by S T Branton
“What about the guards we stuck in the dungeon?” Jules asked, loading her gun with impressive deftness. She had really adapted well to the situations she’d been thrown into head-first. “There are a lot of them. If we let them help us, we might break even.”
The suggestion made everyone skeptical. “How can we trust those pricks?” Luis demanded. “They already murdered a shit ton of people. How do we know they won’t turn on us once we let them out?”
I had no good response to that, and I could see the others came up empty too. Deacon was the one who spoke as the voice of reason. “Well, maybe this is reckless, but under these specific circumstances, I think we can put some faith in them. You guys saw how fast the vast majority gave up after Vic took the General out. They were basically brainwashed. Plus, they know that if the fort is overrun, they’ll be slaughtered.”
True. I would be very surprised if the gods planned to honor whatever deal the general believes he made, said Marcus. I do not think these men will curry any more favor than anyone else on the battlefield.
I nodded. “Settled. Dan, I know I asked you to lock them up, but can you—”
“We’re on it.” The soldier selected a handful of his men and sent them off to the dungeon. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay for the rest of the briefing.”
“Not at all.” I arched my eyebrows at him and Brax. “How’s the internal militia coming?”
They looked at each other. For once, the silent exchange didn’t feel outright belligerent. “With the new recruits, I think we’ve figured it out,” the demon said. His tone was as flat as ever, but at least there was no apparent disgust in his voice.
I motioned to Deacon, who presented the rocket launcher and its ammo. “Maybe this will help.”
Dan whistled. “You’re damn right it will. I got a guy who’s gonna love that shit.”
I laughed. “That’s good because I’d rather not get blown up by our own artillery.”
He gave me the hugest shit-eating grin. “We ain’t gonna live forever, but this might help us live till tomorrow.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Make every shot count. Get moving, soldier.”
He did as he was told, heading off to the wall surrounding the fort. After he’d gone, the dusky evening air filled with an ominous sound—marching. And it was coming our way.
Steph sighed. “Well, that doesn’t sound great.”
“Jeezum Crow,” Frank muttered. “You poor guys must be flyin’ completely blind. I’ve got super-vision, and I can’t see a damned thing out there.”
“We can fix that.” Luis glanced at Maya. “Let’s light ʼem up.” He nodded toward the watchtowers standing silent guard over the gates.
“Hey, yeah! Don’t worry, Vic. We got this covered.” Maya took off at a dead sprint, and the kid raced in the other direction. Seeing them working so well as a team lifted my spirits. That was the kind of mutual support we would need if we wanted to survive.
Luis and Maya made it to the guard towers, and the giant searchlights snapped on, blazing huge swaths of light down onto the area in front of the garrison. I expected to see shapes in the distance, but they were right up close to the first gate and in perfect formation, stopping for nothing.
The lights panned across ranks and files of staring, baleful faces. Each set of eyes flashed back a distinct yellow-gold. They were tall and lithe, and they looked as lethal as anything I’d ever seen before. It didn’t take an expert to know they would move incredibly fast.
Next to me, Deacon chuckled nervously. “Man, I’m glad this is happening here instead of our shitty camp in the woods. We’d have been dead as dog shit.”
I agreed, but I was too busy searching for the god among the army to respond.
She was maybe four rows back and moving forward rapidly. I had no doubt she was the goddess leading the charge because she towered over her underlings, and her gaze had focused immediately on the Gladius Solis. Her eyes gleamed a deeper, more potent gold than those of her followers, and even from that distance, I could see her narrow, malevolent pupils. They were like Tahn’s, in a way, but it definitely wasn’t my previous adversary.
I had no idea who she was, though. She moved with a grace that was beautiful and eerie. It marked her unquestionably as a creature not from this world. Had I not known at a glance what she really was, I might have been transfixed by her beauty. She sang no siren song, but she really didn’t need to.
“Oh, shit.” Frank mopped his forehead with the remains of his sleeve. “That’s one hell of a broad.” Steph shot him a dirty look. He held up his hands. “We were all thinkin’ it.”
