CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Things had declined significantly in the few minutes it took us to arrive at the outskirts of the chaos. The fire had spread from a couple buildings to a couple blocks. People were still trying to escape the area, fleeing through the streets in panic. Of course, some of the humans had decided this was the perfect time to loot the stores, and so most of the storefronts we passed had smashed-in windows and were being emptied out. As we walked deeper into the melee, people cast us strange and terrified glances, wondering no doubt why we were heading this way when everyone else was running their asses off in the opposite direction.
The usual human disaster management teams were on site—ambulances, city policemen, firefighters. They were no match for this type of emergency. The policemen seemed to know they were ineffectual against the supes, what with the witches casting spells, and the vamps and weres being too fast for human eyes. They seemed to have taken a strictly defensive position, simply trying to protect the paramedics and firefighters. Where the hell was the NHTF?
A block deeper into hell, I finally spotted them. “There’s Eli, with the task force.” I pointed, and we headed towards them.
Something whistled past my cheek. “Duck!” I yelled as a volley of darts flew towards us. We flattened ourselves to the pavement. “Supe tranquilizers,” I groaned.
“Stop!” Eli called. “They’re with me.”
I peeled myself off the pavement and ran to where he stood, jumping over the bodies of a couple supes who were either dead or tranquilized. “What are you doing here?” Eli yelled through the noise.
“We figured you could use some supes that hadn’t lost their freaking heads.” I put my hands on my hips. “Am I wrong?”
“No,” Eli said. “I’m glad you came. But you didn’t have to.”
“I know. What do you want us to do?”
“Quinn, can you put out these fires?” Eli asked, all business.
“Yeah,” she answered, looking around at the burning city. Without waiting for further instructions, she ran to the nearest fire and began blasting it with a pale icy shimmer of power from her fingertips.
“Riley and Zy, I need you two to arm yourselves with some darts and start taking down these rogue supes. With your speed, you should be able to tag more than the NHTF.” He led us over to a black van, where a woman was dispensing sleek black rifles. “You remember Commander Hunter?”
“Of course,” I said, nodding at the woman.
“I’m helping with the weapons since no portals have opened up yet,” Hunter said, seeming to feel a need to explain herself.
“Groovy. Load me up.” Was it my imagination, or did she cast a questioning look at Eli before handing me a rifle? Well shit, if that’s how it was going to be… “I’ll try not to kill too many civilians,” I said, turning back to catch her look of horror as I charged off into the crowd.
Riley caught up with me a moment later. “I’ve got your back,” he said.
“Cool, thanks.” I pointed to a spot in the middle of the street where we had a good vantage point in the thick of the riot. “Over there?”
“Yeah, looks good.”
We ran in a low crouch to the middle of the street and stood back to back. I fired off a couple shots and watched as a witch and a vamp hit the ground in convulsions. “Did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine you’d be shooting down supes in the street, with government tranq darts?”
“Definitely not,” Riley responded after taking down a werewolf that was charging a news reporter.
“This totally blows,” I added a moment later.
“That it does.”
It didn’t take long for the supes to realize we weren’t on their side. At first we’d just get charged one at a time, and could pick off the assailant easily. But apparently they decided to form a group and take care of us traitors together, because a pack of a couple dozen supes started moving in our direction. “Uh, bad news,” I called to Riley, who faced the other direction.
He cast a glance over his shoulder. “Understatement, Zy. We’d better move.”
We started to fall back towards the NHTF vehicles, since we needed to reload anyways, but it looked like another group was swarming in that direction. I heard a scream behind me and saw a vamp dragging Commander Hunter away from the van that held the guns. “Damn it! They’re getting our guns!”
We were still a ways off, and it seemed half the riot had suddenly moved between us and the van. I could see only flashes of what was happening—Eli racing in the direction they’d taken Hunter—what looked like a couple weres passing out rifles to their buddies—bringing down a couple angels with the darts. So the darts worked on Heaven’s creatures, too. Interesting.
Somehow we cut our way to the van, at the cost of the last of our darts. Time to get our hands dirty. I pulled out my sword, and Riley just used his brute strength. I cut down the weres passing out darts, trying to deal blows that weren’t fatal unless I had to. I had no doubt lies and coercion had led them to act in this way, and I didn’t think they deserved to die. Whoever was behind this did.
