Fade (29 page)

She lifted her now steady hand to Angela’s neck and searched for a pulse. The hand began to shiver. She moved the fingers up and down Angela’s neck, hoping that she’d just missed it. Then, one of the Fade sacked Lucy, and the makings of one of Lucy’s growing number of sand monsters came down on top of she and Angela.

Cynthia panicked in the dark, the weight of the sand. But she couldn’t let the terror of being buried alive take over. She had to get Angela out from under this pile of sand back to where there was air. (
Was she even still breathing?
No.
Stop thinking that way.
) Cynthia drug her arms through what felt like a ton of sand, feeling for Angela. Nothing. Panic threatened to overtake her again. But she held her lips and eyes closed tight, pushing through the sand, deep, with open hands. There was no air. There was no light. Angela would die soon. Then:
Angela’s arm!
She latched on to it and pulled, staggering to find a foot hold. Her own arm shot through the surface and felt the air, the sun, and she stood, raising Angela up and out.

The sound of battle met her, as repulsive as the oxygen was inviting. She cradled Angela and trudged through the sand to get her to safety, away from the fray. Then that familiar bony hand was sweeping Cynthia up. Angela flailed to the ground.

“You are not dead yet?” that husky, dry voice asked when Cynthia was, once again, face to face with the creature. She marveled at seeing that its skin still tried to grow, flesh still attempted to mend. But Angela had broken something in this creature, pushed her too far as Aern had almost done to Cynthia. “You serve no purpose to me.” This thing pointed at her with one of her more whole, lower arms, then cupped her head with another to rip it from her shoulders.

Cynthia threw an elbow into the thing’s jaw. It almost lost its grip, and she could see for a moment. Bits of burnt skin crunched to debris and flittered away on the rising wind, the bright of the sun gleamed off the sand near Jonas and Lucy battling for their lives. The Queen adjusted her grip, twisting and pulling harder. The dark of her hold on Cynthia’s head felt like being under the sand again. The pain in her torso felt like what Cynthia imagined being inside a trash compactor might. Cynthia kicked wildly, believing she’d had her last chance until her foot caught on something. The Queen growled, taking her hand from Cynthia’s head and yanking Cynthia’s foot out from between the exposed ribs it had found.

But as soon as the Queen raised her arm again, Cynthia kicked at the charred rib. The creature gasped. She could hurt it. It was akin to realizing Santa was real after all. The Queen squeezed Cynthia harder in reply and Cynthia stiffened, grunted at the cracking of bone. Its other hands attached themselves to her now also, crushing her, trying to tug her legs from her body. Cynthia growled in pain.

The sound of her own rib popping in two startled her. Then she felt her hip bone sliding into an unnatural slant. She tried calling out to the others for some scrap of help, but her breath was gone. She could hear their voices over the din, but she was alone. Her hip finally splintered. She felt her spine tingle, then crack.

“Be the first to die,” the thing hissed through ruined lungs.

Cynthia believed she would, that these might be her last moments. Then, as Aern’s Queen crushed her, she wondered,
could she become like this ruined thing?
Could she suffer so much damage but still live in a spoiled body, never quite healing?
The thought was almost as awful as the pain. Almost. Then she remembered her fight with Aern, and how—given the chance—her body had recovered from the worst damage, healed completely. So there was the chance that if they didn’t keep tearing away at her while she was down, the Queen’s body would finish with the triage that now only kept her alive, and make her whole again. This meant Cynthia couldn’t stop.

She pressed back against the fingers that killed her, trying to give herself even a moment’s relief. She was unaware she was capable of feeling so much pain. It was no use, this thing was too strong. Fading into unconsciousness, she barely heard the cry of pain from her right. Then she felt herself falling again. When she opened her eyes, a glowing blade stuck out from under the creature’s exposed rib. She floundered to remove it, finally succeeding in knocking it free. The Queen’s eyes were on fire as she stared at Jonas, whose face was flush from the exertion of that attack. The shout of pain Cynthia had heard belonged to him.

“I…
give
… pain,” she said. A yellow liquid oozed from her side with each word, countering that claim.

