Marvel Monkey King: CH 4 (Patreon)

The first thing that returned was the cold.

It bit straight to the marrow, wet and bitter, pressing against his ribs with the weight of dirty city winter. Snow clung to his eyelashes, half-melted into a crust of frozen slush.

Jack groaned, his tongue scraping against the coppery film of dried blood coating his teeth.

Every joint throbbed. He tried to push his weight off the pavement, but his muscles screamed in sharp, unfamiliar agony. It made no sense. He remembered the heat of the bullet in his shoulder, the slick tearing burn in his femoral artery as the SUV flew toward the hospital. That was two holes. Why did he feel like he had been dragged behind a garbage truck for three city blocks?

He forced his eyelids open.

The world resolved into a narrow, filthy alleyway framed by red brick fire escapes and rusted drainpipes. Snow had fallen overnight, blanketing the trash bags and discarded wooden pallets in graying white. Beneath his cheek, a wide pool of dark scarlet ruined the pristine frost, still steaming faintly against the ice.

Jack drew his hands under his chest to push himself upright.

He froze.

His hands were tiny.

The knuckles were scuffed raw, the wrists thin enough to snap between two fingers. There were no calluses from years of holding cold iron or steering Cadillacs through lower Manhattan. These were the starved, fragile hands of a child.

"Well, well. Look who decided to join the living."

A harsh laugh echoed off the brick walls, thick with the flat vowels of a neighborhood that definitely was not Chinatown.

Jack turned his head, snow clinging to his cheek.

"Told you the little freak wouldn't die that easy," another voice chimed in from above. "Mutation must give them thicker skulls. Like cockroaches."

Heavy boots crunched in the crusty snow. Four or five men in heavy puffer jackets and wool beanies stood circling him, their breath pluming in thick white clouds under the weak flicker of a rusted halogen lamp.

One of them stepped forward, a broad-shouldered man smelling of cheap menthols and stale rye. He dropped into a squat, reached down with a leather-gloved hand, and yanked Jack upward by a fistful of hair.

The sudden jerk pulled Jack's face toward the light. A clump of loose strands fell across his vision.

They were bright, pale gold.

'Blond?' Jack thought through the ringing in his skull. 'Since when the fuck am I blond?'

The man sneered, his breath hot and rancid against Jack's face. "The big boss is putting together a collection of freaks. Says you lot are useful so long as you can follow orders. So here is the deal, Sean. Lick the slush off my boot, tell me you are sorry for running your mouth, and maybe I drag you inside before you freeze into a popsicle."

Jack stared at him through swollen, purple lids. His ribs ached with every shallow draw of freezing air, but deep behind his bruised eyes, something ancient and utterly rotten flickered to life.

He drew air deep into his ruined chest, gathered every drop of copper, spit, and bile pooled under his tongue, and let fly.

Splat.

A thick wad of crimson phlegm struck the gangster squarely between the eyes, sliding down the bridge of his nose.

"Jesus Christ!" The man shrieked, letting go of Jack's hair and scrambling backward in pure revulsion. His heels caught a patch of black ice, sending him crashing onto his rear in the slush.

Jack dragged himself up against the freezing brick wall, his breath coming in ragged, whistling heaves.

"The name is Jack Hou, you retarded fuck," Jack rasped, wiping a red smear from his chin with the back of a scrawny wrist. "And who the hell do you think you are, barking orders at me?"

The alley fell dead silent.

The men exchanged bewildered glances. One of the thugs leaning against a rusted dumpster barked a short laugh. "The kid has finally lost his goddamn mind. We cracked his skull so hard he thinks he is Chinese."

The man on the ground wiped the spit from his brow with a trembling, furious glove. His face burned dark crimson. "Kill the little cunt! Break his neck!"

Before the sentence finished, a heavy boot tore through the air, aimed squarely at Jack's jaw.

Jack reacted on pure muscle memory. In his old body, he would have slipped the kick with a micro-pivot of his hips and planted an elbow into the man's knee joint.

He tried to pivot.

Something heavy, long, and foreign behind his lower spine lashed out, throwing his center of gravity completely sideways.

Jack stumbled, his boots slipping in the muck. The incoming boot missed his chin but caught him hard across the collarbone, sending him crashing back into the brick. Bone barked in protest.

'What the hell was that weight on my ass?'

A hand caught him by the shoulder, spinning him around. Another punch hammered into his floating ribs, driving the breath from his lungs in an agonizing wheeze.

This body was brittle. It was fifteen, malnourished, and hollowed out by months of sleeping on cold concrete. For every five blows these grown brutes threw, Jack could barely muster the leverage to return one.

Yet Jack Hou had never fought clean a day in his life.

As the second thug stepped in to grab him by the collar, Jack's peripheral vision caught the sight of a thick, golden-furred tail whipping wildly behind him like a frightened serpent. The sheer absurdity of it sent a spike of adrenaline through his veins.

The thug's hand closed around the tail, yanking it with cruel force.

