by P. S. Power
Suddenly she felt her body move to the right, fast and hard. A shot went through the space she'd been, causing the wall of the building behind her to blow up, pelting her with stone like shrapnel. The man, her friend, she guessed, had kicked her out of the way and moved to keep fighting.
After a bit, others started joining them in the fight. People coming through the void from Underwood as expected, but also the remaining guard, and shop keepers fought. Some with whatever they could pick up, sticks and rocks. Some with weapons that a modern army could have only wished for.
It was a stand still except where Kate and the strange man fought. There death followed them. Kate kept up with the other as best she could, until Plenthi the Demon ran out into the street where they fought, a bunch of the large invisible things this time and passed the man a small silver box. He yelled at the man, telling him how to use it as the white form of the Demon was picked up and tossed aside, crushed and ruined.
The box turned out to be a blade of sorts, kind of like what she was doing herself, only it seemed flatter and broader, making a green sheen in the air in front of his hand. It cut just as well though. After that, the creatures just started to die, silver armor or invisible, they fell. Kate had to hide more than once, to avoid being shot, jumping out to slash something and then hiding again, but the man, wearing nothing but a t-shirt, soaked with blood, red for all that these things were clearly not Human or even mammal, and armed with nothing but what a Demon had handed him as his dying act, didn't hide. He killed and destroyed, moving from one being to another, not moving faster than she could, but doing it so well that nothing seemed to touch him.
That, she saw, wasn't perfectly true, he had some wounds, but he didn't seem to notice them, and he didn't slow down or stop. His movements weren't rhythmic she noticed. No, he struck without pattern, without form that she could recognize. It wasn't that he did anything wrong, but just, she saw, that for all her practice, she'd never really learned to fight at all.
She popped up then, and kept to her own pattern, killing and hiding. They fought for hours, until Kate thought she'd die from exhaustion. The smiling man moving without end, stopping only once, to suddenly run behind her, calling to her and asking her to cover him. He dove into a building that was collapsing and came out fifteen seconds later, dragging a group of beings she'd never seen before out. They looked like people, but odd to her, covered with bag like clothing, and strange hats. Their faces a pale blue-gray and instead of hair, they had what looked to her like stubby tentacles on their heads.
Seconds after he got them out, something hit the building and finished collapsing it. He yelled at them to run and pushed them back the way that Kate and he had come. She jumped up and slashed at another silver being, this one had a slight greenish tinge and looked bigger to her. About half way between what they fought before and the smaller silver ones that were still four or five times bigger than she was.
It dodged her blow and pointed a weapon at her, which took her left leg off at the knee. She stood for a moment, releasing the energy from around her hands in shock, then fell to the side, gasping. The pain so intense that it turned her vision white for a moment, then red. It faded into black. Kate came to a short time later, she figured it was a short time at least, given how she was still alive. She wanted to take her remaining shoe off before she changed, but couldn't reach it without too much pain, so she shifted into Kyle as she was. It destroyed her clothing. Her shirt kind of stretching to fit though and her underwear, a silky black g-string, stayed on, though neither were comfortable. Her right shoe burst, the foot inside it way too big for it suddenly. That hurt, but she didn't think anything was broken.
Kyle took the shirt off, it ripped when he did it, having been pushed too close to destruction anyway. After a moment he ripped off the g-string too. It didn't help at all and kind of pinched at his groin. He hid for a few seconds, fear coursing through him. His fucking leg had been blown off, after all, so he figured that he deserved the moment, but he didn't let it go on long. He reformed the mental blades and started fighting again, hoping he'd live through the day.
If the man, who'd kept fighting the whole time, working his way down the street, wondered where the naked guy had come from, he didn't ask the question out loud. He just accepted that this person fought like the girl before and kept going. They fought like this for hours. Finally Zack and Claire found them.
“Kyle... We've held the city, but you and your friend are the only ones that have proved effective yet... We've taken a few others, of the large sort, but only a few. Chris is bringing people in to fight from everywhere... But we can't find Don.” She sounded sad about the whole thing, especially Don.
Kyle had told her about Don having something else to do, but she shook her head half way through his attempted explanation.
“No, Kyle... that's what I mean. He's been taken, and no one knows where he is. We think he's been grabbed by the same people that killed the others on campus.” She looked like she expected the nude boy, covered with wounds and blood from battle, to leave then and run to his friend.
“Fuck! We have to hold here first. We need to get to him as fast as we can. Are Willet and his people looking for Don yet?”
This got a grim nod from the Vampire.
Troy's armored form, an iridescent bluish color ran up to Kyle and the man. He held out something in his hands, one to each person. He didn't say what it was, but when each took the one offered to them he yelled at them to swallow it. It was huge for just swallowing, a rectangle about the size of two sugar cubes side by side.
“Swallow them.” He ordered, sounding rather commanding. Kyle took his and the man next to him followed suit. It choked him, expanding in his throat. Growing to fill the space. For about a half minute he wondered if Troy was trying to kill him. Finally able to take a breath, he looked down and saw that he wore armor. Fake looking, totally black armor, like the kind that Beatrice had worn before.
