by Aaron Crash
Chazzie rolled her eyes. “As if we would. It was twenty years ago, and he was a lieutenant commander going places. We are so damn patriotic!”
Pru let out a breath. “Sabina messaged me from above using the old telepathy. Steven is about ready to come in guns blazing. She’ll let us know when he and the rest of the girls leave Catalina.”
“When he lands, he’ll be out of Animus and human,” Chazzie said. “It’s a big fucking gamble.”
Pru puffed out air. “You know our Stevie. He ain’t never met an inside straight he didn’t want to hit.”
“But he hits them,” Chazzie said, defending Steven.
She didn’t have to. Pru was coming around, but it was a slow process.
The two sat in silence. Both were in coveralls, but those would be shredded ten seconds after the first bullets started flying. Chazzie would drive Ducky onto the beach, then she’d drive Rat into the fight. Pru would work the gun. Sabina would try to keep up. That was the plan.
Pru appraised the beach. It looked deserted, but she knew better. Three Dragonlords and their vassals were there, ready to defend the Americos Chamber that would give Steven his power back. This was beaches of Normandy shit, and while Pru wasn’t much for movies, she had seen Saving Private Ryan.
Pru swallowed and found her throat dry. “Oh, sister, this shit is making me nervous. Once Steven hits that beach, ain’t no way he’ll survive three steps. He should send us in first.”
Chazzie laughed. “That’s going full Mouse. No way.” She paused. “I am not bait. We are not bait. You and I are Texas queens, Prudence Pride Wayne. We will do our fair share of fighting, sure, but I ain’t drawing no fire.”
Pru let out a sigh. “I am so glad to hear you say that. You’ve been positively gung-ho recently.”
Sabina’s voice again. Steven, Aria, and Mouse have left Catalina. Zoey is on Steven’s back, Tessa is on Aria’s, and the ninja girl is riding Mouse. They’ll reach land in ten minutes.
“Sabina just telepathied me,” Pru said. “Steven and the gang are on their way in. She’ll let the others know. I’ll go yell to the blind bruja.”
Chazzie hit the engines and they started forward, riding the waves, going for the beach. “Listen, sister, we have to talk about your love affair with the bruja.” She had to yell to be heard.
“Now, Chaz? Kinda bad timing, I reckon.”
“Aw, you know us, a little conversation will relax us. And we got a few minutes. Listen, I don’t know how to bring this up, so I just want to say it. You and Sabina are a surprise all right, and I ain’t got nothing against lesbians, but I don’t want this to change how we are with Steven.”
Pru had known this was coming. “Chastity Virtue Wayne, do you know how many guys have asked us to kiss? Too many to count. Admiral what’s his face certainly did, as did all those generals. We made it clear—we do them, and we don’t do each other. That ain’t changed a bit. I got a certain type, and you ain’t it. Neither is Aria. That chick scares me. As for the others? I don’t see it ever happening.”
“Just what I wanted to hear. And let’s never talk about this awkward shit ever again. Deal?” Chazzie put out a fist.
Pru bumped it. “Deal.”
“Hey, Pru, do we still want it all?”
“Yeah, Chaz, and we want it now.”
Three dragons flew over them to land on the beach in a storm of wings. Their passengers, Zoey, Tessa, and Uchiko bounded onto the sand.
The landing had begun.
Chazzie gave the PTS more juice, and they sped toward the shore. When it came to war and parties, the Wayne twins always showed up right on time.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
STEVEN SHIFTED HUMAN, his Animus sucked away by the Americos Chambers. The effects were so immediate and painful, he nearly dropped Samael’s Lash.
Incoming fire hit the minute they touched sand. Bullets thunked into the beach around them. Others whined past their ears. Mortar shells exploded, flinging sand and shrapnel. Figures broke through the windows and glass doors of the houses on the cliffsides to become full-sized dragons that soared down toward Steven and his Escort.
Yes, they knew they were coming into enemy territory, but they’d come with a plan.
“Incanto!” Tessa called out. The sand rose into walls around them, hardening into stone, ten feet tall. They now had a trench that ran from their position to the cave entrance to the south. They only had a few minutes before the spell wore out, but six inches of dirt was enough to stop most bullets.
