The Awakened World Boxed Set

by William Stacey

  "Alive," he sat up, his gaze going to the dead guards. "How..."

  "Your winged buddy under the mountain," Erin said dryly. "You run with the strangest friends, Jaguar Knight."

  He rose, unsteady, but only for a moment. Then his strength and balance returned, and his eyes grew hard. "Not exactly a buddy, but I get your meaning." He took one of the assault rifles, worked the action, and then looked to Angie and Erin. "What now?"

  "We get the hell out of here," Angie said. "What do you think?"

  He shook his head. "Can't. We need to save Morgan."

  "She's not Morgan, not really."

  He stared at her in surprise. "You know she’s really Wyn Renna?"

  "We know all sorts of things. Rowan and the real Constance Morgan—as well as a bunch of pissed-off elven warriors—are going after her. We need to move."

  "We need to help," he said.

  "You're hurt."

  Tec frowned. "Do I look hurt?"

  "You look naked," Erin said, her eyes darting to his junk. "But I get your point. All hands on deck, Angie."

  Before Angie could argue, a series of explosions shook the cavern, followed by the sound of gunfire and battle cries.

  Rowan was attacking.

  Chapter 39

  Tec and Erin made Angie wait inside the torture chamber while they slipped out the door and made sure it was safe outside. Then they motioned her to follow. Somehow, the two had both decided they were going to bodyguard her, which was a bit galling when she considered that she had just rescued him. Gunfire and explosives rang out within the subterranean cavern, and Angie saw the muzzle-flashes, looking like strobe lights, coming from the temple. Tec, naked but for his Kalashnikov assault rifle, moved in sync with Erin as if the two of them had trained together as a fire team all their lives. Angie, her sub-gun ready, followed them, trying to look in all directions at once.

  A drawn-out scream echoed across the cavern, an all-too human cry of agony. The tempo of gunfire picked up, mostly from the distinctive sound of Kalashnikovs. Whatever surprise advantage Rowan had been counting on was over. There had to be many more cultists than werewolves or elves.

  And then Tec turned, gripped her shoulder, and slammed her hard to the ground. Through the stone ruins on their right, an entire squad of cultists charged, firing their rifles from the hip. The bullets cracked as they snapped over her head. She had used all her mana fighting Shane. The Shade King might be an all-powerful supernatural entity, but it couldn't shield her without mana. She lay prone, firing short bursts with her sub-gun at the cultists. Erin and Tec dropped to a knee to return fire. Angie was, at best, a capable shot, having qualified annually on the Home Guard range. Some of her shots were off, but this close, she couldn’t miss, and she cut down at least three men. Tec and Erin were much deadlier, shooting with Zen-like calm amidst the bedlam.

  In seconds, the enemy were all down. Tec and Erin rose, putting aimed shots into the heads of each corpse. "You hurt?" Erin called out without turning to look.

  "I'm fine," Angie answered as she pulled herself upright, amazed to discover she was.

  Tec was also uninjured, his naked flesh dirty but whole. "Reloading," he called out.

  "Covering," Erin answered, scanning her surroundings with her sub-gun.

  He ejected his banana magazine and loaded another he took from a corpse. "Back in," he yelled.

  "Reloading," Erin said as she ejected her sub-gun's bullpup magazine and inserted another.

  Angie moved closer and saw the glistening blood soaking Erin's hip. "You're hurt!"

  Erin stepped forward, her sub-gun once more on her shoulder. "In and out through the meat. I'm fine."

  "How can you know that? Let me look."

  The gunfire and sounds of battle from the temple intensified. "No time now," Erin said. "Rowan needs us."

  "I'll cover, you move," Tec said.

  Erin began to slip forward. "On—"

  Just then, more cultists ran around the corner of the stone building ahead of them, another squad. Erin and Rowan opened fire at the same moment, cutting down four of the closest enemy, but their bullets ricocheted from the magical shield of a heavyset bearded man armed with a spiked mace—a mage!

