Redemption (The Alexa Montgomery Saga)

by H. D. Gordon

  “An hour from now,” Malcolm said, checking his watch, teeth clicking together. I was happy that I wasn’t someone who got cold easily. I had my own personal furnace buried deep in my soul.

  I nodded, thinking this over. “Do you think King William is here already?”

  Malcolm shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  I let out a deep breath that puffed out like smoke and wished that I could have had one final cigarette before I did this. Turning my head, I pointed at the tower with the tallest point, which was so high that the top of it was not even visible, but instead seemed to have been swallowed up by the blackening night sky. “Is that the Council Building?”

  The burly Brocken—Darvin, I thought his name was—who had challenged me the day before stepped forward. “Yes,” he said. “That’s the Council Building. It will be the place with the heaviest guard, and there’s a silver fence that surrounds it. If the King is here, that is where he’ll be.”

  I raised my eyebrows at this, and he added, “I’ve lived in the Silver City since I was a boy. I know this land better than anyone.”

  I nodded. That would be useful. “How many Wolves among us?” I asked Malcolm.

  “About seven hundred.”

  That leaves eighteen hundred, Warrior.

  “Uh, yeah, I passed the fifth grade, you know.”

  I do know. With a C, but you’re missing the point. Look at the size of this city. It’s the largest on the map. There has to be at the least fifteen, maybe twenty thousand people that live here, and they’ve all been summoned to the same place at the same time. You could take eighteen hundred men in and have a chance at going unnoticed in the crowd. Take them with you through the silver gates of the Council Building. Leave the wolves outside, that way you won’t be completely trapped in one place.

  I thought for a moment. It wasn’t a bad plan, but I wasn’t sure it was a particularly good one either. I looked over at Darvin. “Are there guards in the towers? Will they see us coming?”

  Darvin smiled, white fangs jutting out behind his thick beard. “Yes and no, Sun Warrior,” he said. “There are guards in some of the towers, but I know a way in that they won’t be watching.”

  I studied the expression on his face and decided I didn’t like it. “Why does it sound like there’s a huge but that follows that sentence?”

  The Brocken laughed loud and deep. “You ever walked out over a frozen lake, Warrior?”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s stupid.”

  Darvin laughed again. “That’s what my mother used to tell me every time I used to sneak out of the city as a boy,” he said, and his smile grew wider still, just like a little boy who had done something he thought was clever. “And this ain’t no frozen lake. This is worse.”

  Alexa

  Oh, hell no, Warrior. Nope. I’m not stepping onto that death trap. You might as well just turn your little butt around right here.

  “I know. But there’s no other way.”

  Sure there is. You may as well take your chances and charge straight in. The odds that we would survive that are much better than the odds that we survive this.

  “For shit’s sake, quit trying to psych me out. He said it would hold. If we can get in undetected, we have a better chance at reaching the King.”

  He said it would hold? You can’t be serious. You’re willing to believe a man who probably picks his teeth with the bones of small animals.

  “No, I’m willing to trust a Warrior who has followed me into an impossible war.”

  When he crossed this thing it was as a small boy. You have to know that it’s not possible. We would be lucky to get two men his size across without it breaking. We would need a hand from God to get two thousand of them across.

  “That’s why we aren’t sending two thousand of them across. In fact, it’ll just be us…me…whatever.”

  Like I said before, hell no.

  “Someone has to do it.”

  And why does that someone always have to be us?

  “I don’t think the answer to that question even matters anymore. We are the smallest and lightest. We have to go. That’s all there is to it.”

  Okay, but remember that movie Titanic?

  I rolled my eyes and tested the ice with one toe. “What about it?”

  Leo told that chick that falling into water that cold hits you like a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body.

  “Alright, I get it. Falling into freezing cold water is bad. I’m still going, and you’re really not helping.”

  If you’re going, then go. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you didn’t have your reservations.

  I let out a sigh that was visible in the cold air and glanced back at Darvin, who still had that stupid grin on his face. Luckily for him, I exerted impressive self-control and decided that I didn’t have time to punch it right off his face. The rest of the army was still waiting back by the tree line, including Kayden. It hadn’t been safe to try and sneak more than the two of us up this close. “That one there, right?” I whispered, pointing at a tower twenty yards to my east, on the other side of the deceptively solid river.

  Darvin nodded. “If you can get in and take out the guards there, we can enter on the northeast side of the city without being seen. But, it won’t be easy, Warrior.”

  I looked down at the ice in front of me. “Yeah,” I said. “I see that…I didn’t even know it was possible for rivers to freeze.”

  “Oh, she’s not frozen, Warrior. Just frozen over a little bit. The temperatures here never rise above freezing, and it’s not all that deep. On top of that, it’s a slow mover, but you don’t want to fall in and get trapped under that ice.”

  No shit, I thought, and took my first step out onto the ice before I could convince myself not to do it. I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding when I didn’t hear anything cracking under my boot. It was only about ten feet across to the other side. I could make it. I hoped.

  Another step. Another. My confidence began to grow. But on my seventh step, when I was only and four feet from the other side, from solid land, Mother Nature showed me how stupid confidence was when dealing with something like this.

