Sixteenth Watch

by Myke Cole

  New footsteps approached, and then Ella saw shadows, two hands’ worth at least. They surrounded the man and woman. Someone barked out words. There were sounds of machetes sliding out of their scabbards, and then the night became silent as all the players in that small alleyway froze.

  And then chaos erupted.

  Ella pitied the two. Two versus what looked like eight was terribly unfair. In the slums, numbers were all that mattered in a fight. She kept her eyes trained on the woman as the group of dark figures converged.

  The woman attacked, swinging what looked like a metal stick in her hand. Her movements were a blur as she danced through them, flashes of silver slicing the air in the dim light. There was a beautiful violence to her, lyrical, fluid, deadly. Every time it seemed the shadows were about to envelop her, she would dance to safety, leaving a trail of falling bodies in her wake.

  Ella had never seen anything like that outside of the movies, and she knew those kinds of fights were fake. This, however, was the real thing. In Crate Town, men got their way by being the biggest, strongest or meanest. There were few women here who could stand up to them. Maybe Wiry Madras by way of sheer meanness, but few others. Most resorted to cunning, cajoling or subterfuge. But this woman – this woman was something else.

  Ella was so mesmerized, she forgot to keep her lips squeezed together. Her jaw dropped, and she took in a mouthful of garbage. She gagged and spit, then went back to staring at the woman.

  Every so often, a random blow or cut would nick her, and she’d retaliate. A few more blows began to wear the woman down. She slowed, and the enemy attacks got closer, and soon she was getting struck more and more.

  Ella held her breath, badly wanting to do something, to help, to fight alongside her. However, living on the streets, she knew the rules of Crate Town. She should not get involved. To her left, she noticed the man pressed against the wall. He had a silver stick in his hand, but he didn’t fight. He just stood there, frozen, wearing a look of indecisive panic on his face.

  This guy was leaving her to fight all these thugs by herself. This hit Ella right in the gut. He should be doing something! It was so unfair. Being smaller and scrawnier than most kids, she had often been bullied as a little girl. A righteous rage twisted and burned inside her.

  She looked back at the woman. By now, more than half of her attackers were lying unmoving on the ground. However, the remaining three or four were beating her up pretty badly. Her movements were no longer beautiful; she was staggering from each blow. One of the men took a bat and jammed it into her stomach, doubling her over. Another punched her in the face, and she crashed into the pile of garbage not far from where Ella was hiding. The woman’s eyes were glazed over and unfocused. Yet she continued fighting, struggling to her feet.

  One of the men approached from the side, wielding a stick with two hands, ready to bash in her head. Ella watched the end of the stick hover in the air, about to end the woman’s life. She looked down at the woman’s face, and saw the determination still around her cheeks and mouth, even as the life in her eyes faded. Ella noticed the trinket around her neck and the expensive-looking watch around her wrist.

  Something in Ella snapped. In a split second, she calculated the possible reward to risk for doing something. The woman was wealthy and there were only a few of those men left. Ella bet there would be a massive reward for saving her life. That, and honestly, it felt like the right thing to do, since that ass of a friend of hers was just standing there letting her die.

  Ella jumped out of the garbage heap, shank in hand, and stabbed the guy behind the knee. He screamed and toppled over, and then the woman finished him off with a knife that magically appeared in her hand. She struggled to her feet and limped toward the remaining three thugs. She glanced over at Ella once, and then, without a word, focused on her assailants.

  The three attackers weren’t taking Ella lightly. They were clearly puzzled by this scrawny little girl holding a bloody object in her hand, and they maneuvered accordingly, trying to stay in front of both Ella and the other woman.

  The woman attacked, baton in one hand and knife in the other. She swung them in wide arcs, and the sounds of clashing metal hung in the evening air. She ducked under a swing and jammed the knife into the sternum of one of the attackers. Another thug got behind her and was about to strike when Ella jumped on his back and jammed her shank into the side of his neck.

