It was just Amber, Misaki and myself now, and we were all just about worn down. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Amber place the heavy machine gun on the edge of the guardhouse wall, a brand-new 18mm triple-barrel transportable autocannon taken from who the fuck knew where.
“How much longer do we need to hold?”
Amber squeezed the trigger on the 18mm, sending a line of orange-yellow tracers burning into the nearest demon. The heavy, high-velocity rounds intended for anti-vehicle and anti-materiel destruction plowed through the thing's miasmic armor, punching huge bleeding holes. The demon collapsed with a shrieking wail that felt like a knife stabbing into my brain.
“The trains are loaded and leaving the station,” Amber called out as she picked a new target and unleashed hell on it. It certainly made me feel a little better that we could take them out with big enough guns, but this was about all Luna had.
Misaki squeezed my shoulder and pointed up at the sky. I followed her gesture and nodded as the gunship, back from wherever it had gone after it ran out of rockets, swooped down toward us and fired a few bursts from its own autocannon.
Short bursts, and not very effective; the pilot would be almost out of ammunition at this point in the battle. We'd already been fighting for well over half an hour and our supplies were just about exhausted.
“We need to take out the ones with tentacles!” Amber shifted her fire and concentrated a withering hail of lead onto one of the wolf-form demons. “The gunship can't get close enough to pick us up without being knocked out of the sky!”
Misaki leaned over the edge of the guardhouse and blasted a demon that came too close with twin jets of spell-flame. I followed her lead and struck with a disintegrating beam of white energy, punching through the now-vulnerable head and vaporizing whatever passed for a brain in these things.
There were just too many of them now. The demons flickered and seemed to merge into each other as their miasmic armor shifted and blurred their outlines. The tarmac was covered in dozens of the things. More demons continued to pour out of the forest.
It was a very good thing the Luna fortress was way out in the middle of nowhere. If it had been any closer to actual civilization, the situation could have gotten very ugly, very quickly.
“The pilot says we need to get on now or he's going to have to leave,” Amber's voice came from behind me. She sounded almost as tired as I felt. “The gunship is almost out of fuel.”
Fuck. I hazarded a glance back at Amber while Misaki altered the shape of her spell-flame. A wide, diffuse fan of flames poured out from her outstretched palms, but I could see that even she was starting to feel the effects of fatigue. The color of the flames started to change and become more white, then more yellow as the temperature dropped. If her spell-flame lost much more heat…
“Tell the pilot to get out of here!” I shouted, a plan starting to form in my mind.
“How else are we going to escape? The elevator shaft's already been collapsed!”
I cast another storm of energy blades and sent them raining down on a demon that started to paw at the edge of the guardhouse roof. The monster howled in rage and smashed down heavily with both forelimbs, shearing off a section of the low wall ringing the edge of the building.
“Misaki can cast an invocation of flight.” Impatience colored my voice. “Just fucking do it or your pilot and that gunship's going to end up a smoking crater on the tarmac!”
Amber yelled something into her comm and the gunship immediately swerved off, the repulsion jets stuttering as the pilot tried to use as little of his remaining fuel as possible. I hoped he'd be able to make it to the evacuation point before the thing dropped out of the sky out from under him.
Now it was just the three of us. The security chief had already collapsed the elevator tunnel to prevent the demons from following the noncombatants evacuating below. Except for Misaki's magic, we had no other way out. The rippling report of Amber's heavy machine gun continued, blasting demon after demon, but it was obvious that she'd run out of bullets long before they ran out of demons.
I turned to my fiancee. “Misaki, we need to fly and now.”
“If I stop, they're going to come all at once!”
“I'm aware of that,” I muttered, trying to think quickly. “You can't keep it up forever; we need to risk it—”
“Karin!”
The moment I heard Misaki's warning, I knew what was coming. The strange dark pressure I'd felt ever since the demon incursion… it was the same oppressive and heavy sensation I'd felt when she'd contacted me in my dreams.
Amber squeezed off a few more bursts of fire, but even she noticed it. That pressure on her spirit, distorting the loose mana all around them. The demons stopped their unearthly howls and roars and all of them came to a halt, lining up in a perfect, unbroken circle around the siege-battered guardhouse.
Two of the demons moved aside and a dark figure walked slowly from within the forest. My eyes narrowed, knowing exactly what I'd see once the figure stepped into the light. The slender build, custom-tailored suit and blood-red necktie—it could be no one else.
I walked to the edge of the guardhouse and stepped into the ladder.
“Karin, what are you doing?” Amber demanded. “We've been given a respite; we need to escape—”
I held up a hand to cut her off. “No. If we try to leave that way, the mage could just cancel Misaki's flight spell and we'll be splattered all over the tarmac. We don't have much of a choice but to find out what she wants.”
Amber shivered, looking as frightened as I'd ever seen her. Not that I'd seen her much, but still, she didn't strike me as the type who was easily rattled. I understood well enough how she felt, though.
“Karin…”
“Yeah, Misaki, I know, but if we try to bolt now, she'll just take us out and the demons will eat what's left. We talk to her, it'll put us close, maybe if things go bad we can just blast our way out.”
