Darklight 5: Darktide

by Forrest, Bella

  Sempre’s furious curses brought me a certain amount of delight. This was the least he deserved—to see all his plans blow up in his face. Arlonne grinned as the blasts vanished, but their craft abruptly tipped when a line of skimmers aimed a second barrage at them. All the skimmers worked together. The last skimmer on each end of the line flew slightly forward, training their guns on the nearby redbills to make it impossible for our side to intercept or stop them.

  Reshi let out a frustrated cry as she attempted to right her creation. Another barrage of concentrated strikes hit them, and that finished the mechanical jaspeth. It creaked as it spiraled down toward the water, taking Reshi and Arlonne with it. All three disappeared in the low light. The last I saw of them was the cold glint of Arlonne’s metal arm.

  Shock struck me like a fist. Arlonne and Reshi were gone. In the chaos, Sempre focused on the metal jaspeth, and his pilot left the skimmer vulnerable for attack as he trained the craft’s gun on the already doomed jaspeth. Sempre needed to face justice.

  Dorian leaned forward, and Drigar copied his movement until we faced Sempre’s skimmer from behind. Drigar flew forward to close the distance. “I’m going to leap,” Dorian said.

  I had other plans. He could fly Drigar, but I needed to do something. “Let me do it.” Without waiting for agreement, I crouched and leapt from Drigar’s back. I couldn’t have attempted something like this before, without the strength I felt coursing through my veins. Some part of me registered Dorian’s tight hiss, but my only thought was of Sempre. Forget the danger. I could and would make him pay.

  After I landed, the maker noticed me. He veered sharply in an attempt to shake me off, but I felt perfectly balanced. I crouched low like a cat, a knife in each hand. Sempre sneered at me. My stomach lurched—first from the scent, and then the horror of his appearance. Sempre was ruined. His body had been stitched back together in an offense against nature. Glowing red wire pushed through his flesh, barely anchoring his parts together. Oozing, foul-smelling pus leaked between the gaps in his stitches.

  But I would defeat him… again.

  I lunged forward with the knives. Sempre reeled back, snarling like a cornered animal as my knife skimmed his skin. He lacked any weapons, and I suspected the jerky movements of his strange body didn’t allow for much dexterity.

  I loathed him. When I was finished with him, nobody would be able to put him back together again.

  “Just fly the skimmer,” Sempre, blood welling at the corners of his deranged mouth, snapped at the maker, when the pilot tried to move toward me to help.

  I sliced upward with my blade, but he stumbled back. I went for him again, but he surprised me by dropping low and throwing his weight against me. I slashed his cheek on the way down, earning a pained howl as the flesh sizzled where the stone touched. His retaliatory strike sent searing pain through me as one of my barely healed ribs cracked once more. Not again. To my delight, though, a chunk of gray flesh landed on the floor of the skimmer. His cheek heaved, another piece of skin falling away.

  Sempre shoved me with such force that I slammed into the side of the skimmer. My cracked rib made my resulting gasp excruciating. His dead eyes narrowed. It was all the opening he needed. He slammed against me, pinning my wrists against the hard edge of the craft. I hissed as he squeezed mercilessly, forcing me to drop the knives.

  No. My eyes couldn’t comprehend his disgusting gray hands coming to fasten around my throat. I gulped a deep breath, desperate, just before he pressed hard on my windpipe. My fist lashed out and connected with Sempre’s cheek, pain reverberating up my arm as his jaw dislodged beneath my knuckles. I thought hysterically that I’d have to remember to tell Dorian that I’d finally found a way to shut the ruler up.

  I bucked against Sempre’s grip, trying to throw him. The skimmer shuddered from our struggle, and the pilot cursed as he tried to maintain balance with two fighting passengers. I thought I’d perfected this move in practice, but with the reality of an enemy squeezing my throat, his resurrected flesh squelching against my skin, my thoughts scattered. Sempre’s sewn-together face oozed pus as it bent toward my own, his teeth bared in a nightmarish snarl of triumph. I panicked as my vision darkened, but some corner of my mind narrowed to intent focus.

