An Aztalan soldier holding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher stood in the street below, aiming his weapon at her and Tec. She tried to engage him, but his weapon flashed, and the rocket came right at her. Just before it hit, an explosion of red sparks flashed before her eyes, blinding her. The detonation of the rocket was deafening, the force of the explosion washing over her but leaving both her and Tec unharmed. Once again, the Shade King had shielded her, this time saving Tec’s life as well.
Thank you, she thought.
"Remind me to always fight beside you," Tec yelled, a smile on his handsome features. Before she could answer, they heard a whistling through the air, quickly increasing in intensity. "Incoming!" Tec yelled, throwing himself atop Angie, covering her head with his arm. A moment later, an explosion detonated among the ruins they hid within, casting stones and shrapnel about. More explosions detonated nearby, followed by the whistling of more artillery.
Angie pushed Tec's arm from atop her head and looked about. The Aztalan soldiers were withdrawing under cover of the smoke and artillery fire, leaving their dead and wounded behind. The shells kept raining down around the ambushers, demolishing the buildings. "What do we do?" she asked.
A horn blew, the prearranged call for pulling back.
Tec rose, dragging Angie to her feet by her arm. "We get the hell out of Dodge."
"Where’s Dodge?" she asked, her heart hammering with excitement.
Just then, another shell detonated less than twenty feet away, and she wrapped her arms around Tec to protect him. Once more, the Shade King created another shield.
"Let's go," Tec said, pulling her along with him.
Prince Kilyn was waiting for them at the rear of the ruins, urging them on. Four elven warriors waited with him, watching all directions. When Angie and Tec reached the prince, he ran along with them, his warriors guarding their rear. They hurried back through the ruins of the city following a predetermined path, quickly moving beyond the shelling. Other elves were pulling back from other ambush sites in other buildings. Some carried wounded. Some carried dead, but far fewer than the Aztalans. The elves had lost barely a handful to hundreds of Aztalan soldiers.
When they were clear, the elves paused to regroup. Prince Kilyn bent over, leaning on his knees and breathing deeply. He wore a dull cuirass of elven Starsheen plate mail, which must have been heavy. Angie saw a dent a half-inch wide in its back where it must have stopped a high-caliber rifle bullet.
Tec clapped the elven prince on the shoulder. "Your people did well. That was as good an ambush as I've ever seen—and I've seen a lot."
"Not ... bad," admitted the prince, panting. "Now we just need to do that about another twenty or thirty more times."
Tec nodded, turning to stare south. The shells had stopped. "Those were 105 mm howitzers, I'd guess, probably old Mexican army. A battery at least. Depending on how much ammo they have, they're going to be a problem."
"Just what I was thinking," the prince said, glaring in the direction from which the shells had come.
Chapter 16
After evening fell, Angie and Tec crowded into the basement of an old Imperial Beach apartment complex lit by flickering torches. They joined Prince Kilyn, fifty of his Phoenix Guard warriors, and a dozen short, blue-skinned and black-bearded Fey with short pointed ears and sharp angular features that gave them the appearance of being perpetually angry. Hobgoblins.
There had been a family of the subterranean-dwelling Fey living in the Fresno Enclave, although she had rarely seen them and never spoken to them. Notoriously shy, they were masters of machinery who rarely interacted with the other Fey, preferring the solitude of the underground. Char had said they were dangerous when provoked.
A single female hobgoblin stood next to Prince Kilyn, wearing a sleeveless black ring-mail vest exposing muscular arms that looked like knotted wood. The rest of her armor was black leather, with studded high boots and a pair of foot-long fighting knives on her hips. Her long dark hair was tightly braided, with each braid strung with bright feathers and silver cords. In each earlobe, she wore at least six gold rings. When she spoke to Prince Kilyn, she exposed a pair of inch-long tusks.
Angie, realizing she was staring, gave herself a shake and followed Tec to where one of the elves was ladling bowls of steaming vegetable stew from a pot to the others. Tec took two of the bowls and thrust one into Angie's hands. "Eat," he ordered.
She sighed, her gaze sharp, but she took the wooden bowl. She was ravenous.
