Captured by the Monsters

by R. L. Caulder

  Men and women alike were fighting, hand-to-hand and with weapons. There was blood and body parts everywhere, and my skin crawled at the abhorrent massacre, wondering how it had devolved into such mania so quickly, because this wasn’t dissent.

  This was an all-out war.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  SYLAN

  The Above was awash in blood. The angry red hue assaulted my senses, as did the acrid smell, setting off alarms in my head. Instinctually, I reached for Sera, as did Rowen and Axton. My mind couldn’t process anything but the need to get her to safety.

  Shoving her back into the shuttle, Axton messed around with the console to get the thing going. Sera never took her eyes off the carnage unfolding before us, and even when I attempted to block her view, she craned her head to still see.

  Hadn’t enough death tainted her life?

  My skin crawled with urgency, the desperate need to protect my mate at all costs. We needed to get out of here. Now. I looked at Axton, who was banging on the console and swearing in our language.

  “What’s wrong?” Rowen demanded in our tongue, not that Sera was listening.

  “It requires an eye scan to activate.”

  “Damn!” I snarled in English, which finally got my mate’s attention.

  “You swore!” she exclaimed in surprise.

  “Of course I swore! Have you looked outside the shuttle?” I asked rhetorically. “We have to get you out of here, but we can’t use the shuttle. We’ll have to think of something else.”

  “Maybe we can find another transport—” Axton started, but stopped when Sera leaped out of the shuttle.

  As a unit, we raced after her as she marched into the melee of people. Humans were fighting one another with both simple and sophisticated weapons—and both seemed to be doing equal amounts of damage.

  We jostled to get in front of our mate before any harm could happen, but something curious occurred. All the fighting stopped around us. As my Trifecta formed a circle of protection around Sera, I stared out at the bloodied humans, who openly stared right back.

  Sera had been right.

  Our presence was enough to make everyone pause, but the tension inside of me didn’t ease. If anything, it wound itself tighter around my midsection, preparing for when everyone would begin fighting again.

  Hushed whispers began to fly amongst the humans until the plaza was buzzing with speculation. If the situation wasn’t so dire, I would have laughed at how quickly the humans were diverted, like small children with a new toy.

  I could feel Axton’s and Rowen’s nervousness growing as well, but Sera remained calm. Crouching, she wedged herself between Rowen’s and my legs before we could stop her. Once more, she walked away, making me long to scream in frustration for putting herself in harm’s way.

  “Everyone, put down your weapons,” she commanded regally, as if she were also a queen here. “I am one of the Selected, Serafina Adler, returning from Paratiisi—The Below—with my mates. We’ve been told a great many lies, many of which pit us against one another, but I’m here to dispel them. We mustn’t fight amongst ourselves. To do so only weakens our cause.”

  “And what is our cause?” one man yelled, still clutching his weapon tightly as blood dribbled down his face from a deep cut in his brow.

  I scanned the area to make sure none of their weapons were directed at my mate.

  “Equality. An end to the oppression. Our freedom!” she bellowed.

  A resounding cheer met her words, and my eyes met Axton’s. Sera said she wasn’t only fixing Paratiisi, but her world, too. The crystal did well choosing my mate to heal the two lands because clearly, Sera was tenacious.

  Another man stepped forward, a crude weapon in his hand. “I am the rebel leader,” he announced—stupidly, in my opinion as that would make him a target—but he wasn’t anymore of a target than my mate. The only difference was I wouldn’t risk my life for his.

  “I want to speak to the leader of the Unified Capital,” Sera directed.

  The rebel leader scoffed in response. “I asked but was met with violence.”

  His words didn’t surprise me. Everything that Sera had told us about The Above pointed to a fanatical leader who would never listen to any logical argument—the main reason none of us wanted her to come back.

  A woman with a gun stepped forward, and I swept in front of my mate, snarling. Axton and Rowen mimicked my actions, the sound echoing in the still Plaza around us. The lady shifted back at the menace advancing upon her.

  “I-I mean no harm,” she stammered, blinking rapidly.

  I looked pointedly at her gun, which was aimed at my heart, and she hastily lowered it, but not enough for me to drop my guard. Sera tried to push past us once again, but I was prepared this time. Reaching behind me, I tucked her close to my back.

  “Your weapon says otherwise,” Axton told the woman in response to her stupid comment.

  “It’s for my safety,” she asserted, making Rowen snort.

  “Doubtful. What do you want?” he demanded, not caring about tact. Even though Sera was trying to fix both worlds, we weren’t here to make friends.

  “I’m a member of the current human government—a leader representative—and can take you to the person you want to see.”

  “Both of us?” the rebel leader prompted, and the leader representative sent him a glare.

  “We both want to speak with him,” Sera shouted, still trying to break through the barrier we formed in front of her.

  Good luck.

  The representative looked angry at having to cater to the rebel, but wisely agreed to take Sera and him to the leader of The Above. Next to me, Axton tensed, and I knew he didn’t like this. We were walking into the situation blind, but Sera would be delighted—this was exactly what she wanted.