  Releasing my desperate grip on his brittle wrists, I lowered my arm, forcing the bracer toward Sempre. I touched the stone to his thigh. There was the terrible sound of tearing flesh, and blood spurted, thick and dark, onto my legs. Sempre wailed, but his hands remained locked around my throat. I went to his chest and then to his shoulders and—

  He screeched in even greater pain, falling back as pieces of his body began to drop off of him. A satisfied smile crossed my lips. The smell of rot seeped out, and Sempre’s body began to shudder. My enhanced senses worked against me now, as the scent multiplied with our proximity.

  "Fire the blasters," Arlonne bellowed from the left of me.

  She’s alive! The last I’d seen of her, she’d been plummeting to the lake.

  A series of massive golden energy blasts flashed in front of me. The lights shimmered, but their force was violent. They slammed into Sempre, who uttered a pained cry. He stumbled into me. Our skimmer’s nose dipped, decelerating as we tumbled toward the glowing water below.

  "Remake the spells,” he screamed through his broken jaw. His voice bubbled and scratched, like he’d dipped every word in acid.

  As the skimmer careened toward the surface of the lake, I twisted away from him and leapt off the craft. My newly broken rib screamed as I crashed into the water, immediately sinking. I pawed the water helplessly, the pain forcing me to gasp, allowing the acrid water to fill my mouth. My eyes stung as I choked.

  Everything went quiet. The world began to fade. All I could hear was my heart, thundering desperately in my ears.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I instinctively clenched my eyes shut against the stinging water but forced them back open. Where was the surface? The glowing liquid stunned me for a moment. I tried to paddle up—to what I thought was the surface—but my gear weighed me down. My lungs squeezed painfully from the lack of air, but I resisted the urge to gasp for air again.

  A shock of burnt red shot past my face. A fish swam and twirled in front of me before expanding into the elegant body of a male aquatic wilding. Gate Maker. His sharp face stared at me with those flat lavender eyes I knew so well. I’d forgotten that he was in my pocket. He dragged a webbed hand through the water, producing a trail of bubbles that morphed into one large bubble. He batted it my way, and it enveloped my head. I gasped for air, pathetically relieved. The air left a sour taste in my mouth, but I could breathe now. Gate Maker lurched toward me and wrapped his strong webbed hands around my shoulders. Before I could ask, he propelled us upward with a mighty kick of his feet.

  He shoved his face into the bubble. Up close, his aquatic form was more unsettling than anything I’d seen him wear before. The glassy film over his flat eyes made me nervous.

  “It has entertained me to watch you destroy our enemies. Perhaps this blood cure of yours isn’t the worst way to go in the end, if it creates such ferocity in you… but I have plans of my own to follow. I’ll see you again to fulfill our bargain. Continue surviving, Lyra.” He shoved me upward, away from him. I wanted to follow, but he was impossibly fast. He cut away from me in a flash, darting through the water as if he’d spent his entire life swimming in this lake. There was no point trying to stop him, not with a battle going on overhead.

  He was leaving? Of all times to run… This was the lowest move he could make. He’d saved me and then ditched me. Dorian was going to be furious, but I had bigger things to worry about.

  My head broke the surface, and the bubble popped. Open air rushed over me, without the acrid tang of sulfur, and I sucked in a greedy breath. After being strangled and half-drowned, I would never take breathing for granted again.

  Sound hit me first, the shrieks of a dying redbill on my right. Two flailing redbill bodies
struggled in the shallow water beside a pile of jagged rocks. Nearby, a handful of skimmers floated in the water. One craft gurgled as it took on liquid, the lightweight skimmer finally succumbing to the glowing lake. A hunter surged through the water toward this group of fallen skimmers. He’d pulled off the pieces of his armor that had been pulling him down, and his messy orange hair had escaped his helmet, wet and matted against his pale skin. He snarled at the group of makers lurking nearby, who looked lost and directionless after losing their skimmers.

  “Redo the spells, fools,” he snapped. The makers snapped to attention.

  A murky, massive shadow slithered beneath the water’s surface. I froze for a moment, wondering if Gate Maker had changed his mind and found the energy to transform, but something about the shape made my skin crawl with instinctive terror. Meanwhile, the orange-haired hunter and two others, a lanky male and a muscled female hunter, raised their gauntlets toward the Hive, oblivious to the threat approaching from behind. Their palms glowed with power, still not drained from the battle. Another handful of hunters swam to join them, but they were farther away and unable to aim their weapons for a good shot.

