Elliot, page 7
part #3 of Anarock Shifters Series
All Elliot’s desire to dive and swim and be free vaporized when he got near her. He didn’t want to be free anymore. He just wanted to be near her, to share the subdued certainty that these dragons would kill her. The same people he wanted so much to approve of him and accept him—they were the ones who would rob him of her company.
She was the only person who ever really understood him. He realized that now, but it was too late. She saw him in ways no one else ever had. She got him. She divined his motivations and she tried to tell him in a thousand ways what was best for him. He should have listened to her. Neither of them would be here now if he had.
She put her foot on the canyon floor and marched between the many rooms and chambers of the Halcyon Coast. When she came to a wall, she walked right through it without diverting one way or the other.
She pretended not to notice the dragons staring at her—glaring at her, actually. They craned their necks to watch the pair pass, but they didn’t speak. They bobbed their heads back and forth and narrowed their eyes.
Were these the same dragons Elliot wanted so badly to join? Was this the society he tried so hard to be part of? What was he thinking? How could he even imagine living here without her?
He still couldn’t envision a way to get out of it, but he had to try. He had to try for her sake if not for his own. She would never belong here. That alone told him what kind of people these Blood Kin were.
A few miles along, Chimo came streaking back. He shot over Elliot’s head and whizzed to the right. “This way!”
He led the pair to a chamber like so many others. Elliot spotted Malfie and three other huge dragons parked between the vaporous walls.
Malfie rotated around to stare long before Aria and Elliot got near him. He crouched low to the ground and pulled his head between his shoulders. Aria scanned the group and nodded to Malfie. “You wanted to see us?”
“Indeed,” Malfie rumbled. “Thank you for attending to us. As you know, we have been deliberating whether to keep a bear in our midst as we have never accepted any being such as yourself before.”
“I know,” Aria replied. “Thank you for considering me.”
Malfie sniffed. He kept casting sidelong glances at his friends, but he didn’t bother to introduce them. Elliot saw the meeting going in a southerly direction real quick. He preempted their decision by speaking up first. “I just want to say, Malfie, that if you decide to execute Aria rather than let her live here among you, you’ll have to do the same thing to me. I won’t live on the Halcyon Coast without her.”
Aria whipped around and stared at him in surprise, but Malfie turned on him with calculated attention. “Rest assured, my young friend, that we would not accept one of you without the other. What becomes of her will become of you. Of that, you may be certain.”
Elliot drew his head in. He wasn’t expecting Malfie to be so pointedly direct about the Blood Kin’s intentions. Now that Malfie actually voiced those terrible words, Elliot realized how stupid he was ever to consider it could be otherwise.
All this time, he thought he could find a place here if only Aria wasn’t around to drag him down. Now he knew better.
She blinked at him in silent astonishment, but she didn’t say anything. Malfie rounded on her. “We have taken so long in deliberating this matter because we require certain information from you both. No one else can provide it. As long as you are here, you might as well serve some function by providing it to us.”
Aria squared her shoulders and faced him. “Very well. If I can provide you with any information that would be useful to you, I’m happy to do it.”
“I am indeed glad to hear that.” Malfie turned his back on her. “You see, you are the first visitors to our Coast in living memory. We do not understand the world above. We have no visitors among us who can explain it to us. Therefore, you two will have to serve that function. This, for example, appears to be some sort of martial installation. What can you tell us about it?”
In front of Elliot’s eyes, a section of the transparent wall began to glow. An oblong ring of light radiated out of it and formed a window. Through the aperture, Elliot found himself looking at a portion of Ogru-Kuche where the Prometheus Crest stored weapons and ammunition.
Elliot floundered for the right words to explain what Ogru-Kuche was—what anything in Anarock was. How much should he tell these strangers? What if they turned out to be as hostile toward Anarock as the Omega Battalion?
Before he could get the words out, Aria spoke up. “That’s the weapons locker at Ogru-Kuche. That’s the headquarters of the Prometheus Crest, the ruling house Crest of Anarock. They handle security for Anarock—that’s the New Breed city we come from. They protect all New Breed from military incursion or any other threat aimed at wiping us out.” The picture changed. “That’s the war room where they make all their command decisions. That’s Victor Griffin and Colonel Horace Weeks. It looks like they’re having a meeting with a few other leaders from other centers around the State.”
Malfie growled low in his chest. “And this? Do you recognize this?”
The picture changed. It showed a portion of sky and Elliot recognized the New Orleans skyline in the background. The instant the image formed, five fighter jets screamed into view. They tumbled and rotated above the Quag. Ten huge dragons rose out of the town and engaged them. The creatures spat jets of flame and the planes pelted them with rockets.
Aria gasped. “Those are our people fighting the US military.” Her gaze skidded toward Malfie. “Is that live right now?”
“It is indeed a current picture of conditions above your city. It appears,” he remarked, “that your people are well equipped to counter this particular threat.”
Aria swallowed hard. Elliot kept glancing at her trying to gauge her reaction, but she didn’t take her eyes away from the picture. They both watched Malachai Griffin, Riley Strickland, and Finn Weeks close in on one of the jets. They combined their attack. Finn blasted a scathing torrent of fire at it and tore off one wing. The plane teetered into a dive.
