Technically speaking, Cassiel should’ve been able to handle that tower all by himself. But none of us had taken into account the possibility of more hostiles showing up on the ground.
“Someone must’ve alerted the others regarding the towers,” Hunter said as we kept running. “We all knew it was only a matter of time.”
“Even so, I still don’t like it. I would’ve loved it if, just this once, everything went smoothly,” I said, irritation clipping my tone.
My blood was already rushing to my head. My nerves were snapping, one by one, and I could feel myself spiraling toward a cesspool of negative emotions—with anger being the predominant one. I hadn’t had much time to meditate properly and strengthen my connection to the Word, and that was a big part of why I was so on edge. It felt like a missed opportunity to save myself and my people, somehow.
The spells still came in words I couldn’t understand or remember later, sporadically and without any consistency. It was as if I was a slave to the Word, as it threw me a spell bone once in a while—enough to get me out of trouble, but not clear enough for me to actually learn and master. The Word had yet to fully trust me.
I could perform any of the spells from the swamp witches’ triple tome, but there was so much more to this type of magic—a seemingly endless ocean of knowledge that was always within my reach, but never close enough for me to touch it.
Once we reached the last comms tower, we understood the gravity of our situation.
Cassiel was fighting two dozen Perfects, alone. While his prowess was simply commendable, he still couldn’t kill them all. They moved around too much, retreating whenever he got too close. They worked in pairs, too, just to make it more difficult for him. They’d taken him by surprise, from what I could tell.
The Draenir were up in the trees already, aiming their weapons at the Perfects. It was difficult to shoot, though, since the bastards were constantly moving. Varga, Kallisto, and Hunter took their positions, flipping the pulverizer switches on.
Cassiel fought them both on the ground and in the air, bolting around like a lightning flash. Two heads finally rolled off, but many were still on. He needed our help.
Before I aimed mine in an attempt to start shooting the Perfects down, I put a hand out and dug through my brain for the puppeteer spell. I’d used it before without much of an effort. I could do it again, provided that the Word helped me.
“Come on,” I murmured. “Please. Help me.”
As if responding to my plea, a searing energy burst through me, much like a solar flare. An invisible pulse shot from the palm of my extended hand. It hit one of the Perfects in the air, ensnaring him. I jerked my hand back and pulled the fiend down. He landed with a painful thud, and Kallisto rushed to cut his head off.
He managed to dodge her hit, but he didn’t see my pulverizer pellet coming. He turned into ashes, drawing the attention of other Perfects. They seemed to oscillate between horror and astonishment, but it wasn’t enough to stop them from what they were doing.
“Remember, we don’t have enough pellets!” Hunter shouted, then switched his weapon to bullets. He fired twenty rounds into the brawling cloud of Perfects overhead.
Six of them came down, but only for a few moments, and they all got up and attacked us, instead. At least Cassiel had fewer Perfects to deal with—which meant more heads rolling on the ground. The Draenir were to intervene only if they had no other choice.
I fought my own share of Perfects, and I managed to paralyze one with a stunning spell while I riddled another with a flurry of bullets. A third came at me, too fast for my reaction time. I was completely open in that split second, his for the taking. My heart stopped for a moment, as I felt a fire expand through my chest.
Getting a bad feeling about this.
Before the third Perfect could do anything, though, Hunter intervened and tackled him, football-style. They rolled on the ground, clawing and punching at each other. I shot the first Perfect, who was still under my influence.
Varga snuck up on him and the other one, and, with two swift swings, he removed their heads from their bodies. Others attacked him and Kallisto, two of them getting dangerously close. We heard the guns go off.
The pulverizer pellets hit both Perfects in their stomachs. Seconds later, they vanished into puffs of ashes. I threw one of the Draenir a scolding glance. Stephon raised an eyebrow at me.
“Hey, they were too close!” he snapped, then switched his weapon back to bullet-mode and resumed his hunt for Perfects in the sky.
