by D. N. Hoxa
Nash was right. That alone was going to take me through hell and back, alive and breathing.
Chapter Twenty-five
It never occurred to me to ask Nash where we were even going.
“New Orleans?” Terrin asked, just to double check. He was piloting the helicopter, and Kitty was in the front with him. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing, and there was no taking that little smile filled with mischief off her face. I’d never been on anything other than a car or a train before and let me tell you this: riding on a helicopter was damn scary. The headphones on my ear did nothing to fade the fear, though they faded the sound of the rotor blades above us. And hearing the others speaking through them all at once wasn’t any fun either.
Nash gave Terrin the coordinates again, after he confirmed that New Orleans was really where we were going.
“We’ll land three blocks away from the location,” Terrin said. His voice sounded very different in the headphones.
“Let’s talk strategy,” Lucian said. He and Pixie were sitting across from us, while I was in between Nash and Aiden, because I really hadn’t wanted to be able to look out the window.
“I’m Front,” Pixie said, and Lucian rolled his eyes.
“Pixie, Aiden and Kitty are Front. Aiden, Nash and I are Back,” he said, then his eyes fell on me and he raised his brows as if he just realized that I was there, too.
“And Nova…”
“Nova stays with me,” said Nash. “We’re Front, too.”
“How do you even know there’ll be a front or a back?” I asked. I might have been an amateur—if I could even be called that—but we had no idea where we were going, did we?
“It’s daylight. Devamps can’t stay in the sun. They have to be inside,” Lucian filled me in, but to my surprise, he didn’t even look annoyed like Pixie, who openly rolled her eyes and refused to even look at my face.
“Our best strategy is to use Nova,” Aiden said. “You saw what she did to those servants in the station.”
“She isn’t bullet proof,” said Nash. Not very nice to be talked about while you were right there, I found.
“Maybe I can shield her with my magic?” Aiden offered.
“I don’t think that would work.” Just the thought of being in contact with magic and having whatever beast was inside me roar to life made me shiver.
“Yeah, that will almost certainly backfire,” Nash said.
“Aiden and I will be first contacts,” Terrin said. I’d completely forgotten that he was into the conversation at all. “Pixie, Nova and Lucian are in the middle. Kitty and Nash are the sides.” His voice left no room for arguing.
“You expect us to be surrounded,” I said as I tried to envision how the battle scene was going to look. So far, the movies I’d watched weren’t proving to be very useful.
“Absolutely,” Lucian said, smiling like that was a good thing.
“When the servants attack, it will be up to you to move fast, Nova,” Terrin said through the headphones, making goosebumps break out on my entire body.
“Okay.” Fast was a definition that could vary, but I was sure he’d take into account that I was cut and bruised from my glorious days of training, so I didn’t bring that up.
“You do know how to do that, right?” Aiden said.
“Um…yes?” It was a hard question to answer, because I didn’t really do anything when someone attacked me. I just stood there like a freaking boxing bag, waiting to die, and then my body, or the beast inside me, did its thing and I somehow came out of it unscathed.
“We’ll play it by ear if the setting’s different,” Lucian said. “The most important thing is to kick ass and take names, and bring home a devamp before anybody else can. It’s the dream, fellas. We’re living it! Woo-hoo!”
Then he hi-fived all of us. I felt the excitement coming from all of them in waves. Who would have thought that there were people out there who actually couldn’t wait to come face to face with someone like Red Tie? If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I’d have never believed it.
My heart beat like crazy, but it wasn’t excitement that made me close my eyes and lean back in my seat. Maybe impatience to see what would happen, but definitely not excitement. Taking in deep breaths, I somehow managed to convince myself that when we landed sometime in the next fifteen minutes, I would know exactly what to do. I would find a devamps, be it Red Tie or not, and I would bring Luke back from the coma.
And after that, Las Vegas, here we come.
Chapter Twenty-six
When we got out of the helicopter and began to walk in twos through the busy streets of New Orleans, the panic came back to me with its full force. With every step I took, I realized how unprepared for this I was. Did I ever mention that I was never in a fight before? What kind of a person never fought anyone before?
The kind that had someone to stand up for them all the freaking time. It wasn’t the right time now, but I sure wished Luke had let me fight at least some of my fights, and I wished I’d made him.
Useless, I know, but my mind wandered to the strangest places while I tried to distract myself with the people we passed by, people who seemingly had no idea about what was going to happen to us, who we were going to fight against.
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop it,” Nash said as he walked by my side. His black bag remained at the helicopter after he made places on his person for even more knives, and another gun.
“How do you know what I’m thinking?” Maybe I was speaking out loud? I did that sometimes.
“Your face says it all,” Nash said with a smile. “You can’t ever go into a fight thinking you’re going to be defeated, Nova. Not ever. That’s the only sure way I know that will result in failure.”
“Easy for you to say.” He lived in this world for nine years. I was there barely a week. Not that I was complaining, because a week was so much better than all those years.
“Just work your magic,” Nash said. “Literally. And stop overthinking.”
