by Della Roth
I point to the helmet. “There’s a communication link inside.”
“Where are da Patroxi comin’ from?” Alben asks doubtfully, looking around, and I can understand why.
The mountains are completely ablaze, water is starting to flood the streets—which will help contain some of the burning buildings—and the rest of the paths into Skyscraper City are flooded.
Unless they plan to fly in—
Just then, an enormous, tank-sized gray being lands ten feet away from us. It’s ten times the size of a regular half-alien.
“What the hell—” I choke on my own question.
Instinctively and together, we all take several steps backward, and I almost trip on Deni’s body. Crouching low and never taking my eyes of the thing that just landed before us, I snag the dagger out of Deni’s face. And I pick up her machine gun.
Then, Cat gasps loudly. Whatever it is, if Cat’s alarmed, it can’t be good.
I look up to the fire-lit, smoky sky and see other objects zooming down. Giant Patroxi. They land all around the city, on tops of buildings, and several strategically touch down on the Palace Skyscraper’s balconies, their weight crushing steel, concrete, and wood.
Only a dozen or so come down like meteorites. I don’t even see one vulnerable spot on the one in front of us. It’s completely coated top to bottom in a gray, rocky tar substance.
“It’s in its external suit,” Cat says without hesitation. “And that’s the good news.”
“You mean like an impenetrable, protective shell?” I ask, somewhat sarcastically.
“Yes.”
“How is that good news?”
Cat smirks at me and I can see that Alben nods his head in some internal understanding. Then he plows down a couple of soldiers with one crossbow, trying to get away from the giant Patroxi.
“Cowards,” he grunts.
“The atmospheric fires burned it on its way down, congealing and solidifying the outer suit. Until it breaks free,” Cat explains, “it’s nothing more than a stationary rock.”
Behind the giant Patroxi, and marching in from the blazing mountains, is a formation of bear-like beasts.
I steal a glance at Cat.
“Okay, so what’s the bad news?” I take a couple more backward steps.
“It’s not a half-alien.”
I wrack my brain for a reason why that would be bad news.
“Okay…”
“It can telepathically kill you.”
Eighteen
MY FIRST INSTINCT IS to run like hell, but Cat lunges forward and proceeds to hack away at its outer shell.
“Are you trying to help it?” I scream at her. I make an effort to pull her away, but Cat ignores me.
“Don’t be daft, mizzy,” Alben says as he swerves around me, firing double arrows into the distance. Several beasts fall.
I turn on him suddenly.
“I’ve had about enough out of you, Mr. Underwood. Either you respect my authority—right here, right now, no questions asked—or you’re fired.”
Alben smirks. “Ye got bad timin’, mizzy, an’ ye’s blind as hell, aren’t ye?”
I sigh. “What are you talking about?”
“Who am I with right now, eh? Ye or Roland?”
I study him a moment as he studies me back. Yeah, but at whose insistence? I doubt he volunteered to stay with me. Same with Cat. I’m confident that Roland made them swear to stay with me.
“Point taken, sir.” I nod, knowing it’d be pointless to discuss the topic further.
I hesitantly watch Cat as her sword finally pierces the outer shell, but she doesn’t stop. Finally, I understand, and I watch even closer. The Patroxi inside screams. And not just out loud, but in my head, too.
I nearly crumple. Stupidly, I look down. I stare at the dagger in one hand, the machine gun in the other, the sword at my hip, and strange, insane thoughts swirl dangerously in my head: stab yourself! Shoot yourself! Slice off your arm! Now. Do it now. What? What! I throw my weapons to the ground and back away.
“She be destroyin’ it before it gets out,” Alben explains through clenched teeth. The screams must be getting to him, too. “It won’t just kill ye with its mind, it tortures ye noggin first, scramblin’ it like eggs, until ye try to kill yeself or pray fer death.”
“Then it kills you,” Cat finishes the thought, though now out of breath. “Your turn, Mr. Underwood.”
Alben meticulously loads his crossbow with three torch-like arrows, lights them, and fires directly into the now-large opening of the Patroxi’s meteorite shell. It bursts immediately into flames, and with it, the alien emits a deafening internal scream that burns my insides.
