"I’m not sure I belong.”
Hannah laughed. "Have you been listening to these jokers? I don't think any of us belong here. Especially not Aysa, but we’re all still trying to figure out where the Baseeki actually belong. That’s why we’re perfect together. We’re all a bunch of misfits. Just look at Sal."
Vitali laughed. “Everyone loves Sal. Everyone. But some misfits fit less than others.”
He told her what happened with the young girl, and Hannah's face transformed as she listened. She had the power of the gods in her control, but she also had a warmth of heart that could melt the Frozen North. Growing up in the Boulevard had nurtured a sense of empathy in her that was its own superpower.
“You don’t need to hide from these people.”
"I’m not hiding,” he said. “I’m helping. This city is fit to explode, and our job is to calm it down. We can’t do that if people freak out at the sight of me. Let me stay behind, and I’ll do what I’m good at.”
"You're good at fighting," Hannah said.
Vitali laughed. "We’re all good at fighting. Each and every one of us is good at other things, too. Aysa can build, Karl can command, Parker can con. But me, I can smell a rat. Something didn’t strike me right about the story of good King Aurel. Let me stay and do some recon. Like our ancient brothers the cats, Lynqi like me know how to disappear or blend into the background when we need to. If I stick around here, I might just be able to come up with something useful, maybe even crucial."
Hannah stood still, considering the proposition. He couldn’t read her mind, but he knew his idea was a good one. Finally, she consented. "Stay and snoop around, but keep your nose clean. And if I come back to you passed out in bed with a bunch of empty pints of ale lying around on the floor, you'll be swabbing the deck of the Unlawful for the rest of your days."
Vitali smiled. “Aye aye, Captain.
Hannah turned toward the door, then looked back at the Lynqi. “And Vitali, don’t get hurt. Team BBB needs you.”
With that, Hannah from the Boulevard disappeared, leaving Vitali alone.
Chapter Sixteen
Aysa’s leg bounced in anticipation as she stood on the front step of the great hall, waiting for the rest of the crew. Bells continued to peal through the air. Between their chimes, she heard shouts of the citizens blocks away from where she stood. It took everything she had to stay put and follow Hannah’s commands.
After what felt like an hour, Parker and Karl stepped out into the sun, each of them gripping their weapons, their eyes sharp and their tempers high. Hannah and Sal landed right behind them.
"No Vitali?" Aysa asked.
Hannah shook her head. "He’s going to stay behind and see if he can gather some intel. Things don't seem as squeaky-clean as Kirill wants us to think they are in the royal household. If anyone can sniff out what is truly going down, it’s Vitali."
“Like finding a mouse.” Aysa giggled. "He'll be sorry when I come back with my stories of conquest. Let’s go already.”
Hannah gave her a nod, and Aysa gave Parker a playful slap to the back of the head. "Last one there’s a lump of rotten remnant shit.” She laughed as she took off down the street.
In just a few strides, she opened a healthy distance between Parker and her. Karl had given up before the race began.
Looking over her shoulder, she could see the young Arcadian laughing as his legs pumped like pistons to try to catch the girl from Baseek. He didn't stand a chance, and Aysa knew it. Even though he was a natural athlete, Parker would still be outpaced.
Just for fun, she cut across the street toward a grocery stand. Showing off a little, she leapt off an empty cart and over a tower of fruit boxes, landing in a roll before getting back to her feet with an apple in hand. She turned and launched the apple with dangerous accuracy at her friend. "Come on, old man. Or do you need a break?"
She sprinted two more blocks and then turned toward the noise. As she spun around the corner, the acrid smell of smoke hit her nostrils and scratched the back of her throat. The race was fun and games, but now she was entering the land of serious business.
Thirty feet ahead, a giant building with rows and rows of windows was on fire. Flames licked out of broken windows and off the roof. Thick black smoke hovered over the whole place like a giant mushroom. Aysa slid to a stop, but as she did, there was a flash and in a crack of thunder front of her.
"I beat you," Hannah said with a grin.
"Bullshit! You cheated."
