Rings of the Inconquo Trilogy

by A. L. Knorr

  “She’s weak,” he said leaning against the elevator wall. “They still have her on oxygen, and IV fluids. She’s not in pain, but she fades in and out a bit from the medications.”

  I nodded, my heart pounding with relief among other things. Two days ago they weren’t sure if she would ever wake up. This was a gift, a miracle.

  “Ibby.” Marcus lowered his voice.

  “I’m fine,” I insisted, assuming he was worried about me. I shook my head and straightened from the slumped lean I’d adopted. “Just tired, that’s all.”

  “No.” Marcus shook his head. “There’s something else …”

  His tone caught my attention like a sharp hook, and I looked at him, eyes narrowing at his pained expression. A lurching, primitive sense ignited my nerves, forcing exhaustion to the back of my mind.

  “What?” My voice was sharp and high, my throat closing painfully around the word.

  “Jackie,” he paused, “she can’t feel anything below the middle of her back. The doctors don’t know if it’s a piece of the weapon still lodged in there or just the trauma, but …”

  His face fell as he watched the impact this had on me, unable to bear his burdensome news.

  Cold flooded my gut and my breath hitched as my words tumbled from numb lips. I braced a hand against the elevator’s wall as it lurched to a stop and the world seemed to spin.

  “Jackie’s paralysed.”

  ---

  We walked to Jackie’s room, determined to stay calm and in control. Closing my eyes for a brief moment, I took a breath before stepping inside.

  Jackie reclined against pillows, her features swollen with fluids and ghostly pale. Uncle Iry was beside her, sitting in his wheelchair, his weathered skin hung around his gaunt face. His eyes were focused on her, and her hand was in his.

  Neither noticed me as I hung there in the doorway, Marcus at my back, my body locked into place as I beheld the two dearest people in the world to me in their wounded grace.

  They were smiling as they chatted; Jackie’s brilliant smile undiminished by discoloured lips. But the smiles were haunted, ethereal things.

  The truth stole around my neck like a strangling cord and kept me from moving – even breathing. It was me and all the trouble that had come with me which had left them wounded like this. How could this be worth it? How could all this pain be justified, especially visited on people who’d done nothing to deserve it?

  The overwhelming urge to flee, to run and hide shivered through me. My rebellious limbs twitched fitfully, but I managed an unsteady lurch backward before a strong pair of arms braced me.

  “In you go,” Marcus whispered, his voice sad and unyielding. “You both need this.”

  The urge to flee melted, but Marcus had to guide me a few steps into the room.

  Jackie’s head turned. Her eyes widened. “Ibby?”

  The voice was so paper-thin I wouldn’t have recognised it as my darling, bubbly friend if I hadn’t seen her mouth move. It was all I could do to look in those soft doe eyes, my tongue cleaving to the roof of my mouth.

  Marcus let go of me but kept a hand on my back as I staggered a few steps closer. All I saw were IV and oxygen tubes: reminders of her inescapable infirmity, the cost of being my best friend. A lump grew in my throat.

  “Oh come now, luv.” She chuckled weakly, one unsteady arm reaching out. “I’ve looked worse.”

  I reached her on unsteady legs and took her cold fingers in mine. Gone was the strong, warm grip of the party girl who’d grown into a warrior woman. In its place was a limp collection of frail bones and wasted flesh wrapped in the thinnest of skin. I felt the trembling in her hand and knew the effort taxed her.

  “I’m so sorry,” I sobbed, hot tears racing down my cheeks. “I’m just so sorry.”

  Jackie looked up at me, confusion crinkling her smooth brow.

  “What?” She studied my face through glazed eyes. “Why?”

  My knees gave way as another sob tore its way out of my chest, and I knelt next to her bed. My forehead pressed against the mattress, the smells of rubbing alcohol and detergent assaulting my nose. I wanted to curl into myself with grief and pain, a brittle ball of misery.

  “It’s all my fault,” I groaned, unable to look at her but keeping her frail hand clutched in mine. “I did this to you. I’m so sorry, Jackie.”

