In those last few seconds, he knew he was dying, and yet as he watched, it occurred to him that Jonathan looked so very strange now. He was on his hands and knees as the Borealis approached, and something rolled off his lap to drop into the water with a tiny splash. Jonathan was shaking, his fingers reaching for his face like claws intent on raking out his own eyes.
With each of Malkier’s steps, Jonathan’s head twitched, as though every splash of water was an explosion in his ears. Grant was almost gone when he saw Malkier reach for Jonathan’s neck.
But he was still there to hear it. That sound like distant thunder as the Borealis’s hand jarred to a stop. That surprise when he knew the sound was that of Brings the Rain’s grip clamping down on Malkier’s armored wrist.
As the noise echoed through the remains of the city, Jonathan’s face turned up to look at the owner of that hand. The orange light that had wisped from his eyes was gone. Instead, a malignant red burned there.
“What is this . . .” Malkier said.
Jonathan’s lips pulled back to show bared teeth as a low growl rumbled from his throat.
“This . . . abomination.”
Grant’s last thought as he faded out, was that there was something so familiar about it all.
Oh . . . yeah . . . He smiled. The devil in darkness.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TEN
UNABLE TO GET a choke hold on the red-eyed abomination, Malkier’s free hand formed a fist. The moment he pulled back to strike the beast down it was on him in a rage. It dove up from its knees straight for the Borealis’s face.
As its hands gripped each side of his helmet, the force which it had come at him barreled him over. They spun backward, end over end, across the ground. The red eyes never leaving his face as its thumbs searched for a way to gouge in the steel of his armor’s eye sockets.
When they came to a stop, they were two hundred feet from where they had begun to roll, and the creature was on top of him. That was when fear penetrated into Malkier. He heard something he didn’t think possible. The helmet, the Borealis steel, it was groaning under the pressure of this monster.
He reached up to pull its hands off him and found he couldn’t. Unable to pry it off he tried to roll. The creature was rabid, growling wildly as though its frustration with the helmet was causing a tantrum. Suddenly, it gave up, pulled its hands free and began beating its fists down in pure hatred of the metal that refused to break for it.
The fists came one at a time at first, but soon he pulled them together to bash down on him again and again. Malkier brought his arms up as each hit drove him further down into a crater. The creature did not even realize he was pounding them into the street. Water pouring in to fill the hole around them.
Finally, getting some of his wits back, he waited for it to rear up again, and struck up at it. The hit connected, and the red eyes flew off and away from him.
His heart raced, as he tried to get his footing in the wet crater and broken rocks. His hand reached for the lip and Malkier pulled himself out only to see something impossible. Red eyes, they were coming for him again. Running at him with the speed of a predatory animal.
“No,” he uttered, as the thing rammed into him again.
Malkier’s world became a rolling thing. He bounced across the pavement, end over end, and finally crashed through the bottom floor of a building and out the other side. While he wasn’t hurt, he was—dizzy from it all. Felt disorientated from spinning over and over. He sat up to see the building he’d just flown out of begin to collapse.
He stumbled getting away from it as clouds of dust filled the city streets again.
A strange thing happened then, as the city settled. He found he wanted to stay under the cloud. He heard the man, that thing, looking for him. Its rabid growling. He was afraid, any moment, he would take a step, and the noise would draw the thing to him.
That any moment he would turn and see—
Red eyes stared at him, only for a split second, he blinked and they were gone. He turned again and again, searching for the glow. When something came down on him hard. A boulder of debris knocked him over, he rolled again, but landed on his feet, to see the red eyes running at him.
He swiped wildly at it, but his fist connected with nothing. He spun back and found the red eyes watching. It wasn’t patient, the man growled at him like a predatory beast. It circled him, grunting from step to step as though it were studying him. Like an animal looking for a hamstring or a jugular—some way to get to blood. Malkier’s instincts were telling him to run.
There was no humanity in this thing. It had red blood smeared on its teeth. Its hands were bleeding after whaling against his armor. It didn’t seem to care at all. He turned as it circled him, watched it, waiting for the moment it would try again.
It stopped, stared at him, shivering with violence that wanted to explode. As it did, some of the red seemed to fade in its eyes. The color didn’t change, it was the malignance, the chaos of the glow coming off it.
Malkier felt his vision darkening. Black blood pouring into his throat and eyes. Even in the armor, his ferox physiology responding to a worthy combatant.
As this happened, the thing surprised him once more. It spoke a single word, in a voice that barely sounded human, “Killer.”
He wasn’t sure what it meant. If it was talking to him or itself. But, more disturbing than the meaning of the word was the hyena-like cackle that followed. The sound sent a quake down Malkier’s spine, he stepped back, and it sensed his fear. It came toward him, and he brought his arms up to shield himself. But it didn’t ram him or tackle him as it had before.
It stood straighter. It walked. It pulled what remained of its gloves away and made bloody fists.
Malkier forced himself to meet it. Forced himself to remember he was invincible.
He stepped toward it to strike and got hit with a blow to the ribs that he felt despite the alien steel protecting him.
He struck out again and felt his helmet whip around in the opposite direction.
