by Romi Hart
Finn couldn’t leave to defend his friends. He had to fight these creatures eyeing him with murderous intent. He had to hold his own ground or the village would fall for certain.
One of the dragons reared. An old man clenched his fingers in a gruesome claw in the air before that enormous reptile. He wrenched it and the dragon convulsed with the movement. All at once, the dragon gave a hideous screech and toppled.
The dragon to his left flattened itself against the ground crying in a spine-chilling sob that struck to Finn’s guts. The dragon couldn’t rise. If this kept up, none of them would ever rise again.
A booming roar made Finn glance to his right and his heart turned to water. Victor hovered several feet off the ground. Five beings from the Omega Battalion circled him all working him over with their invisible power. The huge dragon twisted and tumbled bellowing and thundering in impotent rage, but he couldn’t break free.
At that moment, an ear-splitting shriek of feral death ripped through the Quag. Finn raised his eyes a fraction of an inch to see a flying ball of murderous energy vault out of the destroyed remains of the village.
It shot into the air, soared in an arc, and landed in a crouch next to Pablo and Conrad lying unconscious on the ground. The thing whipped around and a head of stringy, dingy hair slapped across its withered cheeks. It bared pointed fangs in a ghastly snarl. Rhiannon. Rhiannon Phillips.
Her furious eyes glistened and she let out a scream that shattered Finn’s brain. Stabbing pain pierced his eyes and threatened to rupture his skull. It echoed to the ends of the Earth to blast everything before it.
She squatted there in a compact ball of animal wrath. Whether she could tell one assailant from another, Finn never knew. Maybe her mind was so far gone she attacked everyone with her maniac power. She didn’t discriminate one from the other.
Finn cringed from the noise, from the pain tearing him apart. He shut his eyes and prepared himself to die when, for no apparent reason, the noise cut off. It stopped in an instant.
He dared to look around him. Not one monster from the Omega Battalion remained. New Breed of the Prometheus Crest picked themselves up and tended their wounded. Victor unwound his long coils and shifted to become the man Finn knew.
Claire appeared next to her brothers. She knelt down to care for them, but she kept casting uncertain glances at Rhiannon. The girl still hunched in the middle of the village. She bared her horrible fangs at everyone and hissing through cracked lips.
Victor cocked his head at her. No one would go near her. She yowled at anyone who looked at her sideways. He studied her for a minute before he picked his way forward.
She darted at him and snapped her deadly teeth. Victor stopped. Then he advanced another few feet. He got within two yards of her and lowered himself into a squat. He held out his hand. “Hey, girl. Rhiannon. It’s me. It’s Victor Griffin. You remember me? I’m the one who brought you here. Do you remember?”
Finn held his breath watching. All over the village, the shifters of the Prometheus Crest kept still letting Victor work his special brand of magic. He might not be the most powerful of all New Breed, but he had a heart the size of Manhattan. For this he became leader of all Anarock.
She shivered her lips back. Her irises reflected the light and gave her a demonic look. Her papery skin and bony figure appeared more disgusting in the light of day.
She snarled at Victor and howled to raise the dead. Victor didn’t retreat. He held out his hand to her. He murmured under his breath so low Finn couldn’t hear the words.
A few feet off, Conrad and Pablo struggled to sit up. Conrad spotted Victor approaching Rhiannon. “Be careful, man. Let me restrain her for you.”
Victor never took his eyes off her. “Don’t go near her. She’ll come. She wants to. She doesn’t like this world of light and air. She wants to be underground where it’s safe. Don’t you, girl? You want to go back down to your little box? I’ll take you there. Come on. Let me take you back to your hole. You’ll be safe there. Come on. It’s me, Victor. I’m the one who took you there last year. Remember? Come on. Let me take you there now. You don’t have to stay here.”
