by Romi Hart
“Claire!” Bernard thundered, but Claire couldn’t look at him. He didn’t exist for her anymore. No one existed but Finn. Finn’s black eyes bored into her. They saw her. That was all she needed to know.
Victor looked from her to her father. “We want to send a counterforce to stop them, but we don’t know where to find them. When we try to track them, we come up with nothing. How about you send some of your people to help us find them and prevent them from harming any more of our people?”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Bernard replied. “We don’t have an alliance yet, and when we do, I don’t see us fighting your battles for you.”
“What’s the point of forming an alliance, then?” Victor argued. “That’s the whole point of an alliance. You would be useless to us otherwise.”
Bernard pivoted around to confront him. “That is something we will have to negotiate in the course of deciding whether an alliance really is in the best interest of both our Crests.”
Claire caught a fleeting shadow of annoyance cross the big Anarock leader’s chiseled features. He stiffened and she smelled the air drifting into his nostrils. The next words out of his mouth would be to order Colonel Weeks and Finn out of the office. They might never return.
She saw herself kicking back her chair. She saw herself leaping to her feet. “I’ll go with you.”
Bernard wheeled around roaring at the top of his lungs. “Sit down, Claire! That’s an order.”
She drew in a ragged breath, but she was shaking too hard to stop herself. She didn’t trust herself to look at her father. She couldn’t even look at Finn. She looked down at Victor instead. “I’ll find ‘em for you and I can help you fight ‘em.”
A faint smile spread over Finn’s cheeks and his white teeth sparkled in his black face. Victor dipped a slight nod. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
Bernard’s voice dropped to a dangerous snarl. “Sit down, Claire. Sit down right now. I won’t say it again.”
“Oh, shove it up your ass, Daddy!” she shrieked. She couldn’t stop shaking. “Just shut your fucking mouth for five seconds, will you? Jesus Christ, you want this alliance as much as they do, but we have to offer some token of goodwill. They need our help and you want to sit up here in your stupid fucking office and play cat and mouse. It’s ridiculous. Do you hear me? It’s truly fucking ridiculous!”
Bernard gritted his teeth and his eyes glittered with venom. “You keep a civil tone in your head when you speak to me, young lady.”
She wasn’t listening anymore. She swung around and accosted her brothers. “Come on, Damien. You know this is the right thing to do. Daddy always said he was raising us to think for ourselves. Finn saved Dorian’s life. Now it’s our turn to throw down and fucking do something for a change! What do you say, Conrad? You want to see the deep Quag? Pablo? This is our chance to fight the enemies of Anarock. Come on, guys. Show these people the alliance isn’t just a bunch of useless words.”
She shrank in on herself shaking like a leaf. She still couldn’t believe she actually said those terrible words to her father, but she couldn’t sit here silent while he played Victor Griffin. That would be taking this whole power and influence game too far.
Bernard glared at her from his seat. She dreaded hearing what he would say, but before he could react, Damien straightened up. He tugged his blazer down and puffed out his cheeks. “All right. Count me in.”
“Me, too,” Conrad added. “I always wanted to fight the military.” Bernard shot him a withering glare, but Conrad only shrugged. “Well, I did. I wanted to fight them when they killed Cameron Griffin. Now’s our chance. Come on, Lucy. You come, too.”
Claire wanted to burst out crying in relief. She glanced up at Finn and the expression on his face made tears spring to her eyes. He was proud of her—proud and pleased. If he was happy with her behavior, she would ask nothing more.
It was Victor who answered. “Thank you all, and thank you, Claire. I can’t express our Crest’s gratitude for this gesture. You have my solemn word it will not go unrepaid.”
Damien slid his tablet onto the tabletop and reclined in his seat with a resigned air. “What would you like us to do? Do you have a plan of attack in place?”
“We have a strike force ready to mobilize, but I’ll have to return to Ogru-Kuche to muster them.” He scanned the group. “You people can probably get there in a few minutes, can’t you?”
