Sanded boards were beneath our feet—smoothed enough so we could kneel to get shots off while being protected behind metal guards spaced evenly apart. I wondered how the battlements and walls would hold up under attacks by wizards. A half-moon rose on the horizon, helping our troops see better. They'd be able to locate the enemy when they came to the walls. Of course, with this particular enemy, that might prove to be too late.
The military station covered the northern edge of Crown City; it was the edge facing the desert, from which the enemy would come. Only a small space on the eastern end belonged to the city proper. "The east end has two of the Prince's wizards guarding it, leaving us short on power," Delvin explained quietly beside me. "They'll open a path if needed should the Prince be forced to flee."
I nodded—we had a little time to talk as we scanned the desert for signs of the approaching enemy. I wasn't surprised, either, that an escape plan was in place for the Prince. It sounded as if he and his wives might be the only ones guarded if things went badly for us. Everybody else had to fend for themselves. Bel paced behind us on the narrow defender's ledge. He was working out his nervousness, I think. Delvin was keeping his at bay by talking quietly.
"Who taught you to cook?" he asked. His question surprised me.
"I learned from watching my brothers—the first thing I made successfully at age nine was pastry dough. My brother beat me because it was better than his."
"Re, don't tell me anything more." Delvin focused on scanning the desert for enemy. I shrugged at his words. I didn't know why I'd said that about Edan—it wasn't something I'd told anyone else.
"Delvin, there—do you see?" I'd caught the first pinpoints of light.
"Re—I don't see anything," he hissed. Bel was beside me in a tick, kneeling at my side and squinting into the night.
"Re, you must be mistaken, I don't see anything either," Bel whispered. I was seeing more than one set of lights, now. Many more, in fact.
"Bel, I see them," I insisted. Was I hallucinating, again? Imagining something, because I was looking so hard for it?
"She's not wrong, Bel." Aris was behind Delvin, staring out at the desert where I'd seen the lights. "They're blocking them from your sight, somehow. Re, I'm not sure how you're seeing this, but I'm grateful. Delvin, hand me your rifle. Re, when I say, we'll both start shooting. When the enemy falls, the rogue wizards will determine that we've found a way around their wizardry and drop the shields. On my mark." Aris lifted Delvin's rifle into his hands. I took careful aim, waiting for Aris to give the signal. It came all too soon. I fired as Aris did, and lights winked out. I fired again and again, as quickly as my weapon would shoot. Every wizard around me drew in a breath as the shield around the enemy dropped and lights appeared everywhere. Close, too—closer than we wanted.
The Prince's wizards were shouting down the lines of troops along the defender's ledge, commanding them to fire and pointing the way. Some hit their marks, most didn't. Only the wizards and I were accurate as we took down the enemy. The lights appeared as a sea of winking points as they heaved toward the walls of the station. I wanted to tell my friends—the few that I had there—that I was proud to serve with them. I was beginning to have no hope of survival—our enemies were greater in numbers than any of us had suspected.
Steady, Reah. Those words inserted themselves into my mind as I kept firing. My actions were automatic, now. The wizards and I made some inroads into the numbers where we were stationed along the wall, but elsewhere, things were not going so well. The enemy was within a few ticks of reaching the walls of the station.
Bel set his rifle aside and sent out power blasts. That cleared the walls for a few ticks until more of the enemy came. Two more blasts were sent out. Although Bel was killing the enemy in swaths, it didn't seem to matter. More came. I kept firing. The whistling noise came, indicating a wizard's attack. Section leaders shouted for their charges to get down. We all made ourselves as small a target as possible when an entire section of the wall was blasted open, raining stone blocks and dead troops upon the ones farther inside. The enemy raced toward that section, causing the troops on either side of the breach to run, even as their commanders and section leaders were shouting at them to stay at their posts.
* * *
Aris had little time to react to this turn of events and employed the relocation spell on the Rangers and Reah, positioning them inside the blasted-out portion of the wall. They recovered quickly, firing their rifles at the advancing horde of spawn. Aris was firing as quickly as he could over Reah's head—she was still on one knee and killing the enemy as fast as her weapon would shoot.