The goddess reached the front of her army and stopped, halting them behind her without a word. Dan’s soldiers rejoined us with the general’s formerly imprisoned men, and she watched them take position intently. Her mouth dropped open, and she hissed a command. The word, in some unrecognizable tongue, sliced through the air. In less than a second, the humanoid figures amassed in front of us had transformed into hundreds of big, feral cats. Their eyes bored through the darkness. Doubtless, they could see us with perfect clarity.
“Uh, Marcus?” I asked. The cats released a piercing, unearthly scream. Their razor-sharp fangs stood out in brutal relief. Every one of them was a deep, inky black that made it almost impossible to pick them out from each other or from the lengthening shadows around them. They swarmed at the first fence, a living, writhing mass. We watched them scale it like it barely even existed. They seemed to melt through the heavy links, and the razor wire on the top had no observable effect at all. Some of them simply made gaping tears in the bottom and squeezed their bodies beneath.
Cats? Marcus sounded perplexed. I suppose this must be Bastas. I have not laid eyes upon her in centuries.
I groaned. “Oh, good. We just won the shit lottery.”
“Speak for yourself,” Steph said, leveling her gun. “I fucking hate cats.”
Chapter Thirty
I had thought that the double fence would buy us a little time, but it was an insignificant hurdle to Bastas’s minions. The cats were up and over in no time, a sinewy flood with claws and teeth bared. They struck the ground with impossible lightness, sprang up, and transformed yet again. This time, they launched into the attack.
“What the hell are those?” one of Dan’s men hollered. He was too well-seasoned a soldier to be panicked by the unusual, but he was definitely confused. I locked my eyes on one of the rushing assailants and saw why. Only the humanoid proportions had returned, and coarse fur covered their otherwise naked bodies. The claws and teeth remained, jutting from fingertips and gums. They moved like torpedoes. The only thing I could get a reliable bead on were the eyes.
“They’re the bad guys,” I yelled back. “Cut them down.”
Dan’s voice soared above the cats’ wild screams. “Not yet!” He held up a closed fist in plain view of all his men, including the new ones. “You turncoats in the back, I know we’re not on the best of terms, but believe me, you want to listen. I’m the only one who’ll get you out of this clusterfuck alive. Hold your fire.” Dan stared straight ahead, cold as ice and soaked with frigid rain. He didn’t move so much as a muscle. His fist stayed airborne.
The cats barreled closer. I measured the distance—forty feet. Thirty. Twenty.
“Now!” Dan’s arm chopped downward. The encroaching night lit up around me with eager muzzle flashes that were all but drowned in a sudden clap of thunder. Some of the howling creatures fell into the dirt that was slowly churned into an ocean of mud and stones. Undaunted, the others pressed onward, an endless torrent. They were now slick with the blood and fur of their brethren, and their eyes glowed even brighter.
“I think we made ʼem mad,” Deacon remarked. He fired a bullet directly between a cat’s eyes and watched it crumple beneath the stampede. “Good.”
“That’s the spirit,” Steph shouted over the rain and wind. Strands of her blonde hair had slipped free of her ponytail and la
y plastered across her face. She grinned from ear to ear, holding her handgun with both hands to steady the shots. “Don’t give these pussies any mercy. This is what they deserve.”
The rain sizzled off the surface of my flaming blade, which didn’t seem affected at all by the burgeoning storm. I was as ready as hell when the cats came within striking distance, practically vibrating in my boots.
The first one to reach me made a vicious swipe with its humongous claws, and as I was about to retaliate, a coin-sized hole appeared in its furry forehead. The yellow eyes rolled back, and it dropped dead at my feet. Seconds later, all that remained was a matted haystack of dark fur. No teeth, no bones, not even blood. It felt like I’d gutted a stuffed animal.
“Hey!” I took my frustration out on the next unlucky monster to leap at my face, slicing it neatly in two at the waist. The smell of burning hair filled my nostrils, and then it, too, was a shoddy pelt rippling in the wind. “Who the fuck is out here sniping? I had that one.”