Two more jets rocketed over the countryside. They raced past the dragons and one of them launched a blistering barrage of rockets. The dragons wheeled, but they couldn’t catch up fast enough. The rockets screamed toward the city leaving a trail of smoke in their wakes.
Malachai and Riley teamed up and charged up behind the planes. They unloaded their fire on both craft. Riley exhaled her fire into their afterburn. One of the planes’ propulsion systems exploded. The plane careened sideways and detonated in a ball of gas. Malachai zoomed at the other and chomped it in half with his great jaws, but the rockets were already too far ahead. The dragons couldn’t intercept them.
Elliot could hardly breathe watching the battle unfold. His throat hurt and his chest tightened, but he couldn’t do a thing. He could only stare from far away under the Quag. What the fuck was he doing here? He should be up there fighting with his brother and the rest of the Prometheus Crest. That was where he would have been if he hadn’t cooked up this wacky idea of getting Alexa back.
Before his eyes, two more dragons ascended from out of the city. Courtney Griffin and… yes! It really was Victor! He was fighting with his family to defend the city. He and his sister spread their wings and met those rockets with all their power.
They arrayed themselves wingtip to wingtip over Anarock. They unleashed their fire at the same moment and created a wall of flame. The rockets screamed into it and vaporized to nothing.
“Your people appear to be capable of handling that particular threat,” Malfie remarked. “They seem less adept at meeting others, however.”
The scene changed and Elliot gazed down at a long column of strange mutants marching through a forest somewhere. He didn’t recognize the terrain, but it certainly wasn’t anywhere in the bayou. Strange wildflowers clustered in forests of deciduous trees. Birds Elliot didn’t recognize perched over the heads of the figures marching in a continuous line.
Everyone he saw had some bizarre disfigurement. Monsters and weird curiosities walked side by side all heading somewhere. The window moved over their heads to a place where the company entered a stockade constructed of stout logs.
Elliot shuddered. He knew the Omega Battalion when he saw it, but he didn’t know this place. He could only assume this picture was another real-time, current depiction of wherever the Battalion was right now.
The scene followed them inside their stockade. It zeroed in one particular woman with her face upside down. Her eyes looked out near a tuft of hair where her chin would be. She entered a house and joined a group of other monstrosities gathered around a table.
A normal man and woman headed the group. Elliot swallowed hard when he recognized Bryce Griffin. “There are two bridges into and out of the city—here and here. This one was destroyed in the last war, but they may have reconstructed it by then.”
“We won’t need to use that,” a many-headed creature replied. “We can swim the river or one of our people can form a tunnel under it.”
“We won’t need to,” the woman replied. “We can just open the portal on the other side. We can walk through the portal right into the heart of Anarock. They’ll never know we’re coming.”
Elliot’s stomach contracted. Was that really his sister Alexa planning Anarock’s destruction? Was she really suggesting ways the Omega Battalion could get inside Anarock’s defenses?
He thought she was the victim, that she needed rescuing. Now she and Bryce Griffin were plotting to attack Anarock. They were using the Omega Battalion to betray their own kind.
He cast one more desperate glance at Aria and discovered her gazing at him. Her clear eyes bored into his heart. She and only she, of everyone in the world, knew what this meant—what it meant to him. He only went over to the NightRage Crest to help Alexa. Now he found out she was his blood enemy. She was more his enemy than the Omega Battalion ever was.
“Your people in the city seem less competent to meet this particular threat,” Malfie muttered. “From what we can see of their conferences, they appear to be unaware of this Omega Battalion’s existence—or rather, its location. They search and search and find no trace of them. I can only assume they have yet to surmise that the Omega Battalion uses these interdimensional portals to travel to and from your world.”
Elliot pulled himself together with an effort. When he turned his attention on Malfie, he experienced a devastating rush of sheer, unadulterated hatred. He loathed Malfie with all his heart and soul. He wanted to kill the big dragon, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t even show his feelings or both he and Aria could kiss this old world goodbye.
“Is that what you brought us here to say—that our people are incompetent and oblivious to the danger? Is that what you’re keeping us around for—to taunt us and torment us with watching our people risk their lives? If that’s the case….”
One of the other dragons spoke up for the first time. “Calm yourself, my young friend. We have no desire nor any need to taunt you or to torment you or anything else. We brought you here to get information from you and we will keep you for the same reason.”
Elliot faced the…..he hesitated to call it a person. It was a dragon like the others—a big blue female. Chimo called her Beslatia. “What information do you want? It seems like you can see exactly what’s going on.”
“We see but we cannot understand—not the way you can,” she replied. “Why do these machines wish your destruction? Why do they continually attack your kind?”
Elliot drew in a ragged breath. How could he explain such a thing to these creatures? He didn’t want to talk to them. He wanted to destroy them. He certainly didn’t want to give them an advantage that would allow them to pose yet another threat to the New Breed.
