Opening my eyes was sort of like waking up from the Total Lockdown pill I’d been given after the Heartchamber massacre. The last thing I remembered was fighting like an unhinged psycho against a skyful of ticked-off Reapers.

  I remembered cutting a couple with the scythe and nailing a bunch with Death Metal, but in the end, the fight hadn’t even been close. After the scramble to implement a cure for Warcry’s knee, multiple rapid-fire raids culminating in that disaster at the organitech hangar, and the faceoff with Takeshi, I’d been running on fumes.

  Worse, what the angel of death had said back when I was choosing a Ten path was true—every Reaper was above reproach. There were no evil ones, so I couldn’t use Damnation to take any of them out of the fight permanently.

  Sometime during the battle, when it sank in that I for sure wasn’t making it out alive, a story Gramps had told me once popped into my head.

  Usually, Gramps didn’t talk about his wild days; I just kind of got the sense through osmosis and the occasional ribbing from his old man pals at the senior center that the young Carl Hake had been a hell raiser extraordinaire.

  But this one night, while I was doing my chemistry homework, he and I had been watching some old show where a bunch of greasers and sailors got in a big melee in a bar.

  “I been there, buddy boy,” Gramps had hooted. “Yeah. Sure did. Back when they had the honkytonk up town. Me and this gal were cutting a rug—this woulda been back before I met your granny—we two stepped all over that floor. Didn’t find out she was spoken for until this sailor boy snatched her outta my hands and decked me one. I was just a dumb hillbilly back then, I didn’t know them Navy boys moved in packs, so I come up swinging. Woulda done the same if I’d known. I mighta had more than sodee pop revving me up, too,” he said, shooting me a toothless grin.

  That sounded a million times more interesting than chemistry. I shoved it aside and asked him, “What happened?”

  “What happened!” He chuckled. “All them fancy white uniforms piled on top, that’s what happened. Then we had us a real scrap going. Some gal over here’s screaming, ‘Call the law!’ Somebody over there’s hollering, ‘Take the starch outta his collar!’ A real hoot-n-holler Saturday night.”

  “Did you win?”

  “Well,” Gramps drew out the well like he always used to when he was setting up something dramatic, “there was eight of them for every one of me. Their Navy whites weren’t so white anymore, but I wasn’t whooping the tar out of ’em by any stretch of the imagination. So I figured, ‘If I ain’t gonna win this, I’m sure as hell gonna make that first sailor boy sorry he picked a fight.’ And he was, buddy boy. Sure as shooting he was.”

  Back in the ruins of Pearl City’s organitech hangar, when I knew it was over, I’d come to the same conclusion as Gramps. If I was going down, then the lead Reaper, the guy wearing those light-eating bracers and ordering me to surrender, was going down with me.

  I couldn’t tell how much time had passed between barreling into him and opening my eyes here, but I knew instantly I was not on Selk anymore.

  First of all, the ground was bloodred sandy hardpack and the wide-open sky was the color of pus. Far away on the infected horizon, a single jagged outcropping of obsidian punctuated the barren hellscape.

  Then there was the wind. Being inside a dome, Pearl City hadn’t had any breezes, gentle or otherwise. Here, sick-smelling gusts blistering with heat screamed across the expanse.

  I don’t mean “the wind screamed” as in a cool way to say “it was loud.” I mean the wind literally screamed in agony. Voices in it howled for someone to end their suffering, screeched for a drop of water, groaned for relief.

  I screamed, too, a strangled cry of pain as the wind carved burning slices in my exposed skin. I couldn’t see the blades, but I could feel them, an endless swarm of tiny razors laced with acid. Blood welled up and trickled from the cuts, blasted dry in seconds by the scorching heat.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  For once I wished I had on that stupid gangster suit instead of the street clothes I’d worn on the raid. Those invisible razors didn’t seem able to affect anything but flesh; they didn’t rip through the fabric of my pants or t-shirt. But the short sleeves left my arms and neck and face wide open. The suit jacket would’ve at least protected to my wrists.

  I covered my arms in Death Metal and brought them up around my head, trying to block as much of the slicing and dicing as possible. Thankfully, it worked. I peered out from between my shields, trying to figure out where I was and find the fastest possible exit from it.

  A familiar chuckle rose over the sound of the wind and made the skin down the back of my neck crawl.

  “Well, I’ll be dogged, Smart Boy. Didn’t I tell you I’d see you in hell?”

