Firedrake - Volume Two Read online

  Firedrake

  Volume Two

  By

  T. Mike McCurley

  Firedrake and all associated Characters, and all material in this book copyright 2008-2015 by T. Mike McCurley.

  ebook Version copyright 2013 by T. Mike McCurley

  Cover design by the author.

  Cover illustration by caza77.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarities between characters in this book and persons / establishments / beings of any sort, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under international law. No material in this book may be reproduced by any means, electronic or otherwise, without the expressed written permission of the author, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.

  Portions of ‘Firedrake: Volume Two’ were previously published by Metahuman Press (copyright Nick Ahlhelm, Editor ).

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication:

  To all those who believed in me enough to kick me into gear again.

  Chelsea, Glenn and Loni, Rachel, Kate, Gary, Dave, Matt, Frank, Hg, Betsy and all the rest.

  All of you have who have been there and will be again –

  You have my Thanks

  Firedrake Volume Two

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About the Author

  More from T. Mike McCurley

  Preview of Firedrake Volume Three

  Chapter Fourteen

  Drake grunted as his back impacted with the light post, folding the metal until it broke off with a shriek. For his part, the booster continued his reverse flight until he slammed into the wall of a pharmacy. Concrete shattered under the impact.

  “You should be more careful,” declared the woman in the black bodysuit with a Texas flag emblazoned across the chest. Her voice was low and soft, with a pronounced drawl, and held none of the tension Drake would have expected given the situation at hand.

  Drake had been in Austin for almost a week following the return of Patriot’s mystical cure, taking time off to allow his battered body to heal. In actuality it took only two days for him to return to readiness, but he was enjoying the hospitality and the vacation. It was during the fifth day that the alarm came from the Police Department.

  “Got one out off Guadalupe and 38th that just blew his way through a half-dozen cruisers,” Soundstage announced as she entered the living room of the expansive house in which the city of Austin had allowed its defenders to live. Her helmet, as always, covered her head and was sealed to the armored battle suit she wore. It fed her a constant stream of information from police and other emergency response frequencies, and years of experience let her garner the details she needed with little effort. She moved through the room with purpose, and her amplified voice echoed throughout the building.

  “Awww, not now,” Drake said with mock sadness. “I mean, Oprah’s coming on and everything...”

  “You can TiVo it,” Soundstage replied as the reptilian booster fairly leaped up from the chair in which he had been seated.

  “Yeah, ’cause I’m so good at programming things,” Drake said, snorting. “I can’t even get my VCR to stop flashing twelve o’clock.“ He slithered into his shoulder holsters, clipping the retention straps to his belt.

  “He is coming?” asked another voice.

  “Yeah,” Drake replied, turning to regard the smaller woman standing in the doorway to the room. She wore a lightly-armored bodysuit of jet black accented by a flag emblem. During his short stay, Drake had become acquainted with the slight figure, who went by the name of Sangre. She was more than a foot shorter than Drake, but he never felt he had to look down to see her. The woman had a presence that felt larger than life. She had made the claim to others that she had been in Texas for a hundred years or more, and there were moments when Drake could almost believe it. He had never seen her in action, but Soundstage spoke highly of her skills. Drake had been surprised to discover that Sangre’s personality was even more abrasive than his own. A part of him wanted to introduce her to Colleen Hart, just for the pleasure of watching the interaction.

  “Is this normal?”

  “Who cares about normal, slick? I’m a cop, right? Gotta go where the action is.” He made an effort to produce the most dazzling grin in his entire repertoire just long enough to convince her that he was not serious, then reached out a wide hand to hold open the door beside her.

  “I figure you probably do, yeah,” she replied, missing the intended sarcasm completely, which was another of the few things that had been so noticeable that it registered with Drake. Sangre had an almost limitless inability to understand humor in any form. He shook his head as she passed beneath his outstretched arm and stepped through the doorway.

  The trio had flown to the scene of the incident with due haste, Sangre clinging to Soundstage’s neck like a flag-wearing monkey and Drake winging his way beside them. As they neared the scene, passing rapidly over approaching emergency vehicles, they saw the cause of the problem. It was difficult to miss.

  Standing nearly thirty feet tall and occupying space between a four-story bank building and a library, the man was holding a wrecked Nissan pickup in one hand as though it were no burden. He was grossly fat, and covered in a mat of hair so thick it was like the fur of a dog. He wore no clothing, and in any space where the man’s flesh showed through the hair, it was seen to be covered in lurid tattoos. As the three boosters approached, he flung the Nissan in an overhand throw that had devastating results. It crashed into the front grill of a ladder truck marked for Company 14, sending the massive vehicle skidding sideways. The tail of the truck slammed into a group of storefronts, exploding them outward in showers of glass and brick. The hairy man laughed echoingly and stomped a foot down to smash a bus stop cubicle.

  “That pretty common around here?” Drake asked, jerking his chin toward the rampaging figure.

