by Jenn Reese
But she didn’t drop her knife.
Aluna folded at the waist and wrapped her left arm around the serpent’s maw. She couldn’t reach its brown Human eyes, so she shoved her blade into its nose slit instead.
The creature’s jaw opened instantly, releasing her. Aluna dropped five meters and crashed against the stone floor. Tides’ teeth. She was back where she started.
“You’re just like her. Selfish!” Strand’s chorus hissed. “I know what’s best for the world. I’m here to save it! Defying me is akin to spitting on Humanity. I am our best hope for the future.”
Aluna groaned and clutched her chest. Something inside her body felt wrong. She needed to keep Strand talking to give herself time to recover.
“Sarah Jennings cared about you,” Aluna said. Her voice came out weak. She tried again. “Sarah Jennings never stopped loving you!”
“Lies!” Strand’s heads roared. “She never thought about anyone but herself and her precious, pathetic Kampii. I could have given her eternal life, and she refused. Is that respect? Is that love? Is that common sense?”
Only six of his heads still functioned, and the two in the middle still swayed dully on their stalks while the others spewed evil words. Aluna would never be able to destroy all of them before Strand killed her. Taking the first one down had left her bleeding and broken. And Hoku — poor Hoku — only writhed and whimpered somewhere behind her, his voice in her ears a painful echo of her own.
Were her sister and brother outside, facing the same fate? She could picture Fathom’s octopus tentacles wrapped around Daphine, squeezing the life out of her while Anadar watched, helpless and wild with grief.
Calli was off somewhere with the Aviars, probably fighting for her life in the middle of the battlefield if she wasn’t already dead. How would that smiling girl survive? She was never meant to be a warrior.
“There is a place for everyone in my new world,” Strand said, his voices growing louder, “but there will never be a place for the Kampii. I will destroy every last one of Sarah’s beloved people, and she will finally be gone forever.”
Vachir. Dash. Aluna didn’t want to think about Dash especially, but his face floated before her, dark eyes grim, his black hair long as a horse’s tail. At least she would not live to see his disappointment.
“You look like her,” Strand said, and three of his heads finally stopped talking and attacked.
DASH WATCHED Odd slide to the ground, a shadow of dark red expanding around him. Dash wanted to scream, but his throat was raw and broken. He had done too much of it lately.
Calli had pressed a spear into his hand, and he was relieved to find that his fingers had enough strength to grip it. Its weight reminded him that he was alive, that the horror of the past few days was over. He would do anything to ensure that his fate did not befall his friends as well.
Scorch stood a few meters away, leering down at Odd. Mocking him, even as the man died. Dash expected no honor from her, but her unbelievable cruelty awoke a new energy inside him. A fresh anger. It coursed through his body, replenishing him like a long drink of water after days spent in the desert.
Dash lunged forward and drove the spear through Scorch’s back while she laughed at her fallen prey. The sound died in her throat. She twisted to face him, her body still impaled by the spear. A bubble of red appeared at the corner of her mouth. She raised her arm and aimed the tip of her sword blade at his heart.
He could not move out of the way. The act of thrusting the spear, of seeing it pierce Scorch’s body, had emptied him of vigor. Scorch spoke, her twisted mouth betraying her sentiment. Her words came to him softly and muffled, as if he were hearing them over a great distance.
Pocket leaped up and grabbed Scorch’s arm, attempting to slow her blade. Calli was there, too, and Nathif — Nathif! — was pulling Scorch away from him and yelling at him to move.
He did not. He could not. He could only watch as Vachir bolted into view, reared up on her hind legs, and brought her two front hooves smashing down. Scorch’s eyes fluttered and rolled to white. Her neck twisted. She fell to the ground at an odd angle, the butt of Dash’s spear still protruding from her back.
Calli’s arms were around him. And then Nathif’s. And then Pocket’s. Dash tried to smile and to hug them back. His arms, as heavy as horses, would not budge. Vachir huffed in his face and he reveled in the warmth of her breath on his cheek.
A path cleared to Odd. Dash stumbled forward and fell to his knees by his side. He wished Odd had not chosen to wear goggles, for he dearly wanted to look into the man’s eyes.