"You use your gifts," Hannah said. "And I'll use mine. All's fair, girlfriend. At least I didn’t use that guy.” Hannah pointed at Sal, who flew in circles over the burning building.
"Teleportation and a pet dragon? Keep bragging, Supergirl. You want to remind me how hot your boyfriend’s abs are while you're at it?" Aysa asked.
Hannah laughed. "Since you mentioned it, they are pretty hot. But enough talk. We need to get in there. The building will collapse any minute, and the city guard is doing shit. They need serious help and direction."
"Wait, you mean to tell me that you've already been up there, assessed the situation, and developed a plan?" Aysa asked.
"You're pretty fast, but you’re not that fast. I beat you three times over.” She patted the girl on the shoulder as Karl and Parker joined them. "I need you guys to go up and try to get Irmand to direct the citizens toward safety. He’s focusing on a bucket brigade, but his little pails of water are doing next to nothing against this blaze. It's freaking bedlam in there. The guy’s gonna get everybody killed. Do whatever it takes to get the people away, no matter what he tells you."
"What are you going to do?" Parker asked through heavy breathing.
"I've got something better than a bucket of water," she said. As she finished speaking, Sal swooped down, losing no speed in his descent. Hannah grabbed his neck as he approached and flung herself onto his back. Before Aysa could say another word, they were gone.
A scream from the burning building grabbed Aysa’s attention. "Parker, go try to get Irmand to divert his men from his impotent bucket party to help the people affected. Karl, you head around back.” She pointed toward a window in the front of the building. "I got this one."
Without waiting for the men to reply, Aysa took off for the burning structure. Three stories up, a woman not much older than Aysa leaned out, holding a toddler in the crook of her arm. "Help me! Please!"
Aysa darted to a spot under the window. "Drop the kid. I've got this."
A look of fear and pain crossed the mother's face, but when the flames licked out of the window above her head, she knew she had no other choice. The kid fell toward Aysa, and she tracked its course. With a step to the left, she grabbed the child in her good arm and dropped him gently on the ground.
Looking up, she shouted, "It's your turn."
The woman's eyes darted about. She took a moment to look back into the burning building, but there was no escape that way. The woman pushed her legs out the window and sat with her butt on the sill. Aysa knew exactly what she was thinking—there was no way the Baseeki girl could catch a full-grown woman. She was right. Without a second to lose, she heard a guttural shout from behind her. "I've got ye, lady. Ye can do this."
Aysa turned and saw Karl racing toward them, rolling a giant cart filled with hay in front of him. The woman jumped and hit her mark perfectly. Aysa pulled the woman out, and she clung to her in an embrace. "Thank you. Thank you. You saved me. You saved both of us."
Aysa pushed her away. "It's nothing. That's what we do."
"It's not enough," the woman said. She turned and pointed toward the building. "There are more in there."
Aysa wiped ash off the woman's cheek. "Like I said, it's what we do."
She gave Karl a nod of thanks and rushed for the front entrance of the building. The doorknob glowed red-hot, so Aysa raised her shield, lowered her shoulder, and ran as hard as she could at the barrier between her and the helpless citizens of Solyr. The wood shattered on contact,
and she continued into the hellscape.
The fire burned around her, and she could feel smoke stick to her lungs and dry out her eyes. Pulling her shirt up over her mouth, she ran into the blaze as others stumbled out. Nearly getting lost, Aysa went from room to room, helping people limp their way toward safety. She climbed the stairs and cleared the second floor. It wasn't until she was on the fifth floor that she found a child under a bed weeping and shouting for help. Aysa flipped the mattress over, and the girl stared up to her with wide eyes.
"Are we going to die?” she asked.
Aysa kept her face as calm as possible. “Yes. We’re all going to die, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm not letting today be your day. Come with me."
Aysa had the little boy climb onto her back, and he gripped her with force likely to suffocate her faster than the smoke. She ran down the hall, dodging flames on the way. Just as she got to the top of the stairwell, she heard the creaking of wood. With a crash, the stairs fell out from underneath them.
