Lost (30 page)

I looked around
as though scared and just realizing how badly outnumbered I was, and
made as if to break across their line of travel. It wasn't the best
route to go if I was truly trying to get away from them, but it did
provide a more or less solid line of islands and, more importantly, I
figured it would pull the boat the direction that it needed to go if
the ambush was going to have any chance of succeeding.

My first step
went off without a hitch, but then the most excruciating pain I'd
ever felt tore through me. I hit the ground hard and slid nearly five
feet through the mud, but I was in too much pain to even worry about
whether or not I'd managed to lure the boat into position.

The pounding of
my pulse in my ears was so loud that it drowned out almost every
other sound. It was like standing under a waterfall, but one that
came in irregular surges, one that seemed to stretch the surges out
for an impossibly long time.

"…don't
kill him, we need him…"

That was all I
caught in between heartbeats and then the pain cut off as quickly as
it had started up. I managed to get my head up in time to see the
boat capsize, but even that didn't go according to plan.

Only half of
the lamias had surfaced. The half of the circle behind the boat had
grabbed it and ripped it into pieces as they tried to get their claws
into Onyx and the driver, but the other half of the circle, the half
closest to me, was nothing more than furiously bubbling water.

As fast as the
lamias had been, Onyx was even faster. He sprang from the boat before
anyone managed to get hold of him and transformed in midflight. He
hit the muddy ground of the island as I rolled to my feet and saw the
rest of his men rushing into the battle.

The boat's
driver was already dead, but the lamia who had destroyed the boat
suddenly convulsed in pain and dropped back down into the water. I
thought everything was over at that point. I'd never imagined that
Onyx's gift was strong enough to keep twelve lamias paralyzed under
the water where they would eventually drown, but given that there
still wasn't any sign of the first set of lamias, it looked like that
was exactly what he was doing.

Two of the
hybrids peeled off from the main group to come deal with me, but
everyone else waded knee deep into the water to form a loose circle
around the channel that contained what was left of the boat.

As I prepared
to sell myself as dearly as possible, the most amazing thing I'd ever
seen happened. The water near the hybrids exploded with lamias who'd
somehow managed to use the turbulence caused by the boat sinking to
get within striking distance of most of the hybrids clustered along
the shore.

It was nothing
less than miraculous, but it still wasn't quite perfect. There were
twelve lamias, and Onyx had brought twelve other guys with him, but
the driver of the boat was dead already, and the guy who had been
chained to the boat still hadn't surfaced. When you added in the fact
that two guys were almost within striking distance of me and Onyx was
well outside of melee engagement range, the lamias outnumbered the
hybrids twelve to eight.

With the
lamias' venom and the element of surprise, the hybrids should have
been massacred. They probably would have been, notwithstanding Onyx's
presence, but for the fact that the lamias hadn't matched themselves
up perfectly against the waiting hybrids.

A number of
lamias matched themselves up in one-on-one battles against the New
Orleans hybrids. One consort—I was pretty sure it was Pal
again—put his opponent down with a single thrust to the chest.
The wound shouldn't have been fatal, but the hybrid instantly started
screaming and dropped to the ground before he could even finish up
the attempted counterstrike that would have taken the consort's head
off.

I saw another
couple of workers, each trading blows with a single hybrid, but it
wasn't readily apparent who held the upper hand there. That was fine,
under normal circumstances they would have just needed to last for
long enough for another lamia to help them out, but this wasn't the
kind of fight that they were used to.

There were some
places where two or three lamias attacked a single hybrid and felled
them with ease, but there were other places where one lamia ended up
squaring off against more than one hybrid. I saw one of the other
consorts—not Set—sink his claws into the stomach of his
enemy and then fall to an attack that Nicolas delivered unexpectedly
from one side.

We lost a
couple of lamias in those first few seconds, but we still could have
easily won except for the fact that an instant later Onyx reentered
the fight.

Unfortunately,
I missed his opening salvo because the two hybrids who had been
approaching me finally arrived. I dodged to one side in an effort to
keep one guy between me and the other guy, but they had obviously
worked together before.

The closest guy
trusted his teammate to back him up, and simply threw himself at me
without even pausing. The move wasn't the kind of thing you usually
saw out of a bunch of anti-social hybrids, so it caught me by
surprise, but I still managed to block his swipe.

It wasn't
pretty—rather than checking his attack with a blow of my own, I
just threw my arm up. It was good enough to protect my chest, but it
didn't stop him from cutting bloody furrows in my back and the
outside of my arm. I'd acted out of reflex and didn't even realize
initially that the block was something Set had taught me.

It was way too
soon for me to be trying that kind of stuff in an actual fight, my
aberrant success in my recent challenge fight notwithstanding. I
hadn't even begun to have put enough time into wiring up a new set of
reflexes, let alone the time required to integrate Set's stuff with
what I already knew, but apparently my subconscious didn't agree.

Rather than
backing away, I stepped forward and sank my right foot into my
opponent's leg. I didn't hit anything critical with my talons and I
wasn't trying to knock him over. Instead I simply used my grip to
launch myself upwards.

I got my left
leg up just high enough to take a slash, that otherwise would have
disemboweled me, on the outside of my leg and then I sank my left
hand in his stomach. Normally I would have said that the distance and
angle was all wrong, but this time I capitalized on my momentum to do
way more damage than I'd ever seen done before with what should have
been a minor blow.

I tried to keep
half an eye on the rest of the battle as I backed away from my first
opponent. He wasn't dead, but his core had been badly damaged and he
was having a hard time getting himself back to his feet.