Odd was so close to death that Dash imagined his spirit halfway to the Sunshine Lands.
“Brought your swords,” Odd said, fumbling at his waist with one meaty hand. And that was all. His body gave up its fight and fell slack while Dash was still summoning the strength to say thank you. He wanted more time. He had so much he wished still to say.
“Me and Pocket, we stay with Odd,” Mags said. She sat down cross-legged on the floor, and Dash saw the bruise blooming on her face and the way her left arm hung oddly from her shoulder. “Don’t forget us when you’re done.”
“I will stay with you,” Nathif said. “I will see to your injuries.”
“Cuts and scrapes will still be here when you’re done,” Mags said. “Run off, now, and fix this. Fix it all.”
“Swords,” croaked Dash. Odd wanted him to have them, and right now, he could think of no better way to honor the fallen hero. “Help?”
It took their combined strength to roll Odd off the swords. Calli and Pocket cleaned them while Nathif and Vachir helped Dash to his feet.
“You are looking particularly handsome today, Dashiyn,” Nathif said, smoothing the hair away from Dash’s face. “You simply must share your secrets with me.”
Dash blinked, the closest thing he could do to laughing, and was rewarded with Nathif’s relieved smile.
With Blaze and Shatter once again sheathed at his side, Dash began to feel like himself again. Or, at least, like a shadow of himself. It was a far better feeling than he had had in days. He gripped Vachir’s mane to steady himself and felt his strength slowly returning.
“Aluna. Hoku. Safe?” he asked.
Calli raised one eyebrow. “Did you really just ask if Aluna was safe? Maybe you’re not recovering as fast as we thought.”
Vachir whinnied at the joke, and the sound lightened Dash’s heart. Vachir had been through as much as he had during their days of captivity. He would not have survived without her.
“We do not know where they are, brother,” Nathif said. “But if you are feeling well enough, we will go find them.”
Dash looked at Pocket and Mags, sitting on either side of Odd’s body. He winced, but managed to lift his hand and touch two fingers to his heart.
HOKU’S WORLD WAS ENDLESS FIRE and searing pain and no hope of escape. He writhed on the ground, clutching his face and expending all of his will to stop his fingers from clawing out his eyes. Each moment felt impossibly long. He was sure he could never survive another, but then, miraculously, he did.
When the pain ended suddenly, it felt like a trick. Hoku stayed on the ground, wrapped tight against himself, and waited for it to begin again. That sort of cruelty would suit Karl Strand.
Or . . . Strand had been distracted. Hoku could hear Aluna’s ragged breath in his ear, her grunts, her yelps, the effort in her every move. Something she’d done had made Strand angry enough to forget about him. He might only have a few moments before Strand remembered.
Despite the respite from pain, Hoku’s vision stayed dark and blurry. A shiver crabbed down his spine. He was almost entirely blind.
Fur grazed Hoku’s hand. He picked up Zorro and clutched the animal to his chest. “Be my eyes,” he said, issuing the commands to his Datastreamers. Their surroundings were projected inside Hoku’s eyes, but from Zorro’s perspective instead of his own. The effect disoriented him, so he stayed on the ground and assessed the f
ight.
Aluna had taken out one of Strand’s heads and wounded another, but the monster showed no signs of slowing down or surrendering. His heads snapped and snarled, fangs flashing. Aluna didn’t have long.
Hoku poked around with his Datastreamers, looking for new holes in Strand’s security. He found them immediately. When Strand had forgotten about Hoku, he’d apparently also forgotten to close the connection between them. Hoku had only to follow it back in order to access whatever computer system Strand was using inside his creation.
He used his tech to swim through Strand’s network, being careful not to trip any of the alarms. It only took a flash of a tail before he uncovered the secret behind Strand’s two dormant heads.
They weren’t sleeping at all; they were working! Messages flowed into the heads from Strand’s generals. The two serpent brains ran scenarios, calculated victory rates, and sent orders back to the front lines. He had discovered Strand’s war room!
Hoku saw a message arrive from Fathom asking for more reinforcements. His stomach clenched. Fathom, that horrible octopus thing, was still alive. He watched Strand process the information and inform Fathom that more troops were on their way.
