Elite: A Hunter novel

by Mercedes Lackey

  The chaos caused by our grenades was enough to halt the enemy advance for a moment. “Weapons out!” Steel ordered. Everyone but Dazzle pulled their assault rifles to the ready position. Dazzle already had her orders: keep the Gogs and Magogs from battering the pylon. To do that, she had to concentrate on nothing else. “Shields down in three! Two! One! Fire!”

  We all braced and fired. As densely packed as the Othersiders were, it was impossible not to hit something. The ranks nearest us reacted to the hail of bullets, which seemed to have been divided equally between incendiary and the steel-jacketed, iron-cored “Othersider” rounds. I’d never seen rounds like that until I got here, and they were effective even against Othersiders with tough hides like the Minotaurs, or with Shields or magical resistance to ordinary bullets, like the Wendigo. These were big monsters, and bullets didn’t kill them, but bullets sure hurt them, interfered with their own magic, and slowed them, down a lot. And they reacted to the impacts with bellows of rage. Even better, you could cripple them with bullets in the right place; it would take more than one to shatter a knee, but we were all good marksmen.

  We fired until the barrels of our guns were hot. Then the Shields came back up and we went back to spellcasting.

  Inside, I was petrified. Nothing I had experienced in my entire life had prepared me for this. All the time I was firing off spells, shooting, or lobbing grenades, I was crying out of pure terror, and I had to keep shaking my head to clear the tears away. And I wasn’t even thinking, not really; I was operating on pure reflex and a drive to stay alive just short of panic.

  Because no matter how many Othersiders we cut down, there were always more behind them. It seemed as if there was no end to them.

  I was vaguely aware of the greater impact of Hellfire missiles hitting deeper inside the mobs, but no one dared fire them at the Gogs and Magogs trying to batter the pylon down, for fear of hitting the pylon rather than them and doing their work of destroying the Barrier for them.

  That was when Dazzle passed out, completely drained. I felt her fall against me and half caught her before she hit the ground. My brain woke up from terror for just a little bit at that point, and I turned to look behind us, spotting my Hounds defending our rear. Dusana! I called silently, and before I could blink, he was there. He must have seen what I wanted in my mind, because he knelt so I could drape Dazzle over his back. Find the medics—

  I didn’t get a chance to say anything else. He bamphed out, and I turned back to face the Nightmares. Literally. The Minotaurs were gone, and in their place were Nightmares: utterly impossible, vaguely horse-shaped black monsters with glowing red eyes in a skull head, fangs and claws as long as my hand, and fire for manes and tails. They attacked us with claws and teeth, with storm wind and terror, howling like the damned things they were. Their high-pitched howls carried even over the cacophony of explosions, screams, bellows, and the boom, boom, boom of the resumed attack on the pylon. I’d seen pictures, but I’d never fought them before. My insides shook, and I had to lock my knees to keep from falling.

  We were running out of energy. We were running out of bullets. And there was no end to these creatures. There was only the screaming night, the orders in my ears, and cutting down one monster only to have three replace the one I’d killed.

  The Nightmares were joined by Goblins in their natural forms, and the vicious little buggers were everywhere. The Othersiders were forcing us back and to the right just by sheer force of numbers, until we found ourselves mixed in with three army Mages and their troop, right up against the Barrier on our right. The enemy was pushing us back, and we were losing, and from the sound of things on the comm, it wasn’t just us, it was everyone. The Gogs and Magogs were about to take down the pylon; without Dazzle, they had gone back to pounding on it. When it went down, so would two sections of the Barrier, and this army was going to pour over the gap, and there was nothing we could do about it. Every Hunter in the entire city was here! There were no reserves!

  And just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did.

  The ground underneath us erupted.

  One second, I was shoulder to shoulder with Steel and Retro. The next second, I was tossed into the air like a ball, literally ten feet up and twice that backward. The double Shield of Hammer and Steel vanished; every particle of thought was knocked right out of my head by the shock, and if my Hounds hadn’t gathered beneath me to catch me in their massed Shields, I probably would have broken my neck or back. As it was, the wind got knocked out of me, the comms went ominously silent, and suddenly I was alone except for my Hounds and way too many Othersiders.

