by K V Deal
The Chosen still on their feet didn’t plan on giving me that luxury. The first one leapt over their friends, who were still struggling to get up. She ran at me, sword ready, to try to run me through.
An arrow zipped past my head to land in a gap in my attacker’s armor right between her helmet and chest plate. She fell with a gurgle as more Chosen rushed past her.
Now, I had my footing again, so I brought the strange bone-like blade across the first two attackers. One tried to block my attack with his own blade. He really should have dodged instead, like his buddy did. The—what did they call it? The Queen’s fang? Well, it cut through him, sword and all, like butter. It even cut a slash in the breastplate of the man beside him.
I think I like this blade.
A bright ball of flame struck the second soldier before he could recover. It exploded across him, turning his armor cherry red and sending tongues of flame dancing into every crack and crevice of his armor. I leaned back and kicked the screaming man back, leaving a footprint in the red-hot armor.
A lance of pain shot through me as the force of the kick slammed into my hip. You’d think I’d know by now not to do that kind of shit! I bit my lip, fighting back the pain, and forced myself to stay on my feet.
“Keep your eyes on the fight stupid!” Rachel snapped. She stepped up beside me and shoved her sword at another of The Chosen, driving him back a step. I noticed she was swinging that thing with a bit more skill now. How had she managed to up her game that much in just one day?
Then, thinking time was over. Two more waves of Chosen assaulted us, as we forced our way into the building...
We finally got a moment to breathe in a large room that might have been a meeting room of some sort before it took the damage from our fight. The first thought that ran through my head was that it was both a good thing and, most likely, a bad thing that my adopted fighting style still seemed to work for me even with my leg like this. Of course, that’s because all I really did was rush in, attack, and hope that my hide could block the attacks.
“Is it just me, or does this seem way too easy?” Carah asked. She sat in a chair trying to get back enough of whatever she used to cast magic.
“It has been a bit strange…” Axle muttered. “Did you notice they didn’t really talk all that much either?”
“I can tell ya why,” Charlie said. She was kneeling on the floor next to one of the bodies. In her hand, she held a helmet. She was gritting her teeth as she looked into its visor. “These damn things are empty!”
“Wait! What?” I stammered, blinking.
“All the ones in this here room? Just armor. And they ain’t like Gloria, either. We’ve just been fighting some kind of animated armor!” Charlie snapped, hurling the helmet across the room to let it clang against the far wall.
“Well, that explains why they seemed so…mechanical, in the way they were fighting. Always the same kind of attack, always the same pattern.” Carah wrinkled her nose as she looked at a corpse near her that had been half-melted into slag. “Also explains why I’ve only been smelling melting metal for a bit. Not that I want to smell roasting…well, you know.”
Crap. Should have realized. No blood on my sword, the ease with which we had been cutting through these last few waves…Wait.
“I’m sure I heard one scream in the first room…” I said.
“If they’re trying to fake us, then they have to mix in a few real people here and there to make us feel like they’re all real,” Rachel said, biting a fingernail. “The question is, why?
“They're trying to wear us down,” Charlie snarled, standing up and hefting her crossbow.
“Jake, do they feel magical?” Carah asked.
“What kind of a stupid question is that?” Charlie said with an annoyed shake of her head.
“Well…” Carah said in an equally annoyed tone. “It lets us know if it’s a spell or if it’s the armor itself. We left a whole crate of the stuff sitting right under the mayor’s office.”
Oh. Oh, that would be bad.
I focused on the armor and winced. “Its magic…” I said.
“We need to tell Gloria.” Axle said quickly, as he began to fidget with his bow. “Crap, this is so bad.”
“What? Just because its magical armor?” Rachel said, crossing her arms and glaring at us. “I don't get why that's important!”
“Worst-case scenario is that everything in that huge crate of armor can get up and start killing,” Charlie gritted out.
“And who knows what happens to anybody wearing it when that happens,” Carah added.
