Page 80 of Ruby
She is obstinate, but Azoeul does not give up.
“They will kill us, but you will wish you were dead,” he states plainly, staring her in the eyes.
He speaks only the truth but she holds her gaze against him. They stare at each other, an unspoken conversation flying between them over my own life. I am willing to take the chance, but when I start to speak Ani shushes me.
“They are almost here, and we don’t have time to set a trap,” he argues. “You know he won’t even try to get down there unless you go first and we are dead if we stay here arguing.”
That does it.
She grumbles, but starts making the slippery climb down.
I turn to him, grateful he is at my side, but questioning why he would be. He could climb down faster than any of us. I open my mouth to ask him why, but the hunters announce their presence with weapons blasting at us.
I jump out of the way to avoid the projectiles fired at us while Azoeul strikes back, throwing stones in a flurry of speed, darting behind trees each time they try to target him. He does not approach the main force, defending so the projectiles do not reach either of us. It is taking everything in me to just avoid the projectiles but I will not have to do that much longer.
“I’m down!” Ani screams up at us.
32
Ani
Another bullet ricochets off the sharp cliff as I cling to the steep side. I lied, I’m barely over the edge, but from the sound of the fighting I know they are trying to be heroic. I’m about to yell up at them again when the hair on the back of my neck raises, some instinct telling me there is a far worse predator here than the hunters above.
Far worse.
The first thing I hear is the sound. It isn’t just noise. It’s a pressure that rolls through the water and up the cliff, low and aching and enormous. The sound of guns stops.
Then the lake surface erupts.
Something massive breaches—dark, scarred, impossibly large—and from one long arching tentacle a figure is launched into the sky.
A woman, but like one I have never seen, features combined in such an array of colors that it’s hard to make sense of what I’m seeing.
She shoots upward in a clean arc, water streaming off her body, and at the peak of it brilliant blue wings snap open from her back. They’re wide and luminous, catching the light like stained glass. The flight is not graceful. She wobbles hard to the left, overcorrects, nearly tips, and then she steadies.
She angles toward the cliff where the hunters have Szhe’ka pinned and starts firing mid-descent. Her aim, unlike her glide, is controlled.
I move back up the small amount I’ve made it down, just enough to see what’s happening, trying to get a glimpse of one of the males.
“Die, you festering idiots!” she screams cheerfully in English, blood spraying from the top of the cliff. She doesn’t hesitate. No warning. No mercy. “I hope you choke on your own—”
She hits the ground in a rough skid, wings flaring to slow herself, then pivots and keeps shooting. There’s nothing hesitant about her, just loud, furious precision.
The enormous creature launches back out of the water. It throws a boulder, knocking two hunters flat. It lets out another thunderous, almost musical call that rattles my bones. My mind interprets it as the creature cheering her on, with a lot of talk about blood.
I scramble back up toward Szhe’ka, desperate to know if he’s still alive.
By the time I get over the lip of the rock, the winged woman is down in a crouch, wings flaring awkwardly behind her as she keeps firing. Up close she’s worse. Feral grin, swirling yellow eyes bright with reckless delight, blue wing membranes twitching like they’re still figuring out how to be attached to her.
Once all of the hunters stop screaming into disgusting piles, she turns to me, face moving out of that scary mask of glee into a different type of joy.
“I would stay back… uh… Ruby? You probably don’t want all that I’m packing,” she says in a boasting voice, free hand gesturing across her body like I should know what she means.
“Ani,” I mumble, correcting her.
Packing? My eyes dart to her gun, suddenly afraid I completely misread the situation. “No, no… not that kind of… Doesn’t matter. Hi, I’m Kira. That giant drama squid is Wroahk. He’s a complete asshole.”
From the water comes another long, echoing call. “I know when you are speaking of me.”