The rest of the
fight wasn't going as well as my little corner. Onyx had used his
ability on nearly all of the lamias at the same time and the effect
had been disastrous. It was impossible to fight when you were in that
much pain, which meant that any lamia who had been within arm's reach
of one of the few surviving hybrids had been savaged. More than half
of the lamias were down on the ground, dead or dying, and only the
fact that there hadn't been very many hybrids still alive by the time
that Onyx had reentered the fight had allowed any of our guys to slip
back into deeper water, out of sight and therefore safe from Onyx's
power.

I was hurt, but
my injuries were relatively minor and I was ready to take my chances
against the other bruiser Onyx had detached to take me down. I
started forward with a well-timed slash to my opponent's neck that
was designed to test his reaction time, but Onyx hit me with another
tidal wave of pain before I could even get within half a foot of his
guy.

The ground
reached up and hit me. I was in too much pain to even realize that
Onyx's guy had backhanded me nearly hard enough to break my neck. He
could have just as easily torn my throat out, but apparently he
hadn't forgotten that Onyx wanted me alive.

I was still
seeing double when Onyx's ability cut back off, but my guy was
standing too close to me when it happened and I managed to reach up
and nearly hamstring his right leg. He stumbled back away from me,
obviously not willing to engage without more help now that his
mobility had been compromised.

I took stock of
what was going on around me while I tried to get the world to stop
spinning. There was one less hybrid standing on the island next to
Onyx now. Somewhere along the way the rest of his guys had fallen
back to surround him, that or maybe he'd only been able to save the
guys closest to him. After that last knock to the head I was too
shaken up to be sure.

Onyx's guys all
looked pretty uneasy considering that they had him backing them up,
but then again I couldn't really blame them. Set and the others were
downright creepy. They must have ambushed another of the hybrids from
the edge of the water. There was blood in the water and big gashes in
the mud that hadn't been there a few seconds before.

I figured that
was what had forced Onyx to break off and use his power elsewhere. I
was going to buy Set and his guys whatever the lamia equivalent to a
drink was once we got back to the enclave.

Another round
of splashing as something came up out of the water on Onyx's island
brought everyone's head around, but I didn't bother waiting to see
who or what it was. I lunged at the hybrid who had nearly knocked me
out, and he wasn't fast enough to avoid me.

I went in not
planning on doing anything fancy. I hit him with more than enough
momentum to drive him to the ground, but he managed to get a slash in
while he was falling that should have taken me across the kidney and
mirrored what Nicolas had done to Ash back at the hospital.

By that time I
was committed, there was no dodging the attack and my hands were out
of position to stop him as well. Once again I acted out of reflexes
that I shouldn't have had. My elbow shot out and caught him on the
inside of his arm. It wasn't enough to completely stop his blow, but
it served to rob his claws of most of their momentum.

I still took
some deep gashes to my back and side, but they weren't enough to kill
me and as his claws recoiled backwards from the force of my elbow
strike, I slammed my right hand forward, taking him in the chest.

We hit the
ground a fraction of a second later. I rolled back to my feet,
leaving a corpse in the mud in front of me, but my thrill of success
was short-lived because Onyx hit me again, locking up every muscle in
my body as the pain made me try to rip my arms free of their sockets.

It felt like I
was screaming in pain for hours, but it couldn't have been more than
a few seconds. I dimly heard another outbreak of splashing and then
the pain vanished and I weakly got my hands back underneath me enough
to lift myself up to where I could see what was going on.

The earlier set
of splashes had been the scrawny guy who had been chained to the
boat. I wouldn't have thought he could survive that long under water,
but somehow he'd gone all the way down to the bottom of the channel
and then dragged his piece of the boat up onto Onyx's island.

He looked half
dead and he was obviously having trouble emptying the water out of
his lungs, but I was impressed. He was a fighter, not that you would
have known it by the way that the rest of Onyx's men were looking at
him. They obviously would have been happier if he'd stayed at the
bottom of the bayou.

The second
round of splashes looked to have been an unsuccessful attempt by Set
and the others to get their hands on another hybrid. The number of
hybrids hadn't decreased any, but it also looked like Onyx hadn't
managed to stop the lamias from making it back into the water before
the rest of his guys got to them.

Onyx hit me
with his ability and for a couple of seconds my world shrank down to
nothing more than pain and the screams that I couldn't manage to
contain. Once he let off of me, it was all I could do to turn over
enough to look at him. I couldn't get myself to my feet, couldn't
even sit up.

"I can do
this all day, Nazir. Maybe you should tell your weird friends that
it's time to come out of the water and just give me what I want. Take
me to Celeste Hunt and none of the rest of you have to die."

"We aren't
taking you anywhere, Onyx, but I'll give you an alternative. Turn
around and walk back to New Orleans and my friends and I won't kill
you."

"You're
hardly in a position to be making threats. How much longer can you
take the pain before your body just shuts down? Ten seconds? Twenty?
It's obvious you're getting close to the end. I can kill you without
even moving, and then I'll just wait here until your friends have to
surface for air and I'll kill them too.

"Once
you're all dead I'll track you back to whatever hole you've hidden
Celeste in, and then I'll take her and her brother back to New
Orleans and torture them until they hand over what's left of their
family's fortune."

"That's a
nice theory, but my friends can spend longer than you would believe
underwater. They can easily go out of sight in shifts to breathe
somewhere you can't get at them. It's uncanny the way that they can
move under the water without creating ripples, but there you have it.
They'll just wait you out. Eventually you'll get sloppy and they'll
take another of your guys down. It's really just a matter of time."

I hadn't
managed to crack Onyx's towering certainty of his own
invulnerability, but I could tell that his remaining men were
starting to get nervous. That would eventually get to Onyx even if
nothing else did.

"Even if
you manage to stay far enough from the water to stop them from
snatching you one at a time, that won't save you. Eventually you'll
have to move and once you're in the water they can take you all at
once. Did you see the way your one guy died? He was poisoned."