So the asshole ran me straight into a brick wall.
For the next half minute, my vision was obscured by an explosion of silver and white stars. I could hear people yelling loudly, some of them scrambling for the exit. A woman dressed as a Bavarian beer wench slipped and fell beside me. Her boyfriend, all made up to look like a zombie in a jester’s hat, picked her up and shoved her in the direction of the door.
“HEY! Are you alright?!”
The devil in fishnets was kneeling beside me now, trying desperately to help me up. I got to my feet just in time to see Carter kick the gladiator in the chest. He flew backward, bumped into the pool table, and started throwing balls as hard as he could. With arms like his he was whipping them at deadly speeds, sending everyone scrambling for whatever cover they could find.
“Cole, STOP!”
Something sailed past my head with a whoosh, the cue ball maybe, and I acted on instinct. I tackled the guy just as he was running out of ammunition, wrapping my arms around his waist and driving with my legs. He didn’t budge. It was like trying to push a bulldozer up a hill, sideways.
The gladiator reared back with one leg, and I prepared for the worst. Before he could knee my face into oblivion, there was the sharp crack of a fist connecting with a very big jaw.
“COLE!”
It was the devil who’d clocked him, and she’d hit him hard. I knew this only because she was shaking her wrist and wincing in pain. He stood stunned for a moment, then shoved her aside, grabbed a cue stick, and snapped it in half. He didn’t even use his knee, either. He just flexed his shoulders, and the thing shattered.
Holy shit.
A small crowd was closing in on him now; me, Carter, and two of the regulars who had their bikes parked out front. The one I knew as Jake was holding a blackjack. The other, a short, bearded guy who looked especially angry, was slipping on a pair of brass knuckles.
Yeah, things were definitely about to get interesting.
“What in the SEVEN HELLS is going on?”
I whirled to find Bodie, standing in the doorway. His face registered the same level of confusion of a vampire walking into a garlic festival.
In the meantime, the gladiator put one arm over the other and began spinning the two halves of the broken cue stick in a dizzying figure-eight. The motion was fluid and practiced, to the point where it seemed surreal — like something out of an old Steven Segal movie.
“Stop it, Cole!” the devil screamed at him. “NOW!”
Cole didn’t stop it. He continued stepping forward, his wrists and forearms spinning the broken ends of the pool cuein a jagged helicopter of death. Someone threw a chair at him, and he swatted it away. It halted his momentum, though. Just long enough for Bodie to surge forward, grab him by the face, and shove him backwards… straight through a thick carpet of scattered peanuts.
The giant fell, finally, crashing to the floor like a slab of granite. Someone shoved a table onto him; one of the bikers, probably. He snarled as it cracked into his exposed ribs, then leapt up and flung it away, as easily as if it were a Frisbee. By now though, he was sorely outnumbered. He had me to contend with, Carter, and now Bodie. The frat boy pirates had taken an interest too, and although not nearly as large as the gladiator, they had youth and recklessness on their side. They also still clutched the costume cutlasses they’d been carrying around all night, and from the look in their eyes, they were dying to use them.
“Fuck this.”
The gladiator spat, turned, and stormed his way to the back door that doubled as a fire exit. Out of sheer spite, he kicked the jukebox over behind him. The music stopped abruptly as it fell flat on its glass face, shattering in loud, spectacular fashion. Halfway through the doorway, he paused, looked back, and pointed.
“I can’t believe youdidthis to me, Hayden!” he snarled, his crimson face twisted in blind rage. “I’ll never forget it!”
With that he stomped into the night, swinging the metal door violently shut behind him. It crashed hard into its jamb, rattling the very rafters. The ensuing silence that swept over the bar was only temporary, however. Three seconds in, The Refuge’s only ceiling fan — still choked with the dust of decades,and long years of neglect — detached from its ancient moorings and came crashing to the floor.
An eerie silence settled over the room, this time so complete it felt like it actually echoed. The only sound came from Grizz, huddled into his usual corner of the bar. He shrieked in glee, hoisting half a beer into the air with his old man’s cackle.
“Now that was some real shit, wasn’t it?”
~ 3 ~
BODIE
The place wasn’t wrecked, it was the lovechild of a hurricane and a fraternity party. Half of everything in the bar was shattered or broken. The other half was covered in food and debris.
“What the hell just happened!?” I demanded.
At first, Carter and Sawyer were too shell-shocked to answer. They wandered the open floor of the main area with thousand-yard stares, picking up pieces of things as glass crunched beneath their feet.
Sighing in frustration, I took to helping them out. The patrons still left in the bar were picking up chairs and righting tables. One of them even grabbed a broom.
