Pax tugged open the door, pulling the collar of his shirt up over his nose to filter out the smoke as he moved into the corridor.
“Do we have a plan?” asked Beck.
“Shoot until you’re empty,” replied Pax.
Dodging the abbey’s fleeing inhabitants, they ran toward the front of the building and found the source of the smoke—a pile of burning debris near the entrance and main stairway. Someone had been thinking, but it had been panicked thinking. The fire was driving out the wasps, but also the people. Once they were out in the courtyard there’d be nowhere to hide.
A woman carrying a wailing infant darted in front of Pax, toward the entrance. Her face bent low over her baby, she didn’t seem to see the knot of wasps clogging the arched doorway. He caught the back of her dress and gave it a yank.
She fought him senselessly until finally he grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Go out the back!” he shouted, giving her a shove the opposite direction.
“Pax!”
Iris’s shout jerked his attention to the front of the room in time to see her bounding down the stairs, the priest and another man on her heels, with at least three wasps in pursuit. Flames licked along both railings, and the lowest section of steps was engulfed in flame as well.
Beck fired steadily into the wasps fighting their way out the entry doors, and Pax shifted position to target the ones crawling after his sister. Four bullets felled the first two, but as Iris and Carrick hopped the burning steps to the ground floor, the man at the rear let out a scream.
“Shoot it!” yelled Iris, as Pax targeted the black globe of the third wasp’s head.
But even as he squeezed the trigger, sharp mandibles pierced through the man’s chest, stopping his screaming. A second shot finished the wasp, and the two bodies slid together to the foot of the stairs, thudding to a stop against a wall.
“The fire has spread upstairs,” panted Iris, joining him.
“Is everyone out?” called Beck.
“All that we could get to,” muttered the priest, his expression grim. A bloody gash stretched from chin to ear. Iris’s uncharacteristic expression of empathy was something Pax would have to puzzle out later.
A piercing, angry hum drew their attention to the entryway, where an injured wasp buzzed its broken body in a circle, trying to right itself. Finally its abdominal section smacked against one of the heavy wood doors, half torn from the hinges. With a growl Beck aimed and fired, knocking off the pointed section of abdomen along with the arm-length stinger.
“Wasted shot,” Pax protested.
Beck strode over and retrieved the stinger, holding it by the oozing piece of hard wasp shell.
Frowning, Pax took aim at the nearest ebony carcass and followed Beck’s example. The bullets wouldn’t last much longer—they needed a backup plan.
A shriek sounded out in the courtyard, and Beck called, “Let’s go!”
Pax shot off two more stingers and glanced at Iris.
Narrowing her eyes, she said, “I’m not going out like this.”
With a bark of mirthless laughter he handed her a stinger. “Glad to hear it.”
As they exited the abbey he tried not to think beyond the battle they were walking into. He tried not to think about how he was going to explain all this to his father, or the fact he might not get the chance.
Mostly he tried not to think about Asha.
* * *
Asha picked up her pace, veering out of the parking lot and onto the road. She hugged the inside curve, hoping the line of vegetation crowding the asphalt would help to conceal her movement.
As the paved road joined up with the coastline, she broke left onto the earthen track that would take her back to the bog. She could see the ships now, and weighed the risks of shouting to make her presence known.
She had only seconds of buzzed warning before she was struck from above.
The moment she splayed onto the ground she launched forward, trying to keep the thing off her back. But a second blow sent her sprawling again.
Rolling to face her attacker, she gave a cry of horror and revulsion as the wasp dropped down over her, caging her between the spiny legs on either side of its black-armored torso. She thrashed from side to side, kicking at the hard abdomen with all her strength. Human arms extended from the beast’s thorax, talon-like hands grasping and pinning her arms to the ground. Translucent, dark amber wings extended in the air behind the massive body.
