Chapter 66: New Ascending

Marco moved across the marble floors in a burst of wind and shattered earth. His muscles were loose. His stomach was full of foul Berserker blood— the likes of which fueled him like premium gasoline in a sports car.

His slashed into the dark. His extended claws drifting on nothingness as Deucalion's expensive silk threads danced out of his reach with a blinding back step.

Marco hit the breaks. A thickly muscled hand grasped his arm and pulled him back, getting him out of the assailants way while keeping him in front of his mother.

A black blur flew past Marco's vision and slammed into Deucalion.

Scott.

All new, all different.

A Wolf of the North— truly.

Short and stocky covered in silky blackness underlined by purple veins. His punches had a force to them that ruptured the air. The balloon pops or gunshots.

The difference between holding back and letting loose was like night and day.

Sun and moon.

Life and death.

"Ahhh, Scott!" Deucalion yelled over the sound of the winds Scott's snapping jaws and claws generated as he dodged.

"You interest me most!"

Marco timed his attacks, engaging everytime Scott placed him in Marco's line of sight with purposefully missed blows.

"Y—"

"Quiet!" Marco kicked Deucalion's knee inward after Scott punched the Alpha into Marco.

Marco didn't give the Alpha a chance to recover. He jumped and twisted, spinning the man in dark silk clothing with a roundhouse kick made deadly by clawed feet covered in stone skin.

His flesh tore— his sharp jaw cracked over the knuckles of Marco's toes and he went flying backward.

Scott caught him in his unbreakable Wolven jaws and shook him like a ragdoll by the arm, twisting it so far out of the socket when he let go Marco half expected Deucalion to hit the wall with a missing arm.

Instead he went through it.

The wall.

Scott stood in the silence in front of Marco. Breaths heavy and hot enough to be seen in the darkness like they stood in wintery air.

There was a silence surrounding them from all angles as the dust settled and the Berserker remains continued to crust against the marble floors and stone walls.

In their intense focus the short span of seconds felt like minutes. And even still, going outside felt like a serious mistake none of them wanted to make.

The gravel outside shifted.

The fur along Scott's leathery black skinned back rose.

"You know….." From the hole in the wall, all they saw was Deucalion's shadow moving slowly in all directions as popping and tearing noises rode the midnight winds. "For a Werewolf infected— laced, with Warlock Magic — reborn from the flames of a Demonic Kanima…. I need you to be a little more deadly."

His voice shifted with the pop, snap and rehardening of vocal cords until his wording was nearly unintelligible.

The air became spicy with a smell that doubled as a feeling suddenly.

Fear.

A hand curled around the hole in the wall, grasping the edges with talons that tapped an ominous clicking beat one by one.

Deucalion— The Demon Wolf, re-entered the bank.

No more soft silk threads and mundane handsomeness.

He was sculpted from stone and furnished in hell-fire.

As if in a crude reversal of all things Shifter based— he shed his fur. He shed all hair. From head to toe there was nothing but dark hard skin. The darkness was pale. Like moonlight at dusk drowned in shadows.

He took slow methodical steps inside. The talons on his hands and raised heels reminded Marco of the Vultures that tried to eat him in the days following his families massacre. Curled meathooks died by blood and bone marrow.

His face followed the trend of everything else.

Unnatural.

His jaws didn't extend in remembrance of the Wolves they were. His face just became cruel. Musclebound but arguably more human than most. His nose grew thicker and longer. His ears sharpened. And his eyes were red disks in a backdrop of pure black.

All the feelings of death and the end.

All the evil spirits he commanded. The Berserkers…. The Nahuals.

Marco truly must've been going insane because when he looked at Deucalion he saw something else. He saw a follower. A kindred spirit in regards to his homelands and their pantheon.

"Anubis…."

Deucalion chortled and pointed at Marco before aiming his finger at the floor.

"Sit."

A force gripped Marco. Ghostly hands by the thousands pressed past his skin and dented his muscles. All of Deucalion's blood splashed against his skin and fur suddenly weighed an ungodly amount of pounds. Pounds he couldn't stand as his feet cracked the floor and he dropped to his knees.

"Now Scott, we were having a discussion. I think that's over. I'm going to test you now. Genuinely and without holding back. Do the same."