  “Giant furry naked men? Oh, yeah. All the time,” Soundstage shot back with a chuckling sound. She banked toward the ground. “Here’s your spot, Sangre.”

  “Exercise caution,” the small woman suggested, stepping off the armored back while still in motion. She seemed to hang in the air for a moment, then plummeted toward the ground. Drake slowed his own flight in an effort to turn back to catch her.

  “She’s got it,” Soundstage said. “Come on! We need to keep this one contained. If he gets into the city proper, no telling what kind of damage he’ll cause.”

  Confident that the chromed booster knew what she was doing, Drake returned his attention to the matter at hand. The furry man had ripped a stop sign and its post from the ground and thrown it in a sidelong spin that would have decapitated a police officer had his partner not tackled him to the ground a second before the deadly impact. The two men hit the pavement mere inches beneath the whistling missile, which then crashed through the glass front of a cigar store. Beside the store, a group of reporters ducked as glass showered their position.

  Soundstage changed her flight attitude to a hover and engag
ed her speakers. Her words echoed from the walls of every surrounding building.

  “Unidentified subject! This is the police booster strike force! Cease and desist your destructive activities or we will respond with force!”

  There was a moment, Drake noted, when everything went silent. It was almost as though time itself had stopped. For that brief moment, he imagined that even the sounds of the sirens and screaming had ceased, that the car alarms had fallen silent, and that everything had come down to the thunderous noise of his own heartbeat. Then the moment ended, and the enormous man let out a laugh that was chilling in its ferocity.

  “Come and get me, cutie!” he roared, the sound nearly as loud as Soundstage’s amplified tones. Bellowing incoherently, the man drove a fist through the facing of the bank building, blasting aside stone and glass to reach a pudgy hand inside.

  “He pulls Fay Wray out of there and starts climbing, I’m going home,” Drake said. He folded his wings back and dived toward the ground, building some speed before flaring them wide again and angling upward in a hard climb. The move put enough distance between him and Soundstage that he did not hear her reply, though her laughter was faintly audible.

  Drawing his hand back from within the bank, the massive man stuck something into his mouth and began to chew noisily. A muffled cry sounded for a second, then cut off.

  “Oh my God! Did he just eat someone?” Soundstage asked. Her volume was still elevated, and more than one horrified police officer shouted an affirmative answer.

  “Shut him down!” Soundstage shouted. There was a bark and a roar, and a cone-tipped missile of white and yellow leapt from her left shoulder mount. Scarcely longer than an outstretched arm, the missile flew unerringly toward the man, exploding as it neared him. The shockwave from the detonation shook the surroundings, and the flash of light was brilliant enough it made Drake’s still-tender eyes sting.

  “Wanna warn somebody before you do that?” he growled, reaching up to rub at his eyes with the back of one hand.

  The giant man squealed at the sudden assault on his senses, flapping a hand before his face to clear the smoke. Fragments from the casing had opened dozens of tiny lacerations on his face, and drops of blood appeared in their wake. Though the missiles were damaging primarily due to their concussion, there was no small amount of shrapnel that accompanied the blast.

  From the ground, the police opened up with a veritable arsenal of small arms, peppering the giant with bullets and buckshot rounds. They did little more than make him shout in surprised pain. He followed up a second later by knocking a cornerstone free from the bank facing and sending it crashing to the ground below. Ragged bits of stone hurtled from the shattered rock and slashed across the officers, momentarily silencing their response.

  Soundstage flew in closer, intending to challenge the man again, and was astonished to see one great eye close in a wink as the man leered at her.

  “Say, baby, looking good,” he said with a suggestive whistle. He licked his lips, waggled his tongue at her, and grinned past teeth in serious need of advanced dental care. An involuntary shiver went through the armored hero as the man added, “I got something for you,” and grabbed at himself obscenely.

  “Well, I see that the growth thing isn’t an all-over kind of effect,” she countered, fighting the urge to be sick. Her wrist-guns snapped to full extension above her hands.

  His face reddened as he reached toward her. “I’ll bust your metal ass, bitch!”

  “Want to wash that hand first? I’ve seen where it’s been,” Soundstage responded. Her wrist-guns spat fire, slashing a stream of bullets past his face in an obvious warning shot. The ammunition she used could easily saw parts of the man completely off, and despite the lust-filled taunts he had made, she had no wish to cause permanent harm.

  “Look out! He’s getting bigger!” Drake shouted. He pointed with the tip of a yellowing talon. The giant was indeed increasing in size. He had passed the thirty-five-foot height mark and was still growing.

  The reptilian booster’s warning was a boon to Soundstage, but his flight had taken him too close, considering the increase in reach that his foe had gained. With a backward slap, a hand the size of a car hood smashed into Drake and sent him sailing backward to snap through a light pole and crash into the wall of a pharmacy with a sickening thud.

  “You should be more careful,” Sangre intoned.

