Boom!

Max crashed through the drywall with guns blazing. 

The Underbelly Kings didn't even know what hit them. 

Bullets flying through the air like angry wasps, the sound of bodies hitting the floor was keeping in time with the beat in his mind.

A Moment with Maggie

Violence is no novelty to Maggie. She has seen her fair share of death and destruction. So now here she sits on the edge of the building looking down upon the crime scene. Many cops are below. They arrived moments earlier. They also failed to see her sitting there, like a bird on a wire; she didn't want to be seen.

She feels the first tinges of hunger; it is a good sign. It indicates that she is still alive. Her long red hair billows about her as the wind sweeps through the city, like a long lost lover.

Her cellphone dances.

"Speak to me," she says.

"Did you have to take him out so soon after the other?" the voice on the other end asks.

"It had to be done," she replies coldly. "You know it had to be done. Soon as I picked up on the trail."

Her katana is on the ledge beside her, the drizzle washing the red stains from the blade. The cops below her are going about their business like ants tending to the hive. She will need to disappear again for a while, to lay low and wait to see what was going on.

She hates the day after. She knows the press will make it more mundane than it actually is.

Tomorrow's headline will declare to the city that the 12th slasher victim was found. They will give the name and the address of this supposed victim. Nowhere in the paper will it say that this victim was one of the hounds of hell unleashed from it's prison many years ago.

"Only one more to go," she says to the voice and then shuts off her cellphone.