Shadow Borne (22 page)

I took a shower and even lingered for a
minute or two under the hot spray. It was an action that was
totally out of character but impossible to resist. The clean heat
of the water was far too tempting and it was doubtful there would
be another opportunity for a shower–a hot shower–until our mission
was completed.

So I rested my palms flat against the
roughly textured white stone tile of the shower wall and let my
head fall forward, let the water sluice through my freshly washed
hair and over my back. A knock at the door shattered the moment of
peaceful solitude.

"Ari? We're supposed to be ready to leave in
ten." Claire called through the solid wood of the bathroom
door.

Ten? I straightened and immediately twisted
the shower knobs, cutting off the water. Had I heard her correctly?
Ten minutes?

"Come in." I called, hurriedly snagging a
clean towel from the rack beside the sink and wrapping it loosely
around myself.

"Sorry." She stuck her head into the room
before opening the door the rest of the way and stepping into the
bathroom, waving a hand to clear the heavy steam from the room. "I
didn't want to interrupt, but Mark just told me we're all leaving
now so..." she shrugged.

"Something's wrong." I guessed, striding
past her into the bedroom. Cool air rushed over my bare skin and I
shivered a little as I tossed the towel aside and began to
dress.

"Of course. Why wouldn't
something be going wrong on this damned day? The children are
downstairs crying, Tara's turning the living room into some sort of
winter wonderland gone wrong in an effort to calm them, and Marta's
mixed enough chocolate chip cookie dough to give us all diabetes
three times over. And by
us
," Claire enunciated, tugging a
brush through my wet hair before she began to hastily braid the wet
locks, "I mean the entire army of Terlain. I warn you, Aries, it's
not a pretty sight down there." She tied a black elastic band
around the end of the tightly woven braid just as I snapped the top
clasp on my snug tan canvas pants and tied the strings on the dark
brown leather top.

"Did he say why we're leaving right now?" I
asked, strapping a sheathed knife to my left thigh. Claire tossed
me the heavy black canvas backpack that I'd–thankfully–prepared the
night before. She shook her head.

"He didn't stay long enough to explain. But
I can tell something is very wrong."

I nodded, laced and buckled my boots, and
then we were headed down the stairs.

Ashley and Sienna had quieted to
intermittent hiccupping sobs, the smell of burnt chocolate filled
the air, and Christmas lights had been strung haphazardly from
every surface and corner. In the midst of the chaos stood Tara,
looking like a wide–eyed, perverted sugarplum fairy in a short red
dress and red hat with a white tassel at the top.

"The girls and I are working on a Christmas
play." she announced brightly. "You're all going to be so impressed
when you come back from your trip." Tara's voice shook a little,
and I shot a sympathetic look in her direction. It was obvious she
was trying hard to distract the distraught little girls.

"A play? Truly?" I forced a grin and hoped
it looked natural enough to be convincing. Tears had gathered in
the corners of Claire's eyes, but she blinked the moisture away
before it could fall. My heart clenched painfully as I watched her
sink to one knee and open both arms to her young daughters.

"I'll be back before you know it." she
murmured, squeezing Ashley and Sienna close before releasing them
and climbing unsteadily to her feet. "And when Daddy and aunt Aries
and I come back, we expect to see a wonderful Christmas play." she
added with a tremulous smile.

***

The sun was well overhead by the time we
gathered at the edge of Bob and Marta's property a few minutes
later. It was already hours past midday, and Mark stood at the head
of the large group, which wasn't unusual. What was puzzling was the
haggard expression on his face. It was there in the tight set of
his jaw and his over-bright eyes.

"Mark?" I shot a look at Claire before
taking a tentative step toward Mark. "What's going on?"

His green eyes cut to my own wary gaze and I
glimpsed something that made my blood run cold. It was fear. Mark
was afraid. No, the emotions I saw on his face went so much deeper
than fear–for one brief second, an expression of sheer and utter
despair arced across his taut features. And then it was gone. Just
like that, Mark's face became a blank mask devoid of any and all
emotion. The dread I had been feeling congealed into a tight, hard
knot that settled in the pit of my stomach.

