Chapter 28 Hector
HECTOR
Ididn’t intend to kill the Hunters. Really, I didn’t. Even though it was likely their intention for us, I felt like the first step in changing as a person was giving up a bad habit.
Killing was mine.
Apparently I had room for personal growth even in such a dangerous place as one of Bahmet’s trials. If I had the time to pat myself on the back, I would have.
Kai and I left the two Hunters bleeding and gasping out on the floor. What harm was a couple of broken noses, one completely ruined set of teeth and a shattered eye socket? They were in a heap of tangled (very broken) limbs, moans escaping blood-coated lips.
“We work pretty well together,” I said to Kai who was doubled over, panting beside me. “You good?”
“Need. Two. Minutes.”
I was willing to give him those minutes but unfortunately for Kai, the real shitstorm was on its way to us.
Kai didn’t notice at first. He was doubled over, heaving for breath, his little demonic cat lapping human blood from his paw as though he’d stepped in a bowl of cream.
Emon was no different as he curled his cold scales around my arm and clung to my flesh, his fangs retiring from the multitude of puncture wounds he’d left over the Hunters’ bodies.
But I noticed the shift. The change. I watched, barely a scratch on my body from the fight, as the Hunters’ blood started to seep into the earth.
It spread quickly, like a piece of tissue soaking up spilled red wine.
At first I thought it was strange, but I put it down to this being Bahmet’s personal hell-zone.
Then the stain of blood grew wider, spread further.
That was when the ground began to rumble.
“Please, no. No more.” Kai looked up, his ginger curls stuck to his forehead. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, widening my stance as another jolt shivered beneath me. “But whatever it is, I think we need to get moving. Can you manage it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Nope.”
I’d been punched a total of seven times across my torso, but nothing hurt. One of the Hunters had swiped a blade across the side of my face, but there was no blood. No broken skin. Whatever was the reason, I was glad, because I had the energy to help Kai start moving.
That was when the soft earth atop one of the grave-sites broke apart. If I’d been watching as the ground drank the Hunters’ blood, maybe I would’ve seen the mottled, rotten arm extend beyond the soil. It was Kai whose exhausted, gargled scream drew my attention.
“Please for the long of everything good, tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
Impossibly long nails gouged at the grave-site until a hole was made big enough for the corpse to drag itself free. The groaning Hunters noticed and began to choke on their screams as a rotten corpse clawed free of one of the graves.
“Kai,” I choked out, stumbling back a step as another grave-site began to crumble apart. “Run.”
“Huh?” he huffed.
I lifted a finger and pointed to the literal zombie that was halfway out of the grave, scratching at the ground with desperate hands, as it worked its way towards the two Hunters.
His eyes narrowed. “Is that a—”
“RUN!”
It took all but three minutes from the end of our fight with the Hunters, for a dozen undead beings to scuttle out of their resting places. Corpses, frozen in all states of decay, with gnashing jaws and flesh-thirsty cries.
And more were joining the fray. Especially as a wave of the undead fell atop the two Hunters and began ripping into their bodies. They didn’t have a chance to scream out for help before death claimed them.
More blood. This time it spurt, ejecting out in sprays, covering the undead in a shower. The noises the zombie-creatures gargled were close to euphoric. Orgasmic, as they bathed in the gore.
And the more blood that spilled onto the earth, spreading outwards like an unnatural stain, the more undead who began clambering out of the graves.
The plague was spreading. Fast.
This was why Bahmet had encouraged violence. Because the demon lord had something up his sleeve for us… a twist in this already fucked-up game that made it a hundred times worse.
“Go, go, go,” I screamed, shouldering into Kai and dragging him away. “Don’t look back. Keep running.”
Our feet hit the ground. Thump, thump, thump. A steady, demanding rhythm that synced with Kai’s rasping breaths. It wouldn’t surprise me if the man was asthmatic, because he sounded like a fish out of water.
Kai’s kitten was bounding after him like it was some game, mewing to himself as he slunk between gravestones. To our left the head of another undead corpse had thrust itself out of the grave, arms reaching for us, and the kitten bounded on its head like it was a springboard.
“This… is why… Bahmet wanted… violence,” I managed, lungs burning with each inhale of cold air.
Kai couldn’t reply with words, but the dismayed grunt that followed seemed to me like he agreed.
