by brett hicks
We shot off like hells spawn chasing down a virgin sacrifice. I would almost wonder if Seri had nitrous boosters in her SUV the way it roared to life. She took several hard turns with screeching tires. I hung my head out the window and helped keep watch for any patrols.
I heard several taps and I knew that Bix had begun to fire on something from the other side.
I didn’t have time to check her kills, because as we rounded the next corner three figures were gathered to my side and I began to open up fire and I saw two take shots to the chests and one to the head, the third had enough time to dive for cover.
“Ok, if that one has a radio, we’re burnt!”
I said and Bix swung to the other open window and began to fire on the spot where the pale form was huddled.
“Shit, I can’t get a clear shot; we’re just going to have to leave him.”
I nodded to her and she swung back to the opposite window and almost instantly began to open up fire.
Several shots peppered the metal of our SUV but we blasted by the gunmen and Bix and I mowed most of them down with precision aim.
“Ok, I take back everything I’ve ever said to both of you for all those hours you waste on Call of Duty.”
Seri said with a tone to spoke of how deeply impressed she was with our aim.
“We have survivors; they are going to call ahead any minute now!”
I told her again and Seri snorted and she jerked the wheel to the right and we skidded around another turn and I nearly flew into her lap.
“Not that I mind, but you might want to save the sexy-fun-time for after we survive this raid.”
She sassed at me and I placed a kiss on her thigh before I popped up and turned back to my window. I shot two more redcaps who were fumbling with their rifles. I fired on a few vampires and witches who were equally as bored. No one had really expected to see anything too threatening here, not this deep inside the territory of Atlantis.
“Babe, can you try not to drive like a lunatic? I mean, wow, you could teach the NYPD tactical driving instructors a thing or two, but this girl does want to have some sense left when she’s done here.”
Seri snorted and rolled her eyes.
“Says the girl playing whack-a-mole with Henry’s people.”
I grinned and turned back to my window and almost instantly opened fire and then ducked. Several shots flew very close over my head.
“If we weren’t a moving target, we would be in a lot more trouble.”
I murmured and Bix grunted something indecipherable in response. She was almost steadily unloading her magazine into beings.
“We have intruders, men down!”
I heard through the earpiece.
“There are a couple of crazy bitches firing out of a freaking tank!”
“It’s not a tank, it’s a Tahoe you idiot!”
I chuckled and the other girls looked at me. I hitched my thumb to the earbud.
“We’re burnt girls, and apparently they don’t know the difference between a Tahoe and a tank.”
“Yes, I heard, I am apparently a lunatic driving a tank.”
I grinned wider and more shots rained down on us and I ducked. Seri swerved hard and jerked us left. We shot over a wide gap in the road and my stomach knotted up tightly as we freely fell.
“Shit, fuck!”
I exclaimed and the SUV landed with a loud bang.
“How far have we gotten?”
Bix yelled, “About fifteen miles, ten more to go!”
As if her words summoned it, an orb flew past us and honest-to-god lasers began to bombard the road and one blast struck the middle of the hood of the Tahoe and our engine died in the next second.
“Break!”
I screamed and Seri began to fight with the wheel and jerk the SUV and then she slammed on the brakes. Rubber burnt my nose as the smell filled the cab, mixed with charred metal from the engine.
“Bix, get all our ammo and we are bailing. We can try to salvage any of the less important stuff later. Liam needs to pull off before that thing gets him too.”
Liam shot past us and larger arms fire sounded as someone was leaning out the window taking pot-shots at the orb-like droid.
“How the hell do they have little R2D2’s? This is like Attack of the freakin’ Clones!”
“There are so many things wrong with that statement I don’t know where to begin!”
Seri said and she swore as we skidded violently. The drone was turning away from Liam to come back for a final pass.
“Ladies, we need to jump, now!”
I shouted and I opened my door and felt the beating winds on my face telling me just how fast we were moving.
