At the last word, his wrist flicks. I’m ready for this, too, and throw up a barrier of power as the barbed length hurtles toward us. It impacts like a fucking missile and I groan as my shield shatters. It takes enough of the impact that Ajax’s strike falls limp into the dirt.
“Sam!” Mika grabs me, dragging be back.
“M’okay,” I manage. “Can’t take too many of those…”
Ajax’s eyes twinkle as he follows, unhurried. Behind him, down the street, the flames jump to another set of buildings.
Mika growls, and from somewhere manages enough strength for another burst of flame. It hurtles at Ajax, but the Obsidian jumps. It’s so unexpected after his languid, almost lazy movements that for a moment I lose him.
“Up there!” Mika shrieks.
He lands on a building to our left, perching on the roof like Spiderman.
His whip comes around…
I block it, barely. It tears through my shield and I fall to my knees, coughing blood.
In the distance, the wreckage of a fallen and burning building shifts. Mereta steps from the flames, her clothes and hair burned away, her skin crackling. Her features are twisted in agony, but her mad smile never wavers. Even naked and burned half to a crisp, she’s horrifying. “Honey, I’m hoooome!” she sings.
“Sam! Oh, Jesus fuck, Sam get up!” Mika pulls at my arm. “We have to run!”
Where? I raise on shaky legs and lurch to follow her.
Ajax drops like a stone and lands in the street. “Can’t have that,” he says like he’s at afternoon tea. His whip tears toward Mika’s head.
I can’t block another hit. Not yet. I throw myself forward, bowling her over as black barbs tear up my back, opening flesh and spraying blood. I moan in agony as I fall over her.
But I’m not beaten. Laying here is death. I’m up to my knees as Mika frees herself from me, and I pick up anything I can find with my power. Wine bottles and pieces of shattered wood raise high before I send them in a wall of death toward the Obsidians.
“Go!” I shout, willing my makeshift bullets faster.
Instantly, Ajax’s whip retracts back to a cane. It spins and arcs through the air with impossible speed, batting aside wood and shattering glass. Bits of broken bottle impact his face and torso and he winces as they slice him open in a dozen places, but nothing bigger than a shard hits him. I have a feeling it’s going to take more than a few little cuts to slow him down.
Mereta, on the other hand, doesn’t even try to avoid my missiles. She simply goes elastic, and the bottles and splinters bounce harmlessly off her body like she’s a living trampoline.
Shit. That was pointless.
Or, maybe not. For some reason I don’t fully understand, manipulating the stuff around us is a thousand times easier than blocking Ajax’s blows. Maybe he’s just that goddamned strong. But whatever the case… If they’re dealing with a hailstorm of random shit, they’re not attacking us.
As Mika tugs me to stumbling feet, I grab anything I can find. More bottles, books, even the used condoms I was so puzzled by earlier. I throw it all backward as we flee toward the mansion. Toward some kind of escape, I hope.
My attacks tears toward the Obsidians. Mereta stays elastic, and Ajax curses as he continues to dodge and block the onslaught. I grab more and more, wincing as the nail of pain in my forehead deepens, but I don’t relent until we’re through the front doors of the house and out of their sight.
“Nice, Obi Wan,” Mika pants. “Now what?”
“Deeper in the house. Hurry.”
We pass through ridiculous opulence, the kind of shit only billionaires can afford. Living rooms and dens and hallways filled with rugs made from animals that don’t exist on Earth or recreations of famous paintings. At least one Mona Lisa hangs above the fireplace of a room we skip over, and every surface is covered in gold or marble or other ridiculously expensive crap.
“This dude is definitely compensating for something.” Mika dodges around a bar set with a dozen glittering bottles and crystal tumblers perched on top of it.
“Yeah. If I could make anything I wanted, it’d be way cozier than this,” I say, following her.
“Tell me.” She glances back, eyes pinched with fear. “Tell me in case this is the last conversation we ever have, Sam. Tell me where you’d take me.”
