Confluence (Godbreaker Book 3) Read online

“That’s not helping.”

  “Did you…” indignation. “Did you take my shield?”

  Perry was saved from having to admit to this violation by the sound of the rear door of the clinic slamming open, and the shouts of the mob becoming crystal clear. He reached the edge of an alley that Stuber had just ducked into and spun, summoned a bolt of energy from his longstaff and sent it careening into the already-destroyed building nearest the clinic.

  He caught the flash of a few shocked faces before they were obscured by a gout of brown dust and smoke.

  He wasn’t sure why he didn’t kill them. Maybe it just didn’t feel right. He was trying to get people to work together, he couldn’t just go around slaughtering them. Even if they were being assholes.

  He turned and sprinted down the alley after Stuber, Mala still on his heels.

  “I need my shield, Perry!” she kept on. “If you don’t give it to me I’m going to—”

  Perry activated his own shield in a narrow dome around him—just big enough to enclose him and protect him from Mala’s wrath. He shot her a look over his shoulder. She was incensed.

  “You’ll do what?” Perry snapped at her. “Fucking nothing! Now shut up and run!”

  He needed her to downgrade her anger level before he trusted her with Confluence again. If she had her longstaff and shield and decided to get squirrelly on them again, they wouldn’t be able to stop her.

  “Okay,” Mala tried, her voice an angry husk. “It’s fine. I’m fine. I don’t need my longstaff. Or my shield. You keep it. For now.”

  “Sounds great. Glad you’re on board.”

  Stuber reached the mouth of the alley where it ended in the main drag that ran through the Old Section. He pulled up short, Petra and Teran stumbling into the back of him. He peeked out to the right, then jumped back in.

  “They’re down there,” he said as Perry and Mala reached them. “Gods, what is wrong with people?”

  “They’re angry and confused,” Petra replied in a compassionate tone.

  Stuber squeezed his eyes shut. “My love…just…now’s not the time.”

  Perry nudged Stuber’s shoulder. “We gotta go. Can’t stay here.”

  “Right.” Stuber looked suspiciously at Mala. “You able to run all the way to the New Section?”

  Mala, despite her ire, was not in good shape. Whatever Petra had rammed into her system had made her go off like a firework, but that didn’t change the fact that she was still very low on blood. Her skin looked colorless, her eyes sunken and hollow. She was stooped slightly, favoring her stomach wound, and couldn’t seem to catch her breath.

  Still, she nodded. “Yeah, I can run. But I have no idea where the New Section is or how far.”

  “Maybe two miles,” Stuber said. “And the second we peek out of this alley, they’re gonna come running.”

  “I can make it two miles,” Mala said, though she didn’t sound very confident. “But why don’t we just blow them up? They are trying to kill us, right?”

  Stuber shrugged. “Perry’s trying to be a peacemaker or something. I dunno. Ask him about it.” Stuber turned to the alley, took another peek out. “Alright. Stay on my ass.”

  They ran.

  Halfway into the street, Perry heard the shouts from his right and hazarded a glance. The mob was far more than what Derrick had stated. It swamped the entire street, only a few hundred yards from them. Easily three hundred people, possibly more that Perry couldn’t even see.

  Word travelled fast. And people were at their most savage and dangerous.

  Eyes back forward.

  A glimpse of the Temple’s time wheel between buildings. It seemed too far.

  Through alleys and along narrow streets, cluttered with rubble and a few people that hadn’t got the word yet that there was a riot going on. They watched dumbly as the group fled past them, staring at Mala in shock.

  Stuber hit a corner and didn’t break stride as he popped his rifle up and snapped off a flurry of rounds. Perry cleared the corner just in time to see two people spilling to the ground. A third, behind them, hurled fist-sized rock.

  Without thinking, Perry swung his longstaff, the blade immediately energizing and turning the stone to dust and molten splatter. He felt bad for the two unlucky bastards that had caught Stuber’s bullets, but he felt pretty good about his longstaff work.

  “Try not to kill anybody else!” Perry gasped out.

