"And it'll fly?" Then she remembered what Earl had said about seeing a helicopter the other night. "You've already flown it!"
There was a loud boom as an engine roared to life, followed by the clanking of heavy metal chains. Sunlight shot through the hangar as the two hangar doors on the far side of the chamber began to open, a rumble filling the large aircraft bay. Angie stared, shielding her eyes as the bay doors swept open, sliding along grooves to disappear into the wall, exposing bright sunlight and a panoramic view of the eastern mountainside. Angie rushed over, peering over the edge of a steeply sloping cliff face.
"Took it up for a test drive the other day," Rowan said.
Casey joined them. "Had some issues with the tail rotor, but I think we've got it all sussed out now. Least I hope we do. If we're gonna bring ammo to help, we're gonna need to take it slow with the engine. Sanwa City's almost five hundred klicks north, and this beast lumbers along at a top speed of about three hundred and fifty k—which we're not gonna even try, so don't ask—but even at half that, it should only take us a couple hours at best. Should get us there in plenty of time to die with your cat-boyfriend."
She squealed with joy, wrapping her arms around him and hugging him with every ounce of strength she had.
He must have been momentarily taken aback, because he stiffened in surprise. Then he grinned and patted her back. "Just don't go blaming me if we fall out of the sky. I'm a pilot, not a mechanic."
Rowan took a breather, placing his hands on the small of his aching back and stretching as the others loaded the helicopter with crates of 5.56 mm ammunition. The Ferals helped—No, he mentally corrected himself, the We Clan, not Ferals. That was going to take some getting used to. According to Angie, these ones weren't cannibals, but that didn't mean they were civilized. And what the hell kind of name was We Clan? He sighed. Didn't matter. The world was changing again; he felt it in his tired old bones. Got one more fight in me, but that's about it.
He glanced at the wheeled cart with the ammo boxes. Tec had an impressive armory here, but they were only bringing the 5.56 mm ammunition. That was the old NATO standard used by all Western nations before A-Day, and both the Home Guard and Norteno military still used the ammo.
When he heard soft footsteps approach, he turned to see the same young girl who always seemed to be around Angie. She held a long cloth-bound object in her thin arms and watched him with obvious trepidation. These people know who we are, he realized. The werewolves that hunted them. After a lifetime in uniform, there was so much blood on his hands, they’d never come clean.
He smiled, hoping he didn’t look like a hungry wolf. "What can I do for you, little miss?"
"Miss Fortune," she said, the pride in her voice at odds with the fear in her big brown eyes. "You call me Miss Fortune."
He nodded. All these people had weird-ass names, and they seemed prickly about them. He'd already had words with Casey, making sure his not-so-sensitive brother didn't say something shockingly offensive. Casey was physically incapable of engaging his brain before barfing out whatever thought was rattling about his skull.
"What can I do for you?"
She unwrapped the end of the bundle she carried, showing him the macahuitl that they had examined when they’d first found Tec's bunker weeks ago. It resembled a two-handed wooden bat with chips of razor-sharp obsidian inserted all along its edges. "It's magic," she said. "You can kill a mage with it."
"Nuh-uh. Not me, hon ... Miss Fortune. I'm no mage."
"Yes, you can. I think it has dragon magic."
"Dragon magic, huh?" He smirked. "And you'd know about this sort of thing how?"
Her face hardened. "'Cause I'm sensitive, always have been. Don't be such a stupid heel and take the stupid sword, you big, stupid wolf."
He laughed, suddenly liking her. "I'll try not to be." Rowan took the weapon, finding its weight and balance superb. Just how old is this thing?
"You and your family are all a bunch of assholes. Real heels. But the elders say that the crowd loves a good heel turn." She spun away, leaving him with the weapon.
He watched her go, shaking his head. "Strangest god-damned people I ever did meet."
As night fell, the Blackhawk—loaded with as much ammunition as Casey felt was safe to carry in an unproven, questionably maintained aircraft—rose into a hover and slipped forward, building up speed before it shot out the open hangar doors. Sandman, his sister, Earl, Silver Katana, and a dozen other We Clan members waved farewell.
