by Maven, Ella
Sitting in front of the massive screens, I shut down each of their utility systems—the water and septic, the electricity grid to all but the pod where I sat. Every time I managed to dismantle a system; shouts rose from the ground like a chorus. I risked a glance outside a small window to see the entire city plunged into darkness except for the headlights of the hover cars.
The lights going out was a sign for Gram and his small army to being their insurgency. Armed with torchlights and weapons, they’d aim to take out the weakest Uldani soldiers. From the sounds of screams, shouts, and more laser fire, I assumed they’d emerged from their bunker to begin their attack. From what I could tell, the city was in chaos, which was what we wanted.
As I began to work on disabling the long-range laser weapons that sat atop the walls of the city, Nero groaned.
“Are you okay?” I tapped a button on the screen to start the de-charging of the weapons and rushed to his side. Prodding at his head wound, I huffed when he shoved me away.
“‘M, fine,” he muttered, his words a bit slurred.
“Well, you’re not fine.” I braced a hand behind his back as he sat up. “You’re bleeding from the head and your entire thigh looks like raw meat.”
He opened his mouth to retort back to me, but then his gaze slid over my shoulder and his eyes went wide. “You… What did you do?”
“Oh, just a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.” I squinted to get a look at the progress bar on the screen. “Long-range weapons are almost shut down. Next is the sensors, and then I’ll open the gates.” I focused back on him. “Are you okay?” I held up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Mate,” he whispered, ignoring my attempt to evaluate his likely concussion. His purple eyes radiated awe. “You’re amazing.”
I didn’t get a chance to respond, because just then the floor tilted to the side, and the pounding of footsteps ran down the outer railing of the pod.
Nero scrambled to his feet, shuffling his bad leg behind him as he readied his gun. All business now, he jerked his chin over his shoulder at me. “Keep going. I’ll hold them off.”
I had to admit, the shouts from outside and the pounding on the door sent my heart into overdrive. I raced back to the control panel, working much more frantically now, but still focused. I couldn’t control what was going on outside, but I could control my fingers flying across this screen.
I spoke to myself in hushed tones so I could do my best to ignore the distracting sounds of battle outside. One by one, I disabled the motion sensors, the heat sensors, and all the automatic weapons which kept Alazar the fortress it was. I risked a glance at Nero to find him alternating between shooting out of the small hold he’d made in the porthole window and holding the door which he’d barricaded with the remnants of a chair he’d smashed. His blood coated the floor, and he slipped in it often as he pushed his back against the door, which jerked as fists pounded it from outside.
“How much longer?” He shouted.
I pulled up an outline of the city, where all the gates were marked in red. One-be-one, I tapped on them, turning them green. As I hit the last one, a canister flew through the open window.
A deafening boom shoved my chair off its wheels, and I crashed to the floor. Pain shot up my arm as I landed on my left side. When I tried to push myself up with my hand, my left arm wouldn’t work, hanging limp from the shoulder. “Fuck,” I gritted my teeth as I scrambled to my feet. Blood trickled into my eyes and I coughed as I staggered.
Smoke clouded the room, and I could barely see inches in front of my face. “Nero!” I waved my hand to clear the smoke to find him standing in the center of the room battling two Kulks in hand-to-hand combat. His black machets flashed in the dim light of the smoke-filled room. More bodies were visible through the haze, and I detected the silver skin of at least one Uldani.
“The comm!” Nero shouted to me. “Comm Daz!”
Shit, we still had to send Daz the signal to let him know he could attack. I dropped to a crouch and searched frantically for Nero’s pack. In the pod’s wild tilting, it slid over to the far wall behind the security control panel. I dove for it. Unfortunately, so did an Uldani.
We both hit the ground at the same time. I reached for the bag with my one good arm just as his claws raked the side of my face. I howled in pain as one caught the edge of my eye. From behind me, I heard Nero roar followed by a meaty smack and the sound of armor hitting the floor in a clanking heap.
