“Then why the hell are we using them?” David pressed.
Nev grinned slyly. “I told you. It’s faster. And I want to be the one to take Chancellor Kinnion prisoner.”
David couldn’t suppress himself. He returned her grin.
“All right,” he heard himself say against his better judgment. “Why not?” As they took off running down the narrow, shadowed street, David’s heart thudded with excitement. He had never experienced anything like the hold Nev had over him—and he wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Far above them, Malcolm leaned dangerously as Sampson banked to the left, swooping in a narrow arc across Woodward Avenue and aiming straight for the tallest central tower of the Renaissance Center. Just as Malcolm and Sampson, moving as if with one body, began to cut through the air directly toward the tower, a wall of black, beating wings rose up in front of them.
Detroit’s Dactyls were in the air to greet the Warped Immortals’ enemy from Flint.
They were so numerous that they darkened the sky across Malcolm’s vision. Beside and behind him, he could hear wings beating in a panicked flurry as the Flint Dactyls and their riders pulled up short, slowing their momentum toward the sea of enemies.
Malcolm threw a gloved fist in the air.
“Forward,” he shouted against the wind, knowing that his voice would be lost in the rush of beating wings. Instead he pumped his fist to signal. He could feel his warriors regaining resolve around him, and within seconds, they were all surging forward to meet the Detroit Dactyls head on.
Malcolm drew his biotoggler from his back, holding it with both hands even as he squeezed Sampson’s flanks in a vise grip between his thighs. He trusted the beast to bank and weave through the air only at angles that would not jeopardize his balance. They flew as a unit, inseparable from each other.
Malcolm raised the biotoggler’s sights to his right eye. His biotoggler was constructed to be accurate to distances of several hundred yards, and the sights magnified the approaching enemy Dactyls. He allowed himself to scan back and forth across the fore guard of the approaching wave of airborne combatants.
And then he saw him. A black-bearded, sharp-nosed Immortal in a blood red helmet with black visor. It had to be Commander Syné. This was the man who had killed Malcolm’s direct commander in hand-to-hand combat. It was because of Commander Syné that Malcolm had taken over command of a unit of Immortal fighters—and earned his own immortality.
Malcolm felt a wave of fury course through him. Sampson felt it, too. Without any urging from Malcolm, he redoubled the speed of his beating wings, and the two of them shot forward ahead of their phalanx of Dactyls.
Aiming through his biotoggler sights, Malcolm fired and easily struck the Dactyl flying to the right of Commander Syné with a precise shot to the sternum. Its wings jerked and froze midair as the virus-bullet pierced through its scales and bone. Instantly, its body began to disappear from underneath its rider. Within moments, it was gone, and the Immortal who had been astride it dropped like a stone, a strangled cry hanging in the air where his body had been.
Malcolm did not hesitate for a moment. He swiveled, his biotoggler still raised to his right eye, and fired again, this time picking off the Dactyl to the left of Commander Syné. Again, the great black bird vanished in midair, leaving its rider to tumble to his death. Immortals were, of course, immune to disease and degeneration and could heal much more rapidly from minor physical wounds. But the wounds of plummeting to the ground from a height of several hundred feet would be too much, even for Immortal anatomy. These riders would die on impact, like any other human being.
Malcolm had now isolated Commander Syné. Sampson sensed without any guidance from Malcolm who their target was and lowered his massive, crested head, straining forward. As he did, Malcolm held himself curled tight and low against Sampson’s shoulder blades. He slung his long-range biotoggler across his back again and drew his handheld gun.
The Dactyls and their Immortals near Commander Syné tried to close in around their leader, tightening the gaps that their fallen comrades had left, but Malcolm held his biotoggler pistol at the ready, and the enemy Dactyls shrank back, retreating and leaving their commander exposed.
Malcolm and Sampson were only a few yards shy of Commander Syné. They were well within biotoggler firing range of each other, and yet, neither pulled a trigger. Instead, their Dactyls craned their necks and screamed into the wind, and the two men locked eyes through their dark helmet visors. This would be a close range fight.
