by Cameron, TR
He had Kayleigh and her mentor Emerson to thank for that. The older man was even better than the tech at making weapons and gadgets, which was saying something. He’d continued working with them on the down-low to improve his gear since their relocation.
A Dark Elf was nearby, the very picture of a stereotypical Drow. Black leather armor covered his body, and his head had the expected white hair, pointed ears, and mean snarl. Rath had met many who didn’t carry that attitude, including Diana, who was part Drow. So, he figured it was a choice, one he wasn’t particularly impressed with. He raced at the man and shouted, “I have a very particular set of skills.”
Lately, he’d been on a Liam Neeson movie binge and appreciated the actor’s no-nonsense approach to combat situations. The elf sent a blast of fire at him, but the magic deflector in Rath’s vest sucked the flames away without letting any escape to damage him. The faceted crystal didn’t make a cracking sound, so he knew it was good to deal with at least one more incoming attack. It wasn’t guaranteed to fully block the next spell since the Drow’s first try partially compromised it. Which must not have been very powerful to begin with. Loser.
He reached his target and slapped the batons out at the man’s legs, forcing him to backpedal to avoid having his shins broken. Rath continued, “Give up, and that’ll be the end of it.” Not a perfect quote, but a little poetic license is appropriate.
Daggers appeared in the Drow’s hands. He slashed both of them down at Rath from the outside in, trying to carve into his chest. The FAM’s—Federal Agents of Magic, one of several nicknames they used for themselves—vests were better than the standard versions at defending against knives, but they still weren’t perfect. Besides, no idiot criminal is going to slice up my gear.
He flicked both batons up in rising crescents to smack into the man’s wrists, driving them outward enough that he could dash through the opening he’d created. He leapt into the air and smashed the top of his head into the bottom of his opponent’s jaw. The unexpected blow knocked him backward.
Rath saw a few stars from the impact, but fortunately, trolls had pretty thick heads. Well, at least this troll. Gotta protect the big brain.
He chuckled at his joke and stabbed out with the batons as soon as he landed. Both of them connected with the Dark Elf’s chest, and the electric tips caused him to jitter in place before falling senseless to the floor. His knives clattered beside him. Rath spared a glance to ensure the man was out, then ran for the portal nearest Diana, which continued to discharge enemies at an alarming rate.
* * *
Cara stopped in her tracks and shook her head at the sight ahead of her. “Are you guys twins?” They look more like clones, really.
The pair of elves standing six feet away nodded in perfect synchronicity. Both wore fancy white leather, somewhere between biker gear and actual armor, and carried paired swords. Their facial structure was the same, the only difference being that one’s long white hair held more curl than the other. She said, “That second Matrix movie was a long time ago. You should maybe consider finding a new shtick.”
They scowled in unison, and the one on the left said, “You’ll pay for that.”
The one on the right finished, “Bitch.”
Cara shook her head. “You should know; I do not like that word.” She drew her pistols and strode forward, firing two-handed, three rounds at each of the elves. They spun in opposite directions to avoid the bullets, clearly intending to come at her from both sides with their swords. “Oh no, you don’t,” she growled. She shoved the guns back in their holsters and launched herself into the air on a blast of force magic.
Flight wasn’t something she’d ever been good at, but Diana had insisted that everyone practice the things they weren’t good at, and now she was capable of managing small, controlled hops. She wouldn’t be flying rooftop to rooftop like some of the magicals she’d met, but her skills were adequate to get her out of the way of their swords as they slashed in at the space she’d occupied.
As her feet hit the floor, she blasted darts of flame from her fingers, sending five at each of them. One dropped his sword and waved, creating a slightly translucent magical barrier in front of him that intercepted and dissipated her offensive magic. She muttered, “Okay, you want to get up close and personal? Let’s do it, then.”