  “Stand guard,” I cautioned Axton and Rowen in our tongue as I turned to my mate. Giving my back to the crowd made me vulnerable, but I trusted my Trifecta to protect me. “We will go, but you must stay between us,” I warned her in English.

  She frowned but nodded, knowing this was her only option.

  “Lead the way,” Sera ordered the woman.

  I narrowed my eyes on the rebel leader who fell into step next to my mate. I wasn’t here to protect him, and I sure as hell didn’t want him this close to Sera. Axton took the lead while Rowen and I flanked our mate’s back.

  If looks could kill, the woman wouldn’t have to worry about killing the rebel leader herself, as Rowen’s glare would already have done so. He clearly didn’t appreciate the human man cozying up to Sera any more than I did.

  Axton stoically walked ahead, not looking back, but I was sure he was plotting murder, too. The rebel leader had no idea how many targets he’d just painted on his back, but knowing my mate, she would be upset if we did anything to him.

  I wondered if maiming him was still an acceptable option, given the circumstances.

  Silently, we walked through the Plaza. Occasionally I would lift Sera over a felled body, but her bare feet were stained with blood, along with the bottom of her dress. The sight flipped my stomach, and I felt sick that such ugliness dared touch her.

  I longed to take her away from here, but Paratiisi wasn’t perfect either. Granted, it was better than The Above, but it still had its shadowed past. There was much for us to overcome, no matter where we were at, and at the end of the day, I was just thankful to be at Sera’s side.

  The leader representative ushered us into a large building where she stopped at the elevators and scanned her keycard. The door pinged open, and she looked apprehensively back at us—whether from fear of being crammed in such a small space with monsters or from skepticism that we would all fit, I wasn’t sure.

  It would be a very tight squeeze, but there wasn’t a chance the three of us were separating and not staying with Sera. We would just have to make it work.

  Axton went in first, his shoulders hunched comically to accommodate his girth. He tugged Sera in,
tucking her into his side and largely out of sight. Next, Rowen went in, and I followed. The leader representative grimaced when she attempted to find an open spot, but she managed to wedge inside, the rebel leader jumping in and pressing himself up against her. This earned him a fierce scowl, but I was happy he wasn’t near Sera anymore. The action might have just spared him his life, although I still couldn’t guarantee the leader representative wouldn’t finish him off for us.

  The woman scanned her keycard and pressed an unmarked button. Immediately, the doors slammed shut and the elevator lurched into action, descending. The movement caught me off guard, and I quickly pressed back into Sera, poised protectively just in case.

  When nothing happened, she poked me to give her some space. Normally I would have apologized, but I didn’t want to speak. Axton, Rowen, and I needed to remain alert. There was no telling what would happen when these doors opened.

  The elevator rumbled on slowly, as if struggling against the number of occupants. Nothing inside indicated how many levels we had already descended, but it felt like we were returning back to Paratiisi—a very unsettling thought, indeed.

  The rebel leader shifted uncomfortably next to the woman directing us. “Do these things have a weight limit?” he mumbled to her.

  “Don’t talk to me,” she hissed primly just as the doors opened onto a lavish office space.

  The rebel leader gave a low whistle as we all exited the elevator. “Must be nice being rich and in control.”

  “Actually, don’t speak at all,” the representative snarked, amending her previous statement.

  In just a few steps she was swiping her card again on a scanner next to the metal doors that were currently sealed shut. After the card beeped, the lock unlatched and she tugged the heavy door open, motioning for us to go in.

  As soon as we walked in, I heard the sounds of screams and fighting like what we had seen when we first got out of the shuttle. Rounding the corner, a large office space greeted us.

  A man sat in a chair with his feet up on the glass table in front of him as he rewound the video and pressed play, watching the violence that had occurred again.

  “Have our guests arrived?” his nasally voice rang out, making me cringe.

  “Yes sir.”

  “We are here to negotiate a new treaty with you,” I offered, wanting to waste no time in making our intentions clear. I didn’t want him to think we were the enemy.

  He chortled in response and lowered his feet to the ground, spinning around to face us. “Please enlighten me on why exactly I would do that, when the current one is working out so perfectly?

  My monsters growled at my side, and I couldn’t hold my tongue as I snapped back, “I wouldn’t consider sending countless women to their deaths to be ‘working perfectly.’”

  With a shrug of his shoulders, he pushed from the table and buttoned his suit jacket. “Better their deaths than mine. That’s what my forefathers always said, and I’m inclined to agree with them.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  SERA

  I was a fool. My Trifecta knew not to trust the leader, but I’d been blinded by my mission to correct everything, thinking myself capable of such an insurmountable task.

  The leader of The Above could never be negotiated with, never swayed, because his mind had been poisoned. Even with the truth staring him straight in the eye in the form of my monsters, he refused to acknowledge that anything he had been taught was a lie.

  Either he was in denial, or—worse—he didn’t care, but it didn’t matter because I was stuck in his office that was who knows how many levels underground. From their hiding spots came six men, and the sneers on their faces showed me they were not here to help with negotiations–only our deaths.

  With the leader representative and the vile man who ruled The Above, that was eight people total intent on killing my mates and me. Of course, my monsters didn’t seem to care that the numbers weren’t in our favor.

