Too Long a Soldier (Kingdom Key Book 3)

by TylerRose.

  “Did you wake up today and know you were going to die?”

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Jerome came out of the cold box to see Rhutvak falling like lead balloons.

  “Davis Besse is safe,” Landra Ahr said. “I’m down and beyond repair or recovery. Self-destructing to prevent the US Government from getting me.”

  Silence.

  Jerome looked to the East. An entire section of town gone behind plumes of thick, billowing smoke. Fires everywhere along the arc to the west. To his left, they stopped at the big, open space of the Ravine Park, Waite’s football stadium, and the huge bowl/lawn of Waite High School. The huge open space around the Junior High at the far end of the ravine also helped to stop the fires on that end. Then the ravine farther on with the road around the water on Seaman Road’s big curve. At least some houses had been spared.

  The cheers of men below, as Rhutvak fell from the sky and started blowing up, drew his attention a bit closer. Owens Corning was gone, the Cherry Street Bridge gone with it. Fiberglass Tower…gone. The Convention Center. Gone. All the hotels were gone.

  The nightmare realized.

  In that instant, he was more furious than he’d ever been in his life. Not an out of control fury, like the night he’d lost his eye; but one that burned so hot within his belly that he did what Tyler did. He went dead calm.

  Adamantine had destroyed his city.

  Adamantine was going to pay for it with his life.

  He saw Tyler with Dominion’s throat in her hand, holding him high in the air. Blood running down her right arm, hair blowing in the freezing wind as the snow began, the back right pocket of her jeans blown out and charred, she couldn’t have been a sexier sight. When this was over, she was going to get the fucking of her life for organizing the resistance.

  Jerome paced, looked up to the sky to the pull of common energy. Adamantine was coming down in the third wave.

  “Did you wake up today and know you were going to die?” Tyler asked. “When I woke up, I knew I was going to kill you.”

  Crushing his windpipe and collapsing major arteries in his neck with psychokinesis, she suffocated his brain. His blood ran all the way down her arm and into the sleeve of her leather jacket, soaking the liner.

  Jerome watched, anxious to join the fighting. Arms flexing, he kept his power up, the fight about to land right in front of him. But it shifted toward the next building over, near Tyler.

  Still holding the scrawny Dominion several inches off the roof, she looked over and up, curls bouncing.

  “No, you don’t,” she heard in her earpiece from Jerome.

  “I got it covered. You just hold tight and don’t be seen yet,” she replied coolly. “Don’t jump the gun. I’ll bring him to you.”

  “Release him,” Adamantine said in Taveragian.

  “He’s dead anyway,” she replied in kind, and tossed the body to his feet. “You really should pick stronger allies.”

  She threw the meat of Dominion’s throat at the body and flicked her fingers, splaying blood to the rooftop between them. Adamantine looked down to the scientist’s body then at her, covered in blood and defiant. He knew a surge in his crotch like he’d not felt in decades. He would have this one and nothing would stop him. He stepped over his former scientist and toward her, mildly amused that she stepped aside. They circled the roof.

  “What is your name, female?”

  “Fate,” she said in Earth English.

  “You will be in my bed when I have finished taking this planet today.”

  He advanced and she teleported behind him. He turned about and she wagged a bloody finger at him.

  “Ah-ah-ah. I’m not that easy,” she grinned.

  “You will bow before me, Fate.”

  Humor left her. “I don’t do that bowing thing and I don’t kneel. You want me? Come get me and make me, motherfucker.”

  She vanished, reappearing on the corner wall of Jerome’s roof.

  “You play dangerous games,” Jerome said quietly, knowing she would hear through the earpiece.

  Her voice was crystal clear. “When the archer shoots for no reason, he has all his skill. When he shoots for a sack of coin, his mind is divided and he loses all his skill. When the prize is female flesh?” she continued, standing firm. “The archer is beside himself for having to conquer her.”

  Jerome had to admit she was one hell of a sack of coins.

