Page 182 of Cold-Blooded Creatures
The military trucks.
I raced to the matte black trucks flocked by our fighters, them powerless against the soldiers shooting strings and strings of bullets toward us and repelling any counterattacks.
Most of us weren’t armed. We hadn’t expected this to befall us tonight.
Meeting Ava’s and Eli’s eyes in the throng, I shouted, “Slash their tires!”
Their curt nods were enough for me to trust that they would get the job done despite Ava limping, her arm thrown over Eli’s shoulders, and half of his face covered in red splotches.
I relayed the same order to the others, and then lunged for the military trucks with their backs still open. Soldiers were already grabbing random women from the crowd and throwing them inside.
They were stealing our people. Again.
“Get off!”
My head whipped toward the yell. A short, blonde teenage girl wrestled a faceless soldier trying to lock her in a chokehold. She elbowed him in his stomach and twisted out of his grasp, kicking him in the balls the moment she was free.
I leaped over the lifeless bodies scattered on the road and, using the seconds the soldier teetered, clutching his smashed-in groin, struck his ankle with the heel of my boot. The bone gave way for his leg to bend in an unnatural position, but no screams had time to leave his throat as I sliced it open and he half-choked on his own blood, half-bled out, slumping on the asphalt.
“Go!” I told the girl, and she darted away, pausing twenty feet from me and kicking the ankles of a smaller stature soldier from behind, the move terrifyingly similar to mine.
A slightly older, also light-haired woman, probably her sister, gripped the soldier’s helmet and his nose connected with her knee right before her foot flew to his crotch.
“Maira, run!” She grabbed the teenage girl’s hand, and their figures faded into an alleyway leading deeper into the compound.
Focusing back on the disorder around me, I jumped back into action, and we quickly took care of the rest of the soldiers gathered around the closest truck. Their corpses littering the ground soon became mangled as our residents poured out of the back of the vehicle and trampled the bodies of troops who’d detained them. When directed to run and hide or fight, all but one woman picked the latter option, and we split into teams.
Eli and Ava had managed to stop two more military trucks from leaving, but three managed to drive away, their headlights off. The last sign of them getting away with theircargowas the tiny glint of metal as they turned a corner and vanished.
More trucks followed, with who knew how many of the city’s citizens we’d smuggled out inside them, not counting the women they had snatched right from under our noses, re-employing their old tactic, likely abducting them for fertility testing, and no matter the result, a fucking awful life, ten times worse than you could possibly imagine.
Hearing about it for years, witnessing my sister make her choice and listening to Kali share her experiences had done its work on me. I heaved in lungfuls of crisp winter air, but the gusts of wind did nothing to cool down my frantic search for the two people I had to make sure were alive.
No, not just alive, but unhurt. Safe and sound.
Yet none of them appeared in my line of sight and the yells, cries, grunts, thuds of heavy-duty boots, and the clatter of bullets blended into a singular loud buzz, climbing, surging, bloating until the cloud of it popped and blurred my vision.
My palm hit a concrete building wall as images spun of Kali shoved into one of the trucks with bars on their windows and Gedeon’s bleeding body waiting to be found just around the street corner from where I was.
They were gone.
Dead.
Taken from me.
Erased by Ilasall.
Returned to dust.
Firm but gentle hands landed on my waist, and I jerked, leaping back and clutching my knife securely as it drew an arch in the air toward his throat.
Gedeon’s forearm blocked my wrist. He lowered it to my side, locking it there while his free hand drifted to my face, his fingers hovering a few inches away from my jawline. “It’s me.” His knuckles tentatively brushed my cheekbone. “Are you okay?”
With my chest rising and falling rapidly, I swallowed the dryness in my throat. Slowly, the screeching tires, shrieks, and shouts quietened, and I scanned the bruises and scratches covering Gedeon’s exposed arms, the first signs of swelling under his right eye, the discoloration from blood pooling already appearing. But from his stance, no deep wounds or broken bones seemed to bother him.
“I cannot lose you again, Zion. I will not.” His hands glided to my lower back, and he stepped up closer, pressing his forehead against mine. “Come back to me.”
Skin-to-skin contact always grounded me. It didn’t matter if it was a person’s palm in my lap or their face close to mine. It was their body heat signaling their life hadn’t been snuffed out.
