Chapter 439: Facing Gaspar [2]

"I have to say, at least you aren’t a complete coward," Gaspar said.

He began walking toward me.

I did not charge at him.

Instead, I moved to the side, circling him slowly while keeping the Three Stones Matrix within sight. I could not let him push me into it, and I could not afford to focus on him so completely that I forgot what was behind me.

The Matrix stood in the road between us, its symbols pulsing over the cube-shaped surface. The red, blue, and silver Stones glowed from within it, feeding power into the wires that spread through the street.

Gaspar noticed where I kept looking.

A small smile remained on his face.

"You didn’t run the second you saw me," he said. "I’ll give you that much. But you should understand something, Ryan. You do not have even one chance in a hundred of beating me."

"You don’t know that," I replied.

"I know enough."

His hands stayed inside his pockets as he kept walking, relaxed as if we were only talking in the middle of an empty street. Around us, the Screamer continued its horrible mechanical buzzing. Infected snarls drifted from farther down the road, but none of them came close.

Not yet.

"I watched you," Gaspar continued. "I know what you are capable of. You’re a baby Symbiote Host. You haven’t even been awakened for half a year."

"It doesn’t matter."

"It does," he said. "Unfortunately for you."

Gaspar smiled wider.

Then something shifted behind him.

A yellowish membrane slid out from beneath the back of his shirt.

At first, it looked almost liquid. Thin strands spilled over one another, glistening beneath the moonlight as they stretched into the open air. Then the membrane thickened and separated into three long tails.

They hovered behind him.

Each tail moved with slow, controlled motions, bending and curling as though they were attached to invisible limbs. Their tips sharpened and flattened whenever Gaspar shifted his stance.

"Can you even control properly your Plasma?"

My eyes narrowed.

Plasma, he said.

That was what he called the Symbiote membrane.

Gaspar knew more about Symbiotes than I did. More about Dullahan too, probably. He controlled that yellow Plasma as naturally as he moved his own arms.

I tightened my grip on the axe.

If one of those things got hold of me, would I even be able to break free?

"Are you sweating already?" Gaspar asked.

His smirk turned ugly.

"The fun hasn’t even started."

He stomped his foot against the road.

Then he rushed me.

The space between us vanished.

I barely saw the movement in time.

I jumped backward as one of the Plasma tails slammed into the pavement where I had been standing. Concrete burst beneath the strike. Fragments flew across the street, one hitting my cheek hard enough to sting.

A second tail came straight toward me.

I swung the axe.

The blade cut through the yellow membrane.

The severed section hit the road and twisted violently for a second, as though it was still trying to move. Then it melted into a thick yellow smear across the cracked concrete.

Gaspar did not react.

He still had one more tail.

It lashed out so fast that I could barely follow it.

I raised my arm to block.

The Plasma did not pierce through me.

It wrapped around my forearm instead.

The membrane tightened around my skin like a living rope.

Then it pulled.

"Shit!"

My boots dragged across the street.

I was yanked forward so hard that my heels barely touched the pavement. Gaspar stepped toward me as I came within reach, and I swung my axe again, aiming for his head before he could use the other tails.

One of them caught my wrist.

It wrapped around my hand and forced my arm down.

The axe stopped inches away from him.

Gaspar drove his knee into my solar plexus.

The impact emptied my lungs.

Pain tore through my chest so sharply that I could not even scream. Blood filled my mouth. I spat it out as my body bent forward around his knee.

I had been hit before.

Marlon had punched me during training. Infected had slammed me into walls. Hybrids had thrown me across rooms. I had taken hits that should have broken bones and kept moving because Dullahan gave me more strength than a normal person.

None of those attacks had felt like this.

Marlon’s hardest punch felt like a kid hitting me compared to Gaspar.

Gaspar released me.

The force sent me flying backward.

I crashed onto the road shoulder first and rolled across the broken pavement. My back scraped against jagged concrete. My vision blurred, and for a second, the Screamer’s buzzing became a dull distant noise behind the pain.

I forced my eyes open.

A Plasma tail was already striking down toward me.

I rolled aside.

It drove into the concrete beside my head.

The road split open with a sharp crack.

"You’re so weak," Gaspar said. ℯℯ𝑙.

