Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

41. RHYDIAN

41

RHYDIAN

F uck!

I should have expected something to go wrong. We’d had too much luck, and that god just had it in for us.

“Rhydian?”

Jordry pulled my focus. “What do you want us to do?”

I looked between the Alchemist’s face and his wife’s. Amida eyes were wide, her heart beating erratically. But her expression was torn. She wanted a fight, but she knew we weren’t in a situation where we could win.

Eleen stared at me from the driver’s seat. Her brown eyes focused, waiting. She knew we only had one chance to survive this encounter. It was her plan after all.

“Prism Shield?” she asked.

Rieka’s gaze was heavy on me as I stared at my oldest friend. As I contemplated such a ridiculous plan to get us home all in one piece.

I sighed in frustration. “Shit. Yes, Prism Shield.” I turned to Anika. “Spread the word.” Wind gust through the open window as the Echo shot off into the air.

“Rhydian, what’s going on? ”

Rieka’s tapped my chest reminding me that she was still in my arms. That the world hadn’t stopped just because I wanted it to. My hands ran up the curves of her body, as her gaze darted all over my face, as if she were trying to determine my thoughts through it.

She hadn’t known about this part of the plan. It hadn’t been part of the plan. It was always just there. A contingency in case—in case the bastards decided to change patrol paths and fucking cut us off.

My hands tightened around her waist. “I don’t have time to explain. Just stay with Eleen.” I popped the door and slid her off me. I made it halfway out the truck door before my sleeve snagged. Rieka had it fisted in her hand, her knuckles turning white.

“Where in the Sphere are you going?” she demanded to know.

“Rieka!” I don’t mean for her name to sound like an apology. “I have to go. I need you to stay with Eleen and speak for me ok? Don’t leave the truck.”

She slid right up to the door before I shut it on her, her expression one of confusion.

I took one last look at Rieka through the truck window before turning for the forest. Behind me, I knew the Runners were already moving into place. Wade and the other Pneumatics would be taking up positions in front of their vehicles, the Brights circling the convoy. Pressure began to build and my ears suddenly popped. The sound barrier shielding the vehicles had been built.

The muscles in my body screamed for me to stop, as though they had run fifty miles, even though I hadn’t gone more than fifty feet. Not even collapsing into the brush could ease the ache. My hand as it parted the brush quivered from exhaustion. A sign my body was not prepared for a long fight. I shuffled along the edge of the ground, twisting in the brush to get a better view. The last of the Bright’s luminos emerged from her hand in a striking stripe of white. Then one by one, in a cascading effect, the Brights vanished, and with them the convoy.

“Rieka, can you hear me?”

There was nothing but forest where she had been. Dark ominous fixtures that seemed to claw at the moonlight.

“Of course I can hear you. I can see you too. What are you doing out there?”

Relief flooded me at the sound of her voice. “Tell Jordry and Eleen it worked. The shield is up.”

“What shield, Rhydian what are you doing?” Her tone was more frustrated than confused.

“Rieka tell them!”

“I did all right, now tell me what is going on.” Rieka’s voice quivered, as if….I pushed the thought aside. It was frustration that had her questioning me. Under normal circumstances, I would find her stubbornness amusing, but right now—she was a pain in the ass. “ A Kensillan Militar Patrol is coming. We’re too slow to run, and we can’t risk the supplies. The Brights have shielded the convoy. I can’t see you.”

“The convoy’s invisible?” Her voice sounded awestruck. I almost wished I could see her face, imprint it upon my memory. “I didn’t even know that sort of thing was possible.”

“Just stay quiet. The more noise you make, the harder the Pneumatics have to work. And this must work Rieka. Or we’re all dead.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this part of the plan?”

“It wasn’t part of the plan until just now. There is not meant to be a patrol here.”

We were so close to the coast. It could not have been Army. The Admirals ran this part of the country. Though they were usually too busy keeping pirates out of the Mesali Gulf and away from the capital to bother with inland patrols.

Rieka scoffed in response . “So now we wait?”

The sound of churning gravel sounded to the right as if in response. Wheels, dozens driving over the road.

The bloodwork back at the compound took almost everything out of me. It would be hours before I could wield at full strength again, so whilst I knew exactly how many soldiers were moving towards the convoy. I’d never be able to hold them off. I would be lucky to puppet one in my current state.

Three trucks and a tank. For every one of us, there were five of them. Dark blue uniforms marked them as Navy. The slim cut of the fabric and the sheen of the material indicated they were armoured, their bodies protected by Spindled garments. Whitecaps. From the Aredyn Garrison. The patrol must have been heading for the compound to collect more Currents for their serf ranks.

The patrol vehicles encroached further on our position, the distance between us shrinking exponentially.

I should have made them move off the road.

It wasn’t going to work. The convoy took up too much space. The trucks were too big.

I should have made them procure smaller vehicles.

The soldier walking ahead of the patrol suddenly stopped, his grip on his gun shifting.

“Rhydian, I think he’s seen us.” Her voice grew flat, quiet.

My senses honed in on the soldier, to his heart. It beat steadily. His adrenaline would be spiking if he had seen anything. The prism shield had likely drawn his eye. A change in the light. I relay that to Rieka, but even I’m not convinced.

The soldier continued at a slow pace, meandering on the road as the patrol vehicles behind him continued to catch up.

“Rhydian!”

