LUCKY THIRTEEN
They were safe.
At least, the main group was safe. They had made it down to the second house, further away and down the stream. There, they mobilized. Sakaki found his other motorcycle, a cheaper model, unobtrusive and fast, just as the others were pulling tarps and cloths off of two other cars. The witches moved swiftly, knowing they had little time left.
Robin stared out a window of the dark, dank garage, rubbing her arms. "Where are they?"
"They're coming," Brett answered. "Kristo wouldn't leave a man behind." The fire elemental sparked a tiny flicker over his thumbs. "Even if it is that no good sonovabitch, Amon."
Sakaki touched Robin's cheek, his fingers brushing over her skin. "Go with Brett and Geoff. They'll keep you safe."
"Sakaki? What about Amon and Kathain?" the Craft user inquired.
"Trust Kristo."
Robin had never heard anything as audacious in her life. Flame flickered behind her eyes. For one whole year, she and Amon had been safe. The girl had kept a keen and vigilant watch for any sign of trouble. Together, Amon and Robin had been close, like family. They lived together, worked together, everything. It was a matter of survival. No, for Robin, it was a matter of family. The teenager couldn't leave Amon behind. Not again.
The girl barely noticed a tiny flame snap into existence on a rag, caused by her emotional fire and her Craft; Brett did. "You are definitely coming with me." He held out a hand and closed it, snuffing the flame from across the garage. "No fires."
Robin looked away, embarrassed. She had forgotten her glasses; they sat on the dining room table, in that abandoned house. Without them, who knew what her Craft would do when she used it. Her glasses gave Robin focus, clarity, and an increased accuracy on her aim. That, and they came from Amon. The girl hadn't really thought of it until that moment.
"Amon…"
Sympathy flooded through Sakaki. "Don't worry. Kristo'll get them back."
Brett didn't even spare a compassionate glance as he slid into the driver's seat of the car. "We need to, with or without them. Kristo'll catch up." He sighed. "C'mon, Robin."
Sakaki squeezed her hand and straddled his motorcycle. The other car peeled out suddenly, speeding off and carrying Bear and Raven away from the second house, into the night. The young man pulled on his helmet and offered one to Nycole; the empathy slid onto the bike behind him, holding his waist lightly.
"We'll meet up, Robin, I promise."
And, then, just as abruptly as Bear and Raven left, Sakaki and Nycole were gone.
The car behind her had already been turned over, roaring to life before the engine subsided to a mild purring. Brett eased his foot on the accelerator, feeding the machine more gas and revving the engine. He hinted to Robin more than mildly.
"I'm coming, Brett."
And, then, they, too, were gone.
xxxx
"There's no way out of here."
Kathain sounded frightened, terrified, really. Afraid of Amon, but more so of the strangers encircling them. She leaned back, trying to sink into the big man to her back. The precognitive just wanted to disappear, to vanish from this world, even if it meant death. Death would have been a far kinder fate.
Bullets whizzed past her ears and overhead.
"Down!"
A twig snapped to one side. Amon spun hard, aiming directly at the source of the sound. It didn't matter. They were outnumbered. Amon's gas gun only held what? Six bullets now that Kristo took the one out before. And the other magazines had been carelessly left at the house when Amon went barging out, into the night. Judging from the sounds of the Solomon agents approaching, there had to be at least ten or more. Amon was no witch, just a talented seed. And Kathain? She had no active powers, only sight. They were helpless.
A voice called out, gruff and authoritative, barking orders at them. "Throw the weapon down and put your hands where I can see them."
Amon closed his eyes and fired directly at the sound. An anguished cry and a heavy thud rewarded the hunter for his shot. Five bullets left, but the lead agent had been taken down. Kathain whispered a silent thank you to the hunter and his sharp hearing, but the satisfaction waned, slipping from her grasp.
She could hear the bullets, before they'd actually been fired.
"Down!"
Kathain grabbed hold of Amon's coat and tried to pull him down, yanking hard; the two threw their bodies into the dirt. At any other time, the girl would have complained about falling three times in the woods in one night, bitching about her clothes and the mud on it. No, now was different. Her body would be black and blue, sore from the landing, but they had to.
Amon came up firing and hurling his body into a sleek roll. Another body fell to the ground, but not the hunter's. He came up on bended knee, jaw clenched and firing again. Another Solomon agent went down under the marksmanship of Amon.
