BOOK 9: CHAPTER 27: INTERRUPTIONS

The intruder wore a velour tracksuit – in bright red and stripes down the sides – with the jacket open to reveal a mat of black chest hair that was partially hidden by a multitude of thick, gold chains. Lamar Sims recognized him, of course. How could he not, after everything that had happened?

Ever since the apocalypse, Vinnie Santoro had been a thorn in everyone’s side. A wannabe warlord-slash-despot, Santoro had terrorized half of Philadelphia to the point where he’d forced anyone with a sense of morality to flee across the Schuylkill River, where they’d initially set up shop in the 30th Street Station. Many had never been afforded that opportunity, and instead, toiled away as little more than slaves under his rule.

And they thanked him for it.

They held him up as a hero because they simply didn’t know any better. After all, he’d saved most of them himself, and where he hadn’t personally stepped in, his men had. So what if he took most of what they had? Who cared if he had a habit of adding any beautiful woman he saw to his harem? They were mostly willing – because why wouldn’t they be, when he gave them the lives of princesses? On top of that, he protected them all from the dangers of the transformed world, so they were more than willing to give him plenty of leeway.

But Lamar knew him better than most, and he recognized the weaponization of fear. He’d hated Santoro almost immediately, and nothing he’d seen since then had changed anything.

“Cat got your tongue?” Vinnie asked, stepping inside.

Lamar’s best friend and former teammate, Kane Ward, made to step forward, but Lamar stopped him with a grip on his shoulder. “I’ve got this.”

“You sure?”

Lamar only nodded.

Then, he focused on Vinnie. “What do you want?” he asked, his voice carrying across the dining hall. “This is a private party.”

“Like I said, I heard there was a party,” Vinnie answered, striding further into the room. He closed in on the buffet table, then plucked a meatball from one of the trays. He popped it into his mouth, then frowned. “Don’t know how you eat like this. It’s like the cafeteria food from my old high school. It’ll fill ya up, but it definitely ain’t gourmet.”

“You weren’t invited.”

“I know!” Vinnie said, clutching his chest in mock distress. “Think about how that made me feel, man. You and me – we go way back, don’t we? You remember how it all started, right?”

Lamar could never forget that night. He’d been out celebrating Kane’s retirement – he’d played for twelve years and had finally decided to hang up his pads – when everything had changed. Suddenly, the world was different, the system had invaded their minds, and monsters roamed the streets of Philadelphia.

For all that Lamar had been an elite athlete, where he really excelled was upstairs. He could look at an offense and diagnose an upcoming play in an instant, and that was where he’d truly separated himself from other, similarly gifted linebackers. He’d used that talent to his advantage, adapting quickly to his new reality.

Even then, people had died.

So, so many people.

Oddly, his first reaction had been to go for the team facility. He trusted the men and women – many of whom were friends he’d known for more than a decade – who worked there. So, he’d led a group of people to the training compound, where he’d linked up with a few of his teammates who’d had a similar idea. He’d also found Helen there.

But along the way was when he’d met Vinnie for the very first time.

He was a big man, broad-shouldered and athletic. In another life, he might have been an athlete, too. But it was obvious that Vinnie had only a passing acquaintance with the law, which had put him on a self-destructive path. When Lamar met him, the man had been wearing an old set of janitor’s coveralls, torn and ragged like they’d long since been discarded and reclaimed.

Rumor was that Vinnie had been homeless, existing off of petty theft and by mugging tourists who’d wandered into the wrong part of town. With his missing teeth, worn coveralls, and lax grooming standards, that was easy enough to believe back then. At the time, though, Lamar was willing to take any allies he could get.

So, they’d banded together, and to Lamar’s surprise, the man proved a valuable weapon against the monsters. Together with the rest of the people Lamar had found, they’d fought their way to safety.

But then, just after reaching the training facility at the Philadelphia Sports Complex across from Lincoln Financial Field, Vinnie had disappeared. It was only months later that Lamar had discovered that the man had done so because he craved the action – and the positive reinforcement of leveling up – that came with fighting and killing monsters.

According to everything Lamar had learned about those first few weeks, Vinnie hadn’t confined his efforts to only beasts, though. He’d killed plenty of human beings along the way.

He also managed to gather a following.

Lamar had no idea when Vinnie’s strategy changed, but at some point, he decided to start building a sect, as he called his organization. Many were meant for support – how was a man to live large without the people to cook his meals, make his equipment, and heal him when he was injured? But he also gathered plenty of like-minded fighters.

At first, Lamar was more than willing to work with Vinnie. By that point, they’d turned the Capitol building into a veritable fortress, and there were a lot of people to protect. However, it wasn’t long until Vinnie started to go off the rails. Drunk with power, he’d begun to display some of the characteristics that later turned him into a despot.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

When Lamar confronted him, the resulting schism had driven a third of the population across the river, where they set up in the most defensible building they could find.

They’d been there since.

In the intervening years, the two groups had clashed multiple times until, at last, Lamar and Vinnie had come to a truce. They stayed on their side of the river, while Lamar and his people remained on theirs.

And now, Vinnie had broken that truce.

“I’m going to ask you again – what do you want?” Lamar persisted. He glanced toward Elijah, who looked ready to fight. If that happened, Vinnie would die, and very quickly.

That would result in a war that wouldn’t end until one side was dead. Lamar didn’t want to think about how many they’d already lost, much less how many more would perish if that came to pass.

So, he shook his head at the Druid.

“Would you believe me if I said I was claiming prima nocta? That’s how you say it, right? The Braveheart thing. The one where the peasant bride is honored to receive the seed of the –”

“Fuck you, Vinnie,” Lamar interrupted. He didn’t raise his voice. He wouldn’t give the man the satisfaction. Instead, he maintained his calm as he added, “Just shut up and leave. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“Is that so?” he asked, his arm already encased in ice. It crept toward his shoulder, then rapidly encased his body. He stepped forward, frost rippling across the floor with the footfall. “You want to make me, goat?”

