by S T Branton
I felt good inside. Deacon was nowhere to be found until I headed back to my quarters. He stood in the hallway outside my door, apparently waiting for me to answer. “You looking for something?” I asked.
“Yeah, and I just found it,” he said. “I thought we could find a way to kill some time before we eat. Did you know there’s a game room in here?” He pointed down the corridor. “It’s over near the regular barracks. They have an old arcade machine.”
“No way.” I inspected his face, trying to gauge whether he was screwing with me or not. It was true I hadn’t had the chance to fully explore the fort yet due to extenuating circumstances.
“For real. Bet you ten bucks I can beat the high score.”
“I’ll take that bet,” I said.
That was how we whiled away the hour before the feast was ready. Deacon labored mightily to win the bet, but he couldn’t succeed. To be fair, neither could I. But I still relished that time we spent together, for once not worrying about where the gods were, what they did, or how we would orchestrate our next move. It was only the two of us fighting over the stool in front of the machine, ribbing each other mercilessly, and sitting real close without stinking to high heaven.
I’d missed that kind of human contact.
I was in a great mood when we found seats in the mess hall. He brought us a couple of drinks, and I sat and watched the scene. More and more of the faces at these tables had become incredibly familiar to me. We were a huge, rambling family—definitely not where I thought I’d end up at the start, but I really couldn’t complain.
I sipped my drink, my eyes closed, when someone screamed. Immediately, I sat bolt upright as my eyes jerked wide open. Another murder was the first thing on my mind, another mangled body discovered inside the fort. That would dismantle this hard-won peace. I braced myself for the worst.
The crowd rippled and eventually ejected Frank almost in front of me. He was clearly on the way down from vamp mode, and he had a big bundle slung over his shoulder. On closer inspection, I realized the bundle was a person and a dead one at that. He dumped it unceremoniously onto the floor.
“Frank!” I jumped forward. “What the hell is this?”
He glanced up at me and rolled the body over. “Look. Remind you of anyone?”
I turned my gaze downward and felt my blood chill in my veins. The corpse belonged to the beefy guy who’d set the mob on Frank after the second murder in the woods—except he had changed. His face was sharp and lean, and fangs protruded from the slackened jaw. A forked tongue lolled out of the bully’s mouth.
“It was him,” Frank said vehemently. “The whole time, it was him. I caught him on his way to go skulkin’ through the woods. He was probably after one of Dan’s crew.” He scowled. “He wouldn’t come quietly, so I dealt with him. I know you said I’m not supposed to, and normally I’d agree, but…” The look he gave me was faintly beseeching, begging me to understand.
“Nah, you did good, Frank.” I clapped him on the shoulder and looked at the rest of the survivors watching us wide-eyed. “You hear that, guys? Frank got rid of the son of a bitch who killed our people in the Delaware Water Gap.”
The crowd cheered. The mobster smiled sheepishly. “It was nothin.’”
“Aw, Frank. You’re a hero.” Maya, still surrounded by kids, beamed at him, and a blush actually crept into his vampy cheeks.
“Now I’ve seen everything,” Deacon muttered.
As have I.
“Let him have this,” I said. “Look, I know it’s pretty weird that he’s a vampire, but he can obviously control himself, and he’s been on our side since he changed. There’s no way we can say all Forgotten are bad now. You know that, right? Some of them, at least, have demonstrated a capacity to do good.”
This much, I must concede, said Marcus.
“I’m not ragging on the guy,” Deacon answered. “It would’ve been just as weird if he was alive.”
I gave Deacon a look and stepped up beside the rotund man in front of the survivors. “Can I say something real quick before the feast begins in earnest? I want everyone here to know how badass they are. Each and every one of you has done incredible things to get where we are today, especially over the last twenty-four hours. I have seen more strength, more courage, and more undiluted human spirit here in this fort than I have ever seen in my life. I mean it. And I will never forget it. We are in this together now, for as long as this struggle lasts. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like me, or you don’t agree with me, or whatever. I’ve got your back until the world is ours again.”