From the west, helicopter blades thrummed as three Russian-made Mi-17V-5s flew in filled with the PNW Primacy’s Warlings led by Imogene Summers. Four of her sister wives joined Imogene, and the five dragons flew in on either side of the heavy choppers.
Imogene and her sisters met the incoming dragons in a blinding display of Exhalants. Lightning flashed from the mouths of the females. Heat met cold as ShadowFire ate into ArcticWind. With the dragons battling above them, Steven and his Escort jogged down through Tessa’s trench.
The cave entrance was directly ahead.
The walls in front of them collapsed, disintegrating back into sand. An aquamarine Homo Draconis stood with her hands out. She’d dispelled the magic, clearly, and now they had about thirty feet of exposed ground between them and the cave entrance. True Form dragons, Homo Draconi, and Kevlar-clad enemy Warlings blocked their way. The coalition forces opened fire on them.
“Defensio!” Tessa cast two shield spells to block both bullets and spell fire. Uchiko ran up the side of the wall, flipped off, and then was gone, somewhere. She’d strike from the shadows when the time was right.
Steven fell onto a knee, the pain in his gut intense. He gasped. Zoey whined, a shaggy wolf pacing in front of him. They were at the mouth of their trench, somewhat protected, but still exposed.
Aria and Mouse bent. “Take my Animus,” both said at the same time. Both were naked, with leather belts over their shoulder. Mouse had the Slayer Blade, Aria her own special weapons in custom-made sheaths.
“Mouse first,” Steven wheezed. “AnimusChain.” He reached and found Mouse’s spinning core of energy and gently opened a channel between them.
Mouse dropped the Slayer Blade and its sheath. She fell against him. “Ow, fuck.”
“I’m sorry.” Steven was taking too much, so he altered the flow. He took just enough Animus to keep him upright and to cast one or two spells. He just needed to get his blood onto the eye in the Americos Chamber inside the sea cave, and then he’d get all his powers back.
The aquamarine Magician stood before them, about to either dispel more of Tessa’s magic or to hurl an Impetim missile. The blue-green lizard girl didn’t get the chance.
Enter the Texas machine-gun twins on what they affectionately called Rat. It was a bright cherry-red dune buggy with oversized tires and the crown jewel of the Wayne sisters’ considerable arsenal: an M61 Vulcan. The massive Gatling gun was mounted on a special roll bar—the whole thing had been customized to handle the weight. And Pru had mentioned that someone named Cactus Bill had provided an Incanto spell to provide additional support.
An M61 Vulcan was a six-barrel rotary cannon. Usually such a weapon was mounted on fighter jets. It was never meant to be mounted on such a ridiculous vehicle. On the sides of the dune buggy were the words “Kiss my sweet ass.”
The Vulcan fired 20mm ammo up to 66,000 rounds per minute. At $27 a bullet, that was $180,000 of ammo for every sixty seconds of demolition bliss. After this battle, Steven figured he wouldn’t be a billionaire anymore.
Flashing pink bullets ruined the aquamarine Magician. Each large caliber round smacked into her flesh, took off an arm, then a leg, then removed her head. A dusky gray dragon leapt off the cliffs above the cave to try to take out the threat. That was never going to happen.
The 20mm rounds punched into the dusty-colored dragon, opening holes and splintering bone, riddling the thing until it looked like a bad paper doll cut out by a hyper third gra
der guzzling Red Bulls. The dragon fluttered to the ground, dusted.
Pru was laughing, manning the gun, with her coveralls unzipped to show freckled cleavage. Chazzie drove, spinning the tires through the sand, expertly handling the buggy, though with how much weight it was carrying, that must’ve been a chore. Meanwhile, the Vulcan chopped through Warlings, Morphlings, and Magicians.
An emerald green dragon snaked through the air over the ridiculously red death machine. Sabina had her claws out, moving shield spells to stop enemy fire from destroying the red dune buggy.
Mouse, pale, a little shaky, coughed laughter. “I liked those Wayne bitches before, but now I’m deeply in love with them. Holy shit.”
From the rear, about a dozen feet away, Warlings came over the top of the trench, their armor glowing crimson. Flashing red katanas filled their hands. They slid down the stone walls and advanced on Steven and his Escort.
Aria whirled, wielding two blade-less daggers, the prongs of their hilts upturned like sais.
