by Alex Wells
Breathing harsh and raw, Anabi yanked the knife out and looked around her. Another motorcycle went down, its rider tumbling. More people were on the ground, curled up like Hob and her friend. Anabi looked at the wall around the pit, the bloody spatter on it. She wondered about the machines they’d been made to put up around the wall; she’d heard the guards joke about it being an anti-witch fence. And she looked down at the knife in her red-cast hand as the scream boiled and boiled in her throat, shrieking for release.
She’d always told Mag she didn’t know what would happen, if she let the scream out. If it’d kill her. It’d sure as hell kill everything in her way.
And it might just be enough to destroy the wall.
She stumbled forward, bent almost double with the effort of breathing, trying to angle herself so she wouldn’t hit anyone she knew to be friendly. This was as good as it would get, she thought. She planted her feet. Blood pattered from her hand onto the saltpan like impossibly gentle rain. Anabi relaxed her throat, opened her mouth, and finally, after so many years, let go.
The world tore apart at the sound of her anger.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Dambala blinked blood out of his eyes, trying to orient himself in the sparking darkness. A strap cut across his chest, so tight he could barely breathe. What had–
Right. He’d crashed the goddamn osprey that his goddamn partner had convinced their goddamn boss to steal. He’d been around Coyote too fucking long, that was for sure. And… “Coyote?” he said. Right, his precious idiot had been in the cockpit with him. He tried to reach out, feeling for the copilot seat, couldn’t hardly move with the safety harness trying to strangle him and break his back in half at the same time. Dambala changed tactics and grabbed for his knife – he always had a knife in reach, he’d learned that one in the service – and sawed through the safety harness. It took a damned eternity.
Then he popped free, or tried, only to find himself jammed between the control panel and more bent wreckage. Cursing under his breath, he squirmed out. He felt his way along with his hands, skating over sharply bent metal, until he found something soft and yielding and… yes, Coyote’s hand. Had to be, there were those scars on his knuckles that he’d gotten off his jag of picking endless bar fights with his damn mouth. “Coyote?”
Nothing, but at least he was still breathing. Good enough. Dambala felt the shape of the situation, and by touch alone, untangled Coyote from his seat. If there’d been some hope in hell of a medevac, maybe he would have left him in place, since he’d gotten enough lectures in his day about spinal injuries. But that was a long ago dream thanks to their growing dedication to chickenshit outfits.
He found other things by touch – his shotgun, Coyote’s helmet, and the door. He hung Coyote over his shoulder like a limp sack of laundry and felt his way out into the cargo hold. There was light there, a crack in the bent and warped door. It was almost blinding after the dark of the cockpit. The familiar smell of smoke and gunpowder and blood wafted in, carrying with it the even more familiar sound of a gun battle. More distant, he saw the wall around the mine pit. Damn, he wished he’d been able to hit that instead, but the angle hadn’t been right.
Dambala hazarded a glance outside and saw nothing directly close but the wreckage field he’d made on the way down, torn tents and shattered crates and smeared, twisted bodies. He wedged himself into the crack in the door, put his back against the hull and got his legs up to push. He was too goddamn old for this, he was sure of it, the way his back was twinging. Slowly, groaning all the while, the door squealed open. Enough that he’d be able to get them both through it.
He dragged his limp partner out into the open air and started wondering where the hell to run to next, since he didn’t want to survive the fourth goddamn crash of his career just to get his ass shot by a Corporate shitlicker, when the wind suddenly whipped up into an unholy, impossible shriek. Instinctively he dropped Coyote and slapped his hands over his ears, and it made no difference. The sound grew and grew until he thought his goddamn eyes were going to burst from the pressure, and then–
The wall around the pit shattered, metal and synthcrete barriers shredding into splinters, the tripods around it turning into chaff that spun through the air and blew out high over the camp. Hands still uselessly over his ears, Dambala huddled over Coyote, his back turned toward the swirling storm of debris. He felt splinters tear at the leather of his coat, a few sneaking under his collar to slash at his neck–
And then the sound was gone. The air was still but for a patter almost like rain, except he knew it was pieces of the goddamn mining camp.
