Boss Fight (Beyond the Aura Book 1)

by Helen Adams

  “We’ll go off the trail here,” I said. “Less chance of being disturbed.”

  Leaves crunched under my trainers. Birds sang. I had no idea what they were, and I didn’t care. The forest was dead.

  The trees thinned out into a clearing. Scraggy bushes crowded the edges, leaving a space fifteen feet wide. It would do.

  “Stand in the middle,” I grunted.

  “How is this going to work?”

  “Just stand in the fucking middle and do as you’re told.”

  “I’ll need to know eventually.”

  I pointed. He moved.

  The ritual itself was simple. Dumping my duffel I crouched down and grubbed about, coming up with a handful of soil. It was moist and dark. A deep, rich smell filled my nose.

  “Earth,” I said, flinging it at Lee. If the throw was harder than it should have been, who could blame me? Soil pattered over his head but he didn’t flinch. It settled on his face, dusted his eyelashes, stained his skin.

  I felt energy stir beneath me. It tingled up through my feet, bringing with it the whiff of burned chicken. I was about to mess with things that I should leave well enough alone.

  I crossed the clearing and stood two feet away from Lee. This close, I could see the lines on his face

  “Air,” I said, and breathed out.

  My breath fanned his skin, disturbing a few particles of soil clinging to his eye lashes. He blinked but remained unmoving.

  The tingle of energy beneath my feet intensified. It shifted, aware that it was being called; I had its attention and it was watching. Listening.

  I reached in my pocket for a box of matches, snatched up before we’d left. I grabbed a branch – a long one, about four feet, slender – and tucked it under my arm. I lit a match and set it to the wood.

  It was just the right kind of damp. Not so wet that it wouldn’t burn, but not so dry that it would blaze. When it caught it puffed out clouds of white smoke.

  “Fire,” I said, handing it over.

  He fanned a hand in front of his face. I stepped back to avoid the smoke.

  Energy, primal magic, was coiling beneath my feet. It was almost here. In seconds I’d know for sure if Lee was telling the truth about having the right genes.

  I looked around and spotted a muddy puddle. I dipped a hand inside, cupped my palm and threw some dirty water at him. It splattered across his head and face, staining his shirt, but still he didn’t flinch.

  “Water,” I whispered.

  Primal energy surged out of the ground, coiling around my legs like a snake. I saw it as a golden rope, thick and gleaming. From the look of astonishment in his eyes I knew that he saw it too.

  Heat prickled across my skin. The rope wound around my waist, my torso, my neck. It slithered across my face. On a whim I flicked my tongue out: - it tasted as it smelled.

  I held my arm up. Primal energy coiled around me, leaving my legs and body. This was it – the moment of truth. Lee would either live through this, or he wouldn’t. I didn’t know which I hoped for most.

  I picked up the end of the rope, fingers tingling, and threw it at him.

  The rope slapped against his foot and now he did flinch. It slithered up his leg, then his body, just as it had mine. The change was gradual – at first all I could see was the suggestion of a shape around his body; it was as if he was throwing out light, and the area beyond that was shaded. Then the light area began to take on distinct hues. The colours strengthened, changing and rippling.

  His emotions. Shit.

  “I see it,” he whispered, looking at his hands, his arms. There was no mistaking the awe in his voice. “I see it!”

  I ignored the colours flitting across his aura. I didn’t care what he was feeling, or even if what he felt was genuine. The fact that I could see it at all – that he hadn’t keeled over, jittering and twitching as he died – was enough. The ritual had worked.

  “Welcome to the club,” I muttered, feeling as if I’d betrayed everything I stood for.

  “Will the taufrkyn come now?” he asked.

  “Eventually.” The feel of primal magic was making me twitchy.

  “How long will it take?”

  “How long is a piece of string?” Lorl had found me two days after my aura matured. Sometimes it was hours, sometimes it was days, but they always came.

  “Rhetoric doesn’t suit you, Daphne.”

  “Apparently I didn’t suit you.”

  “If it’s any consolation –”

  “Your head on a spike would be consolation.”

  “The relationship was great. You were great. Are you sleeping with Raz?”

