Shadows of Divinity

by Luke Mitchell

  “Hal…” Elise whispered, grabbing my arm, pulling me back to reality.

  I forced a breath. Tried to think.

  “Kublich’s here, Carlisle,” I muttered quietly. “Get to the rooftop now. I’ll make sure the others get out.”

  Kublich was still a hundred feet away, but I swear he smirked as if he’d heard me. He started toward us with the gait of a predator already savoring the kill he was about to make. And maybe for good reason. Down here, in tight quarters, a raknoth would be beyond deadly.

  But I sure as demons’ depths wasn’t going to let that stop me.

  This was exactly the moment I’d been waiting for.

  “Howya, High General,” Johnny called. “I think you’ve got something in your eyes, there.” He raised his riot gun, taking loose aim. “Maybe you should lie down, sir. You look like demon scud.”

  Kublich prowled forward, making no sign he’d heard Johnny at all.

  “It’s over, Kublich,” I called. “You can try to take Sanctuary. It won’t matter. After tonight, all of Enochia will be coming for you.”

  The low rumble of his laughter echoed down to us, weighted with horrible certainty.

  “Is that what you think, child? That you have accomplished anything but to accelerate our plans? Your father would be disappointed in you, Haldin.”

  Something snapped inside me.

  I almost didn’t register Elise’s restraining arms around me, her pleading voice in my ear. I wanted to throttle the bastard with my bare hands.

  It was the low boom of Johnny’s riot gun that snapped me to my senses.

  Kublich staggered back a step, a heavy stunner pegged to his chest.

  “Always kinda secretly wanted to do that,” Johnny muttered beside me.

  Kublich peeled the stunner from his chest, regarded it with disdain, and tossed it aside. “Bring the Raish boy to me,” he said, his voice deeper than before. “Kill the rest.”

  I had one moment to wonder who he was talking to. One horrible moment for understanding to set in.

  Then the hybrids came.

  37

  Exit Plan

  Think. I needed to think.

  A dozen hybrids howling down the hallway toward us. More than that. More streaming in still. And only five of us. Only three in fighting condition.

  And then there was Kublich.

  There was no way we were fighting our way out of this. And that grinning, demon-eyed bastard knew it.

  “We’re on our way,” Carlisle’s voice crackled through the earpiece, followed by the faint sound of gunfire, yells, and the hum of an engine in the background. “Try to keep him talking if you can’t get out.”

  “Plans have changed,” I growled.

  We needed a way out. And we needed it now.

  I clamped a hand on Johnny’s shoulder, the bare bones of a shoddy plan whirling in my mind. “Get a cell open. Now.”

  He only hesitated the length of a questioning glance before he was off, strafing to the cells on our left, firing a stream of stunner at the oncoming hybrids all the way.

  I raised my own riot gun and opened up. “Cover him!”

  Franco turned so he and Phineas could both fire on the incoming hybrids.

  It wasn’t enough.

  There were too many hybrids, pressing in too ferociously. Too fearlessly.

  Elise greeted the first hybrid’s skull with her staff and whirled seamlessly into striking another.

  I met the third one with the butt of my riot gun. It felt like batting hardwood, but the hybrid went down by way of perturbed balance if not actual pain. I drew my knife, dropped a knee between the hybrid’s shoulder blades, and plunged the blade into its neck before it could scramble to its feet.

  Even with my thumb braced on the hilt, I wasn’t ready for the resistance the blade met. My hand slipped. I felt the edge of my palm slide neatly open, and my own blood oozed down to join the squirming hybrid’s.

  I adjusted my grip and drove the blade home with both hands. To my relief, the blade sank, and the hybrid went slack.

  “Open!” Johnny cried behind me, the roar of his riot gun rejoining the fray.

  The air was alive with growls and other unholy sounds.

  I clambered to my feet, glancing to the open cell door. “Get to the—”

  “Down!” Johnny roared.

  I didn’t ask questions—just dropped like a sack of stones. Johnny’s riot gun roared twice in rapid succession, and two hybrids flopped to the ground by me and Elise, convulsing with the stunners’ charges.

