Ebb Tide: Book 1 of the South Wind Saga

Chapter 4

A terrible scream fills my skull as my blade sinks into flesh. I feel the blow in my bones, as my knife slides deep into meat. The crimson star snaps off, the stars cut out. My vision stolen as if a hood had been dropped over my head.

The impossible dream, of the Pale King hanging between stars, vanishes and in its place is a darkness as deep as ink, as complete that as found in the deepest cave. My hands ring with an electric shock. The force of the blow sends tremors through my arms like the peeling of a great cathedral bell. I fly backwards, a blow to my chest hurling me through the air.

I am in darkness, falling through the void, falling forever, my mind adrift in a strange and limitless sea, a sea of absence a sea of loss.

I fall forever and more and then—

I crash against the ground.

The screaming continues, a long high shriek of — not pain, no nothing so simple or human as pain — the scream is one of betrayal and indignant rage. A scream that demands: how dare you? A scream that promises its agony will be transferred, that the inflictor of this pain will suffer outrages a million times worse.

My mind races, tumbles but my hands move, my hands go to the places they know they will find what they need.

Drills.

The wind has been driven from my body and I hiss recovery breaths, as Calypso and Mum taught.

My master hand falls to my side, to my hip where the M4 is secured to my body by the three point sling Dad made. So that when I faded, when the carnage and horror and that voice, that horrible seductive voice called me and my will and muscles slackened, the rifle did not clatter to the ground and be left forgotten. It fell to my side, to rest until it was needed again.

Drills. To keep my body on course when my mind is adrift.

My parents, reaching across the years, to keep me safe.

I lie full length on the ground and I point my weapon and thumb the Surefire on, all without thinking, muscle memory, drummed into me by countless repetitions, programmed actions: there is a noise, it could be a target, align the weapon and illuminate.

The creature is bent, its spaded claws scrabbling at the hilt buried in its shoulder, the blade spearing and pinning a tattered epaulette to flesh. The rotten golden thread of the four bands barely glimmer in the torchlight, so greatly are they crusted with filth and rusted blood. Thin streaks of hair slick against its skull, its scalp white with a grave pallor, threaded with clotted black veins. The uniform it wears was white once but now is black with obscene matter. It succeeds in hooking a claw around the hilt of my folding lockblade and it draws it as easily as I might pull a splinter from my palm.

It drops the knife and looks up, straight into the torch, its eyes narrow crimson slits that burn with the radiance of a star, a faint shimmer of beard crusting its jaw as its mouth splits wide open, its thin lips stretching almost back to its ears. Rows upon rows of teeth and a hiss, a horrible hiss as the Pale King screeches at me, his body tenses as he crouches to leap.

SAFE SEMI AUTO and I squeeze.

An impossible noise fills the room, no limitless void this, a cargo hold with walls of steel that capture and contain the twenty staccato explosions that burst from my weapon and return a thousand fold. I go deaf in an instant, the soaring stuttering flame burns a hole in my eyes in the second it lives and the creature shudders, shatters, falling away, its flesh churned, a dozen impacts ripping it, blasting cloth and meat, shattering bones and it falls away out of the light.

Matty, RUN!

I gather my feet under me and spring upright. I release the magazine, fumble and drop it. It clatters, where did it go? No time. My non-master hand falls to my belt, unerringly finding its mate, plucking the fresh magazine from the shingle and slamming it into the receiver. Release the working parts and realign, confirm the target is down.