by R S Penney
A noise from behind.
She turned around to find four grays coming down the street from the west, trying to sneak up on her. Their leader, a short fellow with big, round eyes, launched himself at Miri with a powerful leap.
She stepped aside, moving toward a towering man with thick arms and a mustache. “Enemies behind you!” she called to her allies. If they heard, she couldn’t tell. She was too busy. Mr. Mustache swiped at her.
Miri ducked, letting his hand pass over her. She slashed his belly with the knife, then stepped past him and flung her arm out to the side. Her blade punched through the back of his neck, severing his spine.
Down he went.
The next gray to attack was a woman with wavy hair. She spread her arms wide and tried to charge Miri.
Miri kicked her in the stomach, throwing her down onto her backside. She knelt beside Miss Wavy Hair and plunged her knife through the other woman’s chest. Right through the heart.
Two down, two to-
A hulking man with dark skin flung himself at Miri, slamming into her, knocking her down. They rolled across the width of the street, each trying to gain dominance.
She ended up on top of him, straddling his chest, but his open palm came up to strike her nose. Silver stars filled her vision. Her head rang like a struck gong. She was barely aware of falling over.
Now, the man was on top of her, his hands trying to grab her neck and squeeze the life out of her. She seized his wrists, holding him back, fighting with all her strength. It was no use. He was just too-
CRACK!
When her vision cleared, she saw a hole in the gray man’s forehead. He slumped over, onto his side, lying in the road.
One of the watchmen stood over her with a pistol in hand, smoke rising from the barrel. He nodded once, then turned away without a word.
Groaning, Miri sat up and pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. That awful throbbing pain behind her eyes… “Well, that was a whole new kind of horrible,” she muttered. “Any more coming?”
“Plenty,” the man who had saved her replied.
Miri stood up, rolling her shoulder to loosen the joint. “Well,” she said. “At least we won’t be bored.”
The Ether surged within Tommy.
With Kalia and Nari working beside him, focusing his thoughts toward a single purpose, he directed his mind outward. Into the square where Desa struck down gray man after gray man. And beyond.
He felt the next batch of monsters coming up the East Road, each one a bundle of wrongness in the shape of a human. They were like gaps in the fabric of reality, places where the Ether had been taken away. Like Adele. The only difference was that the malevolent force that animated them wasn’t nearly as strong as it had been in her.
Which should make this easier.
He chose a gray man at random and shoved the Ether into the emptiness. That poor fellow keeled over, lying dead on the cobblestones. No, Nari whispered in his mind. We cannot cut them off one by one. We must go to the source.
How?
Follow, was all she said.
He felt her presence through the Ether, felt her focusing on something. One of the grays who attacked Miri on a nearby side street. Tommy wanted to help, but Nari would only dissuade him.
There was something off about this particular gray man. It was as if the wrongness was not confined to his body. No, it extended in a hair-thin line, running eastward all the way…All the way to Hanak Tuvar.
The demon was hiding in its distortion field, fighting through the pain of its severed tentacle. It sensed Tommy’s attention and spun on him, screaming. Just like that, he was hurled away like a leaf in a gale, his mind sent flying across the city, right back into his own body. What just happened.
We must approach with caution, Nari said. She was a cluster of particles sitting beside him in the parlour of a small apartment above the bookkeeper’s office. We must work together. Hanak Tuvar is too powerful for any one of us to challenge it alone. Only together do we stand a chance.
We better do something, Kalia thought. Those gray things are still coming. If we don’t stop them soon, we’ll be surrounded. Desa…
She will be fine, Kalia, Nari promised. Have faith.
Then what do we do? Tommy asked.
Follow my lead.
Jim burst out of an alley with his bow in hand, skidding across the cobblestones. Gray buildings on either side of the road, each two stories tall. He saw no one in those windows. Perhaps the residents of this neighbourhood had been wise enough to get out of here.
He forced his eyes shut, heaving out a sigh, and then leaned his shoulder against a brick wall. “Just breathe,” he whispered. “Just breathe.”