  “Hurry up,” the orange-haired hunter growled. “This will work better if we all fire at once.” Some sense made him turn as the shadow neared, possibly the displacement of the water around his legs. He swore and fired a blast. It hit the surface of the glowing water but merely bubbled. “The water! There’s something there.”

  They were his last words. The female hunter cried out as the shadow snaked toward them, brushing her submerged lower body. Spiky teeth emerged from the water around them. A serpent-like beast hooked the three hunters into its mouth of spears. The hunters screamed, trying to shoot the roof of the creature’s mouth, but the monster dove back underwater. A shocked chill rocked through my body. Let’s get to land before that monster mistakes me for one of the bad guys.

  Those hunters were silenced forever, but the other group scrambled onto the remaining skimmers with sudden speed.

  “Lyra,” someone called hoarsely.

  Familiar faces greeted me from a distant projection of rock. Gren waved feebly, holding his other arm close against his body. I swam over to them as fast as I could. My ribs spiked with pain at every movement, but I wanted to get the hell out of this lake before that terrifying creature came back for dessert. A murky shape appeared in the water beside me, giving my pulse a startled jump. An aquatic wilding broke the surface with a charming smile—well, as charming as spiked teeth got. He wasn’t Gate Maker, but he helped me to the shore. I whispered a pained thanks, and Colin pulled me up onto the outcropping. The rocks felt slick beneath my boots, but I was thankful to be back on solid land.

  Behind me, Sempre shouted. “Come get me before that thing comes back!” His voice gurgled as he struggled through the water.

  Vicious fury lit my entire body, as if I’d touched a live wire. He was still alive? He was like a cockroach. I turned to search for him. Perhaps there was still a chance I could take him out before he was picked up. My hopes fell as a skimmer dipped low, piloted by one of the shaken makers, to snatch Sempre up onto the craft.

  I’ll destroy you, Sempre. Soon enough.

  The skimmer took off with the remaining two functional skimmers before the water serpent could make a reappearance. They darted for the entrance of the cave, ignoring the screams of the comrades they left behind as the monster resurfaced to devour another group of Sempre’s survivors. I watched it dive again, the cage of its teeth full of impaled hunters who still struggled weakly. It looked like a terrible way to die. Where were Roxy and Kane? I didn’t see them among the survivors on the rocks. My worry surged as I tried to remember where I’d heard Roxy scream. The hunters’ cries vanished with a gurgling sound. Had hers been snuffed out the same way?

  I staggered to the center of the rock protrusion. A wave of exhaustion washed over me, but familiar voices pricked my ears. A spattering of Coalition vampires dotted the nearby area, some stranded on small outcroppings of stone in the water. Aquatic wildings worked quickly to pull more bodies from the lake. I steeled myself. Rest and worry could come later. There were still people who needed help.

  “Your neck,” Gren said, referring to the angry marks I could already feel forming.

  I flinched, having forgotten he was beside me. His entire arm was blackened on one side from a gem blast. I sucked in a sharp breath, the inhale rattling in my bruised throat.

  “Your arm.”

  I surveyed our group. Colin and Laini were thankfully unharmed. Laini looked out over the water, tears running down her cheeks. Several redbill bodies floated on the surface, many dead. A few wildlings moved the injured redbills as carefully as possible back toward the Hive.

  “We can heal the ones who aren’t in critical condition,” Gren said next to me. He moved forward to help his wildling companions, followed by a few makers.

  The poor redbills. They fought so hard.

  The sight of the dead birds was devastating, but I had to prioritize the living. I turned to the Coalition survivors gathered on the various rocks scattered throughout the water. The shadowy beast disappeared, finally satisfied by its meal. There were more vampires than I expected, but I wondered how many we’d lost in the battle. I’d seen several drop into the water. How many had come back out?

  Several yards away, somebody waved desperately from the water. I caught sight of red hair. Roxy, pale-faced but determined, struggled under the weight of a body.