It's their home now, Angie thought from where she sat in the aircraft’s cabin, her back to the cockpit. I hope they find their people and maybe some happiness here. She clutched the dragon egg against her chest, with a part of her screaming that bringing the precious egg into a war was crazy stupid. But if anyone knew anything about dragons, it would be Tec.
She wore one of the crew headsets, as did Erin and Jay, sitting across from her, their boots resting on the crates of ammo tied down with cargo netting. Erin carried a humongous bullpup anti-materiel rifle across her lap that she had appropriated from Tec’s arsenal, saying that they might need the firepower.
Angie’s headset chirped, followed a moment later by Casey’s voice: "Okay, super mages, baby dragons, and noble werewolf warriors—you too, Jay. Air Werewolf Flight 101 has just taken off, bound for beautiful Sanwa City. We'll be cruising at an easy two hundred and fifty kilometers an hour today—just so our engines don't burn out under the stress of carrying all these bullets—and I expect we'll be arriving in about ... oh, let's say, two hours—ish, just as long as one of the rotors Jay installed doesn't go winging off. I'd say that's a fifty-fifty chance."
Despite her nerves, Angie grinned. Erin rolled her eyes, shook her head, and smiled. Jay, red-faced, gave the bird to the back of Casey's head in the cockpit. When he saw Angie watching him, he shook his head and yelled, "He's full of shit. I turned the bolts wicked tight. With a wrench even."
The helicopter banked and turned northwest.
She was going home.
In the hangar, Sandman stood with his sister and the others as the aircraft disappeared. They had a home now, and the weapons to defend it. Now they needed to go save their people taken hostage by the southerners. He couldn't help Angie and her friends, nor was it even his fight. His duty was clear. So why did he feel like he was letting her down?
His sister must have felt the same way, because she spat on the concrete floor. "Ain't right. Feels like we're the heels."
"Not our fight," Sandman said.
Silver Katana sniffed loudly, the way his aunt always did when she thought he was full of shit.
"Been through a lot last few weeks," Earl said. "Time was, folk looked after one another."
Sandman ran his fingers over the head of the hexed ax resting in his belt. "We brought Angie here, kept our word. Got our own problems now. Gotta figure out how to save our own. The wallies ..." He sighed. "Lot of bad blood between them and us."
"Yup," agreed Earl, the simple word filled with meaning.
Sandman glared at the older man. "Even if we wanted to help, Sanwa City's a good ways away. Take us a week to hike there."
"Yup." Earl bobbed his head.
"Gotta rescue our own," Sandman mumbled angrily, more to himself than anyone else.
"Any reason we can't do both?" his aunt asked. "I can take a hundred guns and a hundred fighters and bust that camp open afore any of those southerners even knows I was there. Been fighting all my life, feels like. Figure I can take on some heels come looking to stir shit up."
Sandman remained silent. His aunt was right about that. She was a right fierce one and always had been. Tougher n'leather. Tougher n'me, that's for sure and for certain. They were waiting on him, though. It was his call. Not because he was a shaman—although that mattered—but because they had been looking to him for leadership for years now. From this day on, he'd lead the We Clan; he knew it in his bones. The responsibility pressed upon him. The others would do as he said, ev
en if they didn't agree. But what should I do? He stood in place for a long time.
Finally, he turned to Earl. "Before A-Day, you said you was a trucker, right?"
"Yup." Earl spat on the cement floor.
"So ... do you remember how to drive?"
The old man smiled through missing teeth. "Yup."
Chapter 41
Under cover of night, the enemy surged forward, but Tec had seen them mustering, even from far away, and had passed the warning on to his fighters. The defenders shot flares into the night, exposing the advancing enemy, and then opened fire, but ammunition had grown increasingly scarce, and their gunfire was pathetic compared to the enemy’s massed return fire. Most of the enemy bullets cracked overhead, but some hit their marks with meaty thuds, and men and women fell dead from the wall.
