Authors: Selene Edwards
Damien nodded. After another minute of staring at nothing, he decided it was time to just settle his mind and go to sleep. As he hopped on the bed, he caught Sariel’s figure slip past the doorway. She was supposed to be sleeping in the adjacent room…
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, standing again and heading for the door. He was suddenly glad he hadn’t bothered to disrobe.
By the time he caught up to her she was already in Avrick’s private cell, which seemed less and less necessary by the hour. Damien slowed his walk and just watched from his side of the two-way mirror. No one else was up and about at the moment, and he suddenly wondered what had compelled him to come out here and follow her. Perhaps he was afraid she was going to do something foolish. He knew how deeply she regretted involving everyone else in this, and he also knew how a large part of her had accepted her pending fate even if the others hadn’t.
But no, he was just rationalizing. He knew full well she wouldn’t just walk out and disappear. His reason had been far more juvenile, and it flared brighter than ever when he saw her lean over and kiss him.
He had already decided how nonsensical jealousy was for an Incubus, but it hadn’t done anything to quell the hollow feeling in his stomach. Nothing he had told himself did. He just had to live with it, and maybe that was what was so hard for him. He had never felt it before, and he had no idea what to do about it.
Damien closed his eyes and sighed to try and calm himself. It didn’t really work, but he did remember that he really was tired. Standing here and gawking at the two of them wasn’t going to help anything, and it was very possible it would instead make it worse. Sighing again to himself, he opened his eyes and started to turn—
And then the entire compound seemed like it was exploding. A thunderous blast shook the ground, soon followed by a barrage of muffled pulse fire. It was coming from the western section, and Damien flipped his head back to the cell.
His mouth fell open. Without warning, just as Sariel had turned towards the door, Avrick struck her down. It was a hard blow, precise and perfectly timed, and she collapsed like an empty sack. Damien was already running forward before his mind could catch up with what had happened. Seconds later he was at the door throwing it open—and realized he had no idea what he was going to do.
Avrick was crouched over Sariel’s body, reaching under her to pick her up, when his head snapped up at the noise from the door. Damien looked in the man’s eyes…and it was like staring at a completely different person than the one who had been here the last few days. Avrick’s entire face was blank, and his gaze was at once hollow and feral, like an animal acting purely on instinct.
Damien started to speak, but Avrick never gave him the chance as he pounced up from the floor with inhuman speed. Reflexively, Damien slammed the door closed. It smacked into the Chosen’s body but barely slowed him at all, and the force of the impact hurled Damien backward into the hallway. He hit the ground with a thud and tried to roll with his feet, but Avrick was already upon him, his limbs flailing in a precise frenzy.
Before Damien knew what was happening, he was pinned on the floor, the wind knocked from his stomach and his mouth dripping blood. In another second he knew he would be dead, his neck snapped or a dozen of his other bones broken. And so in the next moment when he felt the Chosen’s hands touch him, Damien unleashed his powers.
It almost wasn’t enough. Disoriented and wounded, Damien was actually surprised it worked at all, but in the split second before the Chosen broke his neck, the Incubus reached through Avrick’s skin and crawled into his mind. He pushed as hard as he could with all the pain he himself was feeling, creating a bond that forced the other man to share in his suffering. Avrick yelped and lurched, awkwardly breaking his grip, and Damien suddenly felt his own pain lessen—the breath returned to his lungs, and the ache in his jaw dulled to little more than a whimper.
He still had no idea what to do. Less than ten meters away, Sariel was either unconscious or dead, and the Chosen would recover from his disorientation soon enough. Damien had bought himself a few precious seconds only to realize he had nothing to do with them. He was a whore, not a soldier, and there was nothing to do but—
His thoughts were drowned out by another explosion of pulse fire. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, a cacophony of shattering windows and splintering wood. From both the western and eastern walls armed men blasted their way inside the building, the bright-blue bursts from their pulse rifles flashing like thunder across a black sky.
His mind finally caught up with what it all meant, and it hit him nearly as hard as Avrick’s fists only moments earlier: the Covenant had found them.
Damien lunged through the door for Sariel. It wasn’t a conscious decision; it was simply a reaction. Somehow he made it to her and quickly placed a hand on her neck. She was alive, which he should have expected. They wanted to capture her, not kill her. He had to get her out of here before they got the chance to do just that.
Avrick flipped around the corner, and Damien fell backwards, fully expecting the Chosen to pounce on him again. But he didn’t. Instead the man pressed himself against the inside of the door, breathing heavily, blood trickling from his nose and even from his eyes…
“You have to go,” Avrick said through clenched teeth, his entire body visibly shaking. “He can see through me. He knows you’re here, and he’ll keep coming.”
“How do you—”
“You have to go!” the Chosen screamed madly, one of his hands clenching at his face as if he were trying to tear something off. “Go…”
Damien had just started to reach for Sariel when the wall crumbled apart and an armored man swept around the corner, rifle in hand. The Incubus just stared in shock at the barrel, waiting for the inevitable searing death to come pouring out of it—
And then Avrick screamed and threw himself at the armed man. With one hand he jabbed the intruder’s face, and with the other he grabbed the rifle and wrenched it from his grip. The gun discharged into the ceiling several times, but it didn’t blast apart the tiles as Damien expected; it must have been on a low power setting, probably to let them take prisoners.
Damien threw himself protectively on top of Sariel, but he needn’t have bothered. The attacker was no match for a Chosen, and Avrick soon had a hold of the gun and fired two shots into his opponent’s chest.
