Zantry's hand dropped, and he turned to look at me. His eyes were a light blue, like the color of the sky in a bright summer day. And they were glowing, like the eyes of a night predator. Diggy took out a penlight, the illumination dim, as dim as the light of one single candle.
Zantry scanned me from top to bottom, his mouth a firm, grim line. “How bad are you hurt?”
I flexed my muscles, stretched my legs. It hurt, but I shrugged it off. “I've been worse.”
“Let me heal you.” He reached for me.
“No,” I stepped aside, “I think you should reserve your strength for now. You can heal me once we leave.”
He inhaled and said, “Alright, but let me at least stop the bleeding.”
“And check for poison.” Diggy added.
I hadn't bitten any of the creatures but I wasn't stupid either. I had no way of knowing if their scratch and bites were venomous. I slashed the arm of my jacket and ripped it off, extending my wounded forearm to him.
He reached for my arm, studied the bite marks for a second before covering the wound with his palm. Like that last time he had healed me, the process made my skin itch and burn like crazy, but he closed even the wounds on my legs and side. When he was done, I noted that the glow of his eyes had dimmed too.
“You think that was all of them?” Diggy asked, scanning the charred remains of the creatures. I was sad to see that we had lost two of the shadows, their bodies burned beyond recognition, save for the two lumps that marked small wings.
“Probably just the first line of defense.” Zantry replied.
“Taz?” I asked, and he stepped forward, dark, viscous blood dripping off his face, his claws.
“Can you still lead us to Mwara?”
“Yes.”
I motioned him ahead, and this time, Zantry and Diggy flanked me, frizz close to my heels, the remaining eight in a tight semi circle behind us.
Chapter Forty-Three
The second line of defense came when we rounded a corner and entered another small chamber. A second patch of absolute darkness blocked the path ahead, but this time the light surrounding our group stayed steady, though Diggy held on to the penlight.
We paused, semi-prepared, and I sensed Zantry sending his awareness ahead, probing. I tried to do the same, aware of how wrong it felt, its existence not just a mere absence of light, but the product of evil, an absolution of all things bright.
I could tell it was sentient, that it assessed us the same way we assessed it. Diggy clicked his penlight, but the thin stream of light seemed feeble compared, stopping at the edges, not penetrating it for an inch.
“What is it?” I whispered, afraid to speak any louder.
“Dimensional pocket,” Zantry replied, his voice tight. His hands moved, fingers tracing something I couldn't see.
I gave Diggy a sideways glance and he explained, “It's like a room in limbo, a storage place in the vacuum between dimensions.”
“A room?”
Beside me Zantry cringed, stumbled. I reached out for him, but he pulled away, shaking his head, a hand rubbing against his forehead as if the spot pained him.
“Talk to me,” Diggy murmured, his voice carrying a strain I hadn't noticed before. He braced his legs, his sword at the ready. “Maybe we should try to skirt it and leave it be.”
“It knows we're here.” As if to confirm Zantry's statement, something moved in the darkness, a ripple that seemed to expand.
A piece of darkness detached itself, formed the shape of a man. Dressed in a ragged business suit, he moved forward, his eyes dark, his paces even and silent. He wasn't evil, exactly, but he was nothing good either. He was nothing I understood… nothing of this world.
He stepped into the light, not cringing, not even pausing to adjust.
And kept coming.
Behind him came another man, then a woman, and a teenage boy.
All carried the same dark look, moved the same way.
A primitive, cold feeling hollowed the pit of my stomach when I realized what they were, to whom they belonged to.
“Zantry.” I whispered. No doubt hearing the terror in my voice, both men inched closer to me, but their eyes remained fixed on the threat ahead.
“Zantry.” I took a step back, unable to form the words I should be speaking.
A sideways glanced showed that his lips were pressed into a hard line, his eyes tight. He either knew what I was going to say, or he had an idea.
“What is it?” Diggy murmured.
“Remo.” I swallowed once and gripped my hands tight together, “That's what he does to people.”
“You're sure?” Diggy asked after a brief pause.
“Yes.”
Diggy swore viciously, stuffed his penlight into his pocket and braced his weapon with both hands. Suspicion began radiating from him in angry waves. It took me a moment to understand the conclusion he had drawn.