She jerked right and left glaring and hissing at everyone, but she didn’t run away and she didn’t attack. She wheeled around to screech at him again. Very slowly, he braced his legs and stood up. He walked up to her and she didn’t strike. She swiveled to one side and spat her horrible venom at Conrad. That left her back toward Victor and he eased up behind her.
He bent down and put his arms around her shoulders. He closed her in a tight embrace. The scream on her lips died to a whimper and she dissolved into his hold.
He swept her up and cradled her in his arms. She huddled in a little ball against his chest and buried her revolting face in his neck. He turned around and walked back to where the hut used to be. He kicked sticks and piles of tattered thatch out of the way to expose the ladder leading down to Rhiannon’s cell.
He descended out of sight. Portentous silence hung over the village. Everyone stared toward the spot until Victor reemerged alone. He stood tall and square and unwavering on top of the pile of rubble. He surveyed the mess and his gaze found Finn.
18
Victor strode through the destroyed remains of the hunting village. All over the ground, New Breed nursed their wounded and got themselves together. Claire helped her brothers Pablo and Conrad to their feet. They were stunned but otherwise unhurt.
Once she ascertained they were okay, she searched for Finn. He stood still several yards into the Quag. His penetrating gaze locked on her, but before she could go to him, Victor marched into the trees and halted next to the Special Forces men. “Get up.”
A stocky man with a deep-lined face straightened up and brushed the dirt off his pants. He wiped his palm on his seat and held it out to Victor. “Thank you. I don’t know who you are but thank you. We owe you our lives.”
Victor arched his eyebrow at that hand, but he didn’t take it. “You can pay that debt by telling us what the fuck you’re doing out here gunning down our people. Who are you and who sent you?”
The man cast a sidelong glance at his men who got to their feet around him. “I’m Lieutenant Joshua Wilkins, First Battalion of the 7th Army Special Forces Group out of Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.”
Victor narrowed his eyes at the man’s hat. “Green Berets, huh? That’s pretty high-level. Are you operating under Army authority or are you working on your own?” He jerked his chin at the man and his companions.
“We’re not operating under Army authority. The order came from higher up to track and neutralize the Omega Battalion. I don’t know how high up, but that was the order.”
“You’re wearing your Green Berets and your insignia on your fatigues,” Victor pointed out, “but you’re out here attacking humans and mutants alike. You’re killing people right and left. To my knowledge, you haven’t attacked the Omega Battalion even once—not even today, so your actions don’t coincide with your orders, Lieutenant. You keep moving your mouth, but you still haven’t explained what you’re doing out here.”
Lieutenant Wilkins squirmed. “Yeah, well, everybody makes mistakes.”
“So why did you attack this village?” Victor asked. “What were you thinking?”
“One of my boys saw him.” Lieutenant Wilkins aimed an accusing finger behind Victor’s back. “He thought it was pretty weird, a timber wolf running through the bayou. Then he saw the wolf run in here and change into a man. I guess we took that as a sign and we attacked.”
Victor glanced over his shoulder at Lincoln Manning. “He’s a shifter. Didn’t your superiors explain to you about mutants living in these swamps?”
Lieutenant Wilkins rubbed his hands against his pants and scanned the surroundings. “They might have mentioned something about that.”
Victor threw back his shoulders. “Well, it looks like you boys have a decision to make. You can carry on with your mission of mercy, in which case we’ll track yo
u. If you ever aim a gun at another mutant anywhere between here and New Orleans—or anywhere else on this coast, for that matter—we’ll fight you and you won’t be the winners. I can promise you that much. Your other option is to hang it up and go home. You want to neutralize the Omega Battalion? You’re gonna need some more firepower than you’ve got now.” He scrutinized the men surrounding him. “I guess one of you has some mutant ability if you cast that shield, but that won’t get you very far against the Battalion or against us. You’re on a suicide mission. I suggest you go home and tell your superiors that.”
Lieutenant Wilkins hung his head. “You know we can’t go home and tell them that. We can’t go home at all until we complete our mission.”
