Katie And The Reaper (A Post-Apocalyptic Romance)

Chapter 5 - Katie 19

Freakin' mages.

No matter where she went, or what she did, they were there, hunting her, popping up from out of nowhere, to give her trouble when she least needed it. Ever since that one time when she'd tried to barter with them. She'd put herself on their freaky mage alert system.

Men and women with magic, some of them had once walked around like normal people with desk jobs. After the world broke, magic found them, changed them. Then there were the ones that came with the rest of the other load, loosed on the land when the world broke. Pulled together like magnets, the two sets mixed, but Katie could tell them apart by the oily feel of their life glow. Plus, the old guys were well beyond fugly. Tainted. Hungry. The old ones used blood sacrifices to gain power. They were like witches who fed on children from the stories. The new ones, their apprentices, didn't have hands soaked to elbows in innocent blood, not in a soul stain sense, not yet in real life action. But they were working toward it like it was a life-long goal of doing what you love and finding success. Believe it and achieve it took on new meaning with mages.

She thought of them as pure evil and half-pint-evil.

And all of them were after her.

She was just trying to mind her own business. Get to the innocent in the tiny cave and take him somewhere safe. That's what she did now. Ever since she left Marie. The life glow of the innocent called out to her in need and she answered just like the Reaper had once answered her. It surprised her, just how many innocent were wandering around. Most of them children. They all had their trauma story, so awful Katie knew not to ask how or why they were alone in the big, bad, Outside. She couldn't take it.

This time, those freaking messed up evils were in on it. She was inside the cave, a little tight space perfect to hide in if you were small, terrified, and not worried about the bugs or the dark. The little boy lay half naked, hog-tied, tucked into the cave as unwilling bait. She cut the ropes.

"Bad guys. The bad guys." He whispered, the heartbreaking puppy whisper of a four-year-old mini-werewolf, trying to protect her, warn her. Head to toe dirty, shirtless,shoeless, his pants too small and his ribs sticking out, he was as pathetic a creature as she had ever seen.

"Can you shift?"

He nodded.

"Do it. Be ready to run, follow my scent, hide when you can."

And then they were there. Seven of them. Three oldies and four half pints, powered up like greasy torches, high on the blood of their last kills.

"Come out, girl. Come to us and we will let the boy live." A sibilant male voice called, all snaky and gross. The old mages had scaly skin, weird, flat faces and split tongues. "We just want you. We won't hurt you. Today."

"Fuck off!" She yelled at them.

They were united in nefarious intentions. Catch her, keep her, use her, tie her. Their minds focused on capture more than the risk to their own lives.

She had arrows. But they had magical shields. Good and bad, their shields kept her from killing them with projectiles, and kept them from throwing any kind of magic at her. Were they gonna wait her out? The cave was a dead end. One way only. She and the boy could lick at the damp rocks for three days, but eventually they'd be too weak to think.

Arrows couldn't get through shields. But she could. Flesh could cross. Then they'd drop their shields and start throwing stuff.

She was fast.

There were seven of the monsters.

Wait? Attack? She looked at the little werewolf boy. He'd quietly shifted, his skinny body still humanoid, but elongated and animal-like, with claws, teeth and a muzzle. Werewolves were a weird in between; wolf-headed men. She'd never seen a child in shift. It was odd. Alien. He showed her his little boy teeth, long tongue snaking out in a sloppy puppy grin, that she found not at all appealing.

His thoughts were on two things. Food and freedom. She'd come to save him, and he trusted her. He'd watch her back when she attacked.

Katie snorted at that. As usual, her face giving away her mind reading abilities. She was not a tall person, but he was only four, his head reaching up to her chest.

He showed her his terrible teeth and his terrible claws, not at all surprised she knew what he was thinking, but rather insulted she doubted him. "Sorry, but you are kinda little. Stay away from the lizardy ones, m'kay. They are the badist. The first three. You don't want to get their nasty blood on you. The others will have some kind of spells to throw like base balls. Fire. Electricity. Disease. So don't get hit with something like that or a poisoned blade." Little four-year-old, baby alpha, know-it-all acted like a biggie, so she'd treat him like one. She could use his help with this.

Both of them silent, they crawled over the rocks towards the cave entrance. Attack it was. No waiting.

Katie focused on the three. She'd discovered things about herself while surviving alone. With her mom, she'd only ever killed zombies. In the great big Outside by herself, obviously female, she was a target for more than cannibal flesh chompers. There weren't a lot of them around now, but still, her only way to sense them was her weak-ass human sense of smell. They weren't as much trouble as human men, though, and bad vamps, mages, and the occasional territorial fae creature. Pretty much anything with a working dick thought she was gonna be their girlfriend slave; finding her was the best luck they'd had in years.

Not.

Her first kill had been scary.

Her second, a human man, she'd cried over.

The third one, cold, calloused and necessary. It changed her. So that now she could take down these mages without a thought. If they were mere humans, shifter or vamp, she could do it from a distance. But all tainted and gross, full of blood powered evil, of course she had to get close enough to smell their graveyard breath and touch their reptilian bodies. Evil or not, they still had life glow, and ever since the reaper had drank from her, she'd been able to take it out from others.

It was like he'd left stuff behind when he brought her back to life, like a boyfriend who forgot his underwear after a breakup.

Too bad she hadn't figured the trick of killing while invisible.  In order to connect with flesh she needed to be flesh.  Invisible would be so handy right now. 

Close to the entrance, she and wolf-boy, Reghar, he called himself, didn't hesitate. Speed was their friend. Metal spike in one hand, she gut-punched one, and drank down the other. The cave entrance was small, and they were all bunched up, easy targets.

The one with the hole in his belly, still standing, grabbed her arm. Instead of throwing electricity, he shot it directly into her body. It hurt. She jerked and screamed. Reghar, dark shadow on the ground, sank his teeth in the guy's ankle. It was enough to weaken the spell shock so that Katie could swing around and take the mage's measly life glow. The other's were still there. Throwing fire balls. Reghar yelped. She tossed him her own special kind of ball, life, regurgitated from what she'd taken, that instantly healed.

But she couldn't make a shield to stop the magic directed their way, and it rained down in a relentless onslaught. Four more of the old mages came out of nowhere. In tandem with the one right next to her, they wrapped her up in some kind of binding spell. No good. No good. It was like rope wrapping around her. One step two, she couldn't move again as her legs and feet were tied together, arms pinned to her body, but she was close enough to purposely fall into two of the mages. All she needed was physical contact, and quick as an inhale, their measly little life lights were out. Hers.

Not enough. Too many of them. Wolfy boy was crying, a boy again. Naked.

Katie called for help. It was instinct. She couldn't stop herself. A mental demand that went out in a pulse and she knew would go for miles. Every magic-touched, empathic creature would hear it and be compelled to respond.

"Shit!" she heard.

Oh, the mages heard that. Anxiety oozed out of them. Someone warned them not to let her do that. They'd failed. Punishment. Pain. Death. Will they kill me this time? The thoughts spread over her just before one of them hit her hard upside the head, in just the right place to knock her out.