“Get to the house,” I snapped. “The enclave’s safety comes first.”
There were kids in there. Pregnant women. Elders too.
The enclave males stood on the lawn behind Knox, faces grim and eyes tight, ready for battle.
The women able to fight flanked Kimora, their teeth bared and fists clenched, eager to draw first blood.
But that had already happened, a few miles away, as far as I was concerned.
“Thom, you’re with me.” I ripped the cat off my shoulder and tossed him. The cat twisted midair, landing in a crouch as a man. “We’ll evacuate the farmhouse. Miller, provide cover.”
A whistling noise preceded the first arrow strike. An Onca yards away jolted, impaled by the wooden shaft, and went down on her knees.
“Damn it,” I snarled. “Goddamn it.”
We passed through the lines, and I met Knox’s gaze for a frozen second. He didn’t have to speak for me to hear his plea to take care of his people.
The front door of the farmhouse swung open, allowing us to enter at a run and slam it shut behind us, for all the good the thin wood would do.
“We have to go.” I counted children, my stomach sinking as the number grew higher. “Leave everything. The Malakhim are outside. We have to run.”
Mothers gathered their infants. Expectant mothers gritted their teeth. Toddlers were slung across shoulders or encouraged to hang off backs. I spotted Lira and her mother. She had quite the brood. As the oldest, Lira would be on her own, and her short legs would never keep pace.
“I don’t have any chocolate on me.” I knelt beside her when her eyes brightened in recognition. Wu had gotten the kid hooked on sweets her parents frowned on, but desperate times called for grand promises. “I’ll give you a whole bar if you can hold onto me long enough to get somewhere safe.”
“I can do that.” She made grabby hands at me. “I’m a big girl. Just ask my mommy.”
“Mommy, do you mind?” I hadn’t met her mother, but it was obvious who she belonged to when the female almost fainted at having her child singled out by me. “My life for hers, I swear it.”
“I’ll hold you to your vow,” the female promised, hope and terror clashing in her eyes.
“Come on.” I hauled Lira onto a chair at the kitchen table. “Hop on piggyback style.”
The first time we met, she told me her father called her Monkey. I could see why. She climbed me like a vine, swinging from my shoulders to peer at my face, her eyes wild with excitement.
Her mother caught me staring at the closed door and read my inner conflict over fleeing the battle. “You’re too important to lose.”
Until she pointed it out, I hadn’t realized I was running scenarios in my head. Leaving the Oncas and Cuprina to fight my battles for me didn’t sit right, and I didn’t even have a name for our newest allies, but they were here of their own free will. This was their choice, their fight. Figureheads had power. Without me, the resistance would crumble, and the world would spin until the next ascension, doomed to repeat the cycle for all time.
“Move out.” It was all I had left to say. “We’ll head to Cypress Swamp. There’s a bunkhouse there. It’s full, but we have airboats. We’ll use them to transport the children somewhere safe.”
As soon as Wu told me where that might be. Aside from Haven, a leak meant nowhere known to them would be secure.
Searching the room to see where Thom had gone, I found him carrying three laughing children who were scratching the furry black ears he had sprouted to amuse them. He crossed to me, took in Lira, and smiled. “Don’t feel bad. I lived among them for a time, and the children favored me.”
“Until you mentioned it, I didn’t realize this was a popularity contest.” On reflex, I reached out to tickle the nearest child, much to his delight. “Hold on tight to Thom. We’re going on an adventure.”
The children were young enough to be fooled into believing the shouts and grunts from outside were part of the game, the ones being carried at least. There were older kids, teens, and their eyes held adult knowledge.
The last mother grabbed the final child, and I led them out the backdoor and into the cover of the trees. It burned to know they were all winged, that flight was so much easier and safer, so much faster. But the Malakhim had wings too, and they trained on how best to use them to inflict maximum damage.
