Elite: A Hunter novel (35 page)

We fired until the barrels of our guns were hot. Then the Shields came back up and we went back to spellcasting.

Inside, I was petrified. Nothing I had experienced in my entire life had prepared me for this. All the time I was firing off spells, shooting, or lobbing grenades, I was crying out of pure terror, and I had to keep shaking my head to clear the tears away. And I wasn’t even thinking, not really; I was operating on pure reflex and a drive to stay alive just short of panic.

Because no matter how many Othersiders we cut down, there were always more behind them. It seemed as if there was no end to them.

I was vaguely aware of the greater impact of Hellfire missiles hitting deeper inside the mobs, but no one dared fire them at the Gogs and Magogs trying to batter the pylon down, for fear of hitting the pylon rather than them and doing their work of destroying the Barrier for them.

That was when Dazzle passed out, completely drained. I felt her fall against me and half caught her before she hit the ground. My brain woke up from terror for just a little bit at that point, and I turned to look behind us, spotting my Hounds defending our rear.
Dusana!
I called silently, and before I could blink, he was there. He must have seen what I wanted in my mind, because he knelt so I could drape Dazzle over his back.
Find the medics—

I didn’t get a chance to say anything else. He
bamphed
out, and I turned back to face the Nightmares. Literally. The Minotaurs were gone, and in their place were Nightmares: utterly impossible, vaguely horse-shaped black monsters with glowing red eyes in a skull head, fangs and claws as long as my hand, and fire for manes and tails. They attacked us with claws and teeth, with storm wind and terror, howling like the damned things they were. Their high-pitched howls carried even over the cacophony of explosions, screams, bellows, and the
boom, boom, boom
of the resumed attack on the pylon. I’d seen pictures, but I’d never fought them before. My insides shook, and I had to lock my knees to keep from falling.

We were running out of energy. We were running out of bullets. And there was no end to these creatures. There was only the screaming night, the orders in my ears, and cutting down one monster only to have three replace the one I’d killed.

The Nightmares were joined by Goblins in their natural forms, and the vicious little buggers were
everywhere.
The Othersiders were forcing us back and to the right just by sheer force of numbers, until we found ourselves mixed in with three army Mages and their troop, right up against the Barrier on our right. The enemy was pushing us back, and we were losing, and from the sound of things on the comm, it wasn’t just us, it was everyone. The Gogs and Magogs were about to take down the pylon; without Dazzle, they had gone back to pounding on it. When it went down, so would two sections of the Barrier, and this army was going to pour over the gap, and there was nothing we could do about it. Every Hunter in the entire city was here! There
were
no reserves!

And just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did.

The ground underneath us
erupted
.

One second, I was shoulder to shoulder with Steel and Retro. The next second, I was tossed into the air like a ball, literally ten feet up and twice that backward. The double Shield of Hammer and Steel vanished; every particle of thought was knocked right out of my head by the shock, and if my Hounds hadn’t gathered beneath me to catch me in their massed Shields, I probably would have broken my neck or back. As it was, the wind got knocked out of me, the comms went ominously silent, and suddenly I was alone except for my Hounds and way too many Othersiders.

They surrounded me; I scrambled to my feet and looked wildly around, but all I could see were monsters, too many monsters—hundreds of them and only twelve of us, and no other Hunters or even army anywhere in sight

The monsters seemed as surprised by our sudden appearance in their midst as I was getting thrown there.

I clutched my rifle and tried to look confident. I don’t think I succeeded.

The Othersiders eyed me. Some of them were actually laughing, others merely licking their chops.

We backed up to the Barrier, the Hounds in a semicircle around me, and braced for the onslaught.

Then, before they could charge us, I heard the welcome beat of helichoppers overhead! Close enough that even the monsters looked up.

The choppers descended in a phalanx from the sky on the other side of the Barrier, disgorging Psimons. Dozens, hundreds, of Psimons. They tumbled out of the choppers and formed up in orderly ranks on their side of the Barrier.

What?

The Othersiders froze, for a moment caught completely off guard at this new development.

Eerily, as if they were all linked together, the Psimons bent their heads at the same time—

And the Othersiders went insane.

Literally insane.

I stood there with my mouth falling open as all the monsters within sight freaked the heck out and completely forgot about me. Some of them dropped to the ground, clutching their heads with hands, paws, or claws. Some clawed at their own bodies, shredding their own flesh until they fell down, senseless or dead. Some, like the Gogs and Magogs that had been attacking the pylon, turned on their fellows, and attacked their own allies with their massive weapons.

All of them forgot about us.

The Psimons
…It had to have been the Psimons! Somehow they were getting inside the heads of these monsters and driving them crazy, so crazy they were turning on each other!
Ohmigods,
I thought, dazed.
We’re saved!

I shook my head to clear it, and we waded back into the fray. A flare went up to my left, and I heard Kent shout over the comm,
“Hunters! Form up on me!”
and took that as an order to cut my way through the chaos of the crazed and witless Othersiders until I could get to him. I had run out of bullets, so I used my rifle as a club, and the monsters were paying absolutely no attention to us. All we needed to do was clear a path. When one of them got past the Hounds, I’d knock it down, and one of the Hounds would finish it off. My arms felt like wood, my legs as if I were wading through sticky mud up to my thighs, and every particle of me ached and burned with exhaustion, but I was only halfway to where Kent was sending up another flare. My focus narrowed to the next enemy in my path, the next six inches of ground to cover.

A glowing figure appeared directly in my path, his Shields knocking my Hounds aside. He dropped the Shields for a moment, seized my shoulders before I could raise my rifle butt to club him, and he shook me, hard. I stared into his lavender eyes without comprehension as he shouted at me.

