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The enemy fired, missing narrowly, many dumbstruck from the sheer vigor of the weapon Kael brandished. It may as well have been a flame thrower. The heat from it was scalding, even from where she stood safely tucked behind the wall of Kael’s back.
“Go! Get back!” Kael screamed.
Though the mercenaries looked mortified, they persisted. Sarah moved with him as wave after wave of men came rushing in, both of them continuing to advance, with Kael acting as her shield.
Sarah had her gun raised at her chest, holding it with two hands like she was in Charlie’s Angels. She knew she looked ridiculous, but she didn’t know any other way. She glanced under Kael’s arm again, watching the violence ensue, panic rising in her gut.
“I have to help!” she yelled at Kael.
He wasn’t listening. His face was distorted, looking more demonic than ever, vampiric teeth perched over his lower lip. Sweat bloomed along his forehead like pearls, his vengeful eyes shimmering gold.
A man came at them from the side of Kael’s blind spot. Sarah turned and pulled the trigger. The man was immediately rendered dead. There was a line of smoke billowing out of his throat where she had hit, the hole the size of a pinprick.
He fell to the ground like a marionette.
“Yes, keep going!” Kael finally responded.
She did as he demanded. She hit a few, but none of them fell poleaxed the way the first one did. Eventually, Kael’s weapon jammed, and his expression went ashen.
“Go hide!”
He smacked the gun the way a human on Earth would smack a television to make it work again. When that didn’t do the trick, he threw it like he was a pitcher at the World Series. It knocked over a few of the mercenaries like dominos.
Kael needed her. She fired her weapon at them, the pew sound something that would have been amusing in any other circumstance.
Kael used his body to continue to attack while the onslaught of beings that looked just like him continued. He kicked them in the jaws, karate chopped their throats and racked their eyes. His agility was stunning for someone his size.
Sarah kept firing, scolding herself for her inaccuracy. Kael was still imploring her to move back into the evidence room to escape the mayhem. But she couldn’t leave him. Even if she were a mere fragile human.
“Get inside, Sarah!”
She ignored him, running backward and firing her gun. She had no idea what she would do if hers jammed or if it even needed to reload. Kael was coming for her, running head-on like a fullback on the football field.
It wasn’t confidence that kept her going, but rather, her genuine bullheaded nature. And something else, too. Something that swirled around in her like a whirlpool.
That was when something seared the top of her breastbone like a cow being branded. She swore she could smell her skin broiling, that foul, fleshy stench of human. It then began to bubble with visceral haste as she plummeted to the ground, the weapon in her hands skittering across the floor as she smacked down hard on her back.
Kael yelled her name again, but it was coated in a petrifying layer of grief. Her vision began to blur as she stared up at the ceiling, the sound of snapping and cracking bones fading like a sinister orchestra.
She tried to rise for him with every ounce of courage left in her soul. She knew, laying there, as dazed and near the edge of unconsciousness as she was, that what she was experiencing wasn’t anything like a bullet. She could actually feel herself cooking.
Kael came to her as she started to slip away. She hated herself despite the tranquility that washed over her. She had put herself in harm’s way, and that could have been the end of him. And it could mean the end of her, adding to the list of inconsolable losses penetrating the Captain’s heart like a rusty nail.
That would haunt her, even in the afterlife. She had given him the gift of love again. And she had taken it away from him just as fast.
“Stay with me, Sarah,” he wept at her side, the sounds of the room eerily quiet. “You will be okay. I promise you will be.”
Sarah didn’t know. She felt the black take her over peacefully, falling away in between thoughts and emotions the way sleep did.
She felt Kael, and she felt Suki. It pulled her in like a warm embrace.
TWENTY-TWO
KAEL
Kael lamented with his rage and pummeled any man who crossed his path with his practiced fists and long, muscular limbs. Someone had struck Sarah in the chest. It was on the left side of her body, just above her heart, but closer to the collarbone than the vital organ.
It was enough for him to bulldoze through the remainder of the mercenaries. He hadn’t been fond of the idea of killing his own men. But the ones that plowed through the door weren’t his. They were someone else’s entirely.
