King of Ends

by Sam Ryder

  Unfortunately, my body had other ideas. My head throbbed and I grimaced, watching one of the men try to grab Gehn. Lightning quick, she lashed out with her teeth, biting his hand. He retracted his hand, howling and dripping blood. I silently applauded her, even as she drew her sword.

  One of the men laughed, drawing a revolver. “Drop it,” he said.

  Gehn snarled at him. Then she did the unthinkable, moving so fast the man didn’t have time to even think about pulling the trigger. Her blade arced through the air with such fierceness I swore I heard it whistle as it slashed through individual atoms. Some of those atoms included the guy’s neck. He gasped, a red line appearing across his throat. Not just his throat, but all around his entire neck. Holy shit, I thought. She’d cut him so precisely and quickly that he’d been decapitated but his head was still balanced atop his neck.

  Until he lost all strength in his body. He collapsed, each part of his body hitting the dirt in quick succession with the head last. It bounced away with a vitality that betrayed its current status of dead.

  Several other men drew their weapons as well, except they stayed well away from Gehn. They spoke to each other, trying to decide whether it was better to shoot her and disobey orders or risk trying to get close enough to capture her.

  In any case, Gehn had bought me some much-needed time and creating a distraction. These fuckers probably thought I was down for the count. Little did they know, I could take a hit better than most.

  Still on the ground, I drew both Alpha and Beta, covering up the motion with a cough and a fake spasm, which almost caused a real spasm to roll through me as the pain in my head intensified to a crescendo.

  I might not be able to reload, which meant I couldn’t waste a shot.

  Through the haze, I counted six men in total in the near vicinity. One on each of the three secured women and another three for Gehn. All had weapons drawn and aimed in Gehn’s direction, fingers on triggers.

  Hannah’s eyes met mine and she read my expression. A small smile flitted across her lips.

  Go time, I thought, taking careful aim from the hip.

  Hannah, who had temporarily stopped struggling, surprised her captor by dropping like a corpse to the ground. He was still holding her, and her weight, though minimal, coupled with her momentum and the element of surprise threw him off balance. For a glorious second, his entire chest was exposed as he struggled to drag Hannah back up.

  My weapon’s report was loud now that the screams were more distant.

  The bullet punched into the guy, rocking him back. Hannah kicked out his legs for good measure, though I was pretty certain my aim had been true given the entry wound right over where his heart should be.

  The added benefit was that the other two captors let down their guards for a split-second. It was more than enough time. I readjusted my aim and shot one in the only part that wasn’t blocked by Belenie’s body—the arm. It was a flesh wound, but would cause great pain. It also had the added bonus of being his gun arm. Which meant he dropped his gun. Belenie, though clearly not experienced in violence, was smart enough to drop to retrieve the weapon, clutching it in her two bound hands and aiming it at the guy, who was bleeding profusely. He managed to get out one word—please—before she shot him in the face. She’d been aiming for his chest, which was smart, but she wasn’t prepared for the gun’s kick, which sent the shot higher, right into his mouth. In any case, it had the intended effect. The bastard died before he hit the ground.

  Go Belenie, I cheered inwardly.

  Though all of this had happened in a couple of seconds, the last four were already turning in my direction, realizing their mistake. They should’ve shot the dog when he was down.

  Gehn was also not idle, moving toward me and then cutting back toward the man who had Adi in a tight grip. She slashed him hard across the forearm and he released her. She slashed back the other way and chopped off his hand, which went spiraling through the air, spraying blood from severed arteries.

  The last three gave up on any thoughts of obeying orders, opening fire on Gehn, who hadn’t stopped moving, shoving Adi out of the line of fire and then diving headfirst into a forward somersault, emerging from the maneuver at full-tilt, charging one of the guys who was firing on her. It was the damndest thing I’d ever seen, watching her dodge each bullet like she was in The Matrix or something. She slammed into him at a run, impaling his throat with her horns.

