by Rose O'Brien
Her face was bone white, her eyes burning red and her fangs hanging over her bottom lip. Her hair was matted with blood, and her formerly white blouse was now red and clinging to her. She was vengeance come to life and horror flashed through Alayna at what Camille had done.
Z’s mighty body writhed in pain, his long neck whipping back and forth as he tried to put his clawed paws to the wound. Alex was knocked back by a flailing claw, and Burdock rushed forward, unable to see Camille.
Camille moved faster than Alayna could track. With a single stroke of the sword she cut through the flesh of Burdock’s neck, and his head went tumbling from his shoulders. His big body sagged to the concrete as a scream tore from Alayna’s throat.
No!
She wanted to drop to her knees and cradle that body, weep until her eyes were dry. But she also wanted to rip and tear and destroy the thing that had taken Burdock from this world.
She pushed the first instinct away and embraced the second.
Alayna turned on Camille. The female vampire advanced on her slowly. Slow enough that Alayna had time to weave the spell she needed. A vortex of wind lifted the vampire off the ground, her leather boots kicking at the air.
With a word, Alayna ripped the sword from her hand and sent it blade first into the metal wall of the warehouse.
“Just kill me, you fucking bitch!” Camille shouted.
Alayna just stared at her.
“Why?” Alayna’s voice was raw.
She glanced over her shoulder to see Alex getting to his feet. He took a step toward Burdock’s body, but realized that he couldn’t do anything and froze. His eyes found her.
“You killed him!” Camille screamed, flailing uselessly in the vortex.
“Not that, you psychopathic wench,” Alayna said. “Why all of this? The hunting and the revenants and the murders?”
“It was all for you,” the vampire said. “Don’t get me wrong, it was good fun hunting those sheep, draining them, turning them and then watching them writhe and starve and die.”
A sick and twisted smile spread her painted red lips.
“But he was trying to draw you in. He wanted to kill your team, turn you and then unleash hell on this city. We could have run this town, turned the sapiens into cattle and told the Council to go fuck themselves.”
Alayna almost laughed.
“You’re fucked in the head, Camille, if you think that would have worked. The Council would perform the magickal equivalent of nuking this city from orbit rather than let it fall into the hands of a madman and outing us to every sapien in the world. You know that.”
It was Camille that began to laugh.
“Speaking of nukes, Whisperer…” Camille nodded toward the revenants tearing at the fence. It was starting to bow outward in several places from the pressure of their bodies. That fence wouldn’t hold for much longer.
“With that lizard out of commission, you don’t have a choice. If you want to save your city, you better get to cutting.”
Rage bubbled up in Alayna again, but the bitch was right.
Dragons needed two liquids, stored in glands in their throats, to produce their fire breath. Camille had wounded Z in such a way that he wouldn’t be able to incinerate the ravenous horde that was trying to claw its way toward her friends and her city. If even a few of those things got loose, they would head right for the festival, killing and destroying as they went. It was likely that any sapiens they drained along the way would eventually rise as revenants themselves as clueless sapiens tried to deal with the aftermath.
The city would be overwhelmed in days.
Alayna pushed the vision out of her mind.
“You’re right, of course,” Alayna told Camille, her voice sounding eerily calm, even to her own ears. “But you’ll get a front row seat for the show.”
She turned to Z, who stood panting nearby, trying to focus through the pain of his wound. The wound was nasty, having opened up one of the soft areas below the dragon’s jaw. Camille had known just where to strike. Must have planned it this way.
I’m sorry I cannot destroy these things for you, sparrow, he said in her mind.
“I know, Z. Don’t worry about it.”
Climb on my back and I will fly you far from here.
“Can’t do that, old friend. I have a job to do here,” she said, stroking his muzzle. A terrible lump was forming in her throat, and she fought to speak around it. “I need you to get clear of this. Go to the high places in the world, try to find more of your kind. I can’t stand the thought of you being the last one.”
He started to speak again and she cut him off with a gesture.
She leaned in and whispered, “Get Alex out of here for me. Just do that one thing, please.”
The dragon nodded his black-scaled head. Tears in her eyes, she turned away and shouted at Dumeril, “You have thirty seconds to get everyone clear of this building. Go!”
Alex made a move toward her, shouting something she didn’t hear. Z grabbed him in his claws and began to beat his massive wings, aiming for the hole in the roof. The last glimpse she had of Alex was his outstretched arms reaching for her, his eyes wide with panic.
She pushed the image from her mind. A glance behind her told her that Dumeril and the others were clear, along with the hostages. Some of the guards that littered the ground may have been unconscious and not dead, but she didn’t care. They had stood by while this happened and they were going down with her.
Alayna pulled one of the long hunting knives from her belt and put it against her wrist. She hesitated only a moment before she let the razor edge slice the delicate pale flesh. The cold bite of the steel felt almost like relief. It was finally ending.
She had come to the place she had dreaded most of her life, and she was strangely okay with what was about to happen. Her friends would be safe. She glanced at the hole in the roof. Her love would be safe. He would be angry for a while, but he would go on.
