“I’m going as fast as this damn car will go,” she shouted.
“Holy Horde,” he growled and shoved his foot down over hers where it rested on the gas pedal.
“Oh yeah, like that’s going to help! I’ve already got it floored.” The car rocked dangerously as the pavement around them surged. “Move your fucking foot back!”
Cinder pulled back and Steffy heard the swell of the music in her head reach an alarming crescendo. She needed to think. Needed to come up with a plan to outmaneuver the thing that was gaining on them. She let her instincts take over, trusted in the precognitive sense she desperately hoped was there as Tryton had told her, and felt her fear leave almost at once.
“Hang on,” she gritted out.
She threw the car into neutral, took her foot off the gas and yanked up the emergency brake. The car flew into the controlled spin Steffy had orchestrated, turning at an almost 90-degree angle onto a blind drive that led into a cornfield away from the main roadway. She disengaged the emergency brake—had only needed it to help her bank the turn—popped the shifter into a lower gear for better traction and floored the gas pedal once more.
“Shit. I didn’t even see this road,” Cinder rumbled in surprise.
“Me either,” she admitted.
Cinder stared at her in something akin to surprise. Steffy ignored him, tearing through the narrow, rough-hewn path that could hardly be called a road.
“Have we lost them?” She asked.
Cinder stared behind them. “I don’t see them.”
“Scheiße!” Steffy screamed and yanked the wheel sharply to the right. The thing had somehow appeared no more than a few yards in front of them. She’d only barely had enough time to react after catching sight of the monstrosity.
“They are Traveling!” Cinder roared.
The car lurched and bounced alarmingly as they drove over endless, towering stalks of corn. The engine whirred and screeched as the vegetation choked off its intake of air. The wheel shuddered dangerously in her hands.
“Cinder.” Steffy breathed his name, instinctively sensing what was about to happen.
“What?” he said, growing still, as if he too knew what was coming.
“I’m sorry I didn’t scream for you.” A strange calm had enveloped her.
“I won’t let us die like this,” he said, his voice already sounding far away to her ears.
“You should know I love you,” she admitted, knowing it was the truth and realizing that now—of all times—it mattered more than anything that she let him hear how she felt.
The car bounced, went airborne over a hidden dip in the ground, flipped and rolled three times. The screaming sound of ripping metal and shattering glass filled the air with a symphony of sound, which mixed and replayed for endless moments along with the music in Steffy’s racing mind. Pain lanced throughout her extremities. Blood streamed into her eyes. The car rolled once more then settled, almost gently, on its side.
Then all was still. And there was silence in the night once more.
Chapter Thirteen
“Stefany. Damn it, Steffy, wake up.”
But she didn’t want to wake up. For with awareness would come pain, and she’d had more than her share over the years. She didn’t need or want any more now. She moaned and sought the blessed darkness once more.
“Wake up.” Hands were pulling her, tugging her out of the wreckage.
Her eyes felt sticky as she struggled to open them. The salty sting of blood blurred her vision and caused her to wince. Her lips were swollen, split open and aching, but she spoke over the pain. “Are you okay?” she croaked. Even her throat felt bruised.
A glowing red foil streaked out and cut her free of the seat belt, which still held her trapped in the mangled car. “I’m fine. I’ve already healed myself. It’s you I’m worried about.” He pulled her free, put one arm at her back, another beneath her bent knees, and lifted her against him.
He ran with her, deeper into the dense field of corn.
“Where are the Daemons?” Her tone sounded dreamy and drugged even to her ears. Everything felt oddly surreal to her now.
He lowered her gently onto the ground. His hands swept over her, checking her for injuries and filling her with heat, easing away some of her aches. “You’ve got some cracked ribs and a dislocated shoulder, I think. Your head is bleeding. Shit, you’re bleeding all over.” His voice shook around his stubbornly clenched teeth.
“Where are the Daemons?” she repeated.
