The Age of Embers (Book 5): The Age of Defiance

by Schow, Ryan

  What did he see?

  Draven shoved his way into the room, eyes on Gregor. All this was happening in a split second. That’s when he saw what Gregor and the others were seeing. Maria was crouched over a lump on the floor, her head buried in the mass of it. Startled by the sound, but in no rush to stop what she was doing, she glanced up at them all with a face covered in gore. The lump on the floor was the half eaten body of the child.

  Sally.

  Several of them froze at the horrific sight, Draven included. In the gloomy red glow, Maria glared at them, mouth hung slightly open, a piece of something meaty draping down her chin. She spit out the meat and said, “Interesting.”

  Fire charged her first. He blew past everyone like a beast and kicked her right in the face. Her head snapped back, staggering her, but she was on her feet fast, rising up like some creepy, impossible animation.

  “Whoa,” Marcus said.

  Fire didn’t slow his assault. If anything, he ramped it up. Maria, however, took the attack in stride. Eliana advanced as Fire drilled the hybrid with a kick she saw coming and stepped into anyway. The impact rattled Fire’s leg and he stepped backwards, favoring his knee.

  It took nothing for Maria to go after him.

  He hobbled back, stepped in Sally’s blood and knocked into Eliana. The Guatemalan sidestepped him, and they both reeled at the incoming flurry of fists and feet.

  The scramble was on and no one dared breathe the way Maria was moving. Fire bumped into Rock, who stepped forward to face Maria.

  “You did all this?” he roared, stopping her.

  “Yes,” she hissed.

  “Why would you do something so diabolical?” he asked, seemingly unafraid. By then everyone was fanning out. Someone might have taken a breath, but not with the flare’s smoke permeating the room, and not with Maria ready to pounce at any minute.

  “Is this where I give you the big, beautiful speech, tell you about overpopulation and world domination? Or am I the cautionary tale of big tech overreach? You tell me what you want me to say and I’ll say it, because in the end, the only thing that matters is that I’ll be standing, right before I start eating.”

  No one said anything. Then, looking around in the red, hazy gloom, the cool night air now swirling around them, she said, “What does every species fear most?”

  “Extinction,” Indigo said, stepping forward.

  “Archer,” she growled.

  “Cyborg,” Indigo snarled back.

  “I’m no different than you. You had the off switch for me, and now I am the off switch for you.”

  “Are you sure?” Rider said from off to her side.

  Maria turned to speak and that’s when Rock shot in. She swung on him so fast, he barely ducked the shot. Coming up hard, he drilled her with a nasty shot to the liver. She checked him with a retaliatory elbow, one he blocked. The ungodly force of it drove him five feet backwards. It jammed both his wrists and his shoulder, making him wonder if something was broken.

  Off balance and out of the fight, he tried assessing his arms. By then, Eliana had already rushed in to fill the void.

  Maria overextended herself with Rock. Eliana slid in the gap and pumped her with two ferocious shots to the solar plexus. The move should’ve had her sucking wind, but like Fire’s and Rock’s attacks, Eliana’s efforts had no visible effect.

  Ice circled, unable to get in as the two women were tucked into the corner of the room and moving so fast, he could hardly keep up.

  In the flare’s glow, they looked like a blur of activity. So much that Draven and Ice exchanged looks. Neither knew Eliana was that good, or that Maria had no problem keeping up.

  Two brutal shots rocked Maria’s head, but she drove a knee into Eliana, one the Guatemalan was barely able to dodge.

  That’s when Maria lined up the big world ender, the one to put Eliana out of her misery. She sent it in at light speed. Eliana anticipated the move, ducked it, answered with an uppercut to the ribs. That was a mistake. The punch hurt her more than it did Maria. Staggering backwards, shaking the pain from her hand, her reaction time halved.

  Right before Maria moved to end her, an arrow cut through the air, the fletching tickling her ear as it whizzed by. Maria moved fast, the arrow missing her and sinking into the wall behind them.

