Chapter 33
Sloan
Sloan couldn’t believe her eyes. She understood the information her brain was relating to her, but somehow she was refusing to believe it. The mage engine that had only been a steel cart infused with mage power to pull the rest of the cars behind it along the track, was somehow now alive.
The groaning came from the weapon standing on two metal legs that opened from its underbelly and two arms unhinging from its sides.
The snarling wolf head once in front of the mage engine had transitioned to the top of its body.
A massive metal monster with a purple wolf eyes now stood, marching its way to the Azra walls.
“Hahaha!” Commander Steel motioned with an open hand for Sloan to travel with the rest of her fleeing soldiers. “Go, run, back to the safety of your walls. They won’t be standing much longer.”
More than anything, Sloan wanted to end the commander there and then, but if she stayed to fight, she knew her vampire unit and Kade would do the same. Against an entire army, they had no hope.
Sloan buried her anger deep and began to run back to the open gates of Azra.
Kade fell in line beside her. His silver armor was bloody, but he moved as though he wasn’t injured.
To her right, Pia, Babs, and Doyle had joined her run for the gates.
Just like Kade, they were bloody but able to run as fast as Sloan.
“What is that?” Pia yelled as they ran back to the supposed safety of Azra.
“I don’t know,” Sloan shouted back.
As they ran, two things became obvious: first, the main group of Azra guards who were not shifters nor equipped with the speed of Sloan’s vampire unit wouldn’t make it to the gates before the mechanical monster.
Second, if Azra was breached, they wouldn’t stand a chance.
Containing the horde of New Hope vampires had to be part of their strategy.
Sloan and the Azra guards were strongest if they attacked the larger unit together.
A battle that spread to every part of Azra’s interior would be a battle they would not be able to win.
The ground shuddered with every step of the mechanical mage monster.
Its long strides meant within seconds it would reach the Azra walls.
Already those guards in the walls tasked with covering the escape of the main group were firing arrows and lead rounds at the approaching behemoth.
Every projectile that struck the iron beast’s hide fell off like water droplets from a steel breastplate.
Sloan and her group skidded to a halt at the open Azra gates. Cherub stood ready with the gargoyle unit.
“We need to close the gates!” a scream from an Azra guard reached their ears. “We need to close the gates!”
“Not until everyone’s inside!” Cherub roared over the sounds of battle.
Sloan had seconds to make a decision. The metal monster that stood just as tall as the Azra wall would arrive in seconds, followed by the fleeing Azra guards that included Croft, Slade, and Sasha, and finally the bulk of the New Hope army would come seconds after that.
“We have to—” But Sloan didn’t get her thought out before she was interrupted.
“Look!” Babs shouted, pointing to a blue blur that raced toward the iron machine. “Who is that?”
Sloan squinted, trying to figure out what she was seeing. A solitary rider came from the south as if she had risen from the ocean itself. A great blue sword stretched out to one side. She rode a black unicorn.
“Kimberly,” Sloan said, more to herself than to anyone at the gates. It was like nothing she had ever seen before. Kimberly raced with abandon straight at the iron giant. “We need to help her! Let’s go!”
Sloan didn’t wait for an answer or a consensus from Cherub. She was about to take her first step forward, when the gargoyle commander reached out and grabbed her roughly by the shoulders.
“Wait. She knows what she’s doing.” Cherub struggled to hold Sloan. “She’s already bought us the time we need.”
Cherub was right. The monster only a few hundred yards away now hesitated as Kimberly made first contact. She dragged her blue made sword across the beast’s right metal leg as she passed. It reached down to swat her, but missed. Seemed speed was one of the monster’s weaknesses.
Kimberly’s act had already bought Azra the time it needed. Croft and the remaining fleeing Azra unit were reaching the gates, with the New Hope vampire army now only seconds behind.
“Inside! Inside!” Croft screamed to the soldiers around her. She bled from a wound on her right eyebrow. Dark crimson red pooled from yet another wound on her left leg. “Close the gates!”
BOOM!
Lightning split the sky. A dozen Azra soldiers’ just feet from the safety of the walls lit up in a ball of fire.
“Let’s leave the gates open a moment longer, shall we?
” Leah descended from the sky, levitating overhead.
The few Azra soldiers fast enough to shoot at her with arrows or bullets were skewered with purple lightning coming from Leah’s wand before they could fire.
“Croft, sister, it’s so good to see you. ”
“Sloan, Cherub, the mage engine must be stopped.” Croft lifted into the air, ignoring her wounds. “I’ll deal with Leah. She’s beyond any of you now.”
“Deal with me?” Leah gave everyone in the area a wicked look. “How are you going to deal with me, when you can’t even protect your own shifters?”
Sloan’s heart broke into a million pieces as the witch took aim at Kade. Time stopped then sped up so fast Sloan didn’t have time to react. Luckily for her, Saber didn’t have the same problem.
The one-eyed shifter understood what was about to happen. With no regard for his own life, he tackled his little brother, shielding him with his own body. Leah’s lightning strike caught Saber in his back, frying skin and hair alike.
Kade let out a scream that sounded half human from his sabertooth throat. The two brothers fell to the ground in a heap.
The events unfolding in front of Sloan had torn her attention from the advancing New Hope army. They were yards away and sprinting quickly. They were so close now Sloan could see their black eyes thirsting with blood lust.
Leah and Croft battled overhead in the sky with a shower of purple-and-yellow magic.
Sloan allowed herself the space of a heartbeat to be overwhelmed. That was all she got; that was all she could be given. Leaders didn’t have the option to be weak.
“Get them inside!” Sloan screamed to Sasha who hovered over her brothers protectively. Kade shifted back to his human form, his large sabertooth armor falling around him in pieces. “Get them inside!”
“Guards of Azra!” Cherub’s voice somehow boomed above the cracking magic taking place over head. “Shield wall! Defend your home! For your families, for your lives, for your future!”
ARRROO!
Immediately, a line of white-cloaked Azra guards lined up in front of Sloan. It was too late to close the slow moving gates. The New Hope vampire soldiers were upon them.
The sick sound of bodies slamming into bodies, shields striking flesh, and weapons cutting into one another permeated the battle.
The vampires with their superior speed were only matched by the gargoyles’ strength.
Like the ebb and flow of the ocean, the two forces fought in the space of the open gates.
The Azra gates themselves afforded a dozen soldiers to stand shoulder to shoulder.
Sloan stood just behind the line, looking to Kade and Sasha who cried over Saber’s smoking body.
She had lost another friend. Although she had just met Saber, he’d already meant something to her being Kade’s brother. A brother he had only just been reunited with.
Somewhere past the confrontation at the gates, past the sizzling magical fight taking place in the sky overhead, the thumb of the steel mage engine hummed.
“With me!” Sloan yelled to Pia, Babs, and Doyle. “To the wall!”
Sloan sprinted up the steps. When she reached the top of the battlements and looked out to the scene in front of her, her heart dropped in her chest.