Damon stopped holding back.
The restraint Damon had kept on his body finally disappeared.
His eyes dilated until the white vanished, replaced by an abyss of pure, bottomless shadow.
The cold air inside the warehouse seemed to drop several degrees.
A mercenary stepped forward with a shotgun raised, his finger white on the trigger.
“Die, you psycho”
Damon didn’t dodge.
He sprinted straight into the barrel.
BOOM!
The buckshot slammed into Damon’s left shoulder, shredding his jacket and tearing open meat and skin.
Blood erupted over his chest, but Damon didn’t even flinch.
The force carried him forward, his hand snapping onto the shooter’s throat like a vice.
With a violent jerk, he ripped the man off his feet and slammed him throat-first against a steel girder.
CRACK.
The man dropped like a sack of wet salt, his windpipe completely crushed.
Before the corpse hit the floor, three more guards rushed in with batons and blades.
A heavy iron pipe slammed into Damon’s side, cracking two of his ribs with a dull, sickening thud.
A knife slashed across his cheek, opening a gash from jaw to ear.
Damon didn’t back up.
He didn’t cover his head.
He spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor, turned toward the man holding the knife, and grabbed him by the hair.
“That’s it,” Damon rasped, his voice dropping an octave into an inhuman rasp.
He laughed, a ragged, joyous sound that rang off the steel rafters.
“Give me more!”
He drove his head straight into the man’s face once, twice, three times, until the guard’s skull caved in and he stopped twitching.
A guard further back panicked.
He pulled a heavy sidearm, his hands shaking so violently the barrel rattled against his ring.
“Get back!
Get the fuck back!”
He emptied the entire magazine.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
Five rounds echoed in rapid succession.
Two missed, piercing the metal drums behind Damon.
One grazed his ribs, and another punched straight through his left thigh.
Damon staggered back two steps, His injured leg nearly gave out.
He caught himself, looked down at the blood running over his boot, and smiled.
Across the room, Julian’s eyes widened.
A chill crept up his spine, freezing the air in his lungs.
Julian stared as Damon stepped forward again, blood running down his leg.
The kid wasn’t bleeding out.
He wasn’t falling.
He was smiling.
The shooter clicked on an empty chamber, his eyes wild with terror.
“No…
no, no”
Damon closed the distance in an explosive burst, his uninjured leg driving him forward like a coiled spring.
He grabbed the shooter’s wrist, snapped the bone backward over his knee, and drove his palm upward into the man’s chin.
SNAP.
The neck broke with a sound like a dry branch snapping in the woods.
The man collapsed instantly, dead before his forehead hit the concrete.
“Shoot him!
Shoot him!” Julian roared, his voice cracking into an ugly panic as he backed toward the loading dock doors.
“Don’t just stand there, kill him!”
The remaining guards rushed him anyway.
Damon didn’t use formal martial arts anymore.
He fought like a starved wolf in a butcher shop.
He grabbed a guard by the vest and threw him directly into two incoming attackers, knocking them over.
He stomped down on a fallen man and kept moving.
He grabbed a blade stuck in his shoulder, tore it free without a whisper of pain, and buried it into the chest of the next man who stepped into range.
Blood splattered his skin, his clothes, and his eyes.
His body was battered – covered in deep cuts, bullet grazes, and bruised bone- but his movements only grew faster, wilder, and more brutal.
Through the red haze of slaughter, Viktor stepped back into the ring.
The scarred enforcer was bleeding from his nose and lips, his arms torn to shreds.
He saw the bodies piling up on the floor.
He saw his men screaming, dying, and breaking apart.
But Viktor didn’t run.
He pulled a combat knife from his harness, his eyes locking onto Damon with focus.
“You’re not human,” Viktor grunted, stepping over the corpse of a guard.
“Does it matter?” Damon laughed, blood leaking from his teeth as he wiped his face with the back of his hand.
“Come on, Viktor.
Show me what you’ve got left.”
Viktor lunged.
He didn’t aim for a knock-out or a submission.
He drove his whole body weight into a vicious tackle, slamming Damon back into a timber support frame.
CRASH.
Wood splattered.
Damon’s head bounced hard off the timber, black spots dancing in his vision.
Viktor seized the moment, driving his knife straight into Damon’s shoulder, burying the steel six inches deep.
Pain erupted across Damon’s nervous system, white-hot and blinding.
He gasped, spittle and blood spraying from his mouth, but instead of weakening, his eyes glowed with a terrifying hunger.
Damon reached up, his hand clamping over Viktor’s wrist like a steel clamp, locking the knife inside his own flesh so Viktor couldn’t pull it back out.
Viktor tried to pull away, but he couldn’t move an inch.
He looked into Damon’s pitch-black eyes and saw no fear, no survival instinct, and no agony – only a dark void that was drinking in his struggle.
His eyes widened slightly.
For the first time, there was something other than anger in them.
He knew how this was going to end.
“You were the only one worth remembering,” Damon whispered.
Damon drove his right hand straight into Viktor’s throat.
His fingers tore through muscle and skin, crushing the windpipe beneath his thumb.
Viktor let out a gasping choke, his body shuddering violently.
Damon twisted his arm, slamming Viktor to his knees, and snapped his neck sideways with a final, decisive jerk.
CRACK.
Viktor fell forward, his heavy body crashing onto the concrete, motionless.
Silence fell over the warehouse.
The remaining six mercenaries stood frozen, their weapons lowering inch by inch.
They looked at Viktor’s body lying at Damon’s feet.
They looked at the sixteen dead and dying men littering the floor, pools of blood joining into a lake across the concrete.
They weren’t fighting a man.
They were standing in front of something that fed on pain and slaughter.
One guard dropped his shotgun.
The heavy steel clattered against the floor.
“Fuck this,” he stammered, his eyes wide with terror.
He turned and ran straight for the side alley exit.
The other five didn’t hesitate.
They threw down their batons, dropped their rifles, and scrambled over the bodies of their comrades, sprinting out into the night as fast as their legs could carry them.
Damon didn’t hunt them down.
He stood alone in the center of the butcher’s shop, his chest heaving as he drew in long, ragged breaths.
His coat was ruined, soaked through with his own blood and the blood of twenty men.
Two ribs were broken, his left leg throbbed where the bullet had torn through, and deep cuts lined his face and arms.
Yet, as he stood among the corpses, he slowly raised his head and smiled.
Deep behind the structural pillar near the exit, Eleanor huddled on the floor, both hands pressed tight over her mouth to muffle her violent sobbing.
Terror had seized her completely, locking her muscles in place.
She couldn’t look away from the young man standing amidst the red ruin.
She couldn’t reconcile the man standing in front of her with the Damon she had known that afternoon.
He was covered in blood.
And he was smiling.
Near the wide loading dock doors, Julian Sterling backed away until his shoulders slammed hard against his sedan.
His cigarette was gone.
His expensive charcoal suit was stained with dust and blood droplets.
His face was gray, his hands shaking so violently he couldn’t even reach into his jacket for his firearm.
Every security asset he possessed, every dollar of muscle he had bought over ten years, lay dead or broken at his feet in under twenty minutes.
Damon turned his head slowly, his eyes locking onto Julian through the pale white haze of smoke.
He reached up, casually pulled the combat knife out of his own shoulder with a sickening wet sound, and tossed it onto the concrete.
“Now, Julian,” Damon said softly, his voice cutting through the silent room like a razor blade.
“Let’s talk about you”