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5. Grief

The burning in his chest woke him up. It was like touching a hot pan, except it was under his skin. He tried to scream, but when his mouth opened, no sound escaped. He opened his eyes, fighting the pain to gain control over his muscles and leant upwards slightly, to see what was burning him. China knelt facing away from him so that she could conceal what she was doing. She had a lighter, cauterising his wound. She'd burnt her hands. Next to her, something reflected the light from the house. A bullet. She finished sterilising his wound and he relaxed, the pain diminishing quickly. 

Taking a few moments to gather his thoughts and calm himself down, he turned slightly to better look at China. She was staring blanking into space and crying silently, her face red from the sting of the tears, but she was otherwise ok. No visible harm and she had pulled a hand of the bound shackles - recently, judging by the still fresh blood around her wrist. Good. This worked for them. If she could use her sigils they could take... Lilian's train of thought slammed on the breaks, and one thought shone through above all the rest. Why had she been crying?

Lilian looked back up at her and then turned towards what she was looking at. His mind was suddenly overwhelmed with frightening silence. 

They say there are stages that you go through when grieving. What they don't say is that sometimes, you go through them all at once.

Denial. This couldn't be real. This was some horrific dream that he would wake from soon.

Anger. He was going to kill those bastards, and he was going to do it slowly. He was going to do it of the course of months. Years. Centuries.

Depression. How could he live with this? Why go on when the worst possible thing had happened to you?

Bargaining. The necromancers. Maybe they could do something? He would trade his own life to reverse this, and he would do it in a heartbeat.

Revenge.

He sprang up, the burning in his chest suddenly meaningless, and time was moving in slow-motion. The adrenaline surged through his body and made him dizzy, but he couldn't fall over. Not yet. He grabbed the shoulder of the German, and spun him around, holding him in place by the shoulders. He smashed his forehead into the german's face, crushing his nose and busting his lip. And again, this time freeing teeth from the german's mouth. Again. And again. And again. Eventually, Lilian heard the crack of the german's skull. He didn't stop. When Lilian could no longer see for the German's blood on his face, he threw him against a tree, and wiped the blood from his eyes. He took the gun from the german's pocket, his hand shaking too much to pull the trigger. He smashed the butt of the gun onto the top of the german's head, again and again and again until the german no longer had a head, but a pile of mashed flesh and broken bone. He threw up. He didn't know if it was the adrenaline, or what he had seen. He didn't care.

He noticed fire on the gun. No, that wasn't right. It was a reflection. He slowly turned and saw fire in the windows of the house. The last intruder, the one who had shot him, strode out of the front door and the flames grew behind him. 

"Alright let's kill the bitch and get out of he-" he stopped when he saw Lilian, and looked down at the mashed corpse leaning against the tree next to him. He looked confused, and did a double take, almost like he was confirming what he had seen. Then his eyes bulged and he threw up.

That seemed to be a running theme tonight. Lillian strode towards him, raising the revolver. It didn't work the first time, but maybe his head was the only protected part of him. He fired all six bullets into the man's chest. He looked winded, but regained his composure quickly. Lilian had now crossed the distance between them and swung a punch that should have broken the man's jaw. But it was like punching a brick wall, and after the man had given a little chuckle, he returned the favour. Lilian was a skilled fighter, but the man's strength allowed him to overpower him. Eventually, more and more punches got through. 

Beaten black and blue, Lilian dropped to the ground and started crawling backwards away from the man. Exhausted, he panted, "I'm going to kill you."

"Is that so? Because, in case you hadn't noticed," the man smiled at his own pun, "I've got thick skin." 

China ran up behind the man and hit him with the force of a truck. He flew off his feet, launched away from China. Her sigils glowed with all of hell's fury and she stormed over to meet him as he got to his feet. He reached out for her but she batted his arm away with such impossible strength that it popped of out its socket. She tapped sigils on her wrists and jammed her hands into his mouth.

Lilian watched as light glowed brighter and brighted from within the man, until China pulled her hands from his mouth, and his skin, now an empty husk, fell to the ground.

Lilian slowly rose to his feet and trudged over to her, wrapping her arms around her. They both wept.

The battle was won, but the war had been lost before it even began. Lilian didn't want to, but he forced himself to face reality. He turned away from China to face the big tree at the edge of the property line, where the German still sat dead. But Lilian didn't care about the german, and neither did China. The war was lost because there in the tree was hell itself.

Their son hung from the tree. Two arms, two legs, his torso and his head. All hung from different branches.