That was a bad joke if there ever was. It hadn’t been safe since the second we stepped foot into this city. Before I could voice that opinion, though, I realized what he meant.
With Vincent no longer protecting me, the wave of heat hit me full-on. My eyes teared up, and my lungs protested as I tried to breathe in what felt like an oven.
Behind us, where the newly arrived police cruisers had been, a wall of fire now raged. At first I thought Kelly and Veronica had really let loose, but then I saw the metal frame burning atop the remains of the cars, the tail rotor still twirling slowly. It was the police chopper that had been hounding us.
“What the hell?”
“The other witch, Meg,” Vincent explained, before stopping to cough. “I chanced a look up and saw a blast of fire engulf the helicopter from a nearby rooftop. It was quite impressive, up until it came crashing down in our direction.”
“You tried to save me.”
“I didn’t think. Had I, I’d have realized you didn’t need the...”
“It’s okay,” I said, taking his hand and pulling myself up. “I appreciate it.”
“But you’re injured because of me.”
I smiled, but left unsaid that I was actually injured because of me, because of my stupid fears. Besides, it was no matter. Burnt or bitten, I could heal myself relatively easily. My wounds, however, might be the least of our concerns.
Templar lay scattered everywhere, though whether killed or just stunned, I couldn’t immediately tell. Of far greater concern, though, were the undead still milling about. Some had been knocked down, but were even now scrambling to their feet. Even more were now aflame thanks to the burning wreckage, still shambling despite being mere shadows of their formers selves.
Sporadic gunshots came from the other direction. There was still an entire block full of enthralled and armed minions waiting to be dealt with.
We needed to regroup quickly. To do that we’d need ... there! I spotted Kelly amidst the chaos, but something was wrong. No multi-colored magic emanated from her. She was down on one knee bending over ... oh no!
I grabbed Vincent by the arm. “Help your brothers and keep your head down.” I paused for a moment before adding, “and if anything moves that isn’t one of us, don’t hesitate.”
* * *
I pulled my aura in until it was the barest of sparks against my skin. Protective though it might be, it was proving to be more of a hindrance against this particular form of undead. That it also made me an easy target to lock on, even in the middle of this war zone, was not lost upon me.
Kelly crouched protectively over Veronica, a pistol in her hands and her eyes darting in all directions. Powerless though she was, she refused to leave her friend.
All of a sudden, I felt very small and insignificant compared to her.
Despite my power, and whatever prophecies were laid at my feet, I still had to consciously keep myself from jumping if so much as a balloon popped near me. It was disgraceful.
My injuries could wait. I made my way toward them. Kelly spotted me quickly and waved me over.
I dropped to my knees next to her and began to examine Veronica. She had a nasty gash in her scalp and bruises all along one side of her face. Thankfully, despite the ugliness of her injuries, she was still breathing. That was the important thing.
“When the chopper came down, it took part of the building with it. She got pummeled by debris before we could get a proper shield up.” Kelly’s calm demeanor betrayed the worried look in her eyes. “Meg’s aim always did leave a lot to be desired.”
I nodded grimly and placed my hands upon Veronica – one on her head, the other on her chest. I’d never actually healed a witch before. Hopefully her latent power wouldn’t react with mine in a bad way.
“Templar, form ranks!”
I turned to see the remaining Templar, those still on their feet, lining up as Vincent had ordered. I’d thought maybe they were forming a defensive perimeter against the zombies. They were, but that wasn’t all they were preparing for.
“No fucking way.”
I had to echo Kelly’s sentiment. Beyond the wreckage of the two buses, the police appeared to be firing wildly, but thankfully not at us for the moment. With the helicopter gone, the rooftop bound Templar were doing what they could to pin down our foes.
However, that wasn’t what caught my eye.
Three humans, armed with black-bladed scythes in one hand and guns in the other, were strolling casually up the middle of the street toward us – seemingly unconcerned with the firefight going on around them. The one in the lead saw me staring and smiled, before raising her weapon and pointing it in my direction.
Cynthia was back, and she had a bone to pick with me.
CHAPTER 30
“Whatever happened to the good old days, when people died after you blew the shit out of them?” Kelly asked with a sigh.
I’d turned away when it had happened, not wanting to see the life extinguished from Cynthia’s eyes. It never occurred to me that maybe she’d survived. “Are you sure you...?”
“Vince emptied his gun into her point blank. She should be Swiss cheese.”
I turned my focus back to Veronica. “Go help them. See if you can figure out a way to get Meg back down here.”
Kelly lowered her voice to a whisper. “Should I try, y’know, tapping you again?”
“Not yet,” I replied. “I don’t want to risk anything unexpected happening while I’m trying to heal her.”
She nodded without a word, checked the magazine in her pistol, and stood. I couldn’t help but admire her bravery. Powerless against the undead, armed marauders, and whatever the hell else was walking our way now, she nevertheless didn’t hesitate.
If I had my say in things, though, she wouldn’t be powerless for long.
I lay my hands upon Veronica again and concentrated, focusing my energy on healing – willing her wounds to mend.