  Visibly deflated, her hand crunched, Eliana lost the advantage. Draven had never seen that look on Eliana’s face before. It concerned him. He knew her well enough to know that in that moment, she realized they never really had the advantage.

  None of them did.

  Maria split the distance in half in a blink, grabbing Eliana by the crotch and the throat. She picked her up and threw her out of the huge opening in the wall, the one where ten stories below the blown up car sat with the blade of upturned sheet metal over the front wheel well.

  Something happened just before Maria really launched Eliana to her death. Something to slow the hybrid down. Indigo loosed another arrow, this one sinking into Maria’s side. The hybrid was mid-throw when the impact of the arrow gave her pause. She still threw Eliana out the side of the building, just with less force than intended.

  The Guatemalan nightmare hit the ground in front of the opening, her body going over the edge. She wasn’t thrown so hard, however, that she couldn’t snag a finger-grip on part of the exposed sidewall to keep from going over.

  Draven rushed in after her.

  She had a grip, but it was as weak as the sidewall wood holding her. What did her in was the swinging of her lower body. It couldn’t be helped. In the end, that’s what caused her to lose her grip—a grip that was never really that good to begin with.

  Before Draven could grab her, the side tore away and that was that.

  Her fate was sealed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Danny and Tim launched their stolen bikes into the ditch on the side of the road, scrambled down the slight embankment and hunkered down in the grassy gully. The other guys fell in fast, rushing to join them in time. Just outside the Loomis homestead, the pickup truck full of people chugged by. Danny and the guys waited with bated breath, hoping not to see flaring taillights.

  “That rig was loaded for bear,” Rusty said quietly.

  “Shhhh!” Danny said.

  Danny and his crew were not ready for war as much as they were ready to stage an ambush and not get any pushback.

  Smiling to himself, pushing his bicycle back up the side of the hill, Danny said, “Well this just got a lot easier, boys.”

  The five of them stashed their bikes nearby, then approached the homestead cautiously and on foot. To Danny’s surprise, the guys he’d come to think of as his men were not only spry, they were anxious to succeed. After seeing what Taylor went through, everyone was ready to be free of Maria. This was their get out of hell free card.

  With Tim at his side, and Paul, Rusty and Wilson in tow, they snuck onto the property, dropping down the second they saw the men watching the perimeter. Danny scampered into the bushes. He was exceptionally quiet. All of them were. When the two perimeter guards drifted away, the five of them crept toward the house, fully intent on breaching it and killing everyone in their sleep. Danny pumped the proverbial brakes, though. Further out on the property, beyond the dying embers of a fire, he saw a small gathering of tents.

  He counted half a dozen of them.

  “I’ll take the tents,” Danny whispered to the group, “you guys take the house.” Without a word, they all faded quietly into the dark, blades out, ready to take the pigs to slaughter.

  At the first tent, Danny slowly undid the zipper. Pulling up a small flap of canvas, he flicked his zippo lighter and saw three children asleep inside.

  His heart was making a ruckus in his chest, the adrenaline soaked blood supply roaring through his veins like vinegar and fire. He was ready to fight, kill and plunder, but then the kids…dammit, he saw the kids!

  Letting the flap down, taking a moment to center himself, he shook off the surprise and
crept to the next tent. He slowly unzipped the opening, all the while reminding himself to pull it together. To keep his wits about him.

  He hesitated though, like a chump.

  If he killed all the adults and didn’t kill the kids, either he and the guys would become babysitters, or they’d have to send them out in to this nightmare on their own.

  They weren’t the babysitting kind.

  But to send them off defenseless meant they’d die a slow, merciless death. They would either be attacked or they’d starve out and expire. He wasn’t that kind of a guy either. Swallowing over a hulking lump in his throat, he decided he’d have to kill the—

  Suddenly there was noise and a sharp, biting pain in his side. Then the smell of humans. No, not humans. Girls. He tottered back a step, wobbled to and fro, then looked up from where he’d knelt down and saw a short-haired blonde standing over him. He tried to focus in on her, but the pain blurred his eyes. She was faint in the firelight, and she was staring down at him.

