Bethany's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

Bethany shut the shack door and turned back to the yard. The fight was still loud. Bodies lay near the gate — some hers, some theirs. She counted maybe four defenders still up. The Vael kept coming through the archway in the scrap-wood wall. She gripped the blade she'd taken from the dead Vael and ran low along the inner wall. Near the water barrels, she saw a young man with dreadlocks and bare feet pinned against a stack of crates. Blue shackles still glowed on his wrists. Tevin — the prisoner Elina's group had pulled out of the mine. He had a captured Vael rifle up, firing into three creatures closing on him. One dropped. The other two kept coming. Bethany drove the blade into the closest one's neck from behind. It went down hard. Tevin swung the rifle at the last one and put a burst through its chest. The Vael folded. "Thanks," Tevin said. He was breathing fast. "More at the gate." Bethany looked past him. She saw the shapes of her people — down, or fighting, or gone. She looked up. The big alien gun sat on its stand at the top of the north tower. The one Elina had used on the first night. Nobody was on it now. "Cover me," Bethany said. Tevin nodded and raised the rifle. She ran. A Vael cut across her path from the archway. She ducked under its arm and kept going. Another lunged. Tevin's rifle cracked and it dropped. She hit the tower ladder and climbed. Her ribs screamed where the Vael had struck her in the shack. She climbed anyway. The gun was heavier than she remembered. She swung the barrel down toward the archway and found the trigger. The stand hummed. Light built in the chamber. She fired. The first shot tore through two Vael at the gate. She swept the barrel and fired again. And again. The recoil punched her shoulder each time. Vael scattered in the yard. She hit them as they ran. Something cut across her sight from above — colored glass catching the sun. Elina dropped from the sky with her wings spread wide. The sharp edge of the left wing came down through a Vael's shoulder and out its hip. She landed, pivoted, took another one across the throat. Bethany kept firing. Elina cut. Tevin picked off the ones that broke for the wall. Then there was nothing left to shoot. Bethany's finger stayed on the trigger a second longer. The gun's hum wound down. She let go. The yard was quiet. Wind moved through the archway. Somewhere a piece of sheet metal knocked against a post. Elina stood among the bodies, wings folded, breathing hard. Tevin lowered the rifle. Bethany climbed down. Her legs shook on the last rungs. She looked at the faces on the ground — people whose names she had never learned. She turned toward the shack where Emmy waited behind a barred door.