Chapter 23

  Josefa clobbered a stumbling soldier with the meat of her hand, swinging wildly with hammerfisted blows and letting the metal hilt of her knife crack at his skull until the resistance gave way to a soft squelch. She’d been cut several times on her arms, back, and legs. Her blood mixed with the pools on the ground that her feet slipped in.

  “Ven! Ven! Muere! Muere,” she cried and wheezed at the pummeled soldier. His feet gave out under him, and a wet splash splattered dark liquids on her legs. The tunnel was full of terrified screams, men cursing and slashing with blades swishing through the blackness. They hit each other more than they hit her.

  Leaden arms and heavier legs carried her stumbling from the tunnel, bashing open the hidden door to the Monastery. She’d only been in that fray for minutes. Her body resisted any further movements, and she slumped down the wall in front of the Children waiting on the other side. They raised their weapons before recognizing Socorra’s spook of a guardswoman.

  “Qué pasó? Are you ok?”

  A waiting hand lifted Josefa to her feet. She wished the Child would just leave her alone and leaned against the wall, gasping, “There are too many. I must have killed a dozen. They never stopped.”

  From within the tunnel, the echoing chaos stilled. “They’re gone! Through the door! Through the door!”

  The larger force of Children contended loudly with the larger Ministry force on the other side of the square.

  Josefa lifted her head, pushing a boulder straight into the air, and looked at the carnage. Soldiers came one after the other, tripping over bodies twisted on the floor pumping blood on the ground and walls. Their brown leather gave way to deep red. Entrails shifted as writhing, scarlet snakes under and beside and over the boots of the coming Ministry men, her knives still drunk with the joy of disemboweling one of the soldiers, and she made eye contact with the lead man coming their way.

  “Give me that.”

  Josefa snatched a bow from a nearby Child stunned with the wanton death in front of him. Helmets outlined with the light of the hallway showed at least fifty more men in a line down the tunnel. Josefa picked an arrow and drew, string taught and cutting into her wet fingers. She released, breaking the soldier’s eye contact with a thud of sharpened metal into his cheek. The impact spun him around, and he thrashed against the wall.

  “They have no chance of getting through here. Alternate shots,” she sighed and met the horrified stares of the dozen Children around her. “Kill them all. Or they will kill you.”

  The archer she stole from pointed into the tunnel. “You did all of that?”

  Josefa just limped away, spitting a loose tooth to the ground at the Children’s feet. And, despite their trepidation, a steady thrum of arrows and muffled screams crept after her.

  Such a beautiful sound.

  ***

  Socorra’s energy was draining. She downed her last bottle of sweet ichor and continued her precise strikes. No Storms had come after the initial butchery, but what had followed was harder to watch. A press of bodies and wood and steel and screams bowed towards the center of the square. She picked off a Ministry guard when she could see the whites of her eyes.

  They looked just as scared as the Children. Socorra felt sick to her stomach.

  “We aren’t going to hold much longer,” Horacio said, voice wavering.

  “I agree.” Where were the Juans? She hoped they had success escorting the Greatstorm out, or this would all be for nothing.

  Cries of the Young Ones drifted down from the upper levels, distress at what was happening, what was to come. Why couldn’t the Children up there keep them quiet? They would be found. A hundred men had gotten into the square and traded blows with the Children down here. A hundred more followed them. They were going to lose.

  “How goes it out here?”

  Socorra turned to see a figure covered head to toe in blood, white eyes poking out from dark brown and red. “Josefa?”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Depends on who’s all that is.”

  “That’s for the Parents to know now.”

  Socorra turned and saw the group of Children outside the tunnel firing arrows into the hidden tunnel. Most were crying, but they continued to shoot.

  ***

  Emiliano was pressed up against a Ministry guard, face to face, screaming at each other. Neither could raise their hands, so they stood there, unable to move with the opposing sides pushing together to kill the other. Tears blurred his vision, and he was afraid. He just wanted to live. He would do anything he could.