She held her breath, heart pounding, and tightened her grip on Beck’s knife. Her panicked fighting was just wearing her out—she was no match for the beast physically. She studied the blank, alien features, searching for something intelligent in its expression. Would it understand a plea for mercy?
Staring at her own ghostly reflection in the orbs that dominated its face, Asha noticed a focal point, like a pupil, behind the gold, translucent shell. The wasp was studying her as well.
“Please don’t hurt me,” she breathed.
Dark antennae protruded from the spot where a nose should have been. They hooked outward, like a curling mustache. Her gaze dropped a fraction, and she swallowed a scream as the long mandibles—also hooked, but hooked inward to form a ring—opened wide.
The creature’s head lowered slowly, and the mandibles closed around Asha’s neck. She jumped as the sharp tips scraped along her skin. Blood pulsed in a panic beneath the flesh at her throat. She was sure the wasp could feel it too.
The creature’s face tilted minutely, and Asha heard …
Not stronger than us. No. Not smarter. Not better.
A voice. A rasping vibration. A ghastly feminine murmur that she wasn’t sure hadn’t come from inside her own head.
“Please,” she choked past the tightening in her throat.
The mandibles clicked open and shut at the nape of her neck. The beast’s torso arched, and its abdomen—which carried its deadliest weapon—bent toward her lower body.
This will sting, continued the thing.
She realized with shock the creature was laughing at her. The note of amusement was undeniable. And horrifying.
In a final, desperate attempt, she wrenched to one side and managed to maneuver away from the descending stinger. As her knees connected with one of the wasp’s legs it faltered, and its grip on her arms loosened. With a growl of effort she drove the knife upward against its thorax.
The tip glanced harmlessly off the hard black shell and she cried out in frustration.
But stillness was death, and she continued to thrash against the beast’s legs. The mandible ring broke open, gouging her neck as the wasp freed its head from hers. Taking advantage of the space that opened between them, she swung the knife to one side, connecting with something solid.
The wasp lurched and she drew up her legs, shoving its torso away from her. She rolled free and vaulted to her feet.
The stick-like legs were sturdier than they looked, but she’d managed to knock off the lower section of one. The creature moved to attack again.
Spinning out of the path of its off-balance lunge, she brought the blade down on a fragile wing, knocking loose a section the size of her forearm.
Run!
Not pausing to question why her brain had registered this command in Paxton’s voice rather than her own, she shot away from her foundering attacker, closing the distance between her and the bog.
She scanned the ground, searching for the entrance to the trench. When she spotted the narrow gap between dry earth and concealing turf, she tugged a section free and dove into the wet tunnel.
Scrambling through the muck, slipping or stumbling every few steps, she remembered nightmares she’d had where she’d run and run but never seemed to make any progress. She could never see what was chasing her in those dreams, but it was difficult to imagine any nightmare could be worse than this reality.
“Banshee!” she shouted when she finally crawled out the other end.
She dashed to the hull, slapping at i
t with her hands. “Banshee, wake up! The captain needs your help!”
The air stilled to silence in the wake of her shouting. She glanced from one ship to the other. Two hibernating beasts.
Her gaze shifted back the way she’d come, toward the abbey. She couldn’t see the building, but its location was marked clearly enough by a column of smoke, and the mass of dark bodies swarming to one side.
Again she slapped the hull. “Banshee, you have to wake up! The captain and Iris will die!”
She slid a hand along the resinous membrane. “Come on,” she pleaded. “You know me.”
* * *
“How do you know she made it to the ship?” demanded Iris as she swung a spiked forearm, punching through the wing of the wasp writhing at her feet. The creature spun toward her and she raised a booted foot, bashing it against the alien face.
The truth was Pax didn’t know. It was just a feeling. But he couldn’t say that to his sister.
“Even if she did,” Iris continued, scanning for the next assailant, “Banshee’s powered down.”