  Jackie tugged weakly to free her hand, and though my heart broke in two I released my hold. I couldn’t blame her. The conviction of that thought beat more sobs out of me and I wept into the edge of the mattress: too ashamed to do anything useful, too broken to flee.

  Then I felt shivering fingers cradle my head. “Ibby. Look at me.”

  I shook my head softly, but her hand stroked my hair until, through tear blurred eyes, I looked up into my best friend’s face.

  Her voice was a caress of gentle reproof. “You saved me. I would have died if you hadn’t carried me out.”

  “But you wouldn’t have been there in the first place if it weren’t for me. It’s my fault. All of this is my fault.”

  Jackie’s smile spread like the dawn.

  “Your fault that you answered the call in your blood to protect others? Your fault that you saved me from the worst of guys like you’ve always done? Your fault that you inspired me to be a better, stronger woman than I ever thought possible? You have to take credit for the good, too.

  “I-I, oh, Jackie!” I rose and pressed myself into her weak but willing embrace. “I just want you to be okay.”

  Jackie’s arms folded around me, and her fingers, light as breeze ran across my shoulders and the back of my head.

  “I’m with you luv,” she whispered softly. “That’s halfway, isn’t it?”

  ---

  “Ibby.”

  I groaned and shifted in my sleep.

  “Ibby, wake up.”

  The voice, masculine but soft, had a note of urgency that dug at my sleeping mind, demanding attention.

  “What?” The word slurred into an irritated groan, as I refused to open my eyes.

  “Ibby, you need to get up, now.”

  That urgency again, a little sharper this time.

  Stifling a growl of frustration, I blinked the last murky mercies of sleep away. I’d fallen asleep in the chair next to Jackie’s bed again. As I forced myself to focus, I saw Jackie sleeping soundly before me. If not for the even rise and fall of her chest, she might have been a wax figure in a museum exhibit. The familiar pangs of guilt threatened to distract me from the voice that had awoken me, but a large hand on my shoulder drew my attention.

  “Ibby, you need to come.”

  I turned my head to see my uncle leaning forward in his wheelchair. A completely different guilt at my grouchiness snapped me into sharp wakefulness. I stood and followed Uncle Iry as he rolled himself to the door.

  “Best ‘it the bog,” Hadlynne began as soon as I stepped into the hallway. He looked me up and down before giving a despairing shake of his head. “We’re off.”

  His Yorkshire accent was hard enough to decipher, but with so little to work with, I was stumped. I looked at Uncle Iry for help, but he sat staring up at the man as though he were not sure what Hadlynne was much less what had been said.

  “Come again?” I asked.

  “Fresh ’teligence, fresh target, Yer a might bit bogeyed, eh? F’gured you’d be chuffed.”

  Now I understood why Hadlynne hardly ever talked: there was no point.

  “Fresh … what?”

  “I heard the word target,” Uncle Iry offered helpfully still studying the freckled soldier like he belonged in a lab somewhere.

  “Bloody faffin’ eejits.” Hadlynne growled then crossed his arms and scowled at us so fiercely his freckles turned three shades darker.

  “We’ve got a new target,” I parrotted as the pieces fell into place. “We have a new target, and I need to get ready.”

  Uncle Iry nodded sagely, then squinted in studious inquiry at Hadlynne.

 
; “Bah!” Hadlynne snarled and turned on his heels, lapsing into his natural silence as he stomped toward the elevator.

  “Best follow him,” Uncle Iry advised, adding “Marcus and I will keep her company. Don’t worry. Jackie is in good hands.” He squeezed my arm.

  I swallowed the lump in the back of my throat and nodded. With a kiss on the top of Uncle Iry’s head, I followed the fuming Yorkshireman.

  9

  “Whose plan was this?” I growled as bullets peppered the stone wall I hunkered behind with Hadlynne. The dust and chips of stone sparkled in the Spanish sun.

  Behind our position a steep slope – two degrees from a cliff – plunged to a beautiful Mediterranean shoreline some ten or fifteen metres below. If it hadn’t been for the screams, curses, and discharging firearms, I would have described the little fishing hamlet south of Calpe as idyllic. True, the dilapidated fish cannery we’d come to “reconnoitre” was a sore spot with its peeling paint and industrial-grade stink, but the weather was mild, the surrounding mountains majestic, and the sea a brilliant blue.

