by John Conroe
Stacia was sniffing the air and her head whipped around to stare where Mack’s voice had come from.
She sniffed again, then growled—a clear, wolfish growl that made the closest horses stamp back. “He’s wounded,” she said in a deep, deep voice. Then she dropped her stubby shotgun and bolted for the fort, her yellow and black dragon skins bursting from her body as she Changed between one step and the next. She gained three times her own mass in a split second, tan skin covering over with white fur as her body lengthened out to over seven feet of lean, predatory power.
She was a perfect fighting blend of woman and wolf, bounding on all fours, clearing the hundred yards to the wall in two jumps, a third leap putting her at the top of the log parapet, where she paused for the merest fraction of time before she was suddenly standing on the catwalk, between the Sutton kids and Clacher’s men. And she was clearly really angry, massive toothy jaws open, lips pulled back, growl shaking the timbers.
One guard flinched away, but a second, braver one stepped forward and stabbed with his bronze-tipped spear. The sharp tip merely skated over her thick fur and tough skin. The guard had a moment to blanch, then he was hauled close by his own spear and an irresistible backhand broke his neck and flung his instantly dead body off the catwalk.
Lady Iona screamed and stumbled back toward the stairs, leaving Ari and Aylin alone behind the huge wolfish killer. Stacia’s head snapped around and she growled at the mother-daughter pair, stalking one step toward them.
“No!” Jetta yelled, rushing fearlessly past the werewolf to place herself between the girl and her mother. “They’re with us,” she said, face-to-muzzle with death.
Stacia pulled back, looked at Jetta, then glanced at Mack, her yellow wolf eyes locked on his wounded forearm.
“I should probably wrap this up, huh?” he said.
Stacia chuffed, pulled back as if affronted, then turned back to the unmoving guards who had clustered around their lord.
“How’s it going in there?” Declan yelled, like he was asking for their Starbucks orders.
Mack glanced over the wall to see his buddy standing facing the sixty or seventy sword, spear, and bow wielding men, looking pretty relaxed, his four orbs of death hovering over his head. Ian looked a little grim, alternating his glances between the Demyne men and the fort. Ashley just stood with Declan, staring down the two elves.
“We could use an exit,” Mack shouted back.
Declan flicked one hand where it hung by his leg, never even looking Mack’s way. All four orbs instantly rocketed at the base of the heavy wooden gate and its two support posts.
Mack heard the sharp cracks as the mini cannon balls blasted through the tree-trunk-sized logs like they were cardboard. Wow, he thought. He really does have more power here.
Splinters of wood, some as long as a foot, spalled across the fort’s interior, some sticking in the ground, a few sticking into the unfortunate guards standing near the log that barred the gate.
The orbs froze in space, ten feet inside the fort, six inches off the ground. Then they shot back, hitting the gate logs again, blasting more splinters to the outside of the fort. This time, the steel balls kept going, flying back to Declan and taking up station above and slightly behind him.
Declan glanced at the gate, then flicked his left hand and Mack instantly heard a thunderous, continuous crack that lasted at least three seconds. The gate, the log barring it, and the whole frame of logs around it fell forward, all of the tree trunks snapping off at their damaged bases. The whole unit boomed as it hit the ground, bouncing a little on impact. It settled for a second, then every fallen timber lifted up, level to the ground. Climbing six, nine, fifteen full feet straight up, each sharpened log parallel to the hard-packed earth, sharpened points aimed right at the Demyne troops.
Every eye on the open killing ground looked up at the massive gate structure that now hovered over Declan’s head, waiting on his next whim.
Lord Norton and his son both gawked at the massive pointed logs staring them in the face, their men all frozen with terrified expressions. The two elves even looked impressed, although they held their positions.
“Lady Speaker, this is the Winter Realm. Her majesty knows you are on her ground and I would guess she will be here at any moment,” the lead elf said, clearly fighting to keep his eyes on her and not the floating gate.
“That will be fine, Guardian. Then perhaps she could explain her part in the abduction of my companions,” Ashley said. Her father was trying not to look up at the tons of wood overhead, his head swiveling between fort and fighters as if on a pivot.
Inside the fort, Mack and his sister climbed down the unbroken stairs on their side of the now-incomplete front wall, herding Ari and Aylin ahead of them. Stacia waited till they were down and in the shattered opening that used to be a gate before she simply stepped off the parapet catwalk and landed lightly on massive backward-bending legs. The mother and daughter servants couldn’t take their eyes off the giant white werewolf.
“You have a ride outta here?” Mack asked as his party moved out of the fort and toward the rest of their friends.
“Once we’re ready, I’ll rip another portal open,” Declan said. Mack got a good look at his friend and did a double take. Declan looked like shit. He had dark circles under his eyes and his cheekbones seemed sharper, like he’d lost a little weight.
