Terry was opening up to Yanmei in his continuing efforts to gain her confidence. Kirkus only had the pain of failure to offer. Terry was talking about the power of freedom.
And Terry was starting to like this captor, not because of Stockholm syndrome, but because of her simple act of calming her servant. She was providing a promised level of protection. She made her servant feel safe without being afraid to ask for that security. He also felt that she was as much Kirkus’s prisoner as he was.
“Kirkus will fall, because his style of control cannot survive the new world. We won’t let it. I won’t allow it. Maybe that’s why I’m here. He lost eight of his minions to capture and one, almost two more attempting to restrain me.” Terry nodded toward the body on the floor. “He must have calculated that it was worth the cost. What does that tell you?”
Yanmei shook her head.
Another explosion shook the walls. This one was closer.
***
Joseph laughed as dust filled the air. Gene roared his disapproval once again at the noise of the explosion.
“I read your goddamned book!” Joseph yelled. He’d seen the trap and tossed a large rock to activate it.
“Next time, fucknuts, give us a warning!” Char yelled, her ears still ringing from the power of the blast. They were almost at the end of Houchins Narrows, which led into the area known as the Rotunda, a massive open space rounded from eons past when water circled within.
Char stayed behind Joseph as he walked from the tunnel into the Rotunda.
Behind her, a man screamed while another started shooting. Mark yelled to cease fire.
“What the fuck are you shooting at?” Mark yelled.
“Something took Glen,” another replied. Char looked back. One of the privates was aiming his rifle at the tunnel wall. She hadn’t seen any side passages.
The lighting was still on despite the explosions. Char expected they would lose that benefit of illumination when it was most inconvenient.
“Flashlights!” she called. Some of the Force warriors started winding furiously. Others had taken the ride on the pod to charge their flashlights. A number of beams appeared, clearly outlined in the dust floating through the cave. They danced along the wall until they all converged on a single spot.
“There’s a tunnel here,” Mark said loudly, motioning for the warrior aiming the rifle to join him. “Blood on the rock. Hang on. Cover me. Wait, you got silver bullets in that thing?”
The man changed magazines, ejected the current round, and sent a new one home. Mark was not amused. “Get your head out of your ass, or you’re going to end up just like him,” Mark growled, pointing at the wall.
The captain worked his way inside, then dragged a body out. Glen’s head had been bashed in. Mark cursed silently, then carefully propped Glen’s body against the wall, making it look like he was resting. He waved the warriors away from the narrow tunnel mouth.
“Fire in the hole!” he said as he tossed a grenade inside, dove away, and slapped his hands over his ears. The explosion sent debris from the tunnel and created yet another dust cloud. Mark looked at the cave wall, waving his hand to clear the air.
He gave Char the thumbs up. “Move it out,” he called.
They’d pick up Glen’s body during the retrograde once the mission was complete. If they didn’t survive, then at least Glen was comfortable in his final resting place.
No one contemplated anything differently. They always planned to win.
Char tomahawked her hand in the direction of an outlet on the other side of the Rotunda. Joseph looked at the walls as he and Gene moved further into the open area.
The sound of metal caressing metal alerted them. Gene and Joseph stood back to back as a thousand metal discs, sharp as razors, flew into the cavern.
North Chicago
Felicity and Marcie dragged Billy through the door. His eyes were wide with shock and his breathing ragged.
The sound of gunfire filled the area in front of the mayor’s building. Kim and Kae were out there. Marcie was beside herself. Marcie and Kae’s kids were already in the mayor’s office hiding under the desk.
“Come!” she yelled in their direction. They were too afraid to move.
Billy started shaking as spasms wracked his body. His jaws clenched and pink foam bubbled from his mouth. He stiffened, jerked twice, and relaxed as a long sigh signaled his final breath.
Felicity screamed in anguish. Marcie started to cry but forced herself to stand and run into the mayor’s office to grab her two children. She carried the youngest on her hip while holding the other’s hand.
The children were terrified and panicking. Marcie wrestled with Mary Ellen and finally had to pick her up, too. Liam had his head buried against Marcie’s breast, his small body jerking as he sobbed uncontrollably.
“Come on!” Marcie yelled at her mother through tear-filled eyes.
Felicity looked up, nodded, and stood, still hanging onto Billy’s hand.
“Leave him!” Marcie bumped her mother and headed for the stairs.
With one last look, Felicity turned and ran after her daughter.
***
The enemy’s Forsaken were projecting terror in every direction, sweeping the minds of the North Chicago residents. Most of the warriors from the Force were affected, although some were able to fight it off. Joseph had helped them to understand the mind control that some Forsaken were capable of.
Those few warriors were fighting back while the rest of the Force were running. Kirkus’s human minions weren’t ready to fight professional soldiers, so it took no time at all to eliminate that threat. The survivors were either still running or cowering in a hole somewhere; their fear was real, not created by a Forsaken.
Kim and Kae had received more training than anyone else, even members of the Force. It was the benefit of being Terry and Char’s children.
The two stood side by side, ready to fight, as two Forsaken approached. The other two Vampires were left to deal with the four Werewolves that emerged from one of Akio’s pods.
