Page 14 of Shadowlands Omega

Yaron. Her disobedience will need to be punished.Or praised.

“I believe we are about to be beset by…”

But before I can say more, before I can take a step in any direction, before I can soothe her with the purr that’s threatening to bang its way free of my chest, before I can unhook my battle axe, the ground explodes open beneath our feet. I’m thrown off of mine, the Omega thrown away from me in the opposite direction. Several of my Riders take flight with us, several more fall to the ground. One of my Riders releases a pained shout, yet not even that is enough to grab my attention like the disembodied torso of an Alpha dragging its way out of the ground.

Surging up onto my feet, I reach into the waterlogged soil, grab the undead Alpha by the forearms and tear them free of the body they belong to. The Alpha might have once been a white male, but he’s been beneath the soil for so long, his skin has turned blue and is crusted in a sheen of dirt. He is not swollen — why would he be? He’s already dead and not taking on water. But I can still tell that this Alpha has been buried for a while.

No, not this Alpha.These.

Alphas fight their way out of the soil all around us, begging the question of whether they were planted here and only here and we were drawn into a trap, or if there are Alphas out here planted everywhere.Everywhere.Lurking just beneath the soil of the entire Shadowlands, the entire South Island, all of Gatamora.

No.

“Destroy the brain stem! Dismember the bodies!” I roar, trying to see past three undead Alphas surging towards me to find the Omega. I can’t see her. “Omega!”

“Yaron! I’m here,” she says, voice breathy and soft. I glance towards the sound of her voice and see that she’s standing between two trees, her hands touching both. She looks panicked and afraid, but I find it curious that she hasn’t thought to run. She could use this opportunity to try to escape. I might have even believed she planted the corpses here, is working in cahoots with Trash City and the Fates, and lured me here on purpose.

Except she’s still here looking so panicked and nervous.

She isn’t a killer, is she?No.She hasn’t lied to me yet, has she?Not once.She’s a good girl, little Kiandah, and I’m still going to kill her because she’s just standing there and right now, I actually do want her to run.

There are only two dozen Crimson Riders with me here, the full breadth of my army dispersed across the island to continue the hunt. I thought two dozen excessive hours ago, and now I regret our nominal numbers. The Omega is entirely exposed. An undead Alpha female has noticed her and is turning in her direction. The Omega slinks back between the trees, looking like she might run,finally, but she looks at me first.

Yaron, she mouths and I can’t fucking stand it because she speaks my name like she knows me, knows something I don’t, like I belong to her and she needs me and she knows she can count on my protection, and the response in my chest is all but catastrophic because I want to be that for her. I don’t want to let her down.

I unhook my axe and sweep the heads of the two undead Alphas in front of me before launching my axe through the trees, over the tops of the now headless bodies and into the back of the undead Alpha zeroing in on the Omega. The Alpha slams into the tree to her left, its body severed in half vertically.

Kiandah jumps, bones leaving her skin, before her gaze flashes back to me. She meets my stare, her one eye swollen, filling me with a renewed revulsion because she looks at me like shetrustsme. And I was the one to give her that mark.

“Kiandah, run!” I say and the surprise in her face confuses me for a moment that lasts just a few heartbeats too long.This is the first time I’ve said her name aloud.

Nailsgouge into my calf, sinking in deep enough to cause my left leg to buckle.Claws — the dead Alpha has claws. I roar and kick the creature free, but it just keeps coming. I slam my heel through its skull while another two undead launch themselves at me. I fight them off with fangs and claws as they cling to my arms with fangs and claws of their own.

“Omega!” I roar, concern blistering my throat.

“Yaron?” Her tone is shaky, so afraid. And still fucking here.

“Omega, get out of here now! Avoid their fangs!” I shout to my Riders as I see Guy to my right take a bite to the shoulder. He roars in pain. I lunge toward him and shred the undead Alpha clinging to him, removing its head. “Close in! Malik!Dorsten! Fall back to the Omega!” Why isn’t she leaving? Why hasn’t she left?

I watch Dorsten and Malik attempt to charge towards the Omega and I try to follow them, but more undead Alphas lunge into their paths, five on two. I take a moment to expand the depth of my hearing to try to calculate just how many we’re up against here, but the thrashing of those in the foreground is too great. Plus, there’s something else in the woods, just out of reach of my senses. A great presence that my beast raises his hackles to, that I know to destroy because it’s also something to fear. But it’s too far away.

I draw my awareness back around me, momentary panic surging at the realization that the Omega is entirely unprotected and my Alphas are nearly overrun. The undead Alphas number in the thirties, forties, perhaps. They swipe with their claws, catching cloaks and tearing through flesh. My Riders are not wearing their full battle armor and I hesitate to draw my beast forward fully because he presents such a large target and one single bite from one of these foul creatures wreaks havoc.

I have not forgotten the pain and the devastation to my body, having been bitten at least three times in my last battle against these creatures. My reflexes were slowed for weeks, I was groggy, couldn’t easily draw my beast forward, not to mention the pain. It was nothing I’d experienced before and it affected not just the site of the bite, but rampaged throughout my entire body like a poison — like venom, but with the intention to maim and not to bond or to heal.

A creature lunges for me now, and I take my claws to his throat, decapitating him cleanly. I kick through the next undead blocking me from reaching the Omega as Malik and Guy successfully battle another cluster of undead back. I finally reach my axe, still impaled in the back of the undead Alpha female and remove it, letting the ball collapse onto the ground, each of its two separated halves still writhing until I remove the head.

I turn to the three undead Alphas now chasing my Omega deeper into the woods and take off at a run. I leap, landing between them and Kiandah just as she falls in the mud. I swing my axe. My stroke takes out two at the neck and the top half of the third’s head. I swing my battle axe over my head and when I bring it down into the third undead’s back, I split it apart along the seam of its spine.

“Riders,” I roar. “Give them no ground!” We fight on, me with the Omega pressed against me, her body bouncing awkwardly against my back. She holds herself up and just as my concern mounts and we are swarmed by half a dozen undead at once, I feel it, the first droplet plummeting from the sky, heavy and threatening. I curse.

My Riders can struggle to fight through the sludge of Paradise Hole. We can cede stable ground and fight on the turf of the undead. But we cannot fight against the rain. “The rains are coming! Fall back to Orias!”

I slash my way through the head of another monster and turn, only to come face to face with three more leaping for us. Kiandah clutches my clothing and doesn’t move out of my way when I try to thrust my body between hers and the incoming attackers.

“Fuck,” I curse. I’m stuck and going to have to suffer a bite. I lift my left forearm but as the creature nearest to me jumps, he hits a wall of shimmering blue fire. Her hands are up, outstretched and shaking, but powerful enough to produce a translucent wall of blue that ripples and shimmers just beyond her fingertips. The creature incinerates against it and just as quickly as it arrived, it disappears. The Omega slumps against my body, spent, and I curse again. The rain droplets are spattering more rapidly now against my hair and shoulders and the top of her head. I need to get her out of here.

“Riders,” I roar, hoping to high hells they can hear me over the chaos. “Disperse! Back to Orias now!”

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