“Stop it,” I hissed at him, feeling somewhat nauseous. “We told you. Zantry isn't in cahoots with him.”
The suspicion throttled back, coated with a heavy dose of uncertainty. The man with the tattered suit paused about twenty feet away, and the others moved to stand beside him.
Somehow, for some reason, I was expecting some sort of speech, so I was caught off guard when they all attacked at once.
In synch they moved, each picking a target. The woman attacked Zantry, the man with the ragged suit Diggy, the teenage boy went for Taz, and another man came for me. I shouted at the pack to attack and kill, and kicked the man rushing me on the balls hard enough that he should have been able to spit them out. Instead he faltered a step, as if his pain receptors had been disconnected, and adjusted course. I followed with a right jab, a left one, a kick to the kneecap. But if the guy felt anything, he didn't let it show or hamper his goal to reach me. He grabbed for me, his moves fast, agile. I jumped back, out of his reach, then kicked him hard on the abdomen. Hard enough to double him over, but he only stumbled back a couple paces, before he was moving forward again.
With a static hum, Zantry expelled the woman's attack with a burst of energy, sent another to an older guy I hadn't seen before. On the other side, Diggy was also fighting off two attackers. What I wouldn't give for a sword like that at the moment. Or to be able to fight with energy like Zantry.
More of the dark human minions were coming from the dimensional pocket, filling in the place. The teenage boy was still up, deflecting two of the shadows with a kick and powerful backslap that sent one flying to the other side, the other bowling three shadows over. He reached and grabbed another shadow and pulled it close to his face.
I froze for a moment, and the man I was fighting grabbed my hair, pulled it so hard my eyes watered. I slashed with my talons, and dodged the moment it let go. I looked back at the teenager, saw him … kissing? Sucking? At the mouth of my shadow, who was twitching non-stop.
The man moved in front of me, blocking my view, and I fainted left, kicked his other kneecap, the impact opening the gashes on my injured leg, causing it to start bleeding anew.
I jumped back, my leg buckling with the impact, and watched as blood sprayed, and the man tumbled to the ground. First his upper body, then his legs. Behind him Diggy lowered the dark sword, still polished, clean of any blood.
I looked at Zantry , five bodies at his feet. At Taz and the pack, found we had lost another shadow, the one by the dead teenager.
Grimly, Diggy assessed the bodies. “Do you think this is Mr. Drammen's infamous lair?”
Zantry's eyes said he thought so, but he didn't say a word. We all knew to turn back now meant certain death for me, possibly Mwara too, now that we knew where she was. Even if we went to the hunters first and they assembled a team and came at once, they wouldn't find anything here, much less Remo. And the clan would never agree to give me more time, no matter what I told them.
At the end, it wasn't really a choice.
“We should hurry up.” I said, shocking even myself. Both men
looked at me with an you-shouldn't-be-here- expression.
I knew what they were going to say even before they opened their mouths. “If you send me out, he'd come after me first. Then he'll use me against you.” My tone was reasonable, but in truth, I was more scared to be left alone out there knowing Remo might come at any moment. Maybe he wasn't here. Maybe he had yet to find out his lair had been breached. Maybe this wasn't his lair.
Diggy nodded, and I stood straighter, only to deflate when Zantry said, “the plan stands. If we find him, I'll distract him while you two find Mwara and get out of here.”
Chapter Forty-Four
We moved forward, Taz leading the way, followed by Zantry and Frizz, just a pace ahead of me. Diggy stayed close to me, his suspicion still there, though less pronounced. Both Zantry and I could sense it, but neither of us tried to ease his mind. For one, there wasn't any time, and trust was born from action, not words.
After we passed through a maze of caves and connected chambers with no additional ambush, we emerged into a familiar cavern, its walls pockmarked with small holes where I knew lay the remains of many humans and animals alike.
Lit like this, I could tell my first assessment a few weeks back had been right. It was a tall, enormous cavern. But it wasn't the memory of my recent near-death experience in this place that caused my heart to jump and lodge in my throat. No, that accident was done and over with, and I'd survived, despite the odds. But what waited ahead was still to come and I, even now, could die a horrible death. Ahead, a hundred yards away, an army of darkness waited for us, with the clawed creatures hiding behind them, safe in the dark shadows.
