Indestructible (Indestructible Trilogy Book 1) (4 page)

Nolan swears loudly, drawing his weapon. “They followed you?”

“They weren’t fooled by our ruse.” Cas barely seems fazed.

The fiend jumps, but Cas’s already fighting, knife blazing red as sunset. The fiend howls as a long cut slices its body. Cas slashes with the blade, his face a brutal mask. My heart pounds in my ears. I want to run, but somehow I can’t look away. What I’m seeing defies all logic. Cas and the fiend move so fast my eyes shouldn’t be able to comprehend it, but every strike lodges itself in my brain. I want to jump forward and join the fray, but the fiend howls like a dog that’s been shot. Blood soaks into the forest floor as it falls to its knees. I look around for a place to run—but two more monsters leap onto the path in front of us.

“Climb a tree!” Nolan shouts over his shoulder, running to place himself between me and the enemy.

For a second, the image of me punching that fiend earlier flashes through my mind, and I almost ignore his idea and rush forward. But common sense prevails. I pick out the sturdiest-looking lower branch and step onto it, grasping the branch above for balance. It creaks and sways beneath my weight, but I reach up and pull myself higher, higher, curtains of dark leaves brushing against me. I glance down and see Cas and Nolan fighting back-to-back, their blades—Nolan fights with a knife, too—glowing red in the gloom around them. I almost fall when I disturb a nesting blackbird, which takes off with a shriek. Heart hammering, I straighten up, pulling myself one branch higher, until the red sky peeks through at me.

Something is flying towards me. Bigger than any bird I’ve seen. Dread clutches my throat. It’s one of the fiends. I’ve never seen one that can
fly
before, but the shape grows larger by the second and I know I’m in real trouble.

Raw panic washes over me. I duck down, drop to a lower branch, but my sweaty hands slip and my feet go out from underneath me. A hoarse scream escapes as I fall. I grasp for solid branches but handfuls of leaves slip through my fingers. I hit the ground with a shudder. Pain shrinks my world to a small bubble. My back’s on fire. My chest burns, as though I’ve broken something inside. I cough, and feel wetness at the back of my throat. Blood.

The fiend crashes through the canopy. Rather than meaty fists, like the others’, its hands are curved claws, like a deformed bird’s.

The fiend attacks.

I can’t move fast enough. Pain stabs my chest all over, but at the same time, the world goes into slow-motion just like at the house. My fist rises to meet it, skin blazing like a torch.

Fiery light explodes around me, and the fiend cringes away.

I’m on fire. But it doesn’t hurt, not at all. As the fiend recovers, preparing to slice through me with its claws, I aim a punch at its flattened face. Red light flares from my fist

But the fiend ducks. Faster than before. My hand connects with nothing, and the claws slice my skin. I scream, the world speeding up in a dizzying haze. Blood spurts from my chest.

It didn’t work.
The thought floats through my head, disconnected. I’m bleeding, dying.

I lost.
No.

The claws come down again. I raise my hands, feebly, and wait to die.

Dots cover my vision. The world drifts around me, gnarled trees twisting into hideous fiends. Voices sound, but I can’t hear anything for the buzzing in my ears. Yet before me, I see Cas’s sword fly out, knocking the fiend back.

I can’t move, but I’m still alive. Helpless. Slipping away by the second.
I can’t die now.

Cas pushes the fiend back, out of my sight, and then everything goes black.

Voices reach me, somewhere in the darkness.

“
You
carry her.”

“Selfish asshole—” I’m assuming that’s Nolan, talking to Cas.

Next thing I know, I’m in Nolan’s arms, and we’re running through the forest. Almost as soon as I become aware of that, the pain crashes over me again. Branches whip at me as we cut a path through the darkness.

“Hang in there!” Nolan says.

I want to ask where we’re going, but my mouth isn’t working properly, and my head hangs limp. Pain. Numbness. More pain, and screeching that causes more convulsions up my spine. During one of the bursts of pain, a howl cuts through the buzzing in my ears, telling me the fiends are on our trail again.