His eyes glowed down into hers. He winced upon seeing the cuts and bruises that marred her face. “I don’t know,” he admitted in a growl.
They fell silent, listening for their foes.
“Get out of here before they come back,” Steffy said softly, looking at his worried face in the shadows.
“You’re stupid if you think I’ll just leave you here.” He pulled back angrily and avoided looking at her injured form.
“Cinder.”
His eyes met hers once more.
“Go. Please go. I need to… I need to…” she coughed, and blood sprayed in a mist down her chin. “I need to know you’re safe,” she ended in a wheeze. The pain that swallowed her body intensified and she couldn’t be sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Good because it could mean she was alive enough to still feel…bad because it could mean she wouldn’t be alive for very long.
“No. I’m not leaving you,” he gritted out, running his hands over her once more. The heat he left behind lingered then fled as her form rejected it. Her body didn’t need that heat, it seemed.
Her body was already beginning to shut down, going into shock.
The ground shuddered beneath them, drawing their attention. “They’re coming,” she whispered.
“They have a Canker-Worm with them.”
She was too weak to ask what the hell a Canker-Worm was. “Go. Get out of here.”
“No.” He dragged her up, made her gain her feet though she teetered drunkenly. “We’ll face them together.”
He half dragged, half carried her deeper into the field. “I’m hurt, Cin. I’ll only slow you down. Leave me here. I’m so tired,” she moaned.
Cinder said nothing, only clutched her tighter to him and hurried their pace. The ground roiled, sent them stumbling, but he merely righted them and kept going.
“We can’t outrun them.”
“I know,” he said simply.
They had made it no farther than the middle of the vast field before a giant, towering creature exploded out of the ground in front of them, sending great chunks of earth flying high into the sky as it came.
Steffy was too weak to do anything but tremble as her eyes took in the horror before them.
The Canker-Worm rose out of the ground, its body measuring at least thirty feet in diameter. Its length above the surface was fifteen feet if it was an inch, and there was no guessing how much more of its body lie below ground. It was shaped like an earthworm, tube-like and limbless, but there the resemblance ended. Its head was split into two parts and the gaping maws of its mouths were filled with brown fangs the length of Steffy’s body.
Its body was brownish black—muddy colored—and its flesh seemed a mixture of both rough scales and slime. Oozing boils steamed and ran with yellow pus all over its form, burning the ground as it wept down. The smell of rotten carrion filled the air, and Steffy, beyond pain or fear or reason, gagged as the stench filled her nose and mouth with its rancid warmth.
A large Daemon sat atop the worm, as a human would sit atop a horse.
Steffy could have sworn that she heard and felt the heavy pounding rhythm of the Daemon’s heart.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
It echoed in perfect rhythm with the tempo playing out in her mind.
“Don’t look, Steffy.” Cinder pulled her tighter to him, pulling her head down to his chest in a protective gesture.
And Steffy was too tired, too frightened, to do anything but let him. She knew they
were going to die.
“Eprish ‘ald Horde, primarsandh!” came the Daemon’s war cry, and his voice held the suffering of a thousand damned souls, the evil of a million black hearts. His was the wrath of the endless army—the Horde itself.
The last vestiges of strength fled Steffy in the face of such dark hatred. She sagged heavily against Cinder, falling to her knees even as she clutched her arms around his waist in an effort to remain standing.
But Cinder remained standing. As strong and fierce as always, ever the proud Shikar warrior in the midst of his enemies. Daemons moved to flank them, surrounding them, and Cinder didn’t even flinch. He faced the Daemons and the monstrous Horde Worm as casually and coolly as he might go to a dinner party.
If Steffy hadn’t been in the midst of a storm of pain and fear she would have smiled at the sight.
“Give Steffy to us and we will end you quickly.”
Steffy choked on a cry of pure terror. Hearing her name on the putrid lips of the Daemon atop the Worm made her heart stop dead in her chest before it resumed its thunderous, stuttering pace. How had that monster known her name?
