The Pale: Volume One by Jacob Long (portable ebook reader txt) 📕

special. Honestly, it sounded like the coolest thing ever. I had to meet you. I had to see if you could take four guys with guns.”

“All right, calm down, Mr. Glass,” Téa quipped.

“So I take it you’re not backing down from this?” Adam said.

Josh shook his head, grinning like a thief. “Not a chance.”

Adam took a deep breath. “Fine. Time to see how far I can push it.” His eyes illuminated behind the eyes of the demon mask. The champion of the Wheel of Fate walked the earth.

Adam focused his energy and sprinted toward the man pointing the gun at Téa. No one even had time to react before Adam was at the table. Adam’s target tried to shout an expletive, but the words were still in his throat by the time Adam kicked the tall chair out from under him. The gang leader fell straight down on his back with a heavy thud. The wind was knocked from his body.

The four armed guards could turn their heads and watch Adam blur past them, but their aims and trigger fingers were far behind. Adam grabbed Téa from her chair and leaped toward the bar blindly, with Téa screaming all the way. Adam positioned his body to guard Téa, and his back slammed against the shelves of booze. A few broke, and nearly all fell to the floor with the duo.

Adam was breathing heavily. He took the impact to his lungs better than he could have hoped, but running that fast had winded him. “All right,” Adam grumbled. “You stay here. I’ll protect you.”

Téa immediately smacked Adam on the arm. Adam flinched and held the area. “Ow!”

“Don’t use that voice on me!” Téa whispered argumentatively. “You think I don’t know who you are? Like, you were going to show up later, and I was just going to be, like, ‘Adam, dude, you missed it. Some kind of superpowered hero just totally saved the day.’” Téa then adopted a more masculine voice. “Really, wow. Wish I could have been here.” She shook her head. “How did you just do that?”

“Ugh . . .” Adam shifted uncomfortably. “It’s a long story. I’ll have to tell you later.”

“What’s the matter with you?” Téa asked.

“I don’t know. I think I overdid it, and my head kind of hurts.”

Téa nodded and shrugged. “Makes sense. You went from zero to, like, literally sixty in an instant. Your brain probably bounced against your skull!”

Joshua hauled himself to his feet. His hair was tousled about, and he looked livid with embarrassment. “Where the hell did he go?” Josh barked.

“They’re behind the bar,” one henchman answered.

“Light it up!”

Without hesitating, the four gunmen opened fire on the wood veneer of the bar, punching hundreds of bullets into it. Adam quickly threw himself on top of Téa and pushed her to the floor, praying that the bar would hold strong. Seconds passed, and the barrage stopped. Then Adam heard a group of magazines dropped onto the floor and the distinctive noise of new magazines being jammed into place. Four bolts heralded fresh bullets being pushed into the chambers.

“Are you okay?” Adam whispered.

Téa nodded fitfully.

“Don’t make a sound.” Adam carefully sat up and crouched behind the bar, not wanting to disturb even a shard of glass. There were no holes on his side of the bar, so the bullets hadn’t gotten through, just as he’d hoped.

Josh walked to one of his men and leaned close to his ear. “Go up there and fill that hole with bullets.”

The henchman nodded and moved expediently. The sound of his hard-soled shoes echoed throughout the relative quiet of the room as he walked right up to the bar. He tried to lean over the counter and fire, but a hand quickly grabbed the barrel, and he was pulled out of sight. Sounds of repeated blows came from the other side, and soon the struggle quieted.

“Okay! I think that’s good!” Téa said after the third time Adam punched the luckless henchman in the face. He’d been unconscious since the first one. The other two strikes shattered the man’s nose and made his front teeth crooked. Blood obscured a majority of the man’s features.

“I need him broken,” Adam said, pulling the man from the floor. He heaved the motionless form over the countertop. The body tumbled onto the floor and luckily landed face-up.

All the men on the other side of the bar cringed.

“You don’t need to end up like this,” Adam boomed. “You can walk away, all except for your boss.”

Joshua immediately pointed his gun at his employees. “Any of you so much as thinks about it, I’ll gun you down. He won’t kill you, I will. Now take him out!” Joshua suddenly started kicking his shoes off.

Adam sighed, holding his still-aching head. “I don’t know what to do. I can feel my energy getting lower. I don’t know if I can take on four men with guns.”

Téa thought for a moment, and then her eyes went to her surroundings. She scanned the floor, the shelf next to them, and the ceiling. “We have a gun,” Téa finally said.

“I’m trying not to use it.”

Téa was bewildered. “That’s . . . noble. A little foolish.”

Adam exhaled sharply. He didn’t have a good argument anymore. He just sulked.

Téa bit her cheek. “Well . . .” Téa selected two long-necked bottles from the floor and held them for Adam to take. “How’s your aim with these?”

Téa saw Adam’s smile even with only his eyes visible. “Worth a shot,” he said, taking the bottles. He stood and whipped the bottles at the two closest men. The bottles spun through the air like hatchets and smashed against the men’s chests. The bottles shattered upon impact, and the men were propelled off their feet, landing flat on their backs. The third goon still standing flinched at the horror of such large projectiles flying in his general direction, which gave Adam time to jump over the bar and zip across the room. He drove his shoulder into the last man with such force that the goon was thrown from his feet. The nameless goon’s sternum cracked, and the air was forced from him. He flew across the room as if hit by a car, slid across the dark wood floor and then smacked his head into the wall.