She scanned the battlefield. A dead Fade lay near Lucy—the one that had sacked her, Cynthia had no doubt. Two of her sandy creatures along with the two remaining Fade on their side held their own against the fifteen or so remaining warriors. Who could have imagined they would make it so far?

“Aern!” The Queen’s voice was a ragged mess. But her servant heard and called for others to take his place in battle and he was soon at her side.

Cynthia took the opportunity to begin crawling toward Angela again. This time, each movement was exquisite pain. Her spine popped and cracked, the loudest among her healing bones. Each movement of each muscle, bone, and joint was pure hell, decreasing in only the tiniest of increments as she healed—so much more slowly than before. Something moved behind her and she almost started crying at the thought of having to battle again. But it was another of Lucy’s creatures—a wavering pile of sand standing watch over her. She smiled, starting to move forward again. Then she stopped, seeing Angela on her hands and knees, coughing into the sand.

***

Lucy believed she had the ability to end this battle in half the time, but she also knew that she couldn’t do what she’d done before. She couldn’t push herself that hard. She had the ability, but not the experience. Well, those were the things Jonas had told her. She wasn’t sure she believed them.

She hazarded a glance at the others and almost jumped up and down with joy when she saw that Angela was moving again. But she also saw Cynthia, badly hurt, slowly moving towards Angela. So she raised another of her sand-puppets to give Cynthia some protection while she mended. One more wasn’t even a strain. She could feel power Jonas didn’t even know she had begging to be used.

Her power was even greater without the blonde bombshell
mask
she had been wearing. Maybe if Jonas knew how powerful she really was he wouldn’t be so worried. Maybe if she took control and did what needed to be done he would stop treating her like… like what? He was treating her like he cared about her, was what. That realization stopped her.

She was a part of a team. No, it was a family. For the first time in her life she could say that word without wincing. Mixed in with the vast store of memories she’d taken from Jonas were his mistakes and missteps, choices made in anger, fear, and lust. Still she trusted him with her life. He was in no way perfect, but he loved her deeply. Like an explosion in her head, it came to her that there was never any need for a mask. He never cared if she were strong and beautiful or small and broken. It was in fact the broken part of her that believed one had to pretend to be accepted. She only ever needed to wait. To the right person—to Jonas—this Lucy was enough.

What she was doing, keeping the Fade busy while they took down the Queen, it didn’t make her the hero, but it helped them do what needed to be done. “A family doesn’t need heroes,” she said, keeping an eye on Cynthia and Angela while they healed.

Lost in thought, two Fade warriors had managed to get past her defenses. She almost attacked the large, friendly Fade who leapt up to protect her. Then she saw him break the neck of one of her would-be killers. But then a blue blade ignited in her rescuer’s abdomen a moment later. She wailed, dispatching the attacker in a way in which Jonas would not have approved and went to her savior’s side. He was dying, but he smiled. “Your warrior, too,” he said, his voice trembling, then a single, heavy breath signaled his departure. His body seemed to deflate at that last breath. She looked up, a tear dancing in the corner of her eye, her jaw set, ready for more, and then realized she and her puppet army was all that was left. Aern’s army was defeated.

***

Jonas stepped into the space between Mira and Cynthia. He hoped the powered armor would keep him from being crushed. But she wasn’t even looking their way. Her raw, open chest shuddered with each breath, one of her four arms gripped her knee, holding her upright. But Jonas dared not see weakness.

He took a step backwards, closer to Cynthia and a revived Angela, watching Aern approach the burned, rotten mess of a queen. Mira placed two shaking hands on Aern’s shoulders, and knelt, leaning in, whispering to him from charred lips. The hilt of the sword she’d angrily tossed away caught his eye in the sand to his right. At that moment he was presented with a choice.

Breathing hard, hot wind and sand rushing against his face, he wondered if using the last of his strength to make a potentially brilliant final move would be worth leaving the girls on their own. The answer that forced itself on him was
no
, but fear that this might be his only chance won the argument. He twisted his head around, looking at Cynthia, who was still healing from her last encounter, and Angela, who was in no shape to fight, then at Lucy, who he was afraid didn’t know how to run. It was the only choice he could make.

