by S T Branton
“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 lay 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 lurch
ed 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 well 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.
Your taunts will only serve to displease her, Marcus said. Bastas is not like the others in the way that she interacts with humans.
“That’s fine,” I said. “Maybe she’ll get curious. Don’t you know what that does to cats?”
Chapter Thirty-One
I found out very quickly that Marcus was right about at least one thing. Bastas did not appear to give two flying shits about me. No matter how much I danced around and waved my giant laser-pointer of a sword, she seemed content to watch me make an ass of myself for a while, her eyes narrowed. I caught sight of various members of my team during this display, and all made the judicious call to steer clear, even Brax. I was glad for that, deep down. This one, I thought, was best handled one on one.
Assuming I could get in range of her anyway. Where was a giant ball of string when you needed one?
“Come on, kitty kitty,” I yelled, pirouetting with the Gladius Solis. “I think you and I ought to have a little chat about what’s going on here, maybe over a saucer of milk. Your pets aren’t looking so hot anymore.” I paused. “Well, the ones on fire look pretty hot, but you know what I mean. Did you see that a lot of them ran home? How embarrassing. One might even call it a catastrophe.”
Her eyes narrowed even further. A little voice in the back of my head told me I was officially stomping around on thin ice. I ignored it. Sometimes thin ice got results, depending on which of us fell through first.
“You want to make a deal?” I went on. “I’ve made a couple of those today. One guy’s dead now, but it doesn’t have to be like that. We could come to an understanding. How much catnip would it take?”
Bastas twitched her long, elf-like ears. She was agitated. I could tell by the way her long body had trouble staying completely still. Her fingers, in particular, fidgeted around. The sharp claws sheathed and unsheathed in quick succession. She wanted to sink them into my throat.
I wanted her to come close enough to try.
“Let’s go.” I beckoned to her with the sword. “Are we going to fight, or are we going to make a deal?” Again, I brandished the sword. “You don’t say much. What the matter? Cat got your tongue? Maybe you’ve got a furball stuck in your throat. Honestly, if you don’t answer me, I’m gonna keep making shitty cat jokes all night. You have the power to stop this.”
The goddess took a step forward, and she was at my throat faster than my eyes could see. Her perfect, otherworldly face stared down into mine. The slender fingers gripping my neck didn’t press down too hard—just hard enough to give me a clear picture of her strength. I blinked, regulated my breathing, and forced my brain and heart not to skip automatically into panic mode. Up close, her eyes were swirling golden galaxies, deep with wisdom and something more sinister. Bitterness, maybe, or pure hatred.
“Do not speak to me as though I am a child,” she snarled. Her voice was not silky smooth. It carried the coarseness of the command she had uttered at the start of the fight. “Compared to one such as me, you are little more than a mist of blood in the wind, unpleasant and soon forgotten.”
As you can hear, Bastas possesses a trait quite characteristic of her feline kin—a rough tongue.
“She speaks,” I told her around a slightly strained smile. “And I would gladly return the courtesy if you’d be kind enough to let go of my throat. If not…” I brought the sword around and wedged it between us, holding it steady even though the heat on my own skin was searing. Bastas jerked away from both the heat and light, hissing sharply. The moment her grip loosened, I used the butt of the sword to knock her hand away with one sharp blow. She cradled her wrist, seething.
That was something I knew about cats. They were sensitive and highly strung, and they did not like pain.
“I offered you the chance to make a deal,” I said. “And correct me if I’m wrong, but that seemed like a blatant rejection.”
Bastas bared her fangs and circled me like a fighter searching for the best angle of attack. “Insolence,” she burst out. “How dare you assume that I, the luminous Bastas, would deign to make a deal with your brand of lowly mortal filth?” She sniffed and tossed her head. “What could you know of deals in the first place, having spent th
e whole of your pathetic life on a tiny, dismal rock? I have dealt in stars, in planets and galaxies, and in realms. There is nothing you could give me that would even begin to tempt me.”
“Don’t be so sure,” I replied. “I mean, I’m sure I could scrounge up a big juicy mouse.”
This is a vain, prideful creature. She adores herself, no other.
That much had become abundantly clear. I turned in place so that I could keep my eyes on her, primed to fend off an attack at any moment. But she seemed more interested in preening for the moment, tending to whatever mutilation she thought I’d inflicted upon her wrist. Never mind that she had been the one inches from choking me to death.
“Child,” she said at last, her voice dripping with disdain. “Before I eliminate you forever, I want you to know how little you mean to me and how insignificant your demise will be in this world. You are a drop in the vastest of oceans, a grain of sand on an infinite beach. You are less than a blade of grass, less than a speck of dirt. I will grind you beneath my feet, and there, you will fade into nothingness.”
“Wow,” I said. “So you’re gonna bury me like a turd in kitty litter? That’s not very nice.”
Bastas pinned her ears against her head, and her lips twisted into a feral grimace. The words that leapt from her throat rose partially into a shriek, and I knew I had her.
“You are null and void!” she screamed.
The flurry of teeth and claws that flew at my face distorted her enough that for a split second, she didn’t look like anything other than pure, vengeful darkness. Her lithe form melted in and out of the shadows until I could have sworn there was more than one of her.
“Is she a master of illusions, too?” I asked Marcus, half joking.