With a sigh, I nodded and tried to do as he asked. Stop overthinking. Yeah, right.
“Are we there yet?” I asked, and when I did, I felt like a kid riding in the backseat of the car, annoying the heck out of her parents. Just the image of the joke showed how bad a mood I was in.
“One more block,” Nash said. Terrin and Kitty were leading the way, while Pixie, Lucian and Aiden were right behind us.
I didn’t even get to enjoy the city—it was the first one I’d ever been to outside of Mississippi, anyway—when we saw that Terrin and Kitty had stopped walking. Nash casually approached them, looking around to the many faces to see if somebody could notice us getting together.
“It’s there,” Terrin said, and nodded his head to the left. Across the street from us, all I could see was a pharmacy, a seafood restaurant and the Museum of Death.
“The Museum?” It looked fitting.
“The pharmacy,” Terrin said. I looked at the store again. It didn’t look nearly big enough to be a place where a devamp would hang out, but then again, Clearwater’s tattoo parlor had looked small, too. Just the thought of going into another basement like that one brought shivers down my back.
Then, Terrin nodded at Kitty, Lucian and Aiden. Without hesitation, they all jumped forward, seemingly eager to get in there. They were the Back team, so they’d have to go and find a way to the building from the other side. The rest of us, we were going in the front.
I don’t even remember how we passed the street and walked into the pharmacy. Terrin and Pixie were in front of us, her katanas forming an X on her back, perfectly visible for everyone to see.
When Terrin turned to us, squinting his eyes, I dared to look at the reception area.
Empty.
“Hello?” Pixie called, but nothing moved in there.
Terrin pulled out his gun. Pixie took out one of her swords. When they walked forward, I followed, and got two of my guns from the hip belt Nash had given to me. Just aim and shoo
t. Aim and shoot. Not a big deal, right?
Terrin pulled up the counter and let us all through to the other side. Boxes and boxes of pills and all kinds of other things on the floor to ceiling shelves around us. Terrin held one finger up to tell us to stand still, while he went closer to inspect them. There wasn’t a door that we could see, but he found one within five seconds. It was the middle shelf, which needed a simple push backward to open.
Too easy, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud. What the hell did I know about going “on a hunt” anyway?
Pixie went through the shelf door first. We followed close behind. A dark narrow corridor lead to only one other door in the back, this one made of what looked like steel, and with a small window in the middle of it. Terrin nodded at Pixie to look through it. Neither of us made even a single sound.
When Pixie looked through the glass of the door and was confident that we could handle what was on the other side, she nodded and stepped back, before touching the knob and trying the door.
Open.
Too goddamn easy.
My hands were shaking so I held on tighter to the handle of my guns in hopes to stop them. It didn’t work, but I still followed Pixie and Terrin through the door.
The floor to ceiling windows on our left were painted dark green. The walls were made of steel sheets, and the floor was set in steel, too. To our right were cardboard boxes and packages of medicine in the iron shelf mounted two feet above ground. It was much colder in there, and the shirt I had on did nothing to stop the shivers.
“Nobody’s here,” Terrin whispered. His voice echoed, though the room didn’t have a high ceiling. Still, it gave me a worse feeling, even than Clearwater’s basement.
“Through there,” Pixie said, pointing at the door across from us, the same as the one we just walked through.
“They’ll be there, waiting for us,” Nash said. So, they did know how easy this all was.
“They’re expecting us?” I asked, unsure of whether that was a good thing or a bad one, but leaning toward the latter.
“Of course,” Terrin said, like I was a fool to even ask.
With a wave of her hand, Pixie motioned for us to follow her. Her katana was raised and she walked very slowly. When her booted feet touched the floor, she made no sound whatsoever. It was like she was a shadow.
I kept trying to prepare myself for what we’d see when we got to the other side, right until we reached the very middle of the room.
All our eyes were on the door in front of us, so we were perfectly aware the second it opened.
My breath caught in my throat and my knees shook. I could no longer hear the beating of my heart. My eyes refused to blink as I took in the face that haunted me in my dreams for what felt like forever take shape in front of me.
Red Tie smiled.
The monster inside me awoke.
Before I knew it, something hard pushed me back. I barely managed to keep from falling down. The sound of a gunshot filled the room, the smell of gunpowder attacking my nostrils. Pixie rose in the air, the tips of her katanas shining in sparkles as she brought it down. A blink later, she was on the ground, five feet away from me.
Fire washed the room. My chest vibrated in response. A sick laughter filled my ears and I was in the club where it all began all over again.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I took in a deep breath. This was not the time to be a coward. Red Tie was here, if my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Everything I wanted was in front of me, and all I had to do was take it.
The second gunshot popped my eyes wide open. Something moved behind me and I jumped back, hoping against hope that it was nothing.
But the nothing was about fifteen devamp servants standing with their hands folded in front of them right in front of the door we’d just walked through. How the hell had I not heard them?
Something hard hit the floor. When I turned back around, I saw that it was Terrin. Pixie had already jumped to her feet and she was going for the fire, which began at Nash’s hands and consumed all the view in front of me. Behind it, I assumed, was Red Tie.
