A Dome of Blood
Page 27
“Oh, crap,” Zeriel murmured, his gaze fixed on Vesta.
“What? What’s happening to her?” I asked, increasingly alarmed, as she twitched a couple of times.
“It’s the Hermessi,” Ben replied. “The water Hermessi, to be precise.”
As if manipulated by puppet strings, Vesta clumsily got herself up into a standing position and opened her eyes. They were strange, pasty white and glimmering. I’d never seen anything like it before. Her voice was raspy and low, completely different from Vesta’s usual sound.
“Aya… You’re back,” Lumi said.
Vesta, or, better said, Aya, looked at Lumi and nodded once.
“You’ve done well,” she said. “One night is left between us and the full moon. Once it reaches its highest point in the sky, tomorrow night, we will awaken and course through this world with our full strength, just like in the ancient times.”
“Is that why you’ve taken over Vesta again? To tell us what we already know?” Zeriel retorted, clearly unhappy with this development. Then again, he was head over heels with our Nerakian fae. This was personal to him.
Aya coughed lightly, water still trickling from her mouth. “No, Tritone King. I’ve come because we will not be able to do anything tomorrow night if the Perfects get to your fae before you.”
“We’re getting ready to go after them now,” Ben replied.
“You must hurry,” Aya said, her brows furrowed. “Even when they’re not looking, the Perfects have eyes in the sky. We felt your diversion. We did our best to help, as dormant as we are. But there is only so much we can do, going forward. Soon enough, Ta’Zan will send people after your fae, if he hasn’t already.”
“Whoa. Eyes in the sky,” Dmitri repeated after her, and cursed under his breath. “Crap. Crap! Scanners. They’ve got scanners. They’re monitoring air traffic, so to speak. Argh!”
“Which means our fae aren’t safe where they landed,” Elonora concluded. “But even if, say, Ta’Zan captures them, we’ll still have one thousand and one fae on Strava. It’s still good for your activation ritual, or whatever, right?”
Aya cocked her head to the side. “Can you guarantee that all the seven hundred and forty-two fae out there will survive capture? How many will fight back? How many will get killed? You cannot be certain of anything right now.”
“They might not deem all the fae necessary for Ta’Zan’s work,” Sofia replied. “He’d have enough genetic material from a couple-dozen of them, so the Perfects would be given some leeway in killing some of them. They would be labelled as invaders or, worse, the creatures responsible for the colosseum’s explosion. They’re with us, after all.”
“Even if one fae dies, we will not be able to fully awaken,” Aya warned us. “You must hurry. You must go to their rescue and make sure they’re all standing when midnight comes tomorrow. From there on, we’ll take over and finish this, once and for all. We’ll help our Fire brother cleanse this world. Believe it or not, I’m aching. My oceans are suffering. They’re slaughtering my pashmiri whales to fuel their warmongering…”
Just as Vesta dropped on the ground again, and the equivalent of a small pond poured out of her and seeped into the hard ground, I fully understood the gravity of our situation. And, as Vesta came to in Zeriel’s arms, I knew we couldn’t waste another second.
“Rose, Ben, Elonora, Nevis, Kailani, Hunter, Lumi, and Heath,” I said. “Grab whatever weapons and supplies you need. You’re coming with Sofia and me. We’ve got some fae to rescue.”
“I’ll take Dmitri, Zeriel, Vesta, Jax, Hansa, Jovi, and Anjani, then, and go find Amane, Amal, Douma, and the others,” Ridan replied firmly.
We gave each other an approving nod.
Trouble lay ahead, and we had to beat it to the punch. If Ta’Zan had eyes in the sky, the colosseum distraction was only a limited one, at best. Sooner or later, someone would go out in search of the small ball of light that had pierced Strava’s atmosphere, headed for the summer-winter cluster.
Hell, Perfects could be converging on our fae already!
But I wasn’t ready or willing to let them screw this up for us. Whether they liked it or not, we were going to change the fate of this planet. We were going to save our people, our worlds and theirs. Ta’Zan wasn’t going to emerge victorious from all this—I could stake my life on it.
