All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) (44 page)

“Not a life.”  Not on my conscience.  He wasn’t prey and my nightmares were already bad enough, thank you very much.

“A life for all our lives.  I’m volunteering.”

“Quit being squeamish, Carol,” Tonya said, sounding like Keaton.  No slurred words this time, no Hollywood special effects voice.  “Take the juice, get out there and save us.”

Yes, boss.  Damn her charisma.  I took a deep breath and turned to her.  “Cut him loose from Gail.  The stress of an Arm taking one of her Transforms might kill her in the state she’s in.”

The Transform fell into my arms, moaning.  “Done,” Tonya said.  No hesitation.  Perhaps a hint of a smile for the pain she just caused.  Perhaps not.

“That hurts,” the older male Transform said.

“Name.”

“My name is Reverend Matthew Robert Narbanor.  Do it.”

“Reverend, if we get out of this alive, they’re going to write songs about you.”

I took him and took away his pain.  I drew as slowly as possible, over about thirty seconds, as painless as ever for my volunteer.  I picked him up and walked toward the window as I took his juice, not wanting to get caught in the ambush Tonya started to set up for Odin, doing juice tricks beyond my ability to metasense.  Damn that bitch was tough, and I was damned glad she was on our side.

This would be hard on my conscience; this man was someone Gail and her household loved.  Hell, he had married Gail to her husband earlier today.  Hurting her household hurt me, at least right now.  Another inadvertent link.  My instincts said I wasn’t anywhere close to being done with Gail.

If we survived the fight.

On my way to the opening, Polly pointed at me, slapping a juice pattern on me more complex and more potent than Gail’s instinctive trick.  Tonya called Polly a real live witch, so what the hell, I decided to believe there were Focuses able to do such things.  Her trick made me feel ten feet tall and full of piss and vinegar.  She had also used Reverend Narbanor as a juice conduit, and I was now full up on juice.

I kissed the Reverend’s head when I finished with him and leapt out the window.

Outside of the Transform-crowded ballroom my metasense opened up and I got a better sense of the battle.  The illusory army stood in tatters, fading to invisibility, a hundred feet away.  Behind the illusion, the real Hunters and their packs came at us in a loose line: Monsters first, then the Hunters, followed by the pack Transforms able to hold and shoot weapons, and backed up by more juice zombies and allied normals, all with weapons.  As they passed around cars, light poles, and larger obstacles I realized the smaller group, consisting of Enkidu, Joshua, two other mature Hunters and their packs, were angling toward the smaller ballroom and institutional kitchen anchoring the left end of the hotel’s conference center, right next to the larger ballroom I defended.  Fewer than ten Focus bodyguards manned the smaller ballroom.  They would never be able to stop four mature Hunters and their packs.

A full split-up of their attacking forces would leave the center group without any of their heavyweights in it, just the seven remaining lesser Hunters, those sane and talented enough to be out on their own but who possessed just the Hunter basics.  The enemy would only be doing that…why?

Oh.  Rogue Crow was in the center group.  He was the heavyweight.  He commanded the juice zombies.  The center group looked the most dangerous to the untrained eye, with roughly three times the numbers of the group peeling off to the left.  ‘Attack here’, it said.

Right.  Sure.  In a melee like this, Rogue Crow’s tricks might be limited to Focus-range, but I bet they would be fatal.  I didn’t want anyone I considered irreplaceable to go hand to hand with that group.

I started to signal, ordering Keaton, Haggerty, and Sky to join me, and if the Nobles obeyed, all three of them as well, to take on the group peeling off to the left.  By ourselves.  The entire weight of the rest of the defenders, including everyone on the ballroom roof, my Transform bodyguard and the Target Security sortie group hidden to my right, the Focus bodyguard cadre hidden in the bushes to my left, and my reserve army of thugs, I ordered to go after the center group.  Behind me, the Arm holding the windows shouted “Got it”, stopped doing targeted assassinations of the leaders of the oncoming horde, and switched over to spraying the front line of the center group.

Love those Arm instincts.

All the Crows, led by Occum, began to relay my signals.  My first group of thugs exited their stolen van and opened fire less than five seconds later.  The other five groups of backup thugs took longer, but by the time I reached Keaton’s side they were all engaged, shooting into the rear of the center group.  I left no easy way out for those seven Hunters, their packs, and Rogue Crow.

