaded my handgun. Then we saw the well. A large circular pool brimmed with fresh, spiraling blood. I’d definitely catch every illness in the book if I went in there.

“How dare you!” A woman’s voice boomed.

I knew it belonged to Thory. Her pale hair breached the red pool first, followed by her head. Whatever damage my grenade had caused to her back on Noron no longer mattered. Her naked form furiously rose, blood oozing off her as her crimson eyes gazed at the both of us and showed her fangs. I see why Todd was into her before the blood-sucking.

“What, not a fan of surprise parties?” BG said.

We opened fire on her. She dodged every single shot. I caught a glimpse of her before I felt her claws slash my chest. The strike knocked me on my ass. Her nails extended into long needle-like blades, and she prepared to stab me. BG tried to shoot her. Emphasis on the word try. Thory sidestepped his shots with no effort as she changed targets and walked after him.

Spears of blood flew from the well and sailed towards him. I stumbled up and raised the pistol. I fired. My shot didn’t reach her. Instead, a claw of coiling blood formed and caught the stake. Then she threw it back. That stake would’ve been through my skull if I hadn’t rolled. Dr. BG tried getting away from her. Wings of blood formed out of her back, and she instantly caught up and snatched him by the neck.

Her mouth opened. I winged her in the arm, causing her to scream and howl in pain. Dr. BG fell to the ground; judging from the loud crack, it sounded like he had broken something. Thory’s arm began to melt and burn. The holy water was working its magic. She did something I didn’t expect.

The crazy bitch tore off her own fucking arm.

Ripped it out of the socket like it was a band-aid.

“I will make you suffer!” She screamed.

A claw made of blood formed to replace the limb. This wasn’t looking too good. My communicator picked up the sound of a fight.

“Todd broke free!” Jeff screamed. It sounded like he was being choked.

Yeah, this situation was fucked.

Thory sent me across the room and knocked the wind out of me. When I hit the ground, I landed on my fucked-up arm. I suppressed a scream. I felt blood against my chest feathers. Her attack ripped through my vest. I looked up as Thory landed on the ground. She began licking the blood on her hand and smirked.

“Ah, so that explains it.”

“Huh?”

She sucked on her fingers, sampling more of my blood. “Haven’t tasted blood like yours in over a thousand years.” Thory approached me as I forced myself to sit up.

“What the hell are you talking about!?”

“No point in telling you. You’ll be dead in a second.”

Her claws extended, and her pace increased. I pulled the trigger. The pistol clicked. She laughed. Shit. Then BG ran up behind her, but she spun at the last second and backhanded him. The decoy exploded into a pile of light. BG landed the shot and Thory shrieked. I watched as the shot pierced right above her navel. The holy water kicked in and her skin began to warp and melt like cheese in a microwave.

I drew the shotgun and squeezed the trigger. The spikes tore up her face and bare chest. She fell back and almost hit the ground. Then, like someone on wires, she pulled herself up. I saw the bones in her jaw and some of her exposed, rotten ribs.

We had her.

She rushed to the Blood Well. I desperately pumped the shotgun and zeroed in. BG fired too. We got her in the legs, and they both snapped off at the kneecaps. However, the rest of her got through.

A second later, the well stirred. Thory erupted out of it. Massive wings of blood gouged the walls of the chamber, and instead of legs, a vortex of blood swirled beneath her, keeping Thory aloft. New blood claws emerged from the pool.

I spoke too soon.

Now we were seriously fucked.

BG unloaded both guns into her.

“Aw hell,” BG said between shots.

Whatever damage the holy water did no longer mattered. The power from all the blood healed Thory faster than the holy water could melt her. I fired the shotgun, hoping the two of us could beat her regeneration. We couldn’t. The claws attacked. I ducked and dodged some of them, but one caught me in the side, and I fell to my knees. She sent Dr. BG flying across the room. I didn’t have a choice now. I grabbed the shotgun, growled, and forced myself to stand. Letting my anger over this situation boil to the surface, I funneled it through the gun rather than letting it out in all directions.