That should strike me as important. But I’m too tired, too numb. I drift off again.

Next time I wake, Nolan is yelling at Cas. I can’t make out the words, but I catch a blurred glimpse of Cas’s face and he looks angry. The trees have thinned out, and the sky above blazes, as though reflecting my pain, the moon a mocking eye staring down at me. The world is painted in angry red-and-black stripes. My companions’ argument forms a background noise.

A screech jolts me to full awareness again. Somehow, I’m in Cas’s arms, not Nolan’s. I blink up at him, confused, as he hisses at me through clenched teeth. I catch the words, “Don’t ever tell anyone about this.”

I think I nod. I can’t feel my head at this point. My world is a haze of pain. I can’t breathe.

Next thing I’m aware of is that Cas is holding a knife over me.

CHAPTER FOUR

I can’t move. Cas says something else I don’t catch, then holds his other hand. The blade flashes as he slices open his own palm. Blood drips onto my body. I notice in a detached way that my shirt’s ridden up, exposing my torso. There’s a lot of blood. I’ve cracked ribs, maybe worse. Scratches cover my stomach from the fiend’s claws.

Cas’s blood mingles with mine.

A burning sensation spreads through my body. I gasp, my spine arching, as my skin flares. Pain ignites every inch of me. My veins are on fire. I can’t breathe, I can’t even scream. The world disappears as I’m swallowed by pure, searing agony.

Shaking. Someone’s shaking me. Violently. A voice breaks through the haze.

“C’mon, Leah, get up—Cas, you don’t need to do that.”

A rustling sound. The burning stops. The world comes into focus with a clarity that stuns me. The pain recedes as quickly as it came, leaving only sweet, blessed peace.

“Don’t you dare fall asleep!” Cas shakes me again. This time, my eyes stay open, focus on the angry slant of his mouth. “We have to leave. Get on your feet. You’ll be able to move now.”

“How?” is the first word to come out. I swallow, tasting blood, but I no longer feel broken inside. Not even the slightest ache. I’m healed.

Cas’s blood healed me.

I look down at myself, moving my hands over my ribs. Dark blood streaks my shirt and jacket, but nothing hurts. Cas stands, and I catch a glimpse of the hand he cut to heal me. But there’s no cut.

“Questions later,” says Nolan—I’d not seen him until now. He’s noticeably paler than before, and he stands at a distance from me and Cas. “We’ve got to go. Now.”

I stand. Cas’s not looking at me anymore; he’s already started walking again, then running. Nolan watches me warily. My legs feel steady, so I take a step. Another. Energy fills me, and I start to run, to catch up with Cas.

“Can’t you bother Nolan?” he says, before I can speak.

“I was just going to thank you for saving my life,” I say. “Good manners cost nothing.”

“But they’re inconvenient,” he says, tonelessly.
Well, that’s friendly.

I’m starting to get out of breath already. “How do you run so fast?”

“Are you going to ask annoying questions all the way to camp?”

“Just curious.” I catch a glimpse of his hand again. No cut, not even a scar. “You can heal.”

“I can,” he says, not elaborating.

“Does that mean I can do the same? I mean, I’m one of you… right?”

His eyes turn cold. “I said, no questions.”

Right. I caught on fire, almost died, and then walked away after he healed me with his blood. Do most people brush those things aside?

“Okay, whatever. It’s just that it doesn’t make any sense you saving me considering what an inconvenience I am. Am I one of you, or what? How can you know that?”

“Because if you weren’t, my healing you wouldn’t have worked,” says Cas, simply. Then, in tones that cut right through me, “I never wanted to save you.”

“Thanks a bunch, then.” I look around for Nolan and see he’s running, too, but a noticeable distance from Cas. The two weren’t exactly friendly to each other before—well, not on Cas’s part—but they stood back-to-back when they faced the monsters. Now Nolan runs at the verge of the path where the trees lean over it, as though reluctant to get close to him.