  Jorge screamed in his ear, “Head to the side, hermano!” Emiliano tilted his head as far as it would go, cheek to cheek with a dead Child drooling blood and held up by the press. He felt something sharp slicing into his cheek, a spearhead, and he couldn’t tell from which direction it came.

  He screamed as it cut to bone.

  Then the soldier trapped at his chest gurgled with a blade in his mouth. The guard’s teeth grated on the metal as it slid down his throat. Emiliano spit vomit down his chest.

  “Push, hermano!” Jorge screamed behind him. “Push! Make us room!”

  Emiliano shut his eyes. He’d been scared to use the blessings in such a wild manner, his control was lackluster. He heard Socorra shouting all of the insults in his ears from all of his years as a Storm, dumped by his real parents because the Ministry didn’t bother coming out to their small pueblo in the middle of nowhere.

  “Push, Em!” Jorge’s screaming drowned out his doubt from Child Socorra’s voice. “Blast them to bits!”

  Emiliano coughed out the vomit remaining in his mouth. Some went into the pried open mouth of the dead man suspended in front of him. He dug deep into the anger and sorrow of his life. A well of madness sprung up within his stomach.

  He screamed again.

  A pure white wall blasted out from him. The dead soldier on his chest exploded in a cloud of red mist, and several Ministry men were lifted off their feet. They came back down in the crowd behind them, opening up little pockets of space where they crushed comrades. The red mist settled over Emiliano and teeth bounced on the ground in front of him. Space opened in the press.

  “Magnifica!” Jorge’s hands connected to two soldiers rushing to fill the gap with bolts of lightning.

  A voice behind the press shouted, “Fill that gap! Take the ground!”

  Emiliano shuttered as his brother pulled him from the front line. He turned his back on the attackers. Three arrows thumped into Jorge’s back. Emiliano watched his brother fall forward.

  “NO!” He shouted a shockwave straight into the air, muffling the sounds of the voices yelling around him.

  Emiliano pulled Jorge grunting with each movement. The downed man pushed with his feet to help Emiliano pull him along. His brother was not dead yet.

  “Someone! Someone help, please!” He cried, and snot ran out of his nose. “Please!” Jorge’s eyes were fluttering. Child Emilia was standing over other wounded behind the line. Her eyes went wide, and she rushed over to them.

  Emiliano yanked on his brother now. Jorge felt much heavier. He’d stopped pushing, stopped helping. He smacked his brother’s slackened jaw. Jorge didn’t respond, didn’t flutter his eyes. Jorge was gone.

  Emiliano blew bursts of air through his nose in shock. He looked around. His Bolt was dead.

  His back arched with a sudden spasm of agony. Had someone kicked him? No, he watched his fingers bend back on their own and break. His elbows did the same.

  His throat felt strangled, and his body twisted unnaturally about its joints. Emilia appeared in his vision as it grew over red.

  He was dying. Emiliano tried to scream. He could not. He felt a tear splash on his face, a tiny prick of coolness in a firestorm of pain. His arms and legs felt like they were being torn free then…

  Buenas noches, mi hijo.

  ***

  Horacio stood with his sword drawn behind his line and watched it break. That brave Thunderhead had done what he could, but they’d lost.

  He raised his sword before him, ready to face his death and take as many of these heretics with him as he could. Killing men was what he’d been trained to do, trained others to do, but it wasn’t ever about really killing anyone, just a dedication of his time to master an art. But here he was, waiting to use those skills and forms, that steel he’d become so familiar with just to cut another man.

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  He eyed Socorra. She was wrapped in lightning. “It’s time, hermana.”

  “Time indeed.” Arcs of lightning connected her teeth, and her voice sounded like she spoke from far away, the sound cut to bits by a hundred swords.

  Children in front of him fell back from the line. They were pushed down, shoved over, or clutched at spears in their chests and guts. All the years of their worship and dedication for the Ministry to just wipe them out.

