It was carnage.

  It would have been simply “victory” if he’d used his own powers. Something like him could have ripped apart the forces of Mithris, but she'd given him permission to use the captured Hellhound. He was silent while he fought, the ghouled flesh of the vat-grown giant responding to his commands as if it were a puppet on strings, while he sat safe in its chest. The hole he’d ripped bled, exposing him to enemy fire, but he knew it could do him no harm.

  Kaz watched the Hellhound flash and flicker, moving with unholy strength and speed, darting in and out of enemy formations. It ripped turrets from Mithris tanks with its oversized hands, stole cannons from other mechs and used them until they ran out of ammunition, impaled Arcadian mechs through the cockpits, and left them propped up by the spears.

  She shut her eyes against it. She tried to shut out the screams of the people she knew were being killed on her orders to her vampire. It was a natural disaster... an unnatural disaster; a spell she’d cast upon them. No matter the wounds it suffered, the explosions that rocked it, or the pain it clearly felt, the Hellhound was a murder machine that came on like an inevitability. She knew she should have been ecstatic. They had a weapon they could use to drive back Mithris but all she could think of was “what came after''. She’d pulled the pin of a grenade, and now she was stuck holding it.

  She shoved all her emotions aside as she ran to the Captain’s side. He’d ejected from his destroyed Tasmania and he was a bit worse for wear, but thankfully still in one piece.

  “Up you go, Cap,” she said, helping him unhook from his ejection plug. She winced from her wound, the stim starting to wear off.

  “You look like shit, Kaz.”

  “We’re both gonna look a lot worse if we don’t get out of here soon. That thing is going to drive off Mithris, but I’m more concerned about the collateral damage,” she said as they braced against each other, Reynolds using a piece of his ejection plug’s metal housing as a makeshift crutch for them.

  “The hell is that thing?” he asked, a dark expression coming over his face.

  “I - I found it. It was my only option.” She was ashamed and couldn’t face him.

  “What is it, Kaz. What’s in that Hellhound?” he repeated more urgently now.

  She took a long time to answer. “...a strix.”

  “A strix?! One of those ancient fangs?! Jesus, Kaz, that’s like pressing a button on a nuclear timebomb!”

  “Look, I was just doing what I could to survive! For Arcadia to survive!”

  “You don’t give a shit about Arcadia, Kaz! We both know that! You’re doing this for revenge!” he yelled, though he was too banged up to push her away.

  “What’s wrong with that, damn it?! Maybe Mithris deserves a strix! We can win now, Captain! That was never on the table before! You want to win, right?! You want to survive, right?!”

  Their discussion was cut short as an armored transport vehicle bounded into sight, skidding and sliding across the mud-slicked ground.

  “We’re not done talking about this, Kaz. That was a mistake...” Reynolds growled as he separated from her and propped himself up on the piece of housing as the Arcadian truck got closer. She felt like arguing. She felt like yelling “WHAT ELSE WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?!”, but she couldn’t muster the energy.

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  As she was laid on a gurney in the back of the vehicle, she watched the destruction of the forces of Mithris continue to unfold. She could only see a bit of it, the small window and the thin treeline obscuring most of it, but she could see explosions and a dark shadow flickering between them. Then she realized she could feel it. She could feel him. It was distant and numb, but she could feel his enjoyment. He was reveling in this.

  “Ahhh, you can sense me now. Wonderful, my master. You’ve awakened me in such interesting times...”

  She tried to turn onto her side in a futile attempt to shut him out but the gurney didn’t let her move enough. The others in the back of the armored vehicle looked at her, briefly stopping their low chatter. She shut her eyes and pretended to sleep. “I don’t need their pity.”

  Then it came to her:

  Vivid flashes.

  Pictures.

  Sounds.

  The smell of blood and spilt oil; flames, death.

  She was looking out from the broken cockpit of the Hellhound, through his eyes, a manic energy flowing through her as it raised a rifle at her command and let off a barrage of automatic fire into a Mithris mech. The gun jerked back as the fire traced up its leg to its chest, sparking where it fell. She threw the gun in a feral expression of battlelust and leaped upon it. It fell under her weight and she slammed on it repeatedly with a double hammer fist. She could hear screaming with her enhanced hearing. She could smell the pilot's fear. She could feel him trying helplessly to make his mech do something, anything, but it was all for naught when her hammer fists caved in its cockpit like an overripe grape.

  “No!”

  Her eyes shot open and she sat up, coughing violently and shaking. The pain in her gut forced her to cry out again and arch her back reflexively. Reynolds held her down. It hadn’t been her but the vampire she was now connected to. She’d felt things from his perspective.

  “What is it?! What’s going on, Kaz! Get the damn morphine!” Reynolds barked at someone she couldn’t see. She gripped his arm tight in her panic, her eyes shaking.

  “N-no! No sleep! I - I don’t want to see it!”

  “See what, Kaz?! See what?!”

  “I can see through him! I can see what he's doing! I can feel it!”

  She heard laughter in her mind … cruel laughter … and she felt cold. She’d never sleep again if she could help it.

  “I thought you had the stomach for this, my master. You are a soldier, after all. Perhaps I overestimated you...”

  “You didn’t overestimate anything!” she yelled at the padded ceiling of the cramped vehicle as it bumped along and Reynolds' eyes went wide with fear.

  “Kaz, it’s OK! You’re safe. We’ll be back to the forward operating base in a few minutes!” her captain said. “We’ll get you help! Where’s that morphine!?!”

  “You didn’t overestimate me, and don’t you dare underestimate me, you undead piece of shit! Now stop playing with your food and return to me when you’re done! We have work to do!” She must have looked more insane than she felt, yelling at the heavens like that, and she could feel the sodden and dirty soldiers in the transport looking at her. Someone stuck her with a dose of something that she hoped was a sedative. She didn’t have to wait long for vindication though, as a great shadow fell over the transport a moment later. Everyone began looking around in panic.

  “Very well, my master. The deed is done.”

  “It’s an enemy Hellhound!” the panicked driver said, forcing himself to crane his neck up to look at the intimidating mecha flying low above the truck. Blood and oil dripped off the suit, mixing with the rain as it hit the truck’s window and washed away.

  “It’s not an enemy, soldier. Just keep driving. This is Kaz’s little pet that she’s been screaming about,” Reynolds replied darkly, shooting another accusing look at Kaz.

  “No … he’s not wrong. It’s an enemy. Just one we don’t have to face yet,” she corrected him just before her consciousness drifted into a restless sleep.

  “When is a man like an atomic bomb?

  It is when he can change the world with a single action.

  You might not know that a man is truly a bomb until years later.

  But he has exploded and killed you already.”

  -The Red Gospel

  Chapter 46, Verse 32-35