An instant later, Sampson careened into Syné’s Dactyl. He reared his head and threw his wings open, lashing forward with the long talons on his feet. His claws sank into the enemy Dactyl’s breast, gouging six deep furrows in its black scales. Instantly, rivulets of black blood appeared where thick, armor-like scales had once been.
The Warped Dactyl shrieked in agony as Sampson beat his giant wings against its flanks. Syné clung to his Dactyl’s neck as his body was thrown back and forth like a sack of flour by the giant beast’s agonized convulsions.
Malcolm leaned forward across Sampson’s mighty shoulders and aimed his biotoggler directly at the black visor of Syné’s helmet. Just as his finger began to tense on the trigger, Syné rallied. He hurled one arm around his Dactyl’s neck and jabbed forward with the other, his fingers gouging directly into one of Sampson’s eyes.
Sampson shrieked and reared back, his talons retracting from the flesh of the enemy Dactyl. Sampson jerked so violently that Malcolm’s lower body swung free from the Dactyl’s back, and for a sickening moment, he dangled hundreds of feet in the air, his arms wrapped in a choke grip around Sampson’s neck.
But Sampson, sensing Malcolm’s peril, recovered quickly. He righted himself, scooping Malcolm back across his shoulders as he did. Malcolm adjusted instantly, once again squeezing his thighs tightly into Sampson’s flanks. Automatically, he made a move to retrain the barrel of his biotoggler on Syné’s visor—but suddenly his stomach lurched with horror.
His hand was empty.
In the confusion of nearly losing his grip on Sampson, he had dropped the biotoggler.
Malcolm reached wildly for the long-barreled biotoggler still slung across his back, but he did not grab it in time. Syné’s Dactyl swooped and slashed at Sampson with its talons, slicing two gullies of black blood into Sampson’s leathery right wing. Sampson screamed, but did not tip. Malcolm held fast to his flanks.
Syné had drawn his biotoggler and was taking aim. Malcolm reacted in an instant. He pulled a long, curved knife from his combat boot and in one swift arc, swung out and slashed across the throat of Syné’s Dactyl.
A gash instantly opened between the Dactyl’s scales, and a spurt of blood shot out with astonishing force, spraying across Malcolm’s visor and mouth. He had cut an artery.
The enemy Dactyl’s wings went limp, and the Dactyl sagged dangerously in the air as its lifeblood pumped out through the gaping opening in its throat. Syné swayed in the air and lost his grip on his biotoggler. It slipped from his hand and fell heavily toward the earth.
But Syné was ruthlessly swift. The moment he felt the life drain from his familiar, he jumped to standing between its massive, sagging wings, and in two mighty strides, he leapt over the top of its crested head and landed squarely on Sampson’s shoulders, facing Malcolm.
Malcolm barely had time to realize what had happened. Syné’s Dactyl was dead and plummeting to earth—and Syné was with Malcolm, astride Sampson’s back. His hands closed around Malcolm’s throat, and his upper lip curled in an unnatural snarl.
Sampson, sensing a foreign presence on his back and the peril this brought his master, began to reel in the air. He beat his wings furiously, attempting to throw Syné off. This had the unintended effect of shaking Malcolm about, even as he was desperately clawing at Syné’s hands, which squeezed ever tighter around his neck, his thumbs pressing into Malcolm’s larynx.
Several hundred feet below, David and Nev were sprint
ing along a narrow, empty side street running parallel to Woodward Avenue. They had half a mile of city ground to cover before they reached the Renaissance Center. Although this particular street was abandoned for the time being, they could hear the clamor of battle in the city around them. Warped Immortals had begun to rally after the biowaves had taken them by surprise, and those who had survived were pouring in huge numbers onto Woodward and Fort to meet the tide of Flint invaders.
Nev’s hand closed around David’s tightly as she made a sharp left and pulled him around a corner. David gasped for air, thinking for one desperate moment that this was truly ridiculous. He had come to terms with time travel; he had accepted that he was now part of a war five hundred years in the future. But he couldn’t escape the fact that he still had the body of a middle-aged, twenty-first century accountant. His adrenaline had helped him to get this far—but his energy was starting to flag.