Adam was unused to so much strength and speed. He didn’t know if the man was dead, but he didn’t have a moment to spare to think about it. His vision blurred briefly, and he suddenly felt a little off balance. Moving at that speed was knocking him out, but he stayed on his feet. He turned around and refocused on his remaining opponents. One was getting up faster than the other, so Adam pounced on him first. The man raised his gun, but Adam held it down. With his free hand, Adam smacked the gun from the henchman’s grip and delivered a vicious backhand that sent the man back to the floor, face-first. The other goon had gotten to one knee and was aiming. Adam thought quickly and whipped the gun he held into that man’s face. He closed the distance and booted him in the skull. The goon fell, out cold. The whole exchange hadn’t even lasted more than a few seconds.

Téa was standing behind the bar, mesmerized by the spectacle, when suddenly someone jumped over the countertop in the periphery of her vision. Téa turned to see Joshua Truong’s snarling face just before he brought the gun up. In all the commotion, she hadn’t even realized the gang leader had disappeared. Téa reached for the gun and held it away, but Joshua used his other hand and snatched the hair on the back of her head. He yanked her neck back, and Téa cried out.

Adam had just knocked out the last guy and looked up. His eyes widened, and the cosmic energy burned brighter behind his irises. He watched as Joshua forced Téa’s face onto the countertop and pressed his gun into her temple.

“Let her go.” Adam stalked toward the bar.

“You come any closer, and I’ll blow her fucking brains out all over this thing.”

Adam hesitated in his steps, but then he said, “Go ahead.”

“What?”

“What?!”

“I said shoot her,” Adam said casually.

Joshua chuckled lightly.

Adam waited.

Then he waited a little more.

Joshua couldn’t look Adam in his crazy, burning eyes. The crime boss fidgeted but didn’t make a move.

“But you have to think about what I’m going to do to you when you’re done with that, don’t you?” Adam asked, though it hardly sounded like a question. “You let Téa go now, and I’ll leave you for the cops. I promise I won’t tear your spine out through your asshole. But you go through with this plan of yours.”

Adam bent over and grabbed the man at his feet by the jacket collar. With one arm, he lifted the unconscious henchman off the ground. He made a show of ingesting a short portion of his soul, and then Adam glared at his nemesis. “Even your soul won’t be safe from me.”

To say this affected Joshua would be putting it lightly. He looked terrified, even disgusted. “You’re a monster,” he said.

“Yes,” Adam grumbled in his menacing voice, carelessly dropping his captive. “I’m a monster, a hunter of monsters . . . and men who act like monsters. Men like you. You’re not the first I’ve met, and I know at the end of the day that your first concern is for yourself. You won’t shoot her and give up your last insurance.”

Joshua was visibly seething with rage and indignation by the end of Adam’s speech. His face was all scrunched up, and Adam could smell the stupid decision on the air. Josh burned holes into Adam with the rage in his eyes. “It looks to me like you don’t have much left. Maybe I’ll just shoot you!”

Josh took the gun from Téa’s head and aimed for Adam, but Téa reacted energetically to him threatening her friend. She screamed, “No!” and knocked it away. Josh pulled the trigger, and Adam swore he could feel the heat of the bullet as it flew by his cheek. Josh wrestled with Téa’s uncanny determination for the gun, but Adam was on him in the next instant. He grabbed Josh by the gun hand and by the throat, and then he dragged him over the countertop. Joshua landed on the floor, choking and sputtering. The strength in his gun arm was no match for Adam’s, and he couldn’t budge it an inch from the hardwood.

“You feel that?” Adam snarled. Josh just choked some more. “That’s fearrrrrr . . . that’s powerlessness, the same fear and powerlessness that all the people you’ve ever terrorized and killed felt right before one of your men pulled the trigger. Now your neck’s in the noose!”

“Adam?”

Joshua’s eyes started to roll back into his head, and the champion of the Wheel of Fate felt a gentle hand rest on his shoulder. A light voice reached him. “Adam?”

Adam turned to see Téa kneeling down next to him. She looked into his eyes and smiled, seemingly not concerned for the criminal at all.

“You did it,” Téa said. “You saved me, and no one died at all. Thank you.”

Adam’s grip loosened on the criminal’s neck. Josh coughed and caught his breath.

“He’s beaten,” Téa continued. “Defenseless. No need to take that last bit.”

Adam sighed. “No. There isn’t.” He stood, taking Josh’s gun.

Téa took Adam’s hand. “Let’s go.”

“No,” Adam said, stopping Téa. “You still have work to do.”

“Me?”

“Yes. The police aren’t just going to arrest these men because they showed up in a pile.” Adam pulled out the burner phone Téa gave him and handed it to her. “You need to call the police and be here as a witness to the things they did.” Adam knelt down and quickly knocked Joshua unconscious.

“What about you?” Téa asked.

Adam stood and peeled off the oni mask, revealing the man underneath. “I’ll wait for you at home. I know I have explaining to do. I’ll do it there. For now, I need to get going. The police are probably already on their way.”

Téa nodded numbly as Adam started putting all the bodies into a pile. He checked all of them for signs of life and was pleased to discover that his record of heroic nonlethal takedowns was perfectly intact.

23

Lamont awoke with a start when the other officers