Beneath him, Coyote squirmed, then gave him a solid shove. He made a muffled sound that Dambala, long used to translating Drunk Coyote Speak, made out to be, “I can’t breathe!”
Dambala sat back, then yanked Coyote to a sitting position with one hand on his collar. “What the fuck happened?”
“They must have another of those anti-witch camp perimeters…” Coyote turned to look at what had once been the mine works, now scraped almost clean of the ground. Debris piled up in drifts. His eyes went wide. “…And it isn’t there anymore.”
Ahead of them, one of the piles of debris shivered and shook apart into Geri. He reeled up to his feet. After that moment of perfect calm after the storm, a gunshot cracked loud. With nowhere left to hide, they flattened themselves on the ground as more gunshots sounded – people still alive making themselves known. It wasn’t even half over. “Where’s the boss?” Coyote said.
“Don’t know. Your helmet’s busted.” Dambala waited for a slight pause in the shooting and stretched up, looking. Dust choked the air. “Way to the mine’s sort of clear if she and her friend ain’t dead.” Saying it like that was a way to ward off disaster, instinctive. Never assume. Always let them be alive and surprise you. He ducked back down.
Coyote bellycrawled to peer around the edge of the wrecked osprey. “Oh, bother.”
“What?” Dambala demanded.
“They’re getting organized. Whatever that explosion was, it didn’t catch too many of them.”
He looked at the wreckage. “Don’t think it was aimed to.” What would that have done to a group of people? And why hadn’t it been used like that? Well, he didn’t even know what the hell kind of weapon it was, though it stank of witchiness and no mistake. He didn’t give a shit, because witchiness on their side was the best kind of witchiness there was. He felt another rattle coming up through the ground, knew it to be the drumming of feet. Through the dust and smoke and wreckage, a flood of ragged, black-smeared people burst into view, screaming as they came. After the sound that had torn apart the wall, it seemed damn thin.
A gunshot cracked and one of the people – one of the miners, he realized – hit the ground. Another raised a rifle, pointing at an enemy Dambala couldn’t see, and returned fire.
“Think we should run for it now…” Coyote started.
Dambala saw another pile of debris shift and move. But what emerged wasn’t a familiar face, but someone tall and thin in a blue suit grayed with dust. Dambala had only ever seen Mr Green from a distance when they’d helped kill the Weatherman months ago, but he knew. The same way he knew in the jungle that he was being watched, the same way his healed-up leg ached when the air was shifting. “Oh fuck.”
“Oh what–”
Dambala reached out to yank Coyote back around. The new Weatherman brushed himself off and started picking his way over the debris with the deliberation of a spider, toward the open pit. Dambala didn’t understand half of what was going on, and it wasn’t his goddamn job to. But he’d listened enough to know that the Weatherman getting to that pit was a grade-A instance of bad shit, and their job was to not let that happen. “We got to fuckin’ go.”
Coyote scrambled to his feet and started running, faster than he had any right to. Dambala started hot on his heels, falling step by step behind. But they were both of them too goddamn slow. They couldn’t close the distance even
at a flat run, not with the Weatherman already near the lip of the pit.
Then Freki came barrel-assing out of nowhere and slammed into the Weatherman’s side. He tackled the skinny fuck to the ground and went in punching. Somehow, Dambala found a little more speed to pour into his legs. Because he remembered, he goddamn remembered what it had been like before, and there was no way it was that easy.
The Weatherman grabbed Freki’s face with his hands, holding it still. “No, don’t look–” Dambala gasped as he ran, like Freki could fucking hear him.
Freki’s fist stopped mid-blow, shaking, and blood began to slide from his ears, his nose, his eyes. Then the big man, who might as well have been Dambala’s adopted son since he’d helped Nick pick him and his twin up off the street in Tercio, went limp. The Weatherman casually pushed his form to the side as if he weighed nothing.
Dambala squeezed that wash of horror and rage at the sight into a bullet that lodged in his heart. He brought up his shotgun and fired, both barrels.
