Page 93 of Only Cold Depths
My eyes narrowed. “You ambushed me in the dark. That’s hardly a fair fight.”
He grinned and gestured toward the training ring. “Then let’s go find out who the better warrior really is.”
Siya rolled her eyes. “Are the two of you going to fight, or are you just going to talk all day?”
I had opened my mouth to tell Zane that I was going to enjoy grinding his face into the dirt when a faint tremor swept through the ground. “What was that?”
“What was what?” Zane asked. “Quit stalling, Kyr.”
I stepped away from him and glanced around. Two Hammers sparring, the other warriors watching them, servants and guards moving along the bridges and stairs that connected the main castle to the rest of the estate buildings. Everything was normal, but my psionic senses kept pinging. I turned around, trying to find the source of the disturbance.
Something was wrong.
“What are you doing?” Zane asked in an annoyed voice. “You’re spinning around and around in circles like a child’s toy that’s been wound up too tight.”
I ignored him and stretched out with my telempathy, scanning the training ring in front of me. Nothing unusual there, so I stretched even farther out with my power . . .
Dozens and dozens of presences flared to life, all zooming this way. Before I could shout a warning, a buzzing sound filled the air, quickly growing closer and louder, and a violent wind current shrieked, whistled, and battered up against the estate’s energy shield.
“What is going on?” Zane yelled over the roaring noise.
A transport zoomed up out of the chasm a few hundred feet away from the training ring. The transport hovered in midair, then dipped down. For a moment, I thought it might crash into the energy shield, bounce off, and tumble back down into the chasm. But then the shield dimmed, flickered, and vanished altogether, and the transport zoomed to the right and dropped down onto the lawn beside the garden where I’d had breakfast with Lady Verona yesterday.
The transport thumped to the ground, flattening a couple of topiary hedges, along with some peony bushes, and green needles and blue petals whipped up into the air like shrapnel. A door on the side slid back, and mercenaries clad in black polyplastic armor spewed out of the vehicle. Each man was clutching a blaster or a hand cannon, and shock batons and other weapons dangled from their belts.
“Fuck,” Siya muttered. “Those are Serpens Corp mercenaries. Hammers, Hammers, to me!”
She spun away to rally the other warriors, but I kept watching the mercenaries. The enemy fighters formed a protective ring, then stopped, and two more people hopped off the transport.
Esmina and Pollux looked around as though they were a queen and king surveying their future home. Esmina glanced up at something, and a smile spread across her face. Then she shouted a command I couldn’t quite make out over the transport’s continued roar. She and Pollux strode forward, with their men spreading out in all directions.
“Where are Lord and Lady Collier?” Siya yelled into her tablet. “Secure them immediately! Estate security has been breached! We are under attack! Repeat. We are under attack!”
Siya grabbed a war hammer from a hoverpallet of weapons, crossed the training ring, and sprinted forward, trying to cut off the mercs before they reached the main castle. The other Hammers followed her, but Zane and I stayed by the training ring.
Pew! Pew! Pew!
The Serpens Corp mercenaries snapped up their blasters and hand cannons and fired at the Hammers. Siya ducked down behind a low stone wall for cover, as did Rigel and the other warriors.
“What is going on?” Zane repeated. “Who are those people?”
I ignored his questions and watched the battle. Siya used the lunarium head of her war hammer to deflect a blaster bolt back into the chest of a mercenary, who screamed and tumbled to the ground. Rigel and the other Hammers did the same thing with their own weapons, dropping one enemy after another. The Serpens Corp mercenaries would take heavy losses trying to breach the main castle—too many losses to justify such a brazen, reckless charge—so what were the mercs really doing here? What was the point of this attack?
In the distance, Esmina and Pollux broke away from the main group of mercenaries. Dozens of men followed them, and they all sprinted toward the guest wing.
Zane spotted them too. “Where are they going?”
Once again, I ignored him, my mind racing. If Esmina and Pollux were here to destroy House Collier, they should be storming the main castle with the other mercs in hopes of killing Lord Aldrich and Lady Verona. So why were they headed toward the guest wing?
As soon as I asked the question, the answer came to me, and icy dread flooded my body. They weren’t here for the Colliers. All the mercs were just a distraction so that Esmina and Pollux could capture their true target, the person they’d been after all along: Vesper.
Foramoment,Istood there, frozen in place. Then my mind kicked back into gear, and I stabbed my finger at Esmina and Pollux.
“Vesper!” I yelled at Zane. “The mercenaries are here to kidnap Vesper!”
Siya and the other Hammers were still deflecting blaster bolts back at the mercenaries, but I yanked my stormsword off my belt and sprinted in the opposite direction.
Zane let out a curse. At least, I think he did. Hard to hear anything over the roar of my heart in my ears, but his footsteps slapped on the stones, and he surged up so that he was running alongside me.