A tingle from my own injuries told me the power was beginning to flow. The burns on my hand began to glow and fade, and I could feel the bite beginning to knit itself closed. Veronica’s head wound, however, continued to ooze blood.
Come on!
I felt resistance coming from within her, an incompatibility. It was different than what I’d felt when Kelly had tapped into my power. She’d accepted me willingly. I was trying to force my essence into Veronica against her conscious will.
The primal energies within her pushed back against those in me, and for a moment a struggle for dominance ensued. Veronica unconsciously gritted her teeth at what must have felt like a war being waged inside of her.
Little by little, I forced her power back, nudging it to the side as gently as I could, all the while ignoring the sounds of battle intensifying behind me ... and also hoping she didn’t explode or anything like that. This was uncharted territory for me, after all.
Just a little more.
The wound on Veronica’s head began to spark ever so slightly. I was tempted to pull back, afraid that I’d somehow end up affecting her the same way I did a vampire. Unlike them, however, she didn’t have accelerated healing to draw upon to compensate for battlefield injuries. She needed me.
Finally, just when I was about to give up, the flow of blood slowed and began to scab over. Had she been a regular person, she’d have been back on her feet by now, but I was happy enough to see what progress I was making.
The inner struggle against my intrusion became more pronounced which gave me the impression she was getting stronger. That was a good sign. Now if I could just bring her back to consciousness, then she and Kelly could recharge each other’s batteries.
Unfortunately time, even so small of a span as I needed, was no longer a luxury I had.
* * *
The cries behind me changed in the space of a second from those of defiance to ones of fear and pain.
A sound, like a side of beef being clubbed with a baseball bat, rang out, and my instincts screamed for me to
duck. I looked up just in time to see the body of one of the Templar flying past me and into the fiery wreckage that continued to burn several yards beyond.
Damn it!
I had no choice but to disengage from Veronica. I’d done what I needed to. With any luck, she’d wake up on her own. Sadly, it couldn’t be soon enough from the look of things.
Vincent had apparently deemed the zombies the bigger threat and had dispatched only a couple of his men to deal with Cynthia’s group. It had been a mistake. Aside from the one they’d just killed, another Templar was down and unmoving. A third was on his knees, obviously injured. Before I could so much as shout a warning, the man on Cynthia’s left lifted his gun and shot the hapless knight in the face.
He then turned toward the unconscious Templar and raised the wicked looking scythe above his head.
I was on the move before I even realized it, something deep inside of me sparking to life and taking over. Though my instincts as an Icon weren’t always to be trusted, there were times when it was best to let them do their thing.
I slipped past the line of Templar defenders easily, dive-rolling between two who were otherwise occupied with the remaining zombies. For a moment, the battle appeared to be almost in slow motion, but it was my senses focusing laser-like on the knight about to be bisected by one of those cursed weapons.
With another roll, I was back on my feet and kicking out. The gun flew from the assailant’s grasp, but I barely registered it as I spun around to his backside and grabbed hold of the arm about to bring down the scythe.
I used his own momentum against him to redirect the swing to the side, missing the Templar, and then slammed the flat of my free hand into the back of his elbow with enough power to shatter the joint.
Except it didn’t. The strike should have incapacitated him, left him on the ground howling in pain. Instead, his arm remained whole while the reverberation of the blow traveled up my own.
He casually turned his head toward me and smiled as if I’d just blown him a kiss rather than tried to break his arm.
By now, the other Templar were registering something was amiss. They halved their already inadequate defense against the undead and moved against these newcomers.
The man I’d attacked glanced their way, then gave me a shove. It seemed as if he put the barest of efforts into it, yet it felt like being hit by a bulldozer.
My aura flared up around me just in time, and for a moment, I thought I saw his skin spark. But then I was stumbling backward, nearly losing my footing until I was stopped by a burning pain that lanced through my back.
I didn’t need to turn to know what had happened, which was useful because right then I couldn’t do much more than scream. My aura had been up, yet it hadn’t given the slightest resistance against the attack.
It was those damned black-bladed weapons, and I’d just done our attackers the favor of impaling myself on one.
CHAPTER 31
Perhaps it was the severity of the wound itself, or perhaps I’d become something of a stranger to pain. Whatever the case, I cried out in agony as the edge of the weapon sliced through the meat of my shoulder blade like it was butter.
A true hero would have summoned the strength to step forward and free themselves from its bite, but in that moment I was frozen in place as nerves I didn’t even know I had lit up like a Christmas tree.
Then it was gone. The blade, that is. The pain stayed, and I could feel my entire backside growing sticky with blood.
I took one stagger step, almost fell, but then managed to turn. Somehow I wasn’t surprised to find Cynthia’s face grinning back at me. She glanced down at the scythe and raised an eyebrow. “Such a crude weapon.”
Movement registered behind me – it was the man who I’d tried and failed to disarm. I braced myself, readying to duck the killing blow no doubt headed my way.
It didn’t happen. He stepped past me, as if I were of no concern, to engage the Templar knights already racing to my aid. Cynthia’s grin grew wider still, the meaning clear – I was hers to deal with.