Just as David was contemplating stopping short and leaning against the brick side of a building to gasp for breath, there was a gravelly shout ahead of them. A group of five Warped Immortals appeared out of nowhere, spread shoulder to shoulder across the street, blocking David and Nev’s path.
They were dressed haphazardly, one of the women in an asymmetrical skirt and one of the men in a jacket half unzipped so that the naked flesh of his chest was exposed. Clearly, the offensive had taken them entirely by surprise. They had run to the defense of their city without a moment’s notice—not one was in the uniform of the Warped Immortal guard, or even in a biovest.
But they did have biotogglers. All five drew on David and Nev in unison. Without their uniforms, it was impossible to know whether these Warped Immortals were members of the guard or not, but they clearly had some weapons training.
Before David had a half-instant to conclude anything else about them, they opened fire.
David felt as if a hundred tiny needles had launched against his chest at once as the viral ammunition of the biotogglers struck his biovest with breath-taking momentum. But none of the pellets landed true. His biovest did its job, blocking the mRNA from contact with his vulnerable cells.
Nevertheless, David stumbled backward in surprise at the sheer force of the biotoggler blasts. Nev took two steps back alongside him. She had more experience with this weaponry, but clearly she too was momentarily thrown off by the assault.
One of the Warped Immortals, seeing that her biotoggler was useless against David and Nev’s biovests, threw her weapon to the ground with an angry snarl. She drew a narrow black baton from the sleeve of her jacket and gave it one brusque shake. It immediately tripled in length and became a five-foot-long quarterstaff.
David felt himself reacting on instinct. The moment he saw the Warped Immortal draw her staff, he reached into the hilt at his hip and drew the long, curved blade of a knife. Nev reacted just as quickly, drawing a collapsible staff identical to the Warped Immortal’s from her sleeve.
Nev and the Warped Immortal sprang in the same instant, their quarterstaffs locking with a loud clap above their heads. Nev held her staff in both hands, heaving with all her might to knock the Warped Immortal off balance. She had the advantage of greater forward momentum, and the Warped Immortal stumbled backward several paces, her quarterstaff slipping in her grip. As she did, Nev swung her staff in a clean circle overhead and lunged forward so that the staff cracked against the Warped Immortal’s shoulder.
The Warped Immortal gasped and lurched to the side, her staff clattering to the ground.
David did not have time to watch further. Two of the Warped Immortal men were springing toward him, one with a knife drawn and the other pulling a long, spear-like weapon from a sheath on his back.
Before David had a moment to consider what he was doing, he took two lunging steps forward, just as Nev had taught him in the brief time they had had to train. He slashed with his knife in an upward trajectory, and its blade met the soft flesh of the belly of one of the Warped Immortal men.
The man did not even cry out. He made a strange sucking sound and seemed almost to fold in on the wound David had made in his abdomen. A moment later, his body began to vanish. David had poisoned his blade with rogue mRNA virus.
David began to pivot on his heel to face the remaining Warped Immortals, but just as he did, he felt a heavy crack across his shoulder blades. The air rushed from his lungs and he took several lurching steps forward, his vision blurring with the shock of the blow. A Warped Immortal had struck him cleanly across the back with a quarterstaff.
David regained his equilibrium and flipped the knife in his hand, so that the sharp edge of the blade pointed upward. He slashed half-blindly in the direction of the Warped Immortal, and by sheer luck, landed a glancing blow across the man’s knuckles even as he was raising his quarterstaff to strike again.
One cut was all it took.
The tiny knick in the man’s hand expanded exponentially. Within seconds, the virus was coursing through his bloodstream, and he began to dissolve.
David did not pause to watch the Warped Immortal’s demise. He turned to find Nev locked in combat with another Warped Immortal man who wielded a long weapon with a foot-long spearhead at its tip. Her opponent was the only one of the five left—Nev had clearly already made short work of the others, and their bodies had disappeared under the assault of the mRNA.