From the corner of my eye,
I saw Mike come around the side of the house and stride across the
lawn toward us. I noticed, but quickly returned my complete
attention to Mark. This was it. Something was going to happen and
soon. The expression on his face couldn't have been any clearer if
he had shouted it from the rooftops–we were going into battle. Not
later, not two weeks from now, but
right
now
. The distant, elusive 'later' had
finally come–it was here.

"Mark." I demanded hoarsely. Claire stepped
up beside me and I could feel the faint tremor that coursed through
her body.

"They're coming." he said. "Just after
midnight, spotters reported a large group of Coatyl beginning to
form and organize at the northern edge of Lerna. Two hours ago,
they began to move. They're headed our way."

"How many?"

"Over three hundred, at last count."

The staggering total wrung a startled gasp
from Claire. My hands clenched into fists at my sides. "Any sign of
Kahn or the shadow man?"

"No." Mark answered. The word was
understandably clipped, tense. We were in trouble, and that was
putting it mildly.

"The fences?" I was petrified to even voice
the question.

"The fences are holding–for now." His tone
was grim.

Claire and I were still processing our
dismal situation when the unthinkable happened. In the instant Mike
had reached our sides, one of the soldiers, a young man who looked
to be barely out of his teens, broke through the trees at the edge
of the property, running hard. He made a beeline for us and even
from faraway I could see the panic in his wide brown eyes. And then
he stood before us and uttered the one thing guaranteed to strike
cold fear into all of us.

"The fences are wavering. They're fading."
he gasped, out of breath.

"Let's go." The words had barely left my
mouth before I was off and running, a mad dash through the trees
that would lead us to the border, to the fence line–and probably to
disaster.

There was no need to stop and check to see
if the others were behind me, even though Mark was the only one who
was able to keep pace with me; I could have gone much faster; I
could have flown and cut my time in half but I didn't want to leave
the rest of our small group in the dust, so to speak. And so I
paced myself, which wasn't such a difficult task because as much as
I knew we needed to get to the border–and fast–there was a part of
me, however small, that was in no hurry to get there.

Mostly because I knew bad news waited for us
in that ever decreasing distance. The fences would fail this time.
Exactly how I knew this, I couldn't say, but I felt it with one
hundred percent, blood chilling certainty. It didn't matter that
last night the protective spell on the fences had bounced back and
remained intact. This time–right now–we would not be so lucky.

I did the best I could to prepare myself for
what we would find in a matter of minutes. I took slow, deep, even
breaths and my gaze remained fixed firmly ahead. There was a job to
be done and people were depending on me; this is what I chose to
focus on. The duty, the responsibility–not the fear. And oh there
was fear…fear and dread and a whole myriad of emotions lived and
breathed and preyed in the darkest corners of my heart.

I felt them there, in the way my pulse beat
rhythmically, almost painfully, against my rib cage. It was the one
thing I couldn't control.

But fear was crippling and so logic dictated
there would be plenty of time for that later and, if there wasn't,
then really, not having the opportunity to freak out and be
terrified wasn't any great loss. Besides, there was always that bit
about people depending on me.

As I dashed through the woods with Mark on
my heels and Claire and Mike several paces behind but still
following at a fast clip, I thought of all the people who depended
on me and who were counting on me–people like Ashley and Sienna and
the children of my village, the nymphs, the people who lived under
the dome–thinking of them, and the people back home, piled on some
added pressure but at the same time it helped me to stay focused on
the task at hand–handling the situation with the fence.

I didn't like to think of
it that way, as something that had to be handled, but it was true.
Things were about to go horribly, irrevocably wrong. And so it came
as no surprise when the four of us burst into the clearing to find
the shimmering fence flickering crazily, madly in the gathering
shadows of twilight.
No
.