“You will never complete your mission and you will never repay the debt you owe us, either. When your superiors find out we saved your asses today and you didn’t gun us down in cold blood, they’ll throw you in prison and court-martial you. Surely, you must understand that.”
Lieutenant Wilkins didn’t answer. He and his comrades exchanged hesitant glances. Victor waited, but when they didn’t speak up, he snorted and spun away. “Right. Anybody that isn’t injured, start cleaning this place up. We need somewhere to sleep tonight so let’s get at least one of these huts rebuilt and we don’t have much daylight left.”
At his word, the onlookers broke up. They stopped staring at the Special Forces men and turned their attention to the catastrophe at hand. Claire checked her brothers one more time, but Pablo and Conrad could both move well enough.
She started collecting armloads of straw, but when she went to pile them to one side, Victor approached her and her brothers. He nodded to the three of them. “You can all go home. I’m grateful for your help today. I just hope your father isn’t too mad at you for helping me and at me for asking.”
Claire set down her burden and stood up brushing the straw off her clothes. She glanced at her brothers and read a shadow of doubt in their expressions. “Excuse me, Victor, but if it’s all the same to you, we’d like to stick around for a while. We’d like to help these people get settled again. We hope you don’t mind.”
He squinted at Conrad and Pablo. “Are you sure? You don’t have to.”
“We’re supposed to be allies, right?” Conrad interjected. “Besides, I don’t think any of us is in any big hurry to go home and face Daddy. We might as well hang around and make ourselves useful.”
“I’m grateful,” Victor repeated. “You’re all more than welcome.”
“It’s us who should be grateful,” Pablo added. “I don’t think hiding in our ivory tower did us any particular favors. I’m glad to get out of it and join the rest of mutantkind for a change. It’s long overdue.”
Conrad nodded in agreement. Claire’s throat tightened with emotion. She didn’t trust herself to say anything. Victor’s chin fell onto his chest. “Thank you. It’s more than I hoped.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about Daddy,” Pablo went on. “When he hears that all of us working together almost lost our lives to the Omega Battalion, I think he’ll come around about the alliance. We all would have been dead if Rhiannon hadn’t attacked when she did. It’s pretty obvious to all of us that we need to work together. It isn’t going to work for one Crest to hide in the shadows while the others fight a losing battle.”
“I’m relieved to hear you say that.” Victor squeezed his arm. “You’re all more than welcome to stay as long as you like.”
Claire and her brothers went back to work. The whole group busted their backs for the rest of the day. They succeeded in rebuilding the hut over Rhiannon’s cell. It raised its thatched roof to the sky, but the rest of the buildings lay in pieces all around it.
Late in the afternoon, Claire carried a stack of kindling to the heap near the creek. She tossed it on the pile with a long sigh. Her arms ached from trucking scraps of wood back and forth all day.
When she turned around to go back for more, she spotted Lieutenant Wilkins helping Riley Strickland pry a heavy timber off the body of some New Breed of the Prometheus Crest. Claire didn’t know the person.
She hated herself for not knowing more about these people. They were her neighbors, her countrymen. She knew every detail of their personal lives from the SeamStream files, but she didn’t really know them as people. She never considered them…..She wanted to say human, but they weren’t human.
This person was just as dead as if it was one of her cousins or her brothers or her other relatives. This person had a family back in Anarock. They would cry and grieve and bury their kinsman. The Prometheus Crest would mourn the loss of one of their own. Claire didn’t even know the person’s name. She didn’t know their relatives. She wouldn’t be invited to the funeral. She wouldn’t comfort the survivors.
That was gonna change. These people weren’t just New Breed. They weren’t just Finn’s people. They were her people, her relatives, her comrades. She bled for that person lying dead under a pile of rubble. She died a little every time they dug some fallen New Breed out of the destruction.
For the rest of the day, she passed the Green Berets helping out. They lent their muscle and their knowledge to reconstructing the hut and clearing the debris to leave open walkways in and out of the village.