"Pick your targets," Tec yelled. "Make each bullet count."
On the ground below, the enemy advance slowed, as if they were waiting. What now? When he heard the roar of engines, he understood: They're trying to ram the gates again.
This time, three trucks came barreling out from behind trees, all converging on the southern gates just below Tec. The enemy fire picked up in intensity as the trucks advanced with difficulty over the rough terrain. If even one truck reached the gates…
The lead truck was a rusted-out flatbed transport, its bed filled with what looked like stacks of hay. The other two were an old garbage carrier and a cement mixer. The defenders opened fire on the lead transport, trying to kill the driver as they had the first time the Aztalans had tried this tactic, but the enemy had learned and had welded metal plates to the windows of all three vehicles, leaving only a slit for the driver. Tec squinted. A figure stood in the back of the lead flatbed with a lit torch. A moment later, the bed caught fire, casting up thick plumes of smoke. The bales must have been soaked in gasoline. The figure with the torch fell away, rolling along behind the truck, followed a moment later by the driver. The truck kept coming. It would miss the gates, but the smoke obscured the other trucks.
Now Tec understood the threat.
"Ignore the lead truck," he yelled, running down the wall and repeating his instructions. "Fire on the other two, not the first." He reached one of the heavy machine-gun crews, the only gun that still had ammo. "Target the rear vehicles."
The gunner, a Norteno soldier with gray hair and a grease-blackened face, nodded, working the charging handle of his M2 Browning 50-caliber machine gun. He took aim. The loader looked to Tec with wide, frightened eyes. "Only half a belt left."
"Use it all, but stop those trucks!"
The gunner fired, the detonation unbelievably loud, and sent fiery red tracers at the garbage truck. The man knew his business, and while the first tracers impacted the ground before the truck, the next volley ripped into the engine and then punched right through the plates over the window. Tec didn't know if the bullets killed the driver or not, but it didn't matter. The vehicle exploded, the detonation hurling the nearby Aztalan soldiers to the ground. The fireball burned high into the sky, painting the battle orange.
"Switch targets, switch targets!" Tec yelled. The cement mixer was closing on the gates, less than two hundred meters away.
The gunner fired, but the smoke from the flatbed must have obscured his aim because his tracers went over the vehicle.
"Take him, take him, take him," Tec screamed as the truck bomb reached the road leading to the gates and picked up speed.
The gunner fired the last of his bullets, sending them into the mixer's cab. But it was too late. "Down!" Tec screamed.
The explosion sent everyone atop the southern wall reeling. Tec rose first, stumbling with disorientation, his ears ringing. Acrid smoke choked him. Fires burned everywhere, even atop the wall. He staggered to the city side of the wall. The gates were gone, and the wreckage of the mixer lay strewn and burning for more than fifty meters inside the city.
The wall was breached.
A cheer rose from the Aztalans.
An hour after takeoff, the Blackhawk began to shake. Angie's stomach lurched into her throat, and she and Erin met each other’s eyes. Angie clutched the egg against her, now wishing she had left it behind. The aircraft dropped suddenly, losing at least a hundred feet in seconds before leveling out again. The headset chirped: "Hang on, kids. We've got some bad vibration in the main rotor."
"I tightened the bolts, I swear to god," Jay yelled.
With one hand, Angie gripped her seat belt. The other held the egg. She smelled smoke—not a lot, but any within an aircraft was too much—then she smelled burnt plastic and oil. The helicopter swerved to the left and then the right. A two-toned siren screamed from the cockpit, reminding Angie of her previous crashes, and her heart pounded painfully.
"God damn it," she blurted out to no one in particular. "How many fucking helicopter crashes can one person be in?"
The helicopter swung wildly again, and Jay and Erin released their seat belts and rose, opening the side doors for a speedy escape. Trees flashed past. Then the aircraft ceased its wild descent, the nose flared up, and Casey set it down in a clearing surrounded by trees.
"Everybody out!" Rowan ordered as he surged out of the cockpit.