  Johnny hauled me up by the forearm, and we spun to face the hybrids side by side, riot guns roaring. Elise’s staff whirled tirelessly, its wind-whipping song punctuated by the rapid thuds of staff on hide and bone. On my flank, Franco and Phineas dropped target after target with softsteel slugs and careful precision.

  The hybrids kept coming, their numbers still growing. I couldn’t even see Kublich through the throng anymore. Several of them were sniffing at the air now. Sniffing, I realized, and fixing their pale red gazes on my freely bleeding hand.

  “Get to the cell!” I shouted.

  Elise spun down from an aerial maneuver to deliver one last bone-shattering blow, then turned and darted for us. Johnny and I shot a few hybrids off her back, shuffling toward the cell ourselves.

  “Scud,” Johnny growled beside me. “I’m out.”

  I shot another hybrid down and realized I was out too—just as one of the fallen hybrids pounced to its feet behind Elise.

  “No!” I shouted, tearing forward.

  Too late.

  The thing caught her from behind in some sick parody of a lovers’ embrace, gleaming fangs bared to strike at the soft flesh of her throat.

  In that moment, my training meant nothing.

  There was no cool focus. No plan. I rushed at them like a frightened boy, trying to reach the girl he loved before it was too late—my mind screaming with the flashes of my mom and dad being violently torn from the world.

  “Elise!” I screamed, stretching my hand out, desperately lunging—already realizing I was too late.

  Except the hybrid had paused, pale eyes fixed hungrily on my outstretched hand. The hand that was still dripping blood.

  It was only a moment’s hesitation, little more than a hungry glance. But it was enough.

  I closed on them and thrust my bloody palm right into the hybrid’s hungry red eyes. Relief swelled as the hybrid released Elise. Then it grabbed my arm instead and chomped down.

  The pain was immediate and breathtaking, and it tripled when the creature jerked its head, jaws still clamped. I jammed my knife through the hybrid’s eye, yelling without hardly realizing it. It went limp with its fangs still buried in my arm, and I staggered with it, trying to pry its jaws open.

  To the left, Johnny was on his back, barely fending off a chomping hybrid with his riot gun held cross-body.

  “Help him!” I cried at Elise as she bent to help me.

  After the briefest hesitation, she whirled away.

  There was a loud crack of staff on skull from her direction, followed shortly by Johnny’s frenetic, “Yeah, have a bite of that, you son of a bitch!”

  I pried my arm loose, and then Franco was there, pulling me toward the cell, and Johnny and Elise were scrambling in ahead of us. Phineas was already on the floor inside.

  We fell into the cell, Franco yanking the door shut behind us.

  A scaly green arm shot in to bar its path. Bones cracked as the door struck it, and there was a terrible screech, but the arm didn’t withdraw.

  I reached out and flung the hybrid away with telekinesis. Franco slammed the door shut. I turned my mind to locking the bolts manually, then killed the access panel outside with a hastily severed power line. That done, I slumped against the wall, head buzzing.

  The first hybrid slammed into the door with a cracking thud. The second impact came with a groan of deforming metal. The door wouldn’t hold long.

  “Alpha b
e damned,” Johnny growled, “what the grop are those th—”

  An enraged bellow filled the room, muffled by the door but still plenty intimidating to make us all jump. A fist-sized dent joined the first one.

  “Hal?”

  Elise was beside me, gaze flicking between me and my mangled arm, her face drained of blood.

  “I’m fine,” I grunted.

  In truth, the pain wasn’t nearly as bad as I would’ve expected. That’s not to say I was actually fine. I was bleeding freely from multiple wounds. I was tired. Hurt. Terrified.

  But we needed a way out. So I needed to be fine a little longer.

  “Everyone against this wall,” I said. “Now.”

  They didn’t argue. There clearly weren’t any alternative plans here.

  I focused, gathering my will.

  “And now?” Johnny asked to my left, closest to the thumping protests of the hardsteel door. “Please tell me there’s more to the pla—”

  Someone—Elise, I thought—shushed at him.

  “What? He’s just sitting there! Hal? Hal, what the scud are—”

  “Shut your mouth, kid,” Phineas rumbled.