Hundreds of warriors were already gathered
around, grimly watching the scene unfold.

I didn't blame them. I had no clue how to
stop what I was pretty sure we all knew was inevitable. Mark came
skidding to stop next to me. Claire and Mike cleared the tree line
only seconds later; both were gasping for breath.

"Oh, no." Claire clutched at the heavy strap
of my pack. "We've got to do something."

Mark was shaking his head before I had a
chance to answer. "There's nothing to be done, Claire, not
now."

"No!" she cried, wide-eyed. "There must be
something–this is not–" her hands curled into fists. "This is not
happening. Damn it, we have to do something." Claire's shrill,
panicked command broke through the numb shock and with a start I
realized she was right. I darted to the fence and gripped the
wooden top rung with both hands, pressing hard and trying to lend
some of my own strength to the flickering, fading light. Beside me,
Claire did the same.

"What are we doing?" she asked without
loosening her white knuckle grip on the fence.

I watched thin tendrils of wispy light and
sparkles weave around our fingers, becoming slower and weaker with
each passing second.

"I don't know. But this worked last night. I
thought…"

"Well, it's not working now."

"I can see that." I forced the words through
my teeth.

T
he energy pulsed and vibrated beneath our fingertips and we
held on tighter. A giant flashing light exploded into the twilight
sky–one final, desperate outburst, and then everything faded to
black. The light was gone. Finished.

I turned to see Mark next
to Claire and me; for a moment he looked up and I could completely
understand the stark desperation that was clearly etched on his
features. Because we
were
desperate and there was no end in sight, except
our own.

"Oh God, no." Claire raised horrified eyes
to mine, and abruptly released the now plain looking fence. "This
is bad, Ari." she whispered, her troubled gaze darting to the
ominously silent forest beyond the useless fence.

"Bad." I nodded, swallowed. "That's one way
of putting it."

But it was about to get much, much worse.
The whole lot of us stood there for long moments, sprites and
warriors and nymphs alike, until a young, slim soldier–a
Scout–dashed out of those woods and jumped the fence.

"They're coming." the girl shouted. "Lots of
them. Hundreds of them."

"Where?" Mark demanded.

"About ten miles back."

Her words incited a flurry of action around
us, most of which was chaotic and totally counterproductive. Ten
miles. I exchanged a desperate look with Mark. Neither of us had to
say we were screwed. We were all well-aware of how fast the Coatyl
were capable of moving. Mike and Bob's studies of the creature I'd
killed had even suggested the potential for increased speed in the
mutated ones. Could we fight them? All of them?

My heartbeat was a dull, deep ache in my
chest as I spun in a slow circle; all around me, arguments were
breaking out. It hurt. Oh how it hurt to think of the thousands of
people back in the town and the small outlying areas, the men,
women and children who were counting on us to protect them from
Khan and horrors like the Coatyl.

What the fuck had we spent
years and months and hours training for? So that we could be
slaughtered along with our entire communities? Everyday citizens
and…family. Innocents like Megan and Rose, Ashley and Sienna, who
were, at this very moment, practicing lines for some silly
Christmas play Tara had cooked up. Tara. I froze, suddenly thinking
of the vivacious nymph and her over-abundance of holiday decor…
of
lights
.

"Hey!" I shouted over the cacophony of sound
that swelled around me. "Hey! Everybody!" I took a deep breath.
"Quiet!" I screamed for all I was worth.

Most of the noise subsided then and I waved
a small group of warriors closer. "I think I know how to fix this."
My voice rang out cool and clear. "We have to re-create the lights
around the fence. And we have to hurry."

A wide grin spread across Aranu's face.
"Smart." He inclined his head.

"But it won't keep anything out." One of
marksmen argued, looking harried. "We need to prepare for a
battle–"

"We won't win." Aranu cut the soldier off.
"And we're wasting time. Listen to what Aries has to say."