Hannah shucked her blanket, nodded, and disappeared into the house, just as they’d agreed.
Charlie flew high above the trees.
There it was, a giveaway cloud of chaos. It had already started to slow down and coalesce.
The monster was blinkered by its desire to touch the Beacon. It had no time to waste on whatever the beating sound was over its head.
Silhouetted by the light coming from the cabin, Charlie’s open claws looked somewhat picturesque. However pretty they looked, the demon had no time to appreciate them, before it felt the force of the first of several devastating strikes. The Hellcat took hold of both the upper and lower jaw of the monster, sinking his claws so deep he hit bone. As any cat might, he pounded the neck of the creature with his back legs, until there was no neck remaining. Still holding tight, he drained the life force of his enemy into his own form.
“One,” Charlie counted, soaring high again to watch their circle.
The creatures emerged from their mist, raging and roaring and ready for blood.
One more minute would do it.
Charlie hovered, his wings beating in time with his heart. He couldn’t move too soon. Had to let them manifest fully.
Once the creatures took their final form they weren’t able to move through solid objects. His job was to get them to manifest, then draw them inside.
The lights below flickered and went out.
A pod of Ivza, twelve strong, stomped towards the front door. That was okay. All the doors were either wedged open or had been taken off their hinges. It was a killing box.
Folding his wings against his back, Charlie let gravity pull him down. Like a hunting falcon, he fell from the air, until low enough and fast enough to turn his fall into fast flight. He was through the door and into the cabin, his talons slicing through an Ivza, before Hannah had time to do a thing.
They fought side by side, slaying their enemies with the efficiency of a bonded Beacon and her Hellcat.
When they were knee-deep in blood and guts, with no Ivza in their immediate vicinity, they darted away from the kill box and headed for the barn.
The forward guard had been eliminated.
Now they had to prepare themselves for the main event: The final battle.
The only way into the barn was through the double doors. The only way out was dead.
Hannah and Charlie waited.
But not for long.
More Ivza piled in, hunting the Beacon like their lives depended on it.
Hannah’s energy spikes and Charlie’s wicked-fast claws made mincemeat of them. They were splattered all over the old leather halters and rusted ploughshares. But they kept coming. Snarling, sneering, snapping, slashing, they came.
Still the Knazh had not been seen.
Hannah stood her ground, whipping cords of energy around the Ivza’s necks, separating them from their limbs, sending them all to an inglorious end.
Silence and stillness fell.
The slime and mucus retreated, returning to where it belonged. Even the dusty old straw on the ground seemed refreshed and new. Shafts of light penetrated the darkness inside, as the glow from outside steadily grew.
When the barn door was wide enough, Charlie flew out, circling high, looking for signs. The lights were on. There were no monsters. They’d fled, knowing they’d been bested. “You can come out, Kid.”
Hannah wasn't so sure as she stood in front of the barn. There was still a great presence hovering in their vicinity. The glade was empty, but she sensed the demons all around. She closed her eyes and concentrated. There was a ripple in her consciousness, a disturbance she couldn't ignore. Pushing her focus, she knew where it was.
So did Charlie.
He could see that the Ivza had lined themselves up in a perfect V formation. One of them headed straight for Hannah.
Charlie dove to intercept, hitting the middle of the cloud by her side. It was solid enough, formed enough, for him to knock it through the doorway. Tumbling in with it, he hurled himself at it, decimating whatever made contact with his claws.
As for any chess player, there is a moment of mastery, as sacrifice becomes part of the repertoire of moves that may be considered. The Knazh had been learning chess. Charlie knew the moment he heard the door close behind them. This demon had been sacrificed for one purpose only; to separate the human and the Hellcat.
He dispatched the monster with ease, but it brought him no relief.
Looking at her through the barn window, he could see Hannah knew they'd been split up, on purpose.
A chill went through them both.
Charlie flew to every corner of the barn, looking for a crack, a crevice, or a loose slat, anything that might be big enough for him to squeeze through. He knew she was battling for her life. Every shot she made, every bolt she threw was like a lightning storm in his heart. It lit the inside of the building, but still, he found no way out. Desperately, he looked out again from the window. She was nowhere in sight. More flashes gave him hope, but the intensity of them seemed to be lessening. She needed him.
He'd never tried it before, but knew it was his only chance. He flew to the highest part of the barn, way up in the rafters. There was a new charge in the air; something he’d never experienced before. It was as though he could sense something was happening to those he loved. Not just Hannah, but his own kind. They were fighting, for sure. But were they winning? He had to get out there. If he could help Hannah, it could change the tide of battle for his queen on the other side of the Horizon. Starting a dive, he banked to the side, folded his wings over his head and hoped.
The glass shattered.
He was outside and could fight.
Over the roof of the barn, was the quickest way he could get to her. Over the apex, he looked down. “Knazh.” Four of them, all closing in on her. Beyond them, in another circle, eight more crouched, poised to attack.
Hannah summoned one ball of lightning after another, draining the colour from the forest and rendering it monochromatic.