So many. We couldn't fight them all.
God, we'd never be able to defeat them.
“Maybe we should … hmm-mm, any suggestions?” I asked.
“Fight or retreat?” Diggy offered.
I shot him an incredulous look. Was he insane? There were countless of minions ahead, at least three, four hundred of them. And only three of us.
“I got them,” Zantry announced, stepping forward. “I haven't done this a while, so stay back, and get ready to engage.” I felt pressure start to build, smelled the pungent smell of ozone.
Beside me, Diggy shrugged his shoulders, popped his neck. Zantry kept going, the pressure in the air increasing until my ears needed popping. I yawned without taking my eyes off the army ahead, afraid to blink and miss their first move. There were dark corners and shadows the light didn't reach, and in them there were movements. The ceiling too was dark, but I guessed that was because it was really high.
Zantry stopped halfway between us and the dark minions, and the moment he paused, they moved. Fast and with an organized advance that denied their mindless status. Even from where we stood, I could tell this bunch was different than the one that had attacked us in the chamber maze.
Diggy swore, and I took an instinctive step back.
These minions weren't just faster, they were preternaturally faster. Behind them the clawed creatures waited, emitting that piercing shriek as they moved back and forth in the security of darkness, their silhouettes resembling medium-sized dogs.
“Get ready,” Diggy said, his stance poised to attack, sword ready. “He's not going to be able to hold them all on his own.”
I reached inside one of the holes and searched for a long bone. In this light I couldn't mistake it for anything else. It could be the bone of an animal, but I didn't think so. This was a human bone, yellowed and scratched. The femur, I guess.
The minions were almost upon Zantry when he braced his legs apart, his shoulders tense. His hair danced up and down with an unseen breeze, his jacket fluttering along. He raised his right arm, palm open wide and facing up. A second passed. The minions were almost upon him. Two seconds passed. He turned his palm down, brought it together with his left hand in a clap. There was the sound of booming thunder, accompanied by a piercing flash of light and the sound of a savage roar. The minions blew back, propelled by an invisible force. I stood, some fifty yards away, frozen, speechless. Light spread as the things were shoved back, revealing more of the cavern as they went. It was an enormous cavern, bigger than I had imagined, with a dark hole the size of a small football field interrupting it before continuing on the other side.
I was almost sure, a few hundred years ago, that hole in the ground used to be a deep lake. A lot of the minions fell into the hole, some with a crooked neck, some shoved so hard, they were almost halfway through the gap before they started falling. Even some of the clawed creatures fell in, some blown by Zantry's kinetic shove, others while trying to back away from the light.
But some of the minions managed to hold on to the edge of the hole, and a handful from the sidelines managed to escape the brunt of the force. Those rushed at Zantry, even as others pulled themselves up from the edge.
An older man in tattered clothing reached him first, but instead of fighting him off or propelling him, Zantry grabbed the man's arm, twisted it and pulled his head close to his mouth. The way the teenage boy had done to the shadow.
He sucked him of his energy, of whatever life still animated the man.
I took in a sharp breath, and beside me, Diggy stood motionless. I don't think he was even breathing.
When Zantry let go of the body, the old man resembled a shriveled corpse that had been dead for a long while. He lowered his head for a moment, and the cavern around us gave a static buzz, the sting sharper than before.
Some of the minions had frozen, watching him, and the moment Zantry focused at them, they attacked. But Zantry didn't move, didn't twitch, didn't draw energy from the air. And then he did, when the minions were less than ten feet away from him. Fast enough that I couldn't follow, He drew something in the air, his fingers leaving a light impression, like the infinity symbol with a horizontal slash cutting through. Then he moved his hand back, mimed lashing at the few dozen minions closing in. Diggy inhaled sharply, and a second later I knew why. The minions fell, some with heads cut off, others without their upper bodies. Smoke curled off the cauterized parts, white wisps I knew would smell like cooked meat.
He's so powerful, my inner voice said, unsure of what to feel.