They scrambled out, with Erin pulling on Angie’s arm, dragging her to safety. Angie still clutched the egg, holding it as firmly as she dared while praying it didn't crack. The rotors whipped about, beating them with the prop wash.
They waited several hundred meters away, watching as Casey, alone on the Blackhawk now, cycled down the engine. The blades slowed; the whine of the turbines died down.
"Well fuck," Jay said softly.
An hour later, Erin and Casey, both filthy with engine oil, addressed the others. Casey wiped his big hands on a yard of cloth Erin had handed him.
"Hit us," Rowan ordered.
"Well," the big man said wearily. "It wasn't Jay, so color me surprised. It was corrosion in a fuel line in the main transmission system, started spilling fuel, the fuel burned, the engine got mad. I got no idea how long those birds have been sitting in storage, but this sort of shit was inevitable. They need an overhaul by a real mechanic."
Rowan ran his fingers back through his graying hair. "Can you put her back in the air? We're so close now."
Casey scowled. "Maybe. But it's gonna take some time."
"How much time?" Angie asked, her helplessness crushing.
"Don't know, Angie-baby. Just don't know." Casey sounded more depressed than weary.
"Do your best," said Rowan. "All we can do. Everybody else, eat, get some rest."
Angie stare north in frustration. It might have been her imagination, but the sky looked lighter.
As if the city burned.
Chapter 42
An hour before sunrise, Rayan Zar Davi looked through binoculars as the first of the Aztalan brigades readied to assault the twisted, still-smoking wreckage that had been Sanwa City's gates.
It would have been better to storm the gates immediately, while her brigades still had the momentum, but the fire had burned hotter and longer than anyone had expected—some idiot had used too much explosive—and the defenders had kept up a light but effective stream of gunfire. Someone, her old foe Teccizcoatl, no doubt, had a firm grip on the defenders and had instilled impressive fire control.
It didn’t matter. She had more than enough soldiers to throw against the breach, and more than enough ammo. The first brigade to assault the breech would likely get savaged, maybe even the second, but the third would get through—or however many it took. And when the angry Aztalan soldiers finally got into the city, it would turn very ugly.
She was, among other things, a student of history, and understood all too well that once a stubbornly defending city finally fell, a bloodlust would consume the victors. That would be the most dangerous moment, and she would need to be present. It wouldn't do for some overzealous soldier to shoot Wyn Renna. No, Rayan needed the elf alive. If only long enough to harvest her blood. This time,
they’d sacrifice her immediately, cutting out her heart and collecting her blood. There’d be no waiting for the stars to align; that had been a mistake.
The thought of the death that was coming for this city and its people saddened her. Despite what Teccizcoatl thought, she wasn't evil, didn't enjoy all the destruction, but she had long ago thrown her lot in with the dragons, and it was necessary to tear down this new Awakened world in order to create a better one, a world in which Memnog would rule with Itzpapalotl.
And Rayan would stand at their side, a new hero for a new world, perhaps even an immortal one ... her special destiny. The thought that she might yet cheat death filled her with wonder.
She gripped one of the silk scarves around her neck, smiling as she imagined what this new world might be like hundreds of years from now. They’d erect statues of her. "Der Sieger wird immer der Richter und der Besiegte stets der Angeklagte sein," she whispered to herself in flawless German, quoting Hermann Göring—The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused.
Rayan sighed, letting go of her scarf and trailing her fingers over the polished hilt of her pulwar on her hip. But first must come the blood, the screams, the messiness of a new beginning.
Without turning to look at the Aztalan major who stood behind her, waiting patiently, she said, "Attack the gates."
The fool saluted—actually saluted—and spun away to carry out her orders.
As the fires burned down, Tec brought a dozen fighters, all he could spare from the wall to defend the breach. He placed them around the smoldering wreckage, making sure each man or woman had at least some bullets. He gave his own rifle away, having only half a magazine left in it anyhow, and drew his machete.
The Awakened World Boxed Set Page 89