  She hopped backwards off the wall, continuing back one patient, confident step at a time. Adamantine extended a hand toward the roof and propelled himself toward her. Landing gently, with many centuries of practiced control evident, he stalked her down. She smiled, and Jerome wondered what she was thinking sometimes.

  “If you want to touch Fate, you have to go through Death first,” she said, jerking her thumb at Jerome as he came into the center of the roof.

  “He owns you?”

  She laughed. “No one owns me, son.” She kissed Jerome square on the mouth and whispered in English. “Kill the fucker and be done with it.” She tossed a glance to Adamantine, then back to Jerome and spoke Taveragian. “I’ll see you when you are done.”

  “So sure that he will win, are you?” Adamantine said.

  She cocked her head. “I’ll bet my maidenhead on it.”

  She turned her back on him to walk away.

  “Do not turn away from me, female!” he growled.

  She felt the blast coming and teleported to the other rooftop. Jerome stepped into the energy, absorbing it completely to charge his own power that much more.

  They engaged. Knowing Adamantine expected a Staff Power battle, Jerome did not use it as a weapon. He kicked and punched, relying on his speed and endurance and knowledge of a fighting style Adamantine knew nothing about.

  Who was this local pup that soaked in blast after blast of energy like he’d been doing it all his life? Who bounced and leapt and flipped away seeming without effort? Who was he that such a deadly, intriguing woman would offer her body as the spoils of war?

  Adamantine no longer cared. He hurled the human into the wall of the metal box on the roof, watched him shake off the collision and mutter some quaint local epithet and come back for more. A grand toy to play with to build his lust for taking her. He would have her as she was, covered in his ally’s blood.

  He knew in the end he would leave the planet ruined and enslaved, as he had dozens before. He would have her. He would make her pay for the loss of his son. He would make her give him a replacement before he choked the life out of her. Dominion could be replaced, perhaps by her so long as she was pleasing. She was obviously powerful in her own right and had no compunction about ending lives. He could imagine her slender legs parting…

  An elbow came from nowhere to wallop him in the mouth. For the first time in centuries, he tasted his own blood.

  “Yeah!” she exclaimed. “Do it again. Finish the fucker now.”

  “I’m workin’ on it!” Jerome growled, and ripped the speaker from his ear. It broke into pieces where he threw it on the hard roof.

  Blow for blow they went, the fight taking far longer than it should from Adamantine’s side. Both grew more powerful the more they used their energy. Adamantine threw Jerome off the building and soared down to continue their battle in the streets. Jerome used the Staff Power to cushion his fall, landing on his feet.

  Tyler teleported down, taking cover behind a parked car. She had to be close, to step in if Jerome failed. With his earpiece and microphone on the roof, hers was useless. There was no one else left to hear or be heard. She dropped hers, eyes locked onto the fight. She had to see it finished. This was her last act as The Witness.

  Win or die.

  Another series of strikes and misses and Adamantine gave Jerome a hard one to the gut. Jerome went down to one knee and Tyler thrust up from her hiding place. Sudden movement and spark of red hair drew Adamantine’s attention. He smiled a snarl of a promise of what he would do to her when he was done.

 
Jerome seized the distraction and grabbed Adamantine by the wrist while knocking out his left foot. A little extra help to the back of the nearest shoulder and Adamantine was on his back on the asphalt before he could stop it. Hands around the head, Jerome snapped neck bones without a second thought, twisting so hard the head was backwards as he let go.

  The following seconds were an eon as every ounce of ancient power, accumulated over nearly four hundred years, dozens and dozens of crystals, shards, and staves, all concentrated together into one life force, shunted into Jerome. He was on fire from the inside out, chi set ablaze and altered under the force of it. In one instant, the energy aligned with the positively oriented staff he already contained, neutralizing all the negative in many of the crystals, and Adamantine’s own negative orientation.

  Sensory overload shut him down and he collapsed in the street.

