Chapter Twenty-Five
Xander
“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”
- Winston Churchill
“It saddens me to see this night has come to past, Adam.” Alexi spoke firmly and clearly, his emotional connection to Adam plain for anyone to see.
“Quite frankly, I have waited for this night for centuries,” Adam announced with relish. “Tonight, I will finally wipe the stench of the Petrovs from the face of the earth.”
“Still delusional I see,” Luka drawled.
“You would think that the asshole would have learned something in all those centuries of getting his ass kicked,” Drako added.
“Yeah, and we’re fucking hard to kill,” I finished.
“Adam isn’t alone in his fight any longer,” Sophia, the witch, said in a singsong voice.
“I have also waited a long time, Alexi.” Malachi put in his two cents. “You have taken everything from me.”
“I knew we should have killed this motherfucker last time,” Luka said drolly.
Malachi glared at Luka. “You think that you will win against us, but you will soon find out, hopefully painfully, that tonight will be our victory.”
“Let’s get on with this,” Nickolai growled, almost as if he was already in a feral bloodlust. He even shifted into his demon to show just how eager he was. His green gargoyle-looking demon immediately charged toward Drako, along with a contingent of Adam’s army.
It was clear that they had predetermined Petrov targets.
Cedric charged toward Tristan, Malachi advanced on Papa, Adam came after Luka, and the witch came at me.
The witch, along with her sisters, Cedric, and their contingent of soldiers came at my team so damn fast we were overwhelmed within seconds.
Tristan, Apollo, and Alexandra immediately flanked me as the first soldier threw an energy orb at me. Apollo’s shield worked like a charm, as the orb incinerated as soon as it touched the shield.
I advanced on the soldier in front of me, while the others did the same. I wielded my sword with the precision and expertise taught to me by my Samurai master, deflecting the oncoming energy orbs and slicing up the immortal soldier in four squares.
At the same time, Apollo tried doing his dad thing of liquifying the brains of the immortal soldier before him. Alexandra allowed her demon to surface, who immediately expanded the blood supply of two of the soldiers until their bodies exploded, while Tristan fire-flamed the soldiers before him.
We watched as their body parts reassembled and fused within seconds, while the charred bodies regenerated. The immortals came back to life as whole as they had been before without a cut, bruise, or blemish on them. They were alive, and as dangerous as ever, in seconds.
Tristan then hit one of the immortals with a vaporizing fire orb.
The immortal burst into a clear, liquified vapor. However, as soon as the vapor dissipated, a liquid puddle remained, and the immortal immediately reformed and resurrected whole again.
“Fuck!” Tristan hissed.
I froze time, hoping to freeze them. However, they seemed to be immune to that too.
Adam’s diabolical laugh pierced the air. “You are so fucking dead, Luka!” He howled with glee.
Apparently, Luka had liquified Adam’s body, and he had reassembled.
All around us, no matter what we did to them, they came back whole to fight again.
What the fuck is this?
Nickolai emitted some black gooey shit from his mouth and eyes that he snaked around Drako in the blink of an eye.
Drako cried out as the tentacles burned through his clothes like hot acid. If it wasn’t for our impenetrable Petrov shield, Drako would have been sliced through in several places. Screaming in pain and outrage, Drako gripped the tentacles and transferred electrical energy until the tentacles were charred and fell away from his body. He then immediately merged into Nickolai’s body and ripped him apart from within.
Of course, the bastard fused back together and was whole again within seconds.
“Fuuuck!” Drako breathed.
Yeah, that about sums it up.
Nothing we threw at them was decreasing their numbers, not even Zora’s deadly incineration orb shield. Nothing damaged them, at least not for long. We were quickly outnumbered and overwhelmed by them, but giving up was not in our DNA.
Papa had his hands filled trading energy orbs with Malachi. However, while Papa was tiring and sustaining wounds, Malachi’s wounds kept disappearing and healing almost instantly.
I transferred Papa’s injuries to one of the zombie soldiers and gritted my teeth when the injury immediately disappeared through the same instant healing.
We continued fighting, and they kept coming back to life. Although we didn’t get tired, the repeated rapid and precise movements and the on-edge tension were wearying.
“Apollo! Zora! Drago! Shields!” I ordered. “Circle!”
Tristan and Alexandra immediately formed a circle with me around Apollo. I trusted that the other teams were doing the same.
Apollo immediately stretched his shield of invisibility over all of us. However, despite their not being able to see us or penetrate the shield, our attempts to kill them were useless. Even rebounding their orbs back onto them didn’t work, as they simply kept rejuvenating. We all watched as the freaky immortals threw themselves at our teams’ shields. They burst into tiny pieces. And then we watched as they reassembled and became whole again.