  As we approached, nearly a third of the industrial compound had erupted into a mass of splinters and shrapnel seconds before the shooting started. Stewart, to his credit, had barked orders almost immediately. While I was still pulling my jaw off the floor, point squad advanced along the opposite flank of the eruption while the central squad moved to secure the seemingly unmanned front entrance. Hadlynne had practically dragged me as the rear-guard moved to cover the ruins of the cannery that had been nearest the tightly wound road.

  Shots rang out from the ruins when we tried to cross the road, and everyone had scrambled for cover.

  Our mission had turned from reconnaissance with a potential raid, to a full-blown gun battle in mere seconds.

  The profanity-laden reports to Stewart from team members suggested their return-fire wasn’t having much success.

  A shot skipped off the top of the wall above my head, and I cringed low enough for my breath to kick up the dust at my feet. I didn’t want to stay here another second, vulnerable in a very poor position. And given the sour tang I’d sensed at detonation, I knew just who had done it.

  My metallic senses strained. Like raking leaves I gathered every bit and bob of metal I could find, mostly shards and fragments from the explosion. I couldn’t see them from where I crouched, but I heard them scrape and tinkle as they bounced off the road and each other. Shots from both sides slackened a little as the combatants gaped at the glittering dervish.

  “Can someone give me a direction?” I asked into my headset through gritted teeth.

  A brief pause, then “Two o’clock.”

  The dervish became a cyclone of metal shards. A terrified spasm of gunfire sliced harmlessly through the gathering storm, pattering across the stone.

  “My turn,” I whispered.

  Men roared and wailed as the twisting, stinging fragments lashed over and through their position in the ruins. Curls of metal sheeting and slivers of fractured nails and bolts scourged the area like a swarm of locusts. I dared a look over the wall to see men springing up, covering their heads with both arms, and casting weapons aside as they ran. Glinting under the Mediterranean sun, the flecks of metal looked like enraged fireflies from hell.

  Separated from their impromptu gun nests, the men appeared to be locals: leathery blokes who would have looked natural on a fishing boat or driving a flock over the rough hills. Some raced about in circles, not noticing they’d escaped the worst of my now dissipating storm. Others crept along on knees and elbows like strange penitents, not daring to look up from beneath their clasped hands. A few staggered forward clapping hands to thin gashes on their face and arms. Altogether there were more than a half dozen of them in the shattered stockyard.

  “Sitting ducks,” Bordeaux growled. Point and central had used my distraction to creep along the front of the building. There had been no clear shot into the cannery before, but now they had the enemy dead to rights.

  “What’s the plan, Sarge?” the corporal asked as I let the remaining scraps tumble to the ground.

  Tension crackled in the air, and the world seemed to hold its breath. All the security team’s weapons were trained on the stunned and defenceless men standing out in the open. Had our places been reversed, I doubted those men would have hesitated to kill us. The whole squad appeared to lean forward eagerly.

  “I can secure them.” I climbed over the wall intending to jog across the road to where Stewart squatted with the central squad.

  “Bashir!” Stewart snarled, his voice low but forceful through my headset. “Get back to cover!”

  “Give me a second.” There’d be hell to pay for this later, but I cared more about avoiding further carnage than I did about Stewart’s wrath.

  I skirted around them, reaching out to a broad section of tin roof. It warbled as I lifted it off the ground, then gave a tortured screech as I tore its corrugations into strips. The men in the yard cringed and recoiled, their eyes bulging in fear. A few genuflected as their gazes wandered back to the rifle barrels levelled at them.

  Stepping over the remnants of the stockyard’s fence, one hand held out to shaping bonds, I met the eyes of the men I was trying to save.

  “That’s an order, lassie!” Stewart hissed.

