Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

LAYLA CASSIDY

The team reached the remains of a makeshift barricade that had been constructed in a small foyer halfway down the corridor of the third floor. Blood saturated the ground, but there were no bodies, no fighters, no enemies—nothing.

Tego walked beyond the remains of the barricade and let out a low growl. Layla flexed the fingers of her metal arm, which changed into a blade as Tego's growl became louder.

The floor beneath them was torn apart by a blast of magical air, collapsing a large part of the structure and sending Layla and her team through to the floor below with a crash. The human gang was on them almost immediately, attacking with clubs and blades, as the sounds of gunfire broke out. Layla reached out, dismantling anything that was even vaguely gun-like as the rest of her team engaged their attackers.

Layla was concentrating on tearing apart a number of firearms and forcing any bullets into the walls around them when a man and woman attacked her with clubs. She deflected one strike, stabbing the second human in the chest with her arm, before spinning back to the first human and cutting across his throat before he had time to readjust to what was happening. Chloe and Piper had been engaged by several attackers, with Chloe using her ability to absorb and redirect kinetic energy to blast one out of a window. Piper had hardened her skin to near-unbreakable levels and was deflecting blows of blades with her bare arms before using her considerable strength to hurt her opponents.

Layla continued on, parrying and dodging attacks from the multitude of humans, taking control of their guns to turn them on their wielders with ruthless efficiency, until bodies littered the floor in her wake.

Sir Lamorak stood at the end of the corridor, the same smug expression on his face that he'd worn outside. Wave after wave of his followers pushed past him, forcing those fighting them to retreat before overcoming them and moving forward again.

"He doesn't care if his supporters die," Chloe said. She had a nasty cut above her eye that had soaked the side of her face in blood.

"He has enough to spare," Piper said, rolling her shoulders.

"I think they've finally figured out that bringing guns to this fight isn't going to work for them," Layla said. She'd been hit several times—once in the ribs, hard enough for them to break. Her power ensured that they were fixing themselves, but they'd be sore for a while, and she would certainly feel it in the morning. If they survived until then.

Layla placed a hand on Tego's head, the feline's fur matted with the blood of their enemies. The four of them had held off the mass of attackers so far, but they had all taken hits, and they couldn't do this all night.

Sir Lamorak took a step forward. "Having fun?" he asked.

"Sure," Chloe said. "You?"

He threw knives of fire at them. Layla blocked several of them with a metal shield, while Piper and Chloe dived into a nearby apartment to escape. Tego let out a whine as one of the blades hit her in the flank, and Layla dropped her shield and threw herself toward her, recreating the shield to cover them both, but not in time to avoid one of the blades cutting her across her hip. Layla stifled a cry of pain and, placing her hand against the shield of metal, caused it to explode, raining thousands of tiny bits of shrapnel down the hallway toward Sir Lamorak and his people.

Layla checked Tego's cut. It was deep, but the fire had cauterized the wound almost immediately.

"All that armor, and he hits you in the joints," Layla said, stroking Tego's face. "Go check on Chloe and Piper; I'll deal with Sir Lamorak."

Tego licked Layla's face and limped away. She would be okay; she healed quickly. But Layla was now beyond furious.

She sprinted down the hallway toward Sir Lamorak, who laughed as he threw more and more blades of fire and air at her. Layla turned her arm into a shield, and while each one that hit hurt, the anger she felt inside spurred her on. Reaching Sir Lamorak, she collided with him, lifted him off the ground, and pounded him back on the floor with a vengeance.

Sir Lamorak grabbed Layla's metal arm and unleashed lightning into it, the current traveling through her body. The pain was all-encompassing as she collapsed to her knees. Sir Lamorak stood up as Layla blinked and tried to remember how to make her body work.

He grabbed her by the throat, lifting her from the ground. "This will hurt," he told her and threw her out of the window.

Layla hit the ground from two floors up, her body still paralyzed from the lightning shock. Thankfully, she hit soft earth, and her body rolled with the impact, but even so, the air was knocked out of her.