  “I only shot them in the legs,” Stuber shouted back.

  That was pretty much a death sentence anyways, seeing as how the only doctor in town was currently running away with them. Perry chose not to press the issue. They could only be so nice when people were trying to kill them.

  “Perry,” Mala said, her voice high and weak. She caught his arm as they ran.

  He glanced at her, shocked by how much worse she looked from only a minute ago.

  She held out her hand. “I can’t run. I need my shield. I need to fly.”

  “Can you do that and stay with us?”

  “I can’t run and stay with you.”

  Swearing, Perry slowed his steps just enough to dive into his pocket. His fingers touched his own clasp, then the chain and pendant he’d taken from Mala. He pulled them out, hesitated only a moment, but if there was any murder left in Mala, he couldn’t see it. She was just trying to survive at this point.

  He shoved the pendant into her hands.

  The second his hand cleared her proximity, her shield blinked into existence around her. She dipped low, then thrust herself off the ground. Her jump wasn’t as strong as he’d seen her do in the past, but as she descended to the ground, the shield pulsed, and she bounced back up into the air.

  It completely lacked the majesty of her usual shielded flight. She looked less like a graceful god flying, and more like a human ball, bouncing down the street. But she kept pace with them.

  As Perry started to lose his breath, he again wished he could fly like Mala.

  Street to street. Corner to corner. Sometimes zig-zagging, sometimes plunging straight on. Mala pulsed herself over the remains of the buildings and when she came back down, she let her boots hit the ground and run alongside Perry for a moment.

  “Stuber!” she called out. “They’re trying to flank and cut you off!”

  “We’re almost to the New Section!” Stuber called back, then edged out of the next corner and caught a rock to the shoulder. His face became savage and he pumped out three rounds that Perry had no doubt were meant for more than wounding. “Bastards,” Stuber noted, then crossed the street, keeping Petra close to him.

  “If you give me my longstaff I can hold them off,” Mala urged.

  Perry shook his head as he dodged a hurled brick and slipped into cover on the far side of the street. “If I wanted to blow them up, I could do it myself.”

  Mala launched herself into the air again, clearly irritated.

  Maybe Perry was trying too hard. Maybe this was just how the world was going to go—maybe it was going to eat itself alive and extinction was inevitable.

  Amazing how you add a little breathlessness and some lactic acid, and all the sudden all those high ideals you had before start to sound dumb.

  “Straight ahead!” Stuber called out.

  Perry jerked his attention forward, where the tumbledown mudbrick of the Old Section gave way to the concrete of the New. The path ahead of them widened, and there, just a few hundred yards away, stood a rank of legionnaires.

  Had they crossed that distance already?

  A glance at the temple’s time wheel showed that they still had a ways to go. This was likely just a perimeter patrol, rather than the full ranks that had encircled the temple.

  The legionnaires saw them coming and closed ranks, their massive shields standing like a wall, their eyes peering sternly over. Rifles protruded, and Stuber slowed, still a good distance away from them.

  “By order of Legatus Mordicus,” one of the legionnaires called out in a deep, gruff voice. “Ho
stile persons are not permitted to enter the New Section of Karapalida.”

  Stuber continued forward at a cautious jog. Mala descended back to the group as they jumbled up behind Stuber, and Perry caught the looks of the legionnaires—confusion at the sight of her, along with a good dose of aggression.

  “It’s Legatus Mordicus we’ve come to speak to!” Stuber yelled.

  “Stop or you will be fired on,” the legionnaire bellowed back.

  The sound of hundreds of feet and voices clattered behind Perry. He jerked around and saw the mob swarming into the street, not far behind them. More rocks were hurled, but they were too far away to reach.

  Stuber had stopped. “Perry, might could use your shield here.”

  Perry sidled around him and activated his shield in a broad square that covered all of them, then began advancing forward.

  The legionnaires didn’t hesitate, or wait for an order. They immediately opened fire, raking the surface of Perry’s shield with impacts that sizzled and sparked. There were five legionnaires, all firing on automatic.

