Shadows of Self (Mistborn #5)(108)

In seconds, a short but robust figure stood in the chamber. The face of stretched skin and muscle reminded Wax of a koloss, but those forearms were like hammers, and the chest superhumanly powerful. It was nude, though the crotch lacked genitals of either variety.

Wax looked back down the corridor outside and raised his pistol, sweating. The things prowled closer. Heads emerged from the darkness, faces that twisted human features into something more canine. He counted five total. These creatures were no longer bipedal, but traces of humanity laced them—fingers that were too long, hands with opposable thumbs. The joints bent the wrong way at the elbows and knees, and the eyes … the eyes were dead. Pure black.

“What has she done to you?” Wax whispered at them.

The creatures didn’t respond. Either they could not think, could not speak, or didn’t care to do either. Wax fired upward, half hoping that the sound would scare the things away, send them scuttling back into the night.

The greater part of him hoped they would remain, so he could finish off every last one of the poor bastards.

The single shot rang loud in the tunnel, but the beasts didn’t flee. Instead they surged forward, their reluctance giving way to frenzy. Wax leveled Vindication and unloaded at the first creatures, aiming for skulls. Flashes of gunfire lit the tunnel. Though his bullets tore off skin and left streaks of bleeding muscle, not one of the creatures dropped.

Wax ducked back into the room, holstering Vindication and setting his lantern on an outcropping. “Their skulls have been thickened,” he shouted to TenSoon while reaching for his Sterrion.

The kandra stepped past him, both lithe and powerful. Wax could almost hear the muscles constricting, pulling taught beneath that skin. As the first creature entered, TenSoon smashed it on the side of the head, pinning it to the wall with one hand. Then he stepped back and raised his foot to crush the skull against the rocks.

The others leaped over TenSoon, dragging him down, biting his flesh. He grabbed at one, ripping it free by the hind legs and hurling it away. Wax fired, aiming for the eyes.

“They have been created to fight you,” TenSoon growled from the ground, where he wrestled with one of the creatures while others tore at him. “Flee. Your modern weapons are useless here, lawman!”

Like hell they are, Wax thought, dropping his Sterrion and reaching to the large holster on his thigh, bringing out his short-barreled shotgun. He pulled out a handful of shells and tossed them to the floor with a sound like rain. Then he waded in, slapping the first monster that came at him across the face with the shotgun. It flinched, then howled—baring rows of uneven teeth.

Wax shoved the shotgun into its mouth and fired.

Bits of it colored the wall, and as it fell—thrashing—it knocked over baskets, spilling bones to the rock floor. The one creature’s death caught the attention of others, who turned from the bleeding TenSoon and charged Wax.

Wax naturally preferred the pistol. A handgun was an extension of one’s focus, a weapon of precision—like a thrown coin in anteverdant days. The soul of the Coinshot, his will made manifest.

The shotgun was something different; it wasn’t an extension of focus or will, but it did do a good job of representing his rage.

Wax shouted, slamming his shotgun across the face of one beast and Pushing on the barrel, giving the swing incredible momentum. The blow flung the creature to the side as Wax spun and pumped his gun, then blasted at the leg of the next one, ripping its arm free at the shoulder and sending it face-first into the stone.

He leaped over the next one that came for him, Pushing on a fallen bullet for lift. He fired a shotgun slug down into the beast’s back, stunning it, then multiplied his weight and landed with a crunch.

The thing thrashed and writhed beneath him as another leaped at his throat. He pumped and shot it in the head, then Pushed on the slug. His weight still increased—draining his metalmind at a furious rate—that bullet didn’t stop at the skull as the others had. It split bone and made a mess of the brain.

Wax sidestepped that corpse as it flopped beside him, then swung his shotgun upward into the head of the last beast coming for him. It flipped backward, exposing the belly.

Wax fired three times, emptying the shotgun. The underbelly was soft, as he’d hoped. The thing went down.

He stood, breathing deeply, the rhythm of the fight having consumed him. Nearby, TenSoon rolled over, the wounds to his arms and sides resealing. He had killed another of the things by ripping it in half. His eyes were wide as he regarded Wax. His bloodied face looked as inhuman as those of the creatures they’d just fought.

TenSoon climbed to his feet, surveying the wreckage. The lantern still burned calmly, illuminating bones scattered across the floor and masses that had once—horribly—been human, but now just twitched. Wax felt sick. He’d called them “things” in his head, but these had been people. TenSoon was right. What Bleeder had done here was worse, somehow, than even her murders.

“I will need to ask Harmony,” TenSoon said, “if I have failed Him in killing this day.” His voice was the same gravelly growl as before, when he’d inhabited the wolfhound’s body.

“Why would he care?” Wax said, still sick. “He uses me to kill all the time.”

“You are His Ruin,” TenSoon said. “I am His Preservation.”

Wax stood in silence amid the dead and dying and lowered his shotgun, trying to suppress the immediate feeling of indignation he felt. Was that all he was to Harmony? A killer? A destroyer?