  “Yeah,” Drake agreed, coughing. “I was thinking about it, but then I was like, ’Naaa, why try something new now?’”

  “Thank you for the assistance, though,” she added, gesturing to the light pole he had destroyed. It lifted from the ground as if by magic and flew in a spinning arc toward the giant, leaving cable sticking from the ground. Sangre wiggled the fingers of her left hand, arm outstretched toward the scene, and the remains of a destroyed cruiser arced upward toward the giant as well.

  A grating sound, as of a garden rake dragging across concrete, split the air with thunderous force. The giant clapped his hands to his ears in pain as the few remaining windows in the buildings around him suddenly disintegrated under the sonic assault. Facing the giant from her hovering position, Soundstage amped the volume a little more as she continued the screaming attack.

  “Well, so far, Soundstage is the only one that’s having any luck,” Drake observed. He flexed his knees and leaped into the air, snapping his wings in a rapid beat as he climbed into the air. “Let’s see if I can’t do a little bit.”

  The car that was flying smashed into the giant’s left knee with a crunch that Drake knew could be either metal or bone giving way. The manner in which the vehicle folded around the joint left little doubt it was the former. It caused the giant distress, though, as evidenced by his pained yelp, and that was enough to bring a grin to Drake’s features.

  Soundstage cranked the volume on her speakers and cut loose with yet another blast of sound. Blood ran from the nose and eyes of the giant in response to the onslaught. The shattered light pole, still spinning, struck the giant in the head repeatedly as Sangre manipulated it from the ground. Drake swept in, feeling no larger than a dog might to a fully grown human in comparison to his opponent, and exhaled mightily, trailing a stream of flame across the hair on the man’s chest. It ignited for a second, then shriveled and stuck to the giant with a sizzling sound.

  A massive hand slapped out at him and Drake was forced to dodge, though he used the barbed tip of his tail to spike into the back of the hand. The move, while psychologically satisfying to Drake, had no noticeable effect on the furry giant.

  “Drake, clear my line!” Soundstage ordered. Without hesitation, Drake folded his wings and let himself fall away, snapping them back open a few moments later and angling his flight to the left as the world erupted into a cacophony of sonic devastation.

  Groaning, the giant bent at the waist and wrapped his fat fingers around the frame of an abandoned taxicab. The metal screamed under the pressure of the hand. Glass shattered and fell free from the windows as he lifted it like a yellow truncheon. Sangre kept the light pole swinging; a mobile bat that left bruises and blood in its path. It smacked across the enormous head and neck, splitting the skin with every strike.

  The giant suddenly rose to his full height, bringing the cab around in a wide arc. The undercarriage and front bumper hammered into the hovering form of Soundstage, throwing sparks and showering the area with bits of the broken automobile. Fluids from the wrecked machine spattered the bank building. Gasoline and oil flared into brilliant life for a few seconds, giving a hellish aura to the whole location.

  A silver streak sailed clear of the scene, blasting through the upper floors of an apartment building and emerging from the other side. Her fall toward the street was arrested by an ignition of the jets in her boots, and she flew back toward the confrontation. A rent in the abdominal plating as well as several smaller scars and dents in the metal armor gave mute testimony to the power of the blow she had taken.

  “Sangre! Make me
some handcuffs!” Drake shouted. He flew at the man once again, dragging both his pistols from beneath his arms. The weapons bucked and roared in his hands. He directed his fire at the frame of the cab, unwilling to fire a round that might cripple the man. Where the rounds impacted, small explosions followed. A second later, the cab disintegrated in a fiery blast as what remained of its fuel supply ignited with a whoomp sound. Yellow-orange flames licked out and fell to the ground in a ghastly display.

  Sangre nodded in response to the request from Drake and focused her attention on the wrecked automobiles and the random bits of scrap that had been generated by the rampaging booster. Strips of metal, pieces of auto chassis, street signs, and more all rose into the air under her command and began to braid themselves together into thick, ropy strands. She forced the metal to respond to her will, ignoring the blood that trickled from her nose and the quivering of her limbs as she fought to control it all at one time.

  With a cry of agony, the giant booster flung the destroyed taxi away from his body. It crashed to the ground and skidded across the pavement, slamming three police cars into new positions before coming to rest. The cries of wounded officers drifted up to Drake’s ears.

  “Rockets!” Soundstage shouted, a second before three more missiles spewed forth from her shoulder mounts and detonated in the face of the giant. The concussion seemed to stun him for a moment, and Drake took advantage of the distraction to sweep wide and come in from the monster’s right side. He attached himself to the side of the giant’s head, anchoring his position with the sharp points of his talons. He spoke in a clear voice into the wax-encrusted ear he was facing.

  “Stop moving, slick, or I’ll blow a hole through the side of your head,” he commanded.

  “Get your ugly ass off my head!” roared the giant, swinging up a hand to swat Drake as if he were no more than an insect. Diving aside, Drake allowed the man to slap himself in the head.