Redemption (The Alexa Montgomery Saga)

by H. D. Gordon

  The army seemed to nod as a whole, and Kayden turned on his heel, letting Darvin lead them toward the city on a path that would not let them be seen. Their exhaled breaths and the snow crunching under their feet were the only sounds to be heard. That, and the pounding of Kayden’s heart. He would see them all lost, and did not feel ashamed of this, as long as his Sun Warrior was safe–as long as he could hold his Alexa, see her face, feel her lips on his own, just one last time.

  Another Arrival

  The train came to a stop. “We have arrived, your Majesty,” Andre said.

  King William stood and stretched the muscles in his legs. “About time, Andre. What is the situation above ground?”

  “No disturbances or sightings have been reported. The people are gathering at the Council Building as we speak.”

  The King was not fool enough to think that the Sun Warrior had not arrived at the Silver City yet, and it did not surprise him that she had done so without drawing attention to herself or her pitiful army. She was a Sun Warrior, after all, and not a creature on this earth could move with more speed or silence or deadly precision than she.

  He did, however, wonder about the Sorceress. If Surah was anything like her sister had been, then she would want to go at this alone. She would be the one uncertain factor here for which he would have to be on the look-out. But, really, it didn’t matter. He had over seven thousand Warriors with him, and a thousand more already spread out within the city. If the Sorceress tried to make her move, and the people saw her fighting with the Sun Warrior, they would equate this with the rumor he’d spread about the two of them being in league, and they would not be supportive of her efforts.

  The King exited the train and saw that his Warriors were already filing out of the train cars that were attached behind his. He sent a message to them all silently, reaching into their heads as he had on so many occasions, and ordering that his words be heeded.

  There will be an army waiting for us there, and we must kill them. We must kill them all, and anyone who gets in the way or tries to fight beside them.

  When he was certain that they all had their orders and were ready to follow them, King William stepped into the large elevator that was built into the tunnel. It would carry him straight up and into the Council Building.

  Then the battle would begin.

  Alexa

  After signaling the others through the arched window with my sword, I found a bathroom and stopped to wash the red off of my face. None had gotten on my hands. I didn’t look up into the mirror to see my reflection. I knew that I would only find my Monster staring back at me, and I needed no reminder of what I had just done. The taste of their blood was still fresh on my tongue, the scent of their deaths still hanging on me.

  Things were going to happen quickly now, and I was ready for it. My belly was full, but my hunger was far from satisfied.

  Some part of me knew that I was edging toward a line that would disappear once it had been crossed, leaving me forever on one chosen side, in a land where nothing but savage beasts roamed, a place of total darkness. And there was nothing to be done about it. This was only the preliminary round. The real battle was still yet to be had.

  I stood now by the entrance of the east tower, looking out from the warmth through the frosted glass windows. When I was as certain as I could be that no one was watching, I pushed open the doors and lost myself once more in the crowd. For a moment, indecision struck me, and I had to force myself to head toward the rendezvous point. If I just followed the crowd, I could be at the King’s doorstep in a matter of minutes. It would be a very stupid decision, but something insistent in me didn’t want to wait.

  Kayden is what made the decision for me, and I headed off to the point where I had promised to meet him. He should be headed toward the east bridge that gave passage over the river, and it would not be good if he didn’t find me there waiting for him and the backup. I made my way carefully through the crowd, making sure to change directions and follow the flow of the people whenever I saw a Warrior’s eyes skim over me. It felt incredibly counter-productive, moving away from the target, but I had made Kayden a promise, and I owed it to him to keep it.

  Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled loud and deep, cutting across the snowy air and ringing in my bones, marking the hour of the night. I stopped in my tracks and had to resist the urge to head in the direction of the Council Building once again. The King would be letting people in now. How wonderfully easy it would be to slip into the Council Building and put my blade through his throat.

  Don’t be a fool, Warrior. We are too close to the objective to do something so stupid. The King will be guarded very heavily. To walk into that building alone would not only be stupid, it would be suicide.

  I gritted my teeth as I made my way to the back of the crowd, and saw that it was starting to thin out. Moving in the opposite direction was becoming harder and harder to do without being noticed. I slipped in between two houses, their windows dark and occupants absent, and waited with a racing heart for the people to move on. The Warriors that formed a perimeter around them were moving along with them, herding them forward like silent dogs nipping at their heels. The east bridge was only thirty yards ahead. I could see it, an old stone structure that a troll could be living under, if I poked my head around the corner.

  I waited and waited. My pulse seemed to be jumping at ten times the rate of every second that was passing by. I watched as the stream of people lessened, slowing down to just a trickle. After what seemed like a million lifetimes, the Warriors that were bringing up the rear passed by as well. I made myself count to a hundred before leaving my hiding spot and racing over to the bridge.

  My heart dropped when I ran over it and could see only white in the distance, no army of rebels or beloved Libras coming through the snow to meet me. A million terrible possibilities ran through my head in the space between heartbeats, and if I hadn’t seen him then, moving through the snow like a phantom in the night, I may have fallen to my knees right then and held my head in my hands.

