New world order, p.66
New World Order, page 66
part #6 of Crimson Shadow Series
Xander pushed his mind, ignoring the pain and watching as the frozen world’s gravity claimed his severed arm and, holding it where it had been cut free from his body, carried it away.
“—and, through it all, understand that you have never been the man with the gun; you have always been the gun and she has been the one keeping you aimed in the right direction. You keep her alive, Xander; no matter the cost, you… keep… her… alive!”
NOW!
And then Xander saw the last few dominoes set up in the row. Saw the truth.
He wouldn’t make it to Estella in time.
He needed to save Ruby.
And she would die…
To his right, out of the only periphery he had left, Xander saw a crimson shadow, unobstructed and unexpected, closing the distance.
And then he heard a not-too-distant memory chime—knowing now he hadn’t misspoken:
“I need you out there.”
Once more the Great Machine commanded him:
SAVE RUBY NOW!!
****
Estella had hurt the monster. His words after he’d finally pulled himself back together—literally—hadn’t just been a statement made out of anger. Like it had with Lenuta the night of their wedding back in her castle, the trauma of an injury like that—one that forced a varcol to reconstruct itself to that degree—weakened them. This, however, was only a temporary state. Aleks’ new leg and the return of his powers was evidence that no injury was permanent for their kind.
He hadn’t wanted her to know how badly she’d hurt him, but it was clear in the way he moved and the intensity of his aura. Aleks was weaker.
After putting himself back together, he’d seen fit to feed from one of his own warriors—ripping the sang off his feet, draining his body and his mind, and then, seeming in that instant to remember that he’d been left naked after the ordeal—stolen the pants off the corpse.
The blood, however, didn’t seem to be enough to bring him to full strength.
The trip back to the city—though Estella was sure that her struggling and fighting every step of the way was partially to blame—had taken longer than it should. The process of binding her with his aura was slow, sloppy; he seemed to be tripping over his own efforts.
A few times, Estella thought she saw the flesh of his torso shift and crawl, as though his rebuilt body was nothing more than a sack of creatures that could no longer agree with one another.
She wanted to tell Xander this—wanted to tell Xander so much!—but, though slow and sloppy, Aleks’ auric binds held more than just her body.
She wanted to tell him that she loved him, that she didn’t regret a moment of what they’d had. She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t his fault. She wanted to tell him, no matter what, not to let Aleks win; not to give him what he wanted.
And then she saw him lose his arm.
Eyes widening at the sight, she caught a blur of black-and-red to her left—just behind Aleks—and started to turn her head.
Ruby!
The fiery redhead sang’s aura was a lightning storm of fury and intent—Xander’s name cycling through her head as a mantra that seemed to push her beyond the very boundaries of their kind—as she closed in on them. Beside her, Aleks’ aura sparked with realization. He’d been too focused on just her and Xander, Estella realized; his aura too weakened by their battle to sense the newcomer.
But he sensed her now, and Aleks’ aura was shifting to stop her efforts.
Xander’s aura spiked, and when Estella looked back she could see that he’d noticed this, as well.
Between him and Ruby, she was closest…
But Aleks’ focus was shifting entirely to her now.
With the auric binds on Estella’s mind lifting ever-so-slightly, she “saw” a single thought on her husband’s mind:
SAVE RUBY!
And then his aura was a whirlwind of tendrils, scooping up scrap metal, debris, and anything else immediately surrounding him—floating the scattered mess of materials back to him as he redirected his focus to Aleks.
The bleeding stump of his arm lifted and drew back, a phantom auric wisp creating a red-and-black ghost of an arm as he prepared to strike the varcol. Then, following through with the motion as he closed in—taking advantage of Aleks’ distracted mind—he assembled the various components he’d collected into a makeshift arm with a heavy slab of iron making up the fist and drove it into the varcol’s face.
Half of Aleks’ brand new mouth tore out through the side of his cheek, and Xander threw all of the momentum he’d gained in crossing four blocks in a fraction of a second into a tackle that left a visible ripple in the air where the varcol had been standing.
