“All of them.”
Keeping the officers alive would only lead to a counterattack. Edmund may have his brawn, but without the brains of his operation, he couldn’t even lead a petty skirmish.
Samson turned to go when he felt a hiss travel down his spine to his navel, the inferno flaring in warning just as the tall brute flung himselfagainst the fenced wall with a death keen. The rudimentary fence quivered. For a moment, everyone stilled. The rods teetered, the barbed wire rattling like scorpions in a pit. And then a singular rod fell—right at Samson’s feet.
He stared down at it and then back up at the soldier. The man grinned and grabbed the barbed wire.
The air erupted.
At once, Jantari soldiers rushed the fence. Chandi bellowed for the Black Scales to shoot. Edmund jumped to his feet, screaming. Shots crashed through the grounds, quick and percussive. A few Jantari went down. But the stampede built, soldier after soldier, pressing against the fence as it jerked in sharp, erratic movements like a branch in a winter wind.
Samson moved to unravel his urumi. One slash, and he could cut the tall soldier’s hands clean off—but something in the man’s eyes made him freeze.
“Butcher,” the soldier called him. He reached through the barbed wire, blood spilling down his hands as he grabbed the metal rods. “Farin treated you like a son. Raised you from the dirt. Trained you to fight like us. But even with all of that, you could never hide your true filth, could you,boy.”
The fence bent, groaning.
“Climb so high,” the soldier said as the fence bucked wildly, “in filth you lie.”
With a horrid crack, the fence snapped.
Chandi roared as pulse fire cleaved through the stampede. There was no order to it. Shoot at will. Soldiers collapsed. The tall man dashed toward Samson before he could react. The Jantari grabbed his wrist, pulling him close as he raised his other fist. Reflexively, Samson drove up his arm to block the soldier’s punch and gasped as the man’s fist collided with his forearm. White-hot pain jittered up his arm, his side. More soldiers rushed through the opening, streaking past.
Kata, kata, kata, kata.
The rapid, percussive sounds of magazine pulses ripped through the air. The fleeing soldiers toppled, one by one.
Samson wheeled, trying to push the big man off him, but the Jantari used his weight to lock him in. His next punch landed right below Samson’s sternum.
He cried out. Black spots danced in his eyes, and his knees buckled. Around him, Samson was faintly aware of the rushing and falling bodies, of the small fire hissing as the soldier wrapped his thick fingers around his throat.
Use us, the flames said.
But he remembered the last time he had wielded his Agni in a weakened state: the pain ripping up his arm, an electric sensation scorching through his body as the cold bit into his flesh.
It won’t be like last time, the inferno purred.You are stronger.
Samson backpedaled, slamming his arms onto the soldier’s forearm. Distance, he needed distance. But the man moved so quick, and his next blow connected with Samson’s chin.
The world spun. Samson tasted iron in his mouth, then dirt, and then he realized he was lying on the ground.
Climb so high, in filth you lie.
The soldier raised his boot, and Samson rolled over. He scrambled to his feet, clawing his waist for his urumi just as the soldier lunged for Samson’s weapon.
No onetouched his urumi.
He roared, slamming his elbow into the soldier and kneeing him in the liver. The Jantari gasped, coughing. Samson ripped out his urumi, and the sound of it unsheathing, like a chord being struck in a wide blue lake, filled him with such fierce relief, such calm, that all the fear melted away until he felt one thing only, one truth that encapsulated everything he knew, everything he was, that he laughed to think he had ever thought otherwise.
I am a god.
The blue flames screeched. They flared down his urumi like a torch, striking so suddenly that the Jantari soldier didn’t even know that his arm was burning until he raised his fist and saw it aflame.
He screamed.
Samson cut down, down, twins blades tearing through the soldier’s thick neck, through skin, tendon, down to the bone and then clean to the other side. His head sailed through the air.
Samson whipped around, momentum now.