Well...Gloria had somehow actually planned for something like this. I handed the second sparrow to Axle.
“Right.” He nodded and began to whisper to the clay bird.
“Now wait just a minute!” Charlie snatched the sparrow from his hand.
If she had wanted to stop him, she should have moved faster. The sparrow’s clay shell cracked in her fingers.
“Aw, hell! No, no, no!” Wrapping her other hand around the cracking clay, Charlie desperately tried to keep the thing whole.
Blue light shown out from between her fingers, and glowing mist began to seep out. The mist swirled, forming into the sparrow’s ghostly form.
“Wait! I didn’t give you the full message!” Axle reached out trying to grab the translucent bird.
It chattered at Charlie, obviously annoyed, before swooping past Axle's grasping hands, out of the room and down the hall we had come down.
“Damn it, Charlie!” Axle snapped.
Okay… wow. That’s the first time I think I’d ever heard him angry at her… Charlie took a step back, obviously startled by that as well.
“I didn’t even get to the message! We just wasted the whole sparrow!” he brought his hand up to rub the bridge of his nose. “What were you thinking?”
“I was trying to stop ya from wasting our last sparrow!” Charlie snapped, her hands balling up into fists. “Ya know, so that we could have one if something even bigger happens…like what happened with Rachel!”
“Hey! Leave me out of this!” Rachel held up her hands.
“Really? So, your way of doing that is to just walk up and take it right out of my hands? When I already activated it?” Axle snapped.
Charlie began to turn red in the face as she glared at him.
What the hell is going on between the two of them?
“I…” Charlie slammed her jaw shut and crossed her arms. I was pretty sure I saw tears in her eyes. “Actually, I just don’t care. Let’s just get this damn mission over with and get out of here.” She turned and began to storm her way further into the building.
Rachel glanced at her and then at the rest of us. She gave us a quick shrug and then followed after her cousin.
“Hey! Wait! Don’t just go running off! We have to stick together!” Axle shouted after her. “Damn, damn, damn!” With that, he hurried after her.
I glanced at Carah, and I’m sure that my surprise was evident on my face.
She looked up at me with a sad expression and then back at the others. “Let’s hurry after them. We shouldn’t split up,” she said, ignoring my unanswered question. We hefted our weapons and hurried out of the room after the others.
We ran into two more groups and had to fight. All the while, we were caught up in an uncomfortable silence as Axle and Charlie refused to speak to each other. The group felt like it was splitting apart—Axle, Carah and I on one side, Charlie and Rachel on the other.
I really didn’t like the way this was going. All this arguing wasn’t going to help us out at all. Not that I knew how to make things better…
Taking a break in a side room that had a locking door, I knelt next to Carah, bandaging up a cut on her leg.
“Ow! Gentle!” she squeaked as I wrapped a bit too tightly.
“Sorry.”
“They’re getting faster,” Axle muttered looking at the door.
“Or you’re just getting slower,” Charlie s
niped.
This was really just starting to get annoying. Here she was, muscling in and trying to be the damn…boss…
Oh.
Suddenly it clicked. That’s what was going on! Not that realizing it helped all that much. The question was, how to handle it?
I bit my lip and looked at Charlie. With how she was behaving, I really wasn’t sure how she would act if she won—probably be even more insufferable. Plus, my instincts wouldn’t let me just give in to her. Actually, now that I had figured it out, I could see how my basic makeup had been pushing me for a while now.
Actually…that might be the answer. If she was getting shoved around the same way that I was then… I stood up and stared right at Charlie.
“Jake?” Carah said, sounding worried.
“Stay out of this,” I said quietly. I began to limp my way across the room.
Charlie looked over and met my gaze.
This could go very badly.
I knew that the moment we locked eyes.
“What?” she snapped, glaring at me.
I didn’t answer, just balled up my fists and closed the distance between us till I was just two feet away, looking down at her. As much as I just wanted to go ahead and do this the simple way, I held myself back. First, I needed to try talking.