Timmons, Sue, Shonna, and Ted scowled as they approached. The two Forsaken laughed.
“Were-fucking-wolves,” one said arrogantly.
Timmons and Sue walked an arm’s length apart. They liked the Forsaken to be overconfident. On cue, they ran at the Forsaken closest to them.
He flexed his knees and raised his fists as if preparing to wade into a boxing ring.
Timmons attacked first with all the power he could muster. The Forsaken realized at that instant that he’d made a horrible mistake. The Werewolf’s blow drove the Forsaken’s own fist backward into his face hard enough to jar his front teeth loose.
Sue spun as she arrived and kicked the Forsaken so hard in the groin that it shattered his pelvis. He went down in a heap. Timmons stopped on a dime, turned, and with his knife, slashed the creature’s throat, cut the skin and muscle around his neck, and twisted the head until it came free from the spine.
Five seconds start to finish, alive and uninjured to headless.
Three Forsaken remained.
Ted and Shonna were engaged with the Forsaken that had intercepted them, but their fight wasn’t going as well.
Ted was furiously trading blows, but the Forsaken was easily blocking them while dodging to keep Ted between him and Shonna.
“Get out of my way!” Shonna barked. Ted was the least capable of all the Werewolves when it came to hand-to-hand combat. He hardly ever trained and whined the whole time whenever they made him attend.
The others had improved to the point that they were more deadly in human form. Ted knew what he had to do. He jumped back and cleared the way for Shonna to engage. The Forsaken considered her a lesser opponent and stood up straight as if to fight her that way.
She jabbed once before pounding his chin with a vicious uppercut. His head snapped backward. She followed with a kick to the groin and kneed his face as he went down.
A Werewolf growled as it dove in and gr
abbed the Forsaken by the throat, rending and shaking. Shonna left Ted to it.
She joined Timmons and Sue as they ran for the final two Forsaken.
Kim and Kae had just engaged, but the Forsaken were physically faster and stronger. Only the young humans’ training gave them any hope. They weren’t able to find an opening, only block, and block, and block some more.
They danced back and forth, their counterpunches easily repulsed.
It dawned on Kaeden that none of the Forsaken were armed, although the humans from the pod were. He didn’t understand it and recognized it as meaningless in his current situation. He knew that the Forsaken wanted to capture him and Kimber alive.
They wouldn’t have used weapons on the young adults regardless.
That meant the Kim and Kae could take greater risks while fighting. Their lives were not on the line.
Kimber fought like one possessed. She rained blow after blow toward the Forsaken, but he brushed them away as if annoyed by a fly. His attacks took all of her attention, and although she tried to counterpunch, the Forsaken was unimpressed. He wore her down and pressed in.
Kae could do nothing to help her as he was fighting his own losing battle.
He thought he could hear the wolf pack howling as they approached. There was rifle fire. There was screaming. Time slowed to a crawl. He heard the sound of a fist impacting flesh, but he couldn’t look to see who landed the punch, his sister or her enemy.
Then all the sounds died away until the only thing he could hear was his own labored breathing and his pulse pounding in his ears. His vision narrowed until he could only see the Forsaken standing before him.
Kae grunted as something rammed into his stomach, but his sight remained locked on the blackness of the Forsaken’s eyes. He saw the fist coming at him, and then all of a sudden, the Forsaken was gone. Kae dropped to his knees, closed his eyes, retched, and fell over.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mammoth Cave
Gene rolled around on the floor of the cavern, caking his wounds with a bloody mud pack.
Joseph staggered a few steps and stopped, looking like he was going to pass out. Char rushed in, wary of the ledges around the Rotunda. Small discs lay everywhere, crunching metal on stone as she stepped on them.
“I’m not sure that could have sucked more,” Joseph mumbled, using one of Terry’s favorite expressions. His leather clothes were shredded, and he was bleeding profusely.
“Here,” Char said and took out her flask. He drank, but they both knew what he really needed if he was to heal quickly.
“This will have to do, fucker. Deal with it.” Char ripped the flask from his hands. “I thought you could detect the traps?”
She was angry and glaring at him.
“He only had to get lucky once. I had to get lucky every time,” Joseph tried to explain, unable to meet Char’s intense, glowing-purple glare. “Can you feel it?”
Char stopped glaring and cocked her head. She’d been too distracted.
“TH,” she whispered.
“Caution, beautiful Werewolf!” Joseph said with a spurt of renewed vigor. “The closer we get, the slower we must go, the more we must spread out, and the more vulnerable we will be.”
“Prophetic words, Joseph. Are you able to lead us down?” she asked.
“No,” he replied as his eyes rolled back in his head and he started to fall.
“DAMMIT!” Char bellowed, and the echoes were deafening. She caught Joseph and helped him to the ground. She laid him down with his head propped against a natural stone bench.
Gene grumbled. His Werebear form had weathered the razor storm much better than Joseph’s leathers. He ambled forward. Char caught up with him and walked at his side as they headed out of the Rotunda and down Broadway.
A voice from behind called to them.
