Chapter thirty

I was driving along the road nodding my head to the rock and roll stylings of AC/DC when I noticed a red truck in my rearview mirror. After taking a complex set of turns to lose what I suspected was a tail I thought I had shaken him when I noticed the same car again. Again I took a detour to lose him but whatever I did the same car would always reappear somewhere behind me in a few minutes. He slowly pulled up next to me and started ramming my left side , forcing me to make a right turn.

By the time I noticed that that was what he had planned to do all along it was too late. What appeared to be a giant stone statue was standing in the middle of the road blocking my way. I tried to brake hard before hitting it but I knew I was too late, but what I didn't expect was the stone statue to suddenly raise one of his massive fists and bring them down on the front of the van causing it to flip forwards , clear over the top of his head.

For a second I experienced the feeling of weightlessness you feel when you are falling as the van went sailing through the air, then the windshield shattered violently as the van landed on its roof. Thankfully I was wearing my seatbelt so I wasn't seriously hurt except for the bruising caused by the seatbelt itself and a few scratches caused by the flying pieces of the windshield. I promptly healed myself and released my seatbelt buckle , causing me to fall on the roof of the now upside down van. I checked that the guns that I had in my holster, a new desert eagle from Kazimir and the 9 mm that Sergei gave me, were both still there before I opened the back door of the van and got out.

What was waiting for me was a large group of Atelli. One of them had bat like wings, I guess he was the reason I couldn't shake my tail earlier, he must have been following me from the sky and pointing them in the right direction every time I had managed to escape.

The one that looked like a stone statue suddenly roared heralding the start of their attack but before they could even move two golden streaks came from behind me and hit two of the hairy looking Atelli. They looked down in disbelief and saw that they had a golden knives embedded deeply in their stomachs causing them to bleed profusely. I turned around to see who threw the knives but all I saw was a golden blur as somebody run past me towards the Atelli. When he reached the hairy Atelli he retrieved his knives by dragging them upwards through their bodies and out the top of their heads, killing them instantly. He jumped on the head of one of the bigger Atelli and somersaulted onto the back of the one with the bat wings who was attempting to take off. He used the knife to sever the wings at their base and jumped off the back of the Atelli adding a little bit of extra force to the body that was already dropping out of the sky due to gravity. He landed gracefully with a roll which he used to get beneath the swipe of a canine looking Atelli and severed its Achilles tendon causing it to fall on one knee. He got up in one smooth motion and decapitated him. He then ran towards what looked like a mass of twisting and twirling blades , I thought he didn't stand a chance but his golden knives passed through the metallic blades like butter and he defeated the living blender in under a second. The only Atelli left were the giant stone statue and one weak looking lackey. He rushed over to them and cut the neck of the lackey causing bright yellow liquid to spray in all directions. He used that as cover to roll to the left causing the massive stone foot that was attempting to crush him to miss. He slipped between the giant's legs and jumped up onto its back. He sunk one knife into the back of the giant , then dragged himself up and then sunk in the other one to drag himself further up and in that manner dragged himself all the way up to the giant's head. When he reached the head he used the knives to stab into its eyes, his whole arm disappeared into the giant's eyeballs up to his shoulders. The giant slowly keeled forward , dead. The man dismounted gracefully off the falling giant and landed gracefully like a cat.

When he straightened back up his glowing golden body was covered by the various bodily fluids of the Atelli which painted him various shades of red, blue, green and other colors. His glowing body made these colors light up and it made him look like a walking work of art. But I wasn't admiring his muscular body, I was pointing my gun at the familiar white mask with the golden sparrows taking flight from the right cheek.

"Hello Mike, fancy seeing you here."

"Persephone, you look........well let's just say I like your previous look better. You sure know how to change, don't you?"

"That's funny , I was about to say the same thing. So unless you are going to tell me you started taking steroids and got fond of golden body paint, how are you going to explain this? Who are you really Mike, and what are you?"

"Mike is the name I use when I am working with normal people, in the supernatural community I am better known as Adonis. As for what I am...what was that term you used for it ? Ah, yes now I remember, " he snapped his finger as if he had just remembered some obscure trivia and then calmly stated,

"I am one of the Atelli."