The Warped Immortal with whom Nev was fighting was tall with massively broad shoulders that he threw into his weapon, driving it toward Nev with a ferocity and force that kept her on the defensive, constantly springing backward and barely managing to parry his blows with her quarterstaff.
The Warped Immortal drew back his spear over his head, preparing to drive it towards Nev’s sternum. He leapt forward—but Nev was quicker. Just as he left the ground, she crouched low and swept her quarterstaff along the earth, so that as he landed, the staff caught him in the ankle and knocked him down. His heavy torso crashed on top of Nev’s staff, pinning it underneath him.
For a moment, Nev remained in her crouch, caught off guard by the sudden loss of her weapon. Then, moving on sheer impulse and adrenaline, she sprang. She landed directly on top of the Warped Immortal, pinning him to the ground with her knee on his shoulder. With her two hands free, she swiftly wrapped her hands around one of his meaty arms, catching him in a skillful elbow lock. The Warped Immortal yelped in pain as his joint was compromised by the force of Nev’s twisting his bicep and forearm in opposite directions. He released his grip on his spear, and Nev reacted in an instant, releasing his arm, snatching the spear, flipping it point downward, and driving it cleanly into his solar plexus.
A high-pitched howl emerged from the lips of the Warped Immortal, and he curled around the point of the spear, snatching at its long shaft. Thick, dark blood immediately began to pour from his mouth, and he gasped to breathe—his diaphragm, too, had been pierced by the spearhead. He inhaled a lungful of his own blood and began to choke.
Something horrifying was happening. The Warped Immortal’s body was trying desperately to heal itself. As he writhed and clutched at the shaft, he inadvertently tore the tissue and muscle around the wound, driving the spearhead deeper. His immortal biology worked tirelessly to heal up the wound even as it expanded. But his cells could not reconstitute around the still-embedded point of the spear. Even for an Immortal, this was a fatal wound. The healing capabilities of his body were only working to prolong his agony.
The Warped Immortal continued to writhe on the ground, clutching futilely at the shaft of the spear, and Nev stood up and backed slowly away from him. Without considering what he was doing, his eyes on the dying Warped Immortal, David approached her and slipped an arm around her waist.
“Why aren’t his cells disintegrating?” He asked, his voice low. The Warped Immortal was trapped in his torment, the scene unfolding before them growing steadily more horrific.
“The spearhead must not have been poisoned,” Nev said. “Either he didn’t have time to poison it in the rush to defend t
he city . . . or he wanted to make us suffer.”
She took a step back toward the Warped Immortal, grabbed the spear shaft and lifted it, sending the point of the spearhead upward through the man’s chest cavity and piercing his heart. He took in one rattling gasp, shook, and was still.
Nev pulled the spearhead out of his body. It was black and glistening with blood. Absently, still watching the Warped Immortal’s now lifeless body, she handed the dripping spear to David.
“So . . .” she said, almost thoughtfully. “Let that be a warning to us.”
Just at that moment, a shrill scream rang out directly over their heads. David looked up to see a black shadow tumbling toward them.
He did not know it, as the falling shape was moving too fast and was turning end over end in a confusion of limbs and wings, but what he was seeing was Sampson, diving precariously close to the earth, trying to throw Commander Syné off his back without throwing Malcolm.
Malcolm was still caught in Syné’s chokehold, but he managed, despite the rushing wind around them, to slip his arm under Syné’s wrist. With a swift heave, he jerked Syné’s hands free from his neck and gasped for air.
But the momentum Sampson had built up was too great, and just as Malcolm broke free of Syné, he careened backward and lost his balance between Sampson’s wings. Sampson was now swooping thirty feet above the ground at a sharp angle so that his broad wingspan could fully extend between the buildings on either side of the narrow street. As Malcolm fell back, Sampson tilted further, and Malcolm toppled off his back.
It was only when Malcolm was falling that David recognized him. Once Malcolm’s body was clear of the shining, black shadow of the pterodactyl, David knew at once, from some primordial, fatherly place deep within himself, that the lithe form plummeting toward the earth was his son’s.
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