  They surrounded me; I scrambled to my feet and looked wildly around, but all I could see were monsters, too many monsters—hundreds of them and only twelve of us, and no other Hunters or even army anywhere in sight

  The monsters seemed as surprised by our sudden appearance in their midst as I was getting thrown there.

  I clutched my rifle and tried to look confident. I don’t think I succeeded.

  The Othersiders eyed me. Some of them were actually laughing, others merely licking their chops.

  We backed up to the Barrier, the Hounds in a semicircle around me, and braced for the onslaught.

  Then, before they could charge us, I heard the welcome beat of helichoppers overhead! Close enough that even the monsters looked up.

  The choppers descended in a phalanx from the sky on the other side of the Barrier, disgorging Psimons. Dozens, hundreds, of Psimons. They tumbled out of the choppers and formed up in orderly ranks on their side of the Barrier.

  What?

  The Othersiders froze, for a moment caught completely off guard at this new development.

  Eerily, as if they were all linked together, the Psimons bent their heads at the same time—

  And the Othersiders went insane.

  Literally insane.

  I stood there with my mouth falling open as all the monsters within sight freaked the heck out and completely forgot about me. Some of them dropped to the ground, clutching their heads with hands, paws, or claws. Some clawed at their own bodies, shredding their own flesh until they fell down, senseless or dead. Some, like the Gogs and Magogs that had been attacking the pylon, turned on their fellows, and attacked their own allies with their massive weapons.

  All of them forgot about us.

  The Psimons…It had to have been the Psimons! Somehow they were getting inside the heads of these monsters and driving them crazy, so crazy they were turning on each other! Ohmigods, I thought, dazed. We’re saved!

  I shook my head to clear it, and we waded back into the fray. A flare went up to my left, and I heard Kent shout over the comm, “Hunters! Form up on me!” and took that as an order to cut my way through the chaos of the crazed and witless Othersiders until I could get to him. I had run out of bullets, so I used my rifle as a club, and the monsters were paying absolutely no attention to us. All we needed to do was clear a path. When one of them got past the Hounds, I’d knock it down, and one of the Hounds would finish it off. My arms felt like wood, my legs as if I were wading through sticky mud up to my thighs, and every particle of me ached and burned with exhaustion, but I was only halfway to where Kent was sending up another flare. My focus narrowed to the next enemy in my path, the next six inches of ground to cover.

  A glowing figure appeared directly in my path, his Shields knocking my Hounds aside. He dropped the Shields for a moment, seized my shoulders before I could raise my rifle butt to club him, and he shook me, hard. I stared into his lavender eyes without comprehension as he shouted at me.

  It was that Folk Mage….

  “Do not just look, shepherd! See! See what we are doing! See how we work together and power flows! Power always comes from somewhere!” he cried, and then he bamphed away before I had time to react.

  His face was still an afterimage in my head when Steel hacked his way to my side. Somewhere, maybe from one of the Trolls, he’d picked up a battle-ax, and alt
hough it wasn’t Cold Iron, he was doing a good job of cleaving his way through the opposition using it.

  “What the hell was that about?” he shouted over the comms. I shook my head.

  “Doesn’t matter!” I yelled back. “We need to get to Kent!”

  I was still so dazed, so shaken by the encounter that I wasn’t paying attention to what was around us, nor adding my Shields to Steel’s. And I should have been, especially the Shielding part, because that was when a levin bolt hit Steel square in the chest, or at least, in his Shield at about the level of his chest.

  My heart stopped.

  Steel went flying backward and disappeared beneath a wave of Othersider monsters. Still blank with shock, I turned sluggishly to face in the direction the blow had come from.

  And found myself staring at Ace.

  But this was an Ace transformed. He had strings of beads and feathers tucked behind both ears, and what looked like a crest made of bright red horsehair attached to the top of his head. He was bare armed and bare chested, with a floor-length vest in scarlet leather, and skintight pants to match that left nothing to the imagination tucked into scarlet leather boots. There were wide gold armbands on both his biceps, and a huge gold torque around his throat.