The scattering of shot stopped like it hit a wall, half a meter away from the Weatherman. And the monster turned his goddamn head toward Dambala. But he’d done his time on the interstellar service. He knew the one rule was that you never looked them in the eye. Ever. He squeezed his eyes shut and fumbled for more shells, like those would do a bit of good.
He heard Coyote yell, a savage note to his voice that he hadn’t uttered in years. There was a sound like meat slamming into rock, somehow audible over the chaos that had engulfed the camp. Dambala hazarded a glance even as he stuffed the shells into his shotgun. Coyote squared off with the Weatherman. Crimson dripped from his hands, and he wiped a smear of it across his mouth. A slash of scratches stood out vivid across the Weatherman’s face, blood obscuring his eye. The Weatherman shrieked, covering his face with his hands.
That was when Geri hit him, slamming into his back and folding him in half with sheer weight. A knife flashed in his hand and tore a hunk from the Weatherman’s sleeve, but left only the thinnest line on his skin.
“Don’t look in his eyes,” Dambala roared. He cursed himself for never passing along that lesson. But they hadn’t ever needed it here. He hadn’t wanted to admit why he knew, and now it was his goddamn fault–
The Weatherman half-threw Geri off. Coyote lunged in, striking at him again. Bullets chattered off the ground near Dambala.
“Pile in!” Coyote yelled. “We have to keep him down.”
And hell, being on top of the Weatherman would probably keep the greenbellies from shooting at them too. Not that he expected to win this fight, but maybe it would buy Hob time. Dambala waded in, wielding his shotgun like a club.
Hob came back to awareness with gravel raining down on her helmet, and she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t fucking breathe–
She ripped her helmet off and sucked in lungfuls of air. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, the pain still stabbing through her head in time with it. But she could think. She could fucking think and move and… gunshots. And screaming, howling, pounding feet. She was in the middle of a goddamn battlefield and now was not the time.
She rolled to her belly, casting around to find the Bone Collector. Through the smoke and flickering lights that remained, she saw the shadow of motorcycles near them, and Wolves sheltering behind them, using them as cover so they could fire: Maheegan, Akela, Lykaios, Hati–
“The wall!” she shouted. Croaked, more like. But loud enough that the nearest, Lykaios, shouted back, “Ain’t a wall no more.”
Hob looked to see the wreckage, trying to puzzle it into something that made sense in her head. “The fuck…” No, she could get that story later. It didn’t matter how it happened, just that it had happened. She felt fingers close on her jacket sleeve and looked to see the Bone Collector, his face haggard.
“Need to get… the Well,” he whispered.
The gunfire around them was only growing. Hob made a quick mental calculation and then dragged them both to the side, behind the slim cover of Lykaios’s motorcycle.
“Shit!” Lykaios said, trying to give them room.
“We’re gonna take your bike,” Hob said, leaving no room for discussion. There was no time, and she couldn’t feel the fire any more, with her head pounding and numb by turns. They’d probably still get their asses shot if they rode, but at least they’d cover that insurmountable distance faster. “You cuddle up with Akela. Throw everything you got at them, buy us some time.”
Lykaios cussed a blue streak and sprinted the short distance to hunker behind Akela’s motorcycle. Hob checked what she could safely see on Lykaios’s bike. It had already been shot to hell, but it’d run enough to get them a few hundred meters. She dragged the Bone Collector upright. He looked like he might vomit again. “I’m gonna get up first,” she said. “Then you get in front of me. Gonna run you in. Got it?”
He nodded. “He’s so close,” he whispered. “I can hear him. Reaching.”
Must be the Weatherman, Hob realized. Like they didn’t have enough fucking problems. Well, she could only worry about one thing at a time. If she got the Bone Collector there fast enough, maybe the rest would take care of itself. He’d never been clear on what might happen, exactly, but it was the only chance they had. “I’m goin’. Get your shit together.”