"We need to go up. Hang on tight, kid. I'm getting you out of here," she shouted over the roaring of the fire.
Aysa took the stairwell up, heat and smoke chasing her the whole way. She had one hope, and she knew it would not disappoint. It never had.
Gaining the top of the building, she kicked in the door and stumbled out into the night air. Even with the smoke pouring out from the building beneath them, a cool lick of breeze hit her head, and she felt a bit of relief.
Creaking and cracking surrounded them again. Aysa knew the roof wouldn't hold. The building was coming down, and it would take them with it if she didn't figure this out fast. She ran to the edge.
Help, please! she thought as hard as she could. Aysa had no magical powers at her disposal, but she knew Hannah had more than enough for the both of them.
The roof behind her started to fall away; chunks of rock and wood fell into the fire as if they were trying to fill in a volcano. She glanced up. Hannah and Sal were more than thirty yards away, and they would not make it.
Aysa held the kid tightly. If it was to be her end, she wanted to give him the comfort she hadn’t had when she was his age. But a voice rang in her head. Do it!
There are few people in the world that Aysa listened to. Very few.
Hannah was one of them.
Without hesitation, she squeezed the child and jumped off the edge of the seven-story building.
Wind whipped around her, tossing her hair in every direction. She held her breath in case she had trusted in vain, but within feet of the ground, her body and the body of her passenger stopped. They floated, just above the ground, and then, like a feather dropped from a ladder, they drifted down.
She put the child down and looked up toward the smoke-filled sky.
“Thanks, girlfriend,” she yelled toward the sky before turning back toward the building.
Chapter Seventeen
"Don’t be an asshole, Irmand," Parker yelled over the noise of death and destruction.
The captain of the guard just stared at him. Parker knew the look. It was the countenance of a man beaten by his circumstances. Parker had no time to debate within himself about whether Irmand was simply a fool or the product of a system that had failed him.
“I’ve got to put this fire out,” he shouted and turned back to his bucket brigade. Twenty soldiers stood in a line, passing along water from a nearby well.
"Your buckets are doing no good. You need to get the people out of there.”
But Irmand was done listening.
“Fine. If you won’t do it, I will,” he said and turned toward the building.
Parker navigated around the edge and toward the back side of the apartment complex. If there was one thing that he knew after his years of working with the Bitch and Bastard Brigade, it was that they were all better when they worked together. Rounding the second corner, he saw Karl hammering at a wall with his trusted weapon. As he approached the rearick, Karl stepped back and looked up into Parker's eyes. He was exhausted. Nearly spent.
"I'm glad yer finally here, lad. The entrance has collapsed, and there’s still folk inside. I'm gonna need yer help to get us in there. I hate to say it, but I can't do it on me own."
"We weren’t made to do anything on our own, Karl. What do you need?"
Karl raised a finger and pointed at a spot along the outer wall. "Focus yer energy right there. We should be able to carve out an openin’ without bringin’ the whole damned buildin’ down. Give me a blast. That should do it."
Parker leveled his spear at the spot Karl had indicated, and when he pulled the trigger, a clean, solid blast of blue energy hit the brick. The wall shook but didn't fall.
"Again, lad!"
Parker pulled the trigger again. Brick blasted in all directions, but the wall held firm.
"Okay. Stand back," Karl yelled.
The rearick stepped up and swung his hammer with the vigor of a man twenty years younger. Parker could only imagine his friend two decades ago in the mines trying to find the precious stones that made half the modern world run.
Again and again, he struck the spot. His aim was perfect. Finally, the wall crumbled, and smoke poured out of the hole.
Karl panted, and Parker expected his heart to burst right then.
"Aye, let's get ‘em out of there."
The two men scrambled over the rubble into the burning building. Parker pulled the trigger on his spear again and the tip of it glowed like a hundred flames. He heard Hannah’s voice in his head. Near the back. Parker followed her prompting and found a group of people huddled in the corner, all of them holding useless rags over their mouths.
"Come with me," he shouted, leading them out of the building toward the new opening Karl had created.