  Meanwhile, I shot one of the other guys in the dick. Was that very nice? Not really. Did I care? Not really. I have impeccable aim and it felt like something he deserved. It also worked, because he also dropped his gun and grabbed his man parts, or what was left of them, dropping onto all fours. My next bullet chipped away a chunk of his skull and finished him off.

  This next bit was my favorite part.

  The last dude tried to turn tail and run. I guess we were more than he’d bargained for. Gehn, however, had other ideas. She raced after him, launching into the air with a vicious growl and landing on his back while simultaneously stabbing him through the spin. Ouch.

  I dropped my head back to the dirt, taking a few deep breaths to calm myself down. My head pounded in agony, my vision was still a little blurry, and my hearing was muffled. Something wasn’t right upstairs. I was probably concussed. Hopefully my skull wasn’t shattered. That would suck.

  My eyes closed and I drifted asleep.

  Chapter 16

  Healers gotta heal

  A flurry of hands descended on me.

  The damage to my head had left me groggy, so I struggled to observe what was happening. As best as I could tell, each of the four women grabbed one of my arms or legs and hauled me back inside Medusa’s. I heard sounds, but they were muffled, as if coming through water. My head lolled from side to side, almost like the movements were out of my control. I tried to shake off the ringing in my ears and shit feeling. Two palms gently cradled my head and positioned it straight. I looked up and saw a figure leaning over, looking into my eyes.

  It was Belenie, as tender as ever.

  “Hang on, Cutter,” she said, and I was finally able to make out her words.

  A warm sensation washed across my cheeks. My skull tingled, radiating even more pain and making me clamp my teeth together until it passed. With each second, a little bit of the fuzziness cleared. The warmer my head felt, the sharper the images came into view. Soon my hearing returned, and I realized there were dozens of voices murmuring, the background noise of an entire bar deep in conversation.

  And I was the topic, all eyes trained on me and the four women who surrounded me protectively.

  The pain in my head subsided.

  Belenie slumped forward, her chest heaving.

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “She’s fine,” Gehn replied. “That just took a lot out of her. She needs to sleep.”

  “Oh, shit,” Hannah said, pointing to my other thigh. Blood was soaking through the pant leg, which was ripped where something had penetrated it. The blood was pouring out and still coming. I touched the area and a stabbing pain shot through the lower half of my body.

  “Dammit!” I shouted. “There’s another wound under there.”

  “Shit!” Hannah said. “Belenie’s out. What are we going to do? That thing is a gusher.”

  Hurts like a bitch, too.

  “We need to access the wound,” Adi said as she unbuttoned my pants.

  “Hey, buy me a drink first,” I joked, trying to distract myself from the pain.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get you a drink,” Adi replied as she pulled down my pants halfway to expose the wound.

  It looked even worse than we thought. Blood flowed freely from a two-inch gash that had somehow sliced through my thigh. When I fell I must’ve landed on something extremely sharp. Maybe I’d gotten very unlucky and my knife and fallen out and landed point up. Who knows?

  “We need to stop the bleeding,” Adi said, determination in her voice.

  Before we’
d left Medusa’s she’d donned an overcoat that went over her tank top. Now, she pulled the overcoat off and wrapped it around my upper thigh just above the gash.

  Then she tied the sleeves together as tightly as she could, gritting her teeth from the effort. “Arrr,” I growled, the pain immense. “Fuck me.”

  “Maybe later,” she said, and I was impressed she was able to joke considering the chaos we’d just experienced. “There,” she said, tying a second knot. “That should buy us some time. I’ll be right back.”

  With that, she took off running.

  While my leg throbbed, Belenie—who was lying down at my feet—rolled onto her side and grabbed my boot. “Sorry I can’t help you with this one, Cutter,” she said weakly.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “You got rid of my concussion. This is a scratch. Adi will take care of it.”

  She nodded slowly. “Just…need…to…sleep a while,” she said, and then she was out again.

