Vulcan's Kittens (Children of Myth Book 1) (22 page)

The lines drew near one another, screaming in so many languages that none could be heard. She was far ahead of her own lines. She lined the arrow up with an immortal she recognized and let fly. She could hear the hiss of the arrow for a second, and then a moment later, Mars’ scream as it took his eye out.

“That’s for my children, you cretin!” she screamed. Then she was past him, shooting for all she was worth.

Chapter 30

Linn found feeding hungry goblins to be very satisfying. They weren't any more messy than the kittens, at least. When lunch had been consumed, Daffyd told her they were almost finished preparing the weapon.

“Go ahead and break camp, Linn.” He gripped her shoulder as she still sat on the ground. “We just need to install the warhead. With the solid-state fuel, there wasn’t a lot of deterioration. And you can help us move it outside, so it will be ready to launch if it’s needed.”

“What about this fog? Is it going to clear?”

“Not just yet. Should be alarming the personnel at Dillingham, though. There is never fog on the North Shore.”

Linn shook her head. She hadn’t known that. “Great. Now the humans will be looking into it, which will make the immortals curious.”

“Ach, don’t worry. They have no idea what Naiads can do. Or the Coblyns, for that matter. We came to this plane as servants. They ignore us rogues now.” He grinned, displaying sharp little teeth.

“I’ll get ready,” Linn promised. When they had gone back into the bunker she policed the area, making sure no traces remained of their brief stay. The tent that had been erected outside the shelter was still up, but she let the tent remain for now. With its shelter, she would at least able to pretend to be dry even after the bunker was resealed.

Blackie, who had been going onto forays into the woods, popped his head into the tent again.

“Hey, there. What have you been up to?”

He opened his mouth, closed it again, and then growled softly, deep in his throat. Alarmed, Linn got up. “What’s wrong?”

She followed him into the fog. He led her away from the bunker the Coblyns were working in. She had to trot to keep up with him, Lambent slapping against her thigh.

“Wait up!” she called to him. He was almost out of sight. Blackie stopped and looked back at her, his ears flat and tail lashing. She came up to him and placed a hand on his head. “Where are we going?”

He took her wrist gently in his mouth and led her forward. She was immediately aware they were walking up a steep incline. The fog got thicker, if that were possible. Linn drew in her breath. Blackie let go her hand, gave her a searching look, and then started to run. Almost without thought, Linn followed him.

The fog had become almost a tunnel, with tiny flashes of light sparking in her peripheral vision. It was also dark. Blackie could see where he was going, but she couldn’t. She unsheathed Lambent and held her up, glowing brightly. She kept running. She didn’t dare stop. This had to be the high path the immortals used, and Blackie was generating it.

She’d speculated that the high path was a form of quantum tunneling. That right now, her individual atoms were disassociated and they were running through everything else... Her skin crawled and she suppressed a sob of terror. She didn’t have the power to do this. She had to keep up with Blackie.

“Blackie, wait!” she cried.

He slowed and flicked a concerned glance back at her over his shoulder
.
When had the kitten developed those muscles in his skinny frame
?
she thought fleetingly.

Blackie kept moving. She kept running, Lambent a torch in the dark tunnel. She was acutely aware of the similarity to her dream. But she couldn’t stop.

Reality diverged from the dream when she was aware that she was falling. She lost sight of Blackie, but kept Lambent in her hand. She landed, stumbling to her knees and catching herself with her free hand. It was dark here, but the kind of dark that had stars overhead and a moon rising on the horizon.

“Blackie!” she screamed. Holding Lambent over her head, she looked for him. A cold wind flicked at her face, stinging her cheeks after the humid warmth of Hawaii. She didn’t know how far they had traveled.

She couldn’t see him in the dark. She stood still, her breath catching in her throat, trying to listen. She could hear the wind hissing through grass... Lowering Lambent, she could see that she was standing in a flat, level steppe type of grassland. She looked up at the moon. It wasn’t Earth’s moon. Rising fast, it was huge and rode low in the sky, lending a pale glow to the land below. She sheathed Lambent and called Blackie again, softly.