“Oh, no,” Kallisto mumbled, looking up.
I followed her gaze and felt my stomach drop like a stone. More Perfects were coming. One of our opponents must’ve called for backup. But that wasn’t the worst part. Cassiel was clearly starting to get tired. Despite his superior design, he had his limits, too, and the Perfects had been constantly testing them for the past ten minutes or so.
He was injured but could still hold his own for a little while longer. I knew we only had a small window left to finish this job, and I refused to accept any kind of failure at this point. I was too angry to reset.
Hunter’s growl made my spine tingle. My head snapped to find him on the ground, blood pooling beneath him. His eyes were closed. The wound would be fatal unless I stopped the bleeding. But it could very well be too late for that.
“Hunter, no!” I screamed.
The Perfect towered over him, his claws extended as he prepared to deliver a devastating blow. There was no time for anyone to do anything! He plunged toward Hunter, milliseconds from killing him.
Something snapped inside me.
The dread of losing Hunter was too much. The film was instantly ripped, and darkness swallowed me whole.
Hunter…
Varga
The air was suddenly impossible to breathe.
Or maybe there was something wrong with me, as if an invisible claw had crushed my windpipe. Everything came to a screeching halt. I wasn’t the only one experiencing this troubling disturbance. My Perfect opponent had frozen, his eyes about to pop out of their orbits.
Light flashed to my left.
When I looked in that direction, I knew everything was about to get much… much worse.
Kailani was different, to say the least. She was no longer Kailani, in fact. She’d morphed into a mere statue made of solid light, hovering several inches above the ground. I’d never seen anything like this before, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
Up in the air, the Perfects had stopped fighting Cassiel, too. To my right, Kallisto looked downright horrified. Judging by the look on her face, she’d seen this before, and it wasn’t good. At all. In fact, judging by her aura, she was utterly terrified and most likely contemplating the possibility of fleeing.
We’d all stopped, gawking at Kailani.
Hunter was on the ground, bleeding profusely. I’d seen their feelings. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what might’ve set her off.
I moved toward Hunter, eager to give him some of my vampire blood to help him heal. A pulse punched me in the chest, knocking the air out of my lungs and forcing me to slide back several feet. The light coming out of Kailani amplified. She was a sliver of the sun itself, glowing brighter with each second that went by.
“This can’t be good,” I mumbled.
Then, her whole body began to hum. My blood curdled, and my instincts screamed at me to either stop her or run—though I knew nothing about what was going on. The light reached Hunter. He reacted to it, stirring as he opened his eyes.
“It’s not…” Kallisto breathed.
The light increased, as did the strange hum. The remaining Perfects came down, along with Cassiel, retracting their wings and staring at Kailani.
Seconds later, dread took hold. Somehow, I knew exactly what was going to happen next.
“Get down!” I managed to shout, then dropped on my belly.
The light exploded in a massive flash, expelled by Kailani’s glowing body. Th
e bright white wave caught all those standing—all the Perfects, except Cassiel, who’d had the presence of mind to get down, as I’d asked.
I closed my eyes, unable to withstand the brightness, or the heat, for that matter.
Silence settled heavily over this small clearing. I heard bodies dropping in the grass. My stomach churned, as I mentally prepared for what I was about to see.
I finally looked up, and found myself speechless.
Kailani was still hovering, humming and glowing, though not as menacingly as a few seconds earlier. Hunter was on the ground, but conscious and gawking at Kailani. Cassiel, Kallisto, and Varga had made it, too, lying on their bellies and looking around.
Everyone else was, for lack of a better word, gone. The Perfects had been reduced to crisp husks of charcoal, parts of them still flickering with orange flames. Tens of them, including the backup, had been permanently destroyed. But they were all still standing, so what bodies had I heard hitting the ground?