  But there he was. My loyal Libra, my Kayden. Moving silently toward me, and even from the distance, I could tell that he had seen me at exactly the same time as I had him, and now he was coming faster, picking up into a run and barreling at me with the relief of seeing me in every stride. Seeing him running to me that way made me wonder how I could have even considered not waiting for him. Just the sight of him had clicked something essential back into place inside me.

  And following right on his heels were hundreds of enormous Wolves, their heads bent low and glowing golden eyes slit against the wind, and behind them, the rest of the Warriors followed on their heels. They moved like a plague through all the white, dressed in all black and ready to kill.

  I don’t know how he managed it, but Kayden reached me first, slamming into me and lifting me off my feet as he all but crushed me in his strong arms. I clutched him back, not at all minding the fact that I could hardly breathe between his embrace. His golden eyes were so filled with love that I felt a tear escape my eye and run coldly down my cheek against the icy air. Then his lips found mine, and I didn’t care that the whole army I’d brought here was watching. I wouldn’t have cared if the entire world had been watching. I stole one last sweet moment from the universe and kissed him back.

  Then I was on my feet again, and the Wolves were surrounding me, awaiting orders. They were all different colors, some of them jet black and others as white as the snow that was catching in their furs. Their tongues hung out of their mouths and hot breath steamed into the air. One of them had the same reddish-brown color coat as Jackson’s had been, and I swallowed hard and told myself that Jackson was in a better place than I was right now, because this was no time to get choked up with feelings.

  I remembered something Jackson had taught me, that Wolves could hear your thoughts in their animal forms if you projected them. It was the way they communicated, and though I shoved it away fast, it made the memory of th
e first time I’d seen Jackson in his Wolf form in the woods at Two Rivers flash through my head. I gritted my teeth and sent my message out.

  “Move between the buildings, in the shadows. Make your way toward the Council Building, and form a perimeter there. Do your best not to be seen by anyone. Kill if you must.”

  The Wolves moved off silently, slipping into the night like the stealthy beasts that they were, and by the time I turned and faced the rest of the army, not a Wolf was left to be seen. The Warriors looked at me the same way the Wolves had, waiting for me to tell them what to do, and I hoped not for the first time that I was worthy of this task that had been placed before me, that I wouldn’t fail these people horribly and lead them straight into a terrible death.

  Little late to be worried about that now, Warrior.

  “The crowd is thick,” I said, my voiced pitched too low for them all to hear me. They would just have to spread the orders amongst themselves. “We can slip into it, I think, if we split up. We will have to move carefully. We need to get past those silver gates so the King doesn’t have a chance at locking us out and escaping. Each of us needs to watch for our moment to be able to move into the crowds. The King’s Warriors are accompanying them, but they are spread thin. No doubt that the bulk of them are at the Council Building already. That is where we will have to fight, but I need to get as close to the King as I can before we are discovered. Does everyone understand?”

  There were nods and grunts of affirmation. I nodded in return. “Good,” I said. “Make sure everyone knows, and let’s move.”

  Nelly

  The air in front of me shimmered, and there it was. The Silver City. It was almost at white as the White World, with snow covering everything and dancing in the night air. I looked down at my tennis shoes and wished that I had chosen to wear boots, and a coat wouldn’t have hurt either, but it was too late to even consider heading back to get these things now. I would just have to tough it out.

  I was standing outside of the GTO, having turned off a back road in the middle of nowhere to find this place, and there it had been, as plain as day in front of me, a white wonder world hidden between the cracks in the human world. It was like looking through a huge window, the world on this side warm with the approaching summer, the world on that side something else completely.

  I looked down at my watch, and decided that if the trucker carting my Lamia didn’t arrive soon, I would have to go in alone and search for my sister. I refused to believe that it was too late already.

  Just when I was about to head in alone, the rumbling of a truck in the distance was followed by two pinpoints of lights. I looked down the dirt road and shielded my eyes as it barreled toward me, coming to a stop only fifteen feet from where I stood. The sound of metal freeing from metal cracked through the air as the rear doors to the truck’s trailer swung open, and some fifty Lamia spilled out, their skin and gowns as white as the snow through the crack in the world.

  Carianna came to me first.

  She glided forward, all-black eyes regarding me with a smile that didn’t reach her red lips. She had told me that I would come back to her, and I could tell without Searching her that she was thinking that as she moved toward me. I swallowed once. Being near her like this was not the same as it had been when I had been lost to the dark side of myself. When she looked at me now, I saw the hazel of my eyes reflected in the onyx of hers.

  “My Queen,” she said, her terribly sweet voice caressing the word. “So pleased I am that you have called.” Her head whipped to the side and her gaze settled on the truck driver, who was sitting behind the wheel of the truck, dull-eyed, like a puppet. “Will you allow me a drink? It was a most unpleasant travel.”