  Tyler bolted out to run to him, and fell with an excruciating pain in her left hip. So intense that she made no sound, she was nearly paralyzed as she neared unconsciousness. Through blurred eyes, she saw a rain of energy weapon fire and then Landra Ahr was there.

  “You made it,” she smiled in relief. “Help Jerome.” She passed out.

  “You tend yours and I’ll tend mine,” Landra Ahr heard, and looked up from her to see Mickey lowering beside her. “I’ll take her to my place until she can walk again.”

  The foot soldiers were at once disconnected from their ship and each other. Communication systems failed. In the next second, the self-destruct mechanism none of them knew existed vaporized their heads and half their torsos.

  The Grassroots force stood victorious for about a minute of fresh cheering and congratulating each other. Then they scattered to the wind, heading for their regrouping sites to the south, west and north. They took their wounded and dead with them.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  “Did you wake up this morning and know you were going to die?” she asked with her fingers sunk deep into the alien’s throat and his blood running down her arm and into the sleeve of her leather jacket. “I woke up and knew I was going to kill you.”

  Cocky bitch, Hades thought, spinning the fresh toothpick between his teeth and watching close down the scope of his long range rifle.

  He was beyond not happy, and it was a good thing he could only receive and not talk back to them. She was in for one hell of an ass-chewing when this was over.

  When she turned, he saw the blackness in her eyes, knew she’d tapped into the core entity still locked away inside her soul and head. He would have to fully introduce himself to that entity soon.

  He didn’t know the language she was speaking, but the Lesson of the Archer made it plain enough. She knew exactly what she was doing. Using herself to distract Adamantine enough to make mistakes.

  First chance he got, Hades was going to make sure she understood exactly how displeased he was with her recklessness.

  Jerome landed hard on his feet, having been thrown by the invader. Hades popped a cap in a foot soldier, then took out two more before refocusing on the roof. Jerome got himself thrown off and the fight picked up again on street level, which meant much more action on his part. He picked off foot soldiers all around the scene, everywhere he could reach, emptying his clip right as Jerome twisted Adamantine’s head around and absorbed the life force within.

  No light show. Nothing like in the Highlander movies. Jerome froze in place, body shivering with the force of so much energy driving into him. Adamantine was a pile of sandy dust, blown apart by the next wind gust.

  Hades reached for the next clip but wasn’t fast enough. He got his eye to the scope in time to see Tyler get hit by a foot soldier at the other end of the street. He cursed himself and took aim. Energy bolts got the soldier first and a new version of the Landra Ahr mechanoid landed beside Tyler in the street.

  Every foot soldier blew apart in a bloody mess. Hades sent the three rising tones indicating they’d won, but the men already knew. Machine guns and rocket launchers raised, they cheered themselves and got the fuck out of there. Bikes and trucks staged in garages all around the perimeter, they scattered West and South to their fallback locations outside of town. Some went North.

  Mickey teleported into the street, scooping her up from in front of the new form of Landra Ahr. He teleported away with her. Landra Ahr picked up Jerome in a fireman’s carry and launched into the air to fly home.

  Hades teleported his weapons to his house before porting himself to the exit of the building he was in. He walked out into the aftermath, telling men still there to head for their rendezvous points. Drop their weapons and go. Do not take the weapons with them. The army had arrived, was fanning out to begin the cleanup. He walked up to a Captain, hands in the air.

  “Take me to your leader,” he said, and was taken to the corner of Summit and Cherry street, across from the wreckage of the Owens Corning building.

  “Major! I have a civilian survivor.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Commander of the home town force,” Hades said. “What are you supposed to do with my men?”

  “My orders are to take names for questioning later.”

  “Good. I have here a list of all their names, for just such a plan.” He handed over a fold of papers from his leg holster.

  “Should I trust these names are accurate?” Major Barnett asked.

  “Considering the magnitude of what these men did today, does it matter?”

  The Major considered a moment. “My commanding officer was on leave. His replacement will be here within two hours. You have that much of a head start. And Thank you.”

