To his surprise, the Noxblade stood down, just as she had ordered. By Ded’s tension, he hadn’t expected that to work either. They swapped looks over the good doctor’s head and Alastor shrugged. He had no idea how exactly dominance played out, especially between Animari and Eldritch. Back in Golgerra, that wouldn’t have ended without a blood battle, but possibly since Gavriel was used to taking orders from a female, he was more likely to accept direction from an unranked woman.
Ded stepped up beside him to whisper, “She is… impressive.”
“She’s not involved in this.”
That, he had to make crystal clear. As his personal physician, Dr. Halek was not a combatant, not part of the force he was assembling. He didn’t want her getting pulled in, and whatever he could do to protect her from what was to come—well, it likely wouldn’t be much. But at least he could establish that she was answerable only to him.
He was about to say something when she touched him. Again. The heat from her palm warmed his arm, a pleasurable shock that soothed raw nerves. “Don’t.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t make a big deal of my role. I don’t know what you’re planning to say, but just keep quiet. It’s nobody’s business.”
For a few seconds, he studied her and realized that she was trying to protect him. She must suspect that it would compromise his capacity to lead, if his infirmity became common knowledge among the Eldritch. “Then… they may think you’ve signed on as the company medic.”
Dr. Halek shrugged. “That’s fine. It’s not like I’d refuse to treat a patient anyway.”
Despite a slow-percolating warmth due to her unexpected loyalty, he tried one last time to make her see reason. “I’m concerned for your reputation. In this scenario, there’s no excuse for the time we’ll spend sequestered together. They may draw… certain conclusions.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass if the world assumes I’m your woman. Knowing the truth is enough for me when I have a job to do.”
5.
It was snowing when Sheyla left the hold, a fine dusting that would accumulate over time. While it was miserable for a march, the weather might cover their tracks. A group this size was vulnerable, too large to vanish into the wilderness, too small to prevail if Tycho’s forces found them, so she’d be lying if she claimed no measure of fear. Yet nobody hesitated over following Prince Alastor into the swirling white, carrying their worlds on their backs.
I probably should have asked more questions.
She picked up the pace and tried not to focus on the fact that she was the lone Animari among Eldritch and Golgoth. Prince Alastor was flanked by his immense bodyguard and the ethereal woman who sometimes stared at Sheyla too long. As she approached, the female yielded her spot first, and then the soldier did.
She ignored that in favoring of inquiring, “How far is it to the rendezvous?”
“Five days if the weather doesn’t worsen.”
“You discussed the pros and cons of traveling like this?” She knew transformation took longer for the Golgoth and it seemed to be painful.
He lowered his voice to the point that it would be impossible for anyone to overhear. Even with her sharp senses, Sheyla had to tilt her head toward him. “The Eldritch couldn’t keep up otherwise, and we need their aid. This is the start of an alliance and likely a test.”
“Of whether you’ve truly committed to killing your brother?” No point in seeking gentler words, but for the first time, she realized that pain must accompany the prince’s resolve.
If Zaran turned for the worst, it would be difficult to hate him entirely, and if she could because of all the evil he’d done, there was no changing that they were flesh and blood, connected down to the bone. As Alastor met her gaze, a little shock ran through her. This had nothing to do with his physical health, so she shouldn’t want to comfort him. With effort, she curled her hands onto the straps supporting her pack.
“Likely, yes.”
“And are you?”
His sigh puffed out in a smoky cloud, carried off by the wind. “Committed? Yes. I can’t guarantee I’ll succeed, mind you. I only know that I must try.”
“You are so brave.” She didn’t mean to compliment him. Yet the words slipped out, and even the tone embarrassed her. Part of her feared he might take the words wrong, assuming she meant his illness, but she was referring to the war effort.
“No.” Already shaking his head, he wore a rueful smile, the one that let him pretend he was simply a clown. “I’m not. I never have been. But you make me want to be.”
Before Sheyla could ask what he meant, the Noxblade stepped up on his other side. “My scouts are reporting enemy movements, less than a klick out. To avoid them, we must reroute.”