The man next to him had the same thing on and looked at his hands, then flexed and moved around. The blade thing he'd had in his hand before now rested on the back of his right hand, but worked anyway.
Troy's flat glass helmet came up, his chin jutting a bit, “Courtesy of Beatrice. Nano armor or something similar enough that I don't know the technical difference. It's strong and light. You can tell it to put itself away and call it out inside a second. I don't know how to do that, but Bea said you'd get the hang of it when you needed those functions.”
He turned and ran back to where he'd come from, someplace much closer to the Nexus they'd all come in from than the place they were now.
Zack stepped forward and put his hand out, placing it on the black armor, on the flat of Kyle's stomach, passing energy until he stepped back. The other man smiled at them and took off running toward the loudest sounds of combat.
The battle was hard. Harder than anything Kyle had thought possible. Bodies littered the streets, mainly not Human or Alede, but they were dead all the same, and didn't need to be. After a while he had to shut his mind off, leaving only his ability to fight active, focusing on nothing else. It took time to reach that state and he didn't want to leave, the hours later that the man next to him called his name.
“Um, Kyle? I think we're done for now. The enemy have all died or run away, and people are calling for you. Time to come back now. It's safe.” He noticed the man beside him, the terrifying man that had saved him over and over again. Even now he couldn't look at him without seeing a cloud of blood coming from around him. He swallowed and nodded.
The other didn't touch him, just walking away, calling to him every now and then, to make sure he remembered to walk after him, as hard as that was to do. He led him toward the Nexus, and it took a while to get there, being over several miles away. He heard something as he walked, but had to block it out. It sounded too much like screaming to him to bear right now.
When they reached the Nexus Hathe was surrounded by blue clad translators, all with sp
lashes of red-brown on them all, some worse than others. Veils off, showing their white faces and big, black colored eyes. They bowed low to them, so Kyle bowed in return, followed by the other man, whose name he still didn't know.
Standing he looked at the man hard, “I missed your name... And if you try to tell me that you're just nobody special, I'm going to nickname you Noodles. I can make it stick too...” He tried to smile, but nothing in his face moved.
The man did manage a smile and held it, “Oh, right... People like names for some reason. Well, call me... Cavendish. That should serve as well as anything.”
Kyle nodded and resisted giving the man, Cavendish, a hug. Terrified of him or not, the being had carried the whole day. Zack told them that only the Djinn had managed to hold out too, even killing some of the enemy. He kept watching Cavendish warily, swallowing occasionally, not so much afraid, but still acknowledging what stood in front of him.
It took Kyle about five minutes to figure out how to put the armor away, not knowing what it would do to him if he tried to change in it. Then he got back to his other form. Kaitlyn. She felt a bit of relief when both legs were there, attached and strong. She'd known they would be, but the fear had remained. The sense of loss that had claimed to her darker impulses that she was ruined forever, with no hope of being herself again.
That... Was probably just the honest truth, she knew. No one seeing even part of what she had that day could ever be what they were before it. Unless they were so broken already that nothing could impact their minds.
Cavendish put his own armor away and she worked her way over to him, fighting her own fear the whole time, but making herself wrap her arms around him anyway, just hoping he wouldn't kill her for it. He hugged her back warmly and smiled sadly at her, letting her go sooner than she thought he wanted to, but seeing how she shook and trembled at his touch.
A sense of pure loneliness washed over her, coming from his direction, but only for a moment. Then he started looking around, for threats that no one else could see. Ready to fight them all, if he had to.
It was heartrending to watch, but what else could be done, except go on as best they could?
Claire walked over and started to speak, but Zack put out his hand.
“No, now we need to go and find Don. I don't know what he was doing, but... I'm worried.” He didn't say anything else, just headed to the node in the back, motioning with his right hand for anyone that was coming to join them.
Hathe and most of the others really didn't want Kate and Cavendish to leave, but the dangerous seeming man just smiled at them and told them they'd come right back if they were needed. "Right now our friend needs us. We have to go and find him."
The way he said it sounded almost sad, as if he didn't think they could help Don at all. Kate hoped that was just fatigue, or her own imagination, not some kind of prescience. That the man had something like that going on was simply clear to anyone that had watched the day's events.
She didn't have the paper Riley's aunt had given her, that being lost during the fighting, along with her clothes. She looked down and tried to summon the armor again, which came, flowing darkly out of her skin itself, covering her in an instant. It looked a little odd for a college campus, but it covered her well enough to keep the police off of them.
Focusing she tightened her concentration until she could follow the lines in her head to the paper she'd had before and recited the address they needed. She could see the paper in her hand as if it were actually there, so she was pretty sure she'd gotten it right. Claire pulled a pad and wrote the address down.
Then they moved out in force.
Kate took Cavendish with her, trembling or not, because if Don wasn't all right, she planned to make certain that whoever had hurt him wouldn't survive the day and if that meant unleashing this incarnation of death upon them, then so be it. If she couldn't do it herself, she'd make sure it was still done.
Cavendish smiled and offered his arm to her.
She took it and went to search for her friend. Wherever he was.