“Is that tiring?” Mack asked, keeping his voice down as they got closer to the other three. Declan glanced at him, confused at the question until Mack pointed up at the log truck load hovering overhead.
“Oh, no. Not really. Lots of free power here. Ripping portals though, that can take it out of you,” he said, conversationally. “But if we’re all here…”
“You’ll go nowhere! Nowhere, without my leave,” a feminine voice said. At the tree line to their left, Queen Morrigan stood in a light, silver-white dress, her massive Bigfoot-troll bodyguard standing to one side, her deadly daughter on the other.
Chapter 24
Chris
China, Earth
They bolluxed it all up. That’s not to say that any other military wouldn’t have as well. We were the only ones who had really faced this enemy, so it wasn’t truly a surprise when we got word that some of the infected had escaped one of the two villages.
The Chinese Air Force had bombed the hell out of both locations, but they were either slightly less complete in their destruction of one village, or the infected had already begun to spread out on their own. Either way, the southern village was not sterilized in time.
Two more villages fell, one to the east and the other even further south. And still the Chinese struggled to contain it themselves. And their witches were new to this game, whereas ours had experience tracking the alien flesh through woods and sewers, neighborhoods and buildings.
But then an unarmed Chinese DF-21C medium range ballistic missile activated itself and launched, all on its own from a supposedly isolated, completely manual ground transport launcher, and well, let’s just say the Chinese authorities had a change of heart about inviting us to help. It didn’t hurt that the missile had guided itself right into the one standing structure left in the southern village. There were no explosives on it, yet the kinetic energy was enough to put on a pretty impressive display.
Welcome to the new reality. Omega’s world. Message sent, message received.
So we found ourselves deep in the forests of the southern province of Fujian, north of the city of Quanzhou, a port city of over eight million citizens. No pressure. Just eight million potential new weapons for the enemy, oh yeah, that happen to live in a port that ships all over the world.
We brought the A team, all thirty-one currently healthy witches as well as Senka, Lydia, Arkady, Nika, Awasos, Tanya, and myself. Plus an even two dozen of our own highly experienced, sharply skilled, ex-military security guys, all of whom were human.
We ran teams twenty-four hours a day, tracking and burning multiple, horrifyingly
mobile, legs, arms, heads, and even full bodies through the dense vegetation. Omega supplied hundreds of drones, his forces increasing at what would have been a terrifying rate if not for the vital support they provided. Every unknown, hostile stretch of jungle or potential death trap was first investigated by his flying and crawling arsenal of robots, many of which paid the ultimate price. The deadly morphing diamond-armored zombies could and would pound a drone into scrap metal.
In fact, the enemy was changing rapidly, becoming more aggressive, more insidious all the time. Small, fast-charging targets joined the human-sized killing machines, proving very hard to stop with any conventional means. Mostly they tried to avoid us, tried to exfiltrate around us, always heading south, toward the city.
The witches worked in teams of four. Two to stop attackers with telekinesis, one to burn the enemy, and an Air witch to fan the flames. Erika Boklund developed a little woman-made tornado that not only burned the zomboids faster but kept them in place while doing so. The truly shocking part was that she quickly taught the other Air witches how to do it without a single complaint or selfish comment.
The massive Chinese military created a cordon of soldiers around the infected areas, actually using two lines of men. The first line defended the open killing zones that had been bulldozed around the villages. The second line of soldiers backed up the first, but also kept the front line from either deserting or, if they became infected, the backups would burn them where they stood. It only happened a few times but it was a major downer for morale.
Our groups just kept working, and our witches threw themselves into the battle with as much courage as the veteran soldiers on our team. Mostly it went well, but we did lose two witches. Both became infected and both had to be killed. I handled one and Tanya, on the night shift, put the other one down. The witches all knew ahead of time, all had been warned this might happen, and all still volunteered. But it was awful. Two young girls, students in the school we’d created, fighting for humanity and we’d had to stop them and burn them.
Oddly it was the little Irish witch, Ryanne, who put it in perspective. She hadn’t been back to Arcane, but when some of the others had texted her, she’d shown up in Italy while we were still prepping for travel.
I had just come back from basically killing and incinerating her fellow witch and was standing in our camp-slash-headquarters, telling the girls what I had done.
“Ye kin not be blaming yerself, Mr. Chris. That girl was dead the moment the wee nano things got themselves into her skin. By the time she turned to attack her mates, she was long, long gone,” the pretty witch said. Around her, the other witches mostly nodded although a few just sobbed.
But ultimately her message was on point: If you got infected, you died, even if your body still moved, because it was directed by an alien will.
