She and Aiden were both armed, but separated, and the lack of light gave the Aurelian the advantage. If it hit them now, they were fucked.
Slipping into the water, she crossed her fingers.
Within minutes, she had a reaction. There was a disturbance in the river, not far from Aiden’s position. A frothing, bubbling upheaval of foam and water weed was followed by a flutter of clear tentacles as they splashed and floated. A creature, clearish-pinkish and very warty looking, heaved itself up on the bank, into the circle of light cast by the lanterns and the streetlights above them on the road. As Cait had predicted, one of its tentacles was wrapped around the hook with its spitted meat.
With a gurgling, slurping noise, the Ty-Op hefted itself like a sea lion up onto the verge, squelching on the grass and onto the towpath. It paused there with the hook in one tentacle, briskly picking the meat off the barbs with its other tentacles. It shuffled away from Cait as she arrived with the sonic staff, but not far enough or fast enough to avoid her.
She quickly snapped what passed for a collar onto the beast. Aiden’s expression made her laugh out loud.
“Your eyes are as wide as saucers,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that, really.” The rest of his face was twisted into a combination of a grimace and the best what-the-fuck look she’d ever seen. It was funny as hell, given what he’d seen and what she knew he was capable of.
“You look like a ten-year-old at the circus.”
“That has got to be one of the ugliest, most disgusting things I’ve ever seen,” he retorted, awe in his voice as he shifted the crate into position.
“Oh, just wait. I’ll show you a picture of the female when we get back to my place. Females are uglier, if that’s possible. Wartier, bigger, and more of a sluggy-buggy look than this. Her tentacles are shorter, but more numerous.”
“To quote my pre-teen niece,” he said, allowing Cait plenty of room to pass the squirming, but relatively passive Opthoid, “grooooosssss.”
“Tap the crate,” Cait requested. “Just tap the top of it gently with your hand, so it vibrates, then angle the door wider.”
Aiden complied and plopped another morsel of the bloody meat into the back of the crate as incentive.
With surprising speed, given its bulk, the Opthoid slithered forward and into the crate with a deftness out of character with its appearance. In seconds, it had devoured the additional meat and turned around to face the door, which Cait quickly slapped shut and locked.
“Okay, that didn’t take as long as I thought,” Cait said, leaning on the sonic pole as Aiden unlocked the crate’s dolly wheels so they could move it.
“It made a hell of a difference to have a partner on this,” she added, smiling at him. “Thanks.
She left the Opthoid to investigate its new confines with moist, snuffling burps of sound and hurried to gather their things, ever watchful in the increasing light of day.
“I cannot believe how much easier that was than trying to do it myself,” she admitted as she unlocked the padlock on the bait chain and gathered it in.
They both continually checked the path as Cait stamped the water off her boots. The mist was lovely as the sky lightened. The horizon was all warm pinks and roses, tinting the mist.
Quit sightseeing.
“How would you have managed it?” Aiden asked, his sword drawn, head cocked in interest before he returned to guard duty. “I mean, you’d have to be two places at once.”
“It would have taken me several tries, I’m sure.”
“Yeah.” Still watchful, he walked around the crate, glancing at the Opthoid. It followed his movement with its eyestalks, rumbling at him. “Is it growling or purring or something else entirely?”
“Something else entirely.” She frowned. “I think.”
Cait took a glass tube out of the pack and used the pole as a staff to help her slip back down the steep bank to the river. Dipping the vial into the water, she ran her meter over it. The water registered clear.
The Opthoid in the crate was restive, rattling the crate back and forth on the rocky path. The wheels on the crate squeaked and snapped on the gravel.
Aiden sniffed the air. “I don’t smell anything.”
The Ty-Op got louder. It made wet, sucking sounds unpleasantly akin to a huge man blowing raspberries. Or maybe it was more like a farting contest without the smell.
“That can’t be good,” she said, worried that it was reacting to the Aurelian. Laser in hand, Cait looked up and down the river. Nothing.
“I need to re-test the canal.”