Cara drew her paired daggers, each about the length of her forearm, from the sheaths on her thighs. As always, Angel was in her right hand and Demon in her left. The blades’ inhabitants spoke to her as she moved forward, reminding her of the instructions they’d given her in the past about fighting longer weapons. The sentient weapons were very concerned with her combat ability and constantly sought to make her better. Sometimes, though, not at the best moments.
She let the message, Not right now, please, float through her mind and engaged the twins. Her angle of approach to the nearest prevented the more distant one from engaging her without going around his partner. Her opponent was skilled, not randomly slashing, but instead bringing his left blade down in a high arc to force her to commit to blocking it, then stabbing quickly with the other, seeking to pierce her stomach. Metal rang against metal as she intercepted the first easily and the second with a slightly more frantic block.
Cara whipped her left leg up in a crescent kick that smacked into the inside of his elbow and drove his right arm and the sword it held out to the side, then stabbed in with her left dagger, keeping his other weapon at bay with her right. He shifted, stepping out and back with one foot, and her thrust passed in front of his now perpendicular body. He chambered and kicked out at her every bit as quickly as her attack, and she accepted the blow without giving up any ground.
The impact flowed through the vest into her tight stomach muscles, which she’d braced for the strike. She was surprised at how much it still hurt. The pain wasn’t relevant at the moment, only her next move.
She threw herself forward, not wanting to surrender her position inside his blade’s reach, and slammed the pommel of her right-hand dagger down at his face while punching into his shoulder with her left fist. Both blows connected. The stun wasn’t powerful enough to affect him through his armor, but the metal smashing into his cheekbone was entirely sufficient to shatter it.
He stepped back reflexively with a cry. She pulled her arms in, then snapped them back out, thrusting forward with both blades. They speared through the chest of his leather tunic, and he fell, her weapons sliding easily out of his armor as he tumbled away.
Her instincts, or maybe the daggers, screamed a warning in her head. She dropped and spun backward, sticking out a foot to sweep the legs of the other elf, who had moved in on her blind side while she was fighting the first. He jumped over her leg and slammed his swords down at her with a triumphant look on his face.
Cara released her daggers and called up a staff of force that stretched between her hands, intercepting both weapons a couple of inches away from her head. She rose as he tried to withdraw the blades, keeping the magical rod in contact with them, and pistoned her knee into his solar plexus.
He gasped and coughed, his attention fully devoted to trying to remember how to breathe. She put her foot down, drove her other knee into his groin, then delivered a spinning back kick to his temple as he crumpled. He flew sideways to stretch out on the floor.
She reached out with telekinesis and pulled the daggers back to her hands. A glance toward movement in the corner of her eye made the blood inside her turn to ice at the same moment Diana said, “Shit. They’re not only moving the artifacts. They’re using them.”
Chapter Three
The appearance of tentacled enemies changed the calculus for the battle. Diana snapped, “No restraint,” and ran at the nearest. Her senses whispered a warning, and she threw herself to her left in a flip to evade the bolts of shadow magic that attempted to strike her from behind. She cursed and circled another enemy, using them as a barrier to keep the shadow bolts away from her, and found a clear path toward th
e foe she sought.
He was a tall, red-haired elf with a long scar on one side of his face. The whitened ridge on his skin was less impressive than the shadow tentacles spiraling from his left arm and seeking Rath’s nimble form. She growled, “Get away from my partner,” and used her free hand to whip out a line of force. It wrapped itself around the tentacles, grabbing them and pulling them from their target. The troll, who’d presumably detected who she was going after and decided to help, dashed in with his batons and swung at the tendrils she’d missed with her snare.
The enemy knocked one of the weapons out of his hand, and it flew aside with a clatter. Diana let the force line go, pulled the pistol from her right thigh drop holster, and walked steadily toward the elf, pulling the trigger in carefully measured bursts. As soon as she’d drawn, he’d responded with a sneer and a wave of his non-artifact arm to create a shadow shield.