  “Thank you, Major.”

  Walking away toward his car parked in the garage across from the Federal building, Nails got out his cellphone and called Dicer. “Move ‘em out. Faster is better. We have 90 minutes before someone might start looking for us.”

  “Some of us are taking wounded to Safe Haven and Rosary Cathedral,” Dicer told him. “Those we can take care of ourselves without hospitals.”

  “Very good. I’m on my way to be sure Tyler’s okay. She took a hit.”

  “How bad?” Dicer asked.

  “That’s what I’m going to find out. Talk to you later.”

  He sped up Cherry Street to Bancroft. The First Responders drilling in Monroe, Michigan were already rushing down to the scene of the invasion. He let them all pass before turning onto Bancroft to drive across town. He parked in the drive. Hard knocks on the door. More knocks and he rang the bell. Mickey finally came to the door.

  “Is she dead?” Hades asked quietly.

  “No.”

  Door opened just enough for Hades to come in and they spoke quietly.

  “She will not die. I’ve got her as stable as I can. You do what you can. Rear bedroom.”

  Hades teleported up, no need for the pretension of walking when they were alone. Hard as nails. That’s why he was called Nails. She still had no idea how soft a spot she lived in. Seeing her lying there, smelling burned flesh, feeling the distress emanating from her, grief and guilt puckered his forehead. Ripping out laces, he stepped out of his boots and stripped to his skin for best contact with her. The room was very warm and she was covered only with a loose sheet. He eased in behind her as she lay curled on her right side.

  She whimpered. He shushed her, wiping away the slow tears seeping from her closed lids.

  “I know, babygirl. I know. Hush now and sleep. It won’t be so bad when you wake.”

  Forced unconsciousness so he could touch the horrible burns without causing her more distress than she was already in. He laid a hand on the curve of her hip, felt the force of the impact and every second of pain since. Transforming beside her into his familiar form, he tapped into his own inner being to heal her as much as he could. He couldn’t heal her perfectly. He could mend the bones that were fractured, but only enough that she would soon be able to get up and walk. He could heal the deep third degree burns to bad first degree ones in this initial sess
ion. He would have to leave her be to heal on her own for a day or so and then come back to heal her again. He could not remove all her pain and fix her to perfection. It didn’t work like that.

  He would never be able to eradicate his own guilt. If he’d held off from killing one foot soldier, this would not have happened.

  “Tyler!”

  A solid metal hand on Jerome’s chest stopped him cold.

  “She is at Mickey’s to recover.”

  “Recover?” She was fine. And you were blown up.”

  “I have multiple armors. One was waiting in the command center. I downloaded to it. You’d have known if you’d not taken out your ear piece. Tyler took a shot to the hip when you destroyed Adamantine. I killed the foot soldier who hit her.”

  “What about Starbird?”

  “In her room in a coma.”

  “Roc?” Jerome asked.

  “Asleep”

  “Gable? Tony?”

  “Asleep. It is two in the morning. You have been out since you absorbed Adamantine this morning,” Landra Ahr told him.

  “How bad a hit did Ty take?” Jerome asked.

  “Bad enough that I am going there now you are awake. The city is on lockdown. There is a curfew in effect. No one is to be on the street after 9pm unless going to or coming from their place of employment.

  “We expected that, “Jerome said, getting out of bed. “Wait for me, I’m going with you.” He pulled on a fresh t-shirt.

  “Negative. You must remain to guard the rest of your team. No refugees have come. There was no need.”

  “But Tyler-“

  “But nothing. Her injuries are such that she will remain where she is until further notice. She will not die. You have enough to worry about here. You will stay and that is an order. There are no refuges at this time, but someone should be here if anyone comes needing help.

  Landra Ahr left the room without giving Jerome a chance to refuse again. Mickey’s home was only two miles away. With so many patrols in the inner city, these areas near the suburbs were not so strongly watched.