The Uldani reached for me again, and I spun on my back to slam my boots right into his face. He shrieked as the skin split along his high cheekbone, spraying me with his stinking blood. I reached for the bag again and managed to get my fingers wrapped around the straps right as the Uldani gripped my leg and tugged. I went sliding across the floor toward him, and he grinned at me as I kicked out again, slamming the thick soles into his face, his shoulder, anywhere I could reach. He didn’t wear armor like the Kulks.
My shoulder screamed as I sought to keep my balance and prevent the Uldani from ripping off my leg. I fumbled in the bag; my one eye already closed from the Uldani claw slashes. If that fucker scarred me, I was going to be pissed.
My hand closed around the comm just as the Uldani lifted a fist and slammed it into my stomach. All the breath left my body, and I swore I heard a rib crunch. I gasped as he crawled up my body. He lifted a meaty fist, this time aiming for my face.
I thought this was it, that he was going to beat me to a lifeless pulp when suddenly, his body was gone. I heard a thud and a crack as something large hit the opposite wall. Through the smoke, Nero’s face appeared. He was coated in blood, and I couldn’t tell which was his and which was his enemies’.
“My mate,” he gasped, surely seeing the wreck of my face.
I thrust the comm in his face. “Daz. Signal.”
He didn’t even look at it as his fingers brushed along the slashes in my face. I winced, and he yanked his hand back. “Justine—”
“Nero, focus!” I didn’t miss the irony of our reversed roles. “Send Daz the signal!”
He came out of his stunned state to grab the comm from my hand. He tapped on the screen twice and then shoved it into his pack before strapping it to his back and hauling me to his feet. “We gotta go.”
Limping, he led us through the destroyed pod still filled with smoke. Bodies lay in a pile at the door, we had to climb over them to reach the outside. We collapsed on the small railing outside, gasping in fresh air as the pod swayed and shuddered.
The only way off this pod was by a small craft located underneath. We just had to make it there and out of the city. Sounded easy, but then nothing about this mission had been easy. The skin of my face felt tight, I could only see out of one eye, and my left arm hung at an awkward angle because of what I assumed was a dislocated shoulder. Nero didn’t look any better. He was covered in blood and dragged his left leg behind him like Bruce Willis in Die Hard.
Nero, unaware of my injuries, grabbed my shoulder to pull me along the railing. I cried out in pain, and he whirled around, eyes wild. “What’s wrong?”
“I think my shoulder is dislocated.” I gripped it and fought the waves of nausea threatening to empty my stomach. “I landed on it when my chair toppled over.”
His jaw clenched, he placed one hand on my biceps and the other on my shoulder. “I can pop it back in. Are you ready?”
No, no way in hell was I ready. This was going to hurt like a sonofabitch. But I didn’t have a choice, so I nodded.
He didn’t give me another warning. With a vicious yank, he wrenched my arm. White-hot agony streaked through my collarbone and down to the tips of my fingers. A sickening pop reached my ears and I gasped through the pain.
Nero’s face swam into my vision. “Justine? Justine?”
I blinked until he was less blurry. While my shoulder still felt like it was on fire, I could at least bend my fingers. “Yeah.” I mumbled, holding onto him so I didn’t topple over. �
�I’m here. I’m alive.”
He clasped me to his chest and cradled the back of my head. He pressed a kiss to my temple. “Yeah, we both are. Now let’s get the fleck off this pod.”
A shrieking roar rose from behind us, and I whipped my head back toward the doorway of the pod to find a silver figure appear through the dark smoke. Bloodied, with a cut on his cheek I knew I’d made with my own boot, the Uldani face shredder who I’d wrestled on the floor amid the chaos charged toward us, a blade glistening in his hand.
“No!” I shouted as he raised the weapon. There was nowhere for us to go, pinned against the railing without enough time to dodge his swing. I anticipated the icy slice of the blade in my chest but just as I was about to close my eyes, Nero shoved me to the floor. He ducked the Uldani’s swing, and the alien, unable to stop his momentum, hit the railing above me at full speed. I covered my head as he flipped over it, but of course we weren’t in the clear. If he was going down, he was taking Nero with him. He grasped my mate’s neck and the two of them tumbled off the edge of the railing.