Another blast came from the outside and another section of the wall was blown out. This time, instead of running away, the troops on either side dropped to a knee and began firing into the breach, killing many of the spawn crowding inside. Aris would have to do something soon or the station would be overrun. The city would then fall quickly. He was considering desperate measures when the last thing he might have expected appeared in the newly created gap in the wall before him.
* * *
Little hope remained—even I knew that as we fired desperately at seemingly endless numbers of the enemy. Some still appeared as the men they'd once been, but many had the muddy, grayish brown skin and fangs of the older ones. I fired on the largest of those—some of them nearly twice as tall as a normal man might be. Sometimes it took two shots to bring one of those down.
Another man walked inside the wall with the latest wave, and nothing touched him. I fired and the shots were deflected. He kept walking toward us. Aris was now shouting something I didn't recognize. A purplish glow hovered about this one, and something about that aura disturbed me. Something instinctive, almost, was frantically trying to tell me something about this one. As if I recognized it somehow, and knew that it was wrong. More wrong than any of the others we'd killed already, even the larger monsters that had stomped inside, bent on destruction.
Slowly I rose from my kneeling position, no longer firing my rifle. A part of my mind told me to lift my weapon and shoot, but I failed to heed it. Something else was calling out to me—telling me that more forceful measures were called for on this one. Was he a wizard? My senses told me no. This was no hedge wizard from an outlying village. This had the stink of evil about it, and something needed to be done.
I was shouting at the creature as I tossed my rifle away. Bel reached out to haul me back, but I shook off his grip as easily as a cow's tail brushes away flies. I took a step. And then another, much larger step. I was looking over the heads of the Rangers who surrounded me now. How had I grown so tall? I had no time to be concerned with so trivial a matter.
The man knew I was coming for him. He also knew that I recognized him as something other than the man he appeared to be. The realization caused him to slough his humanoid disguise—it melted away from him and he grew. Somehow, smoke was blown away from my nostrils as my target lengthened and expanded into a coppery, serpent-like creature, longer than twenty men, lying end to end. The creature was thick through the middle, too—nearly three men thick, his coppery scales gleaming in the light of the moon shining overhead. He hissed at me, revealing lengthy, sharp teeth that I somehow knew were poisonous.
Rising higher over the heads of the ones around me, I screamed at the troops to get back—they would die if they came in contact with any part of this monster. My voice came out in a roar. Had I time to analyze my transformation and my subsequent actions, it might have frightened me. I didn't have time, and it didn't matter. My hands, when they reached toward the monster as he crawled in my direction were scaled in gold with sharp talons for fingernails.
Had I thought this creature slow? He wasn't. Had he thought I might be slow? I wasn't. He struck. I grasped. His throat was in my hands and I was squeezing, sinking my talons into his flesh, past nearly impenetrable scales and digging into the tender muscle underneath. The monster hissed in my grip and thrashed, attempting to get away from me. I
laughed. That also came out as a roar, with more smoke pouring from my throat and nostrils.
Many of the smaller enemy now tried to help the one I gripped in strong, taloned hands, but when they touched any part of me, they shrieked and dusted. More came, not learning from their dying cousins. All attempted to attack me. All died in agony, blasting out their particles in a storm of dust, as if that might have any effect on me. I squeezed my prey harder. His long, poison-scaled tail was killing some of his own as he whipped it about. He would have bitten me if he could. I held his throat too tightly and he had no opportunity.
* * *
Aris nearly dropped where he stood as he watched what Reah had become. She was squeezing the life from of the Ra'Ak—monster that it was. Aris—known as Aurelius to his associates, was sending out mindspeech swiftly. Only one thing might contain Reah after she finished off this monster, and that something was others of her kind. The message was curt that he sent—he was still working to contain the spread of spawn; they were flooding inside the walls, although most of them were now struggling to rescue their creator.