I feel wetness all over. My fingers touch my face and come away with bright, red blood. My nose bleeds. My ears bleed. More sounds come through the Patroxi helmet, but I can’t translate the words. They sound urgent. Dire. Important.
Like orders.
The marching army in front of us is closer. Maybe one hundred feet. Compared to the thing in front of us, they appear so innocent—even with their weapons—and not something to think twice about.
And I don’t need to think long about them, either, as a large group of monk warriors descends upon them like a flesh-eating disease and slaughters all of the beasts in minutes.
I try to wipe away the blood. Cat’s unaffected, which doesn’t surprise me since she’s part Patroxi, but Alben uses his grungy sleeve to clean the blood from his face.
Something out of the corner of my eye catches my attention. A turquoise fabriskin robe.
Wren Iddon.
I stare at the Palace Skyscraper balcony, where one of the Patroxi landed earlier—still in its protective shell—and I see that Wren and her small group are pushing it over the ledge. It falls six stories and lands with a crunching thud, like the sound of crashing boulders that can be heard all the way over here.
I’m not sure if it will do much good. They fell from the sky. I doubt a seventy-foot fall will hurt it much, though it does get the thing away from them, which may have been the immediate concern. It would be mine.
Cat grips my arm, handing me my own dagger, sword, and the machine gun back. She must have picked them up as I watched Wren and the others.
“Time to go,” she urges. “We need to destroy the others.” Her expression is dire, adding, or all is lost.
I look back just as a thick, muscular, bright white arm violently bursts through the flames and out of its gray, outer shell, and then it slumps over on itself and continues to burn.
Just like everything around us, I say to myself.
We round the corner of the Palace Skyscraper, step over bodies—some dead and others crouched in a protective stance, their faces also bloody—and enter into a larger battle scene. I don’t need a map to see the giant, rock-like being.
It’s halfway out of its shell as one person desperately tries to destroy it.
My heart stops.
Even from this distance, I can tell it’s Roland. His back is drenched in sweat and one arm hangs limply at his side as the other continuously stabs at the Patroxi with a blueblood spike.
The thing howls with each stab and Roland, with each howl, instantly doubles over, cradling his own head, but soldiers on—swiping, stabbing.
My legs make the decision for me and suddenly, I’m sprinting in his direction. Cat and Alben follow.
But I’m too late.
The giant Patroxi grabs him, and Roland’s entire body goes limp like a rag doll.
Nineteen
TOO MANY PEOPLE. TOO many between me and Roland and the son-of-a-bitch creature I want to destroy. I sheath my dagger and pull the machine gun’s trigger. Run, shoot. Run, shoot.
I don’t care who I hit. I don’t care what I hit.
Sparkles of blood-red diamonds burst out of arms, legs, torsos, and faces after each solid impact.
Several blows hit me, but I don’t feel a thing. I have the sense of being cut and bruised and injured, but
my brain refuses to acknowledge the actual pain of it.
That will come later, I think.
In the melee, I see a familiar face. A face that shouldn’t be here in the thick of battle.
Pale skin. Deep wrinkles. Ancient white hair. Crisp, clean robes.
The Grandfather. And he’s just standing there, untouched, undisturbed, as the world around us bends into chaos. As blood flows faster than the water rushing around my ankles.
A calm smile graces his thin, colorless lips. For a split second, I’m conflicted, and my steps falter. I want to thrust my dagger into his neck, depriving him of his life’s blood, and watch the lights fade from his bright blue eyes. I want him to know that I’m the one who’s killed him.
He wants this. He needs this. And somehow, I’m responsible. Why am I responsible? Beside the Grandfather, I notice Gryan, attired in thick, scaly dragon-like battle armor, fighting anything that gets too close to his master.
Gryan’s eyes lock on mine. His already savage-looking face turns purple with rage as he lunges in my direction. However, the Grandfather gently taps his guard’s shoulder, and Gryan instantly stands down, though he doesn’t appear to be happy about it.