“I know.” The soldier was walking a direct path down the road. They were going to run right into the convoy, pass right through the shield, and everything would have been for nothing.

I pulled my pin from my hair having made my decision. My voice remained firm when I called out to Rieka. “ Tell Jordry to get the convoy to the tracks, get everyone back on the train. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

“What are you going to do?”

I don’t answer her. Which only irritated her more. She called my name several times as I buried myself further in the brush.

My breathing came out ragged. I’d only have enough energy to do this once, and I’d likely only be able to maintain it for a few minutes so I would have to make it count.

Blood pooled in my palm where I had pierced the skin with the end of the blade. The familiar tingling that accompanied this type of bloodwork trailed down my neck and along my arm until it reached my palm. Like the molten metal in a forge, my blood crawled from my hand in a single long ribbon, elongating and hardening into the crystalline form of a Crimson Blade. Against steel, it would fail, and I didn’t have enough energy to maintain its form. But against flesh and bone, nothing could compare. I just had to get close enough.

My fist closed around the crystalline handle, the blade humming under my grasp as the soldier moved into range. I struck hard and fast, feeling the blade slice through his armour as if it were parchment. Through the blade, I could taste his blood. When I sliced into the flesh of his chest and raked it down to the bone, pink mist showered the air.

I’d garnered their attention. Orders were shouted, doors opened and closed as soldiers poured out of the vehicles. But I was already running. It did not matter where I ran too, just that it was away from the convoy. Bullets ricocheted off the trees around me as the soldiers tried and failed to hit their target.

My senses told me the Runners in the convoy, Jordry, Amida, Wade and the others were moving again, which meant the patrol was now focused on me.

I skidded to a halt at an embankment, the drop much more than I knew my body could handle at present. Heavy footfalls pounded on the ground behind me, and I spun around to face the soldiers who had pursued.

There were seven. I can handle seven.

They hadn’t even slowed down. The smallest of the soldiers, the fastest rushed me. My blade sliced him clean in half, the edge cutting straight through his spinal cord between two vertebrae.

The next soldier slid to a halt at the sight of his comrade, fury lining the features of his young face.

It was an odd sort of hatred they bore us.

On the one hand, we were their greatest commodity, and on the other, that reliance on us had forged a kind of self-hatred that had no outlet except through their treatment of us. Convincing themselves we were the enemy seemed to be the only way they could live with themselves. Believing us capable of anything other than taking orders and being obedient meant we were more than the animals they preached we were. And their minds could not live with that possibility.

The soldier pulled a sword from his back, the steel glinting in the moonlight. I could feel my body weakening with every moment I held the crimson blade. Time was running out. The soldier moved to strike, his blade aimed at my shoulder.

Blood rushed to my head, causing the world to slow just enough that I could see the motion of the sword. I moved out of its line of strike. Shock and anger emerged on the soldier’s face, his gaze fixed on me as I spun and swung back. My blade went right through the gap between his body armour.

Fixing the oncoming soldiers with a glare, I ripped the sword from his body. And after it fell to the ground, I unceremoniously kicked him off the edge of the embankment.

His body hit the ground on the bottom at the same moment the other soldiers stopped. Two kept their guns raised as I twirled the blade in the air like a Setrali sword dancer. Each one wore the exact same expression. Hatred.

“Surrender to The Core and you will be spared,” one of them said in Kensillan. Not feeling particularly inclined to show my understanding, I feigned ignorance.

“It’s a rogue. Let’s just kill it,” another said, his trigger finger itching to pull.

“No,” ordered the third. The insignia on his uniform declared him a lieutenant. He glanced at my hand as he spoke his next words. “It wields a blood sword. The captain has always wanted a Hemopath in his retinue.”

They all exchanged glances. The trigger-happy one cocked a brow. “Does it need to be intact, sir?”

I would most definitely prefer to be intact!

My knees began to buckle, the crystal beneath my hand starting to soften.

The lieutenant shrugged. “ It can be mended.”

Fuck it!

I released my will over my blade and it fell like a ribbon from my hand, the crimson pooling on the forest floor as I forced the wound to clot. “I have a better option. You just take me in.”

“The Quarry speaks.” The lieutenant surveyed me through dark eyes as he wandered towards me. Entirely unafraid. It was a rare trait in a human. And not a good one.

I mimicked his tone. “Because I am intelligent.”

The lieutenant raised a thick brow. “And yet he slaughters The Core’s venerable soldiers. That does not scream intelligence to me.”

“And yet despite all Kensilla’s propaganda, here we are having a civilised conversation. So much for Quarry being too stupid to know their own name.”

The lieutenant continued his slow pace towards me. “And does the Quarry have a name?”

“Lieutenant first,” I said with a mocking bow.

The lieutenant smiled, the expression not quite reaching his eyes. I expected the hit. Whitecaps didn’t take too kindly to cocky taint wielders. But nothing quite prepared you to have the air forced out of your lungs when a rather large fist collided with your stomach.

The forest floor rose to meet me, my knees slamming hard into the soil. I saw his black leather polished boots a moment before my head was yanked back by my hair. Leaning down, the lieutenant glared at me with an icy gaze. “Quarry speak only when spoken to. Best learn that.” Upon releasing me, my body still struggling to take in air after his punch, he kicked me.

The last thing I saw when I hit the bottom of the embankment before my body finally succumbed to exhaustion, was a flash of white between the trees.