“You have to go,” Avrick repeated, tears of blood now covering most of his face. “You have to save her.”
He thumbed the power setting on the rifle and flipped around the corner, firing a series of shots into the wall to his left. It exploded in a gout of flaming debris, and the Chosen dashed into the smoldering hole and began laying down fire into the adjoining alleyway.
Damien clenched his jaw and swept the Angel up in his arms. He might not have been a warrior, but he knew what he had to do.
He threw himself past Avrick and out into the nighttime air of Solace. A few shots streaked towards them as a handful of straggling attackers outside tried to stop them, but Avrick’s rifle answered theirs and provided effective enough cover.
Minutes later the only sound was Damien’s heart pounding in his ears. He had no plan, no destination, but it didn’t matter. He had her, and the Covenant did not. Together they would figure something out.
They had to.
***
Despite the bustle of evening crowds and ever-present hum of dense traffic, the explosions were loud enough to be heard several blocks away. Most people in the residential area where the compound was located were probably asleep when the attack came, but Kronn doubted many of them were anymore. By the time he and Shyrah had a visual of the compound from a long, narrow alleyway to the north, he knew they were probably too late.
“Rifles and heavy weapons,” Shyrah muttered as she pressed herself against a wall and glimpsed out towards the now flaming structure some fifty meters away. “Mercenaries, probably Beren’s.
“Likely,” Kronn agreed, doing his best to push down the increasingly immovable tide of guilt. In this case it wasn’t just the betrayal, but the fact he had actually started to trust the young Chosen. But how had they managed to track him…?
“Where the hell are Stanson and the others?”
He let out a frustrated burst of air through his teeth. “Still a few minutes out at least. I can’t imagine ESI will take more than another ten. If they bring in the local police, probably half that.”
“We’re not leaving them,” she said, shaking her head, her knuckles white around where they gripped her pistol. “No way in hell.”
“I know,” he agreed, “but we don’t have time to wait. If they are just thugs from Beren, they probably won’t have much in the way of rear guard scouts. We need to move now.”
“Then let’s go.”
With that, she was off, moving as fast as she could while still trying to stay half-crouched and relatively quiet. Kronn followed, glancing down at the small hand pistol he had taken off one of the ESI agents. It was incredibly portable and still packed a respectable punch, but if the mercenaries had any type of armor, it just wasn’t going to cut it.
Still, all in all that was probably the least of their problems right now. In another place and time, he would just suggest they get the hell out of here while they could. From a purely rational standpoint, the vast majority of his people were still safely tucked away in their new base, and no good would come of the two of them getting shot or captured in a vain rescue attempt.
But then, he had long thrown rationality out the window. Some of his best people were down there, including the Angel who was the key to everything. Even if they were all going to want to kill him when they found out what he had done, he still wasn’t going to abandon them.
Shyrah dropped into a crouch behind a dumpster and peered over it as Kronn settled in next to her, his eyes sweeping the rooftops for any potential scouts the Covenant had left behind.
“They blasted in on several sides,” she told him. “That pulse fire is coming from the south-side, and it looks like they’ve already quelled any resistance here.”
“How many?”
“I can’t see inside, but I’m guessing at least a half-dozen…” she trailed off and frowned. “A few of them are starting to sweep around outside towards the east. Stanson’s squad?”
“Maybe,” Kronn murmured, biting down hard on his lip and wished he had brought his earpiece com unit to the meeting. He had his phone, but that wasn’t going to help much with real-time updates. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, it’s probably our best chance to slip—”
He cut himself off at the flicker of movement above him. He caught the half-profile of a man on the rooftops in the dim lightning, his rifle quickly tracking down towards their position. Kronn flicked up with his small pistol, dimly aware that he was almost a full second behind the other man and certain it would end in searing agony—
A shot from Shyrah’s pistol caught the attacker squarely in his helmet, and Kronn’s own shot pieced his shoulder a second later. The rifle still fired, but the shot went well wide and blasted out a chunk of the brick building next to them. The body crumpled off the roof and landed only a few meters away.
“Amateurs,” Shyrah sneered. “Definitely Beren’s thugs or some other local gang, not real soldiers.”
Kronn leapt over to the body and grabbed a hold of the rifle. “They’re armed well enough.” On impulse, he picked up the smoldering helmet and looked past the blistered face inside of it, then smiled. At least they had a little luck with them. “His com unit is still intact.”
“So what the hell is going on out there?”
Kronn held up a finger as he tried to listen in. The unit was part of the helmet, unfortunately, and he wasn’t going to lug it around. “Something on the north side is pinning them down. Apparently a few escaped…Sariel, by the sound of it.”
“Good,” she said. “If they were trying to capture any of the others, they’ll probably be grouped up in the base with whatever few men they leave behind. It’s our best chance.”
Kronn nodded and brought himself to his feet, trying not to think about Stansion’s squad or the ESI team that was undoubtedly in route. Even if they did find survivors, they weren’t going to have much time to get them out—not if they didn’t want to end up in a cell, anyway.
“Let’s go,” he said, and the two of them raced down towards the compound.
***
The wall buckled as three more pulse blasts blew out its supports and sprayed the entire room with flaming bits of wood and plaster. Avrick squinted against the brilliant flash, but fortunately he was no longer using that wall for cover. From the opposite wall he spun around the edge and fired his own barrage. Two of the shots splashed more or less harmlessly against a brick wall, but the third caught one of his attackers in the chest. Another gun went silent.