It takes everything inside of me not to rush up to my former mentor.
But I can’t do that. I will not abandon Roland. I don’t care what White Rose said, about how I cannot trust my own heart. Just because my heart might be wrong doesn’t mean it isn’t not right.
I’m allowed to be confused. I’m allowed to not always know the answer.
Ultimately, I give myself the freedom to not be perfect. I’m conflicted, but, for the present, I abandon all thoughts of going after the Grandfather and focus on reaching Roland.
I find another Fisk 837 machine gun lying on the ground, pick it up, and unload it at every Patroxi, beast, and uniformed soldier until I run out of bullets with both machines.
Finally, as a last resort and before I pull out my sword, I use the machine guns as blunt instruments, shoving and swinging them into heads.
I hear a compound crack, and, trying not to feel disgusted with myself, I toss the empty guns aside. When I make it to Roland’s side, Cat and two monk warriors are already there, cutting through the giant Patroxi, killing him. I drag Roland against the side of the Palace Skyscraper.
His face is a bloody mess—I can barely recognize him—but he’s alive and trying to push me away.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he repeats several times before his heated gaze falls on me. I read so much there, things he can’t say right then, but I know. I can feel it. His eyes inspect every inch of me and a small sigh of relief escapes his lips, though, with a stupid grin, he does spend an extra half-minute studying the helmet on my head. “We need to find the other giant Patroxi, and fast. Before they turn us all into brain mush.”
“Where did Alben go?” I ask Cat, looking around.
“Roof,” she answers, pulling an unsteady Roland from the wall.
“What’s up there?” I ask, now on the other side of Roland.
“You mean besides the pure-blood Patroxi?” Roland asks in a less-than-amused voice. “How come your friend didn’t warn you about them?”
I ignore his question.
“Alben has other types of flares he can use on the Patroxi,” Cat explains. “We need to get to the courtyard. I think there’s one in there. I counted eight that landed.”
We stay against the Palace Skyscraper wall, our boots splashing around the rising murky-colored waters, and enter through the main entrance. A passcode isn’t necessary—the door’s been kicked in and a good portion of the inside is now on fire.
Sooty smoke chokes my eyes and I pull the bottom of my shirt to my mouth, but it’s too bloody to be effective.
Roland, seeing this, pulls something out of his pocket and thrusts it in my direction. My black scarf. My fingers touch his as I take it from him, and I allow the touch to linger a second. Any longer, and I’d risk getting emotional. Or angry. Or both.
My lips mouth Thank You, and he nods.
I tie the scarf behind my head, covering my nose and mouth.
“They didn’t waste time,” Roland states under his breath, now limply jogging through the corridors. He goes down some and avoids others due to impassibility. I blindly follow since I don’t know how to get to the courtyard from here.
“It was inevitable, you know that,” Cat says emotionlessly. “Besides, the main staff and all valuables were removed weeks ago.”
“Wait, what?” I ask, confused. The main staff? “You really knew this would happen, didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t lying to you, Rahda, though the full-blood Patroxi is a twist I didn’t see coming.”
“That’s because that isn’t the Grandfather’s doing,” I say, fully realizing that I should have known this fact even earlier. I personally witnessed that transaction happen back in the alleyway several hours ago. “This has Lord Jaucey written all over it. And whether you want to believe it or not, I think his daughter helped orchestrate it.”
Twenty
“DO YOU THINK THAT is why Elwyn met with the war broker?” Roland asks haggardly as we turn another corner. “While it makes sense, I doubt that Jaucey had that much pull with our half-aliens. He would rather see them all drown like a bag of kittens than make a deal with them.”
“I don’t know,” I say, thinking about it. “In my opinion, your uncle sounded like he was willing to do anything to put his daughter on the throne. The giant Patroxi are a pure race, not half-alien beings. I suspect that made all the difference to Jaucey.”
“Elwyn met with a war broker?” Cat asks. “Damn that girl is fearless. Was Jaucey with her?”
“Jaucey’s dead,” I say.