Damien bit back a grin. “Pretty much.”
Victor nodded and got to his feet. Colonel Weeks copied him. “We’ll rendezvous with you in Shenandoah tomorrow night. From there, you can tell us where the squad is and we’ll organize our attack then.”
“They aren’t in Shenandoah.” Everyone spun around to stare at Finn. They blinked at him in astonishment. “They’re east of Three Mile Lake between the highway and the viaduct. That’s where Claire and I encountered them last.”
Victor shook himself. “All right, then. We’ll meet there.” He gave Damien a clipped nod. Then he shot Claire a fleeting smile. “Thank you again. See you soon.”
He jerked his chin at the Colonel and Finn. The three men strode out of the conference room. The bottom dropped out of Claire’s world when they headed for the elevator.
Damien, Conrad, and Lucy struck up a conversation over the logistics of their adventure while Pablo listened in. Bernard sat perfectly still in his chair not looking at anyone. Claire couldn’t go near him, not even to apologize for cursing at him like that.
She wasn’t sorry for what she said. She wasn’t sorry for undercutting him in the middle of a delicate political negotiation, either. She wasn’t sorry for any of it. She wasn’t sorry for anything except that Finn was walking away without saying goodbye. She could stand to let him leave, but she needed just one word from him, maybe one touch of his hand.
The others finished talking and left the room heading off somewhere. Claire couldn’t stop staring at the three men waiting for the elevator. She drifted to the door with her heart in her shoes.
The light over the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Victor and the Colonel stepped into the car. Finn thrust out a hand and touched his leader’s elbow. “I’ll meet you back at Ogru-Kuche.”
Victor glanced over his shoulder at Claire hovering in the door. “You bet. Take all the time you need.”
The car shut and Finn sauntered back to where Claire stood. He bent low to study her face. “Are you gonna be okay? That was some outburst you had in there.”
She swallowed hard trying every which way to get her emotions under control. “I’m okay.”
His eyes wouldn’t leave her alone. He laid one hot palm against her cheek and kissed her. “I’m proud of you. I’ve never been prouder of you. You surprised the shit out of me in there.”
She couldn’t smile. She wanted to die of happiness that he was even talking to her.
“I gotta go back to Ogru-Kuche. I’ll see you at the Lake in a few hours.”
She nodded, but she couldn’t speak.
“What’s wrong, baby?” he whispered. “Don’t tell me you regret what you said in there. Don’t even tell me that.”
“No, not at all.” Her voice cracked. “I just…. I don’t want you to leave. I….” She had to fight to form the words. “I love you.”
He kissed her again and his lips lingered too long before they left her all alone. “Come with me,” he breathed. “Come to Ogru-Kuche with me. You don’t have to stay here.”
“No, I can’t.” She looked over her shoulder at her father still sitting still and unmoving. “I should go with my brothers.”
Finn followed the direction of her gaze. “Are you going to talk to him before you leave?”
She shook her head. “I’m okay—at least, I will be. I’ll see you out there. I better go catch up with Damien.”
“We’re gonna be okay,” he whispered, “and you know what, baby?”
She dared to look up at him. “What?”
He closed her f
ace in both hands. “We’re gonna be together, baby. It don’t make no difference what your daddy does about this. We’re gonna be together one way or the other. We’ll either go back to your house or you’ll come home to Ogru-Kuche with me. Nothing else matters as much as that. Understand?”
She could only nod swimming in his eyes. She never wanted him to let her go. She never wanted this moment to end.
He kissed her one more time and moved back. “I love you.”
17
Victor strutted up and down in front of a party of New Breed. They gathered in a patch of dense Quag miles from anywhere. He pulled to a halt in front of Finn and murmured under his breath. “Any clue when our new friends will show up?”
Finn shook his head. “They’ll be here. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried,” Victor chuckled. “After the way your lady told her father off in front of everybody? I know she’ll be here if no one else shows up.” He burst out laughing until it shook his whole big body. “Christ, I never heard anything like that before. She’s some fireplug.”