“That will delay our arrival at the rally point, yes?”
“Probable,” Gavriel agreed.
“How big is the group?”
“Twenty-five or so. I think they’re keeping tabs on the hold from a safe distance.”
It was fascinating to watch the prince weigh all the factors; she could even read the tenor of his thoughts as they raced. “Do they have any resources we could use?”
“Other than food and basic camp supplies, they’ve got a communications array and a fully functional RVAC.”
Radial Vector Auto Cannon—that was a killing machine, capable of laying waste to an entire town. The idea that there was a group of Golgoth brutes so close, ready to lay waste to the hold, made her want to run back the way they’d come and warn her family.
Alastor’s attention sharpened. “Platform or shoulder mounted?”
“Platform, though I suspect we could field mod it, if one of your men is strong enough to tote the thing.”
“That won’t be an issue,” the prince said. “We just need to take it.”
A little shiver ran down Sheyla’s back, nothing to do with the weather. People said that the Golgoth were brutal to the core, but she’d never glimpsed it in Prince Alastor before. He gazed at her askance, seeming to gauge something of her thoughts, but he didn’t respond. She tried to back away from that reflexive fear since it didn’t seem rational. The Eldritch and Golgoth likely had prejudices that the Animari were mindless animals.
“Then you wish to engage?” the Noxblade confirmed.
“Circumnavigating will take too long and we can’t leave that RVAC. Two birds, one stone. Is an ambush viable?”
“Definitely.”
The details came together fast; the Eldritch would lure the enemy in—small numbers, good bait—and the Golgoth would strike from behind. While Sheyla didn’t want to fight, she also snarled over being instructed to hide, tucked away like part of the provisions. Fortunately, her ego wasn’t large enough to impede progress with pointless protest and she well-understood that her skills would come in handy after the battle.
“I’ll keep watch over our gear,” she promised, as the prince seemed inclined to linger.
His scowl was instantaneous. “I’m concerned about you. At the first glimpse of trouble, shift and run. It’ll be easier to hide as a cat.”
While that was true, it wasn’t his place to concern himself with her survival. “I think you’ve forgotten—”
He silenced her with a gloved fingertip across her mouth. “Yes, you’re in charge of my care. But I’m responsible for everyone here. Stay safe, Dr. Halek.”
As he rushed away, she thought, I should have bitten him.
That thought lost most of its rancor as the Golgoth stripped in the winter chill. It wasn’t that she’d never seen an emergency transformation before, but there was a gravity in how the prince and his Exiles approached it, none of the casual joy present in the Animari. She guessed that the Golgoth were less comfortable in their skin; perhaps they had even been taught this was something that should be hidden, like a monster rising from the depths. And that simply wasn’t true. For that reason alone, she didn’t look away as Alastor skimmed out of his trousers.
Like he’d
said in her office, he bore no scars from those seventeen surgeries. He was snowy pale, so fair that he could be an alabaster statue. Sheyla had rarely found beauty framed so, as pallor often presaged illness. From time to time, when she took someone to her bed, they were usually bronze or darker—not a rule, just a preference. Still, she didn’t turn aside even when the prince’s gaze met hers. This felt like a moment where he needed her to bear witness. She couldn’t have said why, but she had faith in her instincts.
Usually, she paired intuition with the scientific method, but today, there was nothing to investigate except the brightening green of his eyes. They were like magic lanterns that blazed in the chill austerity of his etched features. Others might see his face and think such things as ‘handsome’ or ‘sculpted’; Sheyla saw the compression of lips starting to turn blue, the vague imprint of pain discernable to someone who knew how to find its traces.
Then he shifted. It was a violence, all twisting, lurching, broken skin, and actual blood. She had seen live creatures being born that looked gentler than this. A fine crimson mist dotted the snow at his feet, the smell of copper permeating the crisp air. Inhaling, she drew him in, essence of Alastor and new-minted coins. The others took their cue from him, though they must be more practiced, as there was less blood, less pain. That struggle might result from his illness, she supposed, though it wasn’t the time to inquire.
