No problem, he told himself, and believed it for as long as it took the second tank in line to peel left, swing its turret toward him, and fire.

  The explosion was smaller, and Vincent taunted. “You cannot defeat Abaddon!”

  But something was wrong. This round did not blow up and shower him with his own viscera, it just burned. It sat lodged in the thickest part of one of his limbs, all too near to the human part of him, and burned and burned, a furious fire, like a living thing, like some rabid beast.

  The fire hurt, but in a distant sort of way. Yet there was no denying that it was consuming him. The moist starfish flesh bubbled and melted and oozed away from the fire. Furious white smoke rose and swirled around him, stinging his eyes.

  “Wait!” Vincent yelled. “That’s not fair, I can’t see!”

  He couldn’t see, but now yes, yes, he was definitely feeling not the mind-shattering agony he’d have felt if he was fully human, but pain nevertheless; pain as the unquenchable fire burned his starfish flesh, eating its way up to where he was a shirtless kid who . . .

  . . . who now, suddenly, felt the heat much more directly on his remaining human flesh. Unbearable heat. Unbearable pain.

  My God! Oh, my God!

  He tried to scream, only to gag on the billows of smoke.

  Help me! Someone help me! I am Abaddon! he cried inwardly.

  The Dark Watchers seemed rapt. Fascinated. Indifferent to his agony as the fire curled and ashed his waist whips. His starfish body was half melted, a bubbling cauldron of magma, and he was sinking into it, sinking down helplessly.

  He screamed soundlessly, his flesh melting, his mind a wild merry-go-round swirl of panic and self-righteous anger and now-intolerable pain.

  “No!” he tried to cry, but his last word was a choking sound.

  Vincent Vu, Abaddon the Destroyer, was reduced to a mound of flaming goo, like someone had dropped a marshmallow in a campfire.

  Abaddon would destroy no more.

  The tanks swerved around the fire and clanked on. They had lost just five minutes in destroying Vincent. A consequential five minutes.

Villain, Chapter 23