The bullet that had been inching closer and closer to Estella and her still embarrassingly flat pregnant belly vanished in a blur of black-and-red as Ruby slipped around the chaos and yanked Estella out of its path, the impact of Xander’s sonic boom knocking them both across the street and onto the sidewalk.
The breath exploded out of Estella, and she felt her lungs heave as she struggled to take in a breath. Her chest ached—her lungs burned—and, after a panicked moment of thinking that the bullet had hit her she realized that, no, she’d just been holding her breath too long.
Sucking in a lungful of air, she caught herself whimpering and rolled to check on Ruby…
The redhead was crying, face twisted in pain, as she worked a pair of shaky hands over a bleeding hole in her chest.
“Oh… oh no, Ruby…” Estella gasped, all of her aches and pains slipping into a distant part of her mind that made them seem nonexistent at that instant. “Oh no…”
“I-I did it,” Ruby’s voice was an airy whisper, but one so tightly packed with pride and victory that it became difficult to feel sorry for her. “I really did it, Estella; I… I kept my promise.”
“Yeah, you did,” Estella fought the urge to cry, trying to move her friend’s hands to investigate the wound. “Here, let me—”
“Estella?”
“Yeah, Ruby?”
“Just… just stay with me, okay? It’ll—”
“No! No, no, Ruby! Don’t talk like that! I’ll stay, but you have to—”
“I’m so sorry.”
“For… for what? You saved me, Ruby; saved me and my baby! What could you possibly be sorry—”
“E-Estella… I love Xander; I always have.”
“I…” Estella bit her lip at that and moved to run her hands through the girl’s beautiful red hair. “I know, Ruby; I’ve always known. And it’s alright! I know you care too much for us to… Ruby? Ruby!”
“Estella,” Ruby’s eyes drifted back, rolling behind fluttering lids. “I’m sorry.”
“RUBY, NO!” Estella wailed, throwing herself over the girl’s body. “NO!”
She felt Xander’s arrival, saw through her mind’s eye as he dropped to his knees across from her, and felt the shift in Ruby’s body as he moved to cup her cheek.
“She… she had to die,” Xander said then, seeming to hate the words as he spoke them but, at the same time, seeming committed to getting them out.
“You… you saw this?” Estella asked, looking up.
Xander shook his head. “I already told you: I… I was always too afraid to finish the vision. It just… it told me she had to die. It told me I’d never make it to you in time, and that I had to save Ruby. It just… it never made sense until…”
Tears were rolling down his cheek as he stared down at the dead vampire that had saved them both.
“She said that she kept her promise,” she told him. “Does that… did that mean something?”
Xander stiffened and then trembled, nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, it did… but she already knew.”
“Knew what?” asked Estella.
“That I needed her here with me today,” he whispered.
Estella felt her lip quiver and a sob worked its way out.
Frowning, Xander moved to reach out to her. He caught himself halfway into raising the entanglement of clutter before letting it drop again and cupping her cheek with his left hand.
Estella’s lips tugged in a phantom grin at the feel of his touch, but she couldn’t complete the gesture as her eyes took in the sight of his injury. “Your arm…” she whispered.
Xander shrugged. “I’ll figure out something prettier when all’s said and—” He stopped and looked over his shoulder.
“Xander?” Estella called to him, catching his hand as it began to fall from her face. “Honey, talk to me. What’s—”
“It’s…” Xander stopped, seeming to consider something; his aura shifted from tense rigidity to withdrawing almost entirely. “It’s Sawyer,” he finally said. “He’s about to…”
“He’s going after Aleks?” Estella asked, realizing that seemed the most likely course the tormented vampire warrior would take.
Xander nodded.
“He’s weaker now,” she told him. “I… well, when he came to take me, I fought him.”
Xander looked at her, his eye moving to investigate her more carefully as his aura scanned her. “Did he…?”
“I’m not going to lie and say he didn’t hurt me,” Estella said, “but he didn’t hurt me enough for you to worry. More importantly, though: I hurt him. Bad! He’s… his body isn’t working right. Neither is his aura.”
“Jeez,” Xander said with a smirk. “Just what’d you do to him?”
