The KnightShift: Call of the Moon (Wattys2019)

Chapter 15:

Emersyn

Once the alarm went off it was go time. Men flooded into the stair well as fast as we could knock them out or kill them. We made slow progress fighting our way down into the depths of the building. We reached the next level down and it became clear that there were much more than 30 people in this building. As we were fighting, Kevin came up beside Octavian and me.

"Can't either of you do something about this damn alarm," he yelled over the alarm and the fighting.

"I'd need to know where it was to knock it out," I said.

"I would short the whole building out," Octavian called over to us.

We made it to B1F and were greeted by 6 men. My nose said they were human, but my energy senses said they were anything but. I glanced at the others.

"Be careful. I don't know what these things are, but they aren't human," I said.

"Good to know," Octavian said as he called a bolt of lightning to his hands.

He hurled it at the one closest to him and it hit him the chest. The lightning bolt fried him on contact and then he evaporated. I called the electricity from the lights above us and pushed it into the man who had charged at me. He screamed as the current ran through his body. Octavian shot me a look that held more heat that the lightning bolt he had thrown moments earlier.

"You guys keep going. We can handle these things," Octavian said.

"Are you sure," Viktor asked even as he began moving toward the next stairwell.

"Yeah, find my sister," Octavian called while fighting two of the men like creatures at once.

"Got it boss. You two just be careful," Kevin called as he ran passed us.

I hit one of the creatures with an energy blast that burned away the flesh it hit. The creature screamed and fell to ground trying to stop the energy from burning right through him, though it had little effect. The luminescent black energy that I could emit from my body was like the energy of a miniature sun. Once it touched you there was nothing that could stop it.

Before I could turn to the others, something hit me hard from behind. I caught myself and quickly rolled to the side as a fist the size on my head slammed into the ground inches from where I'd just been. The creature the arm belonged to was more horse than man. He wasn't a lycanthrope or even a shifter of any kind, but a human man spliced with centaur DNA. He had hooves for feet and a horse face that I hadn't noticed before because he had been at the back of the group.

The thing followed my movements and tried to stomp on me with his giant hooves. I had just enough time to put up an energy barrier. The shock wave from him hitting it sent the creature flying into the wall nearest him. I sprang to my feet and called my own black lightning from within. I couldn't shape it into a perfect bolt like Octavian, but I could turn it into other things.

I formed the lightning into a whip and used it to slash at the genetically altered man. The whip burned everything it touched, and it scorched the wannabe centaur right across the chest. He let out a sound that was somewhere between a neigh and a scream. I lashed out at him again. This time the thing grabbed the lightning and began pulling me toward him. I wanted to call out for Octavian, but he was a little busy fighting 3 of them by himself. Instead I began putting more power into the whip. All the stored-up energy was now put to good use.

I screamed as the energy poured out of my body down the length of the whip and into the creature's body. It let out that same horrible sound but finally dropped to the ground. I turned around and lashed the whip at one of the creatures Octavian was fighting. He went down quickly, and I saw that he had gills. Fish and lightning never mixed well. Octavian finished off the other two.