I grabbed a new gun and started spraying the crowd. Supes were falling left and right, but more just sprang up to replace them. It seemed they were seeping up out of the sewers, materializing from the shadows. The angels and NHTF members seemed to have gotten swept away in the surge of bodies, leaving me and Riley as the sole defenders of the weapons. Somehow this wasn’t how I’d imagined everything playing out.
Beside me, Riley let out a groan and grabbed his shoulder. “Zy,” he gasped, before sinking to the ground, where he began to shake like a dying fish. Then his body went limp and I saw the dart protruding from his shirt. With my foot, I rolled his body under the van the best I could while continuing to fire darts into the wave of supernaturals descending on me. There were too many of them. And they looked pretty pissed that I’d taken down so many of their friends. A miracle would be good right about now.
I felt the van rock behind me. Great. They were coming at me from both sides. I looked up in time to see a shadow fall over my face as a large figure jumped down at me. I fired off a shot, but the gun was knocked from my hand and the dart spun off harmlessly. My fist didn’t miss though. I slammed it into the jawbone of my attacker, and as his head whipped back I reached for my sword.
“Damn, Zy, is that any way to treat your knight in shining armor?” The familiar Irish brogue was honey to my ears.
“Donovan! What are you doing?” I retrieved my gun from the ground and began to fire again.
“I figured you’d be out here in the thick of the trouble. Mass chaos meets Zyan Star.” Donovan grabbed a rifle and tossed it to one of his pack members, who was coming around from the front of the van.
“Am I really that predictable?” I grinned up at him.
“Afraid so, my sweet.” He kept tossing out rifles. It looked like he’d brought his whole crew, about thirty in total.
“Well, you were right on time. I was about to bite the dust.” I shot off a couple rounds.
“You know I like to be fashionably late.” He picked up his own gun and began to fire. “We need to try to get these guys pushed back.” Donovan waved over a couple of his shifters. “Gather up five or so pack members to guard the weapons,” he told them. “We’re going to try to push forward and break the wave.”
“And watch Riley.” I pointed to his limp body under the van.
They nodded and quickly began to implement their instructions. We began to move forward, and now that I was no longer holed in, I could take stock of my surroundings. I could see the angels and the NHTF over to our right, trying to push through a large knot of supes like we were. The fires closest to us had died down, no doubt due to Quinn’s counteractive spells, but further down the street they raged steadily. Bodies littered the ground, most of them simply sedated, or so I hoped. Lying there slack-faced, it was hard to tell the humans from the vamps, witches and weres.
“That way,” Donovan said, pointing t
owards the NHTF. “If we can meet up with their line, we can form a net and round these guys up.”
I nodded and we began to shift our way over, taking down any rogue in our path. At the rate this was going, the bodies would be carpeting the entire street in the next few minutes. Somehow, even in the midst of all the sirens and flame and smoke and screams and gunfire, I felt a wave of sadness. Just for a moment. This shouldn’t be happening. We’d all coexisted with the humans for so long. And now everything was ruined. The media would run wild with the story, and more new laws would get implemented. We would carry this scar for a very long time.
We finally made it over to the NHTF. I caught sight of Eli again, and he met my eyes for a moment. Realizing what we were trying to do, the angels and NHTF agents formed a semi-circle with us and began to swing around the crowd, blocking in the majority of the rioters. Then, below my feet I felt something rumbling. Through the smoke, I could see more NHTF trucks headed towards us. Reinforcements had finally arrived. Seeing the cavalry roll in, some of the protestors raised their hands in surrender. Others at the back of the crowd darted off, blending into the smoke and shadows.
That’s when I spotted Quinn. On the far side of the intersection, taking rapid fire from two of the rogue witches. Not gunfire, but a witch’s ammunition. Spells. They must have spotted her cleaning up their arson. Sparks and glowing lights and colored swirls flew back and forth between them like fireworks on the Fourth of July. I watched in horror as a blast of red light hit Quinn full in the chest. She fell back onto the pavement, her head rolling to the side.
“Quinn!” I screamed.
Donovan shot me a bewildered look as I broke from the line and dashed off through the crowd. I didn’t even know if he’d heard me over the noise. Just like in one of those horribly frustrating dreams, everything seemed to move in slow motion, like running through deep mud. As I approached, the witches took off. I caught one of them in the back with a tranquilizer. My anger was so intense I wished it was steel.
I fell to my knees next to Quinn. Half the skin on her body was peeled off like she’d had some sort of acid thrown on her. And then I saw the blades. If that’s what they could be called. Twisted, jagged pieces of a glasslike material, sticking out all over her body. I didn’t know what kind of spell could do something like this, but it was some major black magic.