  I snorted with disbelief, even as ice cracked somewhere in my chest. He’d turned a compliment into an insult.

  “Your spying should have given you the answer to that,” I snarled. “But you don’t have the right to ask. You used me to get what you wanted. Sex just sweetened the deal.”

  “Didn’t you enjoy it?”

  “Doesn’t matter now, does it?” I had enjoyed it – enjoyed being with him – too much. “It’ll never happen again.”

  “No,” he shrugged, “I guess not.”

  I couldn’t kill him because I’d go back to prison. I could beat him until he bled – I would enjoy that, so much that I knew I’d fantasise about it – but I couldn’t kill him.

  The burning branch spluttered; as the fire died, the primal energy was released. Lee twitched as the golden rope uncoiled from his body. The rope sunk back into the earth and vanished. The stench of burned chicken, and my view of his aura, vanished.

  He’d got what he wanted. I couldn’t stand to be anywhere near him – certainly not right next to him in a car. It was time to make like a banana and split.

  “Where are you going?” he demanded as I turned away.

  “Anywhere you’re not!”

  “Come on, let me take you home.” He tossed the charred branch aside.

  “I can manage.” It wasn’t that far. I could jog, aching ankles be damned.

  “Look, is this some stupid female pride thing? I got one over on you and now you’re being stubborn?”

  I imagined driving his head into a tree trunk. In my mind’s eye I kept at it, over and over, until his face was a bloody, unrecognisable mess –

  A wave of something cold and noxious flowed over me and I shuddered, gorge rising.

  “What the hell is that?” Lee demanded, green around the gills. “Daphne, what’s happening?”

  Swallowing convulsively, desperate not to puke, I turned to my duffel and booted the catch. Baby sprang up, ready and waiting for action. I grabbed the hilt and pulled her free.

  “Daphne!”

  “Pay attention,” I said. “This is what a splitter feels like.”

  Why now? Why here? Didn’t I have enough bloody problems?

  Lee stood beside me. I couldn’t tell where the splitter would come from, but by the way my stomach was still clenching, he or she was close – and getting closer.

  Noise from behind. My body reacted before my mind – I put Baby in a full block position, a flush of adrenaline speeding my reactions. Lee turned, tense and wary.

  It was Mina. My boss.

  “How…?” I shook my head. “Why…?”

  She didn’t make sense. This was the vacant Mina that I’d seen at my flat, the not-even-slightly-there Mina. What little humanity she’d had was gone from her face; her eyes were two dead things staring out of her sockets.

  “You should have died.” Her voice was deep, rough and somehow unnatural, and it made my skin crawl. “I keep trying to kill you, so why aren’t you dead?”

  It was the same thing that she’d said to me earlier, when she’d had her ‘absence’. I suddenly knew, without a doubt, that it hadn’t been a true absence – this was her real self. Whatever had happened to Mina, what was still happening, was wrong on a level so fundamental and deep that it hurt just to listen. I glanced at Lee; his eyes flickered around. He sensed that wrongness
too.

  I’d worked under her for months, and I hadn’t felt even a hint of this. How had she kept it concealed? How the hell did she function?

  “What were you?” I demanded. “Before you split, what were you?”

  I was thinking she’d been a witch. A black one. That would explain why she was such a bitch, but it didn’t explain how she’d managed to conceal her madness.

  “I was like you.” Those dark eyes never left my face. “A berserker.”

  Ah, shit. Some people would argue that berserkers were crazy anyway, and I guess there was some truth in that; we had to be a little nuts to go out every day and fight things that would make your average dewdrop wet himself. But what Mina had become was true crazy – that bone-deep, snake-quick madness that would turn around and bite you just as soon as look at you.

  She was tiny. I could take her out with one hand tied behind my back… but not if she’d been a berserker. How much combat training did she remember?

  “There’s a rip in my head,” Mina continued over my thoughts, “where I used to be whole. I can’t… it’s torn. I can’t fix it. But if I kill enough of you, it’ll mend.” Her expression brightened, turning from frightening to fucking terrifying in one easy step. “It has to mend!”

  “Sorry, Mina. I don’t speak Crazy.”

  “Daphne!” Lee hissed.

