Page 24 of Chained Knight

The storm nippedat their heels, a cat toying with slow mice. It was embarrassing to be hauled along, the guys taking turns ducking under her arms, carrying her between them as they loped—or it would have been, if Ari had enough breath or energy for any emotion at all.

As it was, her head bobbed, rain dripping from long dark curls, and her booted toes hovered above the stones. Lightning strobed as she tried to think about dry socks, hot baths and big fluffy towels, a nice comfortable chair in a quiet room, the sugary richness of hot cocoa.

These are a few of my favorite things, Mom sang inside her head; her mother had loved musicals. If she’d been alive, would she have suspected something was off about Mike? There hadn’t been any warning signs.

Or had there? Ari initially thought his clinging was romantic, his frequent allusions to his own mother charming, his protectiveness old-fashioned. He’d held doors for her as a matter of course, put the umbrella more over her than himself when it was raining, and gotten down on one knee to propose.He never let her pay for dates—but he took over their finances almost immediately after marriage and also accused her of wanting to cheat on him when she suggested she could get a part-time job in town during the first year.

I’ll kill you, and the man too. The vein on his forehead throbbing, his blue eyes hot with rage…

“She’s fading,” Sarle said, anxiously. Drumming rain and splashing leaves underscored the words. “We should find shelter, or make it.”

They had already been driven into the woods twice as terrible things ran past, the hoofbeat sounds accompanied by the shushing of tires in standing water—or maybe that was just Ari’s imagination, apt to run away with her even at the best of times—and once again assomething elsedid, those weirdly modulated moans and pad-slapping sounds accompanied by vile squelching.

She didn’t want to look. The darkness of closed lids was no comfort either, since whenever her eyes shut for more than a moment the image of the bedroom rose in vivid detail, from the slight dimples of the white eyelet comforter to the spreading pool of sticky red under Mike’s body on hardwood floor, his blue eyes open, twin searchlights in the stormy night.

You little bitch, you can’t hide from me. The sound he’d made when he fell, the horrible bubbling, the clicking of the .38 as she pulled the trigger again and again, her hands no longer her own and blessed air once more rushing down her bruised throat…

I didn’t mean to, Ari howled internally, but what else had she expected when she bolted for the nightstand? A mad scramble to get there first because somewhere deep down, she knew he wasn’t just going to hurt her that night, oh no.

No indeed.

His silence. The fixed, glazed stare. His hands—they had been gentle once, caressing fingertips or skimming palms—flexing and releasing as if he already felt her neck in their grasp. The bubbling of his last breath.

If she hadn’t reached the gun, would she be in a different place now? Because the longer this agonizing chase went on, the more she couldn’t shake the feeling that instead of a separate dimension she really was in a type of hell, specifically planned and tailor-made.

There went all her relief at having a good, working theory.

“Do you hear anything?” Jazarl, urgently.

Alzarien’s reply, hushed and tense. “Naught but the storm itself.”

Ari was hearing plenty. The dry clicking of a hammer on a revolver’s empty chamber. The last rattling breath leaving a body she’d slept beside for three and a half years. Her own horrified gasps. The hiss of steam from an overloaded car engine, rattling as it crested the last hill it would ever climb.

“Ambush!” Darjeth yelled.

Ari was yanked violently aside. Her eyes snapped open; lightning stitched the sky. The big robots boiled out of the woods, lit in pitiless detail. Branches snapped, splinters flying. Jazarl had her arm; her feet slid as if greased, digging through moss.

How much more strangeness could she absorb before going actually insane? A painting of this scene would be lopsided, the center of focus thrown off. Drops beading on the golden-armored things, an arrow stuck quivering in one’s neck; Majan and Alzarien facing another, their rapiers glistening and Alzarien’s hat pushed far back now, almost falling free, wood splintering as a heavy straight sword hit a tree?—

Her feet tangled together; Ari staggered. Jazarl was suddenly in front of her, rapier flashing in a complicated pattern ashe shuffled, lunging and parrying, metal ringing. It seemed impossible that one slim blade could fend off an armor-robot’s whistling broadsword; the blue-haired man just barely avoided a massive pistoning gauntlet-punch. Majan shouted, and an arrow bloomed in the thing’s eyeslit.

I should help. Now Ari was wishing she had the .38, even if the mere thought of using it was sickening. Would bullets hurt these things?

Jazarl was flung aside. A pointless, acidic scream filled Ari’s throat. Somehow she had reeled across the streaming road, and almost tripped over a long, slim piece of deadfall lying on the moss-grassy verge.

Ari lunged, scooping up the branch. Her fingers closed around wet bark; she whirled and straightened, raising her new, deeply useless weapon.

The Golden armor-suit ratcheted after her, squirts of reddish oil dribbling from the underside of its horned helmet meeting rain-rivulets coursing down its shining chest. Its sword lifted, lightning scintillating on sharp steel.

When it killed her, would she wake up roasting in actual hell? Or near the pond surrounded by pearl-cabbages again? Or maybe she’d be right back in the bedroom, listening to Mike’s dying breath rattling in his chest.

“Hau!” A terrible, thunderous cry. A vast chiming shadow thrust in front of her, sparks flying as massive blades met with a clang nearly lost in greater turmoil. Rain glistened on dull-black iron, dripped from a shock of dark hair. Broad shoulders strained under metal, and the chained man’s left hand flashed out—not to punch, but in a gesture of command.

What. The hell.Ari fetched up against a tree, still clutching the soaked, heavy branch, and stared.

A length of dark dripping chain shot out, punching through one of the golden robots across the road with a heavy, nastythunk. The tall dark-haired man broke free ofcorps-à-corpsand swung with his broadsword in the same moment, his blade shearing through the arm of the robot bearing down on Ari; another lightning-glare showed heavy links moving as they wreathed the new arrival’s dull, heavily spiked armor.

He stepped into the fray almost lightly, the massive sword whistling—Ari could almost feel its weight in her hands again—and snake-lengths of chain whipping in every direction. Naithor ran for Jazarl, pulling the other man to his feet before turning to raise his rapier, but there was little need.

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