“Sorry it took so long to catch up, but you can’t be on point, my alpha,” Adams told her. He moved in front, working his way around the injured Werebear. Once Adams was in the lead, some distance from the others, he cautiously moved forward, stopping every few steps to sniff first and then highlight spots on the wall with his flashlight.
“The closer we get, the slower we must go,” Adams said softly to himself. “Who would have thought that a Forsaken would guide us, wisely, in an effort to save our lives?”
Char thought about the words. There was a secondary tunnel off the Rotunda. “Captain! Seal that tunnel,” Char ordered.
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Mark said, the sound loud within the echo chamber of the Rotunda.
He looked at one of the privates and smiled. “Satchel charge,” he said, nodding and biting his lip. The private pulled it from his pack and handed it over.
“Cover me, you and you.” He pointed to two members of the squad. They aimed their rifles down the unlit passageway. One fired two shots.
“Cease fire!” Mark yelled. “What are you shooting at?”
“I saw someone in there!” the private yelled back, never taking his eye from the rear sight of his M4 Carbine.
Mark shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Fire in the hole!”
Mark pulled the cord and sent the charge winging down the passageway. It hit the side wall as it entered, not going anywhere near as far as he wanted. The three warriors ran for it, diving after counting to five and covering their heads. The concussive blast from the charge was mostly expended outward into the Rotunda, but enough of it blasted the walls of the secondary tunnel to shake loose a great pillar of rock that fell into the entrance, blocking the tunnel. Mark stood up and dusted himself off.
“Well?” he demanded of the other two still face down on the cave floor. “What are you waiting for?”
The two privates popped up and returned to the line of warriors heading toward Broadway.
“Two by two, ladies!” Mark called out, ordering the warriors to operate in pairs.
Merrit hung back to help out if any Forsaken showed up near the rear of the formation.
“Forward,” Char said softly, pointing toward Broadway, the tunnel that continued into the bowels of the earth.
In the silence of the cave, everyone heard the order.
Terry’s Prison
“What’s your friend’s name?” Terry asked. Yanmei looked into the corner where her servant sat hugging her knees to her chest.
“Her name is Fu,” Yanmei finally answered.
“The sooner we leave, the better off we’ll be,” Terry suggested, trying to not sound desperate. He wasn’t sure he was successful.
The Weretiger smacked her lips and folded her arms across her chest. She leaned against the wall, her head tipped backward. Terry read her body language as being defensive.
He’d been too aggressive.
“Where’d you grow up, Yanmei?” Terry asked. She relaxed, but didn’t uncross her arms.
She was still on the defensive, protecting herself.
When she answered, it wasn’t what Terry expected.
“Does it matter?” she started, keeping her arms crossed but looking down as she shifted her feet. “Does anything matter after the fall? Here I am, doing this! I should be in a city on the edge of a jungle, living two lives, both fruitful, rather than wasting away inside this cave! But we lost our freedom of choice when the world ended, didn’t we?”
She looked to be talking to the floor. Terry was no longer in the conversation. He worked his shoulders, hoping that when the time came, he would be able to wrap his arms around his wife and children. He kept his mouth closed.
“Of course we did. Those with the power over life and death were the only ones capable of making decisions. The rest of us just went along. What else was there to do?” she cried.
She uncrossed her arms, held her face in her hands briefly, and then ran her fingers through her straight black hair. When she looked up, she locked Terry Henry in her gaze.
“Those with the so-called power need people like you to do their bidding. Then you run across people like me. T
he only thing that I demand is that people be themselves,” Terry said softly, leaning forward against his chains. He believed in what he was saying because he lived it. “Maybe I insist that they be the best version of themselves.”
He thought of Betty and Lester and their three cows, what a pain in the ass they’d been.
Terry opened his eyes. As thoughts did, his memories of Betty and Lester had flashed through his mind over the course of an instant. Yanmei hadn’t moved since he last looked.
When she did move, she dropped her hands to her side, smiled at Terry Henry, and nodded.
Mammoth Cave
Kirkus intended to ambush the drawn out line of intruders. He’d gotten one but was driven deeper into the tunnels when the grenade exploded. Before that, he thought he heard the human in charge yelling something about silver-tipped ammunition.
That could be a problem.
He was in the tunnel off the Rotunda when they decided to blow it. Kirkus was ready to take out those three idiots before anyone realized that he’d been there, but they were aiming their rifles, and then one fired, narrowly missing his head. Kirkus was not yet ready to experience the pain of having silver punched through his body.
He would count on the next series of trips and traps to whittle the numbers down.
Kirkus had also been dismayed by the presence of a Forsaken with the party. He couldn’t imagine what would drive a Forsaken to join Terry Henry and his group. He couldn’t imagine Terry Henry allowing the Forsaken to feed on human blood as his kind was destined to do.
Forsaken were higher on the food chain, as Kirkus saw it.
He ran when they threw the satchel charge, but it got caught at the entrance to the tunnel. After the explosion and the group had moved down Broadway, Kirkus found that he could get through the rubble and into the Rotunda.
Nomad Omnibus 02: A Kurtherian Gambit Series (A Terry Henry Walton Chronicles Omnibus) Page 69