It occurred to her to focus and look for his power. She looked hard... and saw power everywhere. Flickering in patches and flares over the ground in more colors and combinations than she had seen before. Linn gasped and covered her eyes with her hands. She felt dizzy.

She forced herself to look again... Slowly, she looked for the bright blue that was Blackie. The movement caught her eye. There he was, slowly coming toward her. She started toward him, and then tripped over something yielding, landing in a sticky puddle. She looked back and almost screamed.

Flickering a little with muddy red power, there was a body lying there. From the power she knew he had to be an immortal, though he certainly looked dead. One of his arms was missing and there was black blood everywhere. Which is what she’d fallen in. She could smell it now.

Blackie bumped her with his nose. She wrapped her arms around his neck, trying not to cry. “What happened here?” she whispered in his furry ear.

He didn’t answer, not that she had expected him to. Instead he bumped her face with his nose and turned back in the direction he’d come from. She got to her feet and followed. In the moonlight she could see the sheen on his glossy coat.

She blinked until the power flickers faded from her sight. Now that she knew each of them was a body lying on the plain, she really didn’t want to see. She wondered what had happened here. Had this been the battle Grampa Heff had been preparing for?

Suddenly she heard a moan and stopped, looking around. She could hear it again... there... where Blackie was. He looked at her with glowing golden eyes, then lowered his head to where someone lay on the ground. Linn ran forward, dropping to her knees next to the injured immortal.

Blackie was washing his face clean. Linn nudged him aside and looked down into Bes’s face. She gasped.

Bess opened his eyes and looked up. “Aduro,” he whispered unseeing, then closed his eyes again. Linn started to cry. He was terribly wounded, his gut open to the moonlight. She didn’t know what an immortal could take, and his power... she focused. Instead of a flare she could barely stand to look at, he flickered faintly with white.

Linn held her hands over the worst wound and bit her lips. Blackie lowered his nose to touch her crossed hands. A flare of pink mixed with blue erupted from them and arced into Bes’ body. Linn whimpered. Even with Blackie, that had hurt.

Bes opened his eyes again. This time he was focusing. He stared up at them for a minute. Linn realized it was too dark for him to see her face. She slid Lambent out of her sheath and into her lap. The glow reflected off her face and she leaned over him, trying to smile.

“Bes?”

His eyes widened. “What. The. Hell...” he bit out with anger in his tone.

Linn flinched from the rage. “It’s me,” she told him hesitantly. Blackie licked his cheek, which was uncharacteristically stubbly. “And Blackie.”

“How did you two get here?” Bes whispered. “Is that really you?”

Linn could see the pain on his face. She wondered if she could do the power transfer thing again. She wasn’t sure what it did, but it seemed to have been helpful.

“Blackie brought me. I think it was the high path. We were just about done with...” She hesitated, not knowing who might still be listening “What we were working on,” she finished, feeling lame about that last answer.

“You ran the high path,” he repeated, looking stunned. He tried to lift a hand. Linn took it in hers. He was cold... she bit her lips in concern.

“Blackie...” She looked at her companion. “Can we do it again?”

“Do what again?” Bes asked.

She ignored him for the moment. Blackie moved around to the other side and extended his head over Bes’ body. Linn leaned over from the other side. They touched foreheads.

This time the glow of their power lasted a full minute. Twisting strands of blue and pink extended down into Bes until Linn could see his skin move and the wound closing. Then she started to pass out. Throwing herself to the side so she wouldn’t fall on Bes, her world dissolved into gray sparkling nothingness, and then to black.

She woke staring up at the moon, Blackie licking her face. She tried to sit up and fell back, too dizzy to manage. She turned her head and could see that she was inches from Bes. He was looking at her with a funny expression on his face. Still flat on his back, but the pain and tension had eased. She grayed out again. Bes said something, but she couldn’t make it out.