  “Bite me,” I snapped. “You should know that I trash talk everything that’s trying to kill me.”

  “Kill you,” Mina mused. “That’s a good idea. Let’s do that.”

  She waggled her fingers, spat on the ground, and created a monster.

  It came fast and hard, shooting out of the earth like an ancient monolith come to life. I took quick steps back, putting distance between myself and whatever was emerging.

  It was another fucking golem.

  Hang on, was Mina our mystery wrangler…?

  Then the monster attacked, and there was no time for thought. It lunged at us with a great roar, ten feet tall and the rich dark brown of soil. Muscles bulged along its arms and legs: - an earth golem.

  I sidestepped, trying to keep an eye on Mina, but the crazy bitch stayed just out of my sight. She moved as lightly as the berserker she’d once been.

  “Watch her!” I snapped to Lee.

  “And do what?”

  The golem turned and reached for me. I whirled and hacked at its knee. Baby became lodged in the dense, packed soil of the golem’s leg.

  “I don’t know!” I yelled, tugging my sword free and hacking off a clod. “Just… make sure she doesn’t get away!”

  Distracted by Lee and Mina, I was unable to dodge the golem’s blow. A massive fist crashed into my ribs; my feet left the floor and I flew. Agony blossomed through my torso but I took it and shoved it down deep, burying it under adrenaline. I curled into a ball, rolled in mid-air, and landed on my feet.

  The golem was behind me. I ran to the nearest tree and used my momentum to run up the trunk, pushing back the moment gravity tried to pull me down. Pain was making me woozy despite my best efforts to block it out.

  I swung as I spun. Baby whistled through the air, her weight in my hands as perfect and beautiful as ever. I buried her in the golem’s neck. Baby cleaved through the earth as neatly as a laser through ice. The head tumbled, disintegrating before it hit the ground. As I landed on my feet, square and solid, the body collapsed.

  My ribs screamed bloody murder. I tried to ignore them, tried to ignore the fuzzy greyness at the edge of my vision. At least one was cracked, maybe two. I sucked air into my hurting lungs. This was turning into a bad habit.

  Panting, I turned to find Mina. Each breath made my ribs squeal. She was right where I’d left her and Lee was flat on his back, where she’d left him. His chest rose and fell – still alive. She still had some of her fighting skills, then. Fuck.

  She smiled and waggled her fingers again. Two more constructs lumbered out of the woods; another earth golem – I’d taken one down, I could handle another – but the second was made from uprooted trees and dead branches. A wood golem.

  I dodged a grab from one grasping, wooden hand, and struck. Baby severed the hand at the wrist.

  This was a nightmare, nothing but a fucking nightmare, and I’d wake up any second now. None of what had happened today was real. Going to the mermaids – the water golem – almost drowning – owing a favour to Petra. None of that. Lee was still the guy I’d thought he was, not some shady army operative. I hadn’t just taken down an earth golem and my ribs weren’t cracked. Mina wasn’t a splitter. She was a Class A bitch, but she wasn’t a splitter. The chances of all these things actually happening at once were pretty damned low. Life just didn’t work that way.

  Except that sometimes it did. Like, for instance, when a twelve-foot tall tree golem tries to twat you across the forest.

  I saw stars. I saw galaxies. I was flying through space, and then I crash landed.

  I stared up at the white-grey sky, stunned, searching for the scattered pieces of my memory. Thin, bare branches that looked like an arm and claws whistled through the air, aimed at my head –

  Oh! Right! Golem!

  I rolled away, still scrambling to find my brains. It was hard to breathe and my ribs hurt. I scrambled up and the world lurched. Whoops…

  Wonder of wonders, Baby had landed near my hand. I snatched her up and wobbled to my feet – then ducked, almost tumbling back onto my arse, as that clawed hand tried to rip my head off.

  The wood golem charged. I stumbled and rolled out of the way, burying Baby’s blade in the back of the monster’s knee.

  Mina was gone. Where was Lee?

  I pulled Baby free and hacked at the other knee. The wood was damp but my falchion was sharp; the tree limb parted and the golem toppled. I avoided the flailing arms and went straight for the head. Vaguely round, it was a tangled ball of twigs, branches and leaves. I sank Baby deep.

