The Ghost Consigliere

CHAPTER 2: The Dance of Broken Puppets

Twitch.

The giant index finger of Grox’s corpse trembled. That small motion rippled through the pool of blood on the wooden floor.

At the doorway, Sloane immediately ducked behind the frame. Splinters of wood and chunks of plaster exploded above her head as the bulky man fired his shotgun wildly.

“Die, bitch! You’ve got some nerve sticking your nose into Vancroft business!” the man roared, his face flushed red as he pumped the shotgun in a panic. Red shells scattered into the air.

Vane, the thin man with the scorpion tattoo, joined in, firing his pistol toward the door. A stream of 9mm rounds tore apart what remained of the hinges. “Get out here, asshole! Come out! I’ll blow your head open!”

Sloane returned fire from behind the outer wall.

Pfut. Pfut.

Two suppressed shots rang out. One grazed Vane’s ear, making him scream as he dropped behind Elias’s worn out sofa.

“Shit! She’s using live rounds!” Vane shouted, clutching his bleeding ear. “Take her out, Dom! Keep firing until she’s in pieces!”

“I’m reloading, idiot! Cover me!” Dom snapped, fumbling through his jacket for buckshot.

Amid the chaos, Elias still lay sprawled on the floor. His breathing was ragged. His crushed right hand throbbed with a pain that bordered on madness. Yet strangely, the pain felt like fuel. The more it pulsed, the louder the static in his head became.

Elias stared at the headless corpse pinning his legs.

Zzzzt.

The frequency intensified. This wasn’t magic. It was purely biological. He could feel it. Necrotic waves radiated from his cortex, traveling through the air like invisible jumper cables, connecting directly to Grox’s central nervous system, not yet fully decayed.

Elias shut his eyes. He tried to push his consciousness through that unseen connection.

BLAAARRR.

A brutal cold slammed into his chest. Suddenly, he felt more than just the wooden floor beneath his back. He felt two things at once, his dying, paralyzed body, and the heavy mass of dead flesh weighing over a hundred kilograms.

“Get up,” Elias whispered hoarsely. Blood dripped from the corner of his lips.

Under his control, Grox’s dead muscles tensed. Torn fibers in the neck contracted with a wet, nauseating sound.

“Dom! Hurry the hell up! She’s pushing in!” Vane screamed hysterically as he caught a glimpse of Sloane moving in the hallway.

“Yeah, yeah! Hold on, damn it! It’s stuck!” Dom slammed the shotgun’s chamber in frustration.

Then, a heavy set of footsteps echoed from the center of the room. Not the steps of a living man. More like raw meat being dragged across asphalt.

Vane turned.

His eyes widened to the point of bursting. His jaw dropped.

Grox’s massive, headless body was standing.

Blood still poured from the gaping hole in his neck, soaking his synthetic leather jacket. His blood soaked hands clenched into fists.

“Boss?” Vane’s voice shook violently. His pistol lowered on its own. “What are you doing, boss?”

Dom, having just managed to load his weapon, turned as well. His feral expression drained into pale shock. “What the hell, Grox?! Where’s your head?! How are you moving?!”

On the floor behind the corpse, Elias grinned through blood stained teeth. Inside his mind, he issued a single command.

Destroy.

Grox’s corpse lunged forward.

Its movements were stiff, jerky, like a wooden puppet yanked by invisible strings, yet its speed was unnatural. Without a brain to limit muscle output, it moved at full strength.

“Shoot him! Shoot him, Dom!” Vane shrieked, his voice breaking apart.

Dom raised his shotgun, his hands trembling uncontrollably. “Die, you freak!”

Boom.

The close range blast slammed into Grox’s chest. His jacket shredded. Flesh and ribs tore apart, splattering dark blood across the wall.

On the floor, Elias’s real body convulsed. He felt the impact. Not pain, but a nauseating neural shock. Phantom pain. His brain responded to the damage inflicted on the host body. He growled under his breath, refusing to sever the connection.

Grox’s corpse only staggered back a single step.

No scream. No pain.

The next second, its massive hand shot forward, gripping the still smoking barrel of Dom’s shotgun.

“Let go! Let go, you bastard!” Dom panicked, trying to yank his weapon free.

But Grox’s strength was like a hydraulic press. The corpse crushed the barrel, bending it out of shape, then grabbed Dom’s throat with its other hand.

“Ghh... uhk!” Dom’s eyes bulged. His thick legs kicked helplessly in the air as Grox lifted him a full meter off the ground with one hand.

“Dom!” Vane aimed his pistol at Grox, but his hands shook too badly. “Grox, it’s me, Vane! Stop screwing around!”

Elias pushed his will deeper, pouring every ounce of hatred for Vancroft through that neural link.

Grox’s fingers tightened around Dom’s throat.

Crack.

