Chapter 50 Devour.

Chapter 50: 50 Devour.

"Unhand my daughter before I take those hands off you." the Captain said, his voice heavy as falling lead, every word accompanied by a swirl of the wind.

I released Glacia, though I immediately shifted her behind me.

Glacia was strong, but this wasn’t a fight she could win. Hell, even I had no chance against one of the Order’s headliners if we fought honestly.

Then again, honesty had never exactly been a requirement when dealing with villains.

"You lied to her," I said. "You told her that if she came with you, you’d leave me alone. Then you sent your people after me."

I felt Glacia stiffen behind me, while the Captain’s expression remained perfectly composed. His eyes, however, immediately moved toward his daughter, examining her from head to toe as though checking for injuries.

"The man who trespasses upon my land. Kills my people. Takes my daughter from me. And then has the audacity to question my actions?" the Captain said, descending the first stair, ice spreading beneath his boot. "Who exactly do you think you are?"

"Do you think your life means anything to me? You? Little more than the punching bag for super heroes? Who sells himself to make others seem great?

You are not worthy for my daughter to waste her time on. Had I known why she truly wished to come to this city, I would never have allowed it."

"I think the grown woman can think for herself." I said, extending my magnetic influence toward the weapons scattered around the room, pulling every gun the henchmen had carried toward me.

A plan inside a plan. That’s how villains operated. I could feel the tiny pins, bolts, and triggers within the weapons, drawing them upward with minute adjustments while I kept the Captain’s attention fixed on me. "She has that right to choose."

"She is my daughter. I am her father. And you are scum." the Captain said, stopping halfway down the staircase, his hands folding behind his back as his gaze remained fixed on me. "I have spent over twenty years keeping her safe from men like you. I will not suddenly stop because you believe yourself entitled to her company."

Glacia shifted behind me.

"Father..."

The Captain glanced toward her, and for the briefest moment the terrifying expression vanished, replaced by something almost painfully gentle.

"Are you hurt, darling?"

"I’m fine."

His eyes returned to me.

"You’d better be telling the truth," he said to her, then looked back at me. "Because if you’ve so much as frightened her, I assure you, dead man or not, I will make you regret it."

"And I do not take advice from a dead man."

"About that..." I said, and clenched my grip around a dozen triggers.

The Captain’s gaze snapped toward the sudden chorus of clicks, and his eyes finally noticed the machine guns suspended around him.

They erupted together, spitting a storm of bullets that shredded the ice and staircase around the Captain, filling the ballroom with deafening gunfire and a haze of pulverized snow.

"Father!" Glacia screamed, clutching my coat.

She really didn’t need to worry, which was annoying but hardly unexpected.

Once the weapons fell silent and their ammunition was exhausted, the snowy haze gradually dispersed, revealing the Captain exactly where he’d been.

A ruined barricade of ice surrounded him, its surface covered in bullet holes and fractures, but the man himself looked completely untouched.

And judging by his expression, he wasn’t remotely pleased.

"You think that will stop me?" he demanded.

I let the guns drop away, throwing my arms outward. Plan B involved the grenades hanging from the henchmen’s belts. They tore loose and shot toward him.

The Captain’s eyes flashed blue.

A freezing wave burst outward from his body in an expanding dome, intercepting the grenades and sealing them inside thick blocks of ice before I could reach their pins.

The Captain’s eyes then flicked toward Glacia.

"Stay behind me, daughter."

"Father, I can handle myself."

"I know you can."

His voice softened.

"But you shouldn’t have to."

Then his attention returned to me.

So instead, I clenched my fingers and used my magnetic control to force the detonators directly into the explosives.

The resulting blasts shattered his icy barriers and drove him backward a single step.

I allowed myself one tiny moment of satisfaction before those burning blue eyes found me again.

Oh, shit.

I seized Glacia’s buttons with my magnetic field and flung her away from me, simultaneously using the same force to propel myself in the opposite direction as the Captain lifted one hand toward us.

A halo of freezing energy gathered around him, shimmering like an aurora as the temperature plummeted. Then he unleashed a freezing beam across the spot I’d occupied.

Ragged ice spikes erupted from the impact point, chasing after me as I swung through the air, deliberately staying clear of Glacia. Yet the Captain followed my movement with his gaze as effortlessly as a tracking gun.

"You think tricks will be enough?" he demanded, spears of ice forming in the air about him. "You have not known the battlefields I have fought upon. You have not dreamed of the suffering I have caused. I am Captain Zero! And you are nothing!"

I almost had to respect the sheer theatricality of his speech, even while the ice spears shot toward me in a murderous storm of sharpened shards.

Dodging them took everything I had. Even then, several scraped across my armour, producing an awful shriek as they scored the metal and tore through my jacket, allowing the bitter cold to seep inside.

Fuck! If I didn’t solve this soon, I’d just die of hypothermia. My fingers were already beginning to lose their feeling.

"You’re one of the best, there’s no doubt," I said as another mass of freezing icicles formed around the Captain. "But you’ve got my protégé, and I’m not letting her go!"

I reached through the floor toward the chandelier beneath us.

This was going to be damn close.

Another storm of icicles came screaming toward me, and I dropped from the air, hitting the floor hard enough to crack the ice beneath my boots. The impact sent a jolt all the way through my legs.

Fuck! That was going to hurt like hell tomorrow. But tomorrow was someone else’s problem. Right now, I had to move.

I reached toward the empty space in front of me and seized the magnetic field surrounding the chandelier.

Then I pulled.

The chandelier tore upward from beneath the floorboards like some gigantic whale of bourgeois excess, ripping through the wooden boards in a deafening crash as it rose directly beneath the Captain.

The old man flailed as his footing disappeared, tumbling backward into the chandelier’s tangled framework.

I immediately seized control of its chains.

With a violent jerk of my hand, I ripped them loose from their anchors and sent them winding around the Captain, wrapping his arms tightly against his body.

Captain Zero stared down at himself, clearly stunned for a heartbeat by the sudden reversal. Then his gaze returned to me, his jaw tightening as his face darkened with a fury worthy of Odin himself.

"You think this is enough to stop me!" he roared.

"Kinda hoping it is," I admitted, while rapidly adding another layer of chains around him.

"I do not need my arms to kill you!" he thundered.

I pulled harder, trying to cinch the chains around him like an enormous constrictor, but they barely managed to press through the thick furs covering his body.

Still, the effort shifted his coat enough to expose something underneath.

A glimmer caught my eye.

Ice.

The bastard had ice armour beneath his jacket!

Damn, that was smart. I was definitely going to have Glacia learn that trick. Assuming I lived long enough for that to matter, which was looking increasingly doubtful.

That doubt became considerably more justified when the air around Captain Zero suddenly screamed with freezing wind.

The chandelier beneath him vanished beneath a rapidly forming shell of ice, and the entire structure lifted him upward onto a frozen platform, leaving him towering over me.

He stamped one foot down.

The ice cracked.

But it didn’t break apart.

Instead, the fractures spread with purpose, chunks of frozen material tearing free and bursting across the floor in clouds of white powder. What remained slowly revealed the rough outline of a gigantic wolf, crudely carved from the ice.

Its jaws stretched open, rows of frozen teeth scraping together with a hideous shriek.

Yet the howl that erupted from its throat was somehow colder than the creature itself, chilling straight through me like Zero had taken physical form.

"Devour!" the Captain snarled, and the enormous mass of ice launched itself at me like a beast come alive.