Chapter 3 Samson
SAMSON
Son of sea, son of sea! See the horrors they have done unto me!
—from the hymns of the Great Serpent
Your eyes are too blue, his mother had told him. That is a curse.
But I was born a god.
Samson relished the heat building through his arms, his chest, as he gunned the cruiser.
He zipped past smoking rubble, racing toward the signal blinking on his screen as Chandi took up his flank.
Behind them, the northern wall had already fallen.
After the western tower had crumbled, the Jantari had been too distracted to notice his creeping assassins, and his Black Scales had made quick work after.
The northern gates had opened for them. In his rearview mirror, Samson could see his Black Scales marching in, and he almost laughed at the sight.
He swung around a corner, and a shot rang out. Samson swerved. He saw the sniper—but Chandi spotted him first.
She fired her bloodsplitter, the icy-blue bolt slamming into the sniper with an electric keen and splitting his head in two.
With something akin to amusement, Samson watched the Jantari fall.
He wanted to see if the soldier had been a former mine overseer.
Or, better yet, an island hunter. But the blinking light on his screen tore him back, and he pushed onward.
He could feel her Agni. Raw and powerful, flaring. He was getting closer, and he did not need Visha’s signal to know it. Heat skittered through his body in anticipation.
A blue flame slithered down his wrist.
Wait, he told it.
“This way!” Chandi shouted and veered to the left. He followed as the wail of warbirds and sirens clanged through the air.
Wait.
They flew past a broken storefront. Past Jantari soldiers crumpled in the rubble. He could hear pulse guns in the distance, along with a strange, high whistle. The blue fire twisted tighter.
Wait.
They barged onto a side street, Chandi slamming through a soldier and sending him flying.
His zeemir clattered to the ground. She was already off and grabbing the weapon as Samson leapt and broke into a sprint, the sounds of pulse fire rising, his Agni swelling with such desire, such want, that it took all his control to curb it as he burst around the corner.
She was the first thing he saw.
Black braids and bleeding lips. Eyes bright and burning as she raised her gun.
She was several yards ahead, but she turned.
Her gaze caught his for a moment, and Samson saw Elena’s eyes widen, her mouth twist in…
wariness? Relief? He did not have the time to understand because then he saw the hull in the distance marching toward her.
The blue flame hissed again.
This time, he answered it.
With one smooth movement, he unfurled the urumi around his waist. The long, snakelike blades whipped through the dirt with a sharp ring.
Silver serpents spiraled up the twin tongues.
It was the weapon of his people. The weapon the Jantari would come to fear.
Samson flicked his wrist, and the urumi ionized with electricity as he closed his eyes and sought his inner Agni.
He willed it to grow. To swell. To devour.
The blue flame on his wrist flared, rushing down the urumi.
Samson let it go.
The inferno sprang forth with a roar. Snapping. Biting. Tearing. He flicked his blades, and the flames bounded past Elena, barreling into the hull.
Glass popped. The hull, and the soldiers within it, screamed, batting at the flames.
The huge machine stumbled, and he saw Elena raise her gun.
Wait! Just see! he wanted to yell, but then he saw she wasn’t aiming at the floundering hull, but at a Jantari soldier who had suddenly appeared from behind a fallen wall, lobbing a dark shape into the air.
With a snarl, Samson raised his blades, and a flame shot up. It caught the grenade and devoured the force of its explosion. Melded the heat into its own. Samson felt it surge through his body with an electricity that heightened his nerves, a giddiness that made the inferno cackle with glee.
He flew forward. Snapping his urumi, he directed the flames through the melee.
The blue fire rushed past his Black Scales, instead latching on to any man who held a zeemir.
Howls erupted as metal melted onto flesh.
Samson whipped his urumi faster, the Agni beating within him, heat traveling through his limbs as the inferno grew larger, bolder.
He saw Jantari soldiers running. Retreating.
“Cowards!” he crowed.
Sweat bathed his face. A buzz zipped through his bones, setting his teeth on edge, but Samson paid it no mind as his urumi crackled and his Black Scales pushed past the Jantari blockade.
A laugh started in his stomach. It rumbled through his chest, up his throat, and pierced the air. High and crazed.
Battle madness, his father would call it.
