“What would happen if we did it anyway?” Leon asked.
“Your sister and I would be hauled before the Assembly and forced to explain ourselves. Depending on our answers, we would be released with a fine, jailed, or killed.”
“But you’re Mad Rogan. A Prime.”
“Primes have rules,” I told him. I was learning them, and none of it made me happy.
“Weapons check,” Heart called out.
I checked my rifle. I had a thirty-round magazine and three more in the pockets of my ACUs. My helmet felt too heavy. Sweat gathered on my hairline.
Heart leaned toward me. “Don’t worry. It will be fine. Watch me, watch what the others are doing, follow orders, and you will survive this.”
I pulled my phone out and made a group text message, tagging my sisters, Bern, and Grandma Frida. I love you so much.
That’s it. There were other things to say, but that would have to be enough. I turned off the phone and put it away.
The carrier came to a stop. My mother rose and nodded to Leon. He unbuckled his harness and went toward the side door. I had this terrible feeling that I would never see them again.
My mother fixed the sergeant next to me with her sniper stare, distant and cold. “Keep my daughter alive.”
“I will,” he told her.
“I love you,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I love you too. Don’t forget to breathe.”
My mother exited the vehicle, the door slammed shut, and we were off again.
Rogan’s phone rang. He answered it and put it on speaker.
“Liam, what a pleasure.”
“As I said, we don’t know where Vincent is. So I suggest you turn your transports around and go back the way you came.”
“I prefer to ask your father in person.”
“Not going to happen.”
“I must insist.”
“No, you mustn’t. We have four Primes in residence. Do the lives of your soldiers mean so little to you? They think they’re going to come in here and kick our asses. We both know it’s not going to happen. If you care about them, take them home.”
“Your concern for my people is touching. If you want to avoid bloodshed, open the gates and we can talk like civilized people.”
“No. You’re not coming in. You’re not talking to anyone. Don’t come here with your bullet-meat soldiers and threaten us. Nobody is scared, Rogan. If you persist in your idiocy, we’ll wipe you off the face of the planet.”
“That’s a big promise.” Rogan smiled.
“Suit yourself. Your funeral.”
Liam hung up.
Rogan slid the phone into an inner pocket and squeezed my hand. “Hold on.”
The vehicle made a sharp turn and my insides went sideways. The back of the carrier dropped open, turning into a ramp. Rogan was already moving, lost ahead of me behind bodies in fatigues. Sergeant Heart thrust himself into my view and barked, “Follow me! Move!”
I grabbed my Ruger and got the hell out of the carrier.
Outside, the bright sunlight slapped me. Bullets buzzed by us like pissed-off bees, striking the top of the armored carrier with metallic pings. The space directly above us pulsed with blue as the two aegises shielded us with magic.
“Move!” Sergeant Heart roared.
I dashed forward, following the line of ex-soldiers. They grabbed the edge of the armored plate on the side of the carrier. Metal clanged, sliding into place. The armored plate split and its bottom half dropped down, forming a platform attached to the carrier’s flank.
“Up!”
I jumped onto the platform and pulled myself up between the other soldiers. Servomotors whined and the platform rose, carrying us up. Rogan’s people grabbed the top half of the armored plate, still attached to the carrier. Metal clanged again, and the armored plate slid up. Heart reached in front of me, yanked on a lever, pulled a rectangular shutter open within the plate, and secured it. I was looking through a window, two feet wide and one foot tall. The top of the armored carrier was right in front of me and I could rest my rifle on it.
A concrete yard stretched in front of us, bathed in bright sunlight. Sheer walls rose on both sides, and ahead, about two hundred yards away, another wall towered. Within it a massive door loomed, painted black, like the door of some giant castle.
Next to me, Heart called out, “Okay boys and girls, weapons ready. Safeties off.”
I slid the selector switch on my rifle to full auto.
A chorus of voices barked back. “Roger, Top.”
“Rodriguez, range to target.”
A male yelled out, “Two hundred and eleven meters.”