  The golem twitched. One spasm; two. I twisted the blade. The monster was still

  “You’re lucky I didn’t set your wooden arse on fire,” I grunted, pulling Baby free.

  The earth golem lumbered into view. For fuck’s sake, was this ever going to end?

  Then I noticed – it was wobbling. It was wavering. Because, sat astride its shoulders like a man riding an elephant, was Lee. He’d been gouging huge clumps of soil out of its body, and now it looked about ready to fall apart. I gave him a grudging measure of respect; elite fighting skills were all well and good, but they didn’t mean shit beyond the aura. The first thing you fought could make or break you.

  I brought Baby down in a sweeping arc across the golem’s knees. It crashed to the ground. Lee leapt clear a split second before I chopped its head off; in a shower of soil, it collapsed.

  Lee landed on his feet. He seemed exhilarated, excited and shaken at once, but other than a black eye where Mina had decked him, he appeared uninjured.

  Out of habit I scanned the churned-up clearing, checking for danger. There wasn’t a golem in sight…but I saw the flutter of Mina’s short black hair as she took off.

  She knew I was still alive. This wasn’t over.

  I slumped against the nearest tree, Baby loose at my side, a hand over my face. What a fucking mess – Mina, the boss I’d hated for months, had been a berserker but was now a splitter. More than that; she was a golem wrangler. It was a tiny, tiny step to assuming that she’d been Kristjan’s student, that she was sending golems against us. And I hadn’t had a clue.

  Not true. I’d had one clue, one single fucking clue. The things in her office – the ivory stick that looked like a wand, and the fat, dusty book that could have been a grimoire. I’d been so busy trying not to twist her head off that it had slipped my mind.

  I cursed my stupidity. If I’d remembered that, I could have prevented this. I could have stopped the silk golems from being created and saved myself a world of pain. I could have saved all those dead mermaids. And maybe… just maybe… held on to the fake version of Lee
for days, weeks, months – maybe even years.

  Black rage boiled inside my chest. This was my town, and I wasn’t about to let Mina ride rough-shod over my territory. But how the hell did you stop a splitter? I’d never heard of one being so high-functioning. Maybe… somehow… Kristjan had done something to keep the crazy at bay, worked some magic to keep her on a lead. With his death that magic was gone. She was tearing herself apart and trying to take us with her.

  She might still have all the speed, strength and training of a berserker, but it was now coupled with a driving need to fix the tear in her soul. She’d lost her sense of what was right and wrong. To her, the only ‘right’ thing was to mend the damage.

  “I’ve gotta go,” Lee said, brushing soil from his T-shirt. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Yeah, cut and run when the shit hits the fan,” I snarled. “Go on then. Just fuck off. I don’t need you.”

  “Look…” He hesitated, uncertainty ghosting across his face. I hadn’t expected that. “Let me give you a lift?”

  I wasn’t sure whether I could stand to be in a confined space with him. But now that the combat was over, now that my anger was fizzling away, the fierce pain in my ribs was coming back full force. I wouldn’t be able to walk any distance.

  I gave him a curt nod. A lift was a lift.

  Lee dropped me back on my estate. He tried to talk, but after my continued silence he got the picture and shut up.

  Getting out was difficult. My ribs were on fire.

  “You alright?” he asked, ignoring my furious glare.

  “Like you care.”

  “I always did.” He touched my elbow before I was able to slide out of the seat. I jerked away; the movement sent fresh pain through my torso. “Alright, I don’t want you to die before you teach me what I need to know,” he confessed.

  I offered him a thin smile and he flinched. Did he see pain in my eyes? Or murder?

  I heaved myself fully out of the car, slammed the door, and stalked – well, lurched – away.

  THIRTEEN

  I trudged up the stairs to my flat, hoping like hell that I’d never have to see Lee again and knowing that it was just a pipe dream. Lorl flew into my arms the second I stepped through the door, pressing against my chest. It might have been my imagination, but I felt as if the pain inside eased when her fur – orange now with fear – brushed against my skin. I stroked her with trembling hands and looked for my mentor.