Years of working as a slave had given him quite a bit of endurance, but those years had not been spent running from monsters who wanted to tear his face off. It was terror, not physical strain, that made his heart race.
Two of the gray creatures were prowling the street, scanning this way and that, searching for a victim. One laid eyes on Jim and snarled.
Reacting quickly as Tommy had taught him, Jim took an arrow from his quiver and nocked it. He drew back the string, aimed for his enemy’s head and loosed.
His arrow went through the dead man’s shoulder, causing him to stumble. When the creature regained its balance, it turned those black eyes on him. Jim had never shared Tommy’s proficiency with the bow. A few months of training wouldn’t change that.
The gray man broke into a sprint.
Ducking back into the alley, Jim ran for his life, heart pounding, breath rasping from his lungs. He could hear those creatures behind him. Almighty have mercy! They were gaining ground.
He came out the other side, dashing onto a street that looked very much like the one he had left behind. With no concrete plan in mind, he turned eastward. It was a stupid move – yes, let’s move toward the enemy – but there was no changing his mind now. The two grays were still chasing him. His feeble attack had incensed them.
Frightened people were coming up the street in the opposite direction. When they saw Jim’s pursuers, they screamed and ran into nearby buildings. One poor man actually crashed through the front window of a store.
Victor stepped out of an alley, standing tall with his feet apart and raising his pistol in both hands. He lined up a shot and then fired.
Thunder growled in Jim’s ear.
A glance over his shoulder proved that Victor’s aim was true. One of the grays was lying in a pool of inky blood. The other was still chasing him.
Jim spun around, dropping his bow.
A gray hand tried to claw his eyes out.
Bending his knees, Jim reached up with both hands to seize the other man’s wrist. He twisted it in a way that should have brought pain, but his enemy was silent. It didn’t matter; Jim had the momentum.
Pulling the dead man close, Jim brought his knee up into the corpse’s stomach. That powerful hit threw his opponent to the ground. Just like Miri had taught him.
Victor came forward, gun in hand, and casually put two bullets in the dead man’s head. At long last, the corpse stopped thrashing.
“Thank you,” Jim panted.
Victor shot a glance in his direction. That hardness behind his eyes. He was enjoying this. “We need to find the others.”
“We can’t!” Jim moaned. “These things are everywhere.”
“What do you want to do?”
Drawing in a shuddering breath, Jim closed his eyes and considered his options. These things were coming from the east, from the direction where Desa and the others had set up their trap. If they had been overrun.
Well, what could Jim do? If four Field Binders weren’t enough, then a man who could barely work a bow wasn’t going to add anything of value. That was for damn sure. No, if he was going to die, then he wanted to be-
“Back to the barracks!” he snapped.
“What? Why?”
Jim retrieved his bow and broke into a sprint, r
unning west along the street. “Because!” he cried out. “Our people are there!”
He turned south down a side street, then west, then south again. In about five minutes, he arrived at the stone wall that encircled the military compound. Dead people were trying to scale it, trying to get inside.
Emerging from an alley, Zoe stumbled toward them. Her face was flushed, her eyes wide with fright. “What?” she gasped. “What do we do?”
Jim didn’t answer her with words.
He strode forward, pulling an arrow from his quiver, and then lined up a shot.
The shaft drove itself into a gray man’s back, causing him to fall off the wall and land on the pavement. With any luck, he wouldn’t rise again. The others didn’t seem to notice or care.
Taking his cue, Victor stepped forward, raised his gun and squeezed the trigger. Another gray fell to the ground, but two more crested the wall and dropped out of sight on the other side.
“Dalen!” Jim shouted.
He ran for the wooden gate that had been shut tight after he and the others had left to find Desa. He threw his shoulder against it, pain flaring through his body, but the gate wouldn’t budge. He had to get inside.
“Move!” Victor said behind him.