“Get a running start and you’ll be ok.”
Bix told me and I glared daggers at her.
“Right…”
I said sarcastically.
I took a deep breath and took a nanosecond to contemplate exactly how my life had gone so very wrong. I jumped and I hit with bone-jarring impact and I pushed off and my legs moved with the speed of the SUV, I soon realized what Bix had meant. I was faster than the can when I wanted to be, and that was how I had moved at an imperceptible speed earlier.
I ran and my legs burned in protest under the strain of speeds I was unaccustomed to maintaining. I began to slow down and I felt the heat of friction in my boots.
I saw Seri dive out of the driver’s side a few seconds before the SUV smashed into a thick metallic wall.
I turned in time to see Liam spinning around and several well placed shots with Seri’s desert eagle brought down the drone, but not before it managed to blow out two of Liam’s tires.
We were truly stranded on foot with ten-miles of densely populated hostile territory between us and any hope of ending this mess.
Thirteen:
“Keep moving as fast as you can and Liam for fuck’s sake, don’t drop the ammo or I’ll feed you to the damn pukas!”
I shouted as I aimed and fired at another redcap. Several zombies were roaming this way and I holstered my gun in time to burst my blade out and swipe in a destructive arc of death, or undeath in this case.
I buried my blade to the hilt in the chest of the second zombie and it gave off deathly rattles of agony as the blade burned it in green fires.
Seri was opening up ranks of the back-lines of witches and necromancer with her large caliber rounds. She was every bit the marksman that Bix and I were. Sometimes I wonder how she manages to keep up with so many different skills while ruling a domain. Right now, I didn’t have time for a complete thought, I just pointed and shot, except this time I was utilizing my green fires as a weapon and I was burning off whole segments of the stone and alloy road and surrounding buildings.
“All units converge on the hostiles!”
I heard Henry’s smug tone in the earbud and I lashed out and beheaded a vampire as he came into melee range. I kicked and spun in a half-circuit of death and flames. The casters kept dropping and with them I was pulling more and more zombies over to my side, breaking their minds with my metaphysical minds-eye.
My magic licked at the surrounding ground and I pulled on the shadows and I began to fuel bolts of energy with the darkness and death around me. I fed off the carnage and my powers seemed to soar to new heights, I was the daughter of Nox, and the daughter of Morrigan. I was a warrior and I was aligned with the darkness.
I moved at super-human speeds and I zipped across multiple lines with speed and precision I could barely harness with my mind. I just moved and destruction followed in my wake like an old bed-fellow reunited with her mistress.
Bix was shadows and she was death, arrows rained down she would move in the shadows fire and then move again, then she would already have a new bolt freed from her bow. She was something that took my breath away in every battle she ever participated in.
Liam moved and juked, he was relying mainly on physical prowess, but sometimes he would randomly stop or duck. Fire, spells, or blades would zip
past him each time he stopped and dodged. He was using his self-preservation skill mixed with real-time precognitive senses of danger.
Seri holstered her desert eagle and she blasted with a telekinetic force that churned the stone and toppled buildings. She spun the debris with her hands outstretched. She smashed and pummeled half-a-dozen casters with a cyclone of stone and gale-force winds.
I fired of bolt after bolt of green flames and the devastation of the cold alchemist fire spread all around the area. My mind kept firm control over the expanse of the flames, coaxing them to spread out towards my enemies and to avoid my friends.
I felt several glancing blows and an arrow stabs into my left arm. I ripped the barbed head from my arm and swore, but I kept my fires whirling and consuming more and more ground.
Several rows of the casters began to fall back and throw up rudimentary shields, only to learn that alchemical fire could burn through shields like they had been nothing but a butter coating.
The stink of burning flesh brought tears to the eyes and the screams of the dead and dying were haunting. This was a new level of savagery, a new visceral violence I had never before partaken in. My gut clenched at the rank stench and the sickness that came with taking life. While I was no stranger to death now, I did not relish this part of being a domain, Lady.