“Fuck me,” Diggy murmured.
If he was this powerful, even as he claimed himself weak, how much powerful could he get?
As if to undermine my thoughts, Zantry swayed and fell to one knee, spent. Without thinking, we ran to him, Diggy ahead of me.
I tried counting heads as I ran, but they were fast and didn't keep to a line. At fourteen I got confused and tried again, then decided they couldn't be less than twenty, more than twenty-five. At least none were climbing out of the hole. Only two of them were women. All seemed to have been around their late twenties, early thirties when they had turned into this mindless thing. Some of them were dressed in nothing more than tattered rags, as if they had been wearing them for a very long time. Others were dirty and rumpled, their clothing still intact.
Shit, but they were fast. I paused by Zantry while Diggy waded through the minions, cutting and slashing as he went. I helped Zantry stand, and watched as Diggy cut the head of one, stabbed another through the heart , kicked a third back and brought the sword on the neck of the one he had stabbed. A tall guy with broad shoulders and a dark coat advanced on Diggy's left, and Diggy parried and slashed. I'm not sure if that move had been a trap or just a lucky draw, but the moment Diggy's sword came down on the tall guy's neck, the minion to his right advanced, reaching out for his sword hand and twisting, even as the sword came free on the other side of the neck. I heard the crunch of bone as Diggy's wrist snapped and watched as the sword clattered beside the head and retracted into a small tube. Still holding Diggy's wrist, the minion pulled Diggy closer and reached for his head – was that a pair of fangs? – But a huge black paw swatted at the minion's face. A paw that was attached to Diggy's wrist. The moment the minion let go, that hand shifted into another feline paw, claws extended, and I heard Diggy's sharp intake o
f breath when the bones realigned. Not losing any time, he swatted the one closest to him, once, twice, four times, favoring his left paw, even as he blocked the others from us.
Zantry swayed once on his feet, his eyes back to dark blue, no longer glowing. He took a step back, and I let go as he turned to face the minions. Diggy was holding them back but barely.
Zantry shrugged his shoulders and rushed to help, both of Diggy's paws dripping with blood and gore. A group of the dark humans immediately went for Zantry, and despite his weakened state, he kept them back. I directed half the shadows to go help, the other half to stay with me.
For a moment I waited, unable to decide what to do. Should I go find Mwara on my own, now that the minions were busy? Should I move forward and fight with them? One of the shadows I had sent to help gave a resounding hiss as one of the minions grabbed him by the wings. Zantry made to help , but three minions blocked his path. I stood, half paralyzed, feeling powerless as I watched my companions fight and did absolutely nothing.
Somewhere between the time Zantry rushed into the melee, Diggy got hurt. He was favoring his left leg, and a dark bruise was blooming on his right cheek, his eyes swelling shut. One of the two women crept on that side, but Zantry went at her, and two of the minions he'd been fighting rushed at me, and it was either fight or give in.
They moved preternaturally fast, and I stepped back, caught the one on the left with the bone, slashed at the second with my talons. I jumped away, knowing I'd be as good as dead if they managed to catch me. Frizz and another from the pack latched on to the leg of the man closest to me, and the rest that had stayed followed suit, jumping on his arms and back. I gave Frizz the permission to feed and focused on the one trying to grab my head. His ear was pierced; his jeans clean save for a couple stains. I wondered if he was a new addition to the group. When he reached for me again, I batted his arm away with the bone. There was a sickening crunch, but that didn't deter him. He kept coming, and I kicked, slashed, batted his advances away. The sounds of fighting and frantic feeding filled the spacious room, topped by the shrieks of the creatures in the darkest parts of the cavern. The minion kept me on the defensive, pushing me back, and I needed to do something before there was no more room for me to back to. When the minion came again, rushing forward with a punch that would no doubt put stars in my eyes, I sidestepped, caught the punch on the shoulder, my arm going numb at once. I kicked his leg, punched him on his side and jumped away. On my peripheral, I saw Zantry fighting off two minions while Diggy kept two more occupied, one who's face had been filleted by Diggy's massive paws, the other with an arm dangling useless on his side. All around them, bodies lay strewn on the ground.
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