While that might’ve been effective against normal rounds, she and her team always loaded their pistols with anti-magic bullets, and usually the rifles as well. The first round punched through the barrier and took him in the shoulder. The next struck him mid-chest. She lowered her aim and put one into his hip, and he cried out and fell to the floor in agony. “Tie him up, Rambo.”
Rath ran to the fallen elf and managed to get a zip tie around first his ankles, then his flailing hands, immobilizing him. The pain of the wounds was doubtless interfering with his magical control, as tentacles kept trying and failing to materialize from the artifact. Working as intended. She’d chosen the hip shot knowing that breaking that bone in particular would be extraordinarily painful. The troll took a longer zip tie and connected the other two, leaving the elf bound in an arc, almost forming a circle because Rath had pulled the bonds so tight.
Diana nodded. “Good work, buddy. On to the next.”
* * *
Diana’s command let her team’s full fury loose. Cara sheathed her daggers and jerked up her rifle. She dashed for cover behind a bunch of boxes, then peeked up over the top to sight her enemy.
The nearest foe was a dwarf, conspicuous due to the strange topknot he wore that funneled his hair into a small column before letting it spill out like a weird fountain. A plethora of objects entwined in his beard—Is that bone?—added to the effect. He was surrounded by a weaving shield of shadow tentacles, courtesy of the artifact in his left arm. His right hand held an ax, and he was in motion, angling in the direction of where she’d last seen Khan.
Even if the demolitions expert weren’t currently sharing her bed on occasion, she would have still felt compelled to defend him from the threat. He didn’t have magical abilities unless you counted his explosives proficiency, which was seemingly more than human. She pulled the trigger and held it down, dispatching rounds at the dwarf. He was smart, or lucky, and ducked out of the way at the right moment to avoid the stream of bullets.
Her rifle barrel tracked him as he moved, but the rounds buried themselves in the side of a dilapidated box truck. With a snarl of frustration, she put one hand on the boxes in front of her and vaulted them, bringing her gun in line with where she’d last seen the dwarf. A creaking warned her, and she wrapped herself in a cocoon of force magic an instant before the truck scraped along the floor sideways at high speed.
It slammed into her and hurled her into the air, sending her crashing into another stack of crates a quarter of the way across the warehouse. The upper ones fell on top of her, straining her magical strength as she maintained her shield against them. Cara had never been the most powerful magical, which had led her to prefer technological modes of combat where possible. Under Nylotte’s tutelage, she’d been developing her magical pool. It was far better than it had been when she joined Diana’s team, but it still wasn’t sufficient to handle an entire battle using only arcane powers.
Tony murmured in her ear, “I’ve got you.” A pair of shots rang out from his position on the roof, and a moment later, he said, “Target down. Watch out. The artifact’s free.” That warning informed the team that the host had died, and the physical legacy of Rhadzon’s evil phase would be seeking a replacement. None of them wanted that burden, regardless of the power that came along with it.
They’d had many a late-night conversation in the vimana on that topic over drinks, knowing they were a minute’s walk away from the vault that held dozens of the magical items. Despite the mandate to turn them over to the government, Cara estimated Diana had surrendered maybe one in three. When asked why, the team’s leader said, “I don’t trust them with this much power. We’ll keep our own eyes on it.”
No one on the team disagreed, at least not in public. She wholeheartedly shared the view and probably would’ve turned over fewer. Finally, the boxes stopped falling. Cara used telekinesis to push them off her, then rose to her feet. “Stark, vector?”
“At your two o’clock, pair of magicals. Melee weapons.”
She nodded and hefted her rifle. Experience had taught her that ranged fire was the single best answer to enemies looking to engage in hand-to-hand combat. “On my way.”
* * *
Rath retrieved his baton from where the tentacled scumbag had thrown it and frowned at the mangled tip. “You got what you deserved, jerk,” he muttered and turned to find a Kilomea bearing down on him with a giant club in its hand. Correction, giant spiked club, Rath thought as the object swung through the air at him. He leapt backward in a somersault, taking advantage of his three-foot body’s natural agility to get him moving.