Behind us, Miller took up the rear guard. I was forced to let him set the pace to match the slowest of our group, a female who looked seconds away from giving birth. With that fear lodged in my gut, I chose the gentlest paths, the ones Dad and I troubled to keep clear of debris to make for easy walking for me and easy hunting for him.
We passed the spot where I encountered my first Drosera, and where I first met the dragon.
The trip to Cypress Swamp would be long and ugly, and we only had so much time before the women tired, the babies started crying, and the kids began complaining. I wanted to put as much distance between us and the farmhouse as possible before that happened.
With Lira a warm weight on my back, her touch prickling down my spine, I cut a path toward Death.
Miller had the hindsight to text Portia and Santiago our new location, and we hoped to meet them at the bunkhouse. Wu and Cole were still MIA, I assumed delivering the Rixtons to Haven, meaning Rixton wasn’t here to lighten the mood with jokes inappropriate for young ears. Then again, that might be for the best.
“Sister.” Death stepped from behind a cypress tree into our path. “I wasn’t expecting you.” She examined the ragtag band of refugees staggering behind me. “Your mate was here not so long ago. He reclaimed the pod for safekeeping.”
There was no time for relief, not with so many other children still at risk, but it was good to know Phoebe was out of the crosshairs for the moment.
“We need a place to stay for a few hours. Portia and Santiago ought to be here in thirty minutes or less. I’m not sure when to expect Cole and Wu.” Rixton I didn’t mention since his name would mean nothing to her, and I didn’t want to pick a fight about the value of human life when all of ours were on the line. “We should be out of your hair before dark if we’re lucky.”
“This is your home,” Death said with a welcoming smile. “Do with it as you will.”
“Thank you.” I jerked my head, ushering the females toward the pier. The most heavily pregnant ones took the patio chairs. The rest sat with their sore feet dangling in the murky water. Janardan, upon spotting guests, rallied his children, who rushed to offer the females bottled water and the kids snack-size bags of chips. “Have you heard the news from Canton?”
“Janardan saw a news report on the tablet.” She frowned as she spoke, unsure she had it right. “He said the police station was reduced to ash.” The lines on her forehead deepened. “You worked there, as a law enforcer, correct?”
“A cop, yes.” I didn’t ask if fatalities had been tallied yet. I would hear the news soon enough. It would be broadcast on a loop until avoiding it became impossible. “You have more experience playing this game than I do. How would you strike back? How would you hurt the one responsible?”
“You’re thinking of the wrong sister.” She chuckled softly. “War would have been the one to ask. She thrived on revenge, and look where it got her.”
The jab sliced deep, as it was meant to, but I was already bleeding from a hundred tiny cuts.
Placing her hands on my shoulders, contact which made me break a sweat after recalling how War met her end, Death advised, “The best revenge is a life well-lived. Given who we are, our expected lifespans once we reach Earth, we have so very little time, don’t you think?”
“I can’t kick back and enjoy what’s left. There’s too little of it.” I cupped a hand to my ear. “Don’t you hear the clock ticking? I do.”
“Survive.” Fierce, she held my gaze. “Thrive.” She lowered her arms. “That’s the worst punishment you could dole out to any enemy.”
“Thanks.” I managed to keep
from rolling my eyes. “That’s … great advice.”
Beaming at me, she set out for the pier. “Our philosophies aren’t so different, yours and mine.”
On that, I couldn’t agree. I wanted blood. I had a taste for it now. I couldn’t let Ezra get away with what he had done.
“I need to make contact with my team.” I took out my phone. “I’ll join you in a minute.”
Santiago answered on the second ring. “What?”
“You have the best manners. They never cease to amaze.”
“Busy here. What do you want?”
“That’s better.” I swept my gaze over the exhausted masses. “The enclave is secure, for now. We’re at the bunkhouse.”
“What?”
“You keep saying that.” I frowned. “What is your problem? I just told you mine.”
“We’re ten minutes from the farmhouse. No one told us the party switched locations.”
“The Malakhim attacked,” I said slowly. “Miller, Thom, and I evacuated the vulnerables to the bunkhouse. It was the closest, safest place I could think of to stash them, but we need alternatives yesterday. This is the first place they’ll look.”