Putting my guns in front of me, I began to shoot. My hands no longer shook. My body no longer had any trouble holding me upright. Adrenaline took care of the searing fear inside my chest, and the strength coming from pulling those triggers did the rest.
As long as I was still standing, there was a chance.
Forgetting all about the devamp servants behind me, I jumped forward, closer to Nash. If they were going to attack me, they’d end up dead. Now, if they were going to attack me with guns, that was a different story.
So far, though, no bullet had gone through me, and my two guns were already empty. Throwing them to the side, I reached for the other two, and began to shoot at the fire like my life depended on it—because it did. The sound of metal hitting metal reached my ears, but I couldn’t see Pixie anywhere. She was fighting off Red Tie, but the fire wouldn’t let me see.
“Nova, get back!” Terrin called, as he put his gun in his holster and began to wave his hands around. His magic, like a flashlight, gave the fire in front of us a red hue.
But I couldn’t get back. There were devamp servants back, and I’d rather be up front, anyway. I took another step forward, and when he threw his red ball of light, I shot my guns another three times each.
Red consumed Nash’s fire. It ate at the flames until they disappeared, withdrew backward and into Nash’s hands. I looked at his face and I found him glistening with sweat, his nose bleeding.
Finally, we could see Pixie and Red Tie, who was now wearing a blue tie with his black suit, and who was fighting off the pixie with his hands only. He was also using his arms as shields against Pixie’s katanas, and though his suit was a mess of cuts, his skin seemed to be completely intact.
I shot all of my remaining bullets at him, but before they reached him, he simply disappeared.
A blink later, he was right in front of me.
My chest vibrated when I felt his fingers around my throat.
“Nova!” Nash called, and through the corner of my eye, I could see the fire starting in his hands, a second before he disappeared.
Terrin was no longer shooting his magic, either, and Pixie was still fighting, but against whom?
Then, I remembered. The devamp servants.
I closed my eyes to get the image of Red Tie’s face out of my head. It only made me think of failure, and what did Nash say? You can never think you will be defeated in a fight.
“There you are, my pesky little bug.” With a move of his hand, he turned my head the other way. “Who dared to put all these bruises on you?”
Anger crashed into me like never before. This…creature here, holding me by the throat, was the reason why I was there in the first place. Why all my hopes and dreams had crashed and burned within a second. Why Luke wasn’t there beside me, alive and well.
Fuck you, I thought, and I’d have said it out loud, but he held onto my jaw, too, and it was impossible to speak.
“I’ve been waiting for our reunion for days, little bug. I hope it is everything you expected it to be.”
His voice, like a serpent, slid through my ears and poisoned my mind. I opened my eyes again, hoping to be able to tell him to go to hell through them, but I didn’t have to. Red Tie let me go.
Dragging in air was a disaster, because my throat hurt like I had the worst cold in history. When I held onto it, I realized that I’d already dropped both of my guns. I had no way to defend myself, and Red Tie was right in front of me.
“I’m glad you brought friends, though,” he said, and began to walk to my side while I coughed and coughed until my throat got a little clearer.
When I turned around, I wished I hadn’t. Nash, Terrin and Pixie were all on their knees, hands tied behind them, gun barrels pointed at their heads.
It was hard not to think about failure now, when even Nash said the word with the look in his eyes. But Red Tie’s servants didn’t budge. All fi
fteen of them smiled like this couldn’t have gotten any better.
Something occurred to me. Why hadn’t they attacked me with their magic yet?
“Tell me, little bug,” Red Tie said as he walked around me in a large circle. “What does it feel like?”
“Let them go, you bastard,” I hissed, glad to see that my voice worked just fine, even after he’d toasted my neck with his bare hands.
“Oh, my,” Red Tie said, and stopped circling around me. “Is that a way to talk to your god?”
“Your business is with me,” I hissed, determined not to let anything he said get to me. “Just let them go.”
“I will absolutely not let anyone go,” he said, as if he were insulted that I’d even suggested such a thing. “You have to understand that it’s my reputation that’s at stake here. How weak would I look if I let fresh meat like this just go?” He laughed. “The Creed is everything but weak.”
Tears in my eyes. They added to my anger. One of the guns I’d dropped was just a foot away from me. If I could grab it and shoot him before he realized it, maybe we would still have a chance.
“You didn’t tell me what it feels like yet, my little bug. I’m very curious,” Red Tie—or Creed—said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, and casually, dragged my feet just a tiny bit closer to the gun. If I kept him talking, he’d be distracted long enough for me to reach it.
“About your powers, of course. The compulsive powers you now have.” My whole body froze. “Now, now, don’t be shy with me, bug. I’ve sent my people to confirm it. None of them came back.”
“You asshole,” I muttered. Of course, he’d been the one to send those servants to the station. They nearly killed everyone!
“I prefer the term god, like I said. After all, there’s no better way to refer to your creator.” Red Tie smiled like he was flying close to the sun and not giving a single fuck about it.
“Nova, run!” Nash called. A second later, something exploded.