“Well damn,” Tristan breathed out.
“Yeah. Nothing we’ve thrown at them is killing them permanently,” I breathed out.
“Are they zombies, Uncle Xander?” Apollo asked worriedly as the immortal immortals kept coming at us.
I looked around us, assessing our enemies surrounding us and trying to plot a new strategy. How the hell did you kill an enemy that couldn’t be killed. I could finally appreciate Adam’s lifelong frustration with us.
“Luka, Apollo, and Drago need to take out the witches,” Alexandra wheezed out telepathically.
She didn’t have to explain further to me, because while she might have only voiced one sentence telepathically, I had access to the rest of her thoughts through our mate-link.
“Alexandra needs you to liquify the witches,” I also communicated to everyone telepathically.
“The zombie immortals were created with an enchantment spell. Killing the witches will weaken the spell,” Alexandra explained telepathically. She looked up at the levitating, smirking witches, who stared down at us with an air of superiority.
“Sophia is strong, but the others are far weaker. They might have enchanted everyone around them, but I’ll bet that they will arrogantly think that they wouldn’t need it.”
With Apollo and Drago focused on the witches, we were down two significant shields, and four wolves went down. I transferred their injuries to the zombie soldiers, and the wolves were up and fighting again within seconds. Zora stretched and extended her shield, but she wasn’t able to cover everyone, the battleground had become too vast.
So, I had to keep monitoring the wolves and Papa to make sure they sustained no mortal wounds.
Apollo and Drago weren’t strong enough, but Luka was powerful, and he took out the two sister witches. However, before we could celebrate the sight of the two witches’ liquified bodies on the ground, which Tristan blasted until they were vaporized, Sophia roared in outrage and then chanted some Latin shit, which sent Luka hard to the ground. She immediately sent a magick plasma orb careening toward his downed body.
Alexandra used her powers to volley the orbs back toward Sophia.
With a roar of fury, Sophia dodged the magick orbs but then switched her entire focus onto my mate.
The two women faced each other, both glaring, murderous intent blatant on both their faces. And then Sophia turned her glare on me. Her wicked smirk was my only warning before she emitted a Latin chant that had an electrified whip appearing in her hand seconds before she lashed the lethal tail at my head.
I swiftly dodged, even as I wicked-fast lassoed the whip around my sword and pulled her hard to the ground.
She immediately jumped to her feet and slammed me with a magick orb that put a crater-sized hole in my abdomen and had me writhing on the ground in so much fucking pain I almost blacked out. She had penetrated my shield for the second time in my existence. The remembered pain of the past choked me into a paralysis of stark fear. Everything in me fought through the clogging, crippling fear. Nothing was more important to me than protecting my mate and child, but I couldn’t fucking move. I wasn’t healing fast enough, and I was too injured to use any of my psychic powers. So, I couldn’t transfer my injuries.
Sophia cackled. “I see you remember our time together.”
Even with a hole in my gut, I stiffened my resolve and stumbled to my feet. I stood to my full six-foot-six height. Even though I had no psychic power, I was determined to let the bitch see that she could no longer cower me.
She lifted her palm to hit me again, but suddenly Alexandra was all around me.
Fear unlike anything I’ve ever felt for myself seeped into my veins and saturated my body. It was jarring fear for my mate and child. But wait, Alexandra was all around me!
What the fuck?!
I twisted my head to the left, and then to the right, and then behind me, stunned at the images all around me.
It seemed like everyone else had stopped fighting to look as well. It suddenly became, surprisingly, as quiet as a tomb.
There were six Alexandras surrounding me. Protecting me.
What the fuck?!I thought again because it bore repeating.
“No! Back the hell up!” the Alexandras growled at Sophia.
Sophia gulped audibly and looked as though she had swallowed spoiled, soured milk.
Even the zombie soldiers, who had been coming at me, stopped in their tracks and stared.
It was a powerful astral projection, the most powerful I’d ever seen. All were identical, wearing the same clothes, and all had the same shape and size. It was impossible to distinguish which was the real Alexandra. They all looked real.
“You hit my mate!” the Alexandras said in unison, hissing with rage. And then one of the Alexandras telekinetically reached out.
Daymmmmn! The Alexandra lifted Sophia higher in the air, threw her around as though she was a rag doll, and slammed her hard into the ground.
Sophia’s screams were music to my ears.
Yup, my mate was a total badass.