Once that round of people was evacuated from the burning building, Parker rushed back in to see if there were more. Eyes burning from the smoke, he stumbled toward a room in the rear of the building. Three people came into the orb of light cast by the blue amphoralds at the tip of his spear, two women nearly dragging an older man between them, their shoulders sagging under his weight.
“You’re almost there,” Parker encouraged them on. “Do you need my help?”
The stately old woman looked at her younger partner and her eyes flashed yellow. As Parker watched, her body expanded, growing before his eyes. She straightened her back, and the man almost left his feet under her height. In response, the other woman did the same.
“That’s pretty badass. I think you’ve got this,” Parker said to the Mylek women.
As they escaped the flames, Parker pushed farther in and down the hall.
Parker cut through the thick smoke, his elbow covering his nose and mouth, trying to keep it out of his lungs in vain. Getting to the other side, he searched for his rearick friend.
"Scheisse, Parker. I never thought I'd be so glad to see yer ugly mug.” Karl coughed from across the room.
“Karl?” Parker’s eyes darted around the place. His amphorald torch fought to cut through the thick black smoke.
"Down here, ye bastard."
Almost immediately at his feet, under a giant wooden beam, lay his friend.
"All these years of fightin’ bastards in every corner of Irth. I never thought me demise would come at the hand of a twelve-by-twelve hunk of lumber. Can ye get this thing off me, mate?" Karl wheezed.
Parker grabbed the smoldering wood. The heat licked at his hands, but he pushed the pain out of his mind. Squatting, he got into just the right position to try a deadlift. The wood didn't budge. He tried again, feeling the muscles in his legs, ass, and back strain against the impossible weight.
"Try yer spear," Karl shouted.
Parker stepped back and aimed his weapon at the timber but didn’t pull the trigger. “Too risky. You’d likely get caught in the blast.”
Karl nodded. "There's not enough time. The ceiling’s gonna give and take us both out. Ye gotta get outta here."
Parker shook his head. "Not a
chance, old friend.” He jammed his spear under the beam and pushed with his shoulder. Still, even with the leverage, it hardly moved.
"Go, Arcadian. Save yerself. If ye die with me in this room, Hannah is gonna chase both of us all the way to the River Styx and kick our damn asses fer bein’ so stupid. Now go!"
Parker gripped Karl’s shoulder. "Don't go anywhere; I'll be right back."
He traced his steps back the way he came in, sprinting through the fiery furnace as quickly as his legs would take him. Breaking out the hole he and Karl had made, Parker gasped fresh air. He cast his eyes around the group gathered just beyond the heat of the fire.
"I need your help," he yelled at the two women who had just escorted a man out of the building.
They were standing in front of him before he had the chance to ask a second time. "What do you need?"
"Muscle," Parker answered. "A lot of it."
The woman smiled at each other knowingly. "Muscle, we can do."
A man wearing the colors of the royal family approached them. “I'm in too," he said. "I can't get big and strong like these two, but my physical magic is significant."
"Let's go," Parker said as he led them back into the blaze and toward Karl.
When he finally stood over his friend, he saw that the rearick’s face was still, his eyes closed. It was too late. A knot twisted in Parker’s stomach.
Karl's eyes snapped open. "Aye, ye shitehead. I told ye to get outta here and stay out. Now ye’ve brought these good folk into my hell.” He looked around the room. “Or have we both passed into Hades?"
Parker directed the Mylek women to shift into their strongest form possible. Their eyes flashed yellow as they bulked up to twice their normal size. One of the women turned her hands over in front of him, and thick calluses like leather gloves formed across her palms.
Wasting no time, he jammed his spear under the wooden beam and flexed with all his might as the women worked their own deadlift. He could feel movement; it was starting to budge—but not enough. It wasn't until the Myrna man turned his magical attention to the wooden beam, eyes glowing black, that the thing started to move. Parker knew he was applying just enough telekinesis to make the difference.
Solyrian Conspiracy - C M Raymond & L E Barbant Page 6