Chapter 247 Absolute.

Chapter 247: 247 Absolute.

"Polaris!" Legion roared from the stone man’s mouth. "I am your doom! I am your hell! I am your end!"

"You’re a pain in the ass is what you are," I shot back.

I scanned the office quickly. I didn’t have a lot of dense metal to work with up here, and I needed to get this walking volcano out of an enclosed space. The massive bay window directly behind him looked like a solid exit strategy.

I spread my hands, letting my magnetic field lock onto the heavy steel bolts and mounting brackets securing Arman’s display cases to the walls. With a sharp, upward gesture, I ripped them right out of the masonry.

The reinforced glass cabinets flew across the room like a barrage of missiles.

Granite threw up his massive arms to guard his face as an entire showroom’s worth of heavy furniture slammed into his chest.

The glass shattered on impact, raining geodes across the rug, but the physical momentum did exactly what I needed it to do. It drove the two-ton goon backward.

Granite crashed through the thick windowpane. His demonic bellow turned into a startled howl as he tipped backward into the empty void, plummeting toward the arena floor below.

Well, that worked.

I stepped over the jagged glass lining the window frame. Channeling a controlled magnetic current into my boots, I drifted out over the drop, slowly descending toward the lower bowl.

Granite lay sprawled in the wreckage of the nosebleed seats. He wasn’t down for the count. He rolled over, planting his heavy boots on the crushed concrete, and dragged himself upright.

He raised his fists with a guttural roar. Fire erupted violently from the jagged fissures splitting his body, his rocky hide darkening like cooled lava.

"Give me the relic!" he thundered, his overlapping voices vibrating the empty stadium seats.

I sighed, halting my descent and hovering thirty feet above him. I let my awareness bleed outward, locking onto the thousands of pounds of steel framing the bleachers.

"Listen to me," I called out. "What do I have to do to prove the damn thing is fake? Do you need me to print you a certificate of authenticity?"

"You lie! I have it on the highest authority that the Horadrix Cube is genuine! I have heard its name spoken in awed whispers in the dark! You will surrender it to me, or I will crush you into dust!"

"Try it," I warned. "I’ve got a localized death ray back home that my tech girl is just itching to calibrate. Along with God knows how many other booby traps. Walk away."

"You think you’re better than me?"

"What?" I blinked, completely thrown by the sudden pivot.

"You are not! I am Legion! I am many! I am all! And I will never stop until you are destroyed and the relic is mine!"

God, he was dumb. I rubbed my face tiredly with a gloved hand.

"Look," I started to say, "I don’t—"

Fire suddenly blasted out of the cracks in Granite’s thick stone legs. He braced his boots against the crushed concrete, bending his knees.

What in the hell was he...

Oh, shit.

I threw my weight backward just as Granite launched himself into the air. A localized explosion of flame hurled his two-ton body straight at my chest like a ballistic missile.

His burning, rocky hand grabbed for my throat. He missed by an inch as I violently spun out of his trajectory.

His demonic snarl echoed past my ear as he completed his blazing arc, crashing into the opposite side of the stadium seating with a deafening boom.

Holy hell, that was close. The bastard was a lot trickier than I gave him credit for. If he got those hands on me, I’d be cooked from the inside out.

I zipped backward, putting fifty yards of open air between us to keep him from zeroing in on my position. I aimed both hands at the stands below.

The heavy steel bolts securing the audience chairs to the concrete snapped in rapid succession, pinging through the air like loose bullets.

Granite didn’t even notice. He bunched his legs beneath him, preparing for another jump. A blistering wave of roasting air seared the seats around him as he launched himself at me a second time.

I held my ground in mid-air, watching him rocket upward. A twisted look of absolute triumph lit up his blazing face.

And then the chairs hit him.

The first row of metal seating slammed directly into his stomach, knocking him completely off his flight path and sending him spinning like a defective firework.

Granite shrieked in surprise, venting a blast of fire to try and reorient himself, but a second clump of bolted chairs slammed into his spine.

Then another. And another.

But I wasn’t just throwing debris at him. I aggressively reversed the magnetic polarity on the chairs the second they made contact, effectively welding the heavy metal frames together with Granite trapped right in the center. The steel compacted, wrapping him in a suffocating iron cage.