“Looks like you broke your little knives, Raphael,” one of the Warlings grunted.
Mouse laughed. “Aria won’t get the reference, but that was funny.” The blonde was obviously a little out of it.
Aria channeled lightning into what she called her Animus Daggers. Twelve-inch blades of flickering electricity erupted from the hilts.
The Warlings attacked. Aria took them down. The first attacker she slashed through the throat. Blood geysered out even as his limbs flapped from the electric blow. She drove a dagger into the chest of another, then swung her elbow back to crush the nose of the Warling behind her. She swung off the frame of the soon-to-be corpse, planting a dagger in the side of his neck and using her momentum to spear a foot into the face of another man. He reeled back, turning, and Aria cut both his hamstrings with a slash of her lightning blades. She then severed his spine.
In seconds, the strike force was neutralized.
Mouse sighed. “For the love of biscuits, Aria has light sabers. Well, there goes the neighborhood.”
A big brown male dragon landed on top of the corpses, crushing the trench. Above him, three enemy females were diving in to help. The male batted Aria against a sandstone wall. She took the blow, then crumpled to the ground. He opened his mouth, and the air went silent as ChromaticFury gathered in the back of his gullet.
Before he could unleash death upon them, a slim figure fell from the sky. She’d leapt from the back of a familiar auburn-scaled female. The falling Homo Draconis had a rust-colored body and head while her limbs were yellow. Even from a distance, Steven smelled her scent, that of crème brûlée, hot off the flame.
Abby Free came crashing down on the brown male’s back. She dug her rear claws into his scales, then drove both of her hands, tipped with IonClaws, into the dragon’s brains. Her talons went through his skull like hot knives through butter.
Skylar Blacke unloaded her own ChromaticFury into the three females, who were diving toward her. Their wings melted off them, as did most of their skin, stripped by Skylar’s deadliest Exhalant.
The sounds of Teegan Thornrose’s shotgun blasts filled the air. Michaela Montes, in her partial form, took out a big werewolf with her Escrima sticks and then breathed ShadowFlame into the face of a bear Morphling, igniting the beast, killing him instantly. Pretty McGillicuddy protected her teammates with her reddish-brown force fields.
Their trench had been compromised, but the Five Widows had come to protect their flank.
Aria stood, blood covering her face, the Animus daggers back to being simple hilts. “We have to get to that cave, or we’ll be pinned down here permanently.”
Steven thought to contact the Wayne twins and Sabina, but then those three were hit and hit hard. Lightning cracked into Rat, blowing out tires, toppling the vehicle, and sending it tumbling across the sand. Pru shifted into her partial form and rolled from the crash. The bright red death machine exploded as another female dragon flew down, breathing fire. Pru had managed to drag a bag out of the car, most likely full of guns, but Chazzie was nowhere to be seen.
Sabina was torn out of the sky by three Homo Draconi. She hit the beach in a rain of sand. The bad news didn’t end there. One of Imogene Summers’s helicopters exploded in the air. The chopper went careening into the sea.
Enemy dragons, Warlings, and Magicians raced toward the cave entrance to create a blockade. The first guard had been destroyed. The reinforcements were about to take their place.
Tessa’s shields faded, and she leapt back, just as gunfire chopped into the sand around her. She coughed, wincing, and Steven saw she’d been hit. Blood darkened the right side of her faded black Halestorm T-shirt.
Zoey saw it, too. She turned from wolf to human. She grabbed Steven and kissed him. Steven knew what that kiss meant.
“No, Zoey, wait.” But he wasn’t strong enough to stop her.
She hissed into his ear. “I will be the best Zoey I can be. I will be brave. And I will do this alone.”
The words broke his heart.
Zoey turned from him, shifting into a bear bigger than a Kodiak, and took off running toward the cave entrance.
A bullet tore into her back. An Impetim missile sizzled into her shoulder. From every side, the coalition forces hit her, trying to stop her from getting to the cave. She’d drawn their fire, and she would pay for it with her life.
Aria shot forward, became her True From, and then unleashed her ElectroArc Exhalant. Lightning struck down Warling, Magician, and dragon alike. Zoey raced forward, a golden-brown juggernaut of desperate rage.
Mouse latched onto Steven. “You’re better at shield spells. Take all my Animus. You have to save her.”