"Sorry. I didn't mean it as an order. I've been alone so long, I'm not much good around others."
She let it go and sipped from the bowl. The hot broth was a joy. They had fought in three other ambushes that afternoon, fighting from a series of preplanned positions. Angie had no idea how many Aztalan soldiers she had killed this day and didn't want to think about it. She was becoming numb to the killing, which worried her. Each of the ambushes had been a success, and the elves had inflicted painful losses on the Aztalans, slowing their advance through the ruins of Imperial Beach to a crawl, but shortly after each ambush, the Aztalan artillery had shelled them, forcing them from their positions while the Aztalans retreated from the ambush. During the last ambush, the Aztalans had gotten lucky, and a shell had landed amid a knot of elven warriors, killing all eight of them. The Aztalan artillery had to be countered.
Which was why they were here.
Angie took her bowl of stew and stood out of the way against one of the walls, with Tec joining her. The floor of the basement was crumbling cement with dusty footprints and rat droppings along the base of the walls. Large round cement support beams held up the ceiling with its exposed rusted-out pipes covered by spiderwebs. Angie eyed the sketchy-looking ceiling as she ate. Against the far wall sat an ancient mustard-colored couch. The stench of rat droppings and mold hung in the air, but Angie forced herself to eat.
At the far end of the basement, just behind Prince Kilyn and the female hobgoblin, stood a six-foot-high, wood-reinforced tunnel entrance. The tunnel, with its thick wooden support beams, looked much more solidly constructed than the basement. It sloped down and disappeared into darkness. Clearly, it was hobgoblin construction. The elves really had been readying themselves for this battle for some time, maybe even years.
Kilyn motioned them to join him and the hobgoblin. As they approached, the hobgoblin watched them critically, her hands resting on the hilts of her wide knives. Prince Kilyn nodded. "This is Tunwak Foefell. She and her people are—"
"Hobgoblins," Angie said. "There was a family living in Fresno."
"Still lives in Fresno," said Tunwak in a strange high-pitched voice. "The Stone-biters. Cousins." She extended her large, dirty hand to Angie. Angie shook the hobgoblin’s hand, forcing herself not to wince. When Tunwak let go of Angie's hand to shake Tec's, Angie rubbed her fingers.
"The howitzers?" Tec asked.
The prince looked to Tunwak, who began speaking. "We have been readying ourselves here in the ruins of Imperial Beach for some years. The queen has long known this invasion must come."
"I can see that," said Angie. "The ambush sites were well prepared." Up close, she saw that the hobgoblin's eyes were scarlet.
"And my people and I have dug scores of tunnels beneath Imperial Beach, crisscrossing the ruins. We can come out in dozens of locations behind the Aztalan forces."
"You haven't used them yet?" Tec asked. "Why not?"
Prince Kilyn answered. "Because the first time we do, the Aztalans will realize that we can get behind them and will double their security. We need to make the first use count."
Tec nodded. "Makes sense."
Tunwak tossed her head in the direction of the tunnel. "This passage goes beneath the ruins for two kilometers and comes out south of the hills near the old airport, where the Aztalans have set up their headquarters and logistics depot."
"And their artillery?" Tec asked.
"My scouts have already located them," the prince said. "They even managed t
o get close enough to count them—six cannons and an entire tent filled with ammunition."
Angie's concern spiked. "If you're going to attack their main headquarters, you're going to need a much larger assault force. It'll be defended by hundreds of soldiers and Tzitzime mages." She looked about at the elves and hobgoblins in the basement. "You can't do it with a handful of Phoenix Guards. There's no way."
"Not just the Phoenix Guards," said Tunwak. "My people will fight as well."
"I'm not questioning your bravery, just your numbers." Angie shook her head, a heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach. "They'll cut you apart. It'll take several hundred fighters at least. And even then, the Aztalans will counterattack with their reserves. You'll have twenty minutes at best, maybe less."
"We don't have several hundred fighters to spare," said Prince Kilyn. "Not if we want to defend the Silver Strand. All we have is what you see."