  The woman turned to face him just as blood spewed from his mouth. She shot a side kick to his chest that sent both him and Ella crashing to the ground. Ella just managed to jump clear and roll away to avoid getting crushed. The woman nodded at her and, for an instant, smiled.

  “Look out!” Ella cried.

  The woman stiffened as the point of a blade suddenly appeared through her abdomen. She lashed out in a circle with her baton and struck the side of her attacker’s head. Both bodies crumpled to the ground. Ella was on the man in an instant, her shank stabbing him in the chest over and over. She didn’t know how many times she thrust downward but when sanity returned, she realized that her hands were covered in blood, and his eyes were staring off into nothing.

  Ella looked at her hands and fell onto her back. She had never killed anyone before. At least, none she was aware of. She had stabbed dozens of people in her short nineteen years. Most of them had even deserved it. It was one of the occupational hazards of living on the streets, but she had never actually stuck around long enough to see someone die from injuries she had inflicted. Until now.

  The woman next to her coughed, and her labored breathing snapped Ella back from her daze. She crawled over to the woman and checked her wounds. There was blood everywhere, and Ella could sense her life slipping from her body with every second. Ella hovered over the woman, frantic. She looked up at the man, still frozen in place near the back wall.

  “Help me!” she screamed. “Do something! Save her!” She picked up a rock as big as her fist and chucked it at him.

  It brought him out of his stupor and he rushed over. He checked her wounds and paled. He turned to Ella. “Where’s the nearest hospital?”

  “There’s no hospital in Crate Town.”

  The two of them tried to lift the woman but the instant they moved her, blood gushed from the wound in her stomach. Her eyes rolled back and she grasped the man’s arm. “Make sure,” she gasped. “The news… Seth… reaches…”

  And then she was gone.

  Ella had seen enough death in her life for it not to affect her any more. Growing up during a war and then in the slums, she had seen terrible things. People beaten and robbed, their bodies left on the streets. The ravages of sickness and famine and starvation.

  But for this death, Ella felt a terrible sadness. The feeling aggravated her. She lashed out at the closest person. She stood up and scowled at the man. “I saw you stand there doing nothing. Coward!” She was about to give him a swift kick to vent her frustration when she stopped.

  The woman was glowing. A strange fog with sparkling lights was slinking out of her body until it formed a cloud hovering in the air. The tiny lights, thousands of them, blinked as if alive. The cloud began to float toward the man. And then it stopped, and then it moved toward Ella.

  Ella yelped and retreated, taking several steps backward and tripping over one of the bodies. She fell onto her butt and began to crawl on all fours, trying to get away from this weird, supernatural demon stalking her.

  The light floated directly above her and hovered. At first, Ella shielded her face, but then she peeked. First, one eye between her fingers, then both. Up close, the cloud with its thousands of swirling lights was beautiful. If this was a demon, it was an awfully pretty one. She reached an arm out toward it.

  “You want her to be your host? You can’t be serious,” the man said. “You, get away from the Quasing.”

  Quasing? Ella had heard that name mentioned before in passing every once in a while. They had something to do with the war that had raged across the world for mo
st of the past ten years. Is this what everyone was fighting over?

  “She doesn’t deserve you.”

  Ella had no idea who the man was talking to. However, being told she didn’t deserve something grated on her. She had already experienced a lifetime of ridicule, of being denied and demeaned. She didn’t need this feeble man to pile onto it.

  “Shut it, coward,” she snapped.

  She reached for the living cloud, and then tiny bursts of light moved directly into her. Ella felt a jolt and a hard jab in the back of her skull. Her entire body clenched. She thought she heard a strange gravelly voice in her head that definitely wasn’t her own.

  This is probably a mistake.

  Blinding pain punched her in the brain and Ella felt her stomach crawl up her throat. She opened her mouth to scream, but all that came out were the regurgitated chewed up strips of sweet salmon. The last thing Ella felt was the sensation of flying, or falling, or the world being pulled from beneath her feet as she hit the ground.

  Like what you read? Good news! There’s a sequel available too…