  Perry continued to press forward, his friends hunched behind him, staying on his heels. He kept moving, kept putting one foot in front of the other, while his shield steadily weakened under the onslaught, and the crowd behind them got closer and closer.

  “Mala!” Perry called out over the deluge of gunfire. “Shield our backs from the crowd!”

  He kept his focus forward and hoped that she’d heard him.

  The rolling gunfire stopped abruptly. Perry heard the call of “Reloading!” coming from several legionnaires. He took that opportunity to stop and yell, as loud as he could manage.

  “Cease fire!” He really had no idea if they would listen to him, but it was worth a shot. “I need to speak to Legatus Mordicus!”

  The line of five legionnaires readied again, their rifles reloaded, but the one in the center pulled back and waved a hand in front of his face. “Hold fire! Hold fire!”

  Perhaps he’d figured it was pointless to waste their precious ammunition. Which was really great for Perry, considering he was doubtful his shield would withstand a second barrage, and certainly not a third. Not something he needed to let them know, however.

  He took that moment to look behind him.

  Mala stood at their backs, her shield extended in a mirror of Perry’s covering the group from the crowd. A few objects were thrown and fizzled harmlessly into sparks and dust. The riotous mob continued to encroach, but the hurling of things stopped.

  Back forward again. “Legionnaire!” Perry yelled. “We just came from Legatus Mordicus! He saw us at the temple, and we made an arrangement with him! I’m here to see that arrangement through. Are you going to stop me?”

  At this point, there was perhaps fifty yards between them, and it was difficult to make yourself heard with the rabble screeching and shouting behind them. But the legionnaire in charge was accustomed to giving orders in the heat of battle. His voice came through clear enough.

  “Who the hell are all those people behind you? And is that a demigod?”

  “Uh, well…” Perry blinked sweat out of his eyes. There wasn’t much sense in lying at this point. “Yes, that’s a demigod, and that’s kind of why the people behind us are so pissed.”

  The legionnaire glared at him. “And are you a demigod too?”

  “No, just a half-breed runt.” Perry shook his head, stepping closer, getting angrier. “Look, I’m really trying not to kill you or the people behind me, but you’re not leaving me a lot of options!”

  Hesitation. A brief conference between the legionnaire and one of his comrades, huddled behind their shields for a moment. Then the legionnaire poked his head back up.

  “Are you the fuck that cut Boomer’s arms off?”

  Perry shifted uncomfortably. “He was trying to kill me! What was I supposed to do? I told him not to fuck with me!”

  The legionnaire smiled broadly. “Good for you, Runt. I never liked Boomer anyways. Come on.”

  Perry was so surprised, he just stood there for a moment.

  Stuber nudged him in the back. “I believe that’s an invitation.”

  Perry shook his head again, pushing forward. “You legionnaires are weird.”

  As they began to move again, the brief stalemate from the crowd shattered, and they began to swarm behind, hurling things at Mala again, trying to arc them over her shield, though she adjusted and caught them—child’s play for her.

  Perry stopped again when his shield was just a pace or so from the muzzle of the legionnaire’s rifles. The one that appeared to be in command of the squad—a decanus, right? Wasn’t that what Stuber said they were called?—stood up fully behind the wall of metal shields.

  “Alright, Runt. I didn’t like Boomer, but he was a legionnaire, so don’t think for a godsdamned second that we’re friends here.”

  Perry rolled his eyes. “Of course not.”

  “That said, I’m gonna let you through.”

  “What about the mob?”

  The decanus frowned at them, then gave Perry a look like he was being an idiot. “What about the mob? This is a squad of fully armed and armored legionnaires. If we can’t withstand a few hundred civilians with bricks, then we deserve to die.”

  “Are you going to shoot them?”

  “Maybe. I hadn’t decided yet. What do you care anyways? Looks like they want you dead.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m just trying to keep this shit show from devolving any further.”

  The decanus shrugged. “That’s up to them and Legatus Mordicus. Do you want through or not?”

  Perry grit his teeth. All those idiot peons behind them—would they be smart enough not to press their luck with the legionnaires? “Yes, we want through.”