  A prong of soldiers stabbed into the square.

  The first jabbed a spear towards Horacio. He parried it to the side and spun around the woman. His sword continued the motion, spilling the intestines of the next man. He caught the spear bearer with a back swing to the neck, tip of the sword catching and biting into her spine. Horacio whipped the sword free, and she fell slapping at the gaping wound in her neck. And, just like that, Horacio was a killer.

  May the Parents forgive him.

  ***

  Socorra’s fingers burned like holding them in a fire. Her skin blistered with the constant arcs she sent to smite the attackers. For every step she took back, she blasted three guards. They fell to the ground, stiff and drooling, their bodies fried from the inside. Socorra hated watching them die, but not as much as she hated them for what they did. Josefa snarled next to her, knives out, prowling back with Socorra and waiting for the soldiers to get too close.

  Back a step, connection, back a step, a death. Her back hit the wall of the mess hall’s entrance. She sighed and watched the spearheads approach. This was truly the end. Horacio was somewhere in that crowd still. He wouldn’t fall easily, but it was a matter of time.

  Her leg erupted with ice and pressure. She looked down at the arrow sticking from her thigh. A little streak of blood dribbled down her leg. She had no more lightning, she’d used everything she had. Soldiers walked towards her. Weary. Weapons raised.

  She cast frantic eyes around and screamed, “KILL ME!” It scratched at her throat, and she wished they would kill her.

  Josefa engaged with a spear wielder, but her movements were slow and clumsy. She was spent. He knocked her to the ground after a few traded blows.

  Socorra had brought ruin on the Monastery, and the innocents here had no idea. The Father betrayed her. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  “Not you,” a woman off to the right hissed, “we’re supposed to keep you two alive.”

  Socorra made an involuntary sob, desperate for a release. She looked around and grabbed at a knife thrown to the ground. She brought it to her neck, but a soldier slapped it from her grip. She sobbed, like a little girl again, her brother dead in her arms. Socorra sobbed.

  Her wails lifted over a hush falling in the main square.

  From the Great Hall, deep bass thundered through the pyramid.

  The ground trembled.

  Voices began to rise across the Ministry guards. Most turned and watched. A clearing in the center of the square showed Horacio standing, bloody and battered, but alive.

  Something was coming down the hallway.

  All the soldiers turned to protect their backs, sergeants shouting orders to form ranks. “Archers!” One of the men cried out. “Archers!”

  That thundering was exactly the sound Socorra hoped to hear, and the smell of her blood and fear was washed out by a holy rain.

  ***

  The rear guard was being tossed to the ground and into the air, slammed into the walls and flattened. Footsteps resounded from down the hallway. Pedro watched his men crushed as two figures barreled forward, a storm front over a flat field, clearing a path through their numbers like wind buffeting the grass.

  They were not but dust before that Storm.

  “Bring them down! Archers! BRING THEM DOWN!” Pedro screamed to no avail.

  Now, the hallway lit with the ready ferocity of a Bolt waiting to strike. They were getting closer, trampling through the guards. All were crushed under their feet.

  A blast of air blew Pedro’s sergeant cap off his head. A man flew by screaming and flailing his arms. He landed ten yards behind Pedro. More blasts of air carried down the hallway with screams of soldiers trying to get out of the way of this disaster.

  The clearing of men revealed two distinct figures in the charge, not a great squadron of Storms. It was just two men, a Storm, but still only two men. Soldiers dropped, seized with blood bursting from their nose and eyes. A strong storm…

  Those were two very large men.

  The one in front looked up, a bull but a second from annihilating a vaquero too confident, face twisted in rage and wrapped in a shockwave that traveled with him. Pedro didn’t think that was possible. His men jumped out of the way, crying for their comrades to move.

  More were crushed, eviscerated now, exploding into pieces at the touch of that white wall.

  “BRING! THEM! DOWN!”

  The Thunderhead’s wall disappeared, and the beast of a man jumped forward, feet aimed at Pedro’s chest.