  It was a surprisingly loud sound, and even though I knew that the wind carried it off before anyone could hear it, I felt like it was a sound that could be heard across the world, so big it was in my ears. Just a splintering. The cracking of glass when it’s holding a liquid that’s too hot. My heart was thudding so hard in my chest that I felt as though I may as well have been pounding war drums and waving a flag. I looked down. I didn’t want to, but I had to, so I looked down, and I saw fissures in the ice spreading out like poison in veins beneath my left boot.

  I only had time for one thought.

  Oh shit!

  And then my Monster made me leap off of my right foot, just as the ice under my left gave way, and somehow, amazingly, I landed on the other side of the river. It was such an unexpected, quick-thinking move that I did not land on my feet, but instead flat on my belly, knocking the wind out of me and sending pain through my wrists where I had made a silly attempt to break my fall.

  I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the stars, watching my breath plume out in front of me and feeling the cold ground seep through the warmth of my coat. Utter relief washed over me, sending heat into my wind-battered cheeks and making my stomach turn over. A laugh bubbled up from my throat and I had to slap my gloved hand over it to keep it in. The mighty Sun Warrior, almost done in by a thin layer of ice. It was unbelievably horrible and funny.

  Up, up, up, Warrior. We are lying on enemy land. Get up and get moving.

  Right. I found my feet and checked for my Gladius, even though I knew that it was still tucked into the back of my pants. When I looked back to where Darvin had been standing on the other side of the river only moments ago, I saw that he was already gone. I was alone then. Completely alone. Now all I had to do was sneak into that tower unnoticed, kill the g
uards there, and give the signal to the others to move in. Piece of cake.

  I was glad that it was night, and that the snow floating in the air made for good cover. Ahead of me were two white houses, their rooftops heavy with snow, windows frosted over and dark. I slipped in between them and moved as silently as the snow under my boots would allow. When I made it to the edge of the houses, I peeked my head around the corner and looked in on the city.

  People were everywhere. All of them dressed from head to toe in winter gear, and all moving in the same direction; toward that highest tower at the center of the city. Children with scarves and hats and gloves held their parents’ hands, and men and women huddled together in hopes of sharing each other’s warmth. I took a deep breath, and pulled my hood down over my face as far as it would go, then I slipped into the crowd. If anyone noticed, they gave no indication.

  The hardest part was making my way through the crowd in the opposite direction of its flow, like trying to swim across a river that kept trying to push me downstream. I kept my eyes on my feet, only glancing up occasionally to make sure that I was heading toward the east tower. There were Warriors here, each of them wearing the all-black uniforms with the King’s crest threaded into the right shoulder. They watched the crowd carefully from around its edges, like sheepdogs herding cattle.

  Eventually, I made it to the foot of the east tower, though it took longer than I would have liked because each time I saw a Warrior glance my way I’d had to move with the crowd again so as not to draw attention. I stopped when I was fifteen feet from its doors, which were all frosted glass, and cursed when I saw that a key-card was required for entry, and a Warrior was standing post outside of it.

  “Shit, what now?”

  My Monster gave me the answer, and without second guessing it, I waited until the Warrior guarding the door noticed me, made eye contact with him for just long enough for his brows to furrow, and then slipped in between two buildings that neighbored the tower. The shadows here were thick, and I melted into them easily with my black cloak. Then I waited.

  And waited.

  What if he doesn’t follow?

  “Patience, Warrior. He’ll take the bait. I’m sure the King has ordered them to watch for us, for anything suspicious, and that look you two shared was very suspicious.

  I saw his shadow round the corner and held my breath. A moment later, the Warrior that had been guarding the east tower stepped into the alley, a silver sword clutched in his hand, and looking around with wary eyes.

  Wait, little lion, wait. You’ll need to strike quickly. He must not be allowed to alert the others.

  The Warrior took two steps, three. Just two more, two more and he would be close enough. I was still holding my breath, tucked against the wall of one of the buildings, my hands clenched into tight fists at my sides. The Warrior moved forward, and I felt the muscles in my legs bunching and tightening, getting ready to pounce.

  Another step. He saw me, and his eyes widened. Before he had a chance to even open his mouth or raise his sword, I jumped up, gripped the sides of his head hard, and snapped his neck with a sound that was uncannily like that of cracking ice. The enormous Warrior fell hard, and I caught his body, which made me reel back and slam against the wall, and settled his dead weight to the ground with a stifled grunt.

  I searched him, avoiding looking into his face as much as I could, and breathed a heavy sigh of relief when I found the key-card tucked into the front pocket of the black coat he wore. Then I dragged him a little deeper into the shadows, glad that my muscles were so very much stronger than they looked, because he was heavy, and tried not to think about how easy killing had become for me, like breathing and drinking and sleeping.

  I crept back to the mouth of the alley, pulling my hood over my head again, which had fallen off when I’d attacked the Warrior. The crowd was still as thick as before, but a glance to my left told me that no Warrior had taken up the position of the dead one I’d left in the shadows. The coast was free and clear, at least for the moment.

