Chapter 24

The club erupted into a wall of noise. So much noise. Alex and Darius had come to a stop almost in the dead center of the club. Bullets flew toward them in steady, continuous streams. Underneath the hellish noise, there was the steady click-clack sound of flattened bullets hitting the floor. They didn’t do anything dramatic like ricocheting off of Alex or Darius and then bouncing around the room. Instead, they were simply crushed to uselessness, falling to the ground in twisted lumps of metal.

Darius scanned the faces of the men surrounding them, an animalistic snarl bursting out of his throat. Then he yelled in fury and suddenly bolted, zipping around the circle of shooters in a blur. They couldn’t track him with their guns, not that it would have done them any good, and they couldn’t even begin to stop him. Men started screaming in pain, fear, or both as they went flying, tossed into through the air by Darius’s strength. Some had comical looks of surprise on their faces, but most just looked terrified.

One man went flying sideways until the breath was knocked out of him when his stomach connected painfully with a pole. He folded around it and dropped bonelessly onto the metal cube it was anchored to. Two more collided with the solid, wooden tables that were lined up on the far left wall. The tables splintered as they crashed into them and the men groaned in pain. Another thug was thrown up to the bottom edge of the second story loft. His head collided with it and his limp body flipped end over end until it crashed into one of the expensive TVs behind the bar, also smashing expensive bottles of liquor along the way.

Darius grabbed another guy by his face, his black-gloved hand covering most of it, and tossed him straight up into the air. He screamed in terror as he fell back down and hit the unforgiving dance floor. He didn’t get back up. Darius’s hand lashed out and struck a different man square in the chest, hard enough to send him sliding across the floor until he collided with one of the club’s walls. One of the shooters thought he’d get a shot off at Darius’s back but he just turned, swung his arm out like a baseball bat and swatted the bullet right back at the shooter. He aimed his strike so the bullet tore through the man’s left knee, ripping it to shreds. It was going to hurt like a bitch but he would live. Darius barely registered what he’d done to the man. He just kept going, steamrolling over anyone and everyone in his way.

Four men were left standing, still firing at the two of them even though it was painfully obvious that it was a useless endeavor. Alex just stood there during Darius’ attack, getting shot and barely noticing it. As Darius was finishing up with some unfortunate bastard, Alex decided to finally pull his own weight and took care of the leftovers himself. He wasn't anxious to see Darius smack bullets into anyone else.

The four men tried to run away when they realized the one that had been passive now turned his attention on them. To Alex, however, they were about as fast as sloths compared to what he was now capable of with his new abilities. He decided to follow Darius’s example of simply throwing them and letting gravity take care of the rest. They all went crashing, more or less, into the nearest walls. Unfortunately for them, most of those walls were made out of sturdy brick. They didn’t get back up. One of the men Alex had thrown got lucky enough to hit drywall, but not so lucky when he just kept on going through it like it was made of paper. Judging by the maroon colored stalls Alex could see through the giant hole, the man had gone into one of the bathrooms.

All in all, the fight with Marks’ goon squad took less than fifteen minutes. During that time, they saw Marks watching them intently, his expression growing more enraged as he began to realize there was no stopping the two of them. They’d even see him waving his arms around in frustration, shouting out profanities in that smooth, educated voice.

Now, Alex and Darius stood alone with a bunch of horribly injured and unconscious thugs all around them.

“Ready to finish this?” Alex asked.

“Let’s do it,” Darius answered, a confident smirk on his face. His blood ran high with anticipation, waiting for the prospect of confronting Williams.

They walked to the spiral staircase in slow, swaggering strides. They climbed them, their feet stomping loudly on the metal stairs. They could hear the drug lord’s ranting and as they got to the top of the stairs, they saw him in animated discussion with Richard Williams. The sight of Marks’ right hand man enraged Darius so much, he almost took off at a dead run for him. Alex saw where things were headed and put a restraining grip on his forearm, reining him in.

“Give them what they came here for.”

They heard Williams shout this as Darius and Alex stood fully on the second-floor landing. He was yelling vehemently at Marks, apparently trying to convince him to just give it up. Marks, however, wouldn’t stand for that. He was yelling right back, his usually handsome face now flooded with an ugly red color. He was too arrogant to realize that someone stronger and deadlier than himself had dared to come after him.