Misaki didn't look convinced, but she nodded. “Fine. Let's go.”
“Hey, I'm coming, too,” Amber said, her voice somewhat less shaky than I would have expected. I shook my head and held a hand out to stop her, and not just because she looked terrified.
“Stay here. If I raise my hand and three fingers, it means we're in trouble and you should come down and start cutting shit up. Got it?”
“O-okay,” she managed, clearly relieved that she wouldn't have to go anywhere near the creepy mage unless something went wrong.
I stepped into the ladder rung and slowly made my way down to the tarmac. My left leg was still hurting, but I found it surprisingly easy to tune out the pain. Outside of awakening my magic, I had no idea what other changes the Relic shard caused within me when it fused to my body and spirit.
The mysterious mage stood only about twenty meters away. I waited while Misaki climbed down and started to walk beside me. The both of us slowly approached her, keeping our expressions as calm and neutral as we could.
We were both anxious and not a little afraid, but neither of us were willing to let it show. Our walk came to an end when we stood only a little over two meters away. Demons all around us snarled and hissed, straining at the invisible force holding them in place, but none were able to make even the smallest threatening move toward us.
The mage stared at me with unblinking eyes.
“Who are you?”
“I was called Eirene, a long time ago.” Her eyes seemed to unfocus and stare at something that didn't exist in the material world.
“What do you want from me?” I demanded.
Eirene's expressionless face seemed to gain some color and life and a faint almost-smile formed. “It is already done. You have transcended now and will become stronger, become more. Other humans will awaken. The dark ones have also awakened and will become free.”
“The dark ones?” I echoed. “Do you mean these things?”
“These dark ones have awakened. These dark ones are free and unbound, who have boun
d living ones to serve as their vessels.”
I snorted derisively. “They don't look very free right now.”
“They were free, but I bound them. I take no pleasure in doing so, but I could not let them kill you. You are needed to usher in the approaching dawn.”
Eirene's words were like a strange echo. Nergal, the smarmy blond fashion model lookalike who served as AEGIS's vice-director of crisis management, mentioned halting the approaching darkness.
I wondered if they were talking about the same thing.
“Are you going to kill me?”
There was a long pause. “No.”
“But you tried to kill me before,” I pointed out, feeling more than a little fed up with this weird person and their off-putting manner of speech. “You shoved the Relic right through my body! How is that not trying to kill me?”
“I did not try to kill you.” Eirene stepped forward, closing the few meters of distance with a smooth motion. I could practically feel Misaki tensing up beside me, and I knew Amber was waiting at the edge of the building, the Shattered Sword gripped tightly.
“What do you call blasting me with that whatever the hell it was, breaking my Relic and then stabbing me with it?” I glared at Eirene balefully. “That wasn't trying to kill me? What the hell else do you call it? You—”
“No.” Eirene held their hands up, their almost-expression looking hurt. “The purpose was not to slay, but to join you with the Relic. The night-bringers would have done the same, eventually, but you would have been under their thrall. They would bind you with machines and make you as a puppet.”
I blinked in surprise. They were clearly talking about AEGIS, the “night-bringers.” The confusion written across my face must have been obvious to anyone who saw it, but Eirene only shrugged. The motion didn't look natural, as if she was unused to normal human mannerisms.
“Are you going to let us leave?”
Another long pause.
“Yes. You must leave. The night-bringers are coming here. Many of them.” Eirene's gaze flicked to the right of me, staring at Misaki with those eerie and flat eyes. “You can feel them, spirit of the Relic. They are coming to try and destroy me.”
I was starting to get a headache trying to parse this bullshit, but Misaki tugged on the sleeve of my borrowed jacket. “Karin, I think we should go. She's right; I can feel perturbations in the loose mana. AEGIS operatives are approaching—dozens, all equipped with Spell Engines and who knows what else.”
“If she wants to let us leave, I say we leave,” Amber's voice called out from over near the guardhouse. She'd slid down the ladder to the tarmac, but she stayed as far away from Eirene as she possibly could.
“The car should be over near those trees on the south side,” Misaki noted. “The battle was mostly contained to the north side of the facility, furthest from the gate, so it should still be fine.”
I turned to face Amber, the two of us walking over to her. She looked more than a little pale, her eyes fixated on Eirene anxiously. The mysterious mage was still standing right where we left her, but the demons had moved. Rather than surrounding the guardhouse, they silently repositioned themselves around Eirene in a defensive formation. I felt a little uneasy as I considered how much power it would take to successfully dominate the wills of that many of those nightmare creatures.
Misaki's ears swiveled toward the northern end of the compound. “They're approaching from the north. I can hear… at least three gunships and two aerial troop carriers. We only have a few minutes before they get here.”
Eirene nodded. “They are coming. Go.”
“It'll be at least another few minutes before they get here,” I told them, wondering why I was worrying so much about helping the creepy mage who tried to kill us. “You should have plenty of time to get away.”
“I will not.”
Misaki tugged on my sleeve again. “Karin… come on. Stop trying to help the creepy mage who tried to kill us.”