  Any other day, it would’ve raised my hackles, hearing Phineas take that tone with Johnny. Then and there, though, it was a boon. A quiet vote of confidence from the bear who didn’t do warm and kindly. I drew more energy from the cells in my pack, letting the electric fury course through my veins. Someone might have said something more, but I didn’t have the capacity left to process it.

  In Johnny’s defense, it probably did look like I was just sitting there. In truth, though, I was drinking in more energy than I’d ever thought to channel. My body positively screaming with it. Desperately trying to hold the construct steady in my mind. Leaning on that desperation—the fear, the hatred for Kublich just outside—to force my will into reality.

  Then, when I felt myself slipping into darkness, I let it all loose like a detonating bomb.

  There was a deep, resounding crack that I felt through the wall and the floor. I think I blacked out for a few seconds. Something crashed at the edge of my awareness. Darkness resolved to Elise’s frantic face, and Johnny’s stunned one, both of them pulling on me, dragging me to my feet.

  “Did it work?” I asked. Or tried to, at least.

  It came out more as a slurred groan, the world dipping around me, my head spinning crazily as they hoisted me up. Nevertheless, I saw the thick pile of rubble in the corner of the cell, and the light shining down from above.

  We had our way out.

  My heart eased at the sight of Franco fixing the grappling module’s coiling motor to Phineas’ jumpsuit and holding on, both of them beginning the ascent.

  “Go,” I murmured at Elise. “You next. Go.”

  I tried to take my own weight back from her and Johnny and nearly brought us all down. My body was stiff, unwieldy. I felt slow and thick in the head, drunk on exhaustion. My arm didn’t even hurt. No, it was more than that. I couldn’t even feel the arm. Or the leg.

  Something was wrong.

  Before I had time to wonder about it, though, the cell door gave a horrible moan and wrenched free from its hardsteel frame with a series of sharp cracks.

  Johnny spun and opened fire with his sidearm.

  I whirled with him and caught a glimpse of Kublich tossing aside the hardsteel cell door like scrap before the room lurched and a plunging sensation informed me that my numb legs had failed to plant themselves under my weight. I watched the cell floor rush up to meet me, powerless to do more than weakly flop an arm out.

  Elise caught me as my knees thudded to the floor, at least saving me from a full face-plant. “Hal!”

  Franco was yelling something from above.

  “Hybrid bite,” I croaked as it dawned on me. “Venomous. Can’t move.”

  “No,” she whispered, pulling me back toward the opening I’d made. “Please. We have to move, Hal. Please!”

  Johnny’s steady stream of gunfire ended, his sidearm empty. Ahead, Kublich lowered his arms from his face, red eyes blazing, tendrils of scaly green creeping over his skin.

  It was over. I couldn’t move.

  I was already dead.

  So I did the only thing I could. I wrapped Elise and Johnny in a net of my will and pulled.

  I didn’t get to see their shocked faces, their indignant outrage when they realized what I was doing. I just heard them screaming my name, screaming to stop. Heard the terror and hurt in their voices. It cut me to the core. But I kept lifting until I felt them clear the hole to the ground floor.

  Kublich surged forward with a low growl and cuffed me aside. There was no ducking. No moving at all. I hit the cell wall with a jarring thud and barely felt a thing.

  “After them!” Kublich’s voice roared somewhere far away, more beast than human now.

  Bare feet slapped across the cell floor. Hybrids charging for the rubble-strewn corner, a river of scaly green shins and clawed feet rushing past in my limited field of vision. Darkness was clouding my senses now, pulling me down. Exhaustion. Hybrid venom. Whatever it was, it was trying to take me. My window had already closed on even trying to telekinetically lift myself up after the others.

  I was dead. About to join my parents by Kublich’s hand. The thought made me want to scream. I couldn’t. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything to stop it.

  But I could try to take the bastard with me, at least.

  I reached out with my senses, found the knife I’d dropped, and focused my will, picking Kublich out of the rushing tide of hybrids, taking aim. It’d have to be a perfect shot. I pulled the energy and—

  Something stomped down on my back. Hard. A hybrid, I realized. Just as one of its kin dipped into my line of sight, glistening fangs bared in a hungry snarl. It reached for my throat. Panic tearing through me, I caught its hand with telekinesis, my vision wavering with the effort.

