I marched up the stairs and made straight for the corner where Richard and Hans were still seated, passing by the same big Anathema guy again. He'd finished his popcorn and had moved on to tearing strips off the paper bucket like a kid eating the ice cream cone after licking all of the ice cream out of it.

"Hey boss men, we might have a problem."

Without a practiced ease and smooth confidence, Hans reached into his jacket to press a pager. Richard put down his phone to give me his full attention.

Since it looked like I had their attention and neither had bludgeoned me with questions, I interpreted it as an implication to continue on. "Intruders. Two Tier 1s, another Anathema at Tier—ah fuck, that's confusing. Just call it three Tier 1s, one normal, one Star Guardian, and one Anathema. And also a regular but pretty fucking strong Tier 3."

Richard held up his hand to stop me. "They walked in, or…?"

I nodded. "Yes, I think? I mean there's no commotion, so I think they just walked in, but—"

Another hand raise. "And you recognize them?"

I hesitated. "...Yes. The Tier 3 is the one I fought but didn't kill yesterday, uh, alias is Surfer Dude, and then the Anathema is the one that attacked Dr. DeVille a little while back, and then Katherine Legato, and uh, oh yeah, Maria something. She's not as important though."

The two bosses shared a look. "Go stand by the stairs," Richard commanded, "and stop anyone who tries to come up except Anchor."

I nodded. "On it."

As I returned to my newfound guard position, I wondered if the bosses sent me away because they didn't want me listening in. Seems likely. Either way, there was the very real benefit of creating an active buffer between them and the main approach route.

Whatever. I just hoped that Katherine wasn't about to come stomping up the stairs, at which point I would get in her way, and then—fuck, I don't even know. Stab her?

My main concern wasn't Katherine, and it wasn't even Surfer Dude. It was Luna. She might be two whole tiers below me, but I could tell she was on the cusp of evolving to the next one. Which would be…

I fucking hate this stupid Guardian versus Anathema tier discrepancy. Fuck this. I'm just going to call myself a Tier 3. I started at Tier 2 and now I'm like almost halfway into three. Thanks, Von Jackass.

That meant that Luna was a Tier 1 who was almost Tier 2. I'm just going to extend the Guardian conventions to anyone who's not a slobbering feral mess. It's just way simpler.

Anyway, Luna was worrying because this setting was close to ideal for her abilities. A semi-open, semi-closed, extremely dark space full of distractions and a whole crowd of people—yeah, that seems like a pretty great place to fight a deranged Anathema bitch with spooky shadow powers and a tendency to crawl around all over the place and ambush people with sticky darkness webs. Yeah. That's real great.

I couldn't tell whether my perception that she was on the edge of evolving was good or bad. A few good decapitations might provide enough food to push her over the edge—but I knew from experience that when it came, an evolution was an intensely distracting process.

Maybe she would try to boost her regeneration after getting injured by devouring some poor sap and end up writhing around in physio-spiritual agony.

It had been almost a minute since I'd started guarding the stairs and there was no sign of Cassandra. I guessed that maybe she'd projected herself straight to the bosses' table—not that I was going to turn around and look.

It would be super embarrassing if I got distracted by something inconsequential like that at the exact moment that someone tried to slip past me.

Ugh, come on, something happen already. The longer I stood there waiting for everything to go wrong, the more miserable I became. The conscious realization of that was the impetus I needed to flip my mentality.

Maybe this would actually be fun.

Luna

"Come on, this is fun!" Luna pulled on Kat's hand, trying to lead her away from the stairs and over to the bar area. "She's fine, so stop worrying about her."

Neither of them had expected Alex to be at the club, but both of them had realized immediately—while Luna couldn't compete with Kat's power, her own esoteric senses were quite good.

That also meant that in turn, Alex probably knew they were there as well. And so what? That didn't have to change anything, but she was worried that Kat was going to try rushing things ahead.

And why was the new Star Guardian obsessed with Alex so much anyway? She's kind of mean. Luna hadn't forgotten what the more powerful Anathema had done to trigger her awakening, or how she'd acted later that night.

Luna tugged Kat's hand harder. "Come on."

Reluctantly, the other girl allowed herself to be guided over to the bar. It wasn't really a bar—it was more like a booth distributing shots in small plastic cups. There's got to be a different area with more options, right?

Luna remembered seeing pictures of pretzels and cotton candy online. I want some cotton candy…

"Hey, we might have a problem," someone said from behind them, though it was hard to hear anything over the booming music. Maria squeezed herself up to them, then pointed back into the crowd. "I think Tim is about to get eaten alive."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Anathema?" Luna blurted out.

"Where?" Katherine demanded. At the same time, she ripped a nightstick out of her jacket, clutching it tightly, and started concentrating like she was listening intently for something.

"Jesus Christ, girl, put that thing away!" Maria nearly tackled Katherine in an attempt to get the blunt weapon out of sight. "How the fuck did you even get that through security? Are you insane?"

"She also has a gun," Luna helpfully provided.

"The fuck?" Maria struggled back and forth with Katherine as they wrestled over the weapon. "Bitch—"

"If Tim's in trouble, we need to help," Katherine insisted, squirming against Maria's stronger grip. "I—"

"I didn't mean literally." Maria locked her foot behind Katheirne's ankle, destabilizing the other girl's balance and threatening to knock her off her feet. Luna studied the move, fascinated by seeing a martial technique play out. "I meant by his fans. He got recognized by the public."

