Page 23 of Retribution
Ahead of us in the distance, I saw Sterling heading in this direction, the massive worm chasing his car towering over the vehicle. Despite that, I was relieved. If we were all together, nothing could stop us – me – from protecting what’s mine. Oak turned the wheel sharply, the shift causing my body to jerk violently. Lenin’s arm came out from one side; Justice’s from the other as they held me back, keeping me in place. The tires squealed, the smell of burnt rubber filling the car and then the impact.
The car hit the iron bars at full speed, causing the metal to scrape and screech, but the car stopped. Our bodies were thrown about, Lenin’s size curled around me to protect me from the worst of the impact, though the seatbelt still cut into my skin. Inside our car, everyone was frozen, silence beat on, five seconds, then ten, before the sound of the slime hitting the trunk echoed inside, followed by a hiss as the metal dissolved away.
Oak was the first to click off his seatbelt, but the others followed. “Are we all okay? Liberty?”
“Fine.” However, Lenin had a nice gash on his forehead. I reached up, rubbing away the blood.
“It is superficial,” he informed me.
“Good. Because we can’t stay here.” Oak growled, his car door opening right as a plop of acidic goo landed on the roof, eating away our shelter. We rushed out of the car seconds before the roof caved in, and the goo hit the seat where we had been.
We were out of the car only seconds when Sterling stopped, jumping out to join us before the car fully stopped moving. “What’s the plan?”
“Go for the hearts,” I mumbled, trying to ignore the pain from the seatbelt. “All five of them.”
“Five fucking hearts?” Sterling ran a hand through his hair. “Where?”
The worm chasing Sterling caught up to the one on our tails; their bodies morphed for a moment before they connected, fusing as one being again. Gross. “By its mouth.”
“We can’t just cut off its head?”
Another spat of acid had us scattering in two directions. “No. It can separate itself into two separate beings. If we cut off the head, it could fuse back. We need to stop its functioning altogether.”
“She’s right,” Oak confirmed, “We go for the hearts.”
Then, without waiting a second longer, he unsheathed the knife he had at his hip and dove toward the worm, disappearing underneath its massive body.
Chapter 10
LIBERTY
My heart skippedwhen Oak’s body disappeared, but I couldn’t dwell on it. I trusted him, I trusted Oak with my life, and I had to believe he knew what he was doing. The others were in action before I could blink, each following Oak’s lead to assist in the destruction.
I began to step forward, and Lenin’s arm stopped me. “Not yet, Kitten.”
“But –”
“If you go too soon, the creature will kill them all.”
What? Every limb in my body was frozen in place. I was afraid to breathe for fear that somehow that mere movement might be construed as a threat and set off the chain of events that Lenin predicted. They call him Truth, and he had never been wrong. I trusted him. I knew he would never lie.
But not helping out was painful. Not jumping in on the attack made me feel useless. I could help, I could handle it, I could end this if only –
“Do not do it, Liberty. If you jump in now, the acid would shoot out and vaporize Justice where he stands. The weight of the creature would be too much as it fell, crushing both Michelle and Maggie. And your Oak, he would have the worst of it because it would not be instant death. The acidic mucus would splatter to his face, eating slowly through his facial structure and his brain.”
“I-”
“I would not lie. I have seen many outcomes. They-” He swallowed hard, the words nearly choking him. “They are my family, too.”
Before me, Oak and Ellis scaled the back of the creature, using their knives to gain foot and hand holes as the massive worm thrashed, attempting to throw them off. Maggie flung magic in front of the creature, her eyes closed in spells, as Michelle shot fireballs towards its face. Justice, his whole body consumed by his animal, repeatedly sprang forward, biting anything he could sink his teeth into until he was flung off before going back at it again.
They were giving it their all, pushing all they had into defeating this creature for me, so I didn’t have to, so that I was safe from harm. But I knew they couldn’t do it without me. This wasn’t like those first days of meeting them, when my strength was weak. I’d gained power and potency, found objects and people that elevate my strength and canceled my weaknesses. The hurdles that have been thrown our way reflected that knowledge. She knew I was strong, and each attack was made with that in mind.
The worm rolled, and Ellis flung from his back, landing in a lump by the worm's tail. For a moment, my heart stopped. Memories of another time, another fight flashed in my mind, reminding me when I almost lost one of them, when I was too weak to prevent it, too weak to fight. But Ellis stood and shook off his limbs, rolling his neck before throwing his body back onto the worm. His hands and feet swiftly latched onto the holes previously dug as he attempted to catch up to Oak.
A snarl drew my attention toward Justice, his stout dripping with blood as he spit out a chunk of the worm’s skin. He ran back toward it, jumped so high that for a moment, he was suspended midair before his teeth latched onto more flesh, ripping pieces as his body descended to the ground. The damage that he alone had done was phenomenal. The worm’s torso was covered in open wounds, wounds that didn’t heal and left its organs exposed and made its weakness visible.
The fire Michelle tossed at the worm hit it right in the throat, but either the flame had weakened by the time it reached the distance, or the acid made it immune to attacks that would cause its skin to erode. The flames weren’t phasing the creature, the skin not charring or catching fire. And the magic, the magic that Maggie flung at it, using spells and the energy she pulled from the earth, seemed to be blocked by some force.