“Defensio!” Tessa was already casting again, just in time to deflect fingers of lightning from toasting Zoey. Ice swept down into the bear girl, from the other side, freezing her fur. And still she charged forward.
Tessa then joined Aria in picking off the villains who were trying to kill the heroic werebear.
Steven knew, no matter what hit her, no matter how much pain she was in, Zoey was never, ever going to stop. She’d clear the way even if it meant her life.
He had no choice. He yanked the Animus from Mouse, and she collapsed, unconscious, and he cast another shield spell. Tessa’s and Steven’s force fields could only do so much.
Another bullet clipped Zoey’s back leg, and she went down. A Warling flashed up, using SerpentGrace, and Zoey raked her claws down his face. He fell back, dead. Yet that pause nearly killed her.
She wheeled, and a massive blue male dragon swooped down to bite her head off.
An obsidian-edged club appeared out of nowhere and cracked into the mouth of the blue dragon. Teeth went flying. A Homo Draconis, with scales the color of hickory, had flown in. Whatever that club was called, he knew how to use it. The hickory dragon called to Steven. “Get into the cave, ese. I’ll keep it guarded, but you had better fucking hurry. There sure are a lot of these pinche pendejos.” Javier Jones had arrived at the perfect moment to save the day.
Steven stooped to pick up Mouse and eased her onto his shoulder. Good thing she was petite. He wrapped the straps of the Slayer Blade’s sheath around a wrist.
Zoey had made it to the cave entrance. The naked corpses of men and women surrounded her. The fur on her huge frame was smoking where it wasn’t covered with ice, and she bled from a dozen wounds. She slumped over.
Steven, Aria, and Tessa ran across the battlefield to get to her. Steven tripped and fell next to the bear girl. He was out of Animus again. Mouse slid into the sand and dropped the Slayer Blade.
Zoey shifted to human. She coughed, and blood spilled down her chin. Steven held her hand while Tessa kept them covered with her Peacekeepers. Aria’s Animus Daggers flashed lightning as she moved deeper into the sea cave.
“Brave and alone?” Tears tracked down Zoey’s face.
“You got us here,” Steven said. “You did it.”
Zoey smiled, closed her eyes, an
d passed out from her wounds.
Javier Jones in his True From stomped into view. “Andale, ese! I will watch over the Morphling. Do not waste your Animus on healing spells. You’ll need them. Roy Right, Abner Savedra, and Jem Osprey are already down there.”
Steven wondered if he could trust the Sonoran Desert Prime. Then again, he didn’t have much of a choice.
The Five Widows had fallen back to help Javier.
Sabina and Pru came running up as Homo Draconi, one emerald green and the other pink. Chazzie, still a human, limped along; she clung to her sister. Chazzie’s hair was matted with blood, her face was streaked with dirt, yet she was still prepared to fight. She held a small M4 assault rifle. Another M4 was slung over her shoulder. Pru lugged a huge machine gun with the belt of ammo wrapped around her wrist and dangling off her big serpentine body. The three slipped into the cave just as an explosion lit up the entrance.
Javier roared, then all went quiet for an instant, until the air crackled with his ChromaticFury.
Sabina’s green eyes flashed. “Zoey will not die, Steven. She is hurt, but she’ll heal. Pretty still has spells. You need to take the rest of my Animus. No time to argue.”
Steven didn’t pause. He reached into her, and while he meant to only siphon a little from her, Sabina had other ideas. She gave him everything, and he was full for a second, but already, the energy was drizzling away. They had to hurry. Sabina fell to join Zoey in the sand. Now three of his core Escort were down. More would follow, he knew it. They’d sacrificed everything for him, and he wouldn’t let him down.
Pru’s gaze fell on Steven. What emotions lay behind those yellow serpentine eyes? He didn’t know.
Chazzie raised a weak hand. “Hey, Steven. Good to see you. Good job keeping your blood in your veins. We’ll need it in a minute to free you. Cactus Bill said a kind of rhyme, but now is not the time. Ha. Basically, there’ll be an eye, and you’ll need to bleed on it. Got it?”
Tessa had already raced down to join Aria. Something was different about the barista. She wasn’t joking, and she wasn’t throwing healing spells. It was like she’d become someone else.