Charlie exploded through the first mighty Knazh, before the talons of another tore his wing and impaled his leg. The beast threw him away, like a rag doll. He knew he was spent. He knew he was done.
Hannah saw him fall.
Three Knazh touched her at the same time. With her power at its height, they disintegrated, but at a price. They took more out of her than any Ivza ever could.
Digging one foot into the soft ground, then the other, she raised her hands, opened her palms, and let her weapon loose. Some of the Knazh dropped down before she heard the wingbeats. Glancing over at her companion of so many battles, she knew it wasn't him.
At the edge of the forest, a haze gathered, sending tendrils into her plane of existence. Physics was again misbehaving. How many more monsters would there be?
She could see another group of Knazh, beyond those who were falling around her.
Blasting and searing their bodies with all she could draw from within, she laid waste to them, but she was burning a path straight to herself, as the monsters climbed over each other and their dead, to reach her. Above the wall of claws slashing at her, she saw something she could hardly believe.
Wings.
Wings and more wings.
All varieties of cats, big and small, all with wings.
The bigger ones had no trouble lifting the Knazh into the sky. Taking away so many, as the smaller Hellcats fought those left on the ground, they gave Hannah enough space to breathe. Even then, even with their help, she felt depleted. She had nothing left. It was all gone. She could see how bravely all were fighting. She could see them all, except Charlie.
Lost, she felt her body drain of emotion. Inhaling, she looked around, watching the frantic anger of these unimaginable creatures. Some cats were knocked from the air, bleeding and lifeless. Some monsters evaporated, gone forever. No matter what she could see, she could feel how things were going. It wasn’t going well, at all.
Her mind cleared.<
br />
She didn’t see it, until that moment. The one, glaringly obvious thing she’d never actually realised.
She didn’t control the weapon she wielded. She…was the weapon, itself.
She wasn’t over. She hadn’t ended. She was not dead.
Looking around again, she knew she could do what Charlie had done for her. He’d been so valiant in his quest. He’d really protected her, his queen, his kind, with his life.
“My turn.”
She knew what she meant. She knew it was her own life she would sacrifice.
Bowing her head, she closed her eyes. She could feel the world around her. She could pull energy from the demons and from the earth, just as readily. Breathing, she sucked it in, holding it, making it hers. Raising her hands, she made them into fists.
A tear found its way from the corner of her eye and ran down her cheek. As it fell, she yelled out, then threw her hands to the floor, striking it so hard, the ground shook and the teardrop exploded. She exploded. Everything exploded.
The force of the blast tore away the skin of the Knazh, powdered their bones and blew them away as dust.
Euphoria was a new sensation to her. The Horizon drew close, inviting her to cross, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t leave him behind.
The worlds beyond the Horizon were too surreal, even for her. Too real to be real and too unreal not to be.
Things were so much of a blur she didn't know where she was. Crawling over to Charlie, she cradled him in her arms, using the last of her strength, before she passed out.
Chapter Five
“Kid?”
She grunted. It wasn't particularly ladylike, but a grunt was a good sign.
“It's okay. She's coming around.”
Keeping her eyes closed, she extended her sensory perception. No monsters. Everything was quiet, peaceful.
Charlie purred.
Charlie!
My Charlie!
Alive!
The tears came again, but happy ones this time. Happy and messy and unending.
She opened her arms, as she had before, and he crawled into her embrace. She held him tight, relief pouring through her. “I thought I’d really lost you, this time.”
“Missed you, Kid. I really have. You were like Sleeping Beauty.”
She felt like smiling but knew it would hurt. There were too many questions for her to risk relaxing like that again.
“You said we, Charlie?”
He stopped. Sat proudly and flicked his head towards the shadows and darkness near the wardrobe.
Hannah peered into the inky depths, waiting for the glow from outside to give her enough light by which she could see.
Eyes.
Several pairs of blinking eyes looked back at her in the most kindly and reassuring of ways.
The closest pair moved forward. As paws and fur became more obvious, Hannah realised it wasn't the closest, it was simply the largest, by far.
A feminine voice, full of vibrance, came from the beautiful creature. “Hello, Hannah. I'm Kehsrah.”
Hearing a scampering, Hannah looked past the mountain lion, to see a scruffy looking tabby bouncing into view.
“I'm Flik. Nice to meet you.”
Charlie moved forward, showing great reverence to the lioness. Sitting at her side, he looked back at the girl. “Hannah. This is my queen.”
Once they all were introduced, Hannah remembered their arrival. “You came. You rescued us.”
Looking to his queen, Charlie smiled at her words.
“No, my dear Hannah. You rescued us. Without your help, we could not have fought and broke through the Horizon.”
Hannah knew there were going to be far more questions and explanations, but she was drained. “We have to be ready for the next attack,” she said, lowering herself onto the floor, offering her hand to Flik, so she could stroke him. “If it's anything like this last one, we're going to need all of you to help us again.”
“No,” said Kehsrah, assertively, opening her wings like a shield. “You won't.”