Chapter eleven
Kate ignored everyone for a moment. No one made an impression on her for nearly a whole second, then she moved. There were things that had to be done, and being tired, or hurting inside herself wouldn't help anyone.
Wanting to get to Don before anything else, she gave Willet the address, his scruffy electronics friend taking it from him without asking and running, calling out that he had a car and GPS. They all followed him, every one of them, including Riley's aunt and a guy that had just happened to be in the hallway when they'd gotten there, talking loudly about what they'd all feared had happened.
The car, a white van, quickly filled with people. Looking scared, but determined the boy from the hall followed, ending up next to Britney in the back. Tucked next to some electronic gear. Blaine was next to Kate and Cavendish was pushed into her side, creating terror for her and everyone else in the back. If the kid had jumped in feeling that he probably had a real reason to be there, so she didn't ask. For all she knew he might be the one that saved the day.
Blaine didn't know why he was there though, and was probably wondering if they should throw him out before they got where they were going. It was all over his face when Kate looked over.
“Um, hey...” He started softly, looking at the boy, who had light brown hair, and a slightly soft look to him. Not fat, but young and clearly not an athlete. Average looking in both face and body, and not remarkable at all. “Do you know what we're doing here?”
He asked this gently, not trying to scare the guy more than he was already. The guy nodded slowly, and seeing that Blaine wanted more from him finally explained.
“You're going to save your friend, who you think has been taken by the people that killed Rachel. I'm going to find them and kill them if I can.” The boy said this softly, with steel underneath, and looked at Blaine as if waiting for him to tell him he couldn't.
Blaine snorted, “Well, you may have to kick the corpses by the time this crew is done with them, but I won't take that from you.”
Kate wondered who Rachel was, but didn't want to ask, because it seemed like it would hurt the kid's feelings. Given everything, she was probably the liberal arts student that none of them knew. This boy must have been her lover. He was at least her friend, regardless. That gave him as much right to be there as any of the rest of them, at least to her mind. Cavendish just smiled, his face relaxed and his attention going to everyone around himself, constantly.
They rode then in silence, for over half an hour. The driver didn't go slowly either, meaning that this address had to be at least forty miles away from the school. It turned out to be an isolated cabin, back away from the road, hidden behind a low hill. It was a great spot for someone to have their little murder house. Only a sicko would pick the place for that, but she feared that it really fit the situation at hand.
They piled out of the van quickly, Cavendish simply going to the front door and opening it, finding it not even locked. Shooting started, but ended within seconds. Smiling death had walked into the room after all.
“Come on!” She called running in.
The inside of the house was bare, except for some decently high end camera equipment and lights. That and a bed cast in light from the window in the center of the room. In the middle of it, the girl that Don had been turned into laid. Tied face down. There was a clear plastic bag over her head, tied tightly with a white cord at the neck. Kate ran to her ripping desperately at the crap over her mouth and nose.
Cavendish and Blaine did something to several men and the one woman in the room, who went silent within moments.
Britney screamed.
“Don!” Tears in her eyes she pushed Kate out of the way and started keening.
Kate summoned a small energy loop and sliced through the ropes quickly. The boy from the van ran in and looked around for a second, finally running to Don and pulling her to the floor. Britney hitting at him. Which got i
gnored for the first few seconds.
“We have to get her on a hard surface for CPR!” He hit Don on the chest hard and started forcing air into her lungs, breathing for her.
“Come on, breathe.” He yelled at her when he rose to take a breath and push on her chest her chest rose when he breathed for her, but the lips were still blue.
“Fucking breathe!” He screamed at the girl on the floor.
He didn't stop, keeping this up for over full minute, until Don finally took a huge gasping breath. The brown haired girl shuddered, taking several deep, wracking breaths let color rapidly return to her lips and face.
“Don!” Britney yelled again, this time sounding relieved if still worried. She pushed the boy out of the way again, and grabbed the girl halfway off the dirty pine boards she'd laid on, sobbing. Huge things that pulled at Kate's heart. It hurt, but there was happiness in it too. She hadn't really thought that she'd still be able to feel after all of that.
The boy stood and walked over to where Blaine and Cavendish had the people in the house trapped, held against the wall, cowering from the pain that doing anything but cowering caused them. One tried to move, only to find a foot striking a shoulder perfectly to cause a dislocation. That was Cavendish, who wasn't smiling anymore.
That was probably a very bad sign.
After a few moments Kate recognized them as most of the staff of McC's. The woman from the back room, in a t-shirt this time, rather than the ugly red suede thing she'd had on when they'd gotten Britney's tape from her, sat unmoving, crying as if she had a right to. That hadn't been earned yet, in either suffering or torment.
She looked up at Kate and Britney and called for help.
“I'm not with these men, the made me do it! I've been being held prisoner all this time...”
Kate called for Zack, using a line of energy and thought, though she spoke the words at the same time for everyone else to hear. He simply appeared in the air in front of them, then pulled half a dozen people through the rift that he'd built into the death room. The boy from the school looked on, wide eyed after the first few people showed up, but he didn't say anything.
