Faded Memories
an excerpt

Stray columns of light lanced down from unseen heights, hazy with dust. Empty wooden pews, half covered in dust sheets filled the nave. Edison moved as quietly as he could.
The signs of restorative work were all around in the form of scaffolding and tools set by for the next day’s work. Stone saints and cherubs watched from high places as he made his way down the side towards the Lady Chapel. Despite his best efforts, the sound of his footsteps echoes from the flagstones, magnified by the stonework in the absence of exterior noise.

The punch came from his blind side, connecting with his midriff and winding him. Thrown to the floor, he sprawled loose-limbed, knocking paint pots and chisels flying. The torch was knocked out of his hand, skittering across the flagstones and ending up somewhere among the pews.

His unseen assailant struck him hard again in the stomach and all the air whooshed from him. He reeled back through a moonbeam against a pillar, almost doubled over, and shook his head against the sparks of light now shooting across his vision. Edison swayed away from the next blow, hissing with pain as his muscles protested and he fought the urge to be sick. He heard the shift of boots on the gritty stone and drew himself upright, wincing at the sharp thread of pain in his gut. He looked down at his hand as he brought it away from where he'd instinctively clutched at himself and was relieved to see no blood.

"Well, well..." said a voice that he'd only heard as a recording before.”Surely you didn't think you'd be safe here?" Lorca stalked into the moonlight, fluidity in her movements that he would have not expected from only seeing photographs of her. Her fists were balled. "I'm going to enjoy taking you apart monkey, and then I'll leave most of you here as decorations for the builders in the morning, just because I can." She smiled - a suddenly over wide smile, and licked the front of suddenly jaggedly sharp teeth in anticipation. The smell of ashes and tar grew stronger as Lorca drew nearer, her smile broadening to reveal ever-more dagger-like teeth. His mind racing with displacement, he saw flakes of ask sifting from folds in her clothing as she stalked towards him.

He ran. He kept running, barrelling through and past boxes and scattered trash. She kept coming, disappearing into one shadow, emerging from another, hardly seeming to break into more than a trot. His breath was loud in his own ears, and tightness was binding his chest, fiery and icy at the same time. And then he bounced off something directly in his path, and his only thought was a panicked "Oh God!"

As if in answer to his unspoken words, the solid mass said in a familiar voice "No, his representative." Matthias stepped over him in a fluid motion, swinging his assembled axe under-arm up into thin air. Or rather, into what had been thin air a moment before, but was now Lorca's chest as she stepped out of the shadow and straight into its path.

There was a silent detonation of unseen power that deafened and blinded. It left a sense that the world should not be as intact as it was, and a discordant after-echo rebounding off the brick-work. Lorca was thrown back a full body-length, landing in a pile of abandoned palettes. A gaping wound in her chest bled fire that began trickling down her front and legs in rivulets that soon became streams.

Lorca stood back up, despite the fire, despite the horrendous gaping hole in her chest. He expected to see internal organs rupturing and escaping, but none appeared. Even as the fires caught, he could see that she was nothing but a hollow shell filled with flame. Sharp ivory teeth gleamed in the bloody light and blackened flesh.

Matthias stepped forward and scythed an arc with his axe at midriff level, light seeming to concentrate on its perfect edge and cause the illumination of the chapel. Impossibly, she sidestepped the attack. One minute she was there, the next she was a few feet outside his swing, pivoting gracefully with a dagger aimed at his kidneys. Matthias caught her wrist and swung her hard against the nearest pillar. “Run Edison” he commanded, before being staggered by a blow to the temple.

Edison did as he was told, sprinting for the doors. As he passed the last pillar, Lorca stepped out of its shadow and tripped him. She scooped a crowbar from the floor and walked towards him, hefting it. In the distance he could hear something making a crashing noise but couldn’t concentrate on it. With horrified fascination he watched the crowbar raised above him; a dull cherry colour tingeing the coarse metal. Lorca chuckled vilely as he struggled to scramble back away from her. Then she was next to him, and without further pause she brought the smoking crowbar down at his skull. He closed his eyes.

A heavy booted foot connected with his ribs, hard enough to lift him into the air and a distance away. His much abused muscles shrieked with pain, but there wasn’t the stabbing shift of broken bone. The clank of metal on metal filled the air. Breathless, Edison forced himself to roll further away before risking a look. Through bleary and watery eyes he saw Lorca straining to beat down Matthias’ axe, which he seemed to have swung up underarm to halt the now brightly orange-red crowbar’s descent. Matthias must have booted him aside. Edison peered down the length of the church and saw a trail of destruction from where the fight had started to its current location.

Matthias grunted with effort and shifted his stance, suddenly wrenching Lorca’s weapon from her hands and punching her in the face with his off-hand. She flew back, landing heavily against the pillar on the opposite side of the nave. Her hands left scorch marks on the limestone as she pushed herself back onto the attack.

She was so quick that Matthias’ axe wasn’t back in position, or that would have been the end of it. Instead of his blade therefore she was met by his open palm slapping against her chest, and a leg sweep that landed her back on the floor with flames billowing out of the wound.