She reached up enough to get the motorcycle going, ignoring the unhappy, uneven whine of the engine, the sound of sparking. It didn’t have to last long. She slid her leg over, then reached down and pulled the Bone Collector up, throwing him over the battery stack with brute force. She gunned the motor, almost running into Akela’s bike in the process, and swerved them out of there.
The first bullet hit Hob in the shoulder. That wasn’t so bad. It hurt, it felt like getting hit with a hammer, but she didn’t need her goddamn shoulder. The next one slammed through her leg. The third lodged in her gut.
Her hands stopped working quite right and she lost control of the motorcycle. Somehow, she shoved the Bone Collector free before the bike crashed down, pinning her leg. Oh fuck, everything hurt. Everything fucking hurt and she couldn’t hardly breathe around it. She turned her head to see blood pooling under her already, and her legs had gone numb, which seemed like an improvement. She looked at the Bone Collector, still sprawled where she’d shoved him. It’d taken him damn longer to recover than her before, and they didn’t have that time. “You motherfucker,” she yelled. “Ain’t this enough of my blood yet?”
He rolled, uncoordinated, toward her. Bullets dug tracks through the salt, tore trails in the dust. Hob fumbled one of her revolvers free of her belt and dragged herself around enough to fire a few shots in the right general direction. So close. They were so goddamn close.
The Bone Collector came to her, the idiot, he should have been going toward the Well. He cupped his hand in the pooling blood and raised it to his lips. Then he reached toward her.
She slapped his hand away with the butt of her revolver. “Ain’t time for your nonsense,” she shouted, even though every word ached and burned deep in her gut. “Fuckin’ go!”
For once in his goddamn life, the Bone Collector listened to her without her having to punch him in the face. He stumbled to his feet, and limped for the Well.
Hob pulled herself up to sitting, leaning against the downed motorcycle. She balanced her arm on the battery stack and half-turned to squeeze off a few more rounds in what she hoped was the right direction in all that confusion. The revolver clicked empty, and she fumbled a quick loader from her pocket.
Another bullet tore through her chest and embedded itself in the battery stack.
“Fuck,” she gasped, but didn’t have the breath anymore. The Bone Collector was forty meters from the Well. She knocked the shells out of her revolver and somehow got the quick loader lined up.
Another bullet. She knew it from the impact. She couldn’t really feel anything any more, or even hear anything over the roar in her ears. The Bone Collector was twenty meters from the gaping, steaming pit. She
dragged herself around to fire toward the southeast, since that’s where the last shot that hit her came from. She saw Maheegan sprawled out across the salt, making weak swimming motions in his own pool of blood. She saw miners, still streaming in from the north of the camp, cut down into limp tumbles. More streamed past like ghosts in the swirling smoke, mouths open to howl.
Ten meters. In her periphery, she saw a shape surge out of the billowing cloud like a thing of nightmare – the Weatherman, his suit torn and gray with dust. Two men – Geri and Dambala, oh, it was nice to see Bala was still alive – tackled him to the ground.
Hob dragged her revolver around to train on the Weatherman, just in case. She tried to stoke up the fire in her blood, searching for that roaring flame that had helped her kill Mr Green before. But she didn’t have an explosion waiting in her belly, just lead and her life draining slowly away. She saw Coyote rise up from the melee, slick to the elbows with blood and grinning his damn fool grin. He opened his hand and flung away a chunk of something red and wet. An unearthly scream cut the air, the Weatherman now slick and red still crawling toward the edge of the pit.
The Bone Collector paused at that edge, heedless of the bleeding horror crawling toward him, to look back at her. His lips moved into some message that she didn’t fucking care about because he needed to move–
He spread his arms and fell forward, like he was diving.
Then he was gone.
Well, Hob thought with a sick mingling of horror and hysterical amusement, what the hell else had she expected to happen? One-handed, she fumbled her cigarette case out of her pocket and opened it. A bullet cut through her bicep and she dropped it, all of the cigarettes scattering. “Cocksuckers,” she muttered with lips that tasted like her own blood. Painfully, she transferred her revolver to that hand and managed to reach one of the cigarettes. She tucked it between her lips and lit it with the last flickering spark in her blood.