  I was sweating, but a chill clawed its way up my spine. I was defying direct orders, but I couldn’t risk these men’s lives. I moved to work faster, making as many strips as there were men.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Stewart rise. I had seconds before he either dragged me out of the way or told the team to open fire. With a less than gentle shove, I sent the strips of metal to loop around the chests and knees of the men in the yard. A few screamed as their legs were pinned together. A few flopped over, almost comically, their expressions dramatic enough for a Three Stooges film. But they were alive.

  “See?” I turned to Stewart, who advanced on me like a purple-faced avalanche. I forced my face into a hopeful grin.

  The rattling slither of chains sounded from inside the cannery, and I turned as a nauseous rush assaulted my senses.

  I cried out in horror along with the bound men in the stockyard as oily, black chains burst through the windows in the central building. Like living things with hooked hands they plunged toward the men, snaring bonds, clothes, or flesh. It happened so quickly I hadn’t even taken a breath before they were dragged, screaming, into the building.

  “Bashir!?” Stewart asked, his ire gone, the colour draining from his face. “What the devil are you doing?”

  “It wasn’t me,” I gasped. “I wouldn’t…”

  The screams inside the cannery stopped with sickening abruptness, and something else pressed on my awareness.

  We stood beside the rusted framework of a truck bay. My gaze snapped upward to the exposed girders jutting from the blasted end of the cannery. My knees and stomach quailed as a red glimmer winked at me in time with another rush of putrid force. I felt the metal’s despairing cry as the insidious corruption destabilised it, molecule by molecule.

  “Run!” I screamed at the team as the girders reached critical mass.

  The solid branches of steel had become bombs, shaped by the mad will of an ancient evil who would love nothing more than to see the whole world fester and die.

  Hard-won instinct saved my life, as well as Stewart’s.

  I snatched up the last of the metal sheeting with my power and lifted it to block the sergeant and I from the blast. The sheet of tin slapped against us as thunder blasted, the force driving us to the ground hard, but sparing us from the worst of the explosion.

  Our cheeks smashed into the dirt; the sergeant and I shared terrified looks under the shadow of our makeshift shield. As the ringing in my ears subsided, sporadic gunfire and screams filled them instead.

  “G-et the team ou-t,” I wheezed, fighting for each syllable as I struggled to catch my breath. Blood pounded through my head, making even my ears throb.

&nb
sp; Stewart’s face was pale, and every hard line in his craggy face seemed curled in fear. The shooting and the screams stopped abruptly. Something harder than any metal known to man flashed in Stewart’s eyes.

  “Bloody well dinna think so,” he snarled. With a bellowing heave he threw the battered tin off.

  We rose to our knees in an opaque curtain of dust and smoke. Stewart’s eyes and rifle barrel swept around in frustrated defiance.

  “Squad leaders, report,” he growled. Static answered.

  Somewhere in the fog, chains rattled.

  I struggled to my feet, working on getting oxygen into my lungs. My metallic awareness was nearly as useless as the radio, overwhelmed by the feeling of wrongness in the fragments of metal swirling around us.

  The chains clinked and rustled again, taunting.

  “What are our options, Bashir?” Stewart continued his slow scan.

  The dust cleared with unnatural slowness, cocooning us in a murky twilight.

  “Let me clear the air.” I reached my hands out to either side, laying a mental hold on the fluttering metallic dust. I winced at the contact of the befouled bits with my mind. The chains jangled irritably, and my skin prickled as the noxious aura bubbled up in my senses.

  I swept my hands down, and the clouds sank to the ground.

  In the devastated stockyard a monster clutched its prey with many hooked coils. The entire security team was bound. Vast lengths of greasy chains entangled them, hooks and many-toothed gears pressing just hard enough against throats, eyes, and groins, that not one moved.

  “Let’s not make a bad situation worse,” drawled a familiar voice.

  The head of the monster, leaning forward from the mass of metal like the figurehead of some infernal ship, was Dillon Sark, or something that had once been him. His frame was nearly skeletal now. His chest was a molten mass, seething and throbbing as metals wound over and through holes seared in flesh and bone. At a tone so low, I felt it as much as heard it, the demonic engine that was Kezsarak ground and thrummed.

  KILL HER

  I raised the battered tin, but Sark’s strained laughter brought me up short.