“Fire on command.”
Heart leaned next to me. “We work in teams of two. I’m your teammate. When I give command to fire, you fire. When you’re out, say ‘Out!’ and take two steps back. If you jam, say ‘Jam!’ and take two steps back. Understood?”
My heart was beating too fast. “Yes.”
The massive door split in the middle, showing a glimpse of complete darkness.
“Hold your fire,” Heart ordered.
My hands shook. I took a deep breath, all the way to my stomach, held it in for a few seconds and slowly let it out, concentrating only on breathing.
The gap widened. Something stirred in the ink-black darkness.
In . . . and out. In . . . and out. It wasn’t working.
The doors swung open. A pale spindly leg thrust into the sunlight, a sickly mottled grey, the color of old concrete.
“Hold it,” Heart said next to me, his voice echoing in my helmet.
A creature stepped into the open. It stood on four spindly legs, bent backward like those of a grasshopper, its knobby knees protruding up. Its body hung between them, little more than a sack of flesh. There was no head, no eyes, and no nose. Only a mouth, a round cavernous mouth, lined with rows and rows of conical teeth all the way around. It was a monster designed to feed.
The creatures stumbled in the sunlight. Another emerged from the shadows, then another, and another.
We were two hundred yards away. That meant, considering the door, that they were . . . the size of a small car.
The first beast froze. Two long, feathery whips snapped upright from its shoulders, like antennas. They turned toward us. A sea of feathery antennas sprang up. Oh dear God.
“Hold it,” Heart said.
The creatures charged.
They came at us in a ragged pale mob, rushing in a whirlwind of legs, their mouths gaping open.
“Range!” Heart called out.
“Two hundred meters,” a male voice called down from the left.
Sweat sheathed my palms.
“One ninety.”
My mouth went dry. Waiting was torture.
“One eighty.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Behind us, shielded by a blue sphere of Melosa’s magic, Rogan was drawing a complex arcane circle with chalk.
“Eyes front!” Heart barked.
I spun back to the horde. The stench of ozone hit me, the same one that I smelled in Rynda’s house.
“One seventy.”
I sighted the beast directly across from me, a big ugly creature. Shooting it in the wrinkled bag that was its body probably wouldn’t do much good. The skinny legs would be a much better target. I moved the selector to three-round burst.
“One sixty.”
My breathing deepened. I focused on the legs.
“One hundred and fifty meters.”
“Fire!” Heart roared.
I squeezed the trigger. The first burst went wide. I sighted and fired again. The beast’s left leg crunched and broke. I sighted the second front leg and fired. The creature collapsed.
The second beast took its place. I sighted and squeezed the trigger. Screw the Harcourts, their beasts, and Vincent’s threats. I was my mother’s daughter and I did not miss.
Bodies piled in front of me. To the right someone lobbed a grenade. The explosion
scattered the bodies. Yellow ichor and pale guts flew.
I switched to full auto. I was in the zone now, and it was faster.
The gun clicked.
“Out!” I took two steps back.
Heart stepped into my place, thrusting a fresh magazine at me. I released the empty one and slapped the new one in. A woman ran up to me, snatched the empty magazine out of my hand, and held out a full one. I took it.
“Out!” Heart barked, and took two steps back.
I shoved the full magazine at him and took his spot.
The creatures kept coming, scuttling over the corpses. The two massive .50 cal guns mounted on top of the carriers came to life and spat thunder and death, chewing through the advancing horde.
More beasts poured out of the gates: smaller yellow creatures that looked like skinny cats with wolf heads; bloodred raptor-like things moving fast on two thick legs; a six-legged horror sheathed in glistening thin tentacles that writhed like earthworms, its top half erect as if it were some nightmarish version of a centaur . . . They came and came and came. Time lost all meaning. Only two things mattered—shooting and calling, “Out!”
The space between the carriers and monsters shrank. Barely thirty feet separated us now.
I unloaded the last of my magazine into a tentacled monstrosity. “Out!” I stepped back, ejected the old magazine . . .