  “Adi is good under pressure,” Hannah observed, pointing to my leg. “The bleeding is already slowing.”

  Sure enough, the makeshift tourniquet she tied was doing exactly what she said it would do. Though the pain continued to throb, the bleeding was down to a trickle, which was a far cry better than the raging river a moment earlier. Still, I’d lost a lot of blood and it was taking its toll. My vision was blurring again and my entire body felt weak.

  I heard footsteps approaching, but couldn’t turn my head to look at who they belonged to. Adi slid onto the ground in front of me with two bottles and a long cloth. She spread everything out in front of her. She moved quickly, like a pit crew member in the Daytona 500—efficient but not frantic. I could almost picture her on a battlefield, treating wounds with the same calm precision. If we could clone her several times we’d have the group of medics Belogon had said we needed.

  First, she pulled a cork out of the first glass bottle. The amber liquid inside sloshed around when she opened it, then handed it to me.

  “Told you I’d get you a drink,” she said.

  “Cheers,” I replied, raising the bottle to toast.

  “Yeah, well, you’re going to want to drink that quickly,” Adi warned. “It’s not there to savor, it’s there to numb you up a little.”

  Who the hell am I to argue with that? I lifted the bottle to my lips and threw it back, chugging nearly the entire bottle. The liquor burned my throat so much I began to cough.

  “Smooth,” I said, continuing to choke, feeling like a teenager having his first swig of alcohol.

  “Okay, here we go,” Adi announced, grabbing the other glass bottle. A clear, water-like solution sloshed around inside. Before I could ask what it was, she poured half the bottle directly onto the wound.

  I clutched my leg and bit my tongue to not scream, instead opting for a low moan and deep breaths. The burning was so intense, I almost expected the wound to sizzle and smoke.

  Adi dropped the bottle and picked up the cloth. It was stark white—so white, I wasn’t sure how it even was cleaned in the Ends.

  Where the hell does she get this stuff?

  Sliding her hand under my thigh, she elevated my leg enough to wrap the cloth around the wound tightly, passing over it several times to give it adequate pressure and padding.

  Once she ran out of cloth, she tucked the end of it into the wrapping itself, creating a more long-term solution to the wound. Then she untied the overcoat sleeves and pulled it off my leg, relieving the pressure somewhat.

  “Okay,” she said. “You can pull up your pants now.” She pushed up onto her knees and held up the overcoat in the sun for inspection. “Didn’t even get any blood on it.” Ha, I thought. She’s right. All the blood had pumped downstream, saving the coat.

  I lifted my hips and pulled my pants up. Adi and Gehn grabbed each hand and helped me to my feet.

  “Thank you,” I said to all of them, relieved to be standing in relatively good shape after that attack. “That one was brutal.”

  “I’ll say,” Hannah said. “I thought you were a goner for a minute there.”

  I had underestimated the Wanderer’s Guild to a point. Many of their ranks were sloppy and untrained. But one thing they had was strength in numbers, and this time they’d sent some of their better hired gunmen. I did, however, take solace in the fact that we’d still managed to come out on top.

  At this point, Belenie sat up with her elbows resting on her knees. She had bags under her eyes, and her skin was pale.

  “You look like you’ve been up for three days straight,” I said.

  “Well, you look like death yourself,” she replied.

  I nodded. “I barely made it this time. We need to get to work,” I said. “The sooner we start this war, the sooner we can end it.”

  “We hope,” Gehn said.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a stocky, barrel-chested male Ender dashing toward us. I spun around to face him, reaching for Alpha or Beta.

  Then it dawned on me—my holsters were empty. I must’ve dropped the weapons after the fight was finished and I’d lost consciousness again.

  Shit. Don’t make trouble, man. Please.

  The Ender walked closer, and I limp-stepped in front of the women protectively. I didn’t want to start a fight with this guy, especially so soon after the attack while I was still badly injured. But I steeled myself, trying to muster up the energy to do whatever was necessary.