As I ran, the mature lizard-like Hunter on the far right boomed out the most impressive Terror roar I had ever heard, a window-rattling peal of thunder.  Ahh, Thunder.  I had heard of him by rumor, supposedly the most terrifying of the more recently trained Hunters.  Everyone on our side flinched but me, immune thanks to Polly’s witchery.

Keaton gave off signals of her own, battle signals for what she wanted me to do.  I followed, darting in and out, going where she wanted.  This was her strength, and our group power grew as not only I, but also the three Nobles, began to follow Keaton’s lead.  She didn’t take on the Hunters and their packs head on, but in a slashing fashion, turning them away from their target and back toward the blown windows of the ballroom.  Dart in.  Slash.  Fire weapons.  Dart out.  Dodge the damned pack Monsters and part-Monsters.

As I ripped the head off the dragon-Monster, dodged Joshua’s claws, and flinched from a point-blank-range Terror roar, I got to see the center group fall in waves.  Few, if any, would reach the windows. They were in my trap, and they would
not
succeed.

Now all the rest of us had to do was stop four mature Hunters and their packs.  I soon lost myself in the thrill and wonder of battle, my mind and body now Keaton’s to direct.

Earl Robert Sellers

Sellers bit and tore at Joshua, spun and leapt on Enkidu’s back – distracting him away from a charge by Keaton – and then bounded into four pack part-Monsters, sending their firearms flying.  He ended up with the throat of a pig-woman in his teeth, which he ripped out.  Two bullets hit him, one in the guts and one in his lower left hind leg, and he spun away, limping and concentrating on healing.  He barked Terror at four pack Monsters as they charged him, claws and teeth ready to shred; in their flinch he sprinted out, following Keaton’s signal.

Seven Major Transforms against four, should be a win, save for the damned fighting harem women of the Hunters, and the fact that one of theirs, Sky, was a Crow and hanging back, dropping Crow dross tricks on the combatants instead of physically fighting.  The Noble equivalent of the Hunters’ pack women, their Commoners, were much better as shooters, and they remained on the grand ballroom rooftop.

Count Knox didn’t obey Keaton’s order to fall back and ready another charge, locked in combat with Joshua.  Sellers couldn’t remember, but he didn’t think they had told either of the three Arms that any fight between Knox and Joshua would be a personal grudge match, and likely to the death.

Four of Joshua’s harem women darted in close and fired, nearly point blank, into Knox.  At least the Hunter army’s arsenal wasn’t as good as the defenders’; few carried high-caliber Monster-stopper rounds.  Of the four who shot at Knox, only one shot a Monster-stopper round, and that from a pistol.

Knox staggered, though, shot just above the knee with the Monster-stopper.  He crushed open the skull of the harem woman as he fell and rolled, but he couldn’t roll out fast enough to avoid Joshua’s gorilla-leap.  Sellers lost sight of the Knox-Joshua fight for a moment as he obeyed Keaton’s orders and charged with Keaton, Hancock and Haggerty into the milling throng of harem women arrayed between Enkidu and Thunder.  Enkidu leapt at Sellers as he passed, knocking him off balance and skidding him to the feet of a Horsie and a Sweater.  They bit at him, he bit back and leapt up and over the Monsters; as he did, Joshua lifted Count Knox above his head and tossed him into a burning station wagon.  Knox’s impact crushed the side of the wagon, spraying gasoline, which exploded.

Sky’s metapresence dimmed, and Sellers turned to help, only to find Sky skidding across the wet parking lot, having been hit just below the waist by a car’s bumper, tossed at him and practically through him by a chimp Monster.  He charged the chimp to keep her from finishing off Sky, caught one, two, three and four rounds on the way, and ripped off her lower left arm.  He howled as Knox’s metapresence vanished in a dross explosion of death.

His world turned red, and he almost lost himself in battle fury, as Occum’s Noble household churned with the effects of Knox’s death.  The fury raged through Sellers, an instinctive urge to kill everything and everyone nearby who wasn’t part of the Noble household.  They all deserved to die!  Count Knox’s death demanded it.