We push into a dining room with one of those movie style long tables set with dozens of chairs. Half eaten food covers the table, a feast of meat and delicacies. It smells like slow roasted pork and potatoes. Even with everything that’s happened in the last five minutes, my mouth still waters.
“Sam?”
“A cabin,” I say, wistful. “A little pile of logs up in the Canadian Rockies a million miles away from anyone else. A roaring fire as the snow pours down outside. Stores to outlast the storm. And your body next to mine underneath a thick blanket as we sit on the couch and sip coffee.”
Mika sucks in a shuddering sob. “I would give up…. So much… For that.”
“Someday,” I say. “Don’t give up. We’ll have it someday.”
“Syl can curl up at our feet,” she says.
“I won’t tell her you said that.”
From the dining room to a kitchen. Long counters and stoves, refrigerators and microwaves, it’s half fantasy and half modern and thoroughly terrible. “Where are they?”
“I dunno, but we have to be close to the back wall by now. We should make a plan for when Mister Darcy and Harley Quinn show back u–” she turns to me as she speaks, and the widening of her eyes is the only warning I have.
Instinct takes over. Next to me, a fridge bigger than some apartments I’ve lived in. I grab the door as I pass, yanking it open just in time. It takes the impact of Ajax’s whip. Its wicked head punctures at least a foot of metal, but it arrests it and snarls it enough that it doesn’t tear through my face.
“Go, go!” I shout. “They’re here!”
Mika leads us from the kitchen to some kind of servant’s area. A small table’s set up with cards and cigarettes and a few empty bottles of beer litter the floor. Where did the people that were in the room go? Are we in a different version of the instance? Why is it just the people missing and not the stuff they’d interacted with?
Questions that don’t matter right now, even if they itch the back of my brain.
Mika skids to a halt, color draining from her cheeks.
“What, what is it?” I ask, panic choking me. I look back through the doorway into the kitchen; Ajax curses and struggles to free his whip from the refrigerator door.
Where’s Mereta?
“No way out,” Mika says. “No door but the one we came through.”
“What? That doesn’t… That doesn’t make sense,” I say. “What kind of house is laid out like this?”
“I don’t know,” Mika says, casting about for anything of use. “A videogame house, I guess. I mean, this place has three stories, but I didn’t see a single staircase on the way through.”
“Dude, screw whoever designed this place.” I slap the door closed with my mind, know it’s pointless. “Ideas?”
“That has to be the far side of the island,” Mika says, jerking a thumb at the wall opposite the door. “If we could somehow get through it and into the lake…”
“I can try to make us an exit,” I say. “Watch the door.”
I turn, gathering my power. It’s frighteningly weak after so much use, and I wipe away a disturbing amount of blood from my mouth. If this doesn’t work it’s going to leave me helpless.
I have to try.
I imagine a battering ram of air, pull it back to strike, and–”
“Sam!” Mika’s panicked cry is drowned out by sudden and complete chaos. Mereta’s fist, the size of a city bus, smashes through the doorway and into the room. I have no idea how she can be so insanely strong, but the wall of stone and wood doesn’t slow her the slightest.
I see it in almost slo-mo as I turn in place.
There’s no time to move. No time to get out of the way.
Shit.
Fingers the size of my torso, ten feet away and hurtling toward me. There’s no way I’ll survive the hit. I can’t block it. Can’t dodge it.
But maybe I can redirect it.
My fist closes around the leather at Mika’s arm, and as I pull her close I reshape my gift from a ram to a wall of air. It snaps into place, angled just enough to save us.
I hope.
Mika’s body slams into mine as Mereta’s strike hits my wall. It strains, buckling, but holds just long enough to slide her fist past us. I watch in fascinated horror as a hand larger than my body slides past at kissing distance. The pressure of the hit is enough to throw us to the side, thankfully away from instant death.
Mereta’s fist smashes into the far wall. Wood and rock shriek in protest, shattering. The lights flash and go out, plunging us into darkness like pitch.
“Holy fuck,” Mika whispers into my chest. She huddles in my arms, clinging to me.