“Oh, no…” I whispered, logically answering my own question, as I darted to my feet and saw Stephon at the base of a nearby tree. He’d suffered the same fate as the Perfects, now merely a charred and formless corpse, broken into large chunks from his fall.
“The Draenir…” Kallisto managed, as she pointed to the other three.
None of them had gotten down fast enough, and they’d paid the price of the Word’s wrath, from what I could tell. The worst part wasn’t even that our Draenir allies had perished. No… Kailani was still in this weird Word-mode, clearly capable of doing much more damage than that and with zero control over it whatsoever.
“What the hell do we do?” I asked, my voice shaking.
“The tower’s done for,” Cassiel said, grunting as he got up.
Indeed, the entire tree had been carbonized, but for its base. Hell, all the trees on a fifty-yard radius had been burned the same way. The light wave Kailani had released was responsible for all this. The comms blockers were all down now.
I had trouble grasping this silver lining, as Kailani’s body started humming louder again. It could only mean one thing, and I wasn’t sure that simply ducking would save us this time.
I took a deep breath, then tried to approach Kailani once more. But the invisible pulse pushed me back again, temporarily cutting off my air supply. Kallisto tried, too, but ended up lying on her back, coughing and wheezing.
Cassiel and I exchanged hopeful glances. “Well, I can try,” he said, pursing his lips.
He stepped forward, but the pulse that rammed into him was infinitely more powerful than what Kallisto and I had dealt with. I heard the bones in his ribcage break, shortly before he fell backward, grunting from the pain.
Hunter managed to pick himself up, despite his chest wound.
“Kale… please…” he croaked, paler than usual.
He’d lost a ton of blood, but he seemed determined to do something about this.
“We have to stop her,” I said to him. “I don’t know how, but she’s got to get this Word thing under control.”
This wasn’t natural magic. I’d seen Arwen, Corrine, and Shayla at full power. Hell, I’d witnessed Kailani’s genetic limits as a witch. This was definitely the Word intervening, but there weren’t any brakes, and this clearly wasn’t the first time she’d lost control. Kallisto all but said it, her aura speaking volumes.
“Kale…” Hunter sighed as he stood up on wobbly knees, clearly weakened by the loss of blood.
Nevertheless, he persisted. He took one step forward, just as the light intensity increased, the hum getting loud enough to signal another blast. I motioned for Cassiel and Kallisto to get back down, just in case. There wasn’t much we could do, but we couldn’t run from Kailani.
She was a friend. She was family.
Most importantly, she was instrumental to this mission’s potential success.
To our surprise, however, Kailani didn’t push Hunter back. He moved forward, carefully, ready to defend himself as best as he could, if necessary. I was genuinely scared for him as he approached the nuclear timebomb that Kailani had turned herself into.
“Kale, please,” he whispered, then stilled for a moment. “I need you to listen to me, okay?”
There was no visible feature of Kailani, though, only her figure made of light. She didn’t react. Not a single word came out, or the idea that she’d tone it down. On the contrary, Kailani was charging up again, seconds away from releasing another deadly blast.
Hunter exhaled sharply, then darted forward and closed the distance between them. He fearlessly wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. My voice disappeared completely, my mouth gaping as I expected to see his skin burning. He was practically hugging the friggin’ sun.
But nothing happened.
We all stared, speechless and pretty much mindless, unable to react in any way to what we were witnessing.
Then, the most incredible thing happened.
The light died out. Kailani returned to her original form, tightly held by Hunter, who kept whispering something in her ear. She passed out, and we all breathed a collective, if pained, sigh of relief.
Kailani was limp against Hunter, who slipped one arm behind her knees and picked her up, then turned to look at us. He was devastated and worried about her at the same time.
“This is quite the mess,” I said.
“Duh,” Cassiel replied.
“She has to wake up,” Hunter said, mostly absent as he kept his eyes on Kailani.
The poor girl was in for a deeply unpleasant surprise once she woke up. And I had no idea how we’d tell her about what had just happened, since chances were she wouldn’t remember. How could we describe this kind of blackout?