  How strange, he thought. Angel or assassin?

  Grimacing from the pain, nearly incapacitated by it, he looked down and saw the big hunting blade jutting from his side. It had been driven into him right down to the finger guard.

  So definitely not an angel…

  “Saw you lurking,” the short-haired blonde said, almost like she was about to lecture him on the paltriness of trespassing. “I figured this is my watch, so we can talk. My name’s Atlanta and I do believe you’re someplace you shouldn’t be.”

  He rocked backwards, landed on his backside hard, the jarring not only rattling his spine but further agitating what was most certainly a fatal wound.

  “You…killed me,” he said, looking down at the blade.

  “I believe that might be the case.”

  He looked at the knife in his own hand, tried to summon the will to stab her back, but his tank was plumb out of gas. The air of defeat flooding into his awareness bumped him from his trance. Looking up at this Atlanta girl, he tried to judge the distance between them, even though the pain in his side was screaming so loudly that logic and distance were starting to drown under the weight of sheer, physical agony.

  The second he decided he was going to stab her, she lifted a foot and stomped on the handle of the knife in his side, causing him to cry out. The pain was like nothing he’d ever experienced. The next thing he knew, there was another blonde pulling something across his neck. He didn’t feel the cut, but he felt the gushing warmth draining down the front of his body.

  Looking up, his eyes fogging, the sudden chill of awareness gripping him, he saw the other girl.

  “You met Atlanta,” she said. “I’m Macy. I sincerely hope your experience here was as worthless to you as it felt to us.”

  He gurgled out a reply, his body making slight lurching movements forward.

  “You didn’t think you were really going to get us, did you?” Macy asked. She was wiping her blade across the front of her pants, her face somber, sincere.

  That’s when someone rushed out of the darkness and tackled her, the two bodies rolling hard and violently through the dirt.

  As Danny fell face-first into the ground, he died thinking he’d been gotten, but that maybe someone had gotten her, too.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Eliana’s three fingers clung to the edge of the building’s damaged siding, but her legs swung so far inward from the fall, pieces of the wall and her hand slipped free.

  It was lights out on a mostly crazy life, but then a strong grip latched on to her forearm.

  She looked up, nearly wetting herself and saw Draven’s face peering out over the ledge. She smiled really big, and he returned the gesture as best as he could against the strain. Using a tremendous amount of strength, he pulled her up, winded by the time she scampered up onto solid ground.

  Behind Draven, Ice and Marcus were mixed up with Maria. She moved fast, but they kept up, until they didn’t. Terrified for Ice, she got to her feet, told herself it was not time to think. It was time to move.

  By then Maria had cracked Marcus in the side and kicked Ice so hard his body folded in two and dropped down. Fire was on it though, arcing a mammoth elbow down on top of her forehead. The skin split wide open, the shot clean. Marcus staggered backwards while Ice fought to get to his feet. Both men were hurt but not yet injured.

  “You two okay?” Fire asked over his shoulder.

  Eliana started in but Draven caught her, stood up and said, “Too dangerous!” She shoved him aside, rolled in hard, but not before Rider was back in the mix with her and Fire.

  Rider ducked a wild swipe, checked a halfhearted leg sweep, then began to beat on her something fierce. Indigo hung back, the arrow nocked, her eyes tracking every move. They were moving quick, but the old man was good. That’s when he did what no one expected—he moved in close, body to body, tying her up even as she spat and hissed at him.

  He head butted her, staggering her.

  Indigo moved, but so did Eliana. And Fire? He was back checking on Gregor who must have taken a shot at her when Eliana fell. The Guatemalan saw the man was unconscious. By the time she retuned to Maria, the hybrid was shoving Rider off her. Still coughing, blood and chunks of things powering out of her mouth, Rider wouldn’t relent. He folded back in the mix.