“Get out of my face, dragon. I don’t need to be smelling your breath,” she said while trying to stare me down.
“You’re not in charge. Gloria put Axle in charge.” It came out a lot colder than I had intended. Probably because she was already annoying me.
“I don’t give a damn who ya think is in charge. Me and Axle are the same rank so ya can keep your scaly nose out of how we run things.” She rammed her fists into her hips, as we continued to lock eyes.
“So? Rank or no rank, you’re not in command.” I didn’t break my stare. If somebody was going to look away first, it wasn’t going to be me. “So, you need to take a deep breath and step back. If he’s doing something you don’t agree with then say something, don’t just treat him like an idiot and snatch things out of his hands.”
That…probably wasn’t the most diplomatic way to say it.
Charlie’s head snapped back as if slapped. “I don’t treat him like a…” She broke eye contact, as her eyes darted away to look past me—at Axle most likely. I don’t think she liked what she saw in his face. She scowled, tears forming in her eyes as she looked back at me. “I think ya should mind your own business and stop trying to shove snout in ours, ya damn lizard!”
I don’t think she even realized that her hands were going for her crossbow.
“Charlie!” Axle called out in alarm, as everyone in the room started up to their feet.
Well, so much for talking.
Time to do this the simple way. Guess it was time to see which one of us was the better alpha for the group. Hauling back a fist, I hammered a blow right into her face.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Chapter 24
“Just give up,” I snarled. I had Charlie pinned face down on the floor.
Not that her noodle arms hadn’t just bent backward to wrap around me.
“Never!” Charlie had an almost crazed tone to her voice.
“Jake! Get off her!” Axle shouted.
I glanced over. He had his bow at the ready and an arrow in his hand. Still, I couldn’t just give up here.
“No!” I snapped. “Stay out of this!”
“Jake! I’m warning you!” Axle fitted the arrow, as Rachel came over to join him, sword out and at the ready.
“Axle, trust me!” I tried to keep my voice calm, but I don’t think I did that good a job. “This is a dominance thing! It has to get worked out now or things are just going to get worse!”
The elf hesitated.
“Dominance?” Charlie sounded unsure for just a moment, her arms loosening their hold.
“That’s why she’s at loggerheads over everything and why we keep fighting! It’s an instinctual thing!” I turned back to Charlie. “So, just give up! We don’t have time for this!”
Suddenly she tensed again, gripping harder, as she tried to yank me off. “Ya think I’m just gonna roll over like a beaten dog? Like hell!”
I braced myself, hunching down, as I did my best to hold on.
“When I get up from here, I’m gonna beat ya black and blue!” she snarled, yanking me towards my hurt leg. Another blast of pain shot up my body, but I managed to hold firm.
“Jake, Charlie! We don’t have time for this!” I felt Carah draw my dagger as heat filled the room.
Charlie flinched away from the blade, and her grip loosened for just a moment.
Chance!
Later on, I couldn’t explain why I’d done it, but in the heat of the moment, with my instincts blaring, it’d made perfect sense. Quickly leaning forward, I opened my jaws as wide as I could and gently pressed my teeth to the back of her neck. She froze, and I could feel that she was holding her breath.
“Submit!” Damn. Never thought before about how hard it would be to say ‘submit’ when you had somebody's neck in your mouth.
Her whole body stiffened as if getting ready to struggle again. Then., suddenly, she relaxed.
“Fine.” It came out as an annoyed hiss, but the admission was there.
I held on for a second longer, just to show her who was boss here, and then I let go. I stood up and wiped my mouth on a sleeve. Everyone in the room was staring at me in a mixture of confusion and anger.
I looked down at the ground where Charlie lay, limp as a wet noodle. If I was right, though, that was because of a release of tension, not anything I had done.
Hell, I knew I felt a lot better. It was like a weight had been taken out of my brain now that the issue had been settled.