"It won't work," Angie insisted. "You'll get them all killed."
"Have faith, daughter of Chararah Succubus," the prince said. "My mother's magic will create a thick fog this night. It will mask our approach, cover our attack. By the time the Aztalans recognize the threat, we will be among them."
"She can do that?" Angie asked in surprise. The more she learned of Fey magic, the more she realized how little the Fey taught humans. Chararah had never even hinted that one could create fog.
The elven prince glanced at the silver chain holding the glass rose that Angie wore. The rose was hidden beneath her shirt, but the chain was still visible. "My mother was being modest when she talked of her collection of magical talismans. The Horn of Vajja can indeed call forth fog, but blowing the horn will weaken my mother, leave her vulnerable for days. Trust me, I'd prefer she not take the chance, but we need to deal with those guns."
Tec placed his hand on Angie’s shoulder, the touch light and reassuring. "Normally, I'd agree with Angie, but if Queen Elenaril can do this thing..."
"She can do this thing," the prince said.
"It would still be best to wait until three or four in the morning, when most of their soldiers will be asleep."
"Can't wait," said Prince Kilyn unhappily. "Those guns are pounding us. We had hoped to fight in these ruins for a week or more, but that's not possible now. If we wait any longer, they'll start bombarding our defensive position on the Silver Strand, and if they drive us from the strand, the Aztalans will take the island before my people can get away. I'm afraid we're out of time. We need to go within the hour. My mother will create a fog when the sun goes below the sea, very soon now. We move underground and come out in the hills overlooking the airport and their artillery battery and depot—"
"And their headquarters, and likely a thousand soldiers," Angie said.
"And their headquarters and a thousand soldiers," acknowledged the elf. "But the battery and depot are separated from the headquarters camp by almost a half kilometer. Probably because of the noise when the cannons fire. In the fog, if we hit the depot next to the guns—"
"You can detonate the ammunition," Tec finished. "Even if the guns aren't destroyed, they won't be of any further use."
"If me and mine can get close enough to their cannons," said Tunwak, a gleam in her red eyes, "we can make sure they never fire again. But we'll need help if there are Tzitzime mages."
"There will be," Tec said. "Count on it."
Prince Kilyn's gaze went from Tec to Angie. "You don't have to come. You've already done more than you needed to."
"No," said Angie, meeting Tec's eyes and reading his mood. "We're coming."
"Can't pass up a party," Tec said.
Tunwak smiled, her tusks gleaming in the torchlight.
Tunwak and her people led Angie and the raiding party through the underground passage, the only sound the rustling of boots. Tunwak held a single hooded lantern, its subdued glow barely strong enough to chase away the darkness, but the passage was clear, the dirt floor smooth, and Angie had no difficulty keeping up. Elves and hobgoblins possessed natural night vision and had no need of a light source at all, but Angie wasn't a Fey, and she had lost her NVGs the night they had escaped Baja California. She had no idea if Tec, a were-jaguar, could see in the dark or not. After all, Erin and her brothers saw perfectly well at night but not in complete darkness.
As far as confined underground spaces went, this one was, surprisingly, better than most. The passage had been carved from the earth and reinforced by wooden beams at regular intervals along its length. It was sturdily built and clearly well maintained, but every now and then, when the artillery detonated in the ruins above, the walls would shake, and dirt would shower down on their heads. The air was cooler than above, with the distinct smell of dirt. Tree roots grew out of the ceiling and walls, but the hobgoblins had trimmed and pruned them, keeping the passage open. Angie had to admit the hobgoblins knew how to build tunnels. This was infinitely more pleasant than the sewers of Sanwa City or the underground cavern of Zolin.
The elves traveled lightly, leaving behind their heavy Starsheen cuirasses and replacing them with vests of hardened dark leather. They carried assault rifles but also wore short sword and dagger. At least a dozen carried bows as well. The hobgoblins carried shotguns and thick axes with gleaming black blades that were clearly meant for hewing necks not trees. Angie and Tec each bore an assault rifle, but Angie also had Nightfall on her hip. If they came across a mage—and she was certain they would—she’d deal with him or her.