Looking at it from the outside, four Draenir had died in the process, but we’d taken the comms tower down. At least that part of our mission had been accomplished—though not the way we’d planned it. Kailani was out cold, and my sister, Raphael, and Nevis were still inside the diamond colosseum.
I had a feeling, deep in my bones, that the worst was yet to come.
Elonora
Raphael deleted all the files in the system, as planned, while I kept the Faulty at gunpoint and Nevis stood by the door, ready to take on the other Faulties who were due to come in. The diamond walls were smoky, thus obscuring the view—fortunately, my True Sight allowed me to spot anyone approaching the double doors. Thank the stars for my red garnet lens…
“I found a blueprint of the colosseum,” Raphael said, his eyes glued to one of the screens.
“There’s a drawer to your right, exactly beneath the table. You’ll find crystal storage sticks in it,” the Faulty replied.
“Why are you so nice and helpful?” I asked, surprised by his calm demeanor.
“I’m better off helping you than I am standing against you. I have more reasons to live, and none to die, and, frankly, there is nothing in this hall that is worth my life,” the Faulty retorted.
A moment passed in utter silence, as Raphael, Nevis, and I exchanged glances, our eyebrows simultaneously arched in surprise. For better or worse, this guy made everything run smoothly, at least for the time being.
“Found ’em,” Raphael replied, checking the drawer.
He took one of the crystal sticks and connected it to the computer system. It was, in many ways, similar to what I’d seen on Earth—a simple reminder that the laws of mathematics were universally applicable, paving the way for computer science pretty much anywhere. Strava was clearly no exception.
“Okay, now, what do we do?” I asked, watching Raphael as he downloaded the blueprint onto the crystal stick, then tossed it over to Nevis, who stored it in his pocket.
“The ships. We need to destroy them completely,” Raphael replied.
“Elonora and I have the explosive charges,” Nevis said. “They’re loaded and ready to arm, in our backpacks.”
“Well, you two shouldn’t move right about now, so I’m just going to go ahead and rummage thro
ugh your backpacks. Everyone cool with that?” Raphael asked, wearing a half-smile.
We didn’t answer, but the question was mostly rhetorical. I looked around again, using my True Sight to scan the area. Perfects walked up and down the main hallways outside. Some glanced at our hall, frowning and muttering something to each other as they noticed the smoky walls. I figured they didn’t like the absence of transparency, but I couldn’t be bothered to care.
Raphael proceeded to collect the explosive sticks, which Kailani and Lumi had prepared prior to our departure. They all had long wires, which, once ignited, could not be put out. They also couldn’t be cut or pulled out of the explosive sticks. If we lit them up, that was it. We had forty-five seconds to get as far away from there as possible.
“The diamond walls will contain most of the explosion, but won’t protect what’s in here,” I said, then gave Nevis another over-the-shoulder glance. “The doors will probably give out.”
“We’ll be long gone by the time that happens,” Nevis replied, his gaze darkening. I momentarily lost my train of thought.
Raphael mounted several sticks on the first ship, while the Faulty watched him with genuine interest.
“If you want to cause maximum damage, place the sticks on the underbelly of each ship, and make sure there’s one by the fuel tanks, too,” he said to Raphael. “We had them filled yesterday.”
“Whoa, you use fuel?” I asked, trying to remember whether our starships had ever passed through that stage.
I understood then that the Faulties had not been able to reproduce our vessels exactly. Judging by the shape and general look, these ships were rather rudimentary, compared to ours. They’d certainly copied the aerodynamic design and some of the flight functions, but the Draenir’s magi-tech had yet to figure out a way to power their ships without the use of fossil fuels.
The Faulty nodded. “We couldn’t crack the magic used to make your starships run without liquid fuel, I’m afraid.”
A Shade of Vampire 65: A Plague of Deceit Page 20