A bolt of blinding, white-hot agony shot straight up Jack's spine, so intense it made his vision turn completely white.

"Got the monkey by his tail!" the man barked, laughing.

Jack did not scream. He used the pull.

Letting the momentum drag him backward, Jack drove the heel of his boot downward with all the vicious weight of his falling body, stomping directly into the thug's instep.

The man grunted, his grip slackening for half a second.

That half second was all Jack needed.

He twisted like an eel, scooped two fingers into a sharp claw, and drove them straight into the man's left eye socket with unrelenting malice.

A wet, horrible pop echoed in the cold alley.

The thug unleashed a bloodcurdling scream, clutching his ruined eye as blood spilled between his fingers. He dropped to his knees, thrashing in the slush like a dying fish.

Another man lunged from the flank with a lead pipe. Jack threw a handful of dirty slush directly into the man's mouth, dropped low beneath the swing, and kicked the side of his knee until the cartilage tore with a muffled snap. The second thug collapsed with a choked whimper.

That was his limit.

A heavy blow struck Jack across the back of the head. His vision flared black. A third boot buried itself deep into his gut, lifting him off the snow before dropping him flat onto his back.

Three men still stood over him, chests heaving, their faces pale with shock and sudden dread at the viciousness of the battered kid on the ground.

Jack lay in the crimson-stained snow, gasping for air that tasted like frost and rust. His ribs were cracked, his new limbs felt like lead, and his tail twitched involuntarily against the frozen ground, throbbing with raw, electric ache.

He was outmatched. He was broken. He was half-frozen in an alley with strangers who wanted him dead.

Jack looked up through the curtain of golden hair, staring straight into the cold, frightened eyes of the men towering over him.

A crooked, bloody grin cracked his lips.

"Kekekeke..."

The sound started as a dry, wheezing rattle in his throat, then rose into that unmistakable, mocking laugh, echoing loud and unhinged into the freezing Manhattan night.

"Kekekeke!"

The three men stared at each other, their breath freezing in the narrow space between them.

None of them had ever heard the kid laugh like that. Sean had spent months whimpering under the stairwells, shrinking from shadows and begging for crusts of bread. That voice had been thin, broken, and waterlogged.

This sound scraping out of his throat belonged to someone who had already watched cities burn.

Jack barely noticed their stares. A high-pitched, metallic hum began to thrum deep inside his right ear canal, sharp enough to make his vision pulse. He twitched his head, still chuckling, and reached up with a bruised hand to dig his fingernail into the earlobe.

All he wanted was to take something heavy and beat the living hell out of these bastards.

The thought had barely crossed his mind when his fingers brushed against a tiny sliver of cold iron tucked behind his ear.

Crack.

The iron did not grow slowly. It detonated outward.

A heavy, dark rod tipped in dull gold burst from his hand in a blur of terrifying velocity. It crossed the three feet of air in a fraction of a millisecond, slamming point-blank into the skull of the gangster standing to the left.

The impact sounded like a bowling ball dropped from a ten-story roof onto a cabbage. The man's neck snapped sideways with a sickening crunch, his head caving inward before his boots even left the snow. He crumpled into the slush, dead before his knees hit the pavement.

The rod ceased its expansion at exactly two meters, resting heavily in Jack's scrawny palm.

The remaining two gangsters stumbled backward, their boots skidding violently on the black ice. Their eyes were wide as dinner plates, fixed on their comrade's ruined corpse.

"What the..." one of them breathed, choking on his own spit.

Jack did not stop laughing.

"Kekekekeke..."

He planted the base of the heavy iron staff into the frozen asphalt and began to stand.

The two thugs watched in mounting horror as the boy rose.

The change crawled across his skin like an awakening fire. Pale golden fur sprouted along Jack's jawline, spreading across his cheekbones like a wild, untamed beard before running down his scrawny forearms. His fingernails blackened and curved into razor-sharp talons. When his lips parted, his canines lengthened, glistening white and predatory in the weak halogen light.

The boy was gone. In his place stood something feral, ancient, and half-beast.

Jack sank onto one knee in the snow, resting both hands atop the upright staff, his chin resting against his knuckles. He tilted his golden-furred face upward, his golden eyes fixing on the two men like two hot coals.

Panic broke the men's paralysis.

Both gangsters clawed frantically at their waistbands, ripping out dull snub-nosed revolvers. One man trembled so violently his teeth clicked like castanets, trying to find his voice.

The other did not bother with threats. He raised the barrel and pulled the trigger.

Clank!

The muzzle flashed, but the lead slug never reached Jack's forehead. In a movement so fast it left an afterimage in the snow, Jack flicked the iron staff upward. The bullet struck the metal shaft with a deafening ring, sparking violently into the brickwork.

The shooter gasped, staggering back. "Imp-impossible! You goddamn mutie! Be grateful we didn't put you in the river months ago!"

"Kekekeke," Jack purred, the sound vibrating deep in his chest like a prowling leopard.

His eyes slid toward the man who had told him to lick the slush from his boot.