  I spun around, shoving one shield out in an instinctive block and cocking the other back for the attack. The wind chewed at my unprotected face again, but I pushed the searing pain out of my head. I couldn’t break my stance to cover up. Not standing toe-to-toe with my worst enemy.

  The Bailiff hadn’t changed much from the day he died. Same scrawny frame, baleen teeth, and greasy black hair sticking out from underneath his faded bowler hat. Same sweat-stained wifebeater splashed with dried droplets of Kest’s black Selken blood. Like always, his webbed hands were buried in the pockets of faded brown pants held up by beat-up suspenders. Or, I guess, his hand. It was pretty clear the forearm stuck in his right pocket ended in at the wrist, where the Heartblood Crown had chewed through his bones.

  The most obvious difference was the eight musclebound Spirit arms sticking out of his shoulders, where he used to have only two. But there were also faint razor scars crisscrossing every inch of his exposed skin, and across his left cheek, livid red burn scars stood out against his pale, greasy skin.

  A brand. Slightly smeared, like he’d tried to jerk away from the branding iron when it touched down.

  I grabbed for his life point with Damnation, but there was nothing there. Not like Dead Man’s Hand passed through it because of his defenses, but like he didn’t have a life point at all.

  Which made sense, because I’d killed him months ago in that field on Sarca.

  “That tired old song and dance won’t play here, Smart Boy,” he drawled, grinning his brush-toothed grin. “Time to learn yourself a new tune.”

  Rustling in the sand behind him drew my attention to the new arrivals.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” the Bailiff said. One of his eight enormous ghost arms hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the gang gathering behind him. “I brought your fan club.”

  I knew every face, even if I didn’t know all their names. Their angry threats twined with the endless whispers of my innocent victims whenever I pulled Wrathblade.

  Agent Ravomet, Ling Fey the psycho squid, Tatsu Shin Be and his Contrail buddies. The host of corrupt Technol agents I’d just wiped off the face of Selk. All the problem gangsters and evildoers Takeshi had had me clean up for the Dragons over the last two months, along with the monsters I’d tracked down and exterminated on my own. The nerdy Saline Life cultivator from the ruins delving team and a few of the Technols I’d taken out in the jungles of Shinotochi-Sarca. Some sickos from the Tikrong Every Comfort Palace, suddenly not so cowardly now that they were part of an angry mob. The demon-winged Shogun of the Contrails from the Heartchamber massacre and a small army of the most awful monsters he and the Dragons had had working hooligan for them.

  And right up front, the Bailiff’s old Of Smoke and Silk buddies, Shogun Takiru with his deadly playing cards and Ripper the shark douchebag who’d torn Kest’s arm off.

  They all looked mostly the same as they had in life, but there were minor differences. Every one of them had brands on their left cheek, and they had all upgraded, or maybe mutated, since dying. Wicked bone shards stuck out of knuckles like claws, gleaming fangs and tusks surrounded mouths that hadn’t had any in life, and weird glowing eyes displayed too many or not enough pupils.

  The demonic gang started fanning out to surround us.

  If it had just been everybody I’d ever killed, or just the people I’d killed before I had specialized in Cursed Death, I could’ve believed I was anywhere else. But I knew exactly where Damnation had sent the Bailiff and every evildoer I’d taken out after him.

  “This is hell,” I said.

  “Got ’er in one!” the Bailiff crowed. He rocked on his heels. “And have we ever been chomping at the bit to see you again. Yessirree. In fact, we cooked up a right special celebration just for you. Show him what he’s won, Ripper!”

  The Bailiff beckoned behind him with one huge ghostly arm. Ripper stepped away from the crowd, his overstuffed rows of teeth gleaming in the diseased daylight.

  A white-hot branding iron sparked and popped in his mutated fist. Heat distortions blasted off it like a blowtorch.

  The Bailiff rocked on his heels. “This party’s gonna be a hot one!”

  Enemies I’d already killed once closed in from all sides, cinching tight like a noose. I dragged my eyes away from that blistering branding iron and spun on the spot, raking my glare over the revenge-thirsty horde.

  “You all want a piece of me?”

  I dropped Death Metal shields and thrust my hand out to my side. The Lunar Scythe tore across my skeleton and formed in my fist, while the Void Bracers I’d won from that angel burst from beneath my skin and rippled into place covering my forearms.

  My immortal weapons radiated darkness against the purulent light of that infected sky. The wind of razors shrieked across their black-as-the-grave surfaces like knives sawing on glass.

  “Come get it.”