Chapter 14 Kal
They walked for about a mile and Kal would have liked to walk further, but he could tell how tired Tess was.
He did not have a good feeling about any of this.
They had a few tents in their supplies from the plane.
They would have shelter and food. They had some water and they were all armed.
But in the face of that foreboding display on the beach, everyone was grim.
Kal kept shooting Tess reassuring smiles that felt like a lie.
It seemed as though the nightmare they had all waited for was finally coming true.
He had fought Lucian before. He was glad of that, at least. He knew how brutal and insidiously stealthy and sneaky they could be. But those had only been scouts, sent ahead to investigate the future conquests of the Lucian.
Whoever hung those Vampyren and human heads were not scouts. That was for sure.
They set up the tents and started a fire in the fire pit. It was usually not wise to announce your presence with something as attention-grabbing as a fire. But Kal knew the Lucian well enough to know, if the Lucian were close, they would catch their scent long before they saw the fire.
They ate frugally from their emergency rations; freeze-dried fruit and jerky for the humans and just enough blood to keep the men sated.
They talked for a while but everyone was tired.
Kal and the other men had a lengthy argument about who should keep watch first because everybody insisted on doing it.
Kal suspected they were all trying to impress their women who only seemed amused by the whole thing anyway.
They finally drew straws and Danton and Loren both won, or lost, depending on how one looked at it.
Kal begrudgingly retired to his tent with Tess. But he knew he wasn’t going to be sleeping much. Even with two experienced Vampyren warriors on guard, the Lucian were so fast and stealthy, they could start attacking you and by the time you realized what had happened, you were dead.
“You’re worried,” Tess whispered, as she snuggled up beside him. They had a sleeping mat and one blanket. It wasn’t the most comfortable set-up, but the sand was soft beneath the tent anyway, and it was summer in California, so they weren’t very cold.
“I should’ve told you not to come,” Kal said, clenching and unclenching his fists. “You didn’t want to come. I shouldn’t have encouraged you.”
“ Kal,” Tess said with a snort. “It wasn’t your fault.
You didn’t know the pilot would be a terrorist. I trust Loren.
I know he’s doing the best he can, running basically everything.
At least we crashed nottoofar away from L.A.
We just have to survive and get to L.A. If anything, I feel more motivated for this whole mission, you know? ”
“Yeah?” Kal said, stroking her hair.
“Yeah,” Tess said. “We’ve done a good job in Chicago. Uniting people. We just need to get everyone else to get on board and come together. If we can do that, we can all get through whatever the Lucians throw at us.”
“I love it when you’re optimistic,” Kal said, kissing her cheek.
The attack, when it came, was as stealthy as Kal had suspected.
Kal had managed to fall asleep. Spooning behind Tess, he had lain there worrying and plotting for what felt like hours as the night wore on.
He imagined the quiet buzz of movement and how he would have to jump to his feet and grab his blade that lay on the floor of the tent right behind him.
He imagined it over and over. He pictured himself defending the tent himself, but he knew he would probably have to leave Tess there to fight.
He’d insisted on her loading the gun and keeping it on the floor in front of her, where she could easily reach.
They weren’t even positive you could kill Lucians with guns. But it made him feel better. He was sure a bullet would at least injure a Lucian. Kal was considering this as he finally dozed off.
But when the Lucians came just before dawn, they didn’t wake Kal or anyone else who had finally fallen asleep.
It was Danton and Loren’s shouts that woke him and everyone else, and then the scrape of blades and an eerie kind of high pitched shriek that made Kal’s hair stand up. It was nothing human or Vampyren. But he’d never heard Lucian make a noise like that either.
“Grab the gun!” Kal said, as Tess sat up with a gasp. “And stay in here.”
He wasn’t actually sure if she shouldn’t try making a run for it. But who knew where safety was on this beach and what if they lost track of each other? Kal grabbed his blade and climbed out of the tent.
It took him a second to get his bearings if only to make sense of the movement of bodies in front of his eyes.
The Lucian could movefast. He quickly realized that Vampyren were darker shapes and Lucian were almost translucently pale.