He roared in anger and struck again, his fists never finding anything. His feet yanked out from under him as he fell to the ground and found himself staring up at the boot hammering him down into the ground again.
“You can’t kill me,” he roared, finally grabbing the boot and pushing the thing away. The red eyes stumbled back.
The color drained from them once again. The red, not so red as before.
It spoke again, “Nothing . . . I . . . can’t . . . kill.”
It rushed in again, but this time, it wasn’t as fast. Malkier saw what was coming and put an arm up to block. It bounced off his wrist. As did the next.
The color was turning back to orange again. Though, barely a glimmer of what it had been before.
Jonathan’s eyes were returning. The human was breathing, in ragged gulps of air.
With a breath of relief, Malkier swatted the man away with a powerful opened hand that caught Jonathan across the chest and sent him hurdling away.
The light around him had been intense. He had to close his eyes as it became everything. Pure white light.
He suddenly found himself standing in a desert. The sun warm and bright overhead. Jonathan turned around to see a familiar rock formation. As he stood there, squinting to see, he heard a man speaking. “I’m sorry, sir, did a man come this way?”
Jonathan turned, and he saw what his ears told him he would. His father, standing a few feet behind him. He was young, the same age he would have been that night in the desert. About the same age as Jonathan was now.
He looked, scared, almost delirious with confusion.
“A . . . a man?” Jonathan asked, his voice unsteady.
Douglas nodded. “Yes, yes. My son. He’s close. I know he’s close. I’ve heard him calling out for me.”
Douglas stared at him without a touch of recognition.
Jonathan knew. Finally, he’d found what was left. The part of his father’s consciousness that he h
adn’t absorbed. He fought to keep the sadness it brought him from showing.
“Your son . . . what’s his name?”
Douglas looked at the sands beneath their feet. His face turning from a man’s to one of a lost child. “I . . . I can’t remember.”
“It’s okay . . . I’ll help you. I’ll help you look—”
Douglas’s hands pulled at his hair, his words desperate, becoming a whine. “I don’t remember what he looks like . . . I don’t know.”
Tears streamed down his father’s face. “But he thinks he’s alone. It was so dark. I heard him calling but I couldn’t find him. He thinks I left him in the dark.”
Jonathan couldn’t bear it, he went to the man and took him by the shoulders.
“He never thought that,” Jonathan said.
“I can’t hear him. I think . . . I think he’s giving up.”
He took his father’s face in his hands. “He didn’t give up.”
“Why . . . why can’t I hear him?”
“Because he’s not afraid,” Jonathan said, “and he’s not alone.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN
MALKIER WATCHED JONATHAN’S body plow out the side of a building and crash into the next. It rolled recklessly across what was left of the city, tumbling through the debris. Finally, it came to a stop and Malkier leapt. He landed with an earth-shattering thud a dozen feet from Brings the Rain.
The man tried to stand and couldn’t. Tried to crawl and couldn’t. His body was broken—drained. He could see it hurt him to breathe but his lungs frantically worked for air, each breath worse than the last.
Malkier took his time as he approached, savoring his victory. All of Brings the Rains efforts to stand only managed to roll him onto his back. The man gave up on trying and lay there, defeated. His body just couldn’t do it.
“You’ve lost,” Malkier said.
Head resting on his chest as he struggled for air, his answer little more than a raised eyebrow.
This part of the city was strangely quiet. There were signs of the fighting but not nearly as much as near the conduit. Two brick buildings still stood on either side of the street, and they hardly looked damaged. The waters of the tsunami had receded back. The streets were hardly dry, there were puddles large enough to be koi ponds, but the ground wasn’t sunken beneath two feet of water.
“Let it be over then,” Malkier said, walking toward him.
He paused, because he saw that Jonathan was trying to speak, and his own footsteps were louder than the man could manage.
“How long . . .” He said. “How long . . . was I gone?”
“What difference does it really make, Brings the Rain?”
“You . . . you can’t feel it . . .”
“Feel wha . . .” Malkier trailed off as he saw a man walking up over the debris behind Jonathan. He wore the black uniform of their army. Whoever he was, he carried Doomsday. The chain wrapped about one shoulder.
“It was long enough,” Shane said, as he made his way to Jonathan.
“Long enough?” Malkier asked.
While Shane was the first to step out into the open, The Never Army began to appear all around them. They came out to the edges of the rooftops, from behind corners and mounds of debris. One by one they deactivated gleamers that had hidden the sounds of their movements until they had converged around Jonathan and Malkier.
A crunch of gravel came as Beo strode up from behind Shane, walking over a small hill of rubble and taking a place on the opposite side of Jonathan. He dropped his hammer head down against the dirt with a heavy thud so that it stood handle up in front of him.
They all moved around Malkier with a precision, as though they were taking up positions. They were surrounding him, but there was something more to it.
Rylee was the last to reveal herself. She landed in the debris between Malkier and Jonathan. Her gear in pristine condition after having returned to The Never. She pulled her helmet back, staring down Malkier with eyes that blazed from the bond.