  “Then extinguish your shield on my mark and scamper your ass in here. Legionnaires, make a hole on my mark. Mark!”

  The legionnaires in front of Perry immediately split in half, creating a narrow doorway to squeeze through their shield. Perry pulled himself back from his clasp, his own shield winking out, and slipped through.

  As Stuber, Petra, and Teran came through the hole, Perry shouted to Mala, “We’re through! Pull your shield down and run!”

  Mala turned, saw that they’d gone through a gap in the shields, and ran for it. At the very last second, she extinguished her energy shield and slipped through, gasping for air.

  The squad of legionnaires immediately closed ranks with a reverberating slam of shields.

  The decanus cast one wary look at Mala, then turned to the mob.

  “Legatus Mordicus wishes to deal with these people himself! I suggest you turn your asses right back around before I turn you all into a meat carpet.”

  Perry craned his neck to see over the top of the shields, but Mala grabbed him by the arm and forced him around, pushing him onward. Stuber, Petra, and Teran were already picking up the pace again, heading into the New Section.

  The shouting from the mob didn’t stop, but Perry was heartened that the sound of gunfire never reached him. Maybe humanity could save themselves after all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DESPERATE MEASURES

  Lucky was in shock. His face had that half-conscious expression that told Perry that most of his brain power was being used on untangling everything he’d just witness. It struck Perry that, not so long ago, he would have had a similar reaction.

  Perry wasn’t sure how long this guy was going to be sticking around, but he figured it behooved him to try and get Lucky’s feet back on the ground. They were moving through the New Section, approaching the Temple from the rear—so as to avoid the bloodthirsty crowd clustered around the temple square. Perry didn’t hear the calls from the crowd, so perhaps they’d already killed all the flamens and gone their merry ways.

  He touched Lucky’s shoulder, causing the man to jump. Teran caught the movement and glanced at Perry, curious.

  “You alright, Lucky?” Perry asked.

  Lucky stared at him
for a few strides. Seemed to realize that he was slack-jawed, and snapped his mouth shut. “There’s a lot to take in.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  Lucky turned to Teran. “And you’re okay with all of this?”

  Teran frowned. “All of what?”

  “Working with paladins. Working with legionnaires.” Lucky looked put off by it. “That’s not the Teran I knew.”

  Teran’s expression flattened out. “The Teran you knew has learned a lot and been forced to change her worldview.”

  “The Teran I knew would’ve never abandoned her people.”

  Perry winced, knowing that Lucky had stumbled upon the exact words that guaranteed an explosive response. Which Lucky received in the form of a stiff blow to the chest.

  Lucky rocked back on his heels, coming to a stop. Teran thrust a finger in his face, all fury and hurt feelings. “Don’t think that just because you’ve got a burn on your face, I won’t beat the fuck out of you, Lucky! Everything I’ve done I’ve done for my people!”

  Lucky rubbed his sternum, looking betrayed. “Then where are we going right now?”

  The others had stopped and were looking at them, Stuber in particular seeming more annoyed than the two women beside him.

  “We’re going to see Legatus Mordicus,” Teran snapped. “So that we don’t get torn apart by rioters.”

  “No.” Lucky shook his head and pointed at Mala. “So that she doesn’t get torn apart. This had nothing to do with you.”

  “It has everything to do with me. And the Outsiders.”

  Lucky’s expression softened. Became pleading. “Then come back with me, Teran. Tell them everything you’ve learned. If things are the way you claim they are, then come back and explain it to us.”

  “Should we wait?” Stuber called out, his voice curt. “How long is this going to take?”

  Teran held Lucky’s gaze for another moment, then whirled away from him. “We’re done. Come on.”

  For a moment, Perry thought Lucky might just leave them right then and there. But he grumbled something under his breath and tagged along.

  Perry glowered at the back of his head as he took up the rear. Here he’d spent all this time trying to get Teran to focus on the big picture—you know, survival of the human race—and along comes Lucky, that asshole, to begin casting doubts into her mind again.