Excerpt: One Foot in the Abyss

"You robbed life from others so yours would be more complete! You thought you'd earn yourself a name on their blood!" His hands jerked back and forth as he talked. The heavy-coated man's teeth bounced off one another. "You don't GET your fame! You're going to die useless. All you'll get is the gutter you crawled out of!"

He slung his arms down and to the left. The gunman's body went with them, as if the coat was all he held. Then, shouting out some wordless roar, screams of angered gods in the patterns of cacophony, he flung his arms and his weight out.

The heavy-coated man soared forward. He made some noise, small and insignificant like him, and then impacted the double doors. Both exploded out, torn completely off their hinges, wood and glass and metal shrieking as they flew alongside his body. Out in the rain, clashing with the cement. He saw gray. Uniform, forgotten gray.

Then the murderer died.

"Jesus Christ!" Sergeant Bellini shouted in the downpour. They all watched the shooter burst out the doors. He hit the pavement so hard his skull split down the middle, body and doors crashing down in a jagged heap. Blood and gray spongy material squirted out, nearly hitting Officer Hasker's pant legs. She scuttled back like a crab, biting back a squeak, raising her gun skyward on the off chance she pulled the trigger.

There was no denying it. Everyone knew before the radio crackled again. "Shooter is down. No sign of life. Should we go in, Sarge?"

"Holy shit. Guys, look in there. Look!"

They did. Eight police officers looked in through the broken doors. What they saw made them lower their guns. It made them miss the SWAT van arriving behind them. It made Officer Hasker whisper, voice trembling well before the words came, "Oh god...oh god..."

What they saw was Sebastian Castillon. Standing up. Hunched forward, arms splayed out, like some ancient gladiator savoring his brutal victory. Fists and teeth clenched tight.

The grisly shadow of a bullet hole drilled straight through his forehead. Dried blood in a trail down both sides of his nose. Skin a pale hue.

Not dead. But not alive either.

He suddenly reared back, and cried out a sound that haunted every one of the officers listening the rest of their lives. No human throat had uttered such a sound since the days of mindless barbarism, when man was barely more than ape, and blood was the only vestige of power. When the gods were young, and fought as viciously as their servants.

History lay thick in that howl. So did inhuman rage, from a spirit no longer human.

In answer, ugly lightning forks shattered the storm overhead. They thundered anger down at the police, at their world, as the forks of life and death bent this night. Some of them retreated back into their cars, no longer able to keep up the pretense. Rainwater beat down on their windshields, incessant reminders of what waited outside.

Sergeant Bellini blinked against the wetness on his face. He felt like a worthless piece of trash, standing out there while another did his job. All of a sudden, he thought of a line from an old book he'd read many years ago: Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."

Sebastian Castillon had disappeared.