Page 70 of The Inheritance
Jackson’s eyes were kind and mournful. “I’m going to tell you the same thing I told you back then. The past has happened. It cannot be changed. Don’t do this to yourself.”
Elias drank his coffee. Jackson was watching him with a particular focus.
“Don’t do it,” Elias warned him.
“Do what?”
“Put me into restorative sleep.”
“You look like you need it,” Jackson said.
“What I need is to enter that damn breach. I’ve been sitting on my hands for five days now. What the hell possessed you to go to Japan anyway?”
Jackson smiled. “The trees, Elias. They are good for your soul. Now tell me more about this cave.”
The three of us, Jovo, Bear, and I, crouched on the ledge. Below us the remains of the assault team sprawled on the rocks. We had doubled back to the kill site.
The corpses were still there, untouched. I pointed at the bodies, looked at Jovo, and made a cutting motion. “Knife.”
The lees pondered the bodies below.
The first thing Jovo did after we rested was to scale the sheer side of a cliff to a higher ledge to get a better view of the cavern. He’d scrambled a forty-foot wall like it was nothing, which gave me an idea. Jovo needed a weapon, and the only unclaimed weapons in the breach lay there below us. They were out of my reach but maybe not out of his.
The fox took a deep breath, put his marble into his mouth, and leaped off the stone bridge. He bounced off the rock, weightless, bounced again, zigzagging down the wall like a superhero squirrel, and then landed among the bodies.
Wow.
Jovo gagged, coughed, waved his hand in front of his nose, and began rummaging through the corpses. I sat on the stone bridge and watched. Once he armed himself, we would head to the anchor.
Jovo pulled a tactical belt with five pouches on it from a corpse, and wrapped it around himself, over one shoulder, bandolier style.
I could smell the bodies now. The sickening, cloying stench reached all the way up to the bridge.
Jovo picked up a machete, swung it a couple of times, and tossed it over his shoulder. A big ugly knife was next. He waved it around, and over the shoulder it went. It would be almost comically cute if it weren’t for the rotting corpses.
Bear stared up ahead, at the darkness beyond.
“What is it?” I whispered.
The shepherd went still, focused on something in the gloom. She didn’t woof though.
At the bottom, Jovo raised two small, curved blades. They had six-inch blades shaped like claws and rings in their handles. There was a specific name for that kind of knife… care… kura… karambit. That was it. The style of the knife originated in Southeast Asia.
Those were Ximena’s backup blades. She was a pulse carver, a burst damage dealer with enhanced speed who slashed at her opponents. She was like a whirlwind on the battlefield, and now she was dead, decomposing below.
Did we actually have a chance to win a fight with the gress? Or was I deluding myself?
Jovo slid his fingers through the rings in the handle, holding the blades out, and sliced the air in two vicious, lightning-fast strikes.
Okay.
Jovo spun on one foot, danced across the rocky ground, cutting and carving, and leapt into the air spinning like a windmill. The twin blades flashed as he sliced his imaginary opponents in twin X slashes and landed in a crouch.
Holy shit. How the hell had the gress even caught him?
Jovo straightened, looked at the knives, let out a giggle, and bounced from paw to paw, doing a little happy dance.
Bear’s black lips trembled. She let out a low, grumbling growl.
