by Brian Fuller
“Ready?” he asked.
Shujaa grinned. “It is time!”
Aclima nodded, face grave.
“Get out of the van!” Goliath yelled, and not in an “I’m giving an order” sort of way but in a “Something bad is happening” sort of way.
Helo grabbed his shotgun and pushed against his door, the wind fighting him the whole way. He flared his Strength and pushed, boots splashing on a road quickly turning into a river. Hail pelted him. Rain slapped his wind-whipped face. And then his mouth dropped. A slender pine tree, broken and jagged at the bottom, hurtled through the air, arcing down at the van like an arrow shot from an enormous bow. Shujaa had yanked open the side door and jumped out, but Aclima was still fighting her door, trying to wedge her way out.
There was no time to think. No time to act. The splintered trunk of the tree punched right through the windshield, impaling the van like a spear through a boar. Glass cracked. Plastic and metal whined. Helo lurched backward to avoid a branch whipping by, nearly falling into a puddle forming along the low side of the road.
So the Sheid didn’t appreciate losing its dainty Prius. Now they were even.
He jogged around the back of the van, finding Aclima picking herself up by the passenger side door. A pine branch had forced the door open.
“You all right?” he yelled.
She nodded, water cascading through the buzzed hairs on her head. They joined Goliath, who was rummaging through her backpack, one hand up against the wind and rain. The desecration field was nearly on them. Goliath pulled a sanctified dagger and handed it to Shujaa. She then handed Aclima what looked like a sanctified railroad spike, keeping another dagger for herself.
She shouldered the pack and her rifle. “Shujaa, left flank. Aclima right. I’ll go around and get behind it. Helo, you face it head-on. Fight it. Distract it. On my mark, everybody rush it at once, then—”
Lightning blasted a tree twenty feet to their left, splintering the bark. The thunder boom set everyone to flinching.
Goliath blinked the water from her eyes as the desecration field hit, the red glow overlaying the ground and the rippling, pooling water now filling with hail. Helo felt no difference, but the hail clearly stung his companions, who winced and ducked their heads. Then the ground shook. Hard. Earthquake hard. Helo bent his knees to ride out the bucking. Everyone else fell in a heap. The tremor lasted for ten seconds, then abated.
“That was a seismic event,” Faramir reported.
“Are you sure?” Goliath grumped sarcastically. “Go now, people.”
Shujaa bolted to the left, Aclima and Goliath to the right, each quickly disappearing into the tortured, whipping trees. Anything dead or weak fell in the wind, which worsened, the hail hissing by. The meadow around them was turning into a pool of water and ice at least ankle-deep. The storm was relentless, as was the ever increasing power of the Sheid’s presence.
In moments it appeared on the other side of the clearing, striding with a deliberate, vigorous pace. Vexus, the essence of its creation, swirled around it. The Sheid had taken on the form of some ghastly corpse, blackened and rotted. It was two hundred feet away and didn’t even slow at the sight of Helo waiting for him.
Two trees near the Sheid broke off just above the ground and sailed into the air, twisting and hurtling right for him. Helo’s eyes shot wide. It could control them? Pulling his shotgun to his body, he bolted away from the road into the knee-high grass of the meadow to his right.
One tree pinwheeled into the van, caving in the roof and ripping the side of the van away. The top of the other tree whipped Helo on its way past, sending him hurtling to the ground on his shoulder in a shower of pine needles. He took stock. His body was still good to go. But go where? The Sheid marched down the road unperturbed, now about seventy-five yards from the van.
Helo pushed an entangling branch away and scooted behind the back bumper. He just had to wait. If the Sheid got close enough, he could Hallow the ground, get some relief from the weather, and strike before it got too far. Where was the rest of the team? If they could distract it, so he could get close . . .
“Sitrep!” Argyle called.
“Not now,” Goliath answered. “I can hardly move! We go now. Go! Everyone go!”
Helo edged around the van, hand against the hail. This wasn’t going to work. His teammates couldn’t function in the desecration field and the weather. He could barely do it himself. The report of Shujaa’s rifle joined another crack of thunder, the bullet buckling part of the Sheid’s chest for a scant moment. But it didn’t slow it down.