In midair, though, he started to grow. By the time his feet were back on the floor, some pieces of his gear had fallen away, and others were hanging from his now seven-foot form, which was as heavily muscled as the Kilomea, making them a good match. He dropped his batons and swept forward, grabbing his opponent’s hands before he could start a backswing.
Diana had been teaching him the various martial arts she knew, and one of the things he’d learned was a series of effective joint locks to use from any angle. With a deft twist and a lift, he locked out the Kilomea’s elbow and used it to propel him into motion. Like any creature with an ounce of sense, his enemy preferred not to have his elbow joint shattered by being bent in the wrong direction, so he moved.
Rath reversed his hold suddenly, yanking down and forcing the Kilomea to leap and flip to avoid that same breakage. The move caused him to fly out of Rath’s grasp, but that was fine because the club stayed behind. When the Kilomea rose to his feet again, he faced an angry, seven-foot, muscular, purple-haired troll with a spiked club. The troll laughed as he remembered a similar object being used in Escape from New York and said, “Call me Snake.”
The Kilomea tilted his head as if he didn’t understand, and Rath frowned sadly. “Uncivilized. Uncivilized weapon, uncivilized person. Sad.” He hurled the club up to the catwalk that followed the building’s outer walls, a story and a half above, and ran at the Kilomea. His opponent braced and intercepted the first punch Rath threw his way. A grudging admiration appeared for the other creature, as he hadn’t only blocked the blow, he’d caught it.
Then the feeling faded as the giant tried to crush his hand in a typical display of dominance. Strength isn’t always the answer, dumbass. Rath thrust his left fist in at a punch toward the Kilomea’s chest. When his foe’s free arm moved in to block, as expected, Rath pulled the attack back then punched down, slamming his fist into the creature’s groin.
While he’d lost the connection to the battery on the rear of his belt when he’d changed forms, the techs had specially designed Rath’s gloves to hold a single charge when detached from power. The stun blast went off on impact, and the creature folded and fell to the floor, keening in agony. The troll bent and tapped him on the temple with the other glove, sending him into a merciful unconsciousness. “Idiot.”
He stood and ran toward Diana, who looked like she was in trouble.
* * *
I might be in trouble. Diana had charged one enemy, only to find herself suddenly in the middle of
three, each of them with an artifact. She’d thrown herself into the mental connection with Fury, and together they spun, dodged, and sliced, intercepting and severing tentacles that sought to capture her. They achieved only a stalemate because while having the tentacles cut hopefully at least caused her foes pain, the artifacts created more to replace the damaged ones almost instantly.
She lunged a few times, trying for a killing blow to the throat or heart, but the trio operated well as a unit, her target fading back as his pair of allies used the opportunity to attack her. She had options, including grenades on her belt that might work as enough of a distraction to allow her to strike, but the arrival of her partner in his largest form forestalled the need.
Rath slammed into the one on her right, leaving the ones at twelve and nine o’clock momentarily surprised. Giant troll with purple hair will do that. Diana took advantage of the moment to slash at the nearest, twisting to angle her blade perfectly to slice into and through the man’s arm, just above where the artifact rested near his wrist. The limb fell, and immediately a physical object shaped like a black widow spider emerged from it, grew legs, and scuttled back toward its host.
Diana kicked it, sending it flying. A wave of her free hand summoned a dome of force to cover it when it landed, and she detailed a piece of her mind to the task of maintaining that barrier as she continued to fight. She spun, accepting the grasp of her last foe’s tentacles around her waist in trade for the opportunity to slam her elbow into his face. He stumbled back, and she smacked him in the head with the flat of her sword, almost a baseball swing, knocking him stumbling further.
Before he could regain his balance, her shock glove snapped as it smashed in his nose. He fell, unconscious. Diana looked around to find that Rath’s opponent was also down, and most of the enemies who were capable of doing so had fled through their portals, leaving the battlefield to them.