Ruins and embers danced around me and I commanded the alchemical aspect of consuming purifying fire like it was an extension of my hand—like my sword.
“We’re going to be over-run shortly. Our skills won’t matter then!”
Seri yelled over the screams and battle-cries. I ducked and parried a blade, burning through the metal and running the wide-eyed witch through the gut. She belted out a shriek like a banshee as the green fires began to dissolve her flesh and bone.
More gunfire began to come in and I nearly found myself with a few new holes. I built the wall of fire and pushed out with it like a wave rushing to greet over twenty beings. The inferno was soon a vision of what mortals perceived hell to look like.
Ashes and blood were everywhere now and I felt fresh death with every second. I began to call to the dead with my necromantic powers and I felt them eager to rise, to live again. I gave a single command, “Kill everything not my ally.” They seemed to instinctively come programmed with enough fundamental knowledge of friend-or-foe, or it was a psychic link from me to them, I wasn’t sure, all I knew was more and more, dead and half-burned bodies began to turn on their former compatriots.
I felt older death nearby and I began to call to it, infusing it with my powers. I felt the roars in my bones as the bony and half reconstructed dragon of about fifteen-foot length and ten feet tall, roared and it plowed through the ranks of the Boston inhuman minions.
“Bugger all is that a bloody dragon?!”
Liam asked dumbly and I had just enough time to crack a cheesy smile before the gunfire began to rain down on me again. Everything seemed to be coming for me now, now seeing me as the chief threat.
“We need to get the hell out of here!”
I said and Seri jerked her head towards my dragon thrashing and mauling the men and women of all shapes and sizes.
“Is that thing able to fly?”
I blinked and shrugged.
“I’ll see.”
I rushed over to the dragon; its wings were in tatters and bones protruded in every conceivable crevice or joint. Leathery hide and dulled scales of green and blue coated portions of the hide in some of the more intact place.
“No, this thing needs a lot more power. I can try to make it a revenant, but then you’re going to have to get me the hell out of here! I will not have anything left in the tank if I do this.”
Seri nodded and she firmly said, ‘Do it, you are my kin, I will allow nothing to harm you until you recover.”
Jumped onto the dragon’s back and landed nimbly as if I had mounted him a thousand times before.
I hope this works on dragons!
I thought to myself. Revenants could theoretically be raised from any dead thing. I slashed open my hand and I began to feed my blood into the gaping hole directly into the dragon’s old leathery belly. I began to infuse my powers and blue light flooded me and the dragon became luminescent. It stopped moving suddenly as if it was too busy drinking up my magic to do anything else.
I felt several bullets lodge into my side and my right arm. I bit my lip and I kept pushing my power into the dragon and I siphoned everything I had in the tanks.
I felt the tether forming between us and the dragon did something I had never imagined possible, he tore through the tether and with a bone-breaking roar, he announced himself to the world. He was not revenant; he was just a living breathing dragon again with glossy green-blue mixed scales.
“I serve no one child of Nox, child of Morrigan, but I will help thee this once, as thanks for restoring my life.”
His voice was booming and it felt more like it echoed in my mind, but I noticed everyone else heard it.
“We need a safe place to hold up for a while. Someone stole Atlantis from me.”
“I know of such a place, but you will not be able to progress any further for some time.”
“I know that help my friends and let them mount you, and then we can get this over with.”
The dragon snorted and jets of fire shot forward and incinerated several advancing beings.
“You’re as bossy as your mother, has anyone ever mentioned this?”
My heart clenched and despite the battle, I felt another raw pang of loss. I was an orphan street-rat that was still unable to properly grieve the loving mother who kept me stored safely from the sight of a ruthless tyrant for three-thousand-years. This wasn’t the time or the place, so I pushed through my grief and I focused on helping my friends survive.
“Hurry, get on the damn dragon’s back!”