"You," Jack said, his voice husky, layered with a low, unnatural growl. "You like boots. You like licking. Tell you what, I am going to rip your tongue out and glue it to a stray dog's ass, so you can spend eternity licking dog shit."

The two men shook so hard the guns rattled in their grips.

There was no time to negotiate.

Jack lunged.

His scrawny legs kicked off the frozen pavement with impossible explosive force, kicking up a rooster tail of gray slush.

Both revolvers went off in a panicked frenzy.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Sparks erupted in the darkness as Jack twirled the heavy staff in a tight, whirring circle. Metal collided with metal in a chorus of high-pitched shrieks. Lead slugs flattened against the black rod and ricocheted wildly into the brick walls.

Jack closed the distance in a single heartbeat.

He stepped into the shooter's guard, brought the staff around in a brutal, horizontal arc, and struck.

The iron head smashed into the side of the man's cranium with the force of a speeding truck. Half the skull collapsed inward in a spray of dark blood and bone fragments. The man was lifted clean off his feet, flipping sideways before crashing lifelessly into a stack of frozen trash bags.

Clank! Clank!

Jack deflected the final two stray rounds with a lazy flick of his wrist.

The last surviving gangster dropped the gun from his numb fingers. He collapsed onto his rear in the wet snow, frantically scooting backward until his spine struck the cold brick wall. He looked up at the golden-furred monster towering over him, tears and snot freezing against his upper lip.

"Sean... No, Jack! Jack!" the man sobbed, hands raised in pathetic surrender. "I will call you whatever you want, man! Please! I got family, please let me live!"

Jack stared down at him, his golden tail swaying behind him in slow, lazy arcs.

"I am a man of my word," Jack said softly.

He reversed his grip and drove the base of the iron rod downward with ruthless precision.

Crunch.

The staff pierced cleanly through the man's right thigh, pinning him to the asphalt, before Jack struck a second time, shattering the man's left shoulder into powder.

The gangster threw his head back, unleashing a shrill, breathless scream of agony.

Jack dropped into a squat beside the thrashing man. His clawed fingers shot forward like striking vipers, prying the man's jaw open and clamping around the slick muscle of his tongue.

With a single, vicious twist of his wrist, he yanked.

A wet tear silenced the screams into a bubbling, bloody choke.

Jack rose, holding the wet, steaming scrap of flesh loosely between two fingers. He looked down at the writhing, half-dead man whimpering in the snow.

"I will find the dog myself," Jack said calmly. "Call it my sincerity."

He turned his back on the slaughter, letting the iron staff rest over his shoulder, and walked out of the alleyway.

The cold wind of the avenue hit him like a bucket of ice water.

Jack stopped at the corner, looking up and down the wide street. The tenement buildings were familiar, red brick and cast-iron fire escapes stretching into the dark, but the air was wrong. The cars parked along the snowbanks were heavy, boxy relics from decades ago. Neon signs flickered with faded liquor brands and storefronts that should have been demolished thirty years prior.

'This looks like Harlem,' Jack thought, his brow furrowing. 'Old Harlem. Like the streets when I was still a snot-nosed kid running from the orphanages. Did I get thrown backward in time?'

Before he could piece the thought together, a sudden, crushing exhaustion slammed into his spine.

The feral strength vanished in an instant. The muscles in his legs turned to water. His knees buckled, and he was forced to plant the two-meter staff into the curb, leaning his entire upper body against it like a decrepit old man with a walker.

A warm trickle leaked from his nostrils. Dark red blood dripped onto the white snow between his boots.

The golden fur receded into his skin, dissolving away as quickly as it had arrived. His claws softened back into blunt, chewed fingernails.

With a faint, chime-like vibration, the heavy iron staff shrank, compressing itself down until it was nothing more than a tiny black and gold needle, slipping silently back into the earring on his right ear.

Without the staff to support his weight, Jack collapsed.

His cheek hit the freezing slush. His scrawny chest heaved in shallow, agonizing gasps, his vision swimming with dark spots. The bloody tongue he had been carrying slipped from his numb fingers, landing a few feet away in a pristine mound of snow.

He could not move. His limbs were numb, freezing to the concrete.

Minutes drifted past in the quiet morning dark.

From beneath the rusted stairs of a nearby brownstone, a skinny, mangy stray dog cautiously poked its snout into the wind. It sniffed the air, trotted over to the patch of blood, and paused over the severed tongue.

The mutt sniffed it once, turned around, lifted its back leg, and let out a steady, steaming stream of yellow piss directly over the bloody meat.

Jack lay in the snow, watching through half-closed eyelids.

A weak, wheezing rattle escaped his bloody lips.

"Kekekeke..."

He laughed until his bruised ribs screamed, thoroughly satisfied with the universe's sense of humor.

Then a shadow fell over him.

Jack tilted his heavy head up. Through the veil of falling snowflakes and blurred vision, the silhouette of a massive, broad-shouldered bald black man blocked the streetlamp above, looking down at him with furrowed brows.