Thom deposited his charges then returned to me. “What’s wrong?”
“Hold on,” I told Santiago then addressed Thom. “Santiago didn’t get Miller’s message. They’re en route to the farmhouse, not here.” Meaning help was farther away than I would like. Being on the water only increased the impression we were sitting ducks. “Check with Miller. See if the text shows as clearing. Find out if there was a response.”
A niggling sense of doubt was worming its way into my brain, a worry I couldn’t pinpoint. I was missing something. Something big. There was a connection here, on the edge of my memory, but I couldn’t pull it into focus.
Thom went in search of Miller while I gazed off into the swamp, in the direction of the seal between terrenes.
“The message shows as read,” Miller said, coming up behind me. “There’s no response, but I wouldn’t have expected one.”
“I don’t like this.” A fist of dread squeezed my heart. “We’re vulnerable here, and we’re isolated from the rest of the coterie.”
“Death is here.” The fine lines bracketing his mouth hinted my paranoia was creeping up on him. “Her mate and coterie are here. We’ve got backup if — ”
Death was here. So was Janardan. So was I. Only Cole missing prevented a clean sweep, a total coup.
“I’ve done a stupid, stupid thing.” I whirled toward Miller, panic fluttering along my nerve endings. “I’ve put myself in the same place as Death. One strike here could wipe out the entire cadre.”
“We can load up the enclave, get them on the airboats.” He half turned, searching for Thom, the only other pilot we had on hand. “There are other places they can hide, farther away from the epicenter.”
“Where?” I hadn’t meant to snap at him, but I couldn’t shake the horrible feeling that old debts were coming due. “We’re running out of hidey-holes.” Opening Haven’s doors ahead of schedule would jeopardize Dad, Sherry, and Nettie. Ezra was hunting these people. He was bent on eradicating them. He wouldn’t stop until he punished Wu in the worst way left to him — erasing all traces of his mortal wife by wiping out their bloodline. “We need to move, and Death does too. Her coterie won’t be safe here.”
A sudden wind blew my hair away from my face, and chills dappled my arms in response.
The old-growth trees creaked, their branches rustling. Water rippled, debris skating farther out into the swamp. And overhead … the sky turned black.
Hundreds of Malakhim swarmed above us, blotting out the sun.
They had followed us. I expected some would. The scouts must have turned back to rejoin the host, point them in our direction. Maybe they had already been heading here. Maybe Ezra had pieced together enough about me to know where I would go to ground and who I would take with me. He captured Kapoor, tortured him. He could have told Ezra anything, everything. The NSB had files on me for days.
“What do we do?” I looked to Miller. “What the hell do we do?”
The end was upon us, and backup was nowhere in sight.
“We do the best we can, for as long as we can, and hope for the best.”
Dread soured my stomach, and I screamed to the enclave, “Get inside. Get inside now.”
Arrows rained down on the pier, peppering the bunkhouse, and turning the slowest of our group, the female primed to give birth at any moment, into a pincushion.
Thom sprinted for her before I could scream at him to take cover and hauled her into the relative safety of the bunkhouse.
I promised him, and myself, he would never get hurt again on my watch.
I promised, and I kept my promises.
Rage that the Malakhim would jeopardize that vow blanketed my vision, turning it a vibrant crimson.
Blinking, I couldn’t shake the haze, and that meant one thing — I was about to go dragon on their asses. That meant Wu was right. The dragon was a biological function. Even with Conquest locked away, I had access to that part of me. Too bad the chances of me retaining control were fifty-fifty. I really, really hoped I didn’t eat anyone important.
Without the cold place buffeting the change, I kept a clear head, even as that head rose a dozen feet above the ground. Higher. I was in control. Total control. For the first time, the dragon felt like an extension of me rather than an intruder. This must be how Cole felt all the time — invincible.
The smile Miller wore was one I had never seen on his face, and I was surprised how well it fit him.