“To think,” she continued, looking down at her other hand which held a formidable looking handgun, “that it succeeds where other means fail.”
I wasn’t an expert, but if I had to guess I would have said a .357 at the very least, maybe a 44 caliber. Either way, my blood ran cold. Suddenly the wound in my back seemed almost unimportant.
She raised the gun at me, almost mockingly, then stopped. Maybe it was the hitched breath that caught in my chest or how my eyes widened at the sight, but the way her gaze bored into mine told me she’d noticed some reaction on my part.
“Or perhaps not as useless as we thought.” She leveled the weapon at my face, and for a moment, all I could see was the endless night that lay inside the barrel.
The scared little girl inside of me, the one who’d been happy to lead an unremarkable life beneath the radar of those she considered her betters, somehow found the strength to shove the warrior aside and become dominant. My aura faltered, a flame cut off from oxygen, and I took an unconscious step back.
It didn’t matter whether it was one step or a hundred, though. The black chasm of a barrel still yawned in front of me, and when I dared look above it, gone was Cynthia’s smiling face, replaced by Remington’s cold stare.
A thunderous report sounded, and I was certain that this time, I would not be coming back from that dark place.
* * *
Something was wrong ... or was that right? Time again appeared to slow, but this time I saw no muzzle flash, felt no pain.
Had she somehow missed?
Then time resumed its normal flow and I saw the gun waver in Cynthia’s hand, her stumble forward a step. Another blast of gunfire sounded. Cynthia’s body jerked as I realized the shot had come not from her, but from directly behind – where Kelly now stood with her own gun held out in a shooter’s stance.
She saw me staring and winked. “Just because I don’t like to use them doesn’t mean I don’t know how.”
A flash of light, the jerk of the muzzle, and an explosion of sound followed. Cynthia dropped to her knees in front of me as a third shot found its way home.
Though a part of me insisted I should be horrified to watch someone gunned down from behind, I felt only relief along with, oddly enough, a burning need to pee. The stress of the battle had finally caught up with my bladder. Icon I may be, but that didn’t make me exempt from basic bodily functions.
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. What an absurd thing to think about. We were in the middle of a battle, yet there I was wondering when I could take a restroom break.
Kelly looked confused for a moment, but then a smile began to spread across her face to match mine.
Unfortunately, my view of her was blocked before it could be fully realized. Cynthia stood up again, the look on her face less one of pain and more of someone experiencing a minor inconvenience.
What the hell?
She smiled at me. “We were told to capture you alive. The rest, however, are irrelevant to our needs. Mere fodder.” She then turned toward Kelly and raised her own gun.
The witch fired twice more, but this time Cynthia didn’t so much as even flinch. I saw her slowly put pressure on the trigger, taking her time.
No! I reached out with my power, opening myself and seeking Kelly, hoping she felt it and could sync up in time.
And then she was gone, shoved out of the way the very moment Cynthia’s gun went off.
I didn’t wait around to see what happened. I stepped in, spun, and kicked Cynthia hard in the side. It was like trying to chop down a tree trunk with only my leg. She barely budged. The only reaction she gave was a low chuckle as she aimed again.
I tracked the barrel and saw Vincent lying atop Kelly, shielding her with his body despite an ugly gunshot wound in his side. She looked merely stunned by the impact, but he was in far worse shape.
These were the true heroes. Powerless, yet still willing to stand up for
what was right. How could I do any less?
One thing was certain. I couldn’t live with myself if I did.
Something snapped inside of me and I felt the scared little girl retreating back into the recesses of my mind where she belonged.
It was time for a different tactic.
My aura didn’t work on humans, but more and more, I began to suspect that Cynthia might be a lot of things, but human wasn’t one of them.
This time when I tried to sweep her legs out from beneath her, I allowed my aura to blaze to life, empowering the blow. There was a spark of fire when we connected, and then Cynthia was knocked ass over teakettle, the gun clattering out of her grasp.
I sprung lightly to my feet and raced to where my friends lay.
This time, there was no hesitation. I pressed my already blazing hands to Vincent’s side and let loose. He hissed in pain as the power filled him, but I held on and kept him from pulling away.
“Um, Sheila,” Kelly said breathlessly from beneath him.
“In a second. Let me concentrate.”
“I don’t think we have that long.”
I continued to let the healing power of my aura do its job, but spared a glance over my shoulder.
Cynthia was again on her feet, or I should say its feet. Her clothes shimmered around her before being absorbed into her body. The chocolate brown of her skin became a charcoal grey as her flesh rippled and hardened. Her tall frame began to collapse in on itself, becoming shorter and wider in stature.
Still, the grin on her face remained, widening as the teeth inside her mouth elongated into granite daggers. The last thing to change were her eyes, sinking into her head until all that remained were empty sockets glowing with an unearthly orange light.
The only part of her that remained human was her left hand, still clutching that accursed blade. The creature looked down upon me and raised the weapon over its misshapen head.
“We have grown tired of this game.”
CHAPTER 32
Tome of Bill (Companion): Shining Fury Page 13