  And the hate in his eyes as he stared at me made me drop back a pace.

  Ace was not alone. There was a Folk Mage with him, one of the feral ones, all dreadlocks and beads and ragged leather clothing, bearing a staff that appeared to be made entirely of crystal. The staff glowed a sickly green, and Ace’s eyes glowed the same color.

  I managed to get my Shields up just in time for Ace to hit me with another levin bolt. I’d put a spin on my Shields, so instead of knocking me back into the mob, the power was deflected off to the side and it blasted down a half dozen of his allies.

  He didn’t seem to care. His face twisted into a mask of hate as he sent blast after blast at me, each one glancing off my Shield and atomizing a few more Othersiders. My Hounds quickly added their Shields to mine while I lobbed a return salvo of fire bolts, which fizzled out on his Shield.

  The Folk Mage did absolutely nothing except stand at Ace’s back, but it didn’t matter. Ace was overclocked, somehow; he was doing things he never could before. I was totally on the defensive now, literally fighting for my life. My vision began to get gray around the edges, and the only thing that was saving me was the effort of my Hounds. I was running on fumes, but they were at more than full strength; every Othersider that died nearby just added to their stores of manna. Ace pounded away at me, and we united our Shields and kept them spinning, kept unraveling the passengers he had riding on every levin bolt, every fire whip.

  But I knew I couldn’t keep this up for very much longer. My knees were starting to give way, and I sagged up against Dusana’s side, holding on to him to keep upright through sheer force of will, panting as if I had been running a marathon. I saw Ace suddenly grin as he sensed I didn’t have anything more in me. I watched him spinning up something…terrible….

  Then he paused, hands glowing with power, and glared at Myrrdhin and Gwalchmai. “You!” he barked arrogantly. “Come here!”

  There was a long, long pause. The two Hounds that had once belonged to Ace turned their heads and looked at each other, then back at Ace.

  Then, to my dismay, Myrrdhin and Gwalchmai suddenly bamphed away from my side and reappeared next to Ace and the Folk Mage.

  My heart twisted at the sudden desertion—

  Ace laughed and held out his hand to Myrrdhin. Feeling sick and betrayed, all I could do was watch.

  Which was when Myrrdhin lunged for Ace’s hand and arm and viciously savaged it, while Gwalchmai sank his fangs into the Folk Mage’s legs. Both of them shook their victims like terriers shaking a rat.

  The Mage shrieked, a strangely girlish sound, and struck at Gwalchmai with his staff, and Ace just stood there with his mouth open in a silent scream of agony as blood dripped from Myrrdhin’s jaws. Then they came back, bamphing back to my side, as the spell Ace had been about to cast at me unraveled and sputtered away in a shower of sparks.

  Gasping with pain, the Folk Mage seized Ace by one shoulder, and then they were gone, bamphed away, out of range of my Hounds.

  I slid to the ground and stayed there, one arm around Bya and one around Myrrdhin, until someone found us.

  The choppers were full of the wounded. Those of us who could still walk were told to make our way to the pylon (dented, but still functioning) and go back through the Barrier by means of the door at its base, then wait for pods on the other side. I wasn’t about to take the chance on something rising up out of the piles of disintegrating corpses to attack us, so I kept the Hounds with me and let them through the Barrier a few at a time, starting with Bya and Gwalchmai.

  Dusana and I were the last ones through, and when we got to the other side, I finally mustered up just enough energy to open the Way and send them all back. Bya paused before crossing the threshold and looked back at me. He didn’t need to say anything; I knew what he meant by that look: that if I needed him, all I needed to do was bring him back.

  Then he crossed, and the Portal closed behind him.

  It was all industrial buildings on this side, long windowless oblongs of ’crete that didn’t even have doors in them, just underground tunnels to the barracks-like quarters of the prisoners that worked in them. Not for the first time, I shivered, thinking what a horrible existence that must be, never seeing the sun, never getting a breath of fresh air.