Dan shot me a giant grin. I couldn’t quite see under his hat, but I thought he might be waggling his eyebrows. “That would be the snipers, Vic,” he yelled, gesturing madly toward the top of the fort. “Feast your eyes on that shit.”
I speared a couple of Bastas’s cat-men together and turned toward where he pointed. The fluid momentum tore through their bodies, and I saw shadowy figures nestled in parapets on the roof. Their guns fired less often than those on the ground, but as far as I could tell, every shot was a critical hit. The cat beasts dropped like flies under the hail of bullets, popping like fur grenades as the bodies hit the ground.
But whenever I peered into the distance, all I saw was more of them. Yeah, they were dying in droves, but that wouldn’t matter if we ran out of ammo before they ran out of troops.
“Use the rocket!” I shouted in the general direction of Dan’s squadron. “On the little ones, nothing else. Take out as many at once as you can. I’ll find the god.” A few seconds later, I heard something heavy loaded into a cylinder.
“Go, go, go!” Dan commanded. “Get as far forward as you can without having your face ripped to shreds. I wanna see these pussycats light the fuck up.”
The rocket man darted forward with the RPG on his shoulder, screaming out a bloodcurdling war cry. When he fired, the blast from the rocket nearly knocked him on his ass. He landed on his knees in the mud as the payload sailed through the air. It blew a hole in the ranks where it impacted, cat monsters exploding amid wild scatterings of fur and blood. Something about their uncanny silhouettes gave me the serious creeps.
“Yes!” Dan bellowed gleefully. “That’s what I’m talking about.” Still shooting, he pumped his fist. He was fairly far forward, but his men had him covered. The army seemed to break at his position like waves on a stark, unforgiving beach. He was clearly having as much fun as one could have in the middle of an all-out war.
On the other end of the spectrum, Brax smashed grimly through legions of beasts with his flaming hammer, not even blinking as they fell around him. He cut a wide path through the chaos, and his movements were so deliberate that I wondered what he was doing. “Looks like Dan had the right idea after all,” I shouted. The guns made a rhythmic chorus in the background, punctuated by the wet thud of brand-new corpses.
The demon glanced up. “Oh, you think so?” He still had his sunglasses on, even though they were streaming wet. “Watch this.” He signaled a nearby soldier, who responded by raising a snub-nosed gun and firing a flare in a high arc.
“Stop!” Dan yelled. “Flare out.”
The gunfire ceased immediately. I hacked and slashed at the relentless cats in the path of my sword without actually looking at them. My eyes were trained on the trajectory of the flare. That inattentiveness earned me a nice scratch on the arm.
“Bad kitty,” I said as I severed the creature’s head.
The rain washed the blood from my wound, and the pain hardly registered. Though these cats were tough, they weren’t worse than anything I’d faced before. About the same as a pretty good vamp, actually, but the big issue was their sheer numbers. No matter how well we fought, we could be overwhelmed if we weren’t careful.
Unless Brax’s plan was a real show-stopper.
The flare dropped amid the crush of monsters. Those at the point of collision jumped away, some severely burned. They shrieked and hissed like the animals they were. Then a wall of flames erupted in a significant radius, immolating all the enemies within. The blaze raced helter-skelter down a line of accelerant that had soaked so deep into the ground, it was untouched by the rain. I watched the fire carve out a huge piece of the horde before curling around the rear so that they had no means of escape.
“Damn,” I said to Brax. “I’m not gonna lie. That’s as impressive as hell.”
“It’s not over yet,” he said. Two of the gatehouses which were inside the blazing cage belched out twin torrents of roaring men. The soldiers smashed into the panicking cat-men like a hammer on an anvil. Their makeshift weapons—shovels and fire pokers, beat-up wooden baseball bats, and rough, hand-carved spears—weren’t pretty, but infused with the anger of a hundred ragtag warriors, they were equal to the challenge. The clash was fierce and bloody, obscured by the thickening haze. Tufts of burning hair were everywhere, and patches of it whipped by on the stiff breeze.
The cries that shattered the night’s stillness became less like threats and more like death throes. The onslaught of pissed-off cats flagged. Clouds of fur drifted across the war zone.