The crowd whooped. Someone had taken some of my sad streamers off and tossed them around.
“What’s next?” asked a wiry youth with scuffed-up glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Where do we go from here?”
I thought about that for a minute. “We go up,” I said. “We gained a foothold. We won a battle. I think we’ve been on defense long enough, don’t you? It’s time to start winning the war.”
The cheers were raucous, bouncing off the walls. “Fort Victory! Fort Victory!” Then the chant devolved into, “Vic for Victory! Vic for Victory!”
I couldn’t help the laughter. “That’s not how it works.”
They didn’t care. And it didn’t matter, so I let it slide.
Vic for Victory.
Epilogue
The pain in her leg was excruciating, worse than any Bastas had ever felt in her long, long life. Although she was hurting, her injuries took a backseat to the blind, seething rage that boiled through her veins. The fact that it was a human who had done this to her, accursed god-weapon or not, was enough to drive her to the limits of her sanity. How could that vermin have inflicted such a wound?
How could this have happened?
The goddess’ vision blurred for a moment, doubled, and grayed out. Her quick steps faltered as the blood poured unabated from the open gash in her limb. She hadn’t had time to tend to it before her flight from the charred and bloodied battlefield. The smell of carnage still lingered in her sensitive nostrils, already haunting her senses. She squeezed her eyes shut, and again, she stumbled. Her jaw scraped along the half-frozen ground.
Another wound. Another failure.
The heart perched inside her ribs pounded desperately, attempting to correct for all the things it knew were wrong within her system. The blood was a river now, trailing black in the silver moonlight behind her. She could not go on much longer without doing something about it. Even if she wanted to—which she did—Bastas’ grievously damaged body would not let her.
The only refuge she found was beneath the barren boughs of a tree. The wet stormwind still cut her to the bone. The shaggy dark coat which she had always loved so well offered little protection to her on this night. It had not saved her from the edge of the fiery blade, and it would not shield her from the elements’ wrath.
She collapsed at the base of the wide, gnarled trunk. Her leg throbbed in time with her panicked heart. The fur was matted red, and instead of soothing, the touch of her tongue intensified the agony. The goddess felt her grip on the leopard soul slipping in a way it never had before. She moaned softly to herself, the closest approximation to a keening wail that she could muster.
Everything fell apart, collapsing into dust and sand. This was the world for which she had waited so long.
The color began to bleed from the night, turning velvet blue into shades of flat gray. The bleeding wouldn’t stop. Bastas found herself half in and half out of her beloved animal form, heaving draughts of the crisp, cold air. Each breath brought her a little further back from the edge. She counted them in her head. One. Two. Three.
Four. The shadows were blue and purple again. Five. The blood on the ground was red. Six. The blue-purple shadows were moving.
She blinked. Moving? That wasn’t right. She had purposely gone off to the most desolate reaches of the woods to be alone and have time to recover. No one had permission to see her this way, disheveled and scrapin
g herself off death’s doorstep.
But indeed, someone had come.
She didn’t recognize him at first. The word was that he had become elusive and that his machinations worked far beneath the levels of even the other Forgotten. Bastas had never believed it. He was an Apprenti and an orphaned one at that. No fool bound to a dead master carried that kind of power.
Even if he did move cloaked in shadow.
“Good evening, Lady Bastas.” His voice was silky smooth and unassuming on the surface, as it had always been. It rippled with something else now too, an undercurrent of darkness that made him sound richer and stronger.
The goddess’ golden eyes widened in their sockets. She forgot the persistent dizziness in her head and the weakness engulfing her body.
It was Delano, but it couldn’t be. The metamorphosis he had undergone made him tower over her, shrouded in swirling black mist and his face a lean, angular moon in its midst. He watched her with those pale, expressionless orbs, waiting for a response. Over his shoulders, huge furled wings rested dormant on his back.