  Speaking of the sun, it was just now false dawn, the sky in the east lightening to gray. The Barrier didn’t allow a clear view of the other side, but it looked as if the only things moving were rescue squads from the army, looking for more wounded. Or…the dead. I had no doubt there were dead. I dreaded to find out who they were.

  Here and there some of the big Othersiders that didn’t disintegrate when they died created odd, dark mounds that looked out of place in the flat field.

  I slumped down into the grass at the side of the road, and wondered, dully, how bad the toll was. It had to be bad. I had barely survived, and I had a pack of eleven. How well could someone with two or three Hounds hope to fare? Or an army Mage with no Hounds at all?

  I thought bitterly of the Psimons, standing in safety on the other side of the Barrier to do their work—then immediately felt bad about thinking poorly of them. They weren’t trained to handle weapons the way we were. They had no way of defending themselves, once they’d mentally locked into a target and began messing with its mind. And since they were the only ones of us whose only powers worked across the Barrier, of course they needed to stay behind it.

  And I shouldn’t think of them as a bunch of cowards because they had.

  Besides, they’d probably been under orders.

  And besides that—face it, they’d saved our sorry asses. If it hadn’t been for them turning up when they did, we’d have gotten overwhelmed. As it was, we’d only just barely beaten the Othersiders back.

  If it hadn’t been for them…the Prime Barrier would be down right this minute, and Othersiders would be pouring into Apex.

  I was vaguely aware of someone trudging up to stand next to me. I looked up; it was the armorer, and my relief at seeing him made me feel dizzy for a moment. “Joy,” said Kent, sounding relieved and just as exhausted as I felt. Then I felt panic because his head was bandaged, his arm was in a sling, and there was a huge bandage covering his right thigh. This was Kent! Kent never got hurt!

  “Who’s hurt?” I asked, seeing what was in his eyes. “Who’s—”

  “Everyone’s injured. Archer, Flashfire, and Scarlet were evac’d to the hospital. Archer’s still unconscious. Retro’s dead, and Bull. Steel…” He shook his head. “Missing, but…there’s no ping from his Perscom, and his comm’s dead.” He took a deep breath, as my throat closed and my eyes burned. I knew what that meant. Now I felt guilt just pour over me. I should have been paying attention! Ace had slammed him out into the
mob, and it was my fault! I should have gone after him! I began to cry; Kent was so exhausted he didn’t even notice—or maybe he noticed, but what could he do? “That’s just in the Elite. We’ve lost twenty-three of the ranked Hunters, and half the ones left need serious recovery time. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like—like the Breakthrough and the Diseray, all over again. This is more than a surge. They’ve escalated this into all-out war.” The exhaustion in his voice came as a shock, on top of everything else. I had never heard the armorer sound like this. Ever. “If it hadn’t been for PsiCorps, they’d have hammered us into the ground.” I could tell how much he hated admitting that. “Can you wait a while for transport?”

  “I’ll be all right,” I lied. “You see to the people worse off than me. I’m just worn-out.” The truth was, I was so exhausted I was slurring my words. But then, so was Kent.

  “Thanks, Joy,” he said, and stumbled off, I supposed to check on people who had actual injuries.

  I lay back in the grass and stared up at the sky, which got brighter and blue, while my eyes streamed tears. Steel was probably dead. Retro was dead. The guy who’d gone out of his way to make me laugh, regardless of how he was feeling, was gone. And what had I ever done for him? I was too tired to think. Which was just as well because I didn’t want to think about Steel, or about Hammer, his brother. How could I face Hammer now? At least Mark wasn’t missing or badly hurt.

  Finally, someone in an army uniform came and shook me enough out of my daze to get up and load into a transport vehicle with a bunch of other Hunters. This wasn’t a pod: it was more like a goods transporter, and we all sat on the floor with our backs braced against the wall. I didn’t recognize any of the others; I only knew they were Hunters by the tattoos on the backs of their hands and their Hunting colors. Nobody said a word the whole way back; two of the seven actually fell asleep, curled up on the hard metal floor.