Several times, they came to an intersecting tunnel built in an identical fashion, the ends dark. Each time, Tunwak kept them moving south. Tunwak had said these tunnels crisscrossed Imperial Beach, but Angie was beginning to wonder if they extended into the other ruins of San Diego as well. Twice, they passed wooden ladders that led to a closed trap door.
"Close now," Tunwak whispered. "No more talking."
The tunnel slanted upward, coming to a dead end just ahead, where another sturdy wooden ladder stood. Tunwak handed the lantern to Prince Kilyn before mounting the ladder. She sniffed the closed trap door, her eyes closed, then nodded to the prince. He extinguished the lantern, plunging Angie and the others into darkness. Her pulse raced, her breathing quickening. Then a sliver of gray appeared in the ceiling as Tunwak raised the trap door several inches. Immediately, fresh air blew into the passage. Tunwak opened the trap door the entire way and then slipped out. Angie felt Tec's body tense beside her. Someone else climbed up the ladder—Prince Kilyn, she thought—and disappeared outside. The moments stretched long, the tension growing. As Angie's eyes adjusted to the dim, she could make out the opening in the ceiling a bit better. It wasn't dark yet, but a thick fog obscured the dusk, settling down and drifting into the opening.
Elenaril could make fog.
The other hobgoblins climbed up the ladder, followed by a handful of elves. Tec gripped her sleeve and pulled her along to the ladder, and she scurried up it quickly, letting her rifle dangle by the strap. The fog was cold and wet against her skin, and she slipped from the opening, moving several feet away and crouching on one knee, taking up her rifle once more as Tec followed. She saw nothing but gray mist and shadows; even the night sky was obscured. The full moon glowed through the haze but couldn't penetrate it. At best, she could see only ten or so feet around her.
Beyond that, she saw only the dark shadows of the others as the elves and hobgoblins spread out. They were in the hills to the south of Imperial Beach, she knew, surrounded by brush and desert vegetation. She heard a generator, but its sound was muted and distant.
Then the guns fired again, causing her to jerk in surprise. The flash of the cannon fire cut through the fog surprisingly close, much closer than she had realized they would be. She heard a whistling diminishing in intensity as the shells traveled through the air, followed by the booming of detonation and the flash of the explosions in the ruins of Imperial Beach. Elves probably just died, she thought morosely. She glanced at Tec beside her. In the fog, she could just make out the shine of h
is eyes.
Soon, all the elves and hobgoblins had climbed from the tunnel and spread out around them. The warriors scanned their surroundings, no one making a sound, each elf ready for action. It was hard to make out individuals in the gloom, but she saw one tall elf motioning for the others to follow, and she guessed it was Prince Kilyn. Tec tugged on her sleeve, and she rose, staying at his side as they slipped across the hills. She had no way to judge direction but knew they were moving east toward the lower ground and the old airfield that had been marked on the map. According to Prince Kilyn's scouts, the Aztalans were using a still-standing hangar as a command center, but the artillery battery, six guns, had been placed separate of the camp to the west of the hangar.
There should be no one between them and the guns.
The ground sloped down as the elven prince led his force closer to their target. The elves spread out, with those carrying bows in the front. Tec reached out, gripped her shoulder tightly, and pulled her to a stop before pushing down on her shoulder. She took a knee, holding her breath and seeing that the other elves had also stopped and lowered themselves. The cannons fired again, and this time she saw they were closer, maybe only a couple hundred meters away, but in the flash of the cannon fire, she had seen forms moving through the fog, an Aztalan patrol, at least four or five men. If they raised the alarm now...
The elves with the bows attacked first, releasing a volley of shafts at almost the exact same moment. The only sound was the release of bowstrings and the soft impact as the arrows tore through flesh, followed by a single weak whimper. The elves released another volley of arrows, and then there wasn’t even a whimper. Tec rose, pulling Angie to her feet. They moved forward once more, and after a dozen paces, Angie saw the corpses of the Aztalan soldiers lying in the fog, each with several arrow shafts jutting from throat or chest.
The Awakened World Boxed Set Page 71