She repeated the cut on the other wrist. The blood began to fall in fat drops on the concrete. That should be enough, she thought.
She began to sing the harsh words of the Reckoning. The words were ragged, discordant notes. This was not the song of creation or conjuring or manipulation. It was the song of unmaking, destruction, and death.
She felt the weaving take hold of her, the pull of energy leaving her body. A feeling of floating seeped through her. As she closed her eyes, she felt her feet leave the floor.
This was it.
***
Alex struggled against Z’s hold, but the dragon’s claws were wrapped firmly around his shoulders and upper arms.
They hovered several dozen feet above the roof of the warehouse. Through the hole in the roof, he saw Alayna make the cuts to her arms. He screamed at her to stop, but she couldn’t hear him. Around them, the wind was beginning to pick up, and raindrops were beginning to pelt them. He wasn’t sure if this was a part of the spell or if the weather was just finally coming in.
Inside the warehouse, air currents began to toss crates around. Alayna’s arms extended to the sides and her feet floated off the floor. Her eyes were closed, but that horrible song continued to pour from her lips.
Blood flowed from the wounds on her wrists and the other small wounds she had taken in the fight, bright drops of crimson swept away on the air currents swirling around her. The drops began to merge into larger masses, elongating and hardening.
Alex could feel the cold pouring from the building and saw frost beginning to form around the edges of the hole in the roof.
The fence keeping the revenants at bay was beginning to buckle in places. The roof was starting to shake and buck beneath the force of that wind.
Bits of debris began to tear at crates, the fence and the bodies of the revenants. The hole in the roof was starting to open up, peeling back around the edges and offering Alex a bird’s eye view of the entire grim spectacle.
The flying masses of Alayna’s blood had frozen into long, im
possibly sharp shards and were tearing into the bodies of the revenants. These were joined by the blood that spilled from Burdock’s body. As the shards and debris tore through Camille’s body, which Alex saw was being tossed in the whirlwind, her blood joined the storm.
Alayna was untouched by what she had created, her body floating in the center of the maelstrom. Her song fell silent, but the spell had already taken hold.
He was powerless to stop any of it. Rage and helplessness and grief clawed at his guts. He felt cold tears running down his face as he watched the woman he loved sacrifice herself in slow motion.
Alex continued to watch as the roof collapsed in and the revenants were chewed to tiny pieces in that blender of a storm. One of the walls partially tumbled with a soft boom.
At that moment, the sky opened up, and rain began to pour. Thunder rumbled in the distance. At least the rain would drive people inside, and the thunder might be able to cover for any strange noises.
The storm consumed the warehouse and began to suck at nearby buildings, toppling walls and sweeping up cars.
The spell was beginning to slow down, and Alex saw that Alayna’s limp body was beginning to descend to what had been the floor of the warehouse.
“Bring me down,” he shouted at Z.
The dragon decreased the speed at which he pumped his wings, and they began to drop through what was left of the roof.
The place was a horror show and smelled like a slaughterhouse. There were bones with grey flesh clinging to them scattered about the warehouse. Blood and other substances spattered the walls. Alayna’s body had come to rest on a pile of wood and metal.
As Z’s back legs touched down, he released Alex, who scrambled to find his feet. For one impossibly long moment, he froze.
Alayna’s battered and broken body lay twenty feet from him. Her skin was impossibly pale, the wounds in her arms like silent, red screams. Panic shouted at him that he couldn’t do this. His feet were rooted to the concrete, and everything within him had gone as cold as a morgue.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a second and told himself that this was not the desert. She was not Kelly. He told his racing heart to slow down and took several deep breaths. He opened his eyes and grounded himself. His fingers found the little clay pendant she had hung around his neck what seemed like a lifetime ago, her magick pushing at his fingers.
His eyes snapped back to where Alayna lay, and calm purpose coursed through him.
He could do this.
He dropped to his knees beside her and put his fingers to her throat. No pulse. No breathing. He quickly checked her for other injuries. There were the cuts on the wrists, still bloody, no clotting but largely superficial.
Didn’t appear to be any broken bones or other trauma.
He bent and picked her up, moving her to a clear space on the concrete.
As he did so, Dumeril and Lu—who had returned to her regular form—came running up.
“Get the black backpack tied to Z’s back!” Alex shouted.
Alex tilted Alayna’s head back to establish her airway, checked her pulse again, and started chest compressions. He fell into the old rhythms of his medic days, his hands going where they were needed, the next step of care popping up in his head without thinking about it.
She felt so impossibly fragile under his hands, but he kept pumping her chest, hoping to keep brain death from setting in. One of her ribs broke and he kept going.
Dumeril slid to a stop on the opposite side of Alayna’s body and handed him the pack. Dumeril touched her and then looked at Alex, his face grim.
“She’s gone, man. Just stop,” he said, his voice rough.
“Bullshit!” Alex said quietly, but with the force of everything he was holding back at the moment. “There is still a chance.”
“Her heart has stopped. There is nothing I can do for her,” Dumeril said.
“Yes, there is,” Alex snapped. “Your magick may not work, but you can pull the defibrillator out of that bag. It’s the bright orange box—yeah, that’s the one. Now flip the switch on the side.”