But when Strand sent the message to activate more Deepfell slave soldiers, Hoku snagged it. He let Strand think the message had been sent, but he deleted it instead. Strand didn’t seem to notice. For Daphine, Hoku thought.
If he could do that, what else could he do?
He dug around in the data, pulling up names, and found messages from a General Gator stationed at the war front. Hoku wrote a fake message from Gator informing Strand of a surprise attack from the south by a huge force of Aviars and Equians, and asked for orders. Strand’s brains crunched the fake numbers and sent back elaborate orders for Gator to split his force in half, hold his position with the smaller force, and await the arrival of another army.
Hoku deleted the orders to that second army, too. No reinforcements for Gator, and now half his troops would be marching off to attack nothing, leaving the real Aviars and Equians to fight a vastly reduced army to the east.
It wasn’t enough — stealing a few messages here and there, moving troops, causing chaos. As soon as Strand figured out what had happened, he’d issue new orders and fix everything. Hoku needed to take the serpent heads out for good.
Strand’s multiple voices echoed through the cave. “You are pathetic,” he said. “If she saw you . . . you, whom she sacrificed everything to create, she would regret everything. She would regret leaving me.”
Hoku remembered the letters he’d found in Seahorse Alpha. “She” was probably Sarah Jennings, Strand’s long-ago partner and the mother of their only child.
Hoku reached into his satchel and pulled out the water safe. He told Zorro to input the combination and open it while his Datastreamers pulled up every scrap of correspondence he could find between Sarah Jennings and Karl Strand.
When Zorro had the water safe open, Hoku used the raccoon’s eyes to find the small carved-wood dolphin. Hundreds of years ago, Karl Strand had made the toy for his son, Tomias, and then given it to Sarah Jennings after their son had died.
He put the dolphin on the ground and told Zorro to scan it. Hoku’s vision flickered green as Zorro obeyed. Hoku added the image to the hundreds of electronic text and voice messages his tech had dug up from the Seahorse Alpha records.
Hoku ran his hand down Zorro’s back. “Ready, boy?” The answer flashed before his eyes: Yes, yes, yes.
Hoku gathered all the files and sent them like one long harpoon, straight into Karl Strand’s brains. He told the image of the dolphin to get inside and multiply as fast as it could. He wanted Strand to see it everywhere, no matter which of his brains he was using.
For a long moment, Hoku wondered if his plan had worked. The hydra continued to attack Aluna. She valiantly bashed aside its heads and stabbed them with her knife. Even through Zorro’s eyes, Hoku could see the scrapes and bloody puncture wounds covering her body.
He should have disconnected himself from Strand. He should have put up some sort of shield, or tried to hide his mind. But he needed to know if his plan worked. If it didn’t, he might not be able to open the connection again to try something else. Strand was the one who had made it so deep in the first place.
But then, all at once, Strand stopped battling Aluna. All six of the remaining heads reared back and roared.
“Tomias!” the hydra screamed in a chorus of tortured voices. “My son!”
“Now!” Hoku shouted, hoping Aluna could still hear him inside her ears. “Go now!”
Strand struck an instant later, but not at Aluna. Burning pain ripped through Hoku’s skull, even worse than before. Images of the wooden dolphin appeared in his mind, over and over and over. Strand was beating him with it. Hoku screamed and curled into a ball and silently begged Aluna to hurry.
ALUNA KNEW SHE WAS LOSING. Her arms were kelp, her tail as graceful as a dead fish, her strength had fled. The monster that housed Karl Strand attacked her tirelessly, pausing only to tell her how worthless she was, how weak, how disappointing.
She couldn’t help but think of her father, and her heart ached. However much she guarded her heart against him, the words still burrowed deep and tried to rot her from the inside.
Unworthy. Disrespectful. Rude.
A dishonor to the whole family.
A dishonor to all Kampii.
But although the list of her failures might fill one of Hoku’s books, she would never let it be written that she gave up. She would fight until her last breath was taken from her. Strand wanted to kill her, and he probably would. Until then, she intended to make his life as difficult as possible. Let her father at least acknowledge that his youngest daughter was stubborn to the end. Let Karl Strand choke on her bones.