“Good idea.” Aiden turned to look down at her. Standing in the river, she was about to holster the laser, climb the bank. Then she saw it.
Her horror must have shown on her face, because when she shouted, “Hit the deck!” he instantly complied.
Aiden flattened himself on the ground next to the Opthoid’s crate as the Aurelian’s thrown blade missed him by scant inches. The knife it simultaneously flung at Cait hit her laser, and she dropped it before the electric charge it held could fry both hand and weapon.
The armored warrior, following up on the throw, overshot his landing when he jumped down toward her. Arms flailing, it lost its footing in the mud and rolled toward the water. She lurched sideways so instead of hitting her, it crashed into the heavy brush at the bottom edge of the embankment. Unfortunately it was fast enough to roll behind a tree, avoiding the blast from her second laser. She fired again. And again.
Sliding in the waders, she struggled to keep firing and climb the bank. Aiden, sword in hand, tore into the packs, wrestling the mortar into position.
The Aurelian saw Aiden’s visible weapon and higher ground advantage, and went for him first.
“Aiden!” Screaming his name, Cait scrambled the rest of the way up the bank. Aiden ducked, barely in time to avoid a blow from the Aurelian’s close-in fighting blades.
“The blades are poisoned,” she yelled as she gained the top of the hill.
The Aurelian’s hide was crocodilian, but it glistened with moisture, as if it had been oiled. Its armor was dark, mottled, like camo, but there was very little of it to block a blade.
A harsh, bluish-red gash lanced its side. They had hit it.
Under the arms, the hamstrings, the neck, the hocks where they bent back at the top of the foot. Vulnerable.
The head. Vulnerable.
She ran the litany of weak points to remind herself not to panic. Aiden was a whirl of light and power, his sword spinning like a blue pinwheel.
Unable to use her laser to advantage with the creature so close to Aiden, she resorted to the primitive.
Vulnerabilities. Bright light. Soundwaves.
Snatching a rock from the trailside, she hit the Aurelian’s helmet with a terrific clang. The creature staggered, more from the noise, probably, than any pain.
Unpredictably, it turned to her. She danced and spun, firing her weapon when she could, barely avoiding slashing strikes from its blades. It was keeping her too busy and was too close in for her to pause long enough for a decent shot. With Aiden on the other side of the Aurelian, she’d better be sure of a hit when she fired.
It growled low in its throat, a guttural noise that raised the hair on her neck.
“Amthgreesssh!” it shouted as it leaped toward her, teeth bared, knives flashing.
She gave ground, firing her laser and, by some miracle, disabling one of its arms.
Praying Aiden had the mortar ready, she tried to turn the Aurelian his way, give a good angle for a shot. She didn’t care if he hit her too. She wanted the thing dead.
“Kill it, Aiden,” she shouted. “Don’t worry about me.”
She heard grunting and cursing, but couldn’t look at Aiden, couldn’t split her focus. Dancing with the devil took every ounce of her attention. One blade swung too close, narrowly missing her torso. It connected with her remaining laser though and the sting of the blade’s electric charge fired through her nerves.
The weapon dropped and so did her arm. Her hand tingled with pins and needles, unable to grip.
Disarmed, she cursed and danced backwards. Thankfully the feeling quickly began to return to her hand.
Still, she was totally fucked. She had speed, the bracelet lasers, and her agility. That was it.
“Volturnus, Belenama, Achelous, Nephthys!” Aiden shouted and the beast staggered as four heavy thuds rocked it forward. Aiden had flung two of her long tas-knives and two blades of his own into the thing’s back. They glowed with his blue power signature.
They protruded like shiny, dark-blue limbs. Slime-like ichor flowed over the Aurelian’s armor, but the beast straightened, began to move.
“Cait, catch!”
Over the assassin’s head, too fast for it to react, came the sonic pole and a snaking power lash, bundled with a spell that unraveled as it flew. It dropped neatly into her grip, with a tingle of Aiden’s energy to caress her hands.
Shaking it out, she snapped it, bullwhip fashion, at the creature’s face and parried the blades with the sonic pole. It wasn’t much, but at least she had something other than footwork. And faith.