Grabbing hold of a wooden bench, she used it to help pull herself back to her feet. Layla looked over at the mass of rioters standing on the sidewalk between her and the empath.

"Judgement," Layla said, tapping her comm unit, only to discover it was dead. "Shit." She took it out and tossed it away.

Another blast of lightning from above hit Layla in the back, and she was thrown forward over the bench. She could do nothing but watch as Sir Lamorak landed on the ground and calmly walked over to her.

Layla tried to take control of Sir Lamorak's armor, but nothing happened.

"I read about you," Sir Lamorak said with a sneer as he banged his fist against his armor. "Layla Cassidy, who killed a dragon, who slaughtered trolls, blood elves, and giants. Who defeated the Valkyries. And now you crawl at my feet like the pathetic, feeble creature you are." He looked down at her. "The runes on my armor stop your power from taking control of it. Your friends will die, you will die, and everything you care about will be wiped from the surface of this puny world."

Layla snarled, kicking her foot into his groin, putting all her anger and hatred of him into it. Sir Lamorak gasped and staggered back, giving Layla time to get to her feet. She tried to shift her metal arm into a blade, but the pain was overwhelming. The lightning magic had done something to disrupt her ability to morph her arm, and until the effects lessened, it was no longer an option available to her.

Sir Lamorak threw more lightning at Layla, but she had already moved. She kicked him in the head, grabbing hold of his wrist as he tried to push her away. She narrowly avoided being hit with more magic as she aimed his hand back toward the crowd of his followers charging toward them, and the magic tore into them like they were made of paper. Bodies hit the ground; others were screaming as they were engulfed by flames.

Layla tried to break Sir Lamorak's arm, but he rolled over, lifting her off the ground with brute strength, and threw her across the pathway.

She reached out with her power to take control of the tiny pieces of metal inside Sir Lamorak, and for a moment he froze in place, before he gave a smug grin. Purple glyphs lit up over Sir Lamorak's arms and hands, and he took a step forward.

Layla's eyes opened wide in shock.

"Surprise ...," Sir Lamorak said gleefully. "Matter magic. It's different for every sorcerer, but for me ... well, it means your power has no effect on me."

"It also means you can't use your elemental magic," Layla said.

"There is give-and-take with every power," Sir Lamorak said. "I do not need my elemental power to kill you. I'll be happy to beat you to death."

He raised his fists in a boxer's stance and moved toward Layla, who spat blood onto the ground and raised her own hands, her metal one making a satisfying click as it formed a fist.

Layla noticed Sir Lamorak's continued smug expression. She was pretty sure he had some sort of trick up his sleeve.

Gunfire broke out from the top floor of the building, and Layla forced herself to not look.

"My people are murdering everyone here," he said. "Any survivors will learn to bow to Avalon, as you all will."

"Are we fighting or chatting?" Layla asked.

Sir Lamorak snapped forward with a jab, which Layla easily deflected. She dodged his powerful cross as she stepped around him and smashed her metal fist into his exposed ribs. The fingers of her hand fell to the grass at her feet, and a second later her entire arm was falling apart. She stared at it for a second too long and received a kick to her chest that sent her crashing over a nearby piece of fencing and landing in a small flower bed.

"Were you not listening?" Sir Lamorak asked with a chuckle.

Layla used her good arm to push herself back up to her feet as one of the windows on the top floor of the building behind her exploded, raining glass and pieces of burning paper around the courtyard behind her.

"Your friends are losing," Sir Lamorak said.

Layla put herself in a fighting stance and used the fingers of her good hand to motion for Sir Lamorak to come fight. Something he did happily.

Sir Lamorak was powerful, but he wasn't particularly fast or technical. One more kick to her chest, though, and she was sent sprawling once again.

The humans around them were panicking and fell away from the wall they'd made, revealing Judgement standing over the body of the empath, a bloody sword in her hand. She nodded to Layla, dropped the sword on the corpse, and sprinted toward Sir Lamorak as many of the Avalon supporters felt every emotion that had been suppressed by the empath come flooding back at once. They either collapsed sobbing or fled into the city.