Goat.

Greatest of all time.

That was what Vinnie had called him in the beginning. Back then, it had been a good-natured compliment. Since, it had become something else. A reminder of what he’d lost. Of the changed world and his new place in it.

He was still a leader. An important man by any measure. But his football accomplishments – the ones that should have set him up for a great rest of his life filled with accolades and luxury – no longer mattered.

“Do you really want to do this? Here and now?”

“You’re the one who wants me to shut up and leave? I just want you to make me. No repercussions. No broken truce. Just two men –”

Lamar threw himself forward, embracing Unbreakable Charge. He didn’t have his shield with him, but he didn’t need it, either. He hadn’t personally clashed with Vinnie in a long while – not since before the Trial of Primacy – and a lot had changed. He’d gained a ton of levels, both from the Trial itself and in a furious run of multiple towers upon returning.

Because he’d been shown just how small he really was, and he was desperate to change that.

Doubtless, Vinnie hadn’t been so diligent.

He slammed into the man, and for a second, he felt ice encase him. He shoved it away even as the stalemate broke and Vinnie flew backward, crashing through the door and out into the lobby. Lamar stepped forward, ready to continue the fight.

And he caught sight of Vinnie’s shattered ice armor, of his humiliated expression and his broken jaw. It snapped back into place in the space of an instant, and he shot to his feet with a roar.

He only took one step before, suddenly, Elijah was there. When Vinnie ran into him, his momentum came to a sudden halt. Elijah didn’t even flinch at the impact.

“I think you’re done, buddy.”

“Who the fuck are –”

“Call me the referee. You told him to make you leave,” Elijah said. Then, he glanced backward at the broken door. “Looks like he did. So, let’s end this right here before things really get out of hand. I’d hate to have to participate more…uh…fully.” He leaned close, then added in a stage whisper, “You really don’t want that.”

With that, there was a surge of ethera. It only lasted a split second, but it very nearly shook the walls of the settlement with its intensity. Certainly, Lamar felt his stomach tighten, even from more than two dozen feet away.

Vinnie got the worst of it though. His knees wobbled, and the only reason he didn’t fall was because Elijah held him upright.

Then, the Druid asked, “We good? You and your buddies ready to go? I’d call you an Uber or something but…well, apocalypse problems, right?” He patted Vinnie on the chest. “You understand.”

When he pulled his hand away, he looked at his palm with a brief expression of mild disgust, then wiped it on the other man’s tracksuit.

For a moment, Lamar was convinced that Vinnie was going to do something stupid. It wouldn’t have been that out of character for the man. Normally, he didn’t hesitate to defend himself against any challenges to his authority. But at the same time, he was smarter than he looked. Lamar knew that better than most, and clearly, Vinnie recognized that Elijah wasn’t someone he wanted to mess with.

“Fine.”

“Awesome. Collect your thugs and…wait, calling them thugs is just a self-actualizing the label, right? You know, like calling someone a criminal makes that person more likely to engage in criminal activities? I don’t know if there’s validity to that, but I feel like it makes sense. Anyway – why don’t you collect your buddies and head back home, yeah?”

Vinnie clearly didn’t want that. In fact, judging by the way anger twisted his face, he wanted nothing more than to punch Elijah. However, he subdued those emotions and signaled to his men. Without another word, they all stalked away.

Lamar turned to Kane, saying, “I know this is supposed to be a party, but…”

“I’ll make sure they get across the river,” the big man said. “I’ll check on the guards, too.”

“Thanks.”

Kane signaled to a few of his people, and together, they followed Vinnie. In the meantime, Elijah stepped over the remnants of the door and into the dining hall. To Lamar, he said, “Sorry if I stepped on your toes. I thought you wanted some de-escalation.”

“Yeah, no – that’s exactly what we wanted,” Helen cut in. “Thanks.”

An awkward silence followed before Lamar signaled to the DJ to start the music back up. He did, and within a few minutes, everything was back to normal. Aside from the broken door, there was no evidence of the confrontation.

For the next couple of hours, everyone enjoyed the reception. Even Kurik got into it, engaging in some sort of spastic dance that he claimed was an ancestral wedding dance. To Lamar, it looked the dwarf was having a seizure, and it elicited quite a lot of laughter, which Kurik took in stride, grinning the whole time.

“I really didn’t mean to put my foot in it earlier,” Elijah said, suddenly standing beside Lamar and picking at some finger foods he’d gathered onto a plate. “This is really good, by the way. I expected cheesesteak. I don’t know. Totally inappropriate for a wedding reception, but I was still kind of looking forward to it.”

Lamar laughed. “Good cheesesteak has Cheez Whiz, which, believe it or not, isn’t really available anymore. Plus, there’s a distinct lack of beef. We make do with other sorts of meat, and we got some cheese in Seattle, but it’s just not the same.”

“Shame,” Elijah said. “I never had the chance to come to Philadelphia before. Aside from a trip or two down to the Gulf Coast, I stayed on the west coast. Or in Hawaii.”

“Well, the moment we get access to beef and someone recreates Cheez Whiz, we’ll be glad to introduce you to a proper cheesesteak sandwich.”

“I’d appreciate that. But…”

His eyes glazed over, alarming Lamar. “What?”

Elijah handed the plate to Lamar. “I’m sorry, but I need to go. I’ll explain later.”

Then, after Lamar took the plate, he simply disappeared, which left everyone nearby entirely unsettled.

Lamar was even worse, because he’d seen the look on Elijah’s face. Surprise. Then concern. And finally, rage. It all spelled one simple fact: something terrible had happened.