If she could connect the sonic pole with the tas-knives…
Behind it, Aiden sought an opening. His sword wove like an extension of his arm, and like his hands, it glowed blue. The smoke of charred fabric warned her to pay attention as she barely dodged an electrically charged blow. She dueled with the Aurelian, trying to hit the tas-knives.
Without warning, it went for Aiden again.
Leaping like a jungle cat, Aiden avoided the first attack. They crossed blades, and sparks flew as Cait closed in to try for a hit with the sonic stick across its hamstrings. She got one, and the beast snarled in pain, lashing out with its blades to drive her back.
Aiden shifted the sword in a backstroke, quick as a snake, and the glowing blade split armor on the Aurelian’s upper shoulder. At the same time, she managed a hit on the hilt of a tas-knife and sent a charge surging through the sonic pole.
The Aurelian screamed and pulled back, which took it out of her line of attack. The scream was piercing, and it was all she could do to stay upright. The creature towered over her, its breath foul, and the stench of its blood turned her stomach.
Teeth clenched, Cait moved in again and struck, but the Aurelian turned too fast, caught the whiplash and yanked it from her grip. She stumbled forward and the beast smiled—or bared its fangs—lifting its blade for a killing stroke.
Aiden shouted something, his hand outstretched. The electrical glow snuffed out of two of the Aurelian’s four blades. Tas-knives glowed again with that fierce blue fire.
It screamed again, clutching its chest. It spun to face Aiden and feinted right, trying to close. Cait staggered to her feet, looking for an opening. It was slowing, but it wasn’t down by any means.
Aiden pivoted, trying to give Cait a shot. The Aurelian howled like a wolf as it shifted to attack Cait, but it was a ploy, and it whipped around to strike at Aiden.
And Aiden chose the wrong direction for his own move.
The moment slowed to a crawl, as if the Slip Masters had stopped it. She saw both the creature’s remaining electrified blades connect with Aiden’s fiery blue sword. The joined weapons emitted a blasting, sizzling charge. Sparks showered out, obscuring her view. With a shout and an inhuman scream from the Aurelian, Aiden flew backwards with brutal force.
A giant splash and a wicked electric-lightning crackle followed as Aiden’s body landed in the canal. She saw the hilt of the Aurelian’s poisoned blade, on Aiden’s left side.
It looked like a heart shot.
Blue light exploded like a bomb as his body submerged.
Chapter Thirty
“Nooooo!”
Cait’s heart died in the instant she saw Aiden fall. He couldn’t have survived that. Not with both the charge and the poison. The poison alone would have been enough to kill him, but both?
“Fucking bastard!” she screamed. She couldn’t stop to mourn. But she would, by God, avenge.
She didn’t care, now, if she died as well, but if she let herself be killed without taking out the Aurelian, then she dishonored Aiden’s sacrifice.
She was taking this fucker down.
Aiden was dead.
But she was a United States Marine. She was a Slip Traveler, and by all the gods in the universe, she would finish this. For him.
For what might have been.
Like a Fury, she leapt, swinging the sonic stick and the coils of the bait chain. She’d snatched it up when the Aurelian got her lash. Now she swung it, its barbed hook flying like a mace. She drove him back, firing her bracelet lasers and striking sparks from his remaining blade.
Cait and the Aurelian circled the Opthoid’s crate, fighting over and around it. It wasn’t stable enough to leap on, but she did it anyway, using it like a skateboard, driving the Aurelian back with the intensity of her attack.
She was bleeding in too many places. He hadn’t hit her with the poisoned blade, but his claws were just as sharp. So was the edge of the crate, and she’d cut her leg open on that.
The Aurelian had slowed, but still fought despite its many wounds.
Like Aiden’s battle with the Nightflyer, it was time for a final strike. If she could close with the creature, set the charges in her bracelets as she did, they would both die.
She picked her moment, driving the Aurelian in front of the captive Opthoid.
A flurry of barking heralded the barreling bodies of the golden retrievers from her previous trip to the canal.