  ***

  Juan didn’t like killing. Juan didn’t like killing either. It was messy and mean, but these people wanted to hurt Socorra. Juan didn’t want people to hurt her. Juan didn’t want people to hurt her either.

  This little man didn’t want to move. Juan would move him.

  ***

  Socorra cried tears of joy as the greatest monolith of a Storm she’d ever trained in her entire life trampled into the guards with a glorious wind.

  A lone man, too stunned to move, waited for them. He just watched as Juan jumped at him, turning in the air.

  Juan’s feet collided with the man’s waist. Socorra heard the spine snap and his head crack into Juan’s shin. A controlled burst of a shockwave from Juan’s feet split the man in two and sent the halves careening. They whistled through the air.

  Wet slaps echoed through the main square, and everyone stared at these new predators among them.

  A roaring of something man had forgotten in civilized life clawed from the twins’ mouths, a cry for revenge and for rage, a prayer from more brutal times.

  Socorra had never heard a more beautiful sound.

  ***

  The little men waited around Juan. He didn’t have time to wait. He started.

  A man screamed as he jerked forward, fist coming to the man’s head and stopping his crying, and the head shot to the floor pulling the body with it like a string had been tied to its neck and yanked it to the earth. Legs flung in the air like a scorpion’s tail.

  Juan kicked the body into a group of soldiers behind, added a shockwave, scattering them.

  The next punch passed through another head with a burst of bone. He swept his hands out, knocking soldiers to fly through the air and splatter on the walls of the square.

  And, like that, he was painting. The walls looked like El Mercado Rojo. Juan liked that market. He continued flinging his fists and ducking arrows. Soldiers split in front of him, thrown about by walls of white air like they weren’t even there.

  ***

  Other Juan, he liked Aquiles’ idea to call him that, reached at all the people he could touch around him. His fingers tingled. They dropped, arms and legs rigid and smoking. Arrows shot at him, but his lightning burned them from the air.

  He slid under the thrust of a sword and shoved his fingers into the muscle about the man’s stomach. He reached through the belly and into the man’s friend behind, burning through his skin and those muscles and his breakfast before the bolt reached his friend and cooked them too.

  Other Juan didn’t like killing, but he would protect Socorra.

  ***

  Josefa watched the crowd press in around the giants and felt a pang of worry. It was quickly sent away when a bubble of air blasted from the crowd’s center sending a squall of men in every direction. Bolts of lightning caught them all in the air, and burnt bones crumbled to dust when they met the floor.

  The brothers battered the crowd back, swinging their massive arms, punching out holes in the retreating soldiers' ranks. Men exploded at their onslaught, and they burned in flashing blue light. The surviving Children cheered as the last of the soldiers ran from sight.

  The army of two marched them out of the main square in a gory retreat.

  So few remained. They grouped up in the center. What was once a force of a couple hundred Children was down to a handful. Josefa was consoled a little by the Ministry’s losses. Socorra limped over with an arrow sticking from her leg.

  “Now you get a little taste of what I feel,” Josefa snorted.

  Socorra gave her a scowl and spat, “Puta.”

  Josefa clapped her on the back. They’d protected the Young Ones from a massacre at least. The brothers had saved them in the end. Josefa knew she could rely on them. The survivors all turned as a loud crack blasted from the Great Hall.

  “What was that?” Horacio whispered. Deep voices shouted and fought with something.

  Bolt Juan came backing out of the hallway, struggling with a bolt connecting him to a large man in a black robe. The Stranger held an arc as thick as his outstretched arm, twisting his hand as he took relentless steps towards Juan. In his other hand, he held Juan’s brother by the throat. The Thunderhead’s feet were clear off the ground, and he pounded and swatted at the grip on his neck. His feet kicked at the Stranger’s torso. The gray man didn’t register the hits.