With his HUD destroyed, Jonathan didn’t know the count of how many of his men were left. But, he estimated that at least fifty had made it through to this moment.
As the Borealis’s eyes finished wandering over all the new arrivals, he turned back to Jonathan. “Haven’t you learned by now, Brings the Rain, a thousand of your pathetic soldiers will never draw a drop of my blood? You’ve brought them to me to die.”
Shane reached down and gave Jonathan a hand. He pulled him up, and Jonathan winced in pain. He had to lean on Shane to do it—but he had his feet on the ground. Beo gripped the handle of The Juggernaut with anticipation as Rylee put away Themyscira. Every man, followed suit, as though they had been given a signal. In unison, The Never Army put their weapons away.
Malkier’s eyes sharpened in curiosity. “Ahh, so something more then.”
Shane lifted his hand, holding Doomsday out to Jonathan. He took hold of chain and let it fall spiked tip fall to the ground in front of him.
Suddenly, the quiet of this place was broken. It didn’t come from Jonathan alone but from all sides. As Malkier began to turn and reexamine the army surrounding him, he saw chains unsheathing. In every fist, lengths of true Borealis steel.
As Malkier realized this, a second disturbing change came over them. The entire army withdrew the shield from their device. A chant began to rise up around him.
“We don’t bend . . . we don’t bend . . . we don’t bend . . .”
Malkier could feel their eyes on him. A palpable anticipation in every one of them where there should have been fear. They looked at him like predators, like he was their victim—their prey. Like he was already dead and hadn’t realized it yet. It was a ridiculous notion; they were monkeys staring down a dragon and yet not a single one flinched. Some even pulled their helmets back as though they wanted him to see them.
“Brings the Rain made us all a promise. He would deliver the Borealis Malkier—alone and cut off from his forces,” Shane said, his voice having risen over the army's chanting. “It appears he is a man of his word.”
Doubt seeped into Malkier under the weight of so many merciless stares. He found it harder and harder to hold any of their eyes for long. He turned back to Brings the Rain. Jonathan was flanked on each side by his men, and the bonded woman was in front, standing like a wall between them. She stared back at Malkier with no fear.
Jonathan’s eyes were the most troubling of all. Behind that glowing orange light, he didn’t see either courage or bloodlust—he saw pity.
“I only have to kill him,” Malkier said.
“Can you reach him, Malkier?” Shane asked.
The moment the question was asked, every hateful eye of the surrounding army tensed with readiness. Malkier hesitated to move. He was more powerful than any being that had ever lived—but he couldn’t break through Borealis steel. If they restrained him before he reached Brings the Rain . . .
“Not every day you get to watch a god wonder if the odds are on his side,” Rylee said.
A long moment passed as the two stared at one another unblinking. Finally, with a roar that shook the ground around them, Malkier charged toward him. As his foot caught on something unseen, Malkier began to fall, and in that moment he knew.
Not Shane, nor Rylee, nor Beo moved. There was no fear in any them. Barely able to stand on his own, Jonathan’s face never held a second’s doubt.
Malkier would never reach him.
His legs had been tripped out from under him the moment he moved. He should have careened into them like a bowling ball hitting pins, but instead his face slammed into the ground as something tightened around his feet.
He felt the terrifying sensation of being dragged backwards, further away from his target. Stunned, his head emerged from the rubble to see the rooftops emptying. Men charging in from all directions, chains spinning around them like propellers blades.
What had tripped him? What had his feet? What was yanking him back across the grou
nd?
He saw it then, a movement of shapes, unseen boots being pulled by the tug of war between his legs and their hands.
He never heard them coming over the sound of all those men and their chains. They’d drawn close while he was distracted by so much misdirection. He could see six shapes straining against his attempts to claw back to his feet. The cloaking devices. They had recovered all of them—even the one that had been on the Alpha Slayer’s corpse.
He was losing. The men pulled and their combined strength dragged him across the ground and away from Jonathan. The lights of their devices, so many of them coming at him at once. He began to panic.
“No! No!” he heard himself yelling in defiance, but his movements were like the scrambling of a frightened animal. A rabbit caught in a snare. They saw his fear.
He forced himself to turn over and lost ground until he planted a fist into the cement for leverage. Every instinct warning him that he had to get his feet under him, but the chains . . . some had hooked ends. He might as well have done exactly what they expected.
The chains seemed to wrap around his elbow and forearm the second he planted his fist. They tightened with a practiced efficiency. He tried to use his one free hand to remove them but was yanked suddenly in two directions. The cloaked men tethered to his feet—they were being joined by others. The men with chains around his arm, they were beginning to pull, every direction going taut around him.
“We don’t bend . . . we don’t bend . . . we don’t bend . . .”
He could hear them chanting as his arm tore free of the ground. He was losing mobility—rapidly.
He began to thrash wildly, his one free hand trying to bat away the chains as the lights of so many devices moved around him.
He felt it when a chain gripped his right arm and grew taut. He pulled it toward him before the man who held the other end could be helped. He swatted that man out of the air as he flew toward him. His fist smashing him down into the ground and breaking his body in a single blow.
The Never Army Page 86