I rolled again as another tail smashed into the spot where my ribs had been a second earlier.

Then I shoved myself onto my feet.

But Gaspar was already there.

No.

I clenched my right arm.

Dark-green wind burst around it.

The blades spun faster and faster, ripping away more of my torn sleeve and pulling dust into the air around me. The black chain tattoos across my arm glowed beneath the wind, dark green light running over my skin.

I could not hold back.

Not against him.

If I kept trying to fight him as if he were just another hostile Symbiote Host, he would put me down before I could even understand what he was capable of.

I pulled my fist back.

Then I punched forward.

The wind blades surged toward him in a violent wave.

Gaspar smirked.

He raised one hand.

Yellow Plasma spread in front of him, widening into a thick shield. My wind blades struck it head-on, cutting into the membrane and forcing it inward. The shield bent beneath the impact, its surface splitting in several places.

For one second, I thought I had broken through.

Then the Plasma held.

It caved inward, but it took the full force of my attack.

Gaspar pushed his hand forward.

The membrane moved with it.

The yellow shield stretched outward and formed into a giant hand.

Before I could jump back, the hand closed around my head.

My vision vanished beneath the Plasma.

A crushing grip pressed against my skull.

Then Gaspar threw me.

My back struck the wall of the building behind me with enough force to crack the concrete.

Pain shot through my spine as I slid down the damaged wall and hit the ground.

I gritted my teeth and forced myself back onto my feet.

My back screamed in protest.

The impact against the wall had left pain spreading from my spine through my shoulders, and my breathing came out rougher than I wanted it to. Still, my hand was wrapped tightly around the axe handle.

I had not dropped it.

That was enough.

"I have to say," Gaspar said as he walked toward me, "I’m really disappointed."

I glared at him.

He moved with the same casual confidence as before, stepping over loose concrete and broken pieces of the wall I had crashed into. The yellow Plasma around him shifted behind his back, its tails dragging lightly across the road before lifting again.

I pushed away from the wall and rushed him.

Gaspar’s Plasma tails shot forward immediately.

They came at me from different angles, fast enough that a normal person would not have been able to track them. One aimed for my chest. Another went low toward my legs. The third arced toward my head.

I clenched my right hand.

Wind blades burst around my arm with more force than before.

The air around me twisted violently. Dust lifted from the road. Pieces of paper and ash were dragged into the spinning current, while the dark-green glow of Dullahan’s chains pulsed beneath my torn sleeve.

I swung my arm forward.

The gust hit Gaspar’s Plasma tails head-on.

A shockwave exploded through the street.

The three tails were pushed back, their yellow membrane tearing apart beneath the wind blades. Pieces of Plasma scattered across the pavement, twisting and dissolving as the attack continued toward Gaspar.

For the first time, his expression shifted.

The wind reached him.

Then another layer of Plasma appeared.

It spread across his body in an instant, covering his chest, arms, and face like a second skin. The yellow membrane thickened into a barrier that blocked the rest of my wind attack before it could tear into him.

The gust finally died down.

Gaspar stood behind the Plasma shield.

A smile formed on his face as he lowered down his plasma.

Then his smile disappeared.

My axe was coming straight at him.

I had thrown it during the wind attack.

The hand axe spun through the air at tremendous speed, the metal blade catching moonlight as it cut toward his face.

Gaspar reacted at the last possible second.

He tilted his head sharply to the side.

The axe missed his eye by inches.

But it still struck him.

The blade cut through his cheek, tearing away a piece of flesh before it slammed into the wall behind him with a loud metallic crack.

I breathed hard.

"Damn it..."

I had almost gotten him.

Gaspar stood still for a moment.

Blood ran down the side of his face.

Then he slowly raised a hand and touched the wound.

He looked at the blood on his fingers.

His smile returned.

Wider than before.

"Now that’s the spirit."

The yellow Plasma around him moved again.

More of it poured from beneath his clothes and spread across his body. It wrapped around his arms, coiled around his legs, and climbed over his shoulders. The membrane thickened over his hands and forearms, forming layers that looked less like flesh and more like armor.

Gaspar’s eyes stayed fixed on me.

"Now you’ll have to do much more than that, Ryan."