The Destiny (Blood and Destiny Book 4) (7 page)

Larissa stared at the departing airship as
it disappeared in the sky, two more outlines seeming to follow in its wake. All
of this could have been prevented if only she’d let Holt kill her father back
in the Blue Mountains of Eptora instead of hesitating. She felt Holt lean his
head against hers. In spite of her protesting, he had saved her life with his
choice to leave the ship, though it was little compensation for the loss of so
many others, especially Cid and Kerrigan. She turned slowly, keeping hold of
Holt, not wanting to let go in case he too succumbed to death. The
Eagle
had landed hard, the entire lower deck squashed beyond recognition. The canopy
still burned but had covered the entire back end of the stern. The bow of the
ship appeared relatively unscathed at the upper decks, though the fire was
quickly burning everything in sight and working up the deck.

“We have to help,” she
whispered as she saw men trying in vain to escape the deck, some of them
working together to haul bodies over and down to the ground. She shifted,
attempting to move, but was pinned in place as Holt stiffened his muscles.

“You have a chance to
escape,” he said, looking down at her. “If you go over there, they will capture
you again and we’ll be right back where we started.

“Vries…”

“The Admiral may no
longer follow protocol if he is alive, and if he is not, whomever takes his
place in charge may not look upon you kindly. Especially not after this.”

“I know…but they have
found Vries…” She forcibly removed herself from Holt’s arms. A voice at the
back of her head acknowledged what he was saying, and agreed with his comments,
but her legs had other ideas as she raced forwards.

Scores of men slowly
trudged away from the wreckage, two of them carrying the Admiral through the
mud. She passed an odd-looking pair of people a little farther out—Friar Narry
and Sandy—and her heart thumped a little harder at seeing them. Perhaps
everyone had escaped the brig. Still, she didn’t stop until she reached the
Admiral.

“Admiral,” she called.
The body swung as the two Marines carried him along; his chest was mottled with
blood, a great gash leading up to his neck. “Stop. I can heal him,” she yelled
to the two men carrying him.

“Get away, you witch.” The
man carrying the Admiral’s legs let go and swung his fist across her face,
punching her with enough force to send her straight back down into the mud.