  “Lyra!” she sputtered, then choked on a mouthful of water. My eyes fell to the dark vampire cloak. It was Kane, and he wasn’t moving. Roxy was fighting to keep their faces above the surface.

  Gren and I rushed over to help. I jumped into the water and swam over to help her steady Kane’s weight. Gren stayed on the stone landing, reaching his good hand out to help pull Kane from the water as we pushed. Between the three of us, we managed to lift him to safety. Roxy and I scrambled after him.

  “We got hit by a blast from a skimmer and went down,” Roxy panted. “I landed completely in the water, but Kane hit a rock as we fell.”

  Kane muttered weakly and gave a violent cough. Blood spewed from his mouth. Roxy inhaled sharply as shadowy blood leaked onto the rocky surface. I followed the trail to see it welling from a puncture wound in his stomach. His entire left side was scorched.

  Roxy yanked her uniform shirt over her head. I did the same. We worked quickly to wrap the cloth around his wound. Blood seeped out from under the fabric, rebelling against our efforts. He’s losing so much. Gren reached out to touch my elbow.

  “Here,” he whispered, passing us a thick ball of goopy seaweed. “The aquatic wildlings use it for wounds. It’ll stop the bleeding.”

  Roxy grabbed it from me, gently pushing it against Kane’s stomach. He hissed with pain, but the bleeding stopped shortly afterward. Roxy stared at me, her eyes devastated. Her bottom lip trembled briefly. The hunters had gone, but the fight was far from over for some of our ranks.

  A gust of air chilled my back as Drigar landed next to us. For a moment, my heart felt some relief as I saw Dorian gracefully dismount the redbill. He was safe.

  “Who—” His eyes landed on Kane. His lips murmured a disbelieving, “No.”

  Dorian dropped to his knees beside Kane. Kane’s eyelids fluttered, and he hissed in pain. Roxy and I held him down as Dorian pulled out a knife. He sliced his own arm and offered the blood to his wounded friend, who turned away.

  “Keep it,” Kane muttered. “You’ll need it to fight.”

  “Drink,” Dorian commanded. He lifted the blood straight to Kane’s mouth. “Don’t be an idiot, Kane.”

  Roxy clutched Kane’s left hand tightly in her own. He squeezed back as he drank greedily from Dorian. Roxy flinched. For a moment, her other hand moved to her chest. If the curse was finally rearing its ugly head, it couldn’t have picked a worse time.

  “Hey!”

  I jerked my head in the direction of the vo
ice. Arlonne waved, safe and whole, from the back of the enormous jaspeth. Reshi rode in front of her, operating the control apparatus. Its exterior was a glamor, now flickering to reveal the inner workings of the creation. The creature’s wings beat fiercely, shaking the several sets of stirrups and levers on the saddle. I would’ve marveled at it, had Kane not been breathing so shallowly beside us.

  Kane fell away from Dorian’s arm, mumbling a mindless thanks as he shut his eyes. Dorian waved down Arlonne and Reshi.

  “We need transport for Kane,” I called to them. I eyed him, not sure how we were going to get him into the jaspeth’s saddle. He couldn’t even sit up.

  Before we got too far down that path, a Coalition vampire swung by on a redbill, staring down at Kane. “You guys need a ride?”

  Dorian nodded. “Take them to the medics. Arlonne, Reshi, Lyra, and I are going to scout the perimeter. We need to make sure there are no reinforcements.”

  Gren twisted his lips. Roxy swore. Dorian was right. The battle might not be over, if the hunters had backup nearby. The Hive vampire nodded as the redbill landed gently, leaving enough room on the small rock to give Kane some space. Roxy hopped onto the redbill with the Coalition member, pulling Kane’s shoulders as Dorian and Gren gently eased him up onto the redbill.

  The adrenaline slowly drained from my body, leaving behind all the aches and pains. A pain like pure fire pulsed from my freshly cracked rib, and I knew there would be a livid bruise around my throat in a few hours, but I vowed to fight through it and keep sight of the bigger picture. If Kane, one of our best fighters, was down, I’d work like hell to make myself useful. Mistakes could be addressed, and grievances could be handled once everyone was safely out of the Hive and the training camp was under our control.

  I can be useful… as long as I have a bit of vampire blood…

  Chapter Twenty-Four