It didn’t take long for the mass to drag him out of the sky. The rock-man plummeted, hitting the stadium floor with a deafening, metallic crash that cracked the underlying foundation.

Ooooh, that looked like it hurt.

But it wasn’t enough to keep him down. Not yet.

The twisted ball of metal heaved. Granite was already dragging himself to his feet, staggering under the immense weight of the crushed seating.

"Gyaaaaaaaah!" Granite howled.

A sudden, blinding eruption of intense heat blasted outward. The steel chairs glowed white-hot, losing their structural integrity before collapsing into piles of useless slag.

"You think... you think chairs will stop me?" he snarled. Flames spit from his mouth like an active furnace. "You think your parlor tricks will end me? Me! I am Legion! I am power! I am might! I am—"

"Dead," I said.

I pulled down hard with both hands.

Granite looked up just in time to hear the agonizing groan of tearing steel. High above the arena floor, the massive, multi-ton stage lighting rig wrenched clean out of its ceiling moorings. It dropped straight down like a guillotine.

He threw his hands up, blasting a desperate gout of flame from his palms, but fire doesn’t melt three tons of falling industrial steel fast enough to matter.

The rig slammed into him. The impact sent a heavy wave of scorching dust rolling outward, rattling the chain-link fighting cage and searing the promotional banners painted along the walls.

I descended slowly, keeping my right hand extended, actively forcing the heavy steel rig down against the floor to ensure he didn’t try to lift it.

With my left hand, I ripped a dozen heavy metal poles out of the stadium railings, floating them around my shoulders like javelins just in case.

I didn’t need them. As the smoke cleared, I found Granite’s body pinned flat beneath the wreckage. His rocky arms were twisted at an unnatural angle.

His skin was blackened like dead coal, and the demonic fires burning within his fissures were completely extinguished.

I let out a long sigh and dropped my hands. The javelins clattered harmlessly to the ground. That was a relief.

A sudden, heavy thud from above made me look back toward the executive office window. Right. That was still going on.

I wasn’t exactly eager to throw myself back into a brawl that Arman had dragged me into, but I also wasn’t about to hang around waiting for Legion to possess another goon.

Channeling a magnetic push, I floated back up toward the shattered window and peered inside.

Huh. Seemed my assistance wasn’t required.

Arman was standing over the wreckage of his desk. His diamond facets flashed in the dim light as he casually brushed a dusting of powdered rock off his tailored suit.

The expensive fabric was slightly torn at the shoulder, but that was the extent of the damage. His crystalline skin was completely flawless. Not a single scratch.

The same could not be said for Red. The possessed goon was laid out flat on the Persian rug.

His rocky face had been pulverized into fine gravel, and the rest of his torso didn’t look much better. Yeesh. Yet another solid reason why I never wanted to end up on Glint’s bad side.

For a split second, I considered just ducking out the window and flying home, but Arman looked up and caught my eye.

"Ah, Miles. Glad to see you’re walking," he grunted, adjusting his cuffs.

"Yeah, I guess you could say that," I replied, stepping back through the broken window frame. "So..."

"First of all," Arman said, his deep voice carrying a cold, dangerous edge. "I would like to extend a formal apology for that utterly inexcusable lack of discipline on behalf of my men."

"Yeah, sure," I said, glancing down at Red’s caved-in skull. "These things happen."

"They shouldn’t," Arman corrected sharply. "I pride myself on the strict operational discipline of my league. It appears I have been entirely too lenient with certain factions on my payroll. Rest assured, I intend to correct that oversight immediately."

I didn’t bother asking what his correction process looked like. I had no doubt a few heavy garbage bags would be taking a permanent trip to the bottom of the harbor in the next forty-eight hours.

Or, more likely, they’d be used as foundation filler for his next real estate venture. Either way, anything that pissed off Legion was excellent news in my book.

"Great," I said, turning back toward the exit. "Then I suppose I’ll be heading out. Let me know if anything else turns up regarding this whole... demonic infestation."

"Of course," Arman said, flashing a hard, glittering smile. "You will be the absolute first to know."