After a minute... or more, Linn couldn’t tell, she started to feel again. She hadn’t been completely out that time. It was more like she’d stepped away from her body for a minute. She took a deep breath, feeling her head spin. She gagged. The smell on the battlefield was bad and getting worse.

“Linn! Linn...” Bes’s urgent whisper got through to her. She opened her eyes and saw him trying to sit up.

“No!” She pushed herself up.

He slumped back. “Look...” He tried to point, his hand shaking.

She looked across his body at Blackie, who was standing, his face contorted into a silent snarl and his back hair standing on end. Linn staggered to her feet, Lambent in hand. Advancing toward them were three beings, black power boiling off them like a fog.

She faced them, Lambent in hand, feeling a snarl on her face as well. As they came closer, she could see that they walked on all fours, with a curious, limping gait. They stopped as they saw her, whining a little like dogs. One of them lifted his heavy head and sniffed the air.

He laughed, a long, high pitched chattering howl that set Linn’s teeth on edge.

“How... delicious,” he said in that high voice. “Look, my dears, a halfling and a kitten stand to protect our greatest enemy.”

All three of the hyenas started to laugh as they walked toward Linn and Blackie. Bes was still helpless on the ground. Linn cried out in fear. The miasma that surrounded them stank like long-dead flesh.

“Stop!” she screamed. “Go away from here!”

They stopped and whined, slinking low to the ground. “Hehe...the child wants us to be gone,” one said.

“Wants us to let her be...” another hissed.

“But we are so hungry...” the leader whimpered. “We want their juicy flesh.”

“Come closer and I’ll kill you,” Linn stated grimly, her jaw set.

“Oh, oooh...” moaned one, sinking to the ground and covering his face with his paws. Then he looked up, laughing. Linn could see the flash of his teeth in his open jaws.

“We are already dead...” he choked out.

Next to her, Blackie snarled a warning. The other two were trying to flank them.

“Zombie hyenas. What next?” Linn muttered. “At least I can hurt you.” she lunged, slashing with Lambent like she was swinging an axe. The glowing sword bit into the back of the leader’s neck with a meaty thunk.

He screamed a howl, hurling himself backward.

Linn, who had twisted the sword as she struck, rocked back on the balls or her feet. Another lunged at her, but Blackie leapt and bit deep in his throat, rolling him across the bloody plain. She let them go and pivoted toward the third hyena. He was slinking toward her. She shrieked and ran at him, swinging Lambent high over her head and then down at his skull. He tried to roll out of the way, but she slashed his throat open and one of his forelegs off entirely.

His high scream was almost human. Then he turned tail and ran across the plain.

Linn didn’t chase him, spinning instead to see the hyena Blackie had bitten break free and run away, too. The leader was nowhere in sight. Linn held Lambent high, flaring bright with power, and walked around Bes’ prone body, making sure they were really gone. The sword, covered in blood and bone bits, crackled and hissed.

Satisfied, she knelt and wiped the blade as clean as she could with a tuft of dry grass. She didn’t want that nasty stuff on her sword. Breathing deeply and trying to let the rage that had been coursing through her flow out again, she went to Bes.

Bending over him, she touched his forehead. His eyes were closed again. They fluttered open at her touch. He was warmer. She pulled her trembling hand back.

He gave her a little smile. “You are magnificent.”

Linn raised an eyebrow. “You’re delusional.”

He chuffed out a breath that might have been a laugh. “They won’t come back. Much easier prey than us out there tonight.”

Linn felt her shoulders relax. She had been so tense it hurt. “All right.”

She pulled off her jacket, shivering a little in the wind. She hadn’t brought her pack. She made a mental not to never leave it again. Twice, now, she had been caught without it. Spreading the thin windbreaker over Bes’ torso, she patted her pockets.