She shrieked warnings and imprecations alike as they plowed into the middle of everything. She couldn’t let them be killed.
Shit, shit, shit. If the dogs were there, their nerdy, winking master couldn’t be far behind.
Bellowing and wading into the fight full force, the dogs hit the Aurelian from behind. Bounding and bustling, they slammed into its backward bending hocks. Staggered, it swung at them. Cait nearly broke her back, twisting to lash out with the hooked chain. The barbs lodged deep into the Aurelian’s lower arm, wrapping the other as well, and she yanked the chain tight. The maneuver caught the creature’s slashing, poisoned weapon mid-descent, deflecting it away from the back of the nearest dog.
At the electric discharge, the dogs whined like an ax had fallen. They dropped their tails and bolted for the dubious safety of the water’s edge. They howled and barked from there like fiends from hell, as the Aurelian’s electrified steel hit the dirt with the keening whine of overloaded circuits.
Recovering, the Aurelian yanked the chain from her hands by sheer force. She let it go. Turning the sonic stick like a quarterstaff, she got her bracelets ready as they sized one another up.
Three of the Aurelian’s arms were damaged. One hung limply, the other bled freely where the bait hooks were imbedded deep in the shoulder, and the third bled from Aiden’s sword. The tas-knives still glowed faintly blue, and the Aurelian’s breathing was labored.
But it wasn’t down. It wasn’t dead.
So they feinted and shifted, circling the Opthoid’s cage. The Aurelian swung, and blood from his wounds sprayed her, hissing like acid where it hit her shirt, but she blocked the blade in time. When her sonic stick connected with the handle of the monster’s still-sparking weapon, she gave it a full charge.
The creature shrieked as the current surged through its body, but didn’t drop its weapon. She backed up, intending to charge in, swinging and firing. If she could connect again with the sonic stick, then back it with her lasers, which were short range, she could take it with her. The Opthoid would be found, but there was no help for that now.
She gave ground, getting her footing and sequencing the bracelets when, with a screech like tires on blacktop, a mammoth creature fountained out of the canal.
Transparent and wriggling, it was easily eight feet long. It bore a studded and bejeweled collar around its neck. When it flopped, squelching and squealing, onto the towpat
h, everything stopped.
Almost everything.
As she froze in horror, looking at the female Opthoid rushing toward the caged male, the Aurelian’s blade swung toward her head.
“Cait! Drop!”
She dropped.
Dead man shouting. It was impossible.
A thunderous boom sounded behind her.
With fierce joy, she rolled and fired both lasers at the Aurelian. The beams hit the creature, intersecting with, and superheating, the dozens of stainless steel skewers Aiden had fired nearly point-blank from the mortar.
The noise was hideous. The metal skewers tore into the armor and tough hide, piercing it through and through. The hot metal imbedded itself in the trees behind the beast, and dropped into the river beyond with a steaming hisses. The trees smoked where the creature’s blood ate into the bark.
Thrown backwards, the Aurelian collapsed onto the path, wailing and writhing for what seemed like an eternity before it sank, twitching and lifeless before them.
“Holy God.” It was a man’s voice, one she’d heard before.
“Tank,” Aiden gasped, as he struggled to his feet. “Get the hell out of here.”
Cait rose, whipped around toward Aiden. “OhmyGod, how are you alive?”
Aiden pointed behind her, “Shit, is that the other Ty-Op?”
Cait reversed direction and her back, wrenched in the fight, protested with a sharp, hot pain.
The Ty-Ops had to be contained. She had lost her mind, setting something—anything—before that.
“Looks like I’m late to the action.” Tank’s voice had a strangled quality, like he was barely keeping it together. “Stopped a crazy dude half-mile up. He was frantic about his dogs. They ran right past the barricade. We couldn’t catch them.”
“Thank heavens you stopped him,” Cait said. She wanted to scream with relief, to shout her joy that Aiden was alive. To shake him and lambast him for being stupid. To hold onto him with everything she had. To find out how he could be standing.
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