  I removed my Gladius from where it was tucked into the back of my pants, happy that the cloak would hide it even as I held it in my hand. Then I made my way over to the doors of the tower, making sure to be aware of all that was going on around me. I had to make it in there unseen. I had been very lucky so far.

  When I was sure I was not being watched, I flashed the key-card over the lock on the door and felt more relief flood through me as the light went from red to green. One more glance behind me, and I pulled the glass door open, and slipped inside.

  The hallway in front of me was all white, from top to bottom, and silver lilies and suns were painted into the walls, which glimmered unpleasantly under the fluorescents overhead. I looked all around for possible security cameras, and didn’t see any, which was what Darvin had told me. He’d said that there was never any need for them because the towers were always staffed heavily with Warriors, and no one had ever tried to get past them. But right now, the building seemed to be empty, and this was because the Warriors were all outside or at the Council Building, herding or preparing to murder the sheep.

  Darvin had also told me where to go once I had gotten inside, because he had been stationed here many times. I had only to go up the stairs—the elevators were the only parts of the towers that actually had security cameras—where there would be a Warrior stationed at both the top and the bottom, kill those guards, make it into the watch room, and kill those men, too. It was truly a wonder how everything I did circled back around to that; death and more death.

  I went to the end of the hall and slipped the blade of my Gladius out of the front of my coat, using its blade to see around the corner. There he was, just as promised, reading a magazine and leaning against a door that was marked as the stairwell. A crooked smile tilted my lips. Slacking on duty. His King would be thoroughly disappointed. This was going to be too easy.

  My turn! My turn! Let me, Warrior. I’ll snap his neck before he has a chance to finish reading the next sentence.

  I sighed. What the hell?

  My left eye twitched as my Monster came forth and made good on its promise. The high I always got off of taking life made me lick my lips and I had to shake my head a little so that I could concentrate. It was beginning to catch up to me. Too much in one day. Not enough. I wanted more.

  Soon. Very soon. We will have our fill. Focus.

  Yes.

  I swiped my keycard again and pushed open the door to the stairwell, bracing it open with my foot and dragging the dead Warrior inside to store him under the stairs. Then I all but ran up them, anxious to get to my next fix.

  Focus, damn it. Focus.

  “I’m trying. I just…”

  I know. Me too.

  Five flights up. I didn’t lose my breath at all. Adrenaline was coursing through me and making my hands shake a little with anticipation. When I reached the door on the fifth landing, a huge grin spread over my face and my stomach growled. Swiping the keycard again, I pushed open the door, and snapped a third neck in a little over three minutes. For a moment, all I could do was stare down at the dead body at my feet, at his throat where a pulse no longer throbbed, at his eyes that no longer saw.

  I told you, so beautifullll…

  Yes.

  I shook my head again, pulling my eyes away with great reluctance, disgusted with myself that I felt very much like bending down and sinking my fangs into the dead man’s neck, slurping out the blood that had yet to go cold.

  Terrible, heartless laughter rang out in my head, and I couldn’t tell who it belonged to; me, or my Monster.

  Why drink from him when there is plenty of fresh stuff in that room just ahead?

  I moved forward and came to a stop outside of the door that Darvin had told me would be the watch room, where two guards would be watching the edges of the city for intruders. I looked down at the key-card in my hand and crumbled the plastic into broken pieces in my fist. Then I set my hand of the door knob, chuckled at
little to myself, and used all of my strength to yank.

  Unsurprisingly, the door ripped free of its hinges, plaster and bits of concrete and metal flying free with it, and when I moved into the room, I drank in the sudden fear that filled the faces of the two Warriors there, and then I drank their blood, too.

  And it was good.

  It was really, really good.

  One More Minute

  He paced back and behind the swell of the small hill, his hands tightened into fists at his sides. It had been half an hour since Alexa had kissed him goodbye and headed into the city, and that was thirty minutes too long to be away from her. Kayden’s eyes were glued to the east tower, where the small arched window was. If she didn’t give the signal in exactly one minute, he was going to charge into the city and cut down every person in his path until he found her.

  “Are you sure she made it in?” he snapped at Darvin, who was also watching the tower.

  “She made it over the river, but after that…”

  Kayden was a second away from grabbing the Brocken up by his cloak-front and shaking the shit out of him, but then, a flash of silver from the tower’s window caught his eye, and the air rushed out of him in a cloud of white relief. He waited for a moment, still staring at the east tower, and only let himself truly relax when he saw it again. Another flash of silver. Alexa had made it. She was alive. And the army was free to move in through the east side.

  He wasted no time.

  “Wolves,” he said, loud enough so that they would hear him and but quiet enough that his voice would not carry beyond their group. “Take to your animal forms. When we reach the city, hide in between the buildings. Kill any Warrior who happens upon you, or any that come close enough to be taken out unnoticed. The rest of us will move toward the Council Building with the crowd, and into the silver gates. When it starts, the Wolves will do their best to ensure that we do not get trapped inside those gates. Warriors, do not make a move until it’s time. We must blend into the crowd. The Sun Warrior must be given the chance to get to King William. He must not be allowed to escape.”