Leaning forward, legs churning, Goliath struggled to catch up to it from behind. Without her Strength or Speed Bestowal, she wasn’t going to make it, and Aclima, now emerging from the trees, was doing everything she could just to stay upright on the mucky ground. Shujaa did better, his primal yells seeming to propel his considerable frame forward. Helo stepped out and brought up his shotgun.
“Goliath,” he said over the comms. “Move to your left toward Aclima. I’m going to fire to keep it focused on me.”
“Roger.”
Goliath angled off, clearing his line of fire. Helo fired two rounds at the Sheid, Angel Fire ammo sizzling, the shells blasting its Vexus backward for a few moments before it returned to its host as if pulled by a magnet. In those few moments, the weather slackened a bit, allowing Helo to gain some ground.
Still the Sheid came. Just a little closer and he could Hallow it.
The ground shook and buckled worse than before. It was like trying to stand on top of an angry, bucking bronco. The suspension of the wrecked van whined, the trees thrashed, and Helo went down hard on his back, the hail hammering his face.
Then the wind died.
Now was his chance. He struggled to his feet, gripped his shotgun, and ran straight at the Sheid. It had stopped. The air around it swirled, hail trapped inside a vortex of air winding around the Sheid like a tornado. Aiming at the thing was almost impossible, but he didn’t need precision. He shot, Angel Fire launching a gout of flame into the vortex, which slackened for a sliver of time, allowing his teammates to get closer, sanctified weapons at the ready. A few more steps and he could Hallow the ground . . .
The vortex exploded.
Hail spit outward like a wall of icy bullets, the air and ice drilling Helo, lifting him off his feet and knocking his shotgun from his flailing hands. Through the air he arced, legs churning uselessly.
Then a deep clap of thunder and a flash, and the air was alive with lightning fire. The electricity shot through him, the force of it driving him down. His vision sparked with light, then his downward trajectory took him through the branches of the pine tree impaling the van. The branches snapped, his body spinning around to slam into the top of the van. He slid the length of the wrecked roof and then crashed to the ground behind it and into a puddle of hail.
Aclima screamed in the comms.
Shujaa grunted.
Goliath swore.
If they’d been hit like he had and fallen into the desecration field, they’d be in agony. Even though his angel-born abilities protected him from the pain, it took him several seconds to figure out which direction was up. The ring finger and pinky on his left hand were bent at janky angles. His back didn’t feel right either, but not screwed up enough to keep him out of the fight.
With effort, he pulled himself out of the puddle tainted red by the glow of desecration.
“Sitrep!” Argyle yelled over and over.
Sitrep. Screwed would about cover it. Goliath wasn’t answering, so he filled in. “We just got blasted to hell. The others are injured and in a desecration field. Stand by.”
“Blasted?” Argyle said. “By what?”
“Stand by!”
He needed a weapon. The Sheid would walk right past him before long. If he could Hallow and blast it, he had a chance. One of the rear doors of the van was half open, and it whined as he yanked it off. Weapons and ammo littered the van floor, along
with pine needles and bark. He snagged a Big Blessed Rifle and a brick of C4. He would kamikaze the thing.
Then the desecration field disappeared. Relief flooded comms as Ash Angel numbness returned to his squad mates. What was the Sheid doing? Helo backed out of the van just as a flash of black zipped past in his peripheral vision. He turned around. The Sheid was using its Speed, sprinting up the road. He couldn’t catch it. Goliath and Shujaa had the Speed Bestowal, but he couldn’t see them.
“Where is it, Helo?” Goliath said through the comms.
“Still heading up the road,” Helo reported. “I’m in pursuit, but I’m not going to catch it before it gets to the cabin.”
The stupid wind and hail were still fighting him.
“Coming to you now,” she said. “Shujaa?”
“Leg’s jacked but coming,” he said.
“Aclima?” Helo asked.
“My arm’s half off,” she said. “I’ll get there as fast as I can.”
Then Goliath was there. She slowed from her Speed-enhanced pace. She was lightning burned, a streak of black down her face.
“So much for playing offense,” Helo quipped.
“I’m going after it. Give Argyle his sitrep for me.”