I grabbed the new one from the runner, slid it into the weapon . . .
A huge blue cat that looked just like Cornelius’ Zeus lunged onto the top of the carrier and charged us. Heart fired, point-blank, his rifle spitting a stream of bullets. The cat snarled and rammed the armored plate. It bent. It shoved its massive paws through the window, trying to rake at Heart with its claws.
I threw myself against the armored plate, thrust the rifle through the window, pointing it almost straight up, and sank a stream of bullets into the cat’s throat. Blood splashed on me. The great beast collapsed, the light fading out of its beautiful eyes.
“Out!” Heart and I yelled at the same time.
No runner came. I pulled a spare magazine out of my pocket. Heart did the same.
Creatures piled on top of the carrier, snarling, screeching, clawing, slipping in the blood. We fired point-blank.
A woman screamed on the right.
A tentacle whipped through the window and wrapped around Heart’s arm. He jerked a knife out and hacked it in half.
Last magazine. We were overrun.
Magic moved behind me like a tsunami. The armored carrier under me slid. I grabbed on to the armored plate. The two massive vehicles slid to different sides like the two halves of a door opening wide.
I turned. Rogan stood inside one of the most complicated circles I’d ever seen. It glowed white.
The animal horde abandoned the carriers, streamed toward him, and crashed against the boundary of the circle. Rogan had drawn a high-level spell. The amount of magic he’d fed into the circle was so high, its outer boundary no longer existed in our world.
The green tarp covering the cargo of the truck flew aside. Three long metal cylinders lay in the back of the truck, each thirty feet long and twice as wide as a telephone pole. Rogan raised his arms in a classic mage pose, palms up, elbows bent. The cylinders shot straight up and spun in place. Dozens of blades slid out of the metal shafts. The cylinders turned sideways, forming a triangle, two on the bottom, one on top, rolled over each other and cut into the beasts. Severed limbs flew.
The grinder.
The blades swept through the horde, mincing flesh. Blood drenched the pavement, pooling in puddles under the heaps of cut-up bodies. The air smelled like blood and ozone.
Someone retched. I couldn’t even vomit. I just stared at it, mute. The slaughter was so bright, so vivid, there was no defense against it.
The flood of creatures stopped. In the back, in front of the gate, a knot of magic formed thirty feet above the ground. Black, shot through with violent lightning, it churned, growing larger and larger. Something strained within it, stretching at its boundaries from within.
The blades mopped up the last of the beasts and hovered near it, waiting.
Magic pulsed. The invisible blast wave hit me in the chest. My heart skipped a beat. For a torturous second my lungs locked up. I staggered back and managed to draw a hoarse breath in.
The darkness tore. A colossal foot landed on the pavement, thick toes splayed wide. The armored carrier shook.
Another foot, thick purple-red, its texture rough. Thick claws, each the size of a car, dug into the pavement.
My mind refused to accept that something that large could be alive.
A giant beast landed in front of the gates. It stood on all fours, its legs spread wide like those of a charging Komodo dragon. Thick horn spikes studded its purplish hide and united into bone plates on its shoulders. Its head resembled that of a snapping turtle, but a forest of teeth filled its mouth. Angry white eyes stared at us.
The blades moved toward it and ground against the beast’s side. A grinding noise lanced my ears.
The beast swatted at the blades, knocking them aside. The cylinder flew, spinning. The gargantuan creature raised its front left leg and stomped toward us.
Boom. The carrier shook.
Boom. Another step.
The blades scraped along its sides and dove under its stomach. No effect. The beast opened its mouth and bellowed, an unearthly lingering sound. The sonic blast hit us. If it wasn’t for the helmet, I would’ve clamped my hands over my ears.
Boom.
We had no cover. The armored carrier wouldn’t hold it. If the creature stomped on it, the vehicle would be a metal pancake. The wall was behind us. Everything else around us was gore.
“Fire at will!” Heart’s precise voice snapped in my helmet. “Everything you have. Light it up.”