Aria interjected for him. “Those aren’t machines. They’re flying craft manned by people. There’s a person inside each one that steers it and targets their weapons systems. They belong to a different race. They’re human and they consider us a danger. They’re trying to kill us all.”
Beslatia narrowed her eyes at Aria. “But our window shows us that millions of these humans live in the city along with your New Breed. Why would they put their own people in danger?”
Aria and Elliot exchanged glances. Elliot couldn’t think of one decent thing to say to that, but Aria murmured under her breath. “They do a lot of things to put their people in danger. They don’t really think it through if you ask me.”
“This Omega Battalion appears to think it through a bit more thoroughly, in my opinion,” Malfie added. “Their leadership takes considerable time to plan and explores many different contingencies before they decide on a course of action.”
Elliot gritted his teeth. “You don’t know anything about their leadership.”
“But you do, do you not?” Malfie arched his neck. His pointed, spiky head weaved back and forth before Elliot’s eyes. “That is the information we require from you. Tell us about their leadership. Who are they and what are their motives?”
“I don’t know anything about their motives,” Elliot snarled. “You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think I can tell you that.”
Malfie blew a hot puff of sulfury breath through his nostrils and bellowed so low that the ground vibrated. “You know more than you claim. I can smell a lie seeping through your skin. If you withhold this information, we will consider you hostile and we certainly will not bestow upon you the gift of our hospitality.”
Aria cut in. “He’s upset because the woman in the picture is his sister. He thought she was taken captive by the Omega Battalion and held against her will. He’s upset because this is the first time he’s found out that she’s helping them target Anarock—or planning to target it. The man is our leader’s brother. We thought both of them were lost and we thought they were helping us from inside the Battalion. You can understand why Elliot would be taken by surprise to find out they’re doing the opposite.”
Malfie grumbled more than ever, but he turned away without engaging the pair again. Elliot glared at him. If only he could find a way to kill that fucking Malfie, he would do it. How dare he expect Elliot to inform on Alexa?
Beslatia answered in Malfie’s place. “We appreciate your continued cooperation in this matter. We will monitor the situation above the water and we will require your information on an ongoing basis. I hope you understand. You are free to go for now. Make yourselves at home along the Coast, but at the same time, we anticipate you will also need to make yourselves available to us when we require you to inform us on these subtle details.”
She and the other dragons averted their gaze toward the window. That must be what passed for a dismissal in this fucked-up country. Elliot fumed at them all and Malfie in particular, but before he could stick his foot in his mouth, Aria took hold of his elbow. She rotated him away. “Come on, Elliot.”
He tried to glare at the dragons again, but they steadfastly refused to acknowledge his presence. Aria exerted steady pressure on his arm and marched him away. Every time he looked back, there they all were, gathered around their window. He heard them talking, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
How could he be so stupid as to consider them his friends? How could he be so blind as to consider them his kind? They were nothing like him. They certainly didn’t consider him their kind. They treated him like shit. They treated him like a smear of dog shit on the street that they couldn’t even be bothered to scrape off. They treated him just as badly as they treated Aria.
She knew all along. She was just too polite to tell him to his face what a bitch he was being. It took this meeting to shove it in his face so he couldn’t ignore it any longer.
She guided him back the way they came. When they got near the cliff, she climbed up through the empty air. She raised one knee and put her foot on an invisible step. She kicked up to the top like she did it a thousand times before.
7
At the clifftop, Elliot snapped out of his trance. He looked over his shoulder at the Halcyon Coast spread out to the far horizon. “Fuckers!” he murmured. “Fucking son of a bitch bastards!”
Aria whipped around. “What’s wrong?”
“Those cocksuckers,” he snarled. “They’re gonna milk us for information and then they’re going to kill us. They said so.”
“They didn’t say that at all. They said they would keep us around as long as we provided information on the world above the water. That’s better than I hoped for.”
He smacked his lips. “How can you be so casual about this? They’re using us. They don’t even try to hide it.”
“Why should they hide it?” She started walking again. “They don’t need us. We’re a convenience to them. They get just fine well without us. They’re curious about the world above the water. That’s all they need us for.”
He jumped after her and grabbed her arm. “How can you just brush this off? Didn’t you see what’s going on up there?”
Aria didn’t try to fight her way out of his grip. She didn’t understand his reaction. A few minutes before, he was ready to let them kill her if it meant he could be one of their Kin. Now he changed his tune all over again.
She kept her response measured. Maybe he would calm down and see reason. “I saw what’s going on up there the same way you did. I saw the Prometheus Crest battling the military. I also saw Bryce and Alexa using the Omega Battalion to plan an attack on Anarock. I saw it all.”
“Then you know we have to do something,” he fired back. “We’re the only ones who can stop it.”
“Stop what? You were the one who wanted to go over to the NightRage Crest to overthrow Victor.”
He yanked his hand away and threw up both arms. “Oh, will you stop harping on that shit? Don’t you see what’s going on? We’re the only people on the planet who know the Omega Battalion is planning another assault. Victor and Riley and my dad all think Bryce and Alexa are trying to help us. We have to warn them.”