  Tec threw himself in front of the man, but a moment later, the bearded man flashed out of sight, blurring to reappear just in front of Angie, his mace raised. He had cast Shutter, traveling only a foot or two, but it had been enough to slip past Tec. As he brought his mace down on her, trying to crush her skull, she caught it on her sub-gun. The impact knocked the weapon from her hands and smashed her to her knees. He raised the mace again, his eyes flashing with hatred. Tec, unable to shoot without hitting Angie, swung his rifle butt at the back of his head, but the mage's shade protected him with a shield. Erin, occupied with the other cultists, couldn't help.

  So Angie attacked.

  She scrambled forward, wrapping her arms around the mage's knees. His mace hammered into her back, hitting the small pack filled with Tec's water bottles. The impact was both jarring and painful, but she was alive. With her arms around his knees, the mage toppled back, slamming hard onto the ground, and Angie mounted him, trying to choke him. Her hands wrapped around his neck, and in a flash, his life force flowed into her, filling her with mana.

  Once again, the Shade King had taken another life. But she had mana again.

  She released the dead man's neck and cast Shockwave at the surviving half dozen cultists, hammering into them so hard that their bodies exploded and painted a stone wall behind them red.

  A second later, Tec was at her side, helping her stand. "You okay?"

  "Fine, I'm fine," she said breathlessly.

  "How? That blow should have crushed your spine."

  Angie stripped the dripping small pack from her back and opened it to see the bottles had been broken, soaking the back of her vest, shirt, and back. The pack had protected her from the impact of the mace. Her back didn’t even hurt, but the blow had almost certainly reopened her sword cut. She dropped the pack. "Don't get hurt again," she warned him. "I'm all out of magic dragon water."

  He grinned. "I'll keep that in mind."

  With Erin and Tec leading, they ran to the stone stairs leading up to the summit of the temple. Bodies of cultists lay on the blood-soaked steps, as well as six elves. Screams and gunfire continued, but the tumult was lessening; the battle must be concluding, but in whose favor?

  Before they could take a step, a thunderous roar reverberated across the entire cavern, sounding like it was coming from everywhere at once. Angie's blood ran cold, and she froze in mid-step. A moment later, her left palm blazed with fire, and she screamed as she clutched it to her chest, falling to her knees. Her vision blurred, and when it cleared a moment later, the pain was gone, but the tear-shaped mark glowed with eldritch fury. Then she noticed that Tec, too, was on his knees, clutching his own palm against his chest, the last vestiges of what must have been the same pain washing through his features.

  His eyes widened when he saw her. "You ... how?"

  Erin hauled them both to their feet. "I don't know what's going on, but we can't stay here. Jesus, what was that? Is there another demon?"

  "No," Tec stated coldly, a flicker of fear flashing through his eyes that scared Angie almost as much as that bestial roar. "Not a demon. Much worse. We need to move. Now!"

  Angie drew Nightfall and glared at the temple. "Let's go."

  Rayan Zar Davi cast a blood whip spell at the tall elven mage in the conical helmet with the ridiculous tuft of lion mane—a woman, judging by the molded Starsheen breastplate—but this one was tall even for an elf. The spell, one of Rayan's most lethal, shattered against the mage's counterspell, a powerful fire-lash. Both spells dissolved into a shower of sparks between the two women. She’s competent, Rayan realized. Elf mages were far more dangerous than humans, perhaps even a match for her. But Rayan, gifted with blood magic by her masters, was hardly an easy opponent. She had already killed several of the ar
mor-clad elven warriors. Their corpses littered the stones of the temple's surface between them, but so did dozens of her own people.

  The attackers had hit hard, slaughtering the other Tzitzime cultists before they even realized their danger. Her mages had fallen to this one's magic, crushed like children. Even now, the attackers were at the altar, freeing the changeling. No! she railed at her inability to stop them. Rayan's rage was overshadowed only by the sheer terror she experienced at the sound of her master's bellow a moment earlier. He comes, she realized, fighting down her soul-shivering terror. He comes to deal with these intruders personally. He'll kill everyone, everything—including me.

  This was far worse than the attack on the Home Guard base, the insult heightened by the knowledge that this time, the enemy had bested not that fool Nathan Case but her. The affront was enough to make her scream with rage. The great Lord of the Smoking Mirror could only blame her for this. And the timing of the attack ... it couldn't possibly have been worse. The stars were finally right for the ceremony. Most of her Children had been here atop the temple, preparing for the sacrificial ceremony. The elf changeling had been tied, naked, to the altar, her body arched by the stone, ready for the obsidian dagger to cut her heart out.