It was
that
Folk Mage….

“Do not just
look,
shepherd!
See!
See what
we
are doing! See how we work together and power flows! Power always comes from
somewhere
!” he cried, and then he
bamphed
away before I had time to react.

His face was still an afterimage in my head when Steel hacked his way to my side. Somewhere, maybe from one of the Trolls, he’d picked up a battle-ax, and although it wasn’t Cold Iron, he was doing a good job of cleaving his way through the opposition using it.

“What the hell was that about?”
he shouted over the comms. I shook my head.

“Doesn’t matter!” I yelled back. “We need to get to Kent!”

I was still so dazed, so shaken by the encounter that I wasn’t paying attention to what was around us, nor adding my Shields to Steel’s. And I should have been,
especially
the Shielding part, because that was when a levin bolt hit Steel square in the chest, or at least, in his Shield at about the level of his chest.

My heart stopped.

Steel went flying backward and disappeared beneath a wave of Othersider monsters. Still blank with shock, I turned sluggishly to face in the direction the blow had come from.

And found myself staring at Ace.

But this was an Ace transformed. He had strings of beads and feathers tucked behind both ears, and what looked like a crest made of bright red horsehair attached to the top of his head. He was bare armed and bare chested, with a floor-length vest in scarlet leather, and skintight pants to match that left
nothing
to the imagination tucked into scarlet leather boots. There were wide gold armbands on both his biceps, and a huge gold torque around his throat.

And the hate in his eyes as he stared at me made me drop back a pace.

Ace was not alone. There was a Folk Mage with him, one of the feral ones, all dreadlocks and beads and ragged leather clothing, bearing a staff that appeared to be made entirely of crystal. The staff glowed a sickly green, and Ace’s eyes glowed the same color.

I managed to get my Shields up just in time for Ace to hit me with another levin bolt. I’d put a spin on my Shields, so instead of knocking me back into the mob, the power was deflected off to the side and it blasted down a half dozen of his allies.

He didn’t seem to care. His face twisted into a mask of hate as he sent blast after blast at me, each one glancing off my Shield and atomizing a few more Othersiders. My Hounds quickly added their Shields to mine while I lobbed a return salvo of fire bolts, which fizzled out on
his
Shield.

The Folk Mage did absolutely nothing except stand at Ace’s back, but it didn’t matter. Ace was overclocked, somehow; he was doing things he
never
could before. I was totally on the defensive now, literally fighting for my life. My vision began to get gray around the edges, and the only thing that was saving me was the effort of my Hounds.
I
was running on fumes, but they were at more than full strength; every Othersider that died nearby just added to their stores of manna. Ace pounded away at me, and we united our Shields and kept them spinning, kept unraveling the passengers he had riding on every levin bolt, every fire whip.

But I knew I couldn’t keep this up for very much longer. My knees were starting to give way, and I sagged up against Dusana’s side, holding on to him to keep upright through sheer force of will, panting as if I had been running a marathon. I saw Ace suddenly grin as he sensed I didn’t have anything more in me. I watched him spinning up something…terrible….

Then he paused, hands glowing with power, and glared at Myrrdhin and Gwalchmai. “You!” he barked arrogantly. “Come
here
!”

There was a long, long pause. The two Hounds that had once belonged to Ace turned their heads and looked at each other, then back at Ace.

Then, to my dismay, Myrrdhin and Gwalchmai suddenly
bamphed
away from my side and reappeared next to Ace and the Folk Mage.

My heart twisted at the sudden desertion—

Ace laughed and held out his hand to Myrrdhin. Feeling sick and betrayed, all I could do was watch.

Which was when Myrrdhin lunged for Ace’s hand and arm and viciously savaged it, while Gwalchmai sank his fangs into the Folk Mage’s legs. Both of them shook their victims like terriers shaking a rat.

The Mage shrieked, a strangely girlish sound, and struck at Gwalchmai with his staff, and Ace just stood there with his mouth open in a silent scream of agony as blood dripped from Myrrdhin’s jaws. Then they came back,
bamphing
back to my side, as the spell Ace had been about to cast at me unraveled and sputtered away in a shower of sparks.

Gasping with pain, the Folk Mage seized Ace by one shoulder, and then they were gone,
bamphed
away, out of range of my Hounds.

I slid to the ground and stayed there, one arm around Bya and one around Myrrdhin, until someone found us.

The choppers were full of the wounded. Those of us who could still walk were told to make our way to the pylon (dented, but still functioning) and go back through the Barrier by means of the door at its base, then wait for pods on the other side. I wasn’t about to take the chance on something rising up out of the piles of disintegrating corpses to attack us, so I kept the Hounds with me and let them through the Barrier a few at a time, starting with Bya and Gwalchmai.

Dusana and I were the last ones through, and when we got to the other side, I finally mustered up just enough energy to open the Way and send them all back. Bya paused before crossing the threshold and looked back at me. He didn’t need to say anything; I knew what he meant by that look: that if I needed him, all I needed to do was bring him back.

Then he crossed, and the Portal closed behind him.

It was all industrial buildings on this side, long windowless oblongs of ’crete that didn’t even have doors in them, just underground tunnels to the barracks-like quarters of the prisoners that worked in them. Not for the first time, I shivered, thinking what a horrible existence that must be, never seeing the sun, never getting a breath of fresh air.

Speaking of the sun, it was just now false dawn, the sky in the east lightening to gray. The Barrier didn’t allow a clear view of the other side, but it looked as if the only things moving were rescue squads from the army, looking for more wounded.
Or…the dead.
I had no doubt there were dead. I dreaded to find out who they were.