Boom.
“Belay that,” Rogan’s voice said in my helmet.
One of the bladed cylinders fell to the ground. The other two rose, spinning so fast, the blades became a blur. The cylinders streaked to the beast and punctured its eyes, drilling their way into its skull.
The creature screamed.
In the circle, Rogan’s whole body shook as if he were trying to lift a great weight. The light of the circle faded, its power exhausted.
The blades burrowed deeper.
Rogan snarled.
The blades sank in all the way and disappeared into the creature’s skull.
Not enough. It was still moving. It was still—
The colossus trembled. Its head pitched back. It staggered forward and collapsed. The pavement cracked under its weight, breaking in big chunks, like ice on a frozen lake.
I let out a breath. My legs gave and I sat down on the platform.
Heart crouched by me and patted my shoulder. “You did good.”
I realized something wet was on my cheek and touched it. A tear, tinted with alien creatures’ blood.
“Look at it,” I whispered. “It’s awful. So much death. Why?”
“House warfare,” Heart said, and patted my shoulder again.
I took off my helmet. Someone handed me a wet washcloth and I cleaned the blood off my face. Rivera appeared next to me, as if by magic, and I gave him back the rifle. The battle was over.
I pulled out my cell phone with shaking bloody fingers. There were two messages from Catalina and Arabella, demanding to know what was going on, one from Grandma Frida asking if I was feeling okay, and a smiley face from Bern.
I dialed Mom.
The phone rang.
She picked it up.
“Mom?”
“We’re okay. Are you okay?”
I almost cried. “Yes.”
“Good.” She hung up.
Rogan walked out of the circle. His face was haggard. He walked like his whole body was sore. He was looking at me. I walked toward him. We met halfway among the gore. He hugged me to him, tight, hard, and kissed my hair.
We walked together to the
gates. Rogan’s people formed around us. We entered the dark building. There was nothing there. It was basically a cavernous hangar, reinforced steel walls and a concrete floor, empty except for the stench of ozone and signs of many animals crammed into a small space: clumps of alien fur, a few torn-off tentacles, and puddles of urine. We crossed it to a door on the far left, walked through a short hallway with the same concrete floor and reinforced walls, and through another door.
I blinked. An expensive black and red Persian rug ran over a beautiful floor of golden wood. Paintings decorated the tall walls. It was like suddenly stepping into a palace.
Rogan nodded, and the core of our force peeled off to guard the entrance, moving past us to secure other doors, leaving only Rogan, Rivera, Heart, and me.
We walked through the hallway to a wide-open door and entered a large room. The floor was golden wood, shielded by another Persian rug, this one in the calming shades of white, beige, and brown, glinting with what might have been touches of real gold. Inside, a gathering of expensive couches waited, arranged around the coffee table. Delicate and ornate, with the weathered curved wooden frames supporting shimmering dark grey cushions, it was at once elegant and inviting. If the Sun King had built Versailles in the twenty-first century, he would’ve picked this set.
A family rested on the furniture. An older man slumped back in a chair, a handkerchief pressed to his nose. Owen Harcourt. A woman in her mid-fifties, with mahogany-red hair, thin, wearing a blue pantsuit, sat next to him, gently patting his arm. His wife, Ella. Another woman, this one about my age, and with the same rich mahogany-red hair, leaned forward on the other couch, her hands clenched into a single fist. That would be their daughter, Alyssa. The youngest of the four, Liam, from the phone call, with dark blond hair and a pale face, looked like he could be one of the college friends Bern occasionally brought home when they ran short on cash and needed a home-cooked meal.
Liam saw us and jumped off the couch, his gaze fixed on Rogan. “You bastard!”
“Sit,” Owen said.
“Father—”
“Sit. We lost. You’re the future of the House. Don’t give him a reason to kill you.”
Liam landed back on the couch, his mouth a thin slash across his face.
Ella looked up at us. “We’ve removed our people to avoid further bloodshed. You won. But Vincent is our son. You’ll get nothing from us.”