The Quest (36 page)

The three stopped once, and the leader said calmingly, “Put the guns down, kid. You don’t want to die here.”

“You still haven’t promised me my friends,” I said. “You will let them leave these mountains.”

“You have my word,” replied the leader. “Now give yourself up and we can all go home.”

The three started approaching again. Contrary to my threat, this was exactly what I wanted. I wanted them as close to Alia and me as possible, and I knew that as long as my only threat was suicide, the Angels wouldn’t be too afraid of me despite the fact that I had two drawn pistols in plain view. In a few seconds, I would spring the trap.

Come closer,
I thought to myself.
Just a little closer.
It was fortunate for me that the Seraphim didn’t have a delver who could read my mind from this distance.

But something was wrong. Three approaching, eight waiting, eleven far away. Only twenty-two Seraphim.

I sensed motion to my left. Turning my head, I found myself staring into a pair of floating eyeballs not more than three yards away. I almost pulled both triggers in surprise as the phantom turned visible. Then I felt my limbs suddenly become rigid as this phantom, who I realized was also a puppeteer, took control of my body.

I thought the phantom puppeteer would force me to hand over my pistols, but he didn’t. Instead, maintaining the distance between us, he just kept my arms locked in place so I couldn’t shoot anyone. I quickly discovered why.

Meanwhile, the leader and his two minions quickened their pace, smiling in victory.

“Good work,” the leader called up to the phantom puppeteer. Then he turned his head and shouted down to the rest of his team, “Come on, let’s go! We still have three more to bag.”

As his men started up the slope, I shouted at the leader furiously, “You promised you’d let my friends go!”

The leader, now less than five yards away from me, merely laughed. “Once you’re properly converted, you’ll want your friends to be with you. On our side.”

I turned my head back to the puppeteer. “Let go of me!”

The puppeteer shook his head. “It’s for your own safety, kid.”

He should have been more worried about his own.

Merlin had taught me well. The phantom puppeteer thought he had my arms and legs good and tight. He thought I was a child who hadn’t yet learned how to block a controller’s song. But he was the one who was untrained. This amateur puppeteer’s song was uneven, cluttered, nothing like Merlin’s. The cracks were so obvious I almost felt sorry for him.

Reaching out to take the pistols from my hands, the Seraph leader said pleasantly, “Welcome to the Angels, Adrian Howell.”

I put a bullet between his eyes with my right-hand pistol. Then, quickly shifting my aim, I fired two more rounds: one for each of his two pals. The phantom puppeteer was busy turning invisible again, but when a pair of bullets from my left-hand pistol entered his chest, he quickly reappeared on his back, twitching.

From there, it was controlled chaos.

Alia knew to hit the ground when the first shots were fired. I had actually missed my third headshot from my right-hand pistol, failing to kill the leader’s second minion, but that was only because the man suddenly staggered sideways, having caught a round from Terry’s rifle. As the Seraph fell to his knees, I put a few extra bullets into his upper body, and he collapsed backwards.

Well before the sun had risen, Ed Regis and Terry had carefully crawled just over fifty yards to my left and right, while James had taken position above and behind me. The remaining eight members of the Seraph advance team, now less than thirty yards from Alia and me, opened up with automatic rifles, telekinetic blasts, spark electric charges, and everything else they had. But they hadn’t expected to be fired upon from three different directions.

I dropped to the ground beside Alia as a powerful electric surge shot over my head, singeing my hair. I saw the spark preparing another thunderbolt in his left hand, but then the right side of his head blew apart. I guessed that round had come from Ed Regis.

What felt like an unfocused telekinetic blast smacked into my forehead, but I wasn’t injured. At this distance, the blast wasn’t half as painful as being hit by Terry in the dojo. Stretching my arms forward, I emptied both of my pistols into the group of Angels, but I couldn’t tell if I actually hit them. Some of the Seraph leader’s blood had spattered onto my face, draining me, but I was too far away to effectively use my telekinetic blasts anyway. Once I was out of bullets, I turned my eyes away from the carnage as Terry, Ed Regis and James used their rifles to quickly dispatch the remaining Seraphim. It was over in seconds.

Using my sleeve to wipe the blood off of my face, I turned to my sister and asked, “Alive?”