“Why do you want her?”
“Give her to us! Arr’chen shidd ‘ald Horde. Do not invoke our wrath.”
“Come and get her if you think you’ve got the courage,” Cinder challenged arrogantly.
The ground rolled. The Worm’s charge was held in check at the last moment by the Daemon atop it…but only just.
“You will die, Shikar.” Shadows oozed over Steffy’s brain as the monster’s hellish voice stabbed through her ears.
“After you.”
Steffy cringed and clutched at Cinder, knowing there was such a thing as too much bravado. He looked down at her as the Daemons around them began to inexorably close in. His eyes burned and a halo of heat surrounded them.
“Hold on, baby. Hold on tight.”
There was an intense surge of heat. It ate at her eyeballs and mouth. She closed both and buried her face against his thigh as she knelt there on the ground. More heat swallowed them, rolling from Cinder to her and beyond.
The Daemons lunged with a mighty cry.
The ground around the Canker-Worm roiled and belched as it charged.
Behind her clenched lids, Steffy saw a bright orange glow flicker and pulse and grow.
Then came the swell of agonizing heat. The roar of flame. The crackling sound of burning vegetation. And the scream of many dying things.
Steffy opened her eyes, but the heat and the light engulfed her.
And she was swallowed in flames as Cinder’s power exploded in a blaze that ate the world.
* * * * *
Long minutes—perhaps hours—later, Steffy opened her eyes and watched the spots that danced before her vision. Her hands were hurting from having clutched Cinder so tightly and so long. Cinder was breathing hard, but otherwise seemed none the worse for wear. The smell of burning hair filled her nostrils and she saw that the ends of her hair had been singed away.
But other than that she too appeared unharmed by Cinder’s flames.
The Daemons, however, had not been so lucky.
In fact, they—along with the Canker-Worm—had disappeared entirely. Burnt to ash. Along with several hundred yards of the cornfield. Steffy gasped to see the extent of the damage Cinder had caused to their surroundings. They stood in the middle of a massive black, charred circle. Smoke still rose in lazy wisps from still flaming stalks of corn dotted about the field.
Cinder had succeeded in devastating several acres of land. He’d laid waste to them with the explosion of his power.
“Scheiße,” she said weakly, looking around them in wonder.
“By Grimm…” he said shakily, “did I actually do that?” Steffy saw his eyes were wide with his own shock.
“Didn’t you mean to do that?” she cried, not a little unnerved by his obvious surprise.
“I’ve never,” he took a deep breath, “done anything like that. I didn’t know I could.”
“Scheiße.”
Cinder tore his eyes away from the burnt field with an expression that looked almost like horror. Steffy found no comfort in knowing that he’d been just as surprised as she at the results of his release of control. Not that she was ungrateful for those results—they were alive, weren’t they? But it was still daunting to know that Cinder hadn’t, himself, been aware of his own strength and power.
His eyes met hers and immediately refocused on their situation. “Come on. We have to get out of here. And you need medical attention.”
“Fuck. How the hell am I going to explain all this to a doctor?” She laughed…and lapsed into deep, racking coughs as a result.
Her heart and mind quailed as she saw the bright red blood that stained her hands.
Chapter Fourteen
“Don’t you close your eyes, damn it! Stay with me.” Cinder dragged her roughly along with him as he raced up to the old truck parked negligently in the quaint farmhouse’s tiny graveled driveway.
“I’m so tired,” she whispered. “Let me rest.”
“If you sleep now you won’t wake up,” he said with brutal frankness. He looked at her pale face as she tried to lean against him and rest. He gritted his teeth around a surge of panic. She wasn’t going to make it.
She would make it, he vowed. He would force her to live if he had to.
“We’ve been walking for hours,” she moaned piteously.
“Only an hour. We’re lucky this place wasn’t farther away.” He sidled up to the truck.