What Cas did to me scares him.

Strange. I thought Nolan himself pushed Cas into healing me. I puzzle over this to distract myself from the sting of Cas’s words, and the occasional faint cry that tells us the fiends are still in pursuit. They must be tiring by now—we’re moving far quicker than ordinary humans can. I used to be fairly quick on my feet and had a decent score in cross-country running at school, but not on this level.

Now I’d give anything to have those days back, when running was just a sport, not survival.

I still have difficulty keeping up with Cas, but the ache in my legs is from exertion, not injury; the pain in my side is a stitch forming, not broken ribs. My heart hammers, my feet pounding the ground. Just to be alive is a miracle. A miracle I can’t explain. Whatever Cas did to me, that fire-coloured light appeared again before the fiend attacked me. Whatever I am, it’s more than human.

I see Cas watching me out of the corner of his eye. As our gazes meet, he looks away, his pace quickening. I’m starting to get out of breath, so I let myself fall slightly behind until I’m alongside Nolan.

“Are you okay?” he asks, seeming to have recovered from his earlier wariness. “I should have asked before.”

“I’m fine,” I say, glancing over my shoulder. “Are the fiends… are they definitely following us?”

I haven’t heard any loud noises of pursuit in a while, but I’m aware that I have no weapon and I’ll be defenceless if we’re attacked again. Whatever power I might have, the fiend still as good as killed me. I don’t expect Cas to save me again.

“They’ve fallen behind,” says Nolan, and relief seeps through me. “But they’ll have our scent. I’ve never known them this persistent before.”

Neither have I. Each encounter I’ve had with the monsters is etched on my memory in vivid colours, brief but brutal. They find their target, kill them, then take off. The fiends don’t kill to feed, but for the sake of killing. That’s always been clear.

“Guess we’ll have to keep running,” he says. “It’s not too much farther to our camp.”

“Camp?” I echo. “There are more of you?”

Stupid question. Maybe they really do belong to some kind of cult.

“Yeah, we split up to hunt the fiends. I never expected to go so far out, but those fiends seemed fixated on something. They go where the energy blasts are, usually.”

He falls silent. Perhaps he thinks I don’t want to talk about the explosion. With everything that’s happened since, my survival from that seems less like a dream. It’s my life before that seems dream-like. Running and hiding and running again. Barely speaking to anyone. I don’t think I’ve said this many words in a row since Lissa died. I’ve certainly never felt curious. But now, new questions spark to life in my head with every passing moment. I keep my mouth shut, reluctant to put myself further in debt to these people. But there’s one thing I can ask.

I check he’s out of earshot before I speak. “Why did Cas save me? He as good as said he hates my guts.”

Nolan hesitates for a long time before answering. “Because I asked him to,” he says. “And because he could.”

That makes no sense. I want to say so, but Nolan’s subtly quickened his pace, leaving me in the dust.

I’ll have to get answers later.

Light blooms over the horizon as we finally exit the forest. The sun rises in the fiery sky, rays reaching out over the barren earth. We’re heading for another Burned Spot, and I can see a group of tents clustered on the scorched ground.

Nolan walks faster, but Cas hangs back, as though reluctant. We cut across a field of dry grass which sharply ends where the energy wave must have reached, destroying anything living nearby. I can still smell the burning, though I might be imagining it.

I start to see people amongst the tents. Three or four red-cloaked individuals sit on tree stumps in a circle, mirroring the discussions that used to take place every night in our group. At first, people wanted to talk about the world before, like it was a decade ago, not mere weeks. Then Randy stopped them, said it was upsetting the children. Like we hadn’t seen enough for a lifetime of psychological scarring already.

Two more red-cloaked figures pace the outskirts of the tents, obviously keeping guard. Nolan calls to one of them.

“Hey! Val!”

As we get closer I see it’s a tall woman with long, dark hair swept back in a ponytail and piercing grey eyes. Her gaze instantly focuses on me, the stranger.