He turned back to the fight, barely hanging on to what little remained of his humanity.  He expected a signal from Keaton, but didn’t get one.  The Arm had been jumped by four harem part-Monsters, and then Enkidu.  Sellers lost them as the chimp Monster leapt on his back and clawed at his eyes.  Blinded by blood, he ran the chimp Monster into a Chevy pickup truck, which scraped her off his back.

Enkidu roared and stood, Keaton’s leg in his wolf-jaws.  Behind him, Duke Hoskins faced Thunder and Joshua and the remains of their packs, alone.  As another group of pack Monsters jumped him, he saw Enkidu charge Hoskins, from behind.  Haggerty and Hancock left their fights and charged Enkidu.

Buried by pack Monsters tearing at his throat and abdomen, Sellers fell, overwhelmed.  The world dimmed at they tore him apart.

They were losing, and losing badly.

Gilgamesh

“Save your grief until later, Gilgamesh.”  Gilgamesh looked up, hearing Shadow’s voice.  He wasn’t here.  Tonya was, and she held on to something invisible.  Neat.  Invisible in the dark.  Sounded like a good name for a rock band or jazz ensemble.

“Shadow?  Good.”  Gilgamesh’s panic threatened to consume him from all the screams, Terror roars, blood and the incredible amount of gunfire.  Some of the blood was his.  He couldn’t remember when, but he had caught something in his left leg, and it hurt.  He could barely walk.

“You command.”

“What?”

“You command here, Gilgamesh,” Shadow said.  “The Commander has left the ballroom, Lori is down, Tonya is working on stopping the armored bear Hunter who got in through the hotel, and I’m clueless about any form of combat.  You’re what’s left.  So command!”

To his right, a withering hail of gunfire enveloped two pack-Monsters who tried to enter the ballroom from the hotel.  He caught a glimpse of Odin, just outside the ballroom entrance, as he flinched back from some juice tricks from Tonya and Polly.  Gilgamesh metasensed Shadow arcing complex dross constructs that way, without having to look or interrupt his conversation with Gilgamesh.

He scanned the enemy forces again and quailed.  Their Transform charges were all stable, with none of the backsliding into inhumanity that plagued the Nobles.  The Hunters could even speak in their Beast-forms.  Compared to them, the Nobles and their charges were weak.  The Law was too
good
.

They were all going to die.

Gunfire erupted from behind Gilgamesh.  Stalin and her people had built a barricade in the far corner, tables on tables, and fired through impromptu slits.  Shooting high and careful at Odin and his people.  They were even high enough to get good sight lines out into the parking lot.

They focused too much effort on Odin, though.  The first of the main body of attackers would reach the broken out windows in seconds.

“Bodyguards!” Gilgamesh said, shouting and pointing.  “Help the Arm at the window!”

Tonya and Polly’s people retreated away from the doorway, as Odin and three pack-Monsters forced their way in.  All four were sorely wounded.

“Shadow!” Gilgamesh said.  “Drop Odin!”

Seventeen bodyguards, including Focus Mann and her people, made it to the window before the first of the attackers, a mostly dead tigeroid pack-Monster, leapt into the room.  The Arm at the window beheaded it with a sword Gilgamesh hadn’t seen before she used it.  Three wounded mostly humanoid pack-Monsters and an elephant-headed Hunter leapt in as the tigeroid head bounced toward him.

“Ignore the elephantine Hunter!” Gilgamesh called to the bodyguards.  It would be too easy to lose himself in fear at the Hunter’s presence.  They had to stop the Monsters and part-Monsters.

Three of the bodyguards fell, chopped up by the four enemies who made it in.  The Arm dispatched the Hunter, while Stalin’s bodyguards shot and slowed down all the part-Monsters, dropping two.  Focus Mann, wielding a Monster gun, got off a head shot at point blank range at a carnivorous giant turkey part-Monster.  Focus Larson, standing but shaky, loosed low-end juice patterns at part-Monsters, one after the other, very quickly.  The last of the part-Monsters fell.

Gilgamesh swiveled around when Odin screamed and went down.

“He’s not dead,” Gilgamesh said.  “He’s regenerating.”

“How can you tell?” Sinclair.  He still guarded Polly, now close enough to hear over the din.