  “She’s sick,” he hissed. “Weaker!”

  It was either from the child she’d been eating, or from the damage she sustained from the grenade blast. Maybe it was a bit of both. She stole another look at Gregor. Had Maria killed him right after throwing Eliana out of the building?

  Eliana pushed in further, agitated, bombs going off in her chest with a need to get in the mix, unpack five knuckles and a knee. Rider, however, tied her up again, but like before, she tried shoving him off. He kept unbalancing her feet though, hitting the insides of her ankles, parrying left and right, grinding into her shins with his shins so she couldn’t get her footing. Her head came out enough for Indigo to move. An arrow zinged by Eliana and Rider, the side of Maria’s hair flipping up. The second arrow missed its mark, sinking into the drywall behind them.

  When Maria shoved Rider again, it was with the roaring force of frustration behind it. The force drove him into the wall not five feet away.

  Rock was dragging Gregor out of the studio apartment, in to the hallway. He was alive, but on another planet. Marcus managed to pull himself together enough to hurl the nightstand at her, but he grimaced, folding in half and holding his ribs the second he launched it. The shot was a direct hit. The nightstand broke over the top of her.

  Unfortunately, it did nothing.

  Maria turned to charge him, but Draven shoulder checked her and Marcus straight armed her. She didn’t go down, but she did stop. Indigo launched the third arrow. This time it sunk into her eye, stopping her.

  For a long, triumphant moment, Eliana felt like time itself had pulled to a stop.

  Staggering backwards, her face slack, Maria couldn’t seem to process what was happening to her. Fire turned and looked at Indigo. They all did. She really was every bit as frightening as Maria. Eliana moved on Maria, but stopped when another arrow ripped through the air and hit the exact spot where Maria’s heart should be.

  The arrow smashed against her bones, though, the tip crushing like a bullet hitting a steel wall, the shaft shattering in the middle.

  With no other options left, Eliana dug the grenade out of her pocket, pulled the pin and charged her. With all her might, she jammed that little green pineapple into Maria’s mouth and prayed it was enough. A dozen teeth broke in the process, but Eliana didn’t care because she only had this one shot.

  The grenade barely fit, but her jaw was cranked open and the explosive was lodged in there.

  Stumbling backwards, single eye flashed wide and gagging at the multiple intrusions, Maria reached up to take it out of her mouth. That’s when Ice rushed in and palm-struck the end of the grenade. He nailed it square on the filler plug, jamming the mini bomb deeper
inside her mouth.

  Head snapped back, bucking, convulsing, choking, the hybrid faltered, her legs weak, her arms slack at her side.

  With the arrow sticking out of her eye, with the wet, gulping sounds she was making, it seemed like she was done for.

  But she wasn’t.

  Isadoro grabbed her shirt, flung her around and shoved her toward the opening in the side of the wall. She was too heavy though. It looked like he was wrestling five hundred pounds of sand in a one hundred pound frame.

  Maria was close enough to the edge that Eliana dropped and spun into a side kick, the distance, body mechanics and power on point. This was one of the most brutal kicks in her arsenal, which was why it was her favorite. She connected with the woman’s torso, just below her chest, but Maria was unnaturally dense, her bones too condensed for a shot like that to send her sailing out into the open air.

  Knocked back only a foot, there was still two feet to go and the grenade was about to blow her head off and kill half the people in the room.

  “Run!” Marcus screamed.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Four guys snuck up on the house, saw a gathering of women casually talking by candlelight. Apparently they were waiting up for the men. Tim and the guys did some reconnaissance, circling the house, seeing it filled with activity. One woman in another room was reading by candlelight, while one of the guys was just laying on one of the beds next to yet another woman. The man had a military look about him; his woman had a bob black haircut and she looked smitten.

  He grabbed one of the guys, he thought it might be Paul, then said, “Spread out. I’ll head in the back door, you guys give a whistle if you hear something. Everyone clear?”

  He got three nods and a “Roger that.”