Some of the Golgoth were beautiful and terrible, like demonic angels. Her gaze lingered on Rowena, hovering above the rest on black-webbed wings. With maroon leathery skin and a barbed tail, she resembled an old depiction of a succubus, a devil woman who feasted on the life energies of those she took to her bed.
Yet Sheyla’s gaze returned to Alastor as if drawn by a lure. Transformed, he was still silver-pale, scaled like a lizard, and massive as she could never have imagined. The reptilian face, elongated jaw, razor-sharp teeth, and claws took her attention first, and Sheyla noted the dorsal spikes and ventral plating later. This creature was a walking weapon. Only his eyes gave any hint who he was, still green and luminous, but they were changed too, more like a serpent. She wondered if they could speak during transformation—as the Animari could not—and this curiosity was answered when he uttered a series of clicks and hisses, intelligible to his people, apparently, but nobody else.
Alastor came to her on arched, clawed feet, and placed his clothes in her arms, a gesture that felt symbolic, somehow. She didn’t understand the words when he spoke, even less when he pressed his thumb against her bare wrist and left a red imprint on her skin. The Eldritch and Golgoth rolled out, one group in silence and the others in a deafening horde, leaving her with inexplicably breathless dread and her heart thundering in her ears.
“Was that wise?” Ded asked.
Alastor didn’t care, and let that show with a snarl that took the place of a shrug. The Animari wouldn’t know what that mark meant; it was enough that his people did. As a result, they would afford her all courtesy and she’d said she didn’t mind what stories circulated about them. Time would tell whether that was true. Or hell, Ded might be talking about something else—the battle, him leading the troops personally… the guard tended to worry.
No time for that.
Snow crunched underfoot as he ran. The world came at him, no color, sharper lines, and the smells that danced on the wind. He opened his mouth to savor them. Even at this remove, he could taste Dr. Halek in the air, crisp, and apple-sweet. There would be a reckoning for this transformation; there always was. But in this form, he couldn’t feel it, only strength, sufficient to flip Rovers and uproot trees. The longer he stayed like this, the more he wanted to inflict that damage… and maybe that explained everything about Tycho. Instead of taking those impulses as a warning, he embraced them soul-deep, so he carried them in either skin.
With Rowena scouting, they reached their coordinates without running into trouble. Now they just had to wait for the Eldritch to do their part. If his skin wasn’t so thick, he’d be feeling the cold, but thanks to natural body armor, it was no more than a vague discomfort. He crouched, encouraging the others to do the same. Most couldn’t blend into the landscape, but staying low was better than nothing. If they had more time, he’d suggest digging in.
No more than half an hour had passed when he heard the first signs of pursuit. It wouldn’t be the Eldritch; should be the Golgoth chasing them. Alastor pointed and hissed orders, and his troops obeyed so fast, it shamed him. That shame was a multi-tentacle beast, born of their unswerving devotion and his regret at killing his own people. Ignoring it, he rose and struck the nearest Golgoth from behind.
They didn’t even shift.
Tycho must not have warned them how dangerous the Eldritch could be, about the broken alliance, or Alastor’s defection, so they left the RVAC and tried to run the Noxblades down. But the Eldritch were shadows in the wood, and now the blood was everywhere: his face, his claws, black against the snow through these eyes, though he knew it was red. Some tried to transform, but they were too slow.
Rowena almost decapitated one, his head flopping backwards of a flap of skin. Ded snarled a warning and Alastor spun just in time to block a glancing blow. This wasn’t a fight so much as butchery. Despite his roiling stomach, he fought on. No need to drag things out. The sound of a ballistic weapon startled him, more when the bullet bit into his arm. He lunged at the idiot who had shot him. By his third kill, he didn’t mind the blood or the smell. Violence sang in him like some celestial choir. Each slash, push, pull, thrust, impalement felt good, righteous, even. A few more fights like this and he might be worthy of—
What?