  Shouts from above. Sounds of fighting. Elise screaming. I lay there, listening helplessly, waiting for my power to fail, for the hybrid to tear me to pieces. My vision darkening. The venom dragging me down.

  At the edge of my sight, Kublich strode up and shoved the two hybrids aside. He didn’t need them. I had nothing left. He’d beaten me.

  I’d failed.

  Failed my parents. Failed my friends, Enochia… It was all I could think as my parents’ killer hoisted me up and pinned me against the cell wall like a flimsy plaything, his crimson eyes blazing violent victory.

  With my last breath, I reached for Carlisle, unsure he was there at all, more a hopeless prayer than anything else. That he’d get the others out. That he’d finish what we started.

  But it was too late.

  The world was already fading to black when Kublich’s strike fell.

  38

  Rude Awakening

  The room was dim. Undefined. Like I could feel the walls there in the shadows but couldn’t see them. I didn’t know how I’d gotten there. Only that I came to it groggily and with a good deal of pain.

  Pain. That was good, right? Why was that good?

  Because Kublich apparently hadn’t killed me, for starters.

  But why couldn’t I move my arms? And where the scud was I? And—

  The others!

  I came more alert, taking in my surroundings with bleary eyes, and quickly ran into the answer to one question, at least. I couldn’t move my arms because my wrists were shackled and chained to the table I sat at. Had they been that way a moment ago? Of course. They must have been. And that hardly mattered anyhow.

  Elise. Carlisle. Johnny. What had happened to them?

  “Your friends are dead, Haldin,” a voice whispered from the dark edges of the room, surrounding me. Kublich’s voice. I was sure of it.

  “You’re lying.”

  He had to be. Alpha be sweet, they had to be alive.

  I looked around the room, trying to spot him, and almost jumped when I turned back to find him sitting across from me, face fully
reptilian, eyes pulsing a menacing crimson.

  “Ahh, there we are,” he said, eyes burning brighter. It was hard not to shudder at his alien expression, all flaring nose slits and jagged fangs.

  “Here we are,” I agreed, “but it looks like you forgot your makeup. Your lies are falling apart, Kublich.”

  He gave a hissing chuckle. “Ever defiant. Even when all hope is lost. You might have made a fine raknoth, had fate smiled upon you.”

  “I haven’t lost hope,” I said too quickly, my mind whirling, trying to take stock. Were we still in Sanctuary? Tucked away in some Legion torture chamber? Had Kublich and his hybrids taken the base?

  I shifted in my seat, head throbbing, trying to ignore the deep, cutting pain in my shackled wrists. And that’s when it dawned on me. I could move again. Another reason why pain was a good sign.

  Small victories.

  Kublich was watching me with what seemed like glib amusement. I had the uncomfortable feeling he could see straight through to the thoughts unfolding in my head.

  “I could never be anything like one of you monsters,” I added, mostly to break the silent spell.

  His fanged grin only widened. “No? Lacking virtually all relevant details, and yet so righteous in your self-justification.” He shook his head. “Such impetuous creatures you humans are.”

  “So full of scud, and yet so righteous in your own self-justification,” I shot back. “Such monstrous creatures you raknoth are. You came here to make supper of our planet. Tell me what relevant details possibly make you the good guys here. You’re nothing more than super-charged gropping parasites.”

  Slowly, carefully, I reached out with my senses to probe the lock of my shackles as I spoke. Or tried to, at least. Something was wrong. Fuzzy. Unfocused.

  “Haldin, Haldin…” He hissed the name as if tasting it. His voice grew stern. “You know nothing of my people, child.”

  The way he said the word, child, made me feel like that was exactly what I was. A meddling child, weak and afraid. I did my best to shrug it off. “I know you’re okay with destroying my race to make way for your own. I know you’re sick, dying. I know…” The words stuck in my throat, tight and trembling. “I know that you killed my parents, you son of a bitch. And I know that, after tonight, if I can’t make you pay for it, the rest of Enochia will.”