The gun glowed red, and the wood caught fire. The air around the weapon and my arm began to distort and warp. Embers danced off the gun as I pulled the trigger. The shell and all the stakes caught fire. When they collided with Thory’s body, they erupted in a flash of blinding crimson light. I looked away from the blast. The shockwave caused me to briefly kneel.

When the light faded, I couldn’t see what had happened through the smoke. I felt something slam into my chest. My gun flew from my flipper, and I sailed across the room. I vomited up blood as I hit the ground. My injured arm erupted with pain, and my vision blurred for a moment. I could tell Thory was still alive and somewhat intact.

“Your power is no match for me!”

I wanted to call her a cheating bitch, but I didn’t have the energy to. Thory raised her claws to turn me into a mashed penguin, but disco music blared, and a stake flew through her skull. She turned and attacked Dr. BG as he skated around the room. She flattened him.

He exploded into light.

Decoy.

A purple-skinned version of him appeared on her right. She fell for the decoy again. This one lasted longer. I saw BG hiding behind a column and reloading his gun while trying to sit upright. He looked out of breath for once. When she impaled his second clone, he struggled to make a third one and almost fell over. This one lasted a few seconds. BG finished reloading, slicked back his hair, skated out into the open, and emptied the gun while cranking up his music.

His shots did nothing. Thory smacked him into the left wall, cracking it on impact.

“Enough with the fucking music!” She growled. Then she turned back to me. “Now, where were we? Oh yes, I’m going to bleed you dry!”

I heard something beep, and I looked at my arm. An external force hit the chamber, causing Thory to be thrown away from the Blood Well. The roar of fractured stone and the screeches of the metal were agonizing. It was louder than a gunfight, a fireworks show, and a metal concert, all happening simultaneously. I covered my head as bits of debris hit the ground near me. It only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like it would never end.

Whatever hit the structure came to a stop. I opened my eyes. It was the Vermillion. I saw some dented panels and scratched paint across the ship’s body. The back of the ship opened and someone exited. I couldn’t tell who approached. Then I heard movement from my left. I saw the claw before I saw the rest of them. Thory.

Without her connection to the well, she only had one arm left. The battle stripped her right side to muscle and bone in some areas. Yet she continued to crawl by throwing her arm forward and using it to drag herself towards me.

“Kill them both!”

My attention turned to the person who disembarked the ship. I saw they had a pistol in their hand. They advanced a bit, and the beanie confirmed my suspicions. His eyes were red, and his feathers didn’t look right. The white parts had turned a sickly gray.

“T-Todd?”

Todd didn’t answer me and raised the gun. This was one of the stake guns BG and Nina had supplied us with.

“Yes! Kill him! Kill him now!” Thory growled.

Each time she shouted, Todd shook. For a split second, I saw a change in his eyes. He was still in there.

“Do it!” She shouted.

“Hey Todd, you know that one body pillow you want? I’ll get it for you if you shoot that bitch.”

Todd lowered the gun.

“Are you serious!? Shoot him!” She roared, and the glow in her eyes intensified.

Todd raised the gun again. The body pillow bribe was worth a shot. Todd pressed the gun against my head. No way I’d survive this. I saw the claw on the underside of his flipper move to the trigger.

“You fucking weeb. You don’t have the balls to kill me.” I said, figuring I’d get one last taunt before I died.

The shot went off, but I didn’t have a spike in my brain. Instead, I heard a scream from Thory. A stake pierced her head between the eyes. Thory gazed in disbelief as she comprehended what had just happened. Her eyes focused on the stake, and then she glared at Todd and hissed. Todd fired again, hitting her in the back. She flailed like a fish out of water, but she wasn’t dying. He shot again, with no change, besides making her angrier.

“The heart Todd! Shoot her in the heart, for fuck’s sake!”

This time, Todd shot her in the right spot. Her body ignited like the thralls and lesser vampires.

“Y…you were…mine,” she said, looking at Todd.

Her eyes teared up as she continued to burn. She gave the impression of a girl that had just been savagely dumped by her boyfriend. I mean, I guess that’s kinda what Todd just did. Then she lowered her head and shut her eyes. With that, she burned away, leaving a small pile of ash.

Todd dropped the gun and slowly helped me up. “So…that body pillow?”