My hands fell to my sides and I turned to walk away, following Misaki and Amber across the tarmac toward the relatively undamaged garage. Behind me, demons hissed and growled in eager anticipation, straining at the magical bindings that held them to Eirene's will. The uniform, shrill whine of repulsion jets as the AEGIS strike force came ever closer.
I opened the driver's side door to my car and started the vehicle up, the car's four electric motors humming to life. Misaki and Amber piled in, with Amber in the back seat, the length of the Shattered Sword nearly stretching from one side to the other.
I hit the accelerator and backed the car out of the garage at high speed. I wrenched the wheel around, then shoved the brakes on. Now facing the proper direction, I pressed the pedal down to the floor. Tires squealed in protest, but the EV's high-performance motors were more than up to the task of rapid acceleration.
The car shot across the tarmac and onto the narrow service road that snaked for several kilometers through the forest. I glanced in my rear-view mirror and was completely unsurprised to see the exterior of the Luna base erupt in flames as the AEGIS gunships closed to weapons range and unleashed hell.
“We're clear,” Amber said. I could hear the intense relief in her voice. “You should slow down; the service road doesn't stay very straight for very long.”
Easing off the accelerator a bit, I took the first set of turns without issue. By the time I'd accustomed myself to driving down a narrow road this winding, I could no longer see the signs of battle behind us.
“The gunships came in, dumped their rockets, then probably established a defensive perimeter,” Amber surmised. “They'll do what we did, drop on the roof of the guardhouse to gain the high ground.”
“They're not going to win this battle. There has to be close to two hundred demons in the forest.” I tightened my grip on the wheel with my left hand and leaned over to open the glove compartment with my right. Without taking my eyes off the road, I drew out a fresh pack of cigarettes and held it between my knees to remove the wrapping.
Misaki gave me a dirty look. “I could have done that for you, love.” She grabbed the pack out from between my knees, drew one of the smokes out, and lit it with a tiny spell-flame before handing it to me.
“Thanks.”
“You really should keep your attention on the road,” she admonished me. She peeked around the edge of the seat at Amber. “Where do you want us to drop you off? It'd take almost a half a day of driving to go around the mountains to the evacuation site.”
“If you can just get me to the nearest town, I can arrange for transport to the site no problem.”
Misaki frowned at me. “What about Meilin? She went with the evacuees on the tram, too.”
“What about her?” Amber scoffed. “Meilin's a big girl. She can take care of herself—and I daresay take care of all the people she helped evacuate. Besides, I think she might be interested in sticking around a bit longer. Won't have to show up at the office tomorrow, that's for damn sure.”
I stiffened as I realized the awful implications of Amber's comment.
“Oh, that's right.” I sighed a deep, despairing sigh. “We're all fired now.”
parting ways
Two hours of driving later, we arrived at the nearest town, though calling it such was really stretching a point. It did have cell towers, and I suppose that's all Amber really needed to make arrangements for herself. The three of us sat around a table at an all-night diner attached to the town's generic traveler's motel.
After we arrived, Misaki hid all the weapons, including the Shattered Sword, in the trunk of my car. The last thing we needed at this point was for the police to get involved. Misaki sat to my right, her ears and tail cloaked again through her magic.
For once, I wasn't upset that she hid them. Having gone for a week on barely enough mana to sustain her life, she seemed to derive an unusual amount of pleasure from casting spells for any reason.
The waiter came by the table and we all ordered generic breakfast pla
tes that seemed just as ordinary as the diner, the motel and the town they were all inside. Amber stuffed her phone in a pocket and leaned back in the squeaky faux-leather booth.
“I've got people coming to pick me up.” She took a drink from the small glass of complimentary ice water and let out an exhausted sigh. “I wish I could just crash at the motel with the two of you, but I have to get to the rally point as soon as I can.”
I was reasonably alert, but I could see both Misaki and Amber looked about ready to pass out right there at the table. No surprise there; I'd been stuck in a magically-induced suspended animation for a week and still felt more rested than I had in years.
“Oh, and since you did mention being fired and all,” Amber continued, a sly look in her eyes, “I might be able to help you two out. We're always looking for good people to bring into the organization.”
“I don't know.” I contemplated my glass of water and took a sip—it was good, as was to be expected from the snowmelt reservoirs in the extreme northern part of California. “I'm not entirely sure that our goals coincide.”
“I can convince Elias to bring you in,” Amber pressed. “We can pay you a little—not much, we're not like the agency with more money than we know what to do with—and just be there to help us out when we need it.”
I was not surprised she wanted to bring us over to Luna's side, especially considering how badly their resources were depleted by the demon attacks. I didn't know much about Amber's organization, though it was still more than I'd known about AEGIS when I agreed to sign on with them.
“What do you think, love?”
Misaki's ears flicked slightly. “I like Amber and her group. They're good people who helped me save you. And Meilin will probably take a more integrated position with them after all this.”
“Yeah, that's already happened. Elias, damn his hide, offered her a permanent position as a control officer.” The swordswoman's voice was at odds with her words, though; it sounded to me like she was rather pleased with Meilin's new arrangement.
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