“Same thing you do to everyone you fight: I blew him to pieces,” she answered.
Xander paused at this, seeming stunned either by the answer or by the fact that, despite it, Aleks was still alive. “Damn…”
“So maybe whatever Sawyer has in mind will be enough?” Estella pressed, feeling hopeful.
“No…” Xander said, “but it will—” He growled and wiped his face before saying with a heavy tone of disappointment. “It’ll help, but it won’t be enough to finish him.”
Xander considered this. Then, gazing off into the distance again, he seemed to recalculate the situation with this new information. Estella watched as his aura shivered with something that almost resembled hope, but he still looked withdrawn.
Estella could see there was something else. “What aren’t you telling me?” she demanded.
Xander moved to stand. “Sort of defeats the purpose of not telling you if I answer that,” he said, looking down at her sadly. “Please don’t ask me to answer it. I already don’t like having to lie to you.”
Estella felt a tremor working its way up her spine, but she suppressed it and gave him a nod. She had a sick feeling that she knew what he was keeping from her; it was the only thing that he would struggle to keep from her.
“I need you to promise me that you won’t die,” she said to him.
****
Riding out the momentum of her leap, Nikki used the makeshift hold on the mythos’ head to stabilize herself and then wrap her thighs around its neck. Behind her, Raith swung his “Happy Hammer”—which she kept reminding him wasn’t a hammer at all—into a crowd of the varcol’s warriors. Clawed hands grazed Nikki’s back, but she was already swinging her body around and clearing its reach. Her momentum continued to carry her, turning her bodyweight into a weapon that started to drag the blinded therion back. Then, now planted at the creature’s back, she yanked her weapons free, began to gather the necessary energies for a spell, and completed the flip. Landing behind her towering opponent, she could almost hear his heart explode inside his chest.
Not realizing the therion was already dead, Raith bellowed on the other side of the still-standing corpse and swung his Happy Hammer into its head.
The dead therion’s skull was turned to jelly, and the unnecessarily decapitated corpse finally fell.
“He was already dead, goof-ball,” Nikki said with a sigh.
Raith cocked his head and looked down at the corpse.
“Yeah! Already dead! That was my kill!” she chastised him. “I’m not giving you points for knocking the heads off my kills!”
Raith grunted and gave her a silly dog grin.
“No! You’re not gonna puppy-pout your way into sharing credit,” she argued. “He wasn’t “sort of”-dead or even “a little”-dead; he was “D-E-fuckin’-A-D”-dead! No heartbeat, ‘cause he didn’t have a heart!”
Raith whimpered, gave her the shimmering, wide eyes that always had her melting, and thumped his free hand over his chest.
Nikki sighed and groaned. “Okay… yeah. You still got a heart, right? And you were just trying to help me. Okay, okay…” She turned and sauntered off, “I’ll give you… hmm, a quarter of that credit!”
Raith whined behind her.
She wagged a sai in his direction—a long, blood-soaked metallic extension of a lecturing finger—and said, “Nuh-uh-uh! You take that quarter or I’ll take it all back! Now let’s go! I can sense Zane and Serena no far from here and I’d rather be marching in this ungodly fucking parade with somebody I know.”
Raith grunted, huffed loudly, and started after her, dragging the Happy Hammer loudly behind him like a child taking out his tantrum on a beloved toy.
****
Serena and Zane’s panicked search for Xander to warn him about Estella’s abduction had come to a tense-yet-relieving end when they’d heard Aleks’ roaring call to him several blocks over. Things had moved too fast after that, and, by the time they’d managed to take the heads off of a pair of perfect vampires who’d decided to be the Vaileans new best buddies, Xander and Estella were reunited and in mid-mourning of a friend.
Much as she wanted to be there for them, Serena and Zane agreed that it was better that they leave the Strykers in peace for the time being. It had certainly looked like a shit-show through Serena’s mind’s eye, and she felt that the last thing Xander probably wanted was to see that both of the pregnant wives had gotten dragged into the fray.