The sound of cartilage crushing echoed in the cramped room. Dom’s windpipe collapsed. He didn’t even have time to scream. Blood vessels burst in his eyes, and his body dropped like a sack of wet grain.

Vane stumbled backward until his spine hit the wall. He shook his head frantically, tears and sweat mixing on his face. “No... no way... you were dead... your father never said you could do this, Elias!”

His gaze snapped toward Elias, realizing the truth behind the madness.

“You’re the monster! You’re controlling him!” Vane raised his pistol, aiming straight at Elias’s head. “Die, you insane cripple!”

Before he could pull the trigger, Grox’s corpse launched itself at him.

Vane fired wildly.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Three bullets tore into Grox’s abdomen and shoulder, but the corpse didn’t slow. The headless body slammed into Vane with the force of a speeding vehicle. They crashed into the wall with a thunderous impact, cracks spreading through the plaster.

Elias felt every bullet ripping through Grox’s flesh. His head rang sharply. His vision began to redden at the edges. His limits were being pushed. Fast... finish this fast.

Grox’s corpse raised both hands and grabbed Vane’s head.

“Please! Mercy! I was just following orders, Elias! I was just following orders!” Vane cried, pounding uselessly against Grox’s ruined chest. Blood from the corpse’s neck dripped onto his face. “Don’t kill me! I’ll give you the money! Please!”

“I told you,” Elias’s voice came from across the room, low and hissing. “Go sniff my ass, dog.”

Grox’s corpse twisted Vane’s head one hundred eighty degrees in a single brutal motion.

Crack.

His spine snapped. The sound cut off instantly. His body collapsed before his knees even hit the floor.

Silence swallowed the room.

Only the sound of rain and Sloane’s steady breathing remained.

She stood at the doorway, her modified pistol still raised. Her eyes took in the scene with raw disbelief. She had been a military paramedic. She had seen horrors on the battlefield, surgeries without anesthesia, spilled intestines, white phosphorus burns. But this? A headless corpse strangling two armed men to death? This defied any medical or military logic.

Grox’s corpse stood motionless by the wall, like a statue of flesh.

“What the hell did you just do, Elias?” Sloane stepped inside slowly, nudging the bent shotgun barrel aside with her boot. Her weapon shifted toward Elias, not fully aimed, but not lowered either. “You raised the dead? What kind of necromancer fairy tale are you from?”

Elias didn’t answer. His heart pounded out of control. Inside his head, his brain felt like it was boiling in hot oil.

The connection had to be cut. Now.

Elias took a deep breath and severed the necrotic signal.

Zzzt. Click.

Instantly, Grox’s corpse lost all tension and collapsed onto the floor, returning to nothing more than useless, rotting flesh.

The price came immediately.

“AARRGGHHH!” Elias screamed. His body arched violently, convulsing across the wooden floor. His eyes snapped wide open, staring at the leaking ceiling. Ghost Rot. The side effect of forcing dead nerves to override a dead biological system.

“Elias!” Sloane dropped her weapon, her medical instincts taking over. She rushed to his side and knelt. “Elias, hold on! Don’t bite your tongue!”

Elias turned to the side and vomited thick black fluid. It wasn’t normal blood. It was a mixture of blood and burned bile. The sharp stench of chlorine and rust filled the air.

Sloane held his shoulders, trying to stabilize him. Then her eyes locked onto his left hand, the one still intact.

Beneath his pale skin, the veins began to swell and darken into pitch black. The color spread slowly from his wrist up his forearm, like ink injected directly into his bloodstream. It wasn’t bruising. It was nerve necrosis. Death taking root in his living body.

“Breathe, Elias. Slow breaths,” Sloane ordered, her voice cold and clinical again. She tore a strip from her shirt and wiped the black fluid from his mouth. “Your nervous system is overloaded. Your heart could blow if you keep panicking.”

Elias grabbed the collar of her apron with his black veined hand. His grip was weak, but desperate. He looked into her face. Her brown eyes met his, no pity there, only pure calculation.

“They... Vancroft.” Elias wheezed, black fluid dripping from his nose. “They’ll send more dogs after me.”

“I know,” Sloane replied flatly. She glanced at the three corpses around them, then back at him. “And I’m not planning to die in this scrap heap. That insane ability you just pulled, you’re going to need me to guard your body if you want to keep playing death god.”

“Help me.” Elias coughed, blood soaking into Sloane’s hand. A cold numbness crept from his useless legs up toward his chest. His consciousness began to fade, swallowed by exhaustion.

“We’ll make a deal later, boss. Right now, you just need to keep breathing,” Sloane said, grabbing his jacket, preparing to lift him.

Elias looked at her with bloodshot eyes. His grip loosened.

Darkness finally pulled him under.

“Get me... out of here.” he whispered, just before everything went completely black.