“One sec,” Helo said and then pulled out a stick that had punctured her left kidney.
“Thanks,” she said as she streaked away in a blur of splashing water.
“Sitrep!” Argyle demanded.
“We’ve lost contain on the Sheid,” Helo said. “It’s coming to you. Get the decoys to the propane tank. We’ve got one shot at this thing.”
Chapter 29
Fury
“Look,” Helo said, churning against the restraining wind. “De-forming the Sheid lessens its ability to mess with the weather. The wind and hail are killing us out here. We can’t get close. Goliath’s coming up. Hit it with everything. Blow the propane tank, whatever it takes. Goliath will try to hit it with her sanctified weapon.”
“It’s here,” Argyle said. “We’ve been desecrated.”
Too late.
Helo ran for all he was worth, engaging his Strength to give him power against the wind. He had to get there. Had to Hallow the ground. If he could just neutralize the Sheid’s gifts for a moment!
The comms crackled. “This is Delta leader. We’ve got a busload of Dreads and Possessed two miles out, heading this way fast. Permission to take it out.”
Helo knew what the answer would be before Commander Crane said it. “Not with Possessed onboard. Take out the tires. Slow their advance.”
Helo shook his head. The Dreads knew the Ash Angels had their rules about the Possessed and were using that against them. They’d done the same thing when they took down the Trevex facility.
“This is Goliath. I’m behind it on the driveway. I need an opening here or—holy hell!”
“We’re under . . .” Argyle said, and then there was a lightning flash and comms went dead. The roof of the cabin soared away like an untethered kite on the wind, wooden shingles detaching and flying around like a flock of square birds.
Gunfire erupted. Then several uprooted trees rose up out of the forest floor, circled in the wind for a few moments, and darted downward like falling arrows. Crunching. Breaking. Snapping. The air was alive with an orchestra of destruction. Then the ground heaved again. Helo fell palms first into the sludge.
Gritting his teeth, he got back up, pulled the C4, and jammed in the detonator. He was at the base of the driveway. Two trees had fallen across it, Goliath crouching to the side of one, facing forward into a maelstrom. Helo skirted the detritus and joined her. The scene was like nothing he’d ever seen. Ever.
The cabin looked like it had been attacked by an army of angry trees. Equipment, broken Ash Angels, and chunks of cabin logs lay everywhere. The Sheid was somewhere inside the desecrated mess, gunfire, screams, and thunder still punctuating the air.
Goliath looked at him, shell-shocked. “This . . . this is insane. No one’s seen a category-five Sheid in two hundred years.”
“I’m going in,” Helo said. He showed her the C4. “I’m going to blow it. Follow me in.”
She grabbed the C4. “I’ll do it. You get ready to Hallow. Let’s do this. If it stays in there, I might be able to ambush it. Take my weapon.”
Helo grabbed the BBR and the sanctified dagger. Together he and Goliath scrambled out of the trees, hands up to keep the blowing debris out of their eyes. Within the desecration field, Goliath couldn’t use her Speed, but Helo used his Strength, walking in front of her to block the wind.
At the edge of the parking area, she held him up. “Wait here. You’re going to want to back up. Farther. Be ready.”
He nodded, crouching down behind a broken stump, BBR across his knees, eyes on the wreckage. The Sheid was still in there somewhere, still searching for the fake Tela. He could feel it. Did they get to the propane tank? The Sheid had come so fast.
Ahead of him, Goliath picked her way through the debris and into the structure, ducking under a pine tree that had blasted through a side wall. From Helo’s vantage point, the cabin sounded like a haunted house, moans and groans from the injured trapped in the desecration field rising and falling, adding to the din of the shrieking wind and battering hail.
He shifted, hail crunching under his boot. Where was the Sheid? The cabin wasn’t big and was half knocked down. Once Goliath detonated the C4, there wouldn’t be one log standing on another, and pretty much every Ash Angel inside would be vaporized.
Then she did it.
The concussion and heat were nothing compared to the cabin logs rocketing through the air like giant matchsticks and the debris whizzing and buzzing into the forest. The rain, hail, and wind stopped instantly, and Helo broke cover and sprinted toward the cabin. Nothing was left on the slab foundation. Smoking pieces of the cabin trailed down from the sky, burning logs at his feet.