Finn looked away. He didn’t want to talk about Claire or her outburst. He didn’t want to think about why she and her siblings weren’t here yet. Did Bernard do something to talk them out of it, or worse, to stop them?
The raw truth was that neither Finn nor anyone else knew what Bernard Novak was capable of. He could be hiding unbelievable power. He could have harmed his own children to stop them flouting his wishes.
Did he hurt Claire? Did he kill his own sons to stop them fighting alongside the Prometheus Crest? The very thought gave Finn the cold sweats.
Victor rotated on his heel. “We’ll give them another fifteen minutes. Then we’ll….”
At that second, Claire materialized right in front of him. She emerged from a cloud of vapor. She appeared so fast Victor staggered back with a startled cry. “What the holy fucking hell….?”
Claire rushed him gasping out the words as two of her brothers appeared out of nowhere behind her. “We have to move fast! The Special Forces squad is attacking the village. Come on, Finn! Get your weapons, all of you! Come on. They’re attacking the village!”
Finn darted around Victor and seized her. “Where? Which village?”
He shook her harder than he meant to and she struggled against his grip. “Lincoln’s village! I picked them up on the way here. Conrad and Lucy are already on the way there, but they can’t travel as fast as we can. Come on! We have to hurry! The New Breed were already losing ground when we picked them up.”
Finn let her go so fast he flung her away. “Let’s go!”
He took off in the blink of an eye. He rocketed off the ground and shot into the heavens. He didn’t look back. How could he be so negligent not to realize the Special Forces men would go after Lincoln’s village? It was the closest to where he and Claire fought them last time.
He kicked himself burning down the wind toward the village. He got several miles when a powerful wind struck him under the wings. It levitated him against gravity and swept him forward at lightning speed. Before he could stop it, it carried him even faster over the Quag toward the north.
He heard gunfire long before he got anywhere near the place. The wind puffed out from under him and left him to fly the last miles on his own. He saw the air ripple over the trees below him. The next instant, a hurricane hit the village.
He pulled in his wings and dropped. The next instant, he saw the Special Forces men crouching across the stream. They fired their guns at four dragons squatting in front of the huts. The dragons spread their wings to form a solid wall of flesh blocking the bullets from reaching the village. A bunch of people, men and women, knelt around the dragons’ knees returning the soldiers’ fire with machine guns, grenades, and rocket launchers.
Even before his feet touched the ground, Finn spotted an invisible wall of air sweep down from the sky. It blasted between the dragons and the soldiers and formed a spinning tornado of whizzing air. The soldiers’ bullets entered it and swirled in eddies before the funnel shot them back out at the men who fired them.
When Finn saw that, he pulled up instead of landing. He tucked his feet against his body to spray his fire on the soldiers. For some reason, neither the bullets Claire deflected back at them nor Finn’s fire came anywhere near them. They fizzled out before it got there and the bullets whizzed off somewhere else.
The volcanic rage compelling him to attack his enemies wouldn’t let him think why this should be. Only after several minutes of trying to incinerate these fools did he realize they must be using some magical protection. He couldn’t see anything, but what else could it be?
The soldiers held their ground and not even Finn and Claire and the other dragons could stop every bullet. One of the defenders fell. Finn bellowed in fury, but he couldn’t think of any way to attack these fools. His dragon mind didn’t function that way.
Out of nowhere, a rushing torch of flame shot out of the sky. It zoomed through the village and surrounded the soldiers. Half the men yanked their hands off their weapons as if the metal burned them. Others slapped flame off their clothes. They inched away.
Hot behind the zooming flame, Victor and the other New Breed descended on the village in force. Dragons dropped bears and wolves to the ground. In a second, monsters of every variety crowded the area, but no one could get near the soldiers with that fire rushing everywhere. It surrounded them and drove them into the underbrush.
Finn found a clear spot to land, but the fight was over. The soldiers broke, but before they could run away, a catastrophic explosion blasted out of the Quag behind the fleeing squad. A tempest to end all tempests stripped the blaze back and left the soldiers bare and exposed.