I yelled at them and Seri pulled Liam up where he had stumbled beside her. Bix appeared next to me with her elven mystical arts. One of these days I was going to sit down and try to see if I could learn her neat movement tricks.
The rest of our comrades rushed up and Seri turned and used kinetic pulses of power in rippling waves to disrupt the onslaught.
When everyone was on the dragon he jumped and his massive wings flapped and dozens of beings fell under the gale-force winds. He spewed a fresh patch of fire to further discourage any assault.
The Boston inhumans watched as a handful of powerful beings had slain no fewer than a hundred of their kin and then escaped via dragon.
Liam swore like a sailor on leave and Bix seemed to eye the dragon-like she was in some sort of mild shock. Seri just looked at me in wonder and that was the last thing I saw before my vision darkened and I felt the darkness claim me.
Fourteen:
Warmth blanketed me and I felt soothing hands on my cheeks. I heard dripping of water and echoes as people talked in hushed tones around me. Everything smelled of fresh roses and greenery, not like decay and burning bodies, though that stench seemed to cling to me still.
Subdued green light filled the room as I opened my eyes. I looked around and I noticed two things, I was partially laying on a bed of roses and secondly, a massive hot scaled dragon was parked up against me.
I blinked my eyes as if to clear them, but no the dragon remained stationary. My mind was suddenly flooded with the actions of my last handful of waking minutes. I had sensed a dead dragon nearby and I had not only reanimated him, but I had actually brought him back to life. He had severed a link before it could fully form between us and he had then barbequed over a dozen of my enemies. I remember being on the dragon as it took off and then nothing.
I swore to myself and rubbed my head gingerly. Everything came into sharp focus and I had a sudden bone-deep craving for fairy coffee. I felt like I had a mild hangover, but otherwise, I felt fine. My arms and my stomach itched slightly and I looked at the holes in my shirt and remembered that I had been shot more than a few times.
“Thea!”
The sound of Seri’s voice brought me all the way into the waking world and my stomach flopped at her happy tone. I looked into her gemstone green eyes and I smiled brightly at her. I could forget all my cares and all the worries of the world trying to destroy itself in those green eyes.
“Hey, babe.”
She raced into my arms and she pulled me snug against her warm soft curvy form. I felt every bump and line of her body against me and I was suddenly very aware of two things, I was aroused and there was a massive dragon head with burning golden eyes staring at us.
I waved lamely to the nosy dragon with my hand behind Seri’s back.
“Hey, um, thanks for the ride and all the fire-breathing.”
I said it with a slightly hoarse voice and the dragon’s eyes widened fractionally and then contracted. Those large serpentine slit eyes could easily strike fear into anyone, but I felt no threat or danger from this massive beast. Besides, he—he sounded like a he to me—seemed to have at least the same level of intelligence as any humanoid being I had met. I was sure he could choose not to maim or kill, so long as we were sure to keep ourselves off his bad side and thus off the menu.
“Daughter of Nox, greetings to you once again. I am sure your parents rejoice across the shadows in your rapid recovery.”
I nodded dumbly to that and I looked back to Seri.
“What happened?”
She huffed at me and she pulled back enough to lock her narrowed shimmering green gaze on me.
“What happened?! What happened, was six rounds to your arms, should and two to the gut. You also had a cursed arrow hit you, which Bix managed to patch up. Thea, your regeneration was overtaxed with how much power you expended to revive Shemron.”
I’m guessing Shemron is the dragon’s name?
I thought to myself and I smiled at the dragon.
“You helped me recover, didn’t you?”
The dragon made a deep huffing and crackling sound in its throat. That must have been laughter due to the dancing amusement shining in its eyes.
“Yes child, I helped you by sharing my vitality and warmth with you. You were in shock and your small body was shutting down. I must admit, I did not think an Old-Blood could die of cursed ammunition, but I guess over-taxing regeneration is a pretty sure way to kill anything.”