A crater in the concrete pad showed where Goliath had blown the place, and the Sheid was re-forming right beside it, Vexus streaming back and coalescing. Helo let the hallow flow out of him and unloaded with his BBR, disrupting the Sheid as much as he could. The hallow engulfed it. This was it! He was going to kill this thing right now.
Helo was five steps from it when it solidified, changing to a picture-perfect replica of him, expression dead. But the Vexus of its creation streamed off him, the hallow burning it away. It didn’t move. All the better. Helo drove right for it, emptying the gun. He had to time this just right, had to extinguish the hallow just before flaring his Strength for the punch.
The Sheid had other plans.
Just as he arrived, it pulled to the left, as fast as the lightning it had been flinging around, and drilled him with a side kick to his leading leg. It wasn’t hard enough to break it but hard enough to send him head over heels into the blast crater. He ended up on his back in the dirt.
The rain fell. The hail pounded down. The wind howled. He’d blown it.
He pushed to his feet and Strength-jumped out of the hole and back into the desecration field. Damn the wind and hail! He couldn’t see the Sheid, and so he closed his eyes, trying to sense where it was—to his left, to what would have been the rear of the cabin. He leapt over a smoking pile of logs, catching three Ash Angel auras disappearing over the hillside, heading in the direction of the road, the Sheid Speeding up behind them.
Helo powered after, but he wasn’t going to catch it. Not even close. He passed a set of orphaned legs he thought might be Corinth’s, the rest of the man nowhere to be found. A scream followed a clash of thunder. Faramir. Then another. Scarlet! Ducking a branch, he began to descend the hill but slipped in the mud and tumbled fifteen feet, the desecration field moving away ahead of him.
A log stopped his slide, and he picked himself up. And there they were. The Sheid had broken Faramir to a pulp and folded him over a branch like laundry hung out to dry. Tela’s double, Opal, had no legs. Scarlet lay nearby, dark hair plastered to her face, dark hole in he
r abdomen, her body poisoned by darkness, just like his had been.
A drenched Opal leaned up on one arm. “Never even came for me. Went right for her.”
Scarlet’s eyes were wide with terror. Helo knelt beside her and took her hand, letting his Inspire Bestowal flow. “It’s all right. It’s gone.”
She nodded as if trying to convince herself. “It took my heart, Trace.”
“I’m going,” he said. “It’ll be okay.”
What a lie. They had been wrong the whole time. The target wasn’t Tela. It never had been. Somehow, Cain knew Scarlet had been Helo’s wife. They had come for her to use her to torment him. The Sheid had her heart. He had to get it back.
Helo let go of her hand and tore off down the trackless hill in front of the cabin, wrestling pine boughs the entire way down to the road below. After a final push through the tangle of underbrush, he stumbled out onto the hail-covered road. The swirling sky still rumbled and flashed, dark and angry. The desecration field was fading just ahead of him. The Sheid had a quarter mile on him.
He sprinted, the sloppy roadway constantly trying to send his feet off at weird angles and him down into the muck. The mud and the lousy weather kept progress slow, but as he rounded a curve close to where the driveway met the road, he spotted it, a tentacle of black smoke and fire blasting against the one good side panel of their van. Why was it attacking the wrecked van?
Then the tentacle disappeared, followed by the desecration. Without a look back, the Sheid fled with Vexus-fueled Speed down the road. Helo pulled up at the van. He couldn’t catch the Sheid now. There was no way. The other Ash Angels might have the Speed Bestowal, but he had no way to contact them, and they didn’t have a sanctified weapon anyway.
They had to get comms back up.
Shujaa and Aclima struggled their way down the driveway, Shujaa’s knee wobbling, Aclima hanging on to her right arm, which hung from her shoulder, half by the tendons, half by her uniform.
He jogged toward them. Then Aclima fell facedown in the mud, body completely limp. Shujaa stopped and furrowed his brow, but Helo could see it. Her shoulder was stitching together again. If she was healing, it could mean only one thing: she was getting her first Bestowal.
