Page 28 of Aria's Ascension

From the corner of her eye, she saw his earrings glowing brightly, his hair whipping behind him almost as if of its own accord, and the spikes on his arms, legs, and back were fully extended. He dodged the sonic blasts being aimed at him as though he knew where they were going to be a second before the guards fired.

Switching her gaze and her gun back to the left, Aria provided cover fire for Kix since he didn’t have magic bug rocks to warn him.

Thirty secondsthat felt like thirty minutes later, a quarter of the guards were dead and half were badly wounded, but the remainder were successfully holding off Tirox and Kix from reaching the door from which they’d emerged and the, hopefully, dead body of Zhrovni.

They were well trained, but even from twenty feet away she could see the panic beginning to spread among them as their team members began falling one after another.

They were beginning to consider the merits of fleeing.

Hoping to push them over that edge, Aria yelled out, “Surrender now, and you won’t be harmed. You’ll be free to leave! We only want Zhrovni!”

She’d barely finished when one of the biggest guards snarled and fired at her. Aria was mid-dive to avoid having her head blasted off when movement in the middle of the line caught her eye. Rolling back to her feet, she zeroed in on the pile of bodies. One of them shifted oddly, almost bonelessly, before a green hand shot upward.

Fuck! He’s alive.

“Help me… ”

The weak croak reached her ears and caught the attention of the nearest guards. Four of them broke off from fighting with her men and whipped around, running to where Zhrovni was buried under the mound of bodies.

Launching herself forward, Aria kept up her steady firing to either side to aid her men, using her peripheral vision to aim, but the majority of her attention was locked on that reaching hand. She had to get to him before they could dig him out and retreat back the way they’d come.

Unfortunately, she was too focused and didn’t see the big guard taking aim at her until it was almost too late.

Her little passenger sent a zing through her head, so sharp she staggered and the hairs on her arms stood on end. Her stumble saved her from being shot square in the chest, but she didn’t miss it entirely. The outer ripple of the sound wave caught her on the arm and sent her spinning.

She hit the ground with a grunt and cracked her head hard enough to make her ears ring and split the skin of her brow. The gun went flying out of her hand as blood immediately streamed into her left eye, blinding her.

“Aria!”

“I’m fine! Stop them!”

She tried to shove off the ground before she’d even finished yelling, but her right arm collapsed under her. It was numb and tingling from shoulder to fingertips from the blast.

Snarling, she pushed up with her left and lunged for the gun laying a few feet away. She had shit for aim with her left hand, but it would have to do. She only needed to not hit her men and aim for the converging pack of guards in the middle.

Squeezing her left eye shut, she fired as she ran. She clipped one in the neck and took down a second with a clean headshot, but it wasn’t enough. The remaining two dragged a bleeding, maimed Zhrovni out and lunged for the door, one holding their overlord so he could type in the code while the other returned her fire. Glancing at her guys, she saw they weren’t going to break away from their fights in time.

Aria fired twice more then dropped the gun and reached down for a throwing star. The doors opened, revealing another elevator. The guards carrying Zhrovni darted inside. Ten feet away, now. The doors began sliding closed. Double-clicking the indentation, she threw the star. Heart in her throat, she held her breath.

“No!” Kix yelled.

Jerking her head towards him, she saw his hand outstretched as though he could stop the star mid-air from twenty feet away. Not understanding the dismay she felt from him, she looked back just in time to see it fly between the doors a split second before they sealed shut.

She felt the vibration of the explosion through the floor from ten feet away, but the doors didn’t blow outward or reopen as she’d hoped.

And that was when she realized…

“The code.”

The five remaining guards trapped in the cave with them seemed to realize what just happened the same moment she did. Two of the three fighting Tirox tried to break off and run away, but he shot them before they’d gone five feet. The last, stunned to stillness for a split second that his comrades tried to abandon him, died quickly under Tirox’s ax.

A sonic boom followed by a pained grunt knocked her out of her stupor. She spun around in time to see Kix fly backward.

“NO!”

Denial speared through her as she watched him hit the ground and go horribly, heart-stoppingly still.

Aria whirled around and ran for the gun she’d dropped. In one movement, she snatched it up, spun around, and fired at the guard who’d just shot her mate. A hole big enough to fit her fist appeared in the middle of his chest, but she didn’t wait for him to realize he was dead. Her gaze locked on Kix’s still form.

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