The unearthly fire crackled several yards toward the village and blinked out. Where the flickering flame used to be, Pablo thumped to the ground and curled over groaning.
Finn didn’t think twice. He lashed out his long tail and whipped it around Pablo’s ankles. He yanked and dragged the fallen man into the village. He flung him behind the dragons and returned his attention to the soldiers. The men stood still where Finn could scorch them to kingdom come, but they didn’t try to run away. They didn’t move.
Finn blinked at a wavering line of ragged monstrosities advancing through the swamp. They wore tattered clothes and a few of the men sported scruffy beards. One had a line of eyes stretching straight across his face. A woman wearing a faded grey dress had her face upside down with a mouth at the top and her eyes at the bottom. A huge black man had three heads bobbing everywhere.
Finn’s heart contracted in his huge dragon body. All around him, the New Breed and the Special Forces men stood stock still watching those freaks advance out of the Quag. The Omega Battalion. What were they doing here?
None of that mattered. Before anybody could move, a dirty young man raised his hand. A subtle breath of some forgotten mystery brushed past Finn’s scales. The next minute, the whole village detonated in an ear-splitting bang. The thatch huts splintered and exploded in an enormous cloud of flying debris. Straw and sticks and rock went flying.
The dragons ducked for cover from the wreckage ricocheting off their scales. The gunners taking shelter under the dragons’ wings toppled and fell. They dropped their weapons and lay bleeding in the dust.
Victor launched first. He screamed past Finn’s nose bellowing in hideous fury. His seething energy caught Finn in its wake. He rocketed after his leader and the two dragons zeroed in on the Omega Battalion. They waited for months to engage these fools. Now was their chance.
Finn and Victor got halfway across the creek when a torrential wind whistled past Finn’s wing. A hurricane carrying millions of broken splinters zinged through the trees and hit the Omega Battalion with the force of a thousand freight trains.
The splinters flew into people’s eyes. They cut skin and punctured the hide of monsters running behind. Finn saw the love of his life fighting in her elemental way and he charged in to join the battle.
He bowed his head low and tore across the ground a few inches above the soil. He extended his wings only enough to keep him airborne. When he reached the Battalion’s ranks, he clamped his eyes shut and flung out his wings. His momentum mowed them down by the hundreds. He cut them off at the knees.
His speed started to ebb. He shot his feet forward and landed in their midst, but he didn’t wait around to see what was going on. He thrashed his tail sideways and smacked them flying. He batted as many as he could into the next county. When that failed, he unloaded his fire on anyone who moved.
The air kept ripping all around him. It caught sticks and leaves and turned them into deadly missiles. Finn spun around to see Victor devastating the Omega Battalion with his fire, but beyond the big leader’s green wings, Finn saw something that made his stomach churn.
The Special Forces men lay flat on their stomachs. They cowered for cover under their arms while the Omega Battalion converged on the village. Another whirlwind and another of those shooting flames spun all over the place, but the Omega Battalion’s wizards deflected them. They stopped the elemental forces from attacking.
Pablo sprawled in the same place. From nowhere, a stone wall jabbed up out of the ground to surround him. It erected a barrier between him and the Omega Battalion, but a small girl advanced on it. She pointed at it and it twisted. For a second, it took the form of a man. Conrad.
He reasserted his stone form for a second, but the girl leveled her finger at him and he collapsed in the form of a man. He tumbled over his brother and lay still.
More people from the Omega Battalion surrounded the dragons. The huge reptiles writhed screaming in agony. They flailed their wings against the sky, but none of them tried to fight.
Finn’s instincts told him to rush in, to attack and drive those people off, but when he thought that, something hit him from behind. One glance showed him more and more strange people coming out of nowhere. They marched out of the Quag on an intercept course for the village. Was this the end of the Prometheus Crest? Did they spend the last several months planning their next engagement with the Omega Battalion only to fall here?