I groan as silently as I can and go through a quick check to make sure nothing’s broken. “You okay?”
“Yeah. You took the hit for me.” She kisses my cheek. “You?”
“I’m intact, just beat the hell up. I really need a massage.” I extend my gift, trying to tell what the hell’s going on around us.
Mika chuckles. “I might know a couple of willing ladies.”
“Shh,” I whisper. “Innuendo after we survive this.” I push my awareness out like a balloon. Mereta hand shrinks to normal size with a fwup before retracting like a rubber band back into the kitchen.
I strain to hear and sense the next attack as Mika stands as silently as she can.
“My word,” Ajax mutters from somewhere I can’t see. “Think they survived?”
“Didn’t feel no squelchin’ of flesh,” Mereta cackles. “Let’s go check.”
“One moment, there’s a candle in the dining room…”
Mereta sighs. “Sorry, Jaxxie. Didn’t mean to kill the power.”
“Yes, well, I can’t fault your enthusiasm, even if you did pulverize our prize.”
“Whatever. He’ll respawn and we’ll snatch him for Kara then.”
“Quite right. Makes our errand seem rather pointless, though. And so much damage,” Ajax laments.
“We could have fun on our way out,” Mereta laughs. “From the bridge. Watch this place burn as you fuck me like last time.”
A pause. “Now, now. So uncouth.”
“You didn’t think so when you were balls deep in my ass, lovey dove,” she says in her crazed singsong.
Another pause. “Quite right. But perhaps we should wait and get you a sip of the healing first. You appear to be a bit… Crisped.”
“Aww… I like it when it hurts. You know that.”
“Then I accept your offer, just as soon as we determine the fate of our quarry.”
Mereta lets out a moan like a cat in heat. “Find them faster, Jaxxie.”
Despite everything, I send out a little prayer to whatever God might be listening for him. Dude is literally sticking his dick in crazy.
But they’re coming, and we have to run. Again. We have only moments. They must think we’re either incapacitated or dead. I’m not surprised considering the damage she’s done to the tiny room.
I’m on my feet. It’s still too dark to see shit, but there has to be something…
“Sam, do you hear that?” Mika whispers.
“What?”
“Water.”
“What, like a burst pipe or something?”
Mika finds my hand in the dark, dragging me to the back wall. “No, like waves. The lake!”
We stumble through the rubble of the table and chairs to the back wall. I still can’t see shit, so I extend my senses, and… “Holy shit.”
Mika’s grip strangles my hand. “What?”
“She punched clear through.”
“Wait, like… Through the thickass barrier wall and everything?”
“Yeah. There’s a little bit of stone and… I think rebar?” I push my mind further. “The lake is right there.”
Mika’s breath quickens. “Can you get us through?”
“Definitely. But it’s gonna make some noise.”
“Maybe they’ll think it’s part of the wall collapsing.” Mika hesitates at a noise from the kitchen. “Hurry. They’re coming.”
I don’t hesitate, punching through the last remnant of wall left behind after Mereta went all wrecking crew. There’s a much smaller, but still terribly loud, screech and rumble as stone and metal is thrown outward to splash into the lake. The moment the last bits of wall fall away, moonlight illuminates the room.
They will definitely see that. “Hurry,” I say, urging Mika into the hole. It’s so enormous we don’t even have to crawl. She picks her way through, avoiding jutting metal and jagged stone.
Mereta shrieks from the doorway. “Jaxxie, they’re escaping!”
I don’t wait for his response. Mika leaps from the edge of the hole ahead of me, and I’m a footstep behind her.
I angle my fall so I don’t land on her, and to a chorus of angry cries from the Obsidians, I jump.
It’s only about twelve feet to the lake’s surface, but it seems to last forever. Something about the absolute terror of expecting a whip through the chest like an alien chest burster makes time seem to stretch.
We plunge into the lake. I suck in a breath just before I hit.
I expect frigid water, but it’s warm. It feels incredible after the flames and heat and blood. Mika sinks below me, her descent arrested by the water, and I reach out to take her hand so we don’t lose each other.