Katherine's features shifted. "Oh."

Still wary, Maria eased off, letting Katherine stuff the nightstick back into her jacket. "Seriously though, why do you…" She glanced at Luna, then back at Katherine. She continued in a quieter but no less aggressive voice. "...and a fucking gun?"

Kat did her best to look chill and unconcerned, though it wasn't entirely convincing. "I wanted to be prepared."

"For what?"

There was a loud crack like a firecracker going off, followed by a second, followed by a scream. It was hard to pinpoint where the sounds came from, but Luna was certain it wasn't supposed to be part of the music.

Maria whirled around, looking up at the balcony area, and Katherine once again ripped free her nightstick, and this time the handgun too. "For that."

Alex "Valkyrie" Huntingfield

Well that's fucking hilarious.

A gunman had climbed up to the maintenance catwalk surrounding the whole perimeter of the upper level of the building and had just fired several shots down into the crowd. For a moment, I wondered if it was Mook, but I couldn't taste anything other than normal humans and the several different not so ordinary people I already knew were present.

I think this guy might just be crazy. Really, I didn't know what was happening other than that I was like, maybe seventy percent sure he wasn't one of ours and maybe eighty-five percent sure he wasn't part of Katherine's group.

None of that was what made my eyes sparkle with amusement. It was the timing of the shots that was so funny.

I'd been listening to a lot of music lately, and in that spirit, I'd been casually paying attention to the EDM tracks the DJ had been playing.

Modern EDM almost always had an extra rest measure between the end of the build and the beginning of the drop—it was a basic part of the musical vocabulary of the genre. It wasn't usually filled with complete silence, though—it typically had some kind of interesting drum fill, vocal sample, or something to lead into the drop.

And the timing of the two gunshots? Gun Shootman chose the perfect moment to strike, opening fire right when the current track landed in the pred-drop bar. And not only that, but the timing somehow landed on the beat.

I had to wonder if he also thought it was funny and had done it on purpose.

But being funny, whether deliberate or by accident, was no excuse for shooting bullets into a packed venue. As I tried to figure out what to do, Gun Shootman struggled to aim at whatever target he was tracking.

Wait, a specific target? I realized a large amount of static charge had gathered on my claws, perhaps a reflex of my subconscious. Eh, whatever. Go, my electrons.

Normally, it would be difficult, or even impossible, to shoot an electric arc dozens of yards across open air to strike a specific target. I was not so constrained, however, and Gun Shootman had the disadvantage of putting himself between me and a piece of metal.

A jagged arc of violet energy snapped into existence between the tip of my claws and the steel beam right behind Gun Shootman. That alone wouldn't do anything to hurt him, but what came next did.

Now that a channel of pseudo-electromagnetic something had formed, it was trivial to allow the significant amount of charge that had continued building to dump itself into the huge current sink that was the structural components of the building.

And Gun Shootman happened to be in the way.

Did I get him?

The arc of real electricity was short lived, but it was powerful. Normal static shocks were also surprisingly powerful—an ordinary, non-lethal static discharge could easily inflict amps of current at thousands of volts.

Those kinds of numbers should be instantly lethal, but they weren't sustained for long enough to do more than sting.

But mine? Mine was less like an everyday static shock and more like getting zapped in a thunderstorm. The arc was bright enough to illuminate the air between us and the sound was almost as loud as the gunshots had been.

Yet even then, there was a moment where I wondered if I'd done anything—until Gun Shootman sagged backwards and slumped down onto the metal grating of the catwalk. From the look of it, he wasn't about to get back up.

It was also too late. The crowd below had already been thrown into a panic, and despite removing the threat, my counterattack seemed to have only worsened things. People were still screaming, everything was being knocked over, and I wouldn't be surprised if more people ended up being killed in the crush to escape than by Gun Shootman himself.

Calm as ever, I watched from above with genuine disgust. Normal people are so fucking stupid sometimes. The scene now unfolding looked little different from a herd of livestock that got spooked.

There were only like three or four different people out of however many hundred that looked like they were assessing things truly rationally. One had stationed himself midway up the stairs to free himself from the rioting masses.

Two others, realizing that the shooting was over, had elected to simply stand in the middle of the newly created vacant area on the dance floor, keeping their wits about them and constantly looking around to assess potential threats.

The fourth—I'd lost track, but she looked like she had a plan and a level head about her.

Unfortunately, none of them had realized what was probably about to come next—no, wait. One of the two guys who'd stayed put once he found a free space had spotted me and was hustling over to join Staircase on the… staircase.

Smart cookie. I suspected that he suspected the same thing that I expected—that there was a high probability an incursion was about to form. For a normie like him, cutting his way over to the one obvious 'Guardian' was the best possible move.

Incursions happened most often when there were a lot of people in a small area and something extreme had just happened. A public shooting like this was the ideal circumstance—and I had the benefit of knowing there were already multiple Anathema and a Star Guardian present.

Any moment, now… Any…

A-ha, just as I thought! There was a strange, eerie sequence of a burst and an implosion that sent intangible ripples through reality. When the breach visibly rent a gash through reality a mere second later, the first one to go down was the other floor guy.

Womp womp, guess we know which one was actually clever.

Turning my attention away from the fractal violet patterns twisting through the air, I pointed my sword at Staircase and Smartypants, uncaring of how threatening a gesture it was.

"You two. I guess you're coming with me."

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