Cat looks at the both of us, sees something in our expressions, and lets whatever question she was going to ask die.
“Plus,” I add, “Did you notice how the half-aliens and the beasts from Hades Rocks are also afraid of the full-blood Patroxi? That’s not the mark of a cohesive army. Each side serves a different master. With Jaucey dead, who is controlling or directing the full-blood Patroxi?”
“Rahda’s got a point, Roland,” Cat says. “But the girl’s only twelve. That’s the only part that doesn’t make sense.”
“Yeah, well…” Roland trails off, looking at me in some sort of meaningful way that I do not understand. “I don’t know how else to explain it other than to say that she is her father’s daughter.”
We’re now in a hallway near The Gardens. Cat leads us down another corridor that, after a few staircases, spits us out into the courtyard.
Two giant Patroxis screech as Tomoko, several young women, and monk warriors battle them. One of the Patroxis howls as Tomoko jabs a blueblood tree root into its face. A short, squat woman half my size chops at the other giant Patroxi’s legs with an enormous axe. Within minutes the giant is lying prone just as someone else beheads it in one clean swipe. I watch as its stumpy legs continue to twitch.
“Look out below!” a voice calls from above us.
We look up just as a group pushes a congealed Patroxi off the roof. As it hits the courtyard’s cobblestone, part of its shell explodes, taking down those close enough to it. The damned thing comes out roaring, screeching, and swinging its wide, claw-like arms.
Before I double over in agonizing pain from the internal screaming in my head, I see it grab one of the monk warriors and tear the hooded figure’s body in half. Instantly, dozens of arrows the size of tree branches embed in the Patroxi’s torso, but its death isn’t quick enough; it swipes at those closest to it, gouging into the tender flesh of its victims.
A pack of hairless dogs rush into the courtyard. Cat is the first at them, her sword as fast as lightning as she dismembers them without the least effort.
“My Goddess,” Roland yells, “your sword-work is a beauty, Cat.”
I didn’t think it possible, but her cheeks flush at the praise.
“We’re not done yet,” sh
e says, her voice breathy. Cat checks her communicator tablet. I faintly hear her fingertips tap against the glass. “There are still a few full-blooded Patroxi left.” She deftly clicks several more times, nods, and places the device away. “It looks like one is in The Gardens. Afterwards, though, we need to get back on track. We’ve already lost a lot of time.”
***
I take the lead. Once back inside the Palace Skyscraper, it’s as quiet as a graveyard.
The gentle sizzling sound of burning wood comes from above us as we near The Gardens, and it concerns me.
“I don’t think we should be in here,” I say, placing my scarf back over my mouth. “Unless you want the ceiling to collapse on top of us.”
Roland also looks up with such a forlorn face, I can tell he’s wished many times for something to end his life for him.
“It would be a sweet relief if it did,” he says mostly to himself.
It breaks my heart. The way his sad eyes explore my own. For a moment, it feels like he is baring a part of his soul to me. Then, I think: A dark, bottomless soul.
“Other than the giant Patroxi inside the Palace Skyscraper, Cat, where are the rest?” I ask. We stop at the corner that will lead us to The Gardens.
Cat pulls out her communicator tablet. I watch dumbfounded as she brings up the camera feeds from all around the city, though only a few are actually working. The rest are nothing but static mess.
The outside world is as I expect it to be. Destroyed buildings. Fighting citizens. Fire. Marching soldiers. Flooded streets. Roaming beasts.
“Here.” She points at one camera feed, then switches to another. “And here.”
Each of the huge Patroxis stand motionless, as if they await orders, when, suddenly, above us, probably from the roof of the Palace, a loud Boom! Boom! Boom! shakes the building tremendously, as well as the live camera images on Cat’s communicator tablet.
“Was that Mr. Underwood’s doing?” I ask as I search their worried expressions. Roland shakes his head and mouths the word No. I reach for the wall, hoping for a bit of stability, wondering if the ceiling might actually collapse, only to discover the wall vibrates rather erratically. “Okay, let’s forget about the giant Patroxi in The Gardens. We need to get out of here. And fast.”
