Chapter 34

Conrad

It was almost sunset. Conrad stood ahead of all the other fighters at the vanguard, staring at the line of Kandoran in the distance. They looked like little bugs that he could squash from here. Too bad they got bigger and meaner when they got closer, but it would have been boring if they were too easy to kill.

He loved being a slayer now with the extra strength, speed, and faster healing. It gave his life a higher purpose and a chance to protect people. Also, his girl loved watching him fight since it got her hot for him. Even better, they could battle together, though he knew it was a risk. He tried once to talk her into staying in the rear, but she punched him in the jaw and ended that conversation. She wasn’t some delicate butterfly, she’d said. Yeah, he got that message, alright.

Rosalie stood to his left with her whip, shifting from foot to foot. She got impatient, the same as him. Conrad had tried to talk her into eating dragon hearts so she could become a slayer, but she only took one bite, threw up, and refused to do it again.

She was a butterfly about that.

On the other side of her, Rio gripped his sword. He was a big bastard with muscles on top of muscles who could punch a dragon so hard it would crack their skull. Conrad might have been jealous, but the man’s sword skills had no finesse and mostly involved hacking at them.

He’d been partnered with them since Rosalie wasn’t a true slayer, so she didn’t count for the official lineup. It didn’t matter if she was brave and kickass. She didn’t take it personally, and Conrad appreciated someone to help keep his girl safe.

Bailey’s former captain had a good sense of how to pair people based on their skills, and not surprisingly, Rio fit with them. He’d watched their backs, saving them a few times, and they’d done the same for him. The three of them together were like a killing machine on the battlefield, and they hardly even got hurt. If there was a competition between slayer teams and they counted all their dead enemies, he was sure theirs would win.

It was too bad fighting was exhausting and costing them good people, or he’d be happy to keep the war going forever. Conrad loved the thrill. Of course, he mouthed off at the Kandoran as often as possible, but even the humans weren’t much for responding. That was alright. He could talk enough for all of them.

“Get ready, baby,” he said, glancing at his girl. “They’re comin’.”

She gave him a seductive smile. “You know I’m ready—all the time.”

It was too bad that hundreds of people and dragons werebehind them, or he’d have taken her right there. They could have had a quickie before the Kandoran reached them. Ah well, he had to behave himself.

“You two are nuts,” Rio said, shaking his head. “I got a girl who is a supply sergeant in the rear bunker, or I might be jealous. We’re the same as you two after dawn every day, though.”

Technically, they were on their fourth evening of battle, so it wasn’t like an actual pattern had been formed yet, but it probably would go that way for anyone with a partner. Fighting and danger got the adrenaline up. There was one really good way to get it back down, and Conrad didn’t mind that method at all. One more reason to enjoy battles—the reward at the end.

Artillery started firing rounds down range, startling him. They’d been busy talking, and he’d missed them calling the commands. He watched the ground light up with explosions in the distance. Next, he saw a few dragons go down as the patriot missiles struck.

The coalition only fired for two minutes before stopping, and he sighed. It was gonna be another tough night for them, with the enemy barely touched in the opening. They rotated where they dropped cluster bombs, and today wasn’t their turn.

As the dragons got close enough to see their features, the sorcerers started hitting them, machine guns lit them up, and poison arrows flew. A few dozen more Kandoran went down from that before they stopped. Then, the shifters surged forward in the air to take their turn, Titan and Eliam taking the lead. The pair worked in sync even better than Conrad and his team, killing and maiming like they were born to it. Despite that urge in the back of his mind that whispered he should attack them, he liked them. They were cool.

Conrad spotted fallen dragons just a few hundred feet away and dashed for them. Rosalie and Rio quickly followed behind. The Kandoran he targeted had an arrow sticking out of its neck, which was the perfect place to hit, so the poison flowed through the body quickly.

It weakly raised its head, revealing a hint of green flames in its throat. Shit! He wasn’t immune to that kind. They’d only run into one other one who could blow the deadly flames since the war started and barely dodged in time.

“Green fire, green fire!” Conrad screamed. Everyone knew to stay the fuck away from that shit because it burned anything, including slayers and armor.

He kept himself at an angle from the beast’s mouth as he scooped up as much dirt as possible. The dragon breathed out a small ball of flames, almost reaching him but not quite. Probably, the poison wasstill weakening the big bastard. He leaped forward and threw the dirt into the beast’s mouth, getting a kick out of watching it huff and choke. His sword was buried in the Kandoran’s heart before it cleared its lungs.

“Take that, mother fucker,” he said, pulling out his sword.

The dragon slumped, and the life drained from its eyes.

Conrad looked over to find his girl and the slayerfinishing the other beast. He searched for more on the ground to kill, but then he caught sight of heavy fog slowly rolling toward them. That wasn’t normal—not even a little. It took him a second of staring at it before it clicked. Fuck, that was some bad shit.

“Gas,” he yelled, dashing to grab Rosalie. “You need a mask now!”

They ran back, screaming at the soldiers farther behind them, warning them. He didn’t slow down for a second as he kept his hand on his girl and dragged her toward the bunker. They had the masks stored in a carved-out cavern underneath where the tunnel started since they weren’t needed often like other things. Reaching them and getting them on people’s faces would take precious minutes. Slayers and shifters could go without, but all the humans had to have them.

As soon as they entered the front room of the bunker, he urged Rosalie toward the back supply room where the opening to the tunnel lay. “Get your mask on and start bringing up more for the others. I gotta make a call.”

“Okay,” she said, dashing away.

Conrad found the female medic in charge, a soldier he didn’t know from the coalition, tending a wounded man. He had a bloody head wound and a gash in his chest. Since it was still early, he was the only patient.

“Where’s the radio?” he asked urgently.

“There.”

He followed to where she pointed at a side shelf in the corner. Conrad grabbed it, barking a warning to every position close enough to receive the signal. They’d relay it down the line. As he spoke, the medic’s eyes widened.

Conrad set the radio down once he was finished. “That’s right. You need to get a mask on now, and every other human here does, too. That guy’s injuries won’t mean shit if that gas hits him.”

“Here’s some,” Rosalie said with a muffled voice as she entered the room with her arms full. She’d put on her mask and carried half a dozen more in her arms.

He hurried over to her. “Hand those out. I’ll go down and get more. We need to start a chain so we can get them to folks outside.”

She nodded.

Conrad raced through the supply room, finding the guys in there already moving mask bags from the tunnel and piling them into the room. He grabbed as many as he could and dashed from the bunker. Finding the nearest soldiers, he handed them over and told them to form a line. Word had spread of the incoming fog. A glance at the dark horizon revealed it had come closer and was maybe a few hundred meters away. They were almost out of time.

It only took seconds for the trained soldiers to don their masks. They worked with Conrad to start handing them out, and as each person got theirs on, they joined the line or helped others who struggled with theirs. When the fog was only a hundred feet away, they’d equipped everyone within sight, plus those who’d run up to them from more distant points.

He could only hope there weren’t more out there who’d missed the warning calls. A sickly feeling spread over him when the fog touched his skin. He held his breath for a moment, worried their intel was bad, and slayers could get infected. Then he saw Rio standing ahead of him with his sword upraised.

“The Kandoran humans are coming,” he yelled.

Well, he seemed sound of mind, and he’d breathed it in for sure.

“Incoming!” a coalition sergeant called.

They ran into the fog, only able to see maybe ten feet in front of them, and faced the incoming human horde. This was gonna be a shitty night. He’d changed his mind and hoped the three sorcerers would come to them soon so they could end this bullshit and get things back to normal. Poison gas was going a step too far, cheatin’ bastards.