Their ammunition exhausted, they were fighting hand-to-hand with the enemy, just as Beck had predicted. Beck’s people with their soft bodies and limited weaponry were no match—casualties littered the strip of asphalt between the abbey and the wall. And it was clear by the darkening of the sky above the abbey that reinforcements had just arrived.
“I know it doesn’t look good,” admitted Pax.
“Understatement,” Iris grumbled.
Their conversation was cut short by two wasps alighting on the asphalt in front of them. Pax moved quickly, jamming a harvested stinger into the face of one of them. He managed to penetrate one of the gold orbs, which were softer than the armored bodies. As the wasp faltered, he raised his foot and jammed the spike deeper.
Iris finished off the second wasp and they hurried to join Beck, who had a thigh caught in a set of mandibles. Before they could help him, Carrick dove in and knocked the wasp’s head loose with a powerful swing of his shovel.
“Can they swim?” shouted the priest.
Pax exchanged glances with Iris. “Good idea,” said Iris. It might buy them some time.
“The lake?” asked Beck, gripping the bleeding puncture in his leg.
A shrill cry sounded, drawing their attention a few meters away to a fair-haired woman with a stinger plunged in her hip. Iris was the closest, and she snatched an ax from the hands of a dead man and knocked the stinger free from the wasp’s body. Pax finished the beast while Carrick knelt at the woman’s side. She was already dead.
“Get in the lake!” Pax shouted to the people closest to him. They stared at him, confused. “Go on! They won’t go in the water!”
A boy ran past, and Beck grabbed him. “Thomas, listen! Go around the wall and get in the lake! Tell everyone you see!”
The boy nodded and took off. “Get in the water!” he cried.
A wasp dropped toward him, and Pax targeted and flung another stinger. It sailed through a wing and the wasp plummeted, slamming onto the asphalt, where another man with a shovel waited to finish it.
Pax cast a glance to the sky.
“Forget her,” snapped Iris, coming up behind him. “She ran like hell the opposite direction. It’s what I would do.”
“Get in the lake!” cried a man, as the order made its way among the survivors. “Get in the—”
A wasp snatched him off his feet, clamping mouthparts onto his neck as it dragged him four or five meters along the ground, lifted him over the wall, and then dropped him on the other side.
“Bloody hell!” cried Iris. “This is madness!”
“Listen,” interrupted Pax, glancing skyward again.
Banshee swooped in and lowered over the abbey, guns descending from her underside.
“Get out of there!” Pax ordered the handful of people lingering near the smoking abbey.
As he and Iris took shelter against the courtyard wall, bullets sprayed into the swarm of wasps overhead. A carcass plummeted to the pavement no more than a meter away, and others rained down around it, like a giant was swatting flies.
The dozen of them that managed to elude the guns regrouped in the air above Banshee for a suicide run. The sturdy little Scarab simply held position, allowing them to break their bodies against her hull before they joined their companions on the ground.
The handful of surviving wasps retreated as Banshee repositioned over the lake, her gear dropping for a water landing.
“Let’s get to the ship,” murmured Iris, stepping away from the wall.
“Agreed.” Now that the common foe was defeated, the uneasy alliance wasn’t likely to hold long.
They rounded the wall and approached the ship as the boarding ramp extended, lowering onto the lakeshore.
As they stepped onto the ramp, Carrick waded out of the lake carrying a small child. The girl’s arms clung tightly around his neck, face buried against his broad chest.
“Good fight,” said Iris, as he drew up even with the ramp. “And I’m sorry.”
The priest acknowledged this with a nod and continued toward the abbey.
Before Pax could ask what she was talking about, Asha appeared on the ramp. She took a few steps toward him, and their gazes locked. Her lips parted, and the color drained from her face. Had she expected to find him dead? Hoped to?
His eyes moved to the rivulet of blood seeping down from her neck into her shirt. His shirt.
What the hell was he supposed to do now? His amnesiac prisoner, whom he had pledged to interrogate and drag before his father, had just saved his and his sister’s lives.