For the first time, ever, the man wasn't afraid to empty the rounds of witch-killing bullets. Each and every shot fired felt sweet, sending delicious recoil sweeping up his arm and through his muscles. Amon welcomed the shock waves of energy riveting up the bone, slammed by the force of the gun. The man rode the force, flowing with it in a practiced almost elegant motion.
He caught Kathain's hand and jerked her behind a tree fiercely.
"You alright?" the man shouted.
Kathain nodded, her face white as snow.
The tree bark overhead exploded in a shower of splinters. Kathain ducked low, covering her head with her hands, as if that would stop the firefight. When she had been a little girl, Kathain often dreamed of being in a gunfight, of dodging bullets with lightning speed and ducking behind a bar. Even as a child, Kathain could almost taste the sulfur and carbon from each and every shot. Her mental images had always been intoxicating, where she, the heroine, always won, taking down each and every one of the bad guys who no effort… sometimes while having a drink. At that moment, Kathain could only think bitterly of how movies had lied to her. A real gunfight was nothing like any of the Hollywood battles that so fueled her childhood imagination. Kathain almost growled bitterly.
Strange thoughts to be thinking while hiding behind a tree as a useless shield and hunkered down among dry brush for cover. If Kathain had been any other person, she might have been thinking about her life and how she'd squandered most of it playing videogames and partying with friends. She might have been praying and making peace with god. No. Kathain already knew how this battle would end, and, so, instead, the precognitive found herself mentally arguing motion picture honesty and willing suspension of disbelief.
Amon shook her fiercely. "Kathain, concentrate!"
She blinked.
Amon. Bleeding from the head. His blood was everywhere, but mostly pouring from a gaping hole between his eyes. The entry wound of a sniper round. The image rewound, slowly, as the spray of blood and viscera returned to its source. The hole in Amon's head shrank and sealed entirely as the massive bullet, perhaps two inches long, pulled back, floating before Kathain just as the hole sealed.
She was blinking.
He was saying something.
The image froze, as a movie on pause. Then, it started to move forward.
Amon was shouting at her. "Kathain, concentrate."
The girl shoved him hard just in time for the bullet to lodge itself deep within the tree, burying the slug in the ancient wood. Amon looked to Kathain for a millisecond before firing off a round at wherever the sniper was. It didn't matter. Someone with that powerful of a rifle didn't need to be that close, especially not in range of Amon's gas gun. They were trapped and quickly running out of bullets.
The trees became alive.
"Amon, it doesn't matter anymore. It's too late."
xxxx
"Close."
Kristo wished he'd taken Nycole into the shadows with him. It had grown harder and harder to keep in the abyss, and would have been harder with the empath in tow. He started at the house and began to move down the path.
The distant crack of a rifle report rang in his ears.
Kristo grimaced. "I know that rifle."
Somewhere, in a past life, it seeming like after all this time, Kristo had been in the military. He could tell just from the distinctive sound of the shot exactly what had fired. The shadow walker's mind began to list off details. Beretta. M501. Italian Army issue. 7.62x51mm. 5 round detachable box magazine. 586mm barrel length. Integral harmonic balancer, reducing vibrations of the barrel and improving accuracy. Inception in the mid 1980s. Known to be a fine sniper rifle, with a solid reputation. But Italian? These rifles were not, nor had they ever been available in America.
Solomon.
They were truly after the witches, and in full force.
Kristo hurried.
xxxx
"C'mon…"
Bear tapped on the steering wheel, waiting, trying to kill time and keep from going insane. He couldn't leave. Neither could Raven. Not without knowing that both Kristo and Kathain were safe, sound, and in one piece, respectively. They turned around about a mile away from the house, heading back to the garage and sitting there, engine running, lights out, waiting.
Raven let out a heaving sigh. "Face it. They're not coming back."
Bear was about to concede, to drive off to meet the others, but a tired, dejected form stumbled out from the treeline, one hand gripping his shoulder. "Kristo!" The swordsman looked up sadly when the other two burst from the bar and rushed up to him; he said not a word, allowing Bear to ask the horrible question. "Amon and Kathain?"
Kristo shook his head.
"Dead?" Raven inquired faintly, fearfully.
Rage flashed over the shadow walker's face. "Gone."
"Shit." Bear cursed harshly, cursing Solomon and the stars overhead that had allowed this to happen. "What do we do now?"
"We get out of here," Kristo snarled the words.
Raven double-took. "What?"
The injured man glared. "We leave. We make a plan. We get Kathain back. We destroy them."
"Yeah, but what about Amon?"
XXXX
Well, damn.