I screamed and reached for Nero. My hand caught the edge of his pack, but I wasn’t strong enough to keep him on the edge. My fingers tangled in the straps, and I slipped off the edge of the platform too.
The three of us careened to the ground in a flailing freefall. Nero’s panicked eyes met mine, and for a split second, his purple irises shone in the laser fire lighting up the sky all around us. For a moment, it was beautiful. I should have been crying and screaming because in about half a minute I was going to be a smashed pancake on the ground of this city, but all I could think about was that we’d done it. We’d completed the mission. My only regret was not getting the chance to tell Nero the visions of our future was the only thing getting me through.
I hoped we didn’t suffer and died on impact. Nero’s arms closed around me, smashing me to his chest. Vehicle headlights shone in my eyes and I blinked at the brightness. “What—?”
With a sickening crunch that jarred every bone in my body, we landed on something hard just as Mag’s voice rang out over the hollers of the battle below. “Got you!”
Twelve
Justine
Beneath me, Nero groaned, and blood trickled from his lips, but he was alive. And so was I. We lay on the roof of a hover vehicle, somehow caught in mid-air by Mags, who poked her head out the driver’s side window to peer up at us. “Get in!”
Except with dawning horror, I realized we weren’t the only ones who’d landed on Mag’s car. A groan reached my ears, followed by a low growl. The Uldani had landed on the roof of the car with us. The fucking stowaway. He hadn’t been invited on this rescue. The bastard just wouldn’t die.
With a war cry I didn’t know I was capable of, I picked up his blade which had clattered beneath us on the dented root. With a slash of my arm, I aimed for the Uldani’s face, but he dodged it at the last minute, lips twisted into a snarl.
His fist lashed out, catching me in the jaw. I might have blacked out for a second, because when I came to, I’d slid down onto the windshield, while Nero stood on the hood battling the Uldani.
Through the windshield, Mags’s eyes were huge, and she fought to keep the hover car steady, so Nero didn’t slide off. A hand grasped my leg, and I fought it for a moment until I realized the hand belonged to an Uldani sitting next to Mags. His head was out the passenger-side window. “Come on,” he shouted over the rush of air. “I’m trying to get you inside the vehicle.”
Wind whipping my hair and clothes, I crawled inch-by-inch across the hood of the car. “Don’t look down, Jus,” I whispered. “Don’t look down. Don’t look down.” I reached the edge and… I looked down.
The ground was … really far away. The figures who ran through the streets looked like ants. My head spun as vertigo took my breath away. My world flipped and suddenly I was tossed bodily in the back seat. I sat there for a moment, unsure how I got there, when the Uldani in the front seat shot me a look. “You wouldn’t move, so I pulled you in.”
“Oh, um, thanks,” I muttered.
A thud echoed from above me just as a dent appeared right above my head. I screamed as a body flew past my window. “Nero!” I shrieked as I scrambled to the side to peer down.
A upside-down head appeared right at my window. Blue. Bloody. Horned. He smiled; fangs stained with black blood. “Right here,” he panted.
“Get in the car!” I hollered at him. I wasn’t sure my heart could take anymore. As Nero pulled himself into the car through the small backseat window, I yelled to Mags. “Please tell me we’re getting out of this city.”
“Absolutely,” she answered, and her hands tightened on the wheel. We zoomed over the tall buildings of Alazar, heading toward a back gate. As Mags and her passenger discussed the best route to take, Nero collapsed into the back seat. I reached for him, running my hands over his body to assess if he had any new mortal wounds. Just when I thought my adrenaline had crashed, relief washed over me, sending another wave of endorphins zinging through me. “Are you okay?”
He winced as he stretched out his injured leg as best as he could in the confined space. “I’m alive. Remind me never to do that again.”
“That wasn’t what I meant by wanting to fly,” I muttered.