Suddenly Strand’s heads reared back, all six at once, and roared. Aluna covered her ears and tried to protect herself from the deafening sound. “Tomias! My son!”
Hoku’s voice cut through the chaos, his Kampii devices feeding directly to hers.
“Now!” he yelled. “Go now!”
Strand’s scream echoed anger and anguish to every dark place in the cave. His heads swung wildly, even the ones that had been still up until now. They thrashed, hitting one another, snapping their maws in midair. Strand’s cool intelligence was gone, swallowed up by wild, incoherent rage.
Hoku had given her a chance.
A familiar blur of white and brown wings darted overhead. Aluna’s chest tightened and she wanted to whoop with joy. Calli dodged between Strand’s heads, her spear flashing. Calli couldn’t kill Strand, and she knew it. But she was doing her best to keep him angry.
“Aluna!” a voice called — a voice she hadn’t expected to ever hear again. It was followed by the high, shrill neigh of a horse.
Aluna pulled her eyes from Calli and saw Dash and Vachir galloping toward her. They both looked scarred and battered, barely able to hold themselves up. Yet here they were, racing into battle. Racing to help her.
“We have to get in close,” Aluna said. “Stop fighting the heads, go for his heart instead.” Which is what Hoku had done, she realized, but in a different way. He’d gone after Strand’s connection to his son.
Aluna flipped onto her wobbly hands and vaulted onto her tail. Pain flared. For a moment, she didn’t know if she could stand, or if her body had simply had enough. Dash slid off Vachir’s back while the horse was still moving and tucked his shoulder under Aluna’s arm just as she started to fall. She leaned on him and steadied herself, trying to ignore the gentle touch of his hair as it brushed her cheek. He handed her a sword, flipping a switch on the handle so that it burst into flames. Aluna grinned.
Vachir roared her battle cry and raced for Strand’s lizard claws. She bit and tore at the scales with her teeth, then reared up and brought her hooves down with shattering force. Two of the hydra’s clawed toes snapped. Strand bellowed and shifted his weight to the other leg, suddenly far le
ss agile than he’d been a moment before.
Aluna leaned on Dash and hobbled toward Strand, the fiery sword gripped in her right hand. Vachir and Calli kept up their attacks. Strand’s heads snapped and hissed and darted in every direction without reason. When one got close, Dash batted it out of the way with his sword of ice.
“For Tomias!” Strand screeched. “I will kill you for my son!”
Aluna wasted no time. When they got close enough, she drove her sword into Strand’s chest. Strand jerked back and tried to rear up, but his broken feet stopped him. Aluna’s blade snagged on his armored hide. She shoved harder, pushing the tip through skin and muscle and bone.
Strand yelled, “Impudence!”
She pulled out her sword and plunged it in again. She ignored technique, ignored training. She used nothing but her remaining strength and her surging will and the knowledge that — by her side, and in the air, and crumpled somewhere in the back of the cave — her friends were counting on her. Push, Anadar’s voice said to her, and she did.
She was not useless. She was not weak. And if she was a disappointment to her father or Karl Strand or anybody, then that was their problem, not hers.
Finally, she found Strand’s heart. A spray of warm droplets covered her hand and she yanked her sword out quick, letting it flow.
Dash dropped his sword and pulled her backward with both hands. Strand’s body fell slowly, like Big Blue the whale drifting to the bottom of the sea to die. She and Dash tumbled to the ground, just out of range of Strand’s death throes.
“You did it, Aluna,” Dash said. His eyes were black and warm in the cave’s shadows, and his voice was just for her. “I never doubted you. Not once.”
Somehow, she found the strength to lean up and kiss him.
ALUNA AND VACHIR GALLOPED through the surf toward the cove, and toward the small but growing city of Horizon’s Reach. It had taken them weeks to find the perfect location — a place with easy access to water and sky, to mountains and trees, and to great open spaces. Some of the others had wanted to give up, or reclaim HydroTek or the SkyTek dome. Aluna remained adamant. They needed someplace new. Someplace that hadn’t belonged to anyone before.