“Quinn,” I breathed. My hands hovered over her body. I wasn’t sure if I should try to pull out the shards or not. “What kind of magic is this? Tell me what to do…”
“Nothing,” she gasped, and with just that one word she coughed up a ton of blood. “You can’t… fix this.”
“No, there has to be something.” I didn’t want her to see the panic I knew filled my eyes. She was dying. I knew it and she knew it.
She shook her head and passed out.
I felt like my heart was going to explode. Spinning around, I dashed over to the witch I’d shot. “Wake up!” I grabbed her shoulders and shook her, knowing even before I tried that it would do no good. “God damn it!”
I ran back over to Quinn and started pulling the shards out. As I touched the first one, an agonizing burning shot up my hand, pulsing all the way to my shoulder. I yanked my hand back instinctively. It had to be part of the spell. Fucking black witches. I reached down again and pulled it out, biting my lip to keep from crying out. I noticed something black creeping up my fingertips. I grabbed another piece and flung it onto the sidewalk. This time the black shot up further, like hungry vines climbing towards my wrists. I ignored it and kept going, though I was starting to feel a little dizzy.
A big piece of metal was embedded right below Quinn’s heart. I took hold of it and pulled it out carefully. This time I felt a wave of dizziness so powerful I thought I would pass out. Quinn’s eyes fluttered open and she grabbed my wrist.
“D-don’t turn…” she drifted off. Her eyes closed, then opened again and she caught me in a firm gaze. “Don’t turn me to save me… I don’t want to be immortal.”
I fought back a sob. I didn’t even know if I could turn anyone—I’d never tried. But I would try for her. “I don’t know if I can save you otherwise.” A tear fought its way out of the corner of my eye.
“I know,” she said, trying to smile bravely, but tears traced down her cheeks, too. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. It’s not okay. You are not dying on me.” I ground my teeth together and squeezed her hand. “I have most of the glass out. Just hang in there…”
Quinn’s head rolled to the side again, but this time her chest stopped moving. “No, Quinn!” I pulled out more of the shards, but there were so many. Sliding my hands under her, I lifted her up and began to run. The ambulance sat two blocks away, and Quinn’s heart wasn’t beating.
Another wave of dizziness hit me, and my vision went black. Quinn started to slip and I realized my arms had gone numb. The black tendrils had spread almost all the way up to my shoulders now. I stumbled and fell to one knee. It couldn’t end like this. Not innocent, peaceful Quinn. Not like this. I staggered to my feet, only to feel both legs buckle beneath me.
And then Eli was there, taking Quinn out of my arms.
“Eli! She’s dying. You have to save her.” I paused, choking on my words. “She won’t let me…” I trailed off, my vision blurring again.
His lavender eyes seemed to glow. Or maybe I was just hallucinating. “She’s already gone, Zy.”
“Just try. Please, Eli, try.” I grabbed his hand, and a sob shook my chest. Then I wobbled and slid sideways onto the ground.
“What happened to you?” Eli asked, looking at my arms in alarm.
“Forget about that,” I gasped. “Help Quinn.”
He looked down at me a moment, still debating, then let go of my hand and laid Quinn on the ground. Bending over her, he laid his hands on her shoulders. A blue light began to pulsate around him, creating a fuzzy outline around his body. It spread to Quinn’s body, surrounding her like a second skin. As I watched, the remaining shards glowed black, then began to fizzle and dissolve. Fresh skin began to form over the spots where it had burned off. But her chest remained still, her face remained still.
“Come on, Quinn,” I whispered. “Fight!”
Eli continued to pour energy into her, but nothing was happening. I saw his lips moving. Was he praying? Or reciting some sort of healing incantation? Quinn’s body remained completely limp, and I noticed her skin seemed to have lost its color. She looked devoid of life. Dead. More tears escaped down my cheek. I’d told myself a long time ago I wouldn’t get attached to people like this anymore. Because they always died. But here I was, faced with mortality once again.
I saw Eli’s glow begin to fade, like a comet burning out. The light unwrapped itself from Quinn’s body, bleeding back into Eli’s light, which dissipated a moment later. In contrast to the light that had been there a second before, the night seemed more black than it ever had. He turned slowly to face me, his golden hair shining in the streetlights. His silence said more than his words could have.
“No.” I shook my head. “Not Quinn. She can’t be…”