Harlen's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The ground shook. Not far. Under their feet. Harlen felt it climb up through his boots and into his teeth. More Vael were coming up out of the hole. "Move," Elina said. Harlen slung the woman's good arm over his shoulder. Elina took the other side, careful of the bent one. The woman made a thin sound and kept walking. They ran off the road toward the abandoned town. They passed the first ruin in twenty seconds. Sun-baked brick, the left side collapsed into rubble, walls leaning at a bad angle. Harlen glanced past it and saw another hole punched in the sand behind a fence. Purple bodies boiled up out of it. Then another hole. Then two more. Every pit fed pursuers into the street behind them. "They dug the whole town," Harlen said. "I see it." The woman coughed blood onto his sleeve. He didn't slow. Elina jerked her head at the ruin ahead. Two stories, doorless, windows like empty eyes. "There. Get her up. I take the roof." They shoved through the doorway. Harlen laid the woman behind a lip of fallen brick where nothing could reach her from the street. She gripped his wrist once, hard, then let go. "Stay down," he said. "Don't move." Elina was already climbing. Her wings caught the light through a hole in the ceiling and threw color across the walls. She went up the broken stair, out onto the flat roof, and stepped off the edge into the air. Harlen turned to the doorway and set the rig high. They came in a rush. Six through the front. He breathed and the doorway filled with fire. Three went down thrashing. A fourth pushed through burning and he swung the flame across its face until it stopped. The next two split around the rubble. He caught one against the wall. The other got a claw into his jacket before he burned its arm off at the shoulder. On the roof he heard Elina working. A wet crack. A body hitting brick. Another crack. She dropped past the window with the left wing leading and opened a Vael from throat to belly on her way down. Her boots hit the street. She spun and threw the violet shard into the eye of the one behind her. Harlen stepped out through the smoke. The rig was hot enough to blister his jaw. He didn't care. He counted as he burned. Nine. Eleven. Fourteen. Elina fought at his back. He felt her wings shift against him each time she cut. They turned in place and the Vael kept coming and kept dying. Then there were none. Harlen killed the rig. His breath came ragged. His collarbone screamed under the metal. Elina stood beside him, chest heaving, red down both wings. "Count?" she said. "Enough for today." Inside the ruin, the woman was still breathing. The street was quiet. For now.