He turned to Lu.
“Take over chest compressions.”
He grabbed her hands and put them in the appropriate place on Alayna’s sternum. He showed her exactly how hard to press and how often.
His hands dove into the bag and came up with coagulant and hemostatic gauze. He ripped open the packet of powdered coagulant and poured it over Alayna’s wounds. The powder would form a nice seal when it came into contact with her blood. He began wrapping the hemostatic gauze around her wrists.
Dumeril already had her armor off and had ripped her shirt open. She wore a black lace bra underneath, and the sight almost gave Alex pause. It was so incongruous with the armor, the weapons, the warrior who wore it. It was so totally out of place. And yet, Alex had watched her put it on as she had left him lying on the floor under her ward.
He pushed the thoughts away and placed the defibrillator pads on her chest. The machine was one of the fool-proof models available on the civilian market. It spoke in a woman’s voice. It was a calm voice telling him, “Measuring pulse rate. No pulse detected. Please stand clear. Initiating shock.”
Alayna’s body jerked and arched off the concrete for a moment.
“No pulse detected.”
Alex hit a pause button on the machine and motioned to Lu to resume compressions while he inserted two needles in Alayna’s skin, one in the crook of each arm. He pulled a unit of blood and hooked the tubing quickly, handing it to Dumeril and telling him to gently squeeze the bag. He hooked a bag of saline to the other needle, wrapping his blood pressure cuff around the bag and pumping it up, hoping to speed the fluids into her system.
He waited a few seconds, told them to put the bags down, and hit the button on the defibrillator again.
“No pulse detected. Please stand clear. Initiating shock.”
Her body arched again. Alex felt for a pulse but couldn’t find one.
They all stayed silent. Alex took the bag of blood from Dumeril and squeezed gently, rhythmically, silently praying that the blood would do its job.
His eyes were focused like lasers on her face, watching for the faintest signs of life. He would not lose her. He had lost too many people to violence, and he was not about to lose the one and only woman he had ever loved to the same thing.
“Come on, baby. Come back to me,” he said in a soft voice.
“Initiating shock,” the machine said again.
This time, when Alex felt for a pulse there was a faint flutter beneath his fingers. He almost whooped with joy.
“Pulse detected. No shock advised,” the machine said.
Alex handed the blood back to Dumeril and removed the shock pads from her chest.
“I’ll be damned,” Dumeril whispered. Lu had started to cry, fat tears rolling down her face to hang on her chin.
The blood bag was almost empty, and Alex replaced it with a fresh one.
“We need to get out of here,” Dumeril said. “I need to open a portal to the Citadel. She needs healers. And we need a cleanup crew.”
Alex nodded, but didn’t make any moves to leave her side.
“Lu and I will have to take her,” Dumeril said softly. “She didn’t want you anywhere near the Council, and for good reason.”
Alex nodded again, unable to take his eyes off her. She was breathing, albeit a little shallowly for his taste. Color was returning slowly to her face. There was life in her body again, and he had never seen anything quite so beautiful.
Lu gently took the bag of blood from his hands and held it aloft along with the saline. Dumeril knelt and took Alayna in his arms.
A few seconds later a shimmering blue and purple oval appeared in the air in front of Dumeril, and they stepped through.
Alayna was gone. Every muscle in his body sagged for a moment. They’d pulled off a miracle. Successful resuscitation was rare, and he’d only seen it a handful of times. She wasn’t out of the woods y
et, but she wasn’t dead. The only sound in the stunned silence was Z panting.
Ellie was beside him now and took his elbow, helping him to his feet.
“Gotta get you out of here, Alex,” she said.
She led him back to the empty field and opened a portal back to headquarters.
“Just stay there until I get there,” Ellie said. “I’m going to deal with the cleanup crew and then I’m right behind you, okay?”
He nodded, but didn’t say anything as he stepped through. He found himself on the training floor back at headquarters. He let himself collapse on the floor, closed his eyes and let unconsciousness take him.
Chapter 25
Alex slammed his fist against the metal door for what felt like the hundredth time and shouted, “Let me out of here!”
He knew it was useless, that his captors wouldn’t pay any attention, but it made him feel better than sitting and staring at the wall. The windowless room he was trapped in was painted a stark white, with white tile floors. It was cramped, maybe ten feet by ten feet, tops. A table with a chair on either side was the only furniture.
He’d been in the FBI long enough to know what an interrogation room looked like.
He wasn’t sure how many hours had passed since he’d returned to consciousness back at HQ. When he had, two scary looking mages had been standing over him. They’d zip-tied his hands while he’d been out. The men had hauled him to his feet and shoved him through a portal without saying a word.
He’d been spit from the portal on the other side with enough force to bounce him off a wall. When his head had stopped spinning, he’d found himself in an institutional looking room, led down solid white corridors and stashed in this windowless hell.
From the descriptions Alayna had given, he could only be in one place.
The Citadel.
The stronghold of the Council and the Mage Corps was buried under a mountain in Colorado, and everything he’d seen had a distinctly underground feel.