“Just don’t stop,” I said, half speaking to Kai, and the other half to myself. “Keep going.”
Listen, I really hated running. And when I say hated, I feel like the word isn’t strong enough.
I, Hector Briar, ran for no one. My body wasn’t built for cardio, nor did I have any desire to work on the skill.
But with a hoard of zombies clambering in a wall of rotten flesh behind us, I had no bloody choice.
We could’ve been running for a few minutes at max, but it felt like I’d embarked on a marathon. My legs turned to jelly, and I was sure my lungs had just completely stopped working. But whatever I felt, Kai was worse.
His face had turned a beetroot red. At one point he almost ran into a gravestone because he couldn’t focus. He’d not long been dead, and clearly his body was still struggling with being dragged back to the land of the living.
One thing was for certain. This really wasn’t going to end well.
I didn’t need to look behind me to know that the undead army was gaining, because I could hear them. Teeth practically snapping at our heels, bones grinding as their need for flesh drove their warped minds.
What were my options? I couldn’t use the old magic to hold them off, not without failing the trial. I could fight one, maybe two, but not the sheer number of them. And Kai was in no state to fight either.
“A little help, Emon?” I shot out my plea across my mental tether to the demonic serpent.
“I’m afraid not, witchling. This is all on you.”
Hot, white anger spiked through me. Caym wouldn’t have needed to be asked. My previous familiar would’ve protected me on instinct. “You’re really fucking useless, do you know that?”
“Aye, but I would not go blaming me. You are the one who gave away the power to control me, you are the one who forfeited the only key to surviving.”
I wanted to wrap my hands around the serpent’s throat and squeeze the life out of him. “Then why are you here?”
“The other witchling conjured me. Ask him.”
Emon was right. Kai had unknowingly used the shard of Bahmet to bring my familiar here.
“Of course I am right. I am always right.”
“Shut up.”
Old magic might have been banned, but Bahmet couldn’t put rules on his own powers, otherwise the entire fucking Witch Trials would crumble.
The only option of surviving the next few minutes was in the hands of Kai.
Make that the next few seconds, because Kai tripped, hit the ground with enough force to break a rib or six, and skidded to a stop in a puddle of mud.
I hurtled around, and threw myself beside him.
Kai was face down, his face pressed into the earth.
I rolled him over to find his face completely covered in dirt, his wide eyes bulging out of his skull.
He was breathing, thank the Goddess. And yet, he was in no state to move.
His body was in shock, fighting to get air into lungs that were refusing him.
A shadow passed over us as the wall of undead gained closer. They were barely one hundred yards ahead now. That number was going smaller by the millisecond.
I had no other choice but to demand.
“You need to focus on surviving, otherwise we are both dead,” I said, clawing the mud that caked his nose and mouth.
“Search for an odd a feeling in your chest. Something that doesn’t belong.
When you find the darkness, cling to it.
You’ve done it once before, you need to do it again.
Kai, can you hear me? You need to do it now! ”
In an ideal world I would’ve been able to sit him down with a cup of tea (or large mug of vodka) and explain that I’d brought him back from the dead by giving him access to a demonic power.
But alas, there was nothing ideal about this reality.
I would explain, in time. I supposed that conversation all rode on whether he could get us out of here.
The zombies were fifty yards away. The smell of dead flesh, rotting sweet, and the tang of copper, washed over my nose. Amongst the ranks I noticed the two Hunters we’d fought, now turned into the very thing that had killed them.
Kai had yet to move. No shadows spilled from his skin; no dark power had come to save us. His eyes were fluttering closed, his chest rising and falling so quickly it was like he was having a heart attack.
His familiar curled in a defeated ball on his chest, purring gently as if an unimaginable death wasn’t seconds away.
I was desperate, so I did the one thing I could think to do.
I used his weakness against him.
“Think of Romy. Picture her. Let the power take us right to her, otherwise she’ll be dead before the day is out.”
“I would say it has been nice knowing you, Hector Briar. But it would be a lie,” Emon hissed in my mind. “You have been nothing but a pain in my ass.”
“You’re a snake,” I cried aloud. “You don’t have a—”
Kai bolted upright just as the undead met us. He opened his mouth and bellowed a war cry, except no sound came out. Shadows. Pure, undulating darkness flowed out of his mouth and washed out in a tidal wave across where we were slumped.