Hurrying out of the way, Jim watched as the other man pointed his gun at the gate’s hinges. Each peel of thunder was accompanied by the screech of shredded metal. Then Victor stepped forward and kicked the gate, knocking it over.
The three of them ran into the yard. Each barrack was a single-story, stone building with a flat roof. To his horror, he found Dalen in front of one. He must have come out to see what all the commotion was about.
Dalen was as pale as a ghost, his eyes bulging out of their sockets. He backed away slowly, moving to the wooden door behind him.
Two grays lunged for him.
Jim didn’t bother with his bow; if he missed, he might hit Dalen. He just ran at full speed, bounding over the grass, and hurled himself at one of those monsters. He tackled the gray man to the ground.
The other one swiped at Dalen, fingernails leaving scratches on Dalen’s cheek. No, no, no! Jim couldn’t deal with both of them! Not together. Someone had to step in.
CRACK!
A bullet hit the remaining gray man, ripped right through his body and went on to pierce Dalen’s chest as well. “No!” Jim screamed, watching in horror as the man he had come to love fell to the ground. Red and black blood stained the door.
Lost in a fog of rage, Jim pounded the squirming corpse beneath him, striking its skull again and again. He didn’t relent until the dead man stopped writhing.
Then he stood, rounding on victor and striding toward him with a finger pointed. “Idiot!” he screamed. “Don’t you ever think before you pull that trigger?”
Victor was backing away, mumbling words that Jim couldn’t hear. “I didn’t,” he managed at last. “I…I…I didn’t realize that…”
People were idiots. They always assumed that a bullet stopped when it hit its target. What to do? What to do? There had to be a way to save Dalen! Think, think, think! What was it Mercy had said about-
Jim reached into his pocket, retrieving the shard of crystal he had been carrying. He ran to Dalen, who was now sitting with his back against the door, his legs stretched out before him.
Shallow breath rasped its way out of the other man’s lungs. Dalen was fading fast. In a few moments, he would be gone.
Jim pressed the shard into Dalen’s palm and closed Dalen’s fingers around it. With a forceful squeeze, he shattered the crystal. A rainbow spread over Dalen’s body, up his arm, over his chest and head, all the way down to his boots.
The other man drew in a long gasp, blinking several times as lucidity returned to him. “What…What happened?” He pawed at his chest, but the bullet hole was gone, replaced by unblemished skin.
Dalen turned his gaze upon Jim, and his face lit up with a smile. “You saved me,” he whispered. “You saved me!”
“I couldn’t just let you-”
Before Jim could say another word, Dalen grabbed his shirt and pulled him close. His lips were the softest lips Jim had ever kissed, the warmth of his skin like the sweet caress of sunlight itself.
When it finally passed, Jim cleared his throat, a flush setting his face on fire. “Well,” he mumbled. “It’s nice to be appreciated.”
Silence hung in the air, broken only by the occasional distant scream. The bald man, a hulking figure with arms like tree trunks, lumbered across the square toward Desa. He made a fist, drawing his arm back as if he intended to pound her, but then – without warning – he fell to his knees and collapsed on the ground.
Desa blinked.
That was unexpected. It was as if the life had just drained right out of him, leaving him here like a discarded tool. A hush fell over the plaza. She could hear screams in the distance. The battle wasn’t going well. She had to-
Footsteps.
Desa whirled around to find a gray man on the East Road. This one wore a military uniform and carried one of those new revolver rifles with a nasty bayonet. His pale face had been drained of colour, but it was his eyes that caught her attention. At first glance, they were no different from any of the others – black from corner to corner – but she saw lucidity behind those eyes. Hanak Tuvar had taken direct control of this one.
The man lifted his gun, pointed it at her.
With a thought, Desa triggered the Force-Sink that she had Infused into her shirt buttons. The rifle went off with a flash, and then a bullet hung in the air before her. She let it fall to the ground a second later.
Once again, the dead soldier raised his gun.