  And then chaos.

  Explosions, gunfire, and magic. She saw the hand of the cowardly feathered serpent in this disaster. Only that foul wyrm could have orchestrated such a perfect attack.

  The elven mage cast another spell, and a dozen feet of stones beneath Rayan's feet fell away with a crash, leaving nothing beneath her but a twenty-foot drop. But Rayan cast Shutter, moving to solid ground and casting another blood whip spell. This time her spell hit, finally cutting through the mage's weakened shield and wrapping its crimson band tight about her neck. "Yes!" she screamed in triumph, yanking back on her whip and severing the mage's helmeted head. The head fell away from the helmet, and both rolled across the stones of the temple. Davi stopped the head with her foot, staring in confusion at a human woman with short blond hair and blue eyes—the real Constance Morgan, she realized. She hadn't battled an elven mage but a human one, albeit elf trained.

  She saw movement through the smoke and chaos as figures darted away from the altar—more elves, one of them carrying the changeling draped over his shoulder. Then she realized it wasn't an elf but a human man—Rowan Seagrave, that evil bastard of a werewolf! She should have known. If he was here, then that bitch Angela Ritter was as well.

  They'd both die. Rayan hefted her hexed pulwar, the curved saber that had once belonged to her hated Pashtun warlord father. She'd use it to cut Rowan's head from his shoulders.

  Chapter 40

  Tec and Erin led the way up the stone steps to the flat summit of the temple. Angie had to run to keep up with the insanely fit were-creatures, and with the stairs so slick with blood, she slipped twice. On the temple’s summit, corpses lay scattered everywhere, the blood pooling about them. Some of the corpses were burning, the smell making Angie gag. A single black stone altar, arched so that a victim could be bound across it, sat in the center of the temple's summit. The sides of the stone shone with old blood. Even from here, the altar throbbed with foulness.

  Through the smoke, running straight for them, was a handful of elven warriors with Rowan in their midst, running with a naked woman over his shoulder, a woman with short blond hair—Wyn Renna. They had saved her after all.

  "Check fire! Check fire!" Erin yelled to Tec. "The ones with pointy ears are friendlies!"

  "Got it," he yelled back, swinging his assault rifle barrel away from Rowan and the elves. "Enemies right!" he yelled and began firing in short bursts.

  More gunfire broke out in the direction in which Tec had been shooting, and Angie saw shapes in the smoke as well as muzzle flashes as the cultists opened fire on the elves and Rowan. Bullets winged away from the shield the Shade King threw before Angie, her first indication they were shooting at her as well. Several of the elves stumbled and fell. A couple got to their feet again, staggering away, but others lay still. Angie, unable to see more than muzzle flashes in the smoke, cast Shockwave blindly, hoping to get lucky. The gunfire seemed to lessen, and then Rowan and the elves were there.

  Angie's eyes snapped to Rowan carrying the unconscious nude woman. "Hurry," she yelled.

  And that was when she saw Mother Smoke Heart, Rayan Zar Davi, the woman who had used magic to interrogate her in the slaughterhouse and then ordered her strangled, the same woman Angie had been too frightened of to try to stop when she had seen her escaping the battle at the Home Guard hangar. Rayan held a curved sword in her hand as she rushed at the elves and Rowan. One of the elves spun about, thrusting a spear to skewer her, but her shade blocked the attack, and with a single cut of her curved sword, she opened the elf's throat. She drew back her sword to thrust into Rowan's exposed back.

  "No!" Angie screamed, casting Shutter and transporting herself between Rayan and Rowan.

  Rayan thrust with her sword, but Angie was in the way. The tip of the curved blade drove right through Angie's load-bearing vest and then through her chest. She gasped, unimaginable pain taking her breath away, and looked down to see the hexed blade driven a foot through her body. Rayan's eyes opened in surprise, but then she smiled and yanked the blade free.

  Angie fell to her knees, dropping Nightfall as searing pain burned through her.