“Not in a million years am I buying your degenerate ass a fucking body pillow,” I said.

Todd looked down and sighed. As he helped me up, I had the mechanical arm jokingly shove him. “Fine, but only this one time.”

“Fellas, I’d hate to ruin this moment, but uh, can someone get me to a hospital?” Dr. BG said, wheezing as he did.

Looking at him, yeah, he needed a hospital. And as I fell and lost consciousness, I did too.

8. TODD

---

“Well, Todd, you are officially cured,” Nina told me as she looked at my blood with her enhanced vision.

She smiled and removed the other monitors. We were at a space station called PR-81. Glass and blue lights were the preferred aesthetic here, as every room showcased them. The medical equipment appeared top-notch and in excellent condition. Once Nina deactivated everything, she led me out of the room. I vaguely remember how we got here. I think I told the ship to get us to the nearest medical station, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open either. As we passed through the glass hallway, I could see patients in other rooms being treated by different aliens and, sometimes, robots. Since Nina was a qualified medical android, she could treat all of us and use the equipment as needed. The hallway led to an open room with chairs and a reception desk. Someone was lounging in one of those chairs. I shook Jeff gently, and it took him a few seconds to recognize me. I noticed the bruises on his face that I had given him.

“You good?”

I nodded. “Yeah, no turning into a thrall for me.”

“What about Edgy and BG?” Jeff asked, standing up and yawning.

“Somebody call me?” Edgy said as he came around the corner.

Bandages enshrouded his broken arm. He also had stitches and medical dressings for his other arm, neck, and face. His scowl revealed his dissatisfaction with the matter. Then we heard Dr. BG harmonizing with his light clones as he reached us. He shied away from skates, likely because the hospital disallowed that. He had bandages over his left eye and a cast on his left arm, and I saw bandages and stitches across his chest and stomach.

“How are you feeling?” Nina asked.

“I’m staying alive!” He sang.

“Damn, that chick did a number on y’all,” Jeff said.

“Shut the hell up Jeff,” Edgy growled. “How am I gonna pay for these medical bills?”

I smiled, “I uh…I already did.” Edgy, Jeff, and Dr. BG all seemed surprised by that. “I grabbed some gold and diamonds from Thory’s personal chambers and used it to cover the bills.”

“Nice one Todd,” Edgy said, smiling.

“There any left over?” Jeff asked.

I nodded. The gold coins scattered around still held a decent value in either units or credits, depending on the location in the EdgeWorlds.

BG smirked. “You sly dog.”

“Oh, we recovered part of Thory’s arm before it completely dissolved. It’s in cryo on their ship,” Nina said.

Dr. BG’s silver eyes widened. “Aw man, I can’t thank you all enough. With this, we can speed up cure research!”

I remembered one thing I saw when Thory had control over me. Other ancients existed, and Thory was particularly close to one. Based on her connection to him, he appeared more powerful, but his true strength was unclear to me. I sensed another vampire. They may have been close to Thory before, but not anymore. Despite my explanation, Nina was unsure about the ancient tied to Thory.

“So, what happens now?” Jeff asked.

“Well, I’m thinking you drop us off back at the clinic and then do whatever,” Dr. BG said with a smile. “If you’re nearby, don’t be a stranger and stop by, especially if you have vampire problems.”

Edgy nodded. “If we’re heading out that way, we’ll do that.”

Edgy piloted the ship back to the clinic. Nina and Dr. BG saluted us and left, sliding back to their clinic with a partially melted portion of Thory’s arm in a cryobox. Edgy exhaled, sat back in his chair, and opened the box of gold coins I had taken from the citadel.

“Alright, let’s get these exchanged. Then I’m going to go to a liquor store and getting a big fucking bottle of whiskey.”

“Man, screw that. What do you say we hit up a club?” Both Edgy and I just glared at Jeff.

“Jeff, sit your ass down and shut up,” he growled. “I’ve got a better idea.”

I saw the coordinates he was putting in, and when Jeff saw them, he grinned like a kid in a candy store.

“Yeah!”

“What? Where are we going?”

Edgy smiled gave me a big, devious smile. “A place where the girls won’t bite you, unless you want them to.”