Aris was correct in calling them spawn—they were a Ra'Ak's spawn in every sense of the word. If left alone to grow and thrive, after twenty turns or so they would become Ra'Ak too—terrible monsters that could devour entire worlds if allowed to go unchallenged. Aurelius' duty was to fight spawn. He was not one of the elite Ra'Ak killers—Aurelius was but a soldier in their army. He was calling out to some of them now through mindspeech, but Reah was just about to finish this one off without help. The troops, seeing what they considered two monsters, had fled to hide. Aurelius, posing as Aris, had pulled his Rangers back and they continued to fire upon the spawn, even as Reah killed them by the dozens. They were blistering and dusting the moment they touched any part of her.
Reah stood at a height roughly equivalent to two very tall men, with scales of gold and jointed, membranous wings of iridescent gold. Only her hair was a different color—the white it had always been. Aris should have known. Should have taken the hint from the Larentii. He didn't. He knew better, now. "Get down!" Aris shouted. The Ra'Ak, when he died, would dust just as his spawn would, only his dusting would produce fist-sized chunks that would blast out at incredible speed. Just one of those chunks could easily kill a man.
* * *
The light was fading from the monster's eyes, leaving them a dull, slitted green before he died. The chunks of the creature blasted out when death came. Did he think to harm me with his last attempt at vengeance? He could have saved himself the trouble. I shouted out my victory, and my roar shook the walls and the ground beneath my feet. Turning, then, I went after the spawn running this way and that, completely leaderless, now. Rogue wizards, too, were rushing out of the holes in the walls. They didn't escape me, either, dying more easily than the spawn. The rogue wizards' power and spells had no effect on me when I jerked them up and crushed them in my hands. My fingers slippery with blood, I went after more of them.
* * *
"We'll have to turn to capture him," Jaydevik Rath shouted at Aris. Aris blinked At Jaydevik and Jayd's brother, Gardevik, attempting to understand what they intended to do.
"What? Wait!" Aris shouted. He'd sent the message wrong. He'd left something out. Garde and Jayd were turning, their full Thifilathi dark-scaled and methodical as they unraveled a net between them, running after Reah, who was still killing spawn and rogue wizards. All were running from her, now.
"Relax, father, we're here to help." Gavin had arrived with Winkler and several others.
"Child, no," Aris was desperate, now. "They can't net her. Get them back!"
"Aurelius, you can't stop a High Demon in full Thifilathi. What's wrong?" Kiarra was there, looking up into Aris' face in concern.
"That's Reah! They can't hurt her. I only wanted help bringing her back!"
"Oh, lord," Kiarra muttered. "Come on, we need to be there when they take her down."
* * *
"Somehow, others had joined me in my fight. Others I didn't recognize. A very large wolf bounded past, snapping heads off spawn as he ran. Another man arrived, and he quickly had lengthy claws growing from his fingers. Heads were removed with casual swipes of his hands. Another wolf came. Where had these creatures come from? It didn't distract me from my goal, however. I was still killing spawn at a record pace.
Two more creatures came. Tall creatures—taller than I, even. Their skin was covered in black scales and smoke poured from their nostrils as they ran up on either side of me, a large net in their hands. They handled the edges of it carefully, as if it might burn them, somehow. I gave it no thought, concentrating on my quarry, instead. Would I have turned to fight them if I'd known what would happen? Perhaps. If I had, I have no idea how that fight might have ended.
* * *
"No!" Aris screamed as the net was tossed over Reah's head. She shrieked the moment the power web settled over her and began to burn her skin. Falling, she clawed and bit at the knotted strands, thrashing about on the ground in terrible pain. The nets had been designed and created to contain rogue High Demons. Reah was screaming—a high-pitched wail that hurt the ears. Her skin was smoking now from the burning, her wings scored and nearly burned through in places.
"Get it off, get it off!" Aris shouted as he flung himself toward Reah. Kiarra, powerful in her own right, folded space, lifted her hands and destroyed the net with a thought.