  Wearing a heavy scowl not even a mother could love, he approached and looked me in the eye. I didn’t say anything, simply meeting his stare so he could see the lack of fear. I simply stood motionless, waiting to hear what he had to say.

  He raised his big, meaty right hand and held it out in front of himself. Alpha and Beta rested in his palm.

  “You dropped these,” he boomed.

  Cautiously, I grabbed them from his palm, gave them a quick look, then holstered them. I flashed a half-smile. “Thank you, sir,” I replied.

  “Good luck to you,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder so hard I thought I would hit the ground again. Then he turned and walked away.

  Gehn raised her eyebrows. “A male Ender just returned your weapons to you,” she said. “We’re making progress here. That wouldn’t have happened even a day ago.”

  It was a good feeling. Assembling and leading an army would be much easier if the Enders trusted me. Male Enders in particular were not a trusting bunch. As I had seen so many times, they let their fists do the talking. Violence was the language they seemed to understand the best.

  But for the first time since the Blast, I stood face-to-face with a male Ender besides Lustak and Belogon, and it didn’t end up in a bloody fistfight or brawl to the death.

  Maybe we were finally winning them over. Twice now they’d seen that I would fight humans if they threatened the Parisian peace.

  Despite the intensity and violence we’d just experienced, things were looking up.

  Chapter 17

  The Fourth

  I don’t get nervous very often. My years in the Ends had hardened me more than I liked to admit. But that night, I stared up at the ceiling, unable to sleep.

  We slept in the Queen’s guest house again that night. After the excitement of the day, I assumed we would all sleep soundly. Belenie, in particular, was so tired she retired to her bed the second we walked in the door. Gehn doubled up with her just in case her condition worsened and to free up a bed for Adi.

  Within minutes of separating to our respective rooms, the house fell silent. I assumed all the women had zonked out. But I just couldn’t relax, my mind replaying the events of the busy day again and again and going over the checklist of things that needed to be done and planned for the following day.

  It wasn’t just the discomfort of my injured leg keeping me awake, although that didn’t help. The bandage was still wrapped tightly. It was freeing to lie naked in bed and not irritate it, but it was still a nasty wound that would require Belenie’s services as soon as her strength
had returned.

  In the morning, I would address the officers of the Corps, led by Lustak. Then, once that was over, I would meet with Lustak and Belogon to discuss what came next and to try to convince Belogon that he should help us. That made me nervous. What if I didn’t have the right words?

  I was used to military operations. But I was a soldier, not an officer. I didn’t issue orders—I followed them. I’d always been good at that. And more importantly, I wasn’t held responsible when those plans succeeded or failed. It was like getting a promotion overnight from grunt to four-star general.

  I should have been excited, and I guess I was to some degree. This was a huge step. Up to this point, we were gathering all the pieces and assembling the parts. Tomorrow, we would make our first moves. The road to war stretched out in front of us.

  I knew it was coming. But now that it was here, the weight of it all consumed my mind.

  Besides, I had been out of the game for so long. I depended on myself alone. Could I depend on others again? That’s when I realized I already had. The four women who were sleeping nearby had earned my trust several times over. I did trust them with my life. I just needed to extend that trust to any newcomers willing to help.

  Tap-tap. I flinched at the unexpected sound—knuckles on the wooden door to my room. It opened and I was about to sit up and prepare for another attack—though why would an attacker knock?—when I recognized the knocker.

  Adi stepped into the room gracefully, squinting in the gloom to see if I was awake. She gathered her hair back into a ponytail, tying it with the same deft fingers that had saved my life earlier. She still wore the curve-hugging tank top but had ditched her pants to sleep in barely-there underwear that could easily have been salvaged from the sexiest section of Victoria’s Secret. The moonlight streaming through the window played along her skin, illuminating her curves while she moved like a dancer across the room and sat on the bed next to me.