I wonder if this California girl can swim.
After ten seconds or so, our feet hit the soft, sandy bottom of the lake. I peer up through dark waters and can barely make out the shimmering outline of the moon. We’re maybe fifteen feed down, but the buoyancy of our lungs is already trying to pull us up.
Something slips through the water like a snake, impacting the lake bottom hard enough to churn up mud and silt. Ajax’s whip, thrown to where he thinks we landed.
Not good. With my power, I lash us to the ground to keep us from rising. If we surface, we’ll be easy targets.
Mika lets out a terrified little stream of bubbles and grips my hand so tight I’m afraid she’ll break bones. She’s panicking, and honestly, so am I. We can’t surface for air without getting skewered, but if we drown, we’re not much better.
Think. Think. Shit.
I can barely make out Mika’s eyes in the darkness. They find mine, and though they’re stretched wide with fear, there’s something else in them. Trying to tell me something.
When she’s sure she has my attention, she releases my hand. She holds hers around her head like a globe, or a ball, or…
A bubble.
Mika, you insane genius.
The whip slips through the water like an eel, inches from my head.
I’ve got just a few seconds to learn a new use of my power that I’ve never done before, is complicated as shit, and is potentially lethal if I get wrong?
Wonderful.
I imagine two balls falling into the water and being sucked below the surface. Large ones, at least as big as a beach ball, descending toward us through the inky black. With my gift, I can feel the water pucker above us until it forms two deep wells. Praying that Ajax doesn’t see two reverse bubbles forming, I pull them down, making sure to seal them at the top after oxygen rushes into to fill the displaced water.
My vision blackens and my lungs scream for air. It feels like iron bands clamp my chest.
Must hurry.
My head aches, but the pain is bearable as I pull the bubbles down. A whip slips through the water, missing us again but punching through one of my air pockets. I have a moment of panic as I wait for it to pop before realizing that it isn’t an actual bubble, it’s just an absence of water below the surface. His whip
might have cut it in half, but I just reseal the bubble when he retracts and keep pulling it down.
I guide one over Mika’s head. She watches me, eyes luminous and proud, grinning like a loon as I pull the other over mine. She leans forward and our ‘bubbles’ merge so we share the same space as we suck in lungfuls of air. “I love you so fucking much right now,” she gasps.
“Your idea, you saved us.”
“Hey, we’re a team. Sometimes you save me, and sometimes I save you.” She kisses me, and the quick press of her lips and the soft touch of her tongue are laden with promise. “And sometimes, we save each other.”
Another strike from Ajax’s whip, terrifyingly close. “Not out of the woods, yet,” I say. I release the bands on our feet. My body tries to raise, but when I exhale it sinks down. “Keep as little breath in your lungs as possible,” I whisper. “Breath light.”
Mika turns her head and pokes her lips outside the bubble when she exhales. At my look, she turns back and taps her forehead. “Don’t want CO2 buildup in here. You’ll pass out.”
Right. God, good thing she’s here.
We push away as Ajax’s whip slips through the water fruitlessly. Thank God he doesn’t just dive in, but he probably doesn’t know how deep we are. I’m not sure what the hell Mereta’s doing, but I don’t want to stick around to find out.
I lead us in a bizarre slow walk across the lakebed. It’s flat and featureless, like the person who designed it didn’t bother with underwater landscaping. I don’t mind. Having to climb over boulders or sunken logs would make this ten times more a pain in the ass.
I want to rush, to power through the water like a motorboat, but I school the urge. If we create enough of a disturbance on the lake floor that the Obsidians can track us…
It galls me, though. Syl and Astra and Dusk don’t know that we’ve been betrayed. They can take care of themselves, but if they’re in trouble…
I pick up the pace as much as I dare.
I cast out with my gift, searching for our hunters as we make our way around the outside of the island. There’s no sign of them, and if I could breathe more than a tiny bit of air at a time I’d sigh in relief.
Aspirant 2: A Sci-Fi Harem Adventure Page 42