They focused on the conversation for a minute, amused by Marks’ obvious stupidity. He was so self-absorbed and greedy that he didn’t even notice they were there. But Marks wasn’t stupid. In reality, he planned it so that he and Williams were the first people Alex and Darious would see when they got up to the loft.

Out of nowhere, both of them felt guns suddenly rammed into their spines.

“I don’t know what kinda Kevlar you boys are sportin’, but it won’t do any good against armor piercing rounds,” a gruff voice said, as if the person in question had spent a lifetime smoking. “Turn around.”

They both did and saw that the third man, the one who had been waiting for them, was an overweight slob with more food stains on his shirt than clean spots. He smelled like stale cigarettes and sour, three-day-old sweat.

Darius knew who the man was instantly, even though he didn’t know his name. It was the Fat Man, the piece of shit who’d paid Williams a wad of cash for a night with Anna. He was also the man who’d beat her. The one who punched her in the face.

There was an ugly, malicious grin on the guy’s face. He thought he had them cold.

Alex took careful note of the golden badge of an APD detective half concealed by the man’s enormous gut. He started to feel like the situation was rapidly slipping out of their control and the fact that Darius’ entire body was rigid, his face contorted with barely controlled rage, didn’t help matters.

“Start walkin’ your asses that way. Go,” the dirty cop told them, nodding to where Marks and Williams waited eagerly, both of them with guns too.

Alex looked to Darius for some sort of instruction and he saw his friend give him a barely perceptible nod. For some unknown reason, he was telling him to follow the man’s orders. The cop gestured with his guns again, a vicious glint in his eyes, and they both started walking. Marks and Williams waited.

“Nice going, Terrence,” Williams said to the cop, a note of satisfaction in his voice. Then he walked up to Darius, slow and confident, and abruptly socked him across the jaw.

Darius’s head didn’t even move. Williams would have had better luck punching the trunk of a tree or a piece of solid metal. He pulled his hand back, his breath hissing through clenched teeth.

“Damn it. What the hell?” he asked no one in particular.

“Now, now, Rich,” Marks said, moving past Williams so he could stare into Alex and Darius’s eyes, each in turn. “That’s no way to treat guests. Detective Turner, you can lower your guns.”

“That’s not a wise move, Sir,” The detective replied, keeping the guns trained on their spines despite what the drug lord ordered. “Somethin’ ain’t right bout these two.”

“Lower the guns, you ignorant slob,” he commanded, his voice suggesting he better not ask again.

Terrence dropped the guns, still hesitant. The wary look in his eyes suggested that they’d come back up in a heartbeat if Alex or Darius tried anything.

Marks turned his attention back to the two, strange men that had completely decimated his men.

“I think it’s quite obvious there’s something different about the two of you. I’ve never seen anything quite like it and, to be frank, it was very impressive. It would be such a waste to lose your talents so I’d like to once again extend my invitation to-”

“Go to hell,” Darius spat, interrupting Marks and by the way the drug lord shook with anger, being interrupted wasn’t something he dealt with often.

“Shove it douche,” Alex added for good measure. He wanted to be absolutely sure the scumbag got the message.

Marks paused, something cold and murderous in his eyes.

“Unfortunate. Kill them both. Then rip those ridiculous masks off their faces. I want to know who they are.”

Terrence’s guns popped back up, magically fast, and fired two rounds into their spines.

Marks expected to see fear in Alex and Darius’ eyes as they faced certain and absolute death but there was none. And, to make matters worse, one of them was smiling a disturbing, maniacal grin.

Darius and Alex stood still and let the armor piercing rounds hit them. They didn’t move. Didn’t even flinch at the loud popping bangs from the guns. A second or two went by and then everyone there heard the faint click clack as the spent bullets fell into the floor. The bullets did absolutely nothing to either man.

Terrence’s mouth dropped open in dumb shock.

“What the..,” he managed to get out.

Whatever else he was going to say was choked off when Darius suddenly whirled, too fast for anyone (except Alex) to see, and grabbed him by his fat neck. The cop’s guns dropped to the floor as he tried in vain to pry the hand away from his throat.

“I forgot to mention…,” Darius said through clenched teeth, his voice coming out rough and scary as hell. Angry, stinging tears glistened in his eyes. “We’re not wearing Kevlar.”

He ignored the cop’s panicked choking sounds, but Alex couldn’t. He turned to Darius and tried to stop him, reaching for his hand. He got one around Darius’s wrist before his friend’s head snapped toward him.