Amane
Douma’s pained groans snapped me out of the darkness into which I’d sunk.
We’d made it out of the colosseum, with Douma and Raphael holding me, Amal, and Isda as we’d shot between the jungle trees. But the blast’s shockwave had caught up with us. It tore into us, to be specific.
I remembered Amal, Raphael, and myself smashing one of the thicker trees in our fall. Then, everything had gone black.
My eyes popped open. Fluttering wings swarmed somewhere above us. I looked up, thankful to see the foliage obscuring my view of the sky. Perfects were flying above, and they couldn’t see us down here. Not for long, though.
I tried to move, but a sharp pain in my chest made my breath hitch.
“Amane… Amane, are you okay?” I heard my sister ask me.
I turned my head to follow the sound of her voice. She was ten feet away from me, lying on the ground. Between us was the splintered tree we’d crashed into. Sharp pieces of it were still standing, and Raphael was impaled on one.
“Oh, no,” I murmured, ignoring my own pain as I managed to pull myself up into a sitting position. “Raphael!”
“Argh, I’m okay,” he croaked. “It didn’t hit the spine. I’ll be fine.”
“You would’ve been fine anyway. You’re a Perfect!” I snapped, holding my side.
Glancing around, I remembered the device in my backpack. With sluggish moves, I managed to take it off and look inside. I breathed a sigh of relief, then smiled at Amal.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Some minor parts came off, but nothing we can’t put back together. We’ve got it.”
“Thank the heavens and the stars.” She sighed, then got up.
Her knees were weak. I could tell from the way her legs were shaking. She was covered in bruises and cuts, much like me, and she’d probably cracked a bone or two, somewhere inside, but she wasn’t going to let that get between her and our mission.
Heck, that made two of us. We reached Raphael, carefully analyzing the spike on which he’d gotten himself impaled.
“I got stuck in the crash,” he said, breathing heavily. “Pretty sure I’m bleeding out.”
“Yeah, you can say that again,” Amal murmured, following a stream of crimson blood pouring out from his wound. “We need to get you off it before you die, so you can heal faster.”
I climbed over the gnarly tree base and gripped the lower half of the spike. Amal knew what to do next, though Raphael didn’t seem happy about it.
“Oh, this is going to hurt like a—” He didn’t get to finish his sentence. He roared from the agonizing pain instead, as Amal grabbed the tip of the spike and pulled as hard as she could, until it snapped off clean.
Raphael tumbled onto the ground, the upper half of the spike still piercing through him. I rushed over and dropped to my knees, tearing up from my own injuries. I covered his mouth, while Amal did the dirty part of the job and pulled the spike out through his back. We managed to stifle most of his screams.
Blood sprayed out from the gaping wound, which Amal was quick to cover with torn pieces from her tunic. I ripped my sleeves off and handed them to her, while Raphael did his best to measure his breathing. There wasn’t much we could to for him in terms of pain relief, and he knew it. He was temporarily disabled, and that pretty much sucked for us.
“Isda? Douma?” he called out, and I shushed him.
“Hold on,” I hissed. “I heard them earlier. Hold on,” I added, then looked at Amal. “Stay with him.”
She nodded, and I turned around and went back to where I’d woken up. I’d definitely heard Douma grunting here. Not far from where we were, th
e colosseum had crumbled. Most of it, anyway. The smoke was spreading outward through the jungle, making it harder for me to see ten feet in front of me.
The constant fluttering of wings didn’t help. Thousands of hostiles were close by, probably minutes away from discovering us. We couldn’t stay here. We had to get as far away as possible, but I didn’t want to leave Douma and Isda behind.
I moved around, checking every shrub and bush in my path, until I tripped over Isda. I hadn’t even seen her—the dark green dress she’d been wearing worked well as camouflage, especially with the thickening smoke hanging around.
“Isda. Isda!” I whispered, then gently turned her over.
Her eyes were closed, but she gave me a responsive moan.
“Isda! Are you okay?” I asked.
“Amane…” Douma’s voice came through from my left.
She, too, had crashed into a tree. She’d taken the whole thing down from the root. The trunk was practically intact and toppled, its twisting roots torn from the ground. She lay on her side, covered in blood. A branch had punctured her side, but she mostly had cuts and bruises to deal with.