“You can’t drive. I’ll have to.” He only hoped it wasn’t too hard a skill to master or they were both screwed. Dawn would be on the rise within the next two hours.
“I hope this hunk of junk is an automatic then,” she muttered.
Cinder tried the door. It was locked. He cursed blackly, shook Steffy as she tried to nod off—he’d been shaking her awake more and more often over the course of the past hour—and smashed the window in with his fist. As swiftly as he could he unlocked the door, yanked it open and shoved Steffy inside. He followed her, looking around warily to assure himself that no one had heard the noise.
“How do I turn it on?”
“Look under the visors. There might be a spare set of keys, though I doubt it.” Steffy was visibly struggling to help him as much as she could. The bruises and cuts that covered her face and body were an alarmingly stark contrast to the chalky pallor of her skin.
And, of course, there weren’t any spare keys to be found.
“Hang on,” Steffy said and drunkenly leaned down to the floorboard at Cinder’s feet. She fiddled unsteadily with some wires down there and within minutes the truck’s engine roared to life. Steffy leaned back with a bleary smile. “I used to be able to hotwire a brand new car in less than a minute. I must be slipping.” She sighed and leaned heavily back in her seat.
The door of the farmhouse flew open and a man in his bedclothes came running out into the drive, waving his hands and yelling.
“Shit. How do I do this?” Cinder growled.
Steffy leaned over and pulled the stick that protruded out from the steering. “That’s reverse. Hit the gas, that pedal there,” she motioned weakly, “and back up into the road.”
Somehow Cinder managed to do it, tires throwing gravel at the angry farmer as he sped backwards. He slammed on the brakes as he hit the pavement of the road, jerking the vehicle brutally. Steffy reached over and repositioned the stick.
“That’s drive. That’s all you need to know.” She smiled encouragingly at him, but it was ruined as her lip cracked and began once more to bleed.
Cinder stomped on the gas and off they sped down the road. It was unsteady going at first as he became accustomed to the nuances of steering the vehicle, but at last they were easily eating up the miles, on their way back to the city.
“Don’t go to sleep,” became Cinder’s litany as the minutes crawled by. He was forced to shake her several times here and there to pun
ctuate his command.
Steffy’s cough got increasingly worse.
“I think my lungs are fucked up,” she said thickly, and by the tone of her voice Cinder knew she wasn’t really aware of much. Shock had set in. Everything had probably taken on a surreal, dreamlike quality to her. She was beyond fear. Beyond pain.
It wasn’t a good sign.
She coughed again and it sounded wet. Bubbly. Thick.
“You’ll be fine,” he gritted out as if just saying it would make it so. “Just stay awake. Stay with me.”
He reached across the seat and grabbed her hand in one of his. His heart stuttered at the cold feel of that small hand swallowed up in the heat of his. The fire that hovered beneath his skin moved to embrace her, to shield her in heat. He pushed his power out and over her, fearing what her increasing coldness might mean.
He couldn’t lose her. He’d rather die a thousand deaths than be without her for one single moment.
“Did I tell you about the first time I used my Incinerator ability?” he asked, knowing full well he hadn’t. He’d been stingy with her, refusing to share much of his past with her. But no more. He would share with her now, and gladly.
Hopefully he’d have a lifetime to share with her.
Steffy’s eyes were glazed as she looked at him, but he could see the curiosity swimming in their depths as well as the pain. He saw that curiosity as a good sign. A sign to show she was still with him. It would have to do for the moment.
“I was nine years old. I was with my aunt, Desondra—”
“Desondra is your aunt?” she asked, obviously surprised.
“Yes.” He was pleased to see a little bit of awareness return to her. “She was always totally cool—as Cady would so blithely put it. I liked spending time with her. Anyway, I was with Desondra when it happened. My mother was a Council member and my father was out guarding the Gates. Desondra and I were making tents out of bed sheets in her sitting room—”
The Horde Wars II: Wanton Fire Page 12