If anything, the death of the two witches, whose names were Mariah and Kristen, made the witches harder and more determined than ever. It served to give them a ferocious resolve, one they needed when the really big zombies showed up.
Most of the infected tried to sneak by our patrols, something that didn’t work when a skilled witch was using her craft to track them. These zombies were all villagers, recently infected, still morphing into true horrors. Sometimes it was a part of a villager, something that used to be a body part but had grown its own appendages, sensors, and mouthparts. But the ruthless efficiency the girls displayed rapidly reduced the numbers of sneaking enemy to a mere trickle. That’s about when the enemy’s reserve came into the picture.
It happened on my watch, the day shift. Seven hours into our sweeps, Ryanne, who had detection duty, got a hit on her spidy senses. Each witch had their own method of tracking, with some creating pendulums, others infusing a wood or bone dousing rod with an attraction for the aliens’ flesh, while still others used the game spinner approach. Ryanne, who was a musician, used music—or rather, sound. A tuning fork she somehow linked to her spell that would change tone as she swung it in an arc in front of her. My inhuman hearing let me listen in from twenty yards in front of her, the fork’s tune changing as its signal strengthened and weakened.
With the visual trackers, I had to be next to or behind the witch using it, but Ryanne’s trick put me out into the danger zone, rather than her. Good thing or we would have lost a valuable witch right then, right there.
The first indication of trouble was the tone deepening beyond the normal alert tone that announced that a zomboid was near. It was followed by a rush of black and then I found myself flying through the air to land fifteen feet in front of my witch squad. All four, Erika, Tami, Ryanne, and an Earth witch named Michelle, reacted instinctively with a combined burst of telekinetic power that threw the rushing alien back forty feet.
I flipped back onto my feet as the thing rolled to a stop, instantly attacking again. Seven and a half feet tall, it was humanoid but sexless, its body covered in tiny black facets that flexed and stretched with every movement. Like an NBA center wearing gem-fabricated chain mail.
It had no hair and its eyes were black like a shark’s and it moved almost as fast as I did. This time, instead of coming straight at me, it covered half the distance to me in an eye blink before it suddenly shot off to my right, ignoring the massed fire of our security guys and killing three of them with three blows of its arms. Cut them right in half. Kinda like I could, but instead of aura edges, its arms had a single diamond-hard edge running from the side of the little finger of each hand all the way to the elbow and just slightly beyond, where a little point formed.
I caught up to it as it killed a twenty-seven-year-old ex-soldier named Colby, my aura-infused fist smashing into its back.
Ignoring the blow, it spun and backhanded me, knocking me down a second time although I kept myself Posted. The thing was big, at least as strong as I was, and fast. I was faster, but its armor made it both a living weapon and almost invulnerable.
So I didn’t waste a lot of time punching or chopping at it. My experience so far showed me that was not super effective with the regular-sized ones and this one was at least a quarter again larger. Just a complete waste of energy.
Instead, I sidestepped at the last moment, swinging around to take its back, jiujitsu style, wrapping my arms around it. The diamond-hard skin instantly started to shred my flesh while the thing demonstrated the use of its elbow points by jabbing them into me. I was healing almost as fast as it injured me, but that used energy and reserves at an incredible rate and I wasn’t even harming it.
New tactic. I Posted to the ground, Clung to its back with both palms, and body slammed it down.
“Burn it,” I said to Tami as it got up and I slammed it down again. She focused and I could feel the heat build up inside it. Apparently so could it because it freaked out and tore away from me, leaving me with a patch of black armor on each hand.
“Burn those,” I said, tossing the skin, which was already changing into some more mobile form, to the ground. Tami refocused and the skin things burst into flame as I ran after the giant parent organism. It was headed for more of my guys and I wasn’t gonna let any more die. Just as I caught up, the thing spun around and rocked my world with a rock-hard punch that broke bones. I actually heard my clavicle snap, but felt no pain as the V-squared virus crushed my pain receptors and instantly started to repair the damage.
I blocked the second, third, and fifth blows, the fourth getting through to smash into the left side of my rib cage.
My own left hand Pulled at the vest of the closest security dude while I jammed my right, aura-sharpened spear hand deep into its side, finally punching through the armor.
The object I yanked to me was a grenade of sorts and I wasted no time in pulling my right hand out, shoving the grenade in, and yanking the pin as I pulled out a second time.
The armor sealed over while I ducked a sixth blow and kicked it hard in its stomach region. The heavy thing only moved six feet, but then it froze as a sharp whump resonated from its core. Nothin
g happened for a second and it actually took a step forward before stopping in place, seemingly confused, a wisp of steam coming out of its tiny O-shaped mouth.
“What kind of grenade was that?” I asked the guard, who had barely time to react.