The look of fury on Sir Lamorak's face was easy to see, and he ran toward Judgement. That was a mistake.

Judgement dodged a punch and drove a blade of light into his chest, then moved past him, tearing the blade out as she did. The armor he'd been so proud of provided no protection against someone as powerful as Judgement. She drove another dagger into his back, twisted it, and detonated the magic inside him as he spun to face her.

Sir Lamorak was slow now, barely able to keep up with the number of times the twin blades of light pierced his body, each one leaving his shining armor drenched with more and more of his own blood. He dropped down to one knee as Layla pulled herself back to her feet. She wasn't about to get involved; Sir Lamorak had brought this on himself.

"Damn it," Layla said to herself, cursing the thought as it passed into her head. "What if he knows something important?" she shouted to Judgement.

Judgement drove a blade of light into Sir Lamorak's head and detonated the magic inside his skull. "He doesn't," she said casually as Sir Lamorak's body dropped to the ground. "He was always just a thug with delusions of grandeur."

Layla dropped back to the ground, exhausted.

"You did well against him," Judgement said, placing a hand on Layla's shoulder. "Sorry I missed the rest of the fight. He was a tough bastard."

The rest of the fighting inside the building was brief as Judgement led her cavalry inside to exterminate anyone stupid enough to get in her way. Judgement scared a lot of people, but Layla had always found her to be pleasant, if odd. A side effect of living through hundreds and hundreds of years of fighting and killing, she imagined.

"How many did we lose?" Layla asked Piper, who looked singed and was covered in blood.

"Forty-six human civilians," she said as they walked the hallway of the top floor, heading up to the roof, where the rest of Layla's team waited. "The APC driver and six cops too."

Tego lay on the ground, basking as the dawn broke over the sky.

Layla bent down to scratch the large feline and checked her wound at the same time. "You're okay," she said softly as Tego purred.

"Avalon forces have moved further across the city," Piper said. "I think we may actually be able to call this a win. Not a particularly good win, but I'll take what I can get at the moment."

Tarron sat cross-legged, further away from everyone else. His eyes were closed, and he breathed methodically in and out.

Layla walked over and stood behind him. "Thank you," she said.

"I can't have you die," Tarron said with a slight chuckle, although he didn't look back over at her. "We have a lot more fights to win before we're done. A lot more lives to take."

"Hopefully once we're done, we won't need to do that anymore."

Tarron looked back at Layla. "And that would be a world I'd like to live in."

"May I?" Layla asked, motioning to the spot beside Tarron.

Tarron nodded. "Of course."

"Today was a bad day," Layla said. "You helped make it better. You might not like war—and honestly, I'd be really concerned about someone who said they did—but we saved lives. A lot of lives."

"I know," Tarron said. "Taking lives to save lives is an odd way to live, but so long as it tallies in the right column, I can deal with it."

Piper stood by Layla, her ear mic in hand. "For you," she said.

Layla took the mic and put it in her ear. "Layla," Jinayca said, her voice excited and concerned all at once.

"I'm okay," Layla said. "We're all okay. Judgement sort of pissed everyone off, killed them all, and I think we sort of won."

"The KOA are folding all over the city. You're needed back here; we got Gawain."

Layla looked up at Piper. "We got Gawain?" she repeated. "Any casualties?"

"Not on our side," she said. "But there are a lot of people yelling about how the White House is no longer in one piece."

Layla paused. "They broke the White House?"

"Sure, let's say broke," Jinayca said. "Just get back here. I think this is just the start, Layla."

"We're on our way," Layla said, passing Piper her mic back. "Get ready, everyone—we're not done yet."

"Who gets to tell Judgement?" Chloe asked.

"Not it," Tarron said, raising his hand.

Tego raised a paw in the air.

"We'll finish up here and head back together," Layla said, shaking her head in amusement. "Sounds like the shit is about to hit the fan. Again."