Desa thrust her fist out, releasing a hair-thin stream of electricity from her ring, a jagged bolt that struck the rifle and jumped from that to the man’s body. He staggered.
Desa ran into the street, closing the distance in seconds, then jumped and kicked the fool in his chest. The man went stumbling backward, struggling to stay on his feet. She advanced on him, raising her knife and bringing it down in a swift, vertical arc.
The soldier lifted his rifle with both hands, parrying her strike by catching her blade on the barrel. He kicked Desa in the stomach, then spun for a hook-kick, his foot whirling around to clip her across the cheek.
Darkness filled her vision as the dizziness set in. She was barely aware of stumbling sideways and crashing into the front wall of a tanner’s shop. Sweet Mercy, the pain! It took everything she had to turn and face her enemy.
The soldier hoisted up his rifle, taking aim.
Screaming in ragged desperation, Desa lashed out with a blast of kinetic energy that knocked the man off his feet. He landed on his backside, the rifle going off and firing a bullet into the sky.
Undaunted, he stood up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Did you know,” he began in Hanak Tuvar’s chorus voice. “That when I take direct control of a body, I can manipulate your world?”
“Really?” Desa asked, striding into the middle of the road.
“Just like Adele.”
He stretched a hand toward her, and Desa heard a strange, crumbling sound. Like rocks being crushed with a hammer. Bricks flew out of the wall behind her.
Pulsing her Gravity-Sink, Desa jumped and let them fly past beneath her. She fell to the ground, then thrust out her hand with fingers splayed. Kinetic energy exploded from her ring, accelerating every single one of those bricks until they pelted the soldier like a hailstorm.
Desa charged in.
Recovering his wits, the soldier shook his head and then lifted his rifle for a shot that would take her right between the eyes.
Crouching down, Desa swung her knife up to strike the underside of his weapon, batting it aside before it went off with a roar. She stepped forward and drove her fist into his gut, winding him.
The man recoiled, drawing back his rifle, intending to use it like a spear. That wicked bayonet came at her.
Desa twisted out of
the way.
She kicked the side of his leg, forcing him down onto his knees, and then snuck around behind him. Grabbing a handful of his hair, she tilted his head back to expose his neck. Her knife flashed across his throat, spilling black blood onto his clothing.
Planting her boot between his shoulder blades, Desa forced the gray man down onto his belly. “You were saying?” she murmured. “Something about unlimited power?”
“This resistance serves no purpose.”
She looked up to find a gray woman in a billowy dress floating over the roof of the tanner’s shop. This one was tall and leggy with long, dark hair that fluttered in the wind. Like the soldier, her eyes were black. “Destroy one vessel,” she said with Hanak Tuvar’s voice. “And I will simply claim another.”
“Then come down here and fight.”
“Foolish child,” the woman said. “I grow weary of toying with you.”
She snapped her fingers.
The air became smoke, forming a thick cloud around Desa. It burned her lungs as she sucked it down. Within seconds, she was bent double and choking, clamping a hand over her mouth. She couldn’t stay here.
She triggered her Gravity-Sink and then jumped, shooting into the air at incredible speed. The cloud dissipated as she rose up to the rooftops. She gulped down fresh air with sharp, heaving gasps.
Her eyes had watered, but she could see her enemy on the other side of the road. The gray woman cast a hand down toward the cloud, projecting a streak of lightning that blasted the cobblestones.
She looked up, snarling at Desa.
Desa reached into her pocket, fished out the special coin and tossed it out the side. She triggered it for a surge of kinetic energy that sent her soaring back into the plaza. The gray woman followed.
Extending her hand, Desa recalled the coin and then killed her Sink. She landed on the slanted roofs on the north side of the square, shingles crunching under her boots. Fear blossomed within her. She had been unable to defeat one Adele. How was she supposed to stop dozens? Sooner or later, she would deplete her Infusions, and then she would be helpless. If only Mercy and Tommy could do their part before that happened. Carefully, she returned her knife to its sheath. It wouldn’t do her much good