I swore I heard somebody sneeze.
Tons more of the feline figures moved steadily toward us, their unholy eyes glowing like disembodied orbs in the smoke and rain, but we had slowed them down.
“I’m glad you guys finally got your shit together after all,” I told Brax as I pulled my jacket up to shield my nose and mouth. “Remind me to look for some gas masks or rebreathers or something next time we hit a store. These assholes stink.”
“Work hazard,” he said nonchalantly. “Can’t stand the smoke, get out of the fire.”
“That is not how that saying goes,” I said. “You guys will never blend in if you can’t grasp the vernacular.”
“Blend in?” He laughed gruffly. “Not a chance, Vic.” A smoldering creature lurched at him from the screen of smoke, and he brought the hammer down on its head. “That’s the silver lining to all this mess, I guess, if you can say there is one. As long as all this unbelievable crap is still going on, I don’t seem that strange.”
“You wouldn’t seem that strange if you dressed in normal clothes, Brax.”
We waded through the battlefield, our boots squelching in the ankle-deep mud. All semblance of order had gone from Bastas’s army, and in the far distance, they began to turn tail rather than rush into the war zone.
“Keep going,” I shouted to anyone who could hear. “They’re turning back.”
The hurrah I got in response was louder and more fearsome than I’d expected. Whether through luck, skill, or sheer determination, much of our fighting force was still on their feet, and by the sound of it, raring to go.
My heart almost burst with pride. And even though I was soaked through to the skin, covered in filth, blood, and cat guts, I grinned so wide my cheeks hurt.
The army you have built is more than admirable, Victoria. This is because all militaries reflect the qualities of their leader, no matter what stock they are made from.
“That’s cool of you to say, Marcus,” I answered. “And I really do appreciate it. But I’ve got a real big question that hasn’t been answered.”
What is that?
I scanned the area, doing my best to peer through the acrid smog. “Where the hell is Bastas? That’s what you said her name was, right?”
Yes, and it is a valuable inquiry. I am sure I need not say that she can be rather slippery if she likes, although she must be annoyed that her minions have fallen into shambles.
“Historically speaking, cats don’t do that wel
l against guns, swords, or fire,” I pointed out. “Or vacuum cleaners. Too bad we don’t have a bunch of those. Anyway, I’m not sure what Bastas expected.”
I am in agreement, but I am also certain she will not see things that way. Be prepared for a long and difficult fight.
“Noted.” I paced farther into the field, angling away from Brax. “Hey,” I called across the widening gap between us. “If you saw a tall, slender, evil-ass cat goddess, you’d tell me, right?”
He stared, his face impassive. “Like that one?”
“What?” I realized at that moment that he had been looking over my shoulder through the dark glasses. “Damn it, Brax. I’m over those shades.”
I turned to face the still-roaring barrier of fire, and I froze where I stood. A clearly defined female silhouette approached from the other side. She moved with ethereal grace, as if her body belonged on another plane entirely and did not need to obey our pathetic laws of physics. I watched, mildly entranced, as she stepped directly through the licking flames. Those minions who tried to do the same were consumed posthaste, but she emerged unscathed.
“Yeah,” I said, too quietly for Brax to hear me. “That’s her.”
Bastas’s unmistakably feline features revealed no expression except a quiet haughtiness housed mainly in the brilliant eyes. I felt that she could see through me as easily as if I were a window and that she wasn’t too impressed by what she saw. She glided toward me, her lips curling to reveal nasty fangs that jolted me from my reverie.
I sprang backward, brandishing the Gladius Solis in a flourish of flame. Unlike her underlings, the goddess did not flinch. Bathed in the insistent glow of the blade, she smiled cruelly in the dispassionate way of cats.
I could suddenly see why Steph might not be a fan of the species.
Remember, Bastas is very fast, Marcus warned. You will never have as much time as you think you do.
As he spoke, I was already backpedaling. “Here, kitty, kitty,” I shouted. The sword drew ribbons of light through the dense, smoky fog, sizzling and steaming from the still-falling rain.