I reached her in two jumps that cut the air from my lungs—I’d fractured a couple of ribs, for sure. Tearing another piece of my tunic, I quickly cleaned off some of the blood from her face, enough to spot the source: a couple of deeper cuts on her temple.
“You’ll be fine,” I said to her. “You’ll be okay.”
“Yeah… I’m just sore. I took the tree first. Couldn’t let Isda…” Her voice trailed off.
She shot to her feet like lightning, accidentally tossing me backward in the process. She looked around, then dashed toward Isda.
“Hey… Hey, Isda. Wake up,” Douma murmured, taking Isda in her arms.
I swallowed a curse I’d planned to hurl at Douma for knocking me over, mainly because I was too thankful to see her still walking and talking. Isda was trying to wake up, but her eyes kept closing, her head lolling as if she were a mere rag doll.
Douma picked her up and went straight to Raphael and Amal. I joined them, carefully moving over stumps and rising tree roots, so as not to cause myself unnecessary pain. Some healing paste would’ve worked wonders right about now, but there were no Shadians around to help us.
“They’re probably waiting for us,” I said. “The device. They need the device.”
“We need to get out of here, first,” Raphael replied, now standing with his arm around my sister’s shoulders. Amal grimaced from the pain, but she didn’t say anything as she helped prop Raphael up.
Branches broke, too close for my comfort.
“They’ll be scouring the area for survivors and culprits,” Douma said. “They’re angry and confused. We delivered one hell of a blow, this time.”
A bloodcurdling roar erupted from the colosseum, about half a mile from where we’d landed. I knew that sound. I recognized the rage, the raw anger and despair.
“Ta’Zan,” I whispered.
“He’s awake,” Amal replied, equally shaken.
Perfects were getting closer. I could see some of them darting between the trees. Maybe a couple hundred feet away, coming from multiple directions.
“We need to go, now!” Raphael insisted.
“Where, though?” I asked. “We can’t go to base camp right now. They’ll be tailing us. We can’t lead them to the prisoners we just stole from them.”
“We can’t get caught, either, with this device on us,” Douma replied.
Raphael shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We need to get off this island first. Find a place to hide for a bit. Then regroup.”
As broken and as weary as we were, we did the impossible. We started running, though not as fast as we would’ve wanted. Then again, we’d lost some blood, torn some muscles, broken a bone or two. It was a miracle we could do this much, thanks to the adrenaline rush.
Behind us, the Perfects were getting closer. Dangerously so.
Douma pressed her earpiece button. “Dmitri? Elonora? Rose?”
She frowned as we kept running west.
“What, no answer?” Amal asked.
“No sound at all. I don’t think the comms are working,” Douma replied.
I checked my earpiece next. “Ridan? Rose? Anyone?”
Nothing. Douma was right. There wasn’t even static. It was as quiet as a grave, and it made my stomach churn.
“The earpieces are intact, though,” Douma murmured, with Isda thrown over her shoulder. “It can’t be a technical issue.”
Amal exhaled. “Ta’Zan was rebuilding the comms blocker. Maybe he succeeded.”
“What, in the middle of the explosion?” I asked incredulously.
“Or shortly before. Or after. I don’t know,” Amal replied. “Point is, comms are down, as far as we’re concerned.”
“The fae must’ve landed. The prisoners surely made it out. That leaves us in the wind,” Raphael breathed. “We’ve got to save our asses first, then figure a way back to the others.”
I agreed, already panting. Sweat dripped down my face and neck, soaking what was left of my tunic. We heard voices about a hundred feet behind us. The Perfects were catching up with us. They were barking orders.
They’d caught our scent.
But I couldn’t stop. None of us had any intention of giving up right now.
We’d come too far. Yes, we were all in tremendous amounts of pain. Yes, it was damn hard running with cracked ribs and bruised ankles. Yes, we had to give it everything we had left in order to not get ourselves captured again.
I was going to see Ridan soon. We were going to be together. Free and happy.
We had to keep going.
No matter what.
* * *
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