  The other Lamia hissed their agreement, and by the looks on some of their faces I could tell that they might try to kill the man whether I gave permission or not. I took a deep breath, not sure I really wanted to say what I was going to next, but not really sure I had a choice, either. “Why waste your appetites?” I said. “Follow me into the Silver City, and you can drink from the Warriors that are there.”

  Carianna’s head tilted, and she struck forward like a snake and planted a kiss on my lips. I had to swallow again as a little bile rose in my throat. “We will follow you anywhere, my Queen,” she said. “But the Silver City is ringed by a river. We cannot enter there. How are we to feed from the Warriors?”

  I turned on my heel, not able to look into all those black eyes as words I never thought I would say came out of my mouth. “Surround the city. I will send them right into your arms.”

  The Lamia shrieked and hissed their approval, and followed me into the white wonderland that would soon be painted red.

  Wolves in the Midst

  He stood on a balcony three stories up in Council Building, overlooking the people as they gathered below. His hands shook as he gripped the icy balcony, but not because of the cold. He was hopped up on Lamia blood, and though his mind was soaring out further than it ever had been able before, with a strength and precision that was beyond any he’d ever known, his body was feeling the effects of it. Like a twitching tweeker who has figured out how to rule the world in their trip.

  There were nearly twenty-five thousand people here, counting his eight thousand Warriors, and he was able to Search them by the thousand, picking out traitors and sending silent messages to the Warriors below to pluck them from the crowd and do away with them. This time, he would not do the cleansing in a single room, but right out in the open, because it would not be wise to trap himself in a box that way with the Sun Warrior so close to making her move. No, he would stand above them all and watch them die their deserved deaths. And if things didn’t go as planned, he would send out the orders to the Queens in the other cities to dam up the rivers, and the Accursed ones would wipe the worthless souls out of existence for him. Either way, those two little bitches would not get their happy ending.

  On his third Search, as King William was sweeping his mind over the crowd of people just entering through the silver gates, he found them. Over a thousand of them, all thinking the same thing; that they would see him dead on this night. The anger in him bubbled up and boiled over, and he tried with all his might to pinpoint the Sun Warrior among them, but it was impossible. The entire crowd was cloaked and coated and covered in their warmest clothing, and even with the assistance of the Lamia blood, a Sun Warrior’s mind was impenetrable.

  No matter. He had known they would come, and here they were. He opened his mouth to command the Warriors he’d posted by the silver gates, gave the orders, clutched the icy railing of the balcony, and waited for the fireworks to begin.

  Alexa

  The silver gates were just up ahead, glittering like deadly icicles stuck into the snow. People were pressed in against me from all sides, too closely, as the crowd bottlenecked to pass through the gates. Kayden was on my right side, and his hand found mine and clutched it tightly, and my free hand tightened around the sword hidden under my cloak. I tried my best to keep myself calm as we entered the white lawn of the Council Building, where what seemed like tens of thousands of people waited already. I hated crowds. This crowd in particular.

  I couldn’t risk looking around to see where exactly all of my comrades were, as I needed to keep my hood pulled down as far as it could go to conceal my face, but I did look up at the Council Building itself. It was even more intimidating up close, with its jagged edges and all silver and white exterior. Standing here at the foot of it, I felt like a bug that could be squashed should a deity decide to take a careless step.

  I could feel the fear that radiated from the crowd, as if it was something like electricity that ran through us all simultaneously where our shoulders and arms and bodies met. If I concentrated, I could even smell it carrying on the cold wind that abused the skin on our faces, an involuntary odor that rose off of people whenever danger came too close. In that moment, I got the feeling, the terrible feeling, that our arrival had been anticipated, and that e
veryone here knew exactly what was about to take place.

  Too late, too late, too late, Warrior. Who cares if they know we are here. Let them know. Let them know as they watch the blood of their King spill out and paint the white world Red around them. I am sick of hiding, done with running. Today, we will end this thing, and we will end it with the death of a King.

  My eyes found him then, as if my thoughts had led them to him. King William stood on a balcony thirty feet above the ground, the jewels on his fingers glittering under the moonlight that peeked between the clouds. I could tell by his stance, so proud and rigid, that I was right. He had known we were coming. Somewhere along the way, I had been betrayed.

  I looked around for Tommy. He was only a few people over to my left. His cool blue eyes met mine for only the briefest of moments, but that was all it took to push any blooming thoughts out of my head. Tommy was not the traitor. Tommy was the rare type of friend who truly would die for those he cared about. A hero, not a traitor.

  Who, then?

  My eyes found King William again, looking down at us all with an impervious look surely on his face, and my left eye twitched.

  “It doesn’t matter now who the traitor was. Everyone here tonight will be a traitor to someone.”

  The King shouted something over the crowd then, just as my group was pushed through the silver gates and into the box where many of us would meet our deaths.

  “Close the gates!”

  And the behind us, the silver gates to the Council Building groaned, and slowly began to seal off any hope of an exit.

  I tilted my head back and let the hood of my cloak slip off my hair and rest at my neck, and then my blade slid out from my sword and someone screamed and my eyes glowed Wolf gold as they met those of the King.