Alia’s eyes were wide and frantic, but at least she didn’t appear to have any holes in her. She tried to stand up but I grabbed her and pulled her back down. There were still eleven Seraphim approaching from below, already within rifle range.

Ed Regis called out, “You kids okay?”

“We’re good!” I yelled back. “Run or fight?”

“Run!” shouted Ed Regis. “Up to James! We’ll cover you!”

We didn’t need telling twice. As our rifle team fired several rounds in the direction of the approaching second wave, Alia and I scrambled up the slope toward James’s cover. Ducking behind his boulder, I heard the unmistakable sound of bullets ricocheting off the rocks.

Terry and Ed Regis joined us there.

“What have you got?” Terry asked James.

“I’m empty,” said James, breathing heavily.

“Two rounds,” reported Ed Regis.

“I have one left,” said Terry.

“Nice shooting,” I panted. “Good thing they split up.”

“Not good,” said Terry. “Only three rounds left and they won’t fall for that again.”

Terry was referring specifically to our rifle ammunition. Our original plan had included Terry, James and Ed Regis charging out with their pistols once their rifles were dry. But without the element of surprise, our pistols would be of little use against the remaining Seraphim, who could pick us off one by one from a safe distance. Nor was there enough cover below us to retrieve the weapons the first-wave Seraphim had dropped when we killed them.

“Light and fast,” said Ed Regis. “Dump the rifles and packs.”

We did. Ed Regis transferred the remaining food and water into his own backpack, which he kept. The rest of us now had nothing but our tattered clothes and a few pistols between us.

“Three days, right?” Ed Regis said to Alia. “We can still make it.”

Up we went, using the terrain for cover, occasionally having to dash or crawl between the rock formations as more bullets greeted us from below. Fortunately, we were already so close to the top of the slope that, within only a few minutes, the Angels no longer had line of sight on us.

I was bringing up the rear with Ed Regis so I didn’t immediately see what caused Terry to swear as loudly as she did the next moment. Anxiously making my way around the rock that was blocking my view, I saw the cause of her frustration.

The descending slope was so steep that it could hardly be called a slope at all.

“This is a cliff!” shouted James. “You led us onto a goddamn cliff!”

“Shut up, James!” Terry and I shouted in unison.

James looked like he had been slapped. I felt a bit sorry for him, being thrown into this horrid mess on only his second mission. He was much like I had been: unstable and panicky. But we didn’t have the time to nurse him through it.

“There’s got to be a way down,” I said, looking down over the edge. But there wasn’t. Not without the ropes and gear we had just dumped.

“Nothing for it,” said Terry. “We’ll just have to keep going.”

She meant keep going north along the edge of the cliff, which ran all the way to the next mountain peak where the slope was gentle enough to descend without dying. Until we got there, however, we would be easy targets.

It wasn’t much more than half a mile, though, and I hoped we might make it before the Seraphim behind us reached the top and re-established line of sight. Our path between the two peaks quickly turned into a knife’s edge, with dizzying drop-offs on both sides. We jogged forward as fast as we dared, single file, Terry first, followed by James, Alia, then me, and Ed Regis last. To our rear left, I could see the mountainside where we had ambushed the Seraphim. Fortunately, the curvature of the mountain kept us out of view from the Angels who were no doubt scrambling up the slope, and the jagged mountainsides were so steep here that our pursuit would have no choice but to follow our roundabout route.

A rifle shot rang out behind us. We stopped and turned, wondering how the Angels could have already reached the top of the slope. But there were no Seraphim yet to be seen on the path behind us.

“Look!” shouted James, and he didn’t have to point for us to know what he was talking about.

One Seraph, a flight-capable telekinetic, was hovering high up above the spot where I had shot their leader. The telekinetic was holding a bulky scoped rifle in his hands.

“So they did have a flyer,” muttered Ed Regis.

The Angel telekinetic was smarter than me so he wasn’t about to rush at us without the rest of this team. But there was nothing we could do to keep him from sniping us from the air. Praying not to catch any bullets in our rears, we kept going as fast as we could.