  No soldiers followed their leader in, the Juans must have taken care of them only to find the Stranger had survived Arturo’s blast. He didn’t even look injured. His voice rang out across the square, “These are not your champions. These are children. Not strong enough to hold out against one man.” The Stranger sneered. “I will break this place. I will break all of you.”

  In response, Thunderhead Juan, kicking and trapped in the Stranger’s grip, shouted and swung a hand engulfed in shrieking white and cut the Stranger’s arm off.

  Screeching metal on metal left that mouth, and his assault on the Bolt cut. Juan rushed forward, arms burnt and cracking with fluid. He scooped a spear and drove it into the Stranger’s gut, running him through with the full shaft before hitting the gray man in the chest with his shoulder and carrying him into the wall.

  The spear drove straight into the stone.

  Thunderhead Juan was on his knees coughing, but he threw shockwave after shockwave to pin the Stranger to the spear as unreal hands tried to claw their way off. Red spit dribbled down that gray chin.

  A purple flash connected with the coughing Juan, and he fell to the ground, chest jerking.

  Bolt Juan shouted and pummeled the Stranger’s face with heavy blows imbued with arcs. The pinned man dissipated the energy even in this state. Not enough blood poured from his arm. Josefa started forward to help, trance broken by the violence.

  The Stranger connected another sustained onslaught to Bolt Juan now and took pained steps, pulling himself off the spear. Juan dissipated as much as he could, but his skin was smoldering now. The agony must have been immense. He was flung across the room as the arc of lightning flashed brighter. His head smacked against the stone of the wall. As he slid down the wall, a smear of blood traced his body’s path. His eyes were closed and calm.

  Thunderhead Juan roared to his feet and bounded towards the Stranger. A shockwave took out the gray man at his knees, and Juan leapt onto his chest. The Stranger’s face became a puddle of flesh under the shockwaves and punches that followed. Juan was yelling the whole time.

  Then, his back spasmed. Arched.

  He stopped his mauling and looked at his brother, eyes closed and leaning against the wall. Josefa watched, feet frozen, all of it happening too fast.

  Juan took a few steps towards his fallen brother then fell to the ground. The snapping of bones resounded in the chamber.

  The Stranger stood, a disgusting monster dipped in a vat of its own gore and guts, and his face was becoming remade.

  He trudged towards the great Thunderhead on the ground writhing in the grips of an invisible and cruel force, breaking his fingers and arms and pulverizing his insides. Juan didn’t scream.

  The Stranger lifted Juan to his feet. He nodded at the dying man in respect.

  “A mercy,” he said. His hands wrapped around Juan’s throat, he twisted, and a final snap of bone echoed about the pyramid.

  Josefa just watched the brother’s limp forms. The Stranger tossed Juan in his grip aside like a doll.

  The Stranger watched her and Socorra, “I only need you two.” His voice was mangled. He looked at the other survivors. “The rest of you may die.”

  The group of survivors dropped, choking on lightning cooking their flesh. Horacio grabbed the botanist and held onto her back to protect her for not. Josefa watched Emilia as her hair singed and curled, skin becoming darker and splitting under the load. Horacio fell with her, gone.

  They all stopped struggling at once and went still.

  “Better.”

  Socorra had her eyes closed, resigned to the loss. Josefa felt nothing. The satisfaction at killing the Ministry goons was washed away.

  ***

  Aquiles rode hard. He’d made it to the road without being seen. Arturo still sat unconscious in front of him. Aquiles didn’t know where to go.

  He hoped the Children had held up with that gray man blasted all to hell by his brother. He hoped all the Children were safe. He hoped Socorra was unharmed.

  He pulled on the reins and looked back towards the Monastery scraping the sky in the distance. From its peak, a thin pillar of smoke rose to the clouds. He sniffed and smelled the fruity and spicy aroma of jalapenos and habaneros burning.

  The chiles had been planted next to each other, an experiment to see what traits might be shared. He should have said yes. He was so mean to her in the end.

  Aquiles smelled them, and he became hopeless.