  We only had the four of us—five if you counted the rebel leader—but I doubted my Trifecta included him or me in their count. I knew from their stances that they would do everything in their power to protect me, and my skin tingled with alarm.

  The Rumilus were stronger—stronger than humans by far—but were they weren’t stronger than human weapons

  I’d noticed that the rebels used crude weaponry, things like homemade spears and knives, which made them easy to identify when I was in the Plaza. None of the castes were allowed to have anything that resembled a weapon, for exactly this reason—so there couldn’t be an uprising.

  I supposed the joke was on them because the rebels turned everyday household items like pens into knives and caused a riot in the Unified Capital, but the casualties I’d seen in the Plaza were largely rebel bodies.

  Although I acknowledged its futility, I continued to talk to the leader of The Above. I wasn’t trying to persuade him anymore—I was trying to distract him. My mates needed an opening.

  “Think of how much better it would be if we worked together,” I shouted inanely.

  The leader gave me an incredulous look, like he couldn’t quite believe I was still trying. I tamped down the urge to give him an equally dubious face that he was stupid enough to believe me. For the time being, his eyes were trained on me—as were the soldiers’.

  My mates were smarter and knew exactly what I was doing. Taking his cue, Axton lunged at one soldier, Rowen and Sylan simultaneously following suit. By the magic that came from years of them being to together, they worked as a unit.

  In one blurred motion, they took out three soldiers while somehow still managing to keep me blocked and protected. My Trifecta was so fast, in fact, that the remaining humans in the room couldn’t follow them enough to assist their now fallen brethren.

  By that time, Axton, Rowen, and Sylan were advancing on the three remaining soldiers and The Above leader. The sound of guns firing ricocheted around me as they scrambled to counterattack, and I screamed as bullets whizzed by me.

  I was too worried about my men to crouch down, so when one grazed my left shoulder, I could only stare in numb shock as blood pooled and started to spill from the wound. Another bullet slammed through my outer thigh and I dropped to my knee, hissing in pain.

  As I looked up, I saw it wasn’t the soldiers’ stray bullets intended for my monsters that had hit me—it was the leader representative’s. Her face was twisted in unholy delight to see me felled.

  With Sylan, Rowen, and Axton fighting in front of me—their element of surprise gone—they didn’t realize the danger at their backs. Even though the woman pointed the gun at me, my first concern was still for my men.

  I flinched as she leveled the weapon at my head, wondering if someone really felt the pain of being shot there, or if it was over so fast the brain never had the chance to register the pain. I watched her pull down on the trigger as I rolled out of harm’s way, hissing at the pain from my wounds.

  My brain might be scrambled, but my body seemed to be working on instinct—something I was grateful for.

  When I looked behind me, a piece of the wall was gouged where the bullet had lodged itself. Where I had just been kneeled.

  I had to take her out. I couldn’t give up and leave my Trifecta to take this on alone.

  I ran at her, closing the gap between us with a zigzag pattern, making it harder for her to train her gun on me in the short time I needed to reach her.

  Bowing my head, I ran at her like a battering ram, trying to ignore the pain pulsing through me. I connected squarely with her midsection, and a whoosh of air escaped her mouth as she went down. Before she could get back up, I kicked her in the side of the throat. She seized up, gasping for breath, and I took the opportunity to nab her gun and hit her in the temple with the butt of it.

  Holding the gun with unsteady hands, I tried to aim at the soldiers attacking my mates, but I hesitated to shoot, scared I might accidentally hit one of my guys. I didn’t have any training with this. T
he rebel leader came over, and I turned to give him the gun, hoping he would have better luck, when suddenly, he crumpled to the ground.

  In the center of his forehead was a smoking, bloody circle from where a bullet had hit him perfectly—too perfectly. Staring in horror, my eyes connected with the leader of The Above, who grinned at me in triumph as he lowered his gun and walked towards me.

  Did he think he could take me as a prisoner of war to be used as a bargaining chip? Why the hell didn’t he shoot me too?

  I refused to be used against my monsters or Paratiisi for him to get anything he wanted. They would do anything to save their Queen.

  My body began to tremble, and I knew I was going into shock, but then something strange happened. A calm, numb feeling washed over me as I thought of my mates dying here. In almost a robotic fashion, I assessed the scene as if it were playing out in slow motion.

  Axton had killed his opponent and was helping Sylan while Rowen fought the soldiers positioned in front of him—meaning the leader could easily shoot them. Considering how he’d just taken out the rebel leader without blinking, I knew he was more than capable.

  I had underestimated him, but I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  Fluidly, I raised the gun I was still holding. Without aiming or pausing, I leveled it at the leader’s chest and fired without second-guessing. There was no time for me to doubt my movements. Any extra second could have resulted in my own death.

  The kickback from the gun shocked me, and my ears rang fiercely from the sound.

  Surprise froze the leader’s features as red began to bloom around his heart, and he collapsed to his knees before face-planting into the ground. A large pool of his blood began to seep out around him as he gasped and choked on his own blood.

  My eyes didn’t leave him until his struggling stopped and his eyes glazed over.

  Dead.