“This is one of them,” he shouted. The anger was back now, and in full, raging force. It was buzzing in his head again, worse than all the other times he felt like that. “This is the fuckhead that punched her.”

“Don’t do this!” Alex shouted, but Darius couldn’t hear him over the buzzing in his head. It kept on growing, filling up his mind. Soon, there was nothing left but that and the cop’s fat face getting steadily more purplish as his air ran out.

“Stop it!” Alex yelled.

Terrence’s eyes widened in sudden shock as he realized he was about to die. This man, this crazy fuck, was too strong for him.

“Stop it!” Alex screamed but he was too late by a long shot. His eyes widened and he realized he’d been a colossal fool the whole time to allow Darius anywhere near the men that had been abusing Anna.

Time slowed down but it had nothing to do with the dangerous situation they were in.

Alex tried to pull Darius away, but before he could, Darius’s hand closed like a bear trap, crushing the cop’s trachea to pulp with no effort at all. Blood began gurgling up the man’s ruined throat, spilling out of his mouth in long tracks that ran down his already stained shirt.

Alex turned away from it, not wanting to see it, but Darius didn’t. He watched the man die. He watched those red streams swim down the man’s clothes, spreading and widening as they went. He watched as the piece of shit fell to his knees first and then onto his side. Then he watched the light in his beady, disgusting eyes go out and heard the man’s rattling attempts to get air through his suddenly mangled windpipe quit a few seconds later. Darius lifted the man’s corpse off the floor effortlessly tossed him over the railing with disgust, even though the guy had to have weighed two-eighty or even three hundred pounds.

Alex just looked at him, unable to say anything. He couldn’t even move. Shock froze him in place.

Darius’s anger still buzzed inside his skull. The cop's death did nothing to stop it. It was becoming a living thing and it was hungry. He sought out his next target and found him racing toward the office with Marks beside him. They were viscously pushing each other aside, each one fighting hard to get there first so they could put something between themselves and the two attackers.

“You killed someone,” Alex muttered, finally finding his voice.

Darius didn’t hear him over the buzzing in his head and wouldn’t have cared if he had. All he cared about was the bastard trying to get away. That’s it. He saw Anna’s battered face and broken spirit in his mind, blazing like a raging fire. It left nothing in its wake but an intense need for vengeance. He sped toward Williams, who had just reached the door to the office and was frantically trying to open it. Marks had gone through it just seconds before and, apparently, shut and locked the door behind him in a monumental display of extreme cowardice.

Alex watched Darius run after Williams and, once again, tried to stop him. He thought he’d been prepared for the possibility of Darius losing it but he had been so wrong. So devastatingly wrong. Deep down, he didn’t think of his friend as a killer. He never thought Darius would have that inside him. And so, he’d blinded himself to all the obvious signs. When he crushed the cop’s throat, Alex was already three moves too late to stop him. He was also three moves too late to stop what Darius was about to do to Williams. He watched in horror as his oldest friend in the world, a man he trusted like a brother, wrapped a hand around one of Williams’ wrists, clenching it so tightly that the bones there snapped under the immense pressure.

Williams let out a long scream of agony right before Darius threw him across the floor…hard. He bounced a couple of feet and then started rolling, coming to a stop when he barreled into a sofa.

“Go get the money!” Darius roared at Alex, who had stopped running and stood there frozen with shock again.

When he heard Darius’s command he wanted to say no. He suddenly wanted no part in whatever slaughter their simple robbery had turned into. He wanted to bolt. He wanted to run away and not look back.

But…

…he didn’t.

A disturbing, sick thing inside his brain told him to do it. Told him still that these men were flat out evil. No better than animals really. They were getting what they deserved. So, disgusted with himself, he headed to the office and confronted Marks.

As Alex drew closer to the sturdy metal door, the uncertainty and guilt he felt started to drain away. When he was a foot or two away from it, he heard heavy bolts being thrown on the other side of it. Calmly and without much thought, he slammed one foot into it in a hard stomp. There was a horrible screeching of tearing metal and then the door crashed onto the floor of the office. As he went inside, Alex saw Marks behind a broad glass desk with a phone, computer, and other bits of stuff scattered on top. The drug lord was in a classic shooter’s pose, both hands gripping the handle of a gun with his feet spread shoulder-width apart. In both hands was a ridiculously large, silver gun.