Ruling the Golgoth.
The desire felt so wrong, so alien, that he came back to his proper mind and saw the corpses piled. A few were still twitching, and his men were putting them down with more enjoyment than he trusted. Even Rowena was crouched over her last victim, claws sunk in to feel the last trickle of blood from a desperate and dying heart. He clicked a warning so sharp that they all straightened.
“We bury them and then we move.”
They got to work without looking at him, a sign of shame at getting lost in the bloodlust, but he could scarcely blame them for it. Not when it took him as well. He shoveled his share of snow, mounding it until it hid the worst of the carnage. Afterward, he took them past the half-frozen river, a detour, but he couldn’t bring his group back to camp like this.
“We bathe. We wash it away.”
The soldiers understood the order. They didn’t whine. This was penance for losing control, and they all deserved it. That bastard Gavriel already didn’t approve of this alliance. If he saw how brutal even the rebel Golgoth could be—well, Alastor couldn’t have him running back to Princess Thalia with a reason to back out. No, this had to work; the peace had to hold and they must reach the rendezvous point to join forces with Pine Ridge and Burnt Amber. He felt like he was building a bridge out of fir needles, but that didn’t mean he’d stop.
Alastor ran, ignoring the chill, the pain in his left arm. At this point, he only knew that Dr. Halek was waiting in the cold. Not shifted in protective feline form, either. She must be frozen… and furious. That drive kept him from the tide of mayhem, the yearning to ride the destructive wave all the way out to sea. But the hiding spot where he’d left his doctor held nothing at all. Their things were gone as well, a fact that made no sense, but his brain wasn’t functioning well, neurons filling with rage and a need to see something—anything—burn.
As he fought to get a breath through the tightness in his chest, not sickness, but pure, visceral fear, the Eldritch leader stepped out of the shadows. “She’s gone with my men. We have the RVAC and we’re setting up camp, ten kilometers away.”
It was just as well this asshole didn’t speak base Gol, what they called their shifted tongue. Because he spat choice curses before indicating that he understood with the universal gesture of ‘lead on’. The Eldritch set the pace, and it was brutal, a full-on sprint as the
sun went down. Even through his natural armor, it was devastatingly cold. His feet burned with it, ice encrusted on his toe claws. At least the raw discomfort kept him from further violence.
Half an hour later, thanks to Gavriel’s good navigation and Golgoth stamina, they reached the campsite. Tents had already been erected, including one that the Eldritch indicated. “That’s yours. Up to you if you want to share.”
Then the asshole flicked a look at Rowena, who had suffered a little on foot. She wasn’t used to running hard, but it had been impossible for her to keep them in sight beneath the tight tangle of branches. She must be hurting now, though she didn’t show it. The only sign came from her elevated breathing and her hate-filled eyes.
Alastor ignored the provocation. There were larger bivouacs where his men could bunk down. More importantly, he had to get out of sight before he shifted back. He could already tell he’d burned too much energy, and it would likely get ugly. Before he’d hardly looked for her, Dr. Halek was at his side, swearing over his wounded arm.
“You got shot?” she snapped.
“Not for fun,” he tried to say.
“Seriously? I don’t speak that. Come with me. Now.”
It was no hardship to let her wrap him in a blanket or a cloak, or whatever the hell, it was large and warm, and his head was swimming. But he couldn’t let on to his men—or to the Eldritch—that he’d blazed through his allotment of brute strength—so he shoved his feet forward. One step, another, until they got inside the tent. Dr. Halek had promised to keep his secrets and to make him as well as he could be. Alastor clung to that promise like it was a rope, and he’d fallen off his fir-needle bridge.
He didn’t even have the power to hold to his form. As he fell, he shifted back, naked and weak and bleeding. Everything hurt now, and he still couldn’t breathe well. The air in his lungs felt like steel thread, as if someone had been sewing his flesh together. That feeling was intimately familiar, a sign that bad things were growing. The doctor had to perfect the serum or she’d have to perform surgery on him within a month.