Victory is what he called it.
Samson slashed down, and the blue flames rammed into the hull. It fell with a clatter. Oil and something acidic filled the air as Samson slowly walked toward it. The fire hissed. It bowed to him like a devotee to its master.
Come, it chanted.
Elena was already kneeling, peering into the hatch.
“They’re dead,” she said.
Samson slowly crouched beside her. He could not make sense of the tangle of metal and flesh and coils. But he saw the metal eye of one soldier blink. Once. Twice. And then it stopped, fizzing.
He remembered the Jantari king with his robotic eye, the cold touch of his metallic fingers. You are like a son to me, Farin had said. He remembered the smell of oiled flesh. And one day, you will look like this too.
Samson spat. It hit the unblinking eye and dripped down into the mangled flesh and coils.
Elena turned to him in surprise as he stepped back to avoid the growing pool of blood. No sense in ruining his boots.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Blue flames brushed his feet, whispering. Elena inhaled sharply. She scrutinized the melted hull, but he knew she was looking past it, listening to what the fire had to tell.
“What do you hear?” he asked, hopeful.
“Men weeping.” She stood, and the fire parted with a hiss. “They’re all crying in the city center.”
“You’re getting better.” He reached out, and a blue flame looped up his arm. It unfurled slowly as if testing the air. He brought it closer. “The fire tells me that the Black Scales have pushed the Jantari inward. They’ve barricaded themselves in the city center.”
“You heard all this from the fire?” she asked, incredulous.
“Yes.” He smiled as the flame slithered down his arm and waist. “You just need to listen.”
“We penned them in. But we also trapped the remaining civilians.”
“Elena—”
“They’re hostages, Sam,” she said. There was an edge of bitterness in her voice that made him bristle. “You made them hostages.”
“The Jantari wouldn’t dare to hurt them.”
“How do you know?” She finally met his gaze.
Once, when they had danced under rose petals and soft lights, she had looked at him with something like hope.
Tenderness, even. He had asked her how far she was willing to go to protect her kingdom, and her voice had cracked with complete conviction.
Far enough. He had heard himself in that answer.
Believed that perhaps they shared a similar sense of duty, of burden.
But the look she gave him now was unflinching, accusatory, an uncomfortable heat between his shoulder blades.
“I won’t give them the option,” he said firmly. He curled up his urumi, belted it back around his waist. “Neither will you.”
He searched her face. She had not used her Agni yet, he could tell, and that worried him. “You won’t hold back, will you?”
A muscle feathered up her jaw. She glanced between him and the roving fire, her face at once stricken and hard, a mask he could not tear off.
“No more civilian deaths,” she said finally. Her eyes met his. “No more senseless killing.”
She did not have to say like this, but he could feel those unsaid words.
Smell the rancid sweat and fear of the dead around them.
The fire hissed. It wanted to feed, couldn’t she see?
This was its nature. Their nature. But that was an argument he had lost before, and he did not have the energy to lose it again.
No. Victory was lying a few miles away. His first real victory against Farin.
He could almost taste the fire’s hunger as it clenched his own stomach.
So he tried on a smile. “For you? Surely.”
The horizon had begun to grey by the time they reached the inner city.
The Jantari had set up a barricade of cars and tanks, cutting off access.
But he did not need it. Samson stood with his hands in his pockets, waiting.
Above, a floating streetlamp flickered intermittently.
Chandi shifted beside him. The Jantari had allowed him to bring only one soldier for the parley, but his men were sprawled out and hidden in the buildings behind them.
Just as the Jantari surely were spread out on the other side.
He felt a tug in his navel. Elena. She was getting into position. Serpent willing, Magar would be theirs by dawn.
“They’re taking their damn time,” Chandi grumbled.
“They’ll come,” he said. “Just wait.”
Chandi paused, and it was this sudden hesitancy from her that made him turn. “What?”
Her eyes searched him, as if looking for something amiss. “How are you feeling? Otherwise?”
“Me? Swell.” He grinned, nodding to the Jantari soldiers who were now stepping through the barricade, bearing a white flag. “And look. Here comes the catch.”
“I don’t mean that, Blue Star.” There was a warning in her voice. “How is your… Agni?”