  Rayan drew her sword back with both hands, her intent clear—she was going to cut Angie's head from her shoulders. Yet strangely, the pain disappeared before the other woman could strike. She might have been in shock or in the final moments of her life, but she could move. She raised her palms and cast Shockwave from only a pace away.

  As the spell hit the other woman’s shield, Angie’s vision exploded in sparks, blinding her. Angie shook her head, her vision returning just in time to see Rayan stagger back, still on her feet but disoriented. A shape flew over Angie as Erin launched herself at the mage feetfirst, hitting her in the chest with a dropkick. Rayan, whose shade must have been overwhelmed in blocking Angie’s spell, soared back through the air and dropped through a huge hole in the floor, vanishing from sight.

  Then Tec was at Angie's side, holding her down as she tried to rise. "Don't move," he ordered, his voice filled with emotion. "You'll bleed out."

  "It's okay." She patted her chest, seeing the blood soaking through her clothing but feeling no pain at all.

  "You should be dead." Tec pulled down the zipper on her tactical vest, and the water bottle Angie had stuffed there fell out, cut through by the same sword thrust that had driven through her chest. The bottle was empty. Tec yanked her shirt open, exposing her bra—and unblemished skin. He stared in confusion. "What?"

  Realization coursed through Angie, and she grasped at his wrists, holding them. "The pool water, it must have healed me. The back of my shirt is still soaked with the water from my pack as well."

  His mouth opened, but he shook his head. "It doesn't work on any—" He froze and then pried her left hand free of his wrist, opening it and staring at the still-softly glowing dragon-mark. He opened his own hand, showing her the identical mark. Understanding passed between them.

  "This better not be dragon pee," she whispered.

  "We need to go!" Rowan yelled, standing atop the stairs with Wyn Renna draped across his shoulders.

  Only five elves remained, and they covered Tec and Angie as they hurried to the stairs. Angie froze, spinning about. "My sword!"

  "Got it," Erin answered, hurrying to catch up to them with the hexed side-sword in one hand, her sub-gun in the other. She spun about, firing a burst of rounds into the smoke.

  And then they were rushing down the stairs.

  As they ran through the ruins, heading for the stairs that led up to the columns and cavern entrance, a second, louder bestial roar shook the cavern.

  "Run for your lives," Tec yelled.

  They bolted toward the stairs, but as they reached them, one of the elves turned and pointed behind them, hi
s eyes wide with terror. Angie paused to look over her shoulder just in time to see a massive winged form as large as Quetzalcoatl land atop the summit of the temple.

  It was another dragon.

  Chapter 41

  Angie watched only long enough to see the dragon—its massive serpentine body covered in blue-green scales, its wings like a bat’s, its long tail forked—scurry over the side of the temple, knocking one of the pyramid towers into rubble as it rushed after them. Unlike Quetzalcoatl, this dragon was more lizard in appearance, with twisting horns extending back from its reptilian head and four powerful clawed legs propelling it.

  Their terror energizing them, Angie and the others bolted up the stairs, taking them two or three at a time. The dragon's pursuit was like an earthquake, shaking the ground. They sprinted past the columns on either side of the cavern entrance, and Angie suddenly understood why the opening was as large as it was: for the dragon. This was its lair.

  Angie risked another glance behind them, seeing that the dragon was already at the base of the stairs. It's faster than we are, she realized in horror.

  Rowan, with Wyn Renna still on his shoulders, turned and tossed something small and metallic to Erin—the detonator, Angie saw as Erin caught the object. Erin thrust Nightfall into Angie's hands, and Angie sheathed the weapon. They stood about a hundred meters up the passage from the columns.

  "We're too close," Erin yelled to Rowan.

  "Do it, or it will catch us," he yelled back. Then he turned and kept running with the elf woman over his back, barely slowed by her weight.

  Angie rushed to Erin's side. The others had run farther up the passage, but the dragon was almost at the columns. Angie stepped in front of Erin. "Do it. My shade will protect us both."

  I hope.

  Erin activated the detonator, and the powerful explosives went off in a deafening roar. The detonation was much larger than Angie had expected, and a cloud of debris came rushing at them, enveloping her and Erin. The overpressured blast of air cascaded around her, and Angie found herself bent over, coughing and shaking her head. Then Erin was at her side, patting her on the back and asking her something.