I lightly nudged her with the side of my foot. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Holy hell! I can finally think again!” It was the most relaxed I’d heard her since she started to change.
Charlie pushed herself up to a sitting position, and I winced. She was already sporting a nice black eye where I’d hit her. “It was like I had somebody chanting over and over in my head, 'Ya gotta be top dog. Don’t take shit from nobody. Make sure everybody knows their place.’”
I nodded. “Know the feeling. Though I don’t think mine was as insistent as yours.”
“Will somebody clue me in?” Axle said angrily, as he hurried over to check on Charlie.
“I'm fine, Axle.” She gave him a smile, then winced. “Well, mostly fine. Ya had to hit me in the eye?”
“Sorry,” I muttered.
She shook her head and winced again. Then she turned to Axle. “Hey, umm...Axle. Sorry.”
Carah reached up to tug on my sleeve. When I turned to look at her, she gestured for me to lean down to her level.
“Sooo...things are good now?” she whispered to me.
I shook my head. “Probably just a breather.”
She grimaced. “If that's the case, explain it to me, so I can understand if this happens again.”
“Alright...but remember, I don’t get all of it or really understand why it works this way. I think it has to do with what we are.” I pointed at my chest and at Charlie. “I know I'm an alpha predator, and I think she is too. Think about it—two alphas in a group? And we hadn't worked out who was top dog?” I shook my head.
“So, you forced the issue. I think I get it.” Carah nodded.
I looked back at the others just in time to see Charlie and Axle hugging.
Good.
Stretching back up to my full height, I took a moment to feel for the mace. I think my cursing startled everyone. Axle and Charlie sprang apart, and both Rachel and Carah jumped.
“Jake?” Axle said hurrying over. “What's wrong?”
“They’re moving the magic items!” I snarled.
“Well, damn!” Charlie checked her crossbow and then looked at Axle. “You’re calling the shots here. Just give the word.”
Axle smiled at her. �
�Right. Let's get going.”
It was nice to see them getting along again, not that I thought that my scuffle with Charlie had fixed everything, but it was a start. I even managed to let it distract me from the nagging in my head that kept saying I needed to get moving.
We gathered up by the door, readied our weapons and then kicked it open. As we had expected, there was another squad of those animated armors right outside. Crushing our way through them, we advanced down a hall.
“Were pretty damn lucky those things can be killed the same way normal people can,” Rachel murmured as we hurried along.
“Don’t jinx us!” Carah said. “You keep talking like that, and we’ll find out later, they’ve been getting back up and following us all this time!”
“Now, you’re just being paranoid.” Charlie shook her head. “They ain’t getting back up.”
At the front of the group, I slowed to a stop. Was it…was it coming this way?
“Jake, what’s wrong?” Axle asked from behind.
“We may be getting company.”
“We have been getting company,” Rachel said. “What makes this any different?”
“This time, they have my mace.”
“You mean MY mace,” a voice said angrily, as a familiar, tall, thin person stalked into view. Dressed in Chosen plate mail, the thin woman cut a much more imposing figure than the last time Carah and I had seen her. It helped that she held that blunt metal bar that she used as a sword in one hand, and in the other…she had the mace. Well, that explained why it’d felt like it’d been coming towards us.
“Jake! Isn’t that…” Carah snapped her fingers twice before remembering the name. “Mary! That was it!”
“Yup.” I readied my sword for a fight.
As soon as she saw the weapon in my hand, Mary's face contorted in rage. “So, it wasn’t enough for you to take the Daystar! You stole one of the Queen’s fangs as well! Who did you kill for that one?!”
“That mace!” Rachel's eyes went wide. “That’s the one Edward was always carrying!”
“You don’t deserve to say that name!” Mary screamed, throwing herself forward as five other Chosen came around the corner at a run, weapons in hand. They weren’t the run of the mill swords the drones all seemed to have. These guys all had weapons that gave off a distinct feeling of magic.