Feeling a little as though they were being abandoned to a fate they had narrowly avoided, Hannah was about to argue the point, lioness or not.
Charlie crawled onto her lap. “There isn't going to be another attack, Kid.”
“What?”
Hannah had been fighting for almost a decade. To hear him say such a thing was more than she was willing to simply accept.
“Yeah, Kid. They're not going to come back.”
“How do you know?”
“We know,” said the lioness.
“They're scared of us,” added Charlie.
“Scared? Why are they scared of us?”
He purred, turning over, hoping she would stroke his tummy, before he would say more.
If she did, he wouldn't be able to help himself. Fortunately, Kehsrah could see what was going on and wasn't going to let his mischievous manipulation go unchecked, giving the explanation he was withholding.
“You looked into the Horizon. It changed everything. They know you can tell where they are. They're scared because you can sense them across dimensions. It means they can be found.”
Hannah didn't quite understand the significance of finding either the Ivza or the Knazh, when they were always trying to find her.
Not getting the petting he craved, Charlie sat up, looked her straight in the eye and told her the one thing she never knew she would be pleased to hear.
“They're scared, because now they know we can take the fight to them.”
Aidan Pilkington-Burrows writes epic sci-fi, captivating fantasy, and twisty, pulse pounding psychological thrillers, as well as scripts for games and video productions. He also writes adult literary fiction under a pseudonym.
Find out more at aidanpilkingtonburrows.com.
Glamour Puss
An excerpt by Audra Spicer, writing as H.L. Beatty
A burned-out witch and a shapeshifting cat want to rescue the witch's daughter, but a powerful narco-wizard serves up addictive doses of magic to anyone who can pay--and the daughter is in business with him.
Dedicated to Mr Darcy’s feline-fragged face
I’d followed the street-level dealer from the Reverend’s roadside business to this mansion, and finding it was a huge break in the investigation. This house belonged to my most-hated perp. He was dealing a magical drug no one had ever experienced before, something he alone manufactured and distributed in exclusive Naples, Florida, and I wanted to know how.
When I’d watched the catering trucks during my surveillance this afternoon, I guessed there was going to be a party tonight. A chance to approach in the dark and infiltrate.
He had a monopoly on the product that his dealers delivered to private white-sand beaches, poolside, and on the golf course, and once his users got addicted, they would compromise themselves. To get another taste of magic, and another and another, mortals would do anything. He would have them where he wanted them. Through these people and their connections, he would pull the strings on the entertainment world, the press, the law. The country’s soul.
He could not be allowed to do it, and I would do anything in my magic to stop him.
I shot my cuffs.
“This is a beautiful home,” said the Reverend. Her tone of wonder assured me that she’d never been here, which meant she probably wasn’t involved with him. I would have to keep testing her until I was sure of her innocence. It was strange that she was a witch out here alone, but then again, there weren’t many with the old magic left—another situation that had brought me, on a personal level, to southwest Florida to explore.
Frankly, I’d expected a narco with this perp’s money, not to mention magic, to live somewhere more upscale. But this was it. His lair and his litter box. Well, he never had any taste.
“I see a few problems,” I said. “This house’s rear exposure is east, not southwest, so the lanai gets no sunsets. It faces no water. No bay, no ocean. No dock. Not even a boat slip. Just
a three-car garage. And it’s in a development. A $2 million house in this part of Naples is not an estate in Port Royal, however much it would like to pretend.”
“Ooo, la de da, aren’t you a snob.” But she said it with a low laugh, and she leaned into me as we walked up the drive. I laced our arms together. She gripped my forearm with nervous energy, and I flexed at her touch. Whatever happened tonight, we couldn’t lose each other.
The house’s white facade rose above us against the cotton-candy evening sky. Through three stories of windows, lights swirled across the walls.
I stopped. Even though I could slip us in and out of this party, maybe, at this point, it would only be fair to tell the Reverend what we were walking into.
Manuel Miguel Lira—as he called himself in twenty-first-century Florida—was a narco with a lot to lose when the law caught him. I intended to catch him. I had chased him for millennia, from the day the Khmer army of Suryavarman overthrew my darling princess’s Mon kingdom and he committed atrocities that I witnessed, unblinking, up until this night. Now, I had not only the practiced power, but the shape, the authority, and the purpose to put him in the lead-lined coffin where he belonged.
Lira by any name was a soldier of fortune, a mercenary, a bum, a hitman, a grifter, a bankrupt, a drug dealer, a murderer, a thief, an abuser, a sadist. And a warlock. He needed to be where he could not pervert his power to hurt innocents like my princess ever again.
He was powerful. And what about the Reverend, walking into this with me? If what I felt from her aura was true, she had been strong once, but she didn’t help herself anymore. I could tell that much in the few hours I’d known her.
If I told her the truth about Lira, she wouldn’t come to the party with me. And I do love a party.
It would be okay. I was here to observe, not engage. Intel-gathering only. I was undercover for my handlers tonight, so any magic would be incidental, not operational. I would keep my claws to myself.
Hellcats: Anthology Page 10