He moved quickly and jumped into the fray.
Loren and Danton were fighting off two Lucian but now a couple more appeared and Kal charged forward, shouting the warrior call of old that he’d learned as a child.
It wasn’t used much anymore in real battle, but he found himself screaming it, the others joining in, and it made him feel stronger as he swung his blade at the pale figure moving like a blur towards him.
His blade missed, the Lucian moved so fast, and he growled, whirling quickly on his feet and catching the creature in the back of the leg.
The Lucian punched him in the neck, so hard that he saw stars and fell like a rock to the ground.
The hit had felt like a boulder thrust into his neck.
But he recovered and hopped to his feet, flipping his sword in his hand.
Somehow the shock had rattled his brain, but he found himself falling into the rhythm of battle.
Vampyren, he thought, might be bad at dancing to music but they were good at dancing to battle.
The Lucian’s bodies made a buzzing sound when they moved very fast, but it sounded justbeforethey moved so that if he was listening hard, he could tell when and which way it would go.
He sensed the creature was about to go right and swung his sword just in time, going low when he’d been holding it high, and bringing it cleanly through one of the thing’s legs, cutting the limb free from its body.
Danton darted over and finished it off when it was on the ground, cutting its head clean from its body.
The Lucian screamed and its companions screamed with it.
They had an acrid and metallic scent to them. The rumors of them smelling terrible weren’t completely true. They didn’t smellbad, they smelled… like something that wasn’t animal. They smelled strangely like machines.
They never spoke. Kal found thatcreepy. He wasn’t sure if they couldn’t talk or they chose not to, but most Vampyren theorized they had some kind of psychic connection with each other.
Something hit Kal hard and just then he saw Mindy go flying into the ocean, landing in the shallow tide with a thump, but she was moving and getting to her feet again.
A Lucian hadthrownher. Kal was rattled, but not so rattled that his mind didn’t race with the thought that it could have been Tess and it would have hurt the baby.
As much as he cared for his friends in the soft, human way to which he’d become accustomed to after just a couple of years, Tess came beforeeverything.
Kal growled, but instead of jumping to his feet, he rolled over and swung his sword without bothering to look at who was behind him. He’d guessed right, and now a Lucian was disemboweled with his one, sure swing. It fell into the sand, screaming, its guts spilling out and writhing on the ground.
Shots rang out and the humans ducked as a Lucian jerked, stunned by the force of the bullets riddling its body.
Tess was stone-faced as she stared over the barrel of the handgun he’d left at her side.
Of course, she hadn’t stayed in her tent.
Typical Tess, Kal thought. The Lucian didn’t die but it seemed both baffled and astonished by the gunshot wounds now oozing a dark, black substance and Loren took the opportunity to slice its head off in the second it gave him.
Kal heard Mark shout and in no time, Kal was on his feet, running through the sand that made it feel as if he were moving in slow motion. A Lucian was swinging its serrated blade and Mark had been disarmed.
I won’t get there in time, he thought. It was strange to him how clear and matter-of-fact the thought was, even as his heart felt as if it were dropping down to his feet because his brother was about to have his head removed from his body.
With a thunderous roar and that came from deep within him, Kal threw his sword and watched it flip through the air, end over end, before plunging into the back of the Lucian, throwing it to the ground.
Then it was Mark and Kal in a wrestling match with the Lucian.
They were stronger than they looked, being lankier and much wirier than the Vampyren.
The tide was rising and the three figures tumbled into the water and it took the strength of both Mark and Kal to shove the thing face-first into the sea.
It choked and resisted and the two of them held it down, keeping its face beneath the waves as it drowned.
When the creature had been completely still for a while, they struggled to their feet.
There was only one left and it waspissed.
All eight of them plunged into the fight and the thing gave them a run for it, moving so fast that it made Kal dizzy as it blurred and spun around him.
Danton accidentally cut close enough to slice through Alek’s earlobe, as the four of them were clustered together.
But eventually, Loren hit on the winning kill shot, shouting as he cut the Lucian down the middle of his belly before kicking it into the shore next to its drowned companion.