Chapter 10
Part II
"Aurelius—father—you can't blame yourself. It was a miscommunication." Gavin rubbed his sire's shoulders. "Jayd and Garde have come back to themselves and are just as worried as the rest of us. They cannot understand how someone like Reah not only exists, but managed to escape notice until now."
"I didn't give them proper information. I only said I needed help getting a High Demon back to Le-Ath Veronis. I didn't tell them she was female and not rogue. Now she is in terrible pain."
"The Larentii and the healers are tending to her," Gavin attempted to soothe Aurelius.
"Karzac says the wings will heal, as will the burns. However, it will be painful for a few days before things get better." Lissa, Queen of Le-Ath Veronis walked into the kitchen to give Aurelius the news.
"Love, will she be in full Thifilatha the entire time?" Gavin asked. He was one of Lissa's mates and the father of her youngest child.
"Renegar says it's best—the wings might not heal properly otherwise."
Aurelius cursed softly. "Will she even understand what we're saying if we speak to her?"
"That is difficult to say—Garde says that he understands most of the time, but the closer it comes to the full moon, the less that happens." Lissa patted Aurelius' hand.
"How is she High Demon? She can't be full High Demon," Gavin said.
"She isn't," Lissa tapped her nose. "She's a quarter, but somehow received the full complement of High Demon gifts. The other thing I know and I'm waiting to talk to Glindarok about first, is that Reah belongs to Glinda's family. Somehow, one of Glinda's brothers fathered Reah's mother. Reah is Glinda's niece."
"I thought all her brothers were dead."
"So did we all. I've got a message out to Kifirin. If anybody can sort this out, he can."
"May I see her?" Aurelius sounded lost, and as a four-thousand-year-old modified vampire, that didn't happen often.
"She's sleeping now, so it shouldn't be a problem." Lissa pulled Aurelius off the barstool in the palace kitchen and folded space, taking Aurelius and Gavin to the dungeon beneath their feet in less than a blink.
"She's not in pain." Renegar assured Aurelius as he went to his knees at the sight of Reah. She lay in a golden-scaled heap inside the largest cell in Lissa's dungeon.
"But she's lying on the cold floor," Aurelius buried his head in his hands.
"I will remedy that shortly, as soon as Karzac is done," Renegar assured the spawn hunter. Karzac, physician to the Saa Thalarr and the spawn hunters, was doing a last-minute inspection, maki
ng sure they'd missed no burns on Reah's naked flesh. The gold of her body and wings was scored with net burns, some overlapping others.
"The only other female High Demon that can turn is Glinda, and she's white when she's Thifilatha," Lissa murmured. "She keeps hoping her daughters will turn, but Jayd says that they haven't been angry or provoked enough to turn. Those husbands of theirs keep them happy and away from any stressful situations."
"Then I'm surprised that Reah didn't turn before now—she's had plenty of those things in her life," Aurelius sighed. Gavin pulled his vampire sire to his feet.
"Are you sure this cell will hold her?" Lissa looked up at Renegar. He towered over her at eight and a half feet. Lissa was only five feet tall.
"I have reinforced it with father's help. It will hold. I have also placed the command that she not turn back until given permission," Renegar nodded. Nodding was another human gesture he enjoyed using.
"How's the patient?" Garde, Jayd and Glinda appeared, using the High Demon ability to skip from one place to another.
"Sleeping—I have numbed the pain," Renegar turned to look at the fifteen-foot creature inside the cell.
"Jayd, how could you not tell she was female?" Glinda glared at her mate. Jaydevik Rath was King of the High Demons, while Gardevik, his brother, was Prime Minister under his brother's rule. Garde was also one of Lissa's mates.
"We were under the impression that it was a rogue we were chasing. Gender didn't enter into this."
"Glinda, there's something else you should know," Lissa offered.
"What's that?" Glinda turned to Lissa, the question on her lips. Glinda was beautiful, with long, white-blonde hair falling down her back, blue eyes and short in stature. Anyone not taking Glinda seriously might find themselves on the wrong end of a very sharp knife. Glinda had worked as a bodyguard for a very long time before returning to her homeworld and taking her place as Queen of the High Demons.
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