Toward sunset, Lincoln Manning came striding out of the Quag with a dead pig slung over his shoulder. He dropped it in the yard. It thumped in a billowing cloud of dust. “This was all I could find at short notice that’s big enough to feed us all. I’ll get busy gutting it if Pablo will take charge of getting the fire going.”
Pablo chuckled to himself. “You got it, brother. I’m your man.”
Victor raised his voice over the noise of work. “All right, people. Let’s knock off for the night. We did good work today. We’ll have a clean, safe place to sleep tonight and Rhiannon is secure. Congratulations on a job well done.”
Everybody split up in bubbling conversation. People fetched water from the creek and got busy gathering materials from the countryside to make the place as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.
Finn drifted to Claire’s side and touched her elbow. “How are you doing? Are you sure you don’t want to go home?”
She peeked at Pablo gathering broken sticks and straw from the heaps of rubbish lying to one side. He lugged them to the middle of the yard and made a big, messy cone. He sliced his forefinger back and forth over it and it burst into flame.
Claire bit back a smile. “I think we’re happy to stay here for now.”
He hugged her around her shoulders and pulled her against him. She was never so happy to slip her arms around his waist and bury herself in him. She closed her eyes, but voices drew her attention to a few yards away. She froze when she saw Victor talking to Lieutenant Wilkins. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“It’s like you say,” Lieutenant Wilkins told him. “We can’t go back. We couldn’t tell them what really happened. Even if they believed us, they would retaliate. They would retaliate more if they did believe us. We can’t go back and we can’t go on with our mission. I know I said we owe you, but I suppose we don’t have a choice but to ask you to let us fall even farther in your debt. Let us stay here. I swear we won’t do anything to make you regret it.”
Victor scowled at him. Then he shook his head. “I don’t like this one bit. I wouldn’t be doing you any favors if I didn’t lay it on the line for you.”
Lieutenant Wilkins spread his palms. “I don’t like it, either, to tell you the truth. I don’t like anything about it. I have a wife and four kids back in Pensacola. I don’t like the idea of getting publicly disgraced in front of all my friends and family, but I like the idea even less of getting killed by the Omega Battalion—or you. I don’t see any way around this besides staying here.”
Victor stole a fleeting glimpse over his shoulder to where Lincoln strung the pig from a tree branch and slit it down the front. The intestines tumbled out into a wooden tub. “I don’t know,
man. I’m not saying anything against you and your guys, but you gotta see the situation from our point of view. You’re our enemies. If the military finds out you’re hiding here, they’ll send some other detachment of Green Berets after us.”
“I get that, man,” Lieutenant Wilkins returned.
“We spend our whole lives fighting people like you. Even if I approved it, I can’t guarantee the others would accept you. I’ll ask them, but they might refuse to take you and I wouldn’t be able to force them, especially since I agree with them.”
Lieutenant Wilkins bowed his head and closed his eyes. “I understand. Let me know what you decide. We’ll ride with your decision, whatever it is.”
He retreated across the creek to where his men squatted among the trees. They conversed in whispers, but they didn’t enter the village. They kept themselves apart.
Claire huddled in Finn’s arms listening to this exchange. She didn’t for a second envy Victor his position. She didn’t want to throw the Special Forces guys out to face certain death even if they were enemies of all Anarock. At the same time, she didn’t much look forward to welcoming them into the fold. They were the enemy. That could never change.
Darkness fell and the pig sizzled on the spit over the dancing flames. One by one, the New Breed gathered around the fire. They sat on rocks and blocks of wood and broken timbers. Claire snuggled close to Finn with his arm around her.
They passed their water jars around the circle until Damien vanished into the shadows. He came back fifteen minutes later carrying two bottles of Scotch. He sat down next to Victor and pried the cork out with his teeth. “You take the first shot, man.”
Victor took the bottle and grinned at the label. “I don’t even want to know where you got this.”