Fortunately, it takes an extraordinary amount of psionic focus to levitate yourself and a big metal rifle at the same time, and the telekinetic wasn’t finding it easy. He fired several more rounds, but none of the bullets landed close enough for us to even hear the ricochets.

I was certain that it was only a matter of seconds now before the telekinetic ran out of psionic energy and would have to give up and land, but then Ed Regis suddenly let out a surprised yelp behind me. A lucky bullet had hit Ed Regis’s backpack, and in his surprise, Ed Regis had lost his footing. Turning around, I tried to grab him, both with my hands and telekinetically, but it was too sudden. Ed Regis toppled over the edge and slid down the near-cliff more than thirty yards before coming to a stop on a little ledge. If he had fallen over that ledge, it was another one hundred yards or more, but this time really straight down.

“Ed Regis!” I called down.

He didn’t reply, but he seemed to be moving a little.

I glanced back up toward the Angel telekinetic, but he had already dropped out of view. Most likely he’d need a good long rest before he flew again.

Terry wasn’t taking any chances, though. “Come on!” she shouted, leading us forward several more yards to one of the few rock formations on the narrow edge that we could use for cover.

“Ed Regis!” I shouted again, and Alia joined me, cupping her hands around her mouth and shouting, “Ed! Are you okay?!”

Ed Regis finally turned his head and looked up at us. “I’m alright!” he shouted. “Get moving!”

“He’s not alright!” I said angrily. “He’s got nowhere to go. The Angels will shoot him as soon as they get up here.”

“We can’t get down to him,” Terry logically pointed out.

“I can,” I said through clenched teeth, all the more furious because it was true. If I didn’t, it would mean I had deliberately refused to, and that wasn’t about to happen.

I turned to my sister and said quickly, “Alia, you’re the leader now. You get Terry and James to the Historian for me. If we both survive this, I’ll see you there.”

Alia shook her head. “No, Addy! You can’t go!”

“He saved my life and yours,” I said, putting my hands on her shoulders. “I’m not leaving him.”

Alia gave me an anguished look. I knew what she was going through because I was going through it myself. “I know you’re scared,” I said gently, “but you wouldn’t leave him to die, either. You know you wouldn’t.”

Alia grabbed my right arm. She looked like she was about to say something, but then she just nodded acceptingly.

“You’re an idiot, Adrian!” spat Terry. “You’d do this for a Wolf? For
that
Wolf?!”

I nodded. “Yes, Terry. For that Wolf. Take care of Alia for me.”

Without waiting for a reply, I jumped over the edge, using my telekinesis to slow my descent only when I was almost at the ledge. I had to carefully save my strength for what I was about to do next.

Landing lightly beside Ed Regis, I asked, “Are you injured?”

“No,” groaned Ed Regis.

“No broken legs or anything?” I asked. “That was a hell of a fall.”

“What are you doing down here, Adrian?”

I scowled at him. “What goes around comes around.”

“You can’t lift me and yourself back up this slope,” said Ed Regis.

“There’s no going back up,” I agreed. “But there’s always down.”

Now that I was down here standing on the edge of the cliff, I wasn’t at all sure I really could save this man. Despite his months in Angel captivity and all this time rationing our limited food supplies on the mountain, Ed Regis was a big and muscular man, and I suspected that he weighed as much as Terry and Alia combined.

“Just hang on to me,” I said. “We’ll jump together. I’ll get you down safely.”

Ed Regis caught the uncertainty in my voice. “Have you ever done this before?”

I looked at him for a moment, wondering if he preferred the truth or a lie, especially considering the good chance that we were both about to break our necks on the rocks below.

“Not successfully,” I answered honestly. “Throw your backpack over the side. Your boots, guns, belt and jacket too.”

Ed Regis did as I requested, and I also threw everything metal I had on me over the ledge.

Once we were as light as we could be, I took two deep breaths and said to Ed Regis, “Alright, arms around my neck. Time to fly.”

Ed Regis looked at me, suddenly afraid. He shook his head and said, “You don’t have to do this for me, Adrian. It’s okay. Just go.”

I punched him in the face. Not a nose-breaking punch, but hard enough to knock him back to his senses. Grabbing the front of his shirt, I hollered, “I am not going to let you die here, soldier! Put that in your goddamn database!”