“I don’t know who you two are but you are going to regret coming into my house and threatening me!” he shouted, his forehead beaded with sweat. His eyes held none of their usual, petty arrogance. Instead, they were wild with panic. “I’ll have your balls ripped off and make you watch!”

The threat might have been a valid one to an ordinary person. He’d probably done it or something like it many times before. To Alex, however, the threat was meaningless and empty. He stared at Marks and realized something important. When it came down to it, the drug lord was nothing but a gutless coward. He hid behind his armed thugs and wielded power over all of them because he was a good bluffer. Killing people was only a tool he used to ensure that his men had the necessary fear he needed to have complete control over them. Now, Marks was standing alone, all of his thugs unconscious or otherwise incapacitated. The man’s hands were shaking so badly, he couldn’t even keep the ridiculously over-large gun steady. Also, Alex was pretty sure the man was on the verge of pissing himself.

“Really? You’re gonna try and shoot me. You’re not a quick learner are you?” Alex questioned. His voice was eerily calm. “Show me where the money is and I’ll try to make sure you can still use your legs after I’m done here.”

“Go to hell.” This was Marks’ reply but it was shaky and there was a faint, quavering to his voice.

“Guess we get to do this the hard way.” Alex grinned menacingly. He advanced on Marks slowly, knowing full well there was nowhere the man could go.

Marks’ gun barked in a steady rhythm, unloading all the rounds he had in the clip. Alex caught every last bullet out of the air. He held up his closed fist and opened it. He titled his hand to the side and let the useless bullets fall to the ground. Then he continued onward. Marks, reduced to nothing else, threw the gun at Alex, hoping to use the distraction to try and escape. Alex snagged the man by the back of his expensive suit and yanked him closer, dangling him in the air with one arm. Marks started screaming and begging for his life, sobbing like a child.

“Where’s the money?” Alex asked again. He shook the drug lord for good measure, watching with a certain amount of satisfaction as the man’s head was rocked painfully back and forth.

His hapless prisoner’s arm pointed to a blank wall, most of it clear of any kind of decoration. Alex grew angry.

“Quit playing me for an idiot.” He shook him again, this time even rougher.

“I’m not, I’m not,” he squealed. “There’s a secret door there. It leads to my vault. All of it's there, now let me go.”

Alex did, but only after he slammed Marks’ head into the relatively low ceiling of the office. He let out a groan of pain but was still conscious so Alex did it again. After the second strike, he came back down limp and unconscious. Alex tossed him aside like a broken toy and came to the wall the drug lord had pointed at. He tore through the drywall, his hands pulling it apart in great big chunks. After a moment or two, he found the door. It was concealed almost perfectly in the wall. If Alex hadn’t known it was there, he never would have found it. Thick, white dust clung to the air and he waved his hand to clear some of it away.

The door he uncovered was thick and looked like something that belonged on a vault in a bank. Alex went up to it and gripped it with both hands, yanking it as hard as he could. The door screeched loudly in protest but finally popped off a minute or two later. Cracks splintered through the floor of the office when Alex threw the heavy thing down on it and for a moment he thought it would keep on going, crashing right through to the ground floor. When it was evident that wasn’t going to happen, he turned his attention back to the vault and peered inside. The walls in front of him each had four rows of thick metal shelving and in the middle of the room was a simple table with a few money-counting machines on it. He smiled when he saw the stacks of bills neatly ordered along the top two shelves of every wall. The bottom two rows were taken up by packages of cocaine, heroin, and massive amounts of vials, each one filled with morphine. There were also tons of brown-orange prescription bottles filled with Vicodin, Percocets, and even Oxycodone. Lastly, he saw marijuana packaged into neat bricks. Marks had his hand in every type of vice imaginable.

Before Alex actually got started stealing all the money, he decided to do something else first. He grabbed every last thing in Marks’ inventory and destroyed it. There was a large and luxurious bathroom close to the glass desk, so Alex took everything there and flushed it all down the toilet, not even caring how long it took. On his last trip out of the bathroom, he passed close to Marks and didn’t miss the opportunity to lightly kick the scumbag in his ribs. The unconscious man let out a moan of pain.

“Lousy piece of shit,” Alex muttered as he entered the vault again. He pulled out a large, black trash bag and flipped it open. He walked up to the stacks of money and dumped them all inside. When he had snatched every last cent of the drug lord’s money, he tied the bag shut and lifted it to his shoulder. “Don’t worry. We won’t be coming back.”

Then he walked out of the office to get Darius and force him to leave.