He barked out a harsh laugh, which ended in coughing fit.
I slapped his back. “Let’s have a boring life here on out.”
Nero grinned as he caught his breath, and I noticed his left fang was chipped. “Boring sounds great.” His smile faded and his eyes warmed. “I’m so proud of you.”
My heart pulsed happily. “I need to say this now, in case something happens, and I don’t get a chance. You were right. Every bit of it. When you hit your head and passed out, the only thing that kept me going was remembering what I was fighting for. I thought fighting for my friends was enough, but back there, I realized I wanted to fight for me too.” I jabbed my thumb at my chest as I fought back tears. “I wanted to fight for us. Our future. And that was why I kept going when all I wanted to do was curl in a ball and cry.”
Nero pulled me against him and shoved my face into his neck. God, he was filthy and sticky, but I didn’t care. He was whole, and we completed our mission. My wrists tingled, and I glanced down at them as black marks began to appear like an invisible tattoo gun.
“Nero!” I jerked up and grabbed for his wrists. The marks appeared there too, running in two parallel lines around his wrists. Between the bands, a few jagged lines appeared, looking like heartbeat lines circling our wrists.
The Uldani had scratched me, drawn my blood, and when Nero sent him sailing off the car to his death, Fatas awarded us with our loks. I touched the claw marks on the side of my face, and his hands covered mine. “I felt this when he marked you,” Nero said quietly.
“I heard you roar.”
He swallowed. “I could feel your pain.”
“Just a few scratches.” I smiled.
“I knew you were my mate,” he said. “It didn’t matter to me if I was blessed with a cora-eternal. Knowing Fatas honors our union makes it that much sweeter.”
I leaned into his touch just as my head felt like it swelled. A tree rose from the ground in my mind, its roots digging deep and implanting themselves in the soil of myself. The leaves spread open, soaking up the sun and rain. I leaned on the steady branches and inhaled the fresh oxygen. Yes, this was Nero’s aura, a steady oak that would never waver. Never fall. I could lean on it when I needed or stray from its trunk when I felt steady on my own. Nothing about his aura controlled or dominated.
“I can feel you,” I whispered. “Like a strong tree setting down roots in my mind.”
“You’re a brigger, chirping around and picking out dead twigs and rearranging my branches.”
I choked out a laugh amid my happy tears. “I guess you needed a little maintenance.”
“I’ll always let you fly, my mate.” He smoothed my hair off my forehead with gentle fingers. “And I’ll always be a
firm, permanent place for you to land.”
Home. That was what Nero was. Home. I’d searched all my life for a place I belonged, but I was never satisfied. Probably because home would never be a place. It would always be a person—Nero. No matter where I was, on this planet or any other, I’d always be home with him.
I pressed my lips to his and lost myself in his taste as I fluttered about his branches until a throat cleared in front of us, reminding me we weren’t alone.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Mags said. “But we’re leaving the city. Gram and his soldiers have engaged the Uldani on the ground, but they don’t have the manpower to sustain it for much longer.”
Nero straightened and peered out his window. “The Drix will be here.”
The would be. I didn’t let doubt enter my mind. Daz would never leave us, not until he had confirmation Nero and I had failed our mission. But that confirmation wouldn’t come. Because we were alive, and we’d succeeded.
I kept waiting for another shoe to drop—we’d gone through an entire damn closet already—as the car zoomed toward the gates. But nothing stopped us, and we burst through the opening out into the open fields surrounding Alazar.
I nearly climbed in Nero’s lap as we stared outside the window. The moonlight shimmered off the blue grass surrounding Alazar. Where were the Drix? Had Nero’s signal not reached them? Suddenly a big smile stretched across Nero’s face and his eyes crinkled. In a voice full of price, he said, “They’re coming.”
“They are?” asked Mags.
“Where?” I pressed my fingers to the glass just as I caught sight of movement along the tree’s edge at the outskirts of the open field.
Nero pointed with a steady finger. “Right there.”