And, speaking of the fray…
“Oh, Zane, darling,” she cooed over her shoulder as she fired four auric arrows into the skulls of just as many enemy mythos ahead of her. “Your play-date is here!”
Zane’s aura actually swelled with childlike excitement as he saw the mace-toting therion lumbering towards them.
Oh that is just too fucking adorable, she thought, reminding herself to thoroughly bust his balls about it when all this was over.
Where Zane and Raith had been tight for quite a while—and never more close than those years they’d shared a single body—Serena and Nikki’s friendship, though still young by comparison, had been strained from the start.
Serena was so… well, Serena.
And Nikki was so… Nikki…
Unsure if there were adjectives in existence to serve the comparison, Serena just decided to put a tack in the idea and think back on it later. “Awesome” and “bitchy” didn’t feel classy and, in Nikki’s undeserved defense, they were too interchangeable in this case to do much good.
The point, the crazy blonde reminded herself, was this: tough as things had been between the two of them, Serena couldn’t help but love Nikki and, as she saw her and Raith heading their way—Nikki setting an ykali on fire while Raith turned a pair of alvs into a single, coagulated mess with his mace—she couldn’t help but smile.
The four convened, shared a silent-yet-relevant moment at their reunion, and then began kicking sweet ass as a unit. It was almost enough to get Serena nostalgic—though she was happy to not have the lyrics of “Buttercup Baby” being snarl-sang all throughout—except that something was still missing.
No, not something—a pair of someones.
Not far off—at least, not far off by overdrive standards; Blue-Bush and Donkey-Dick will still have a bit of a hike ahead of them, she thought—she sensed Zoey and Isaac.
Grinning at herself as she ducked a broadsword swipe, Serena drove her foot into the attacker’s balls—Nothing like fresh guacamole!—and sent out a call to the pair:
Yo, Twinkle-tits! Get you and Isaac’s tight little buns out here and say “hello!” The gang’s all here, and I wanna see which is bigger: Raith’s mace or Isaac’s—
After the day I’ve been having, Zoey cut her off, I think it’d be only fair to ask that you not finish that sentence.
Something in her psychic tone had Serena frowning. Everything okay? she asked.
It is now. Sort of, Zoey said. But Isaac was blinded in—
Whoa! WHOA! Blinded? As in, like, blind-blind?
As opposed to the “Help me! I can’t hear!”-blind, Serena? Zoey quipped.
Humor, huh? Guess it can’t be that bad if you can crack jokes about it, Serena challenged.
He’s seeing through my mind’s eye. It’s… Serena, it’s incredible! He’s fighting better than I’ve ever seen, Zoey marveled.
Serena chuckled and said, I bet it’s better than he’s ever seen, too.
Subjects Serena’s not allowed to joke about: Zoey started, Isaac’s penis, Isaac’s blindness, and my pubic hair.
Serena pouted, evaded an attack, and put her aura through an enemy’s chest. An alv fell with a hole large enough to look through. Alright, she resigned, that’s all fair, I suppose. There’s just one thing I’m curious about…
And what’s that? Zoey asked, already sounding impatient.
Do you think Isaac will be able to use his monster cock as a cane to bumble his blind ass towards your sky-blue beaver?
I’m going to hit you when we get there, Zoey informed her.
Kay! Serena chimed excitedly, Love you too, doll. Bye-sies!
Zoey promptly closed the connection, what Serena was sure she wanted to serve as the psychic version of slamming the phone down to hang up.
Returning her focus entirely to the fight, Serena fired an auric arrow through the back of an auric vampire who’d been about three seconds from catching Zane in an attack he wouldn’t have been able to see. Beside him, Raith tore the winged arm off a gerlin, then silenced its shrieks by planting its arm-stump into its gaping maw.
Serena was strangely proud to say that the sight of the mythos’ distended throat turned her on a little.
Nikki’s tattoos flared, turning the ground beneath the feet of a pair of sangs into a liquid that swallowed them up to their ankles. Then, as they fumbled from their lost footing, the street beneath them became solid once again, trapping them in place, and the grinning taroe bitch turned away from them, leaving them to Zane and Raith’s devices.