An instant later, he swelled into his charun form, and a massive snake lashed its tail through the trees.
Quick as lightning, he sped toward the bunkhouse, to defend the enclave.
Since taking to the air was a no-go, I climbed the tallest tree capable of supporting my weight and used my whiplike tail to knock Malakhim out of the sky. Their arrows bounced off my scales, and I didn’t let them get close enough to find out if the same was true for their swords. Cole had been injured with bullets the night I first met his dragon, so I wasn’t invulnerable in this form, even if it turned out females were more heavily armored, as sometimes happened in nature. While it might not kill me, it wouldn’t feel great, and it would slow me down enough for the Malakhim to finish the job.
Too bad there were no dragon-size mirrors. For once, I would have loved to take a look at myself, compare my form to Cole’s.
And that was the panic talking. Vanity would have to wait. I had to focus. Push out the inane thoughts meant to soothe or distract. I needed my head on right if I wanted to keep it on my shoulders.
Through the leaves, I spotted Miller striking, capturing Malakhim in his jaws and gulping them whole. I tried not to watch the struggle as they lodged in his throat. He didn’t seem concerned, so I couldn’t let myself be either.
No sign of Thom, but that was a good thing. It meant he was inside, working on the wounded, and safe.
Free to refocus on the swarm buzzing around me, I lashed out with my tail, knocking three soldiers into each other and tumbling them into the trees along with a fourth.
My endurance in this body was phenomenal, but I couldn’t hold the line against so many for long. A few were skirting me now, diving for Miller. Once enough of them got on the roof, they would infiltrate the building, and we would lose.
“We must take the fight to them,” Death called from below me. “It’s the only way.”
The rumbling groan issuing from my throat sounded close enough to what the actual hell to work for me.
“You can fly, Luce.” Her eyes burned, dark voids with red embers in their centers. “It’s muscle memory for that body. Trust me.” She reached out her hand. “We must defend our people, or they will perish.”
Using my tail, I coiled it around her offered wrist and hauled her up to me. She settled on my back in the spot where I rode Cole, making me think she — or we — had d
one this before. I flinched as a fresh volley of arrows whistled through the sky, but they disintegrated, rotted clean away, before touching her.
I gulped hard and tried not to think too much about what she could do to me with the same ease.
“You’re high enough.” She peered around me. “Spread your wings and leap. The wind will catch you. You’ll glide, even if you can’t achieve lift.”
I might have argued with her, as much as I was able, if I hadn’t spotted movement behind Miller, near the rear of the bunkhouse.
Lira.
She had taken a sword from a body or a cache in the house, and she stood with the weapon in her hands, ready to defend the others with her life.
A deafening roar exploded from my throat, and I lunged for her, wings spread as far as I could stretch them. I glided, as Death said I would, but at this rate, I wouldn’t save Lira. I would squish her flat and maybe topple the bunkhouse too.
Muscles screaming from the strain, I managed to backbeat enough to scoop Lira up with my tail and deposit her in Death’s lap. The roof scratched my stomach, but I made it over the top. I wouldn’t last in the air. This body might be made for flight, and it might remember the mechanics, but it hadn’t flown in too long. I was too weak to maintain without Conquest’s power boosting me.
“Get me to them, and I will kill them.” Death yanked on my mane. “You can do this. Just a moment longer. Hold your position.”
I hadn’t meant to slow enough for the Malakhim to catch us. I was that tired, that winded, that I couldn’t have escaped them if our lives depended on it. Which, of course, they did.
“A little closer,” Death murmured, and I remembered what a patient hunter she could be. “There.”
From the corner of my eye, I watched her reach up like she would clasp forearms with the soldier above her. He startled at her bare hand, and it cost him. She rested her palm on top of the fingers clutching the dagger he hadn’t thought to use, and the light went out of his eyes. He dropped like a stone, his corpse splashing into the water.
Rise Against: A Foundling novel (The Foundling Series) Page 23