The yellow ooze was congealing on Mira’s side, but still pumped out in slow globs. Movement—something large—caught his eye and he turned to see one of Lucy’s creatures crawling out of the sand, standing sentinel over the other two girls.
That was his girl.
He let out a breath, concentrating on the sword.

Something exploded in his head. His body tensed at the sudden pain. But he used the meager remains of his powers to mentally lift the sword from the sand. It ignited, a blue blaze, and flew straight at the queen. He imagined, before Angela had blown its face off, it would have been no ordeal for her to catch the blade mid-air and have it for lunch. But he was still impressed at the speed with which she moved to block it. But that frail, blackened body just wasn’t fast enough.

This time, the blade wasn’t thrown in as some last minute tactic to get the monster off Cynthia. He had time to aim, to calculate the move. The blade sunk deep with a wet thunk and a ragged screech from Mira. Aern fell back, pushed down as Mira lurched forward. Eyes, wide and painfully angry, found him. She was a tough one. Even half-dead, she was a damn tank.

Pain squealed like a siren, but he managed one last mental act. As fast as he could, he moved his own body to the side—he looked like a child pretending to pull a blade through the air. In response, the actual glowing blue edge in her chest jerked faster than her hands could grasp, hopefully ripping at something important before coming snapping out of her thin, ashy skin in a surge of flesh and yellow gore. A fiery jolt rode up his spine into his head and Jonas stumbled. This was the price.

Mira flailed and screeched in pain. Her side hung open like a fool’s mouth and spat her life’s juices in time to whatever passed for her beating heart. Aern leapt to his feet, shouting something to her in his own damnable language, cutting the hilt of the blade in two with his own electric sword so that it could no longer be used against her. The force field that made up the sword flickered to nothing and Aern narrowed his eyes at Jonas, who was on all fours now.

Jonas wavered, his eyes fluttered, and he felt his face thump against the hot sand, at once half-buried in it. He was done. He’d pissed in the eye of death for the last time. His vision blurred, the coppery taste of blood coated the back of his throat; his head quaked.
One step too far, you jerk
, he thought, hoping he’d at least finished this. The sand burned his face, but there were several seconds between the desire to move and the actual act of him rolling over.

He thought of the pills in his pack, wondering if they might patch him up enough to, at the least, not die. He needed to be there for Lucy when this was done. The idea took him over, even bigger than the battle now. The thought of her being tossed around the system again—he couldn’t handle that. But he’d thrown his pack off as soon as the battle had begun. Now he could hardly move, little less search for a backpack. Then he remembered the pills he’d stuffed in his pocket in the woods.

He felt himself smiling, despite it all.
You did it.
You stopped that bitch
. Everything was a blur as his hands jerked along the top of his pants, in search of his pocket. It felt like trying to find a switch in the dark. At last, his fingers found the opening and his hand slipped in. The jittering tips of his finger found one of the pills. He pushed away the clouds as best he could and concentrated on grasping the small, slippery tube. He had no more than pulled his hand free from the pocket than the pill slipped from it, lost in the sand.

The pain was past unbearable. He was stiff with it. The sand burned him, the sun scorched his bare skin, but his insides boiled from the pain. He was unsure if he could make himself go in for the second pill. Jonas could feel his heartbeat, fast and irregular, in his eyes, his throat, his fingers. He waited for it to stop. He wanted to call out, but his tongue was a thick and dead slug in his mouth.

For a moment, he believed he was back on his Earth, and the blaring siren of his alarm clock was demanding that he wake. Sleep was all he wanted. Rest. He wondered, right before he came to himself, why Elizabeth would turn the heat on in the middle of summer. Then, as lucidity rushed back in the form of one of the girls screaming his name, he took advantage and, with much effort, stuffed his trembling hand again into his pocket. This time he rolled the pill into his palm and made a painful fist before pulling it out.

He opened his mouth in anticipation as he moved the arm, which did not seem to even want to perform the simple task of bringing his hand to his face. Finally, he held it, hovering above his open mouth, willing his fingers to release their bounty. The pill stuck to his sweaty palm, but finally dropped, hitting the edge of his mouth, but falling in. Jonas forced his jaws together, biting the pill and his slug tongue. But the pain was far off and he felt the pill begin to sizzle in his mouth, already healing the bite.