Bastas refused to show the fear that lapped bitterly at the back of her throat. She sneered from her place on the ground. “I see the Apprenti has been busy now that his god has fallen. What have you done to mutilate yourself so?”
Delano’s thin lips curled into a smile, and he laughed. The sound of it gripped her in an unshakeable chill. “Irreverent to the end, Lady Bastas.” He sighed. “I had hoped it might not come to this, that you might succeed in your every endeavor and we could rule as equals, more or less. I had a faith in you that I did not have in the others. Alas.” He stroked her hair. “You are no more worthy, in the end. You too have failed me.”
The words cut deeper than the sword into her flesh. “Listen to you,” she hissed. “An abomination speaking as a god.” She moved to turn her head away from him. “Some of us will never forget where you were born, Delano. In the gutter, with the trash of a hundred others before you.”
His hand tightened on her hair. She clenched her teeth. Delano forced her to turn and meet his gaze. “My birth is of no consequence,” he said softly. “The new generation of gods are not born, darling. They are made.”
Bastas’s head rocked backward, the movement beyond her control. The wind ripped across her cheeks. She opened her eyes and stared at the slivers of night-blue sky through the naked branches of her last bastion.
The goddess barely felt the Apprenti’s teeth puncture the skin of her neck.
She barely felt anything as the sky bled slowly to white.
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Author Notes
Written November 18, 2018
Dear Readers,
I’m sitting here on the couch with Mrs. Raymond.
The lights are off, the fire is roaring, and we’re both sipping on mint tea. It really is the perfect end to a weekend after running the daughter to rehearsals (Elf, Jr. musical), taking the boy ice skating, and raking six tons of leaves.
It’s also the perfect breather because I stare Thanksgiving in the face and tremble with fear.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Turkey Day and all of its accoutrements. But we do it at the in-laws (who are great), and we’ve added a few more bodies and a couple of dogs to the invite list, which is going to make it a super-packed house… and I’m kind of an introvert in disguise.
Guess I’ll just have to hide in the bathroom and write some stories. Might be a good writer’s retreat!
Okay, speaking of Thanksgiving, I’ve gotta say, I’m in a damned grateful mood. There’s a lot of blessings to count. Family. Health. Daily sustenance. My writing partner. You know, the usual stuff.
But since Lee and I are coming up on an anniversary of writing together, I find myself more and more thankful for you, the readers.
Seriously. Can you imagine how cool it is to make up stories and have people read them WAY faster than you can write them? Well, take my word. It’s a freaking blast, and we are truly, truly grateful.
Also, there are the folks that make up team ST Branton. There’s a lot of moving parts, but one of the most important parts is the JIT (Just in Time) Readers. These are folks that will blow through our book in the matter of a day or two. They catch typos that our editor missed, offer some comments on form and content, and most importantly, they grab some ridiculous continuity errors.
Listen, we all know Lee and I aren’t writing technothrillers. In fact, we are kind of firearm idiots. We don’t know at what speed the bullet-slug-bit is travelling when it comes out of the end of the gun-nose-thingy. See what I mean?
This is usually not an issue. We’re pretty good with magic and maces.
Unfortunately, for us, there were firearms in this one.
Fortunately, for us (and you), we have some JITers who know more about guns than I know about breathing. Looks like he’s saved our gun-ignorant butts more than once.
Anyway. Our readers are great. Our Team is great. Life is good!
On to book seven...
For Kronin,
Chris (for Lee and Team Branton)
Also by CM Raymond and LE Barbant
Steel City Heroes Saga
The Catalyst
Buy The Catalyst
The Crucible
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The Casting
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Jack Carson Stories
The Devil’s Due
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The Devil’s Wager
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The Rise of Magic
* With Michael Anderle *
Restriction (01)
Reawakening (02)
Rebellion (03)
Revolution (04)
Unlawful Passage (05)
Darkness Rises (06)
The Gods Beneath (07)
Reborn (08)
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