DEATH (The Justice Cycle Book 1) by J Kiefer (best classic books to read TXT) 📗

and a tangled beard long. He shivered and tossed, trying in vain to shake off the chill.

The dark figure stooped and fixed his shadowy gaze upon the sleeping person. In a moment, the person’s life flashed before his eyes like a sped-up movie, and he saw everything.

Alcohol and drug abuse had brought this man to this place. Addiction had taken everything from him including his wife and children, but addiction had only been a symptom of a greater pain.

His gaze saw all. Saw the homeless man as a child watching as his father, who was unable to deal with his own failures at life, brutally beat his mother until she eventually fled. That was when his father turned his wrath upon him.

The boy eventually escaped his seemingly unending torment when his father had finally succumbed to liver failure. He watched as the boy, now a young man, dumped a full bottle of whiskey on his father’s grave before getting wasted. He watched as the young man tried to move forward from the demons that haunted him. Watched as he fell in love and built a family of his own, vowing not to follow the same path his father had. But the American dream comes at a cost. Two layoffs and no work eventually took their toll, and he heard the call of the same demons his father had. Demons that eventually changed a loving man into a monster who, in a fit of alcohol-induced rage, murdered his ten-year-old son.

The man removed his trench coat and settled it over the sleeping man. His shivering subsided.

“Sleep tight, David,” he said, in a hollow voice. He watched the man a moment before continuing on into the shadows.

He moved quickly and stealthily, more shadow than man. Without his coat, the man appeared out of place here. “Out of time” might be a better description. A sheathed katana hung from his hip, and a black Japanese kimono dangled loosely on his wiry frame. Even though he did not wear the trademark armor of a samurai, he carried himself as a warrior.

Before the man reached the end of the alleyway, he crouched and sprung upward, then scaled the brick wall of the building on his right. When he reached the crest of the wall, he stood on the rooftop like a bat, peering down into the darkness below him. His black eyes pierced the thick gloom, searching for anything out of the ordinary. Not a minute went by before a slight movement caught his attention. A shadow darker than the night moved silently below him.

The figure in the alleyway snapped his head upward toward the movement just in time to catch a blur of black before the man was gone. The person chuckled to himself and stepped out of the shadows and into the center of the alley. Dressed in what looked like a black French musketeer uniform, the man wore a rapier at his side and a large brimmed black hat on his head. But where the musketeers of old wore a cross, this man wore a skull.

His long, slender mustache twitched with a smile. “Shogun, why must we continue to play this cat-and-mouse game? It is becoming very tiresome. Still, protocol requires it, so I will not begrudge you your whims. Ready or not, here I come.” He leapt up onto the rooftop in a single bound.

The Musketeer’s blade slid out with a ring as he flipped through the air and landed on the roof. He scanned the empty rooftop, then lowered his sword.

The Musketeer had the same nightmare black eyes as the Shogun and his gaze was just as keen. He saw every raindrop as it fell to the earth. Nothing escaped his penetrating eyes.

“I know you are here, mon ami. I can sense your presence. Why make this difficult? The outcome is inevitable.”

“Why must you always talk so much?” came the whispered reply from everywhere and yet nowhere at all.

“I suppose it is my nature,” the Musketeer said. “Much like your nature is to be depressed and gloomy.”

“It was not always so,” said the voice again, reverberating like an echo.

“Ah, do you find yourself longing for the past?” The Musketeer continued to search for anything that would give away his opponent’s position.

“What do you care?” came the reply. This time it seemed to be coming from directly behind him as if someone was whispering in his ear.

The Musketeer chuckled. “You hurt my feelings, Shogun! I have enjoyed our little game more than you could ever know. We are brothers, you and I!”

With lightning speed, the Musketeer dropped into a crouch and pivoted, slashing backward with his rapier at shin level. The blade sliced harmlessly through the night air, hitting nothing more than raindrops.

“It will not be so easy.”

The Musketeer’s grin faded, and his eyes glinted. “Your tricks will only prolong the inevitable. You can sense the end is near for you. Why resist it?”

“What you say may be true, and it may not. You have been known to lie.”

The Musketeer let loose a laugh. “So, you still have a sense of humor left in you after all these years? It is a pity that it only revealed itself now.”

He held his sword in front of his face with both hands. As he did, the blade glowed with an eerie violet-black light, illuminating his angular face. “I must admit this banter is quite entertaining, but like all good things, it must come to an end.”

He slashed downward and a flash of dark energy surged forward, arching right then left, as if searching for something. It finally struck an object about twenty feet off in a torrent of violet sparks.

The air around the impact shifted until the illusion the Shogun had created dissipated entirely. He stood there with his blade held up in a defensive position, his katana arcing with similar mystical energy.

The Musketeer launched forward and was upon the disoriented Shogun in a single bound. He struck with ferocity, forcing the Shogun into