“Nicely done,” said Iris, passing Asha as she boarded the ship. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Pax joined Asha on the ramp, conflict and confusion swarming his brain. Why couldn’t he speak? Because nothing he wanted to say made any sense.
Finally she saved him the trouble. “Where’s Beck?”
It was a natural-enough question. Beck had rescued her from the Manti, and of course she would think of him. Why it made him feel like he’d swallowed a glowing hot stone was a question he couldn’t afford to ask himself right now.
ENEMIES AND ALLIES
Asha hadn’t realized how anxious she felt until the moment she saw him, when she all but staggered from relief. She lowered her gaze so he wouldn’t see how tangled up her loyalties were.
“Where’s Beck?” she asked.
“I’m here,” called the man himself, striding over to join them on the ramp. Paxton’s expression tightened.
The leader’s shirt hung in tatters, revealing a long gash across his chest. A piece of bloody cloth bound one of his legs. No trace of his cocky, joking manner remained.
The two men shifted on the ramp, uncomfortable in such close proximity. She knew the hostility they felt toward each other was not far below the surface. What would happen now?
“How many have you lost?” she asked Beck.
The leader frowned. “Many. But it would have been worse if you hadn’t come back. Would have been hard to blame you for running.”
Beck’s gaze flickered at Paxton, and it occurred to her they were both surprised to see her again. Had they believed her capable of leaving them all to die?
“You were right about the ship,” said Paxton. “It was a good call.”
Beck reached out and took hold of her chin, lifting and tilting her face. The skin on the side of her neck stung as it stretched.
“That’s an angry cut,” he said.
She pulled her chin free. “I’m alive.” Scanning the ground in front of the wall, she counted at least eight bodies—two of them very small. She closed her eyes, heart aching. Surviving against all odds, only to die like this.
“Were you attacked?” Paxton asked her.
Her eyes found his face again. “On the bog road.”
He nodded, jaw clenching.
“No doubt they’ll be back,” said Beck, scanning the sky above the abbey, fo
llowing the path of approach and retreat.
“No doubt,” agreed Paxton.
“You still offering a ride?”
Asha studied the leader, surprised by his change of heart. Though perhaps not surprising, considering what had happened since then.
The Manti captain hesitated. “We can destroy the hive. Shouldn’t be hard for Banshee to trace them back.”
“But is it the only one?”
Paxton nodded. “No way to be sure.”
Carrick joined them on the ramp.
“How bad?” Beck asked him.
The priest’s dark gray eyes and heavy brows would have given him an intense countenance in any situation, but especially so now. “We lost twenty-six,” he replied.
Asha moaned softly. A staggering number for the nearly extinct. The fact she hadn’t known they existed until today didn’t make it any easier to hear.
“We’ve got eight gravely injured,” Carrick continued. “One is stung—I doubt she will make it. The others might with proper care.”
Asha remembered how the Manti ship had diagnosed her on board. “Maybe Banshee could help them,” she said to Paxton.
He studied her a moment, and glanced at Beck. “I can get you someplace safe, and look at your wounded, if that’s what you want.”
“Aye.” Beck nodded. “We’d be grateful.”
“I intend to lock you in the hold for the journey,” warned Paxton. “When we let you out, you get off the ship. No discussion.”
Beck nodded. “Agreed. Carrick, tell the others. Tell them to pack up quickly.”
The priest hesitated, dark gaze shifting between the two men. Then he turned and walked down the ramp.
“We can’t take you all on Banshee,” said Paxton. “We’ll have to go for the other ship first. But you can board your wounded now, and we’ll see what the ship can do for them. Make it quick.”
“Thank you,” said Asha.
He moved past her on the ramp without replying, and boarded his ship.
She was still staring after him when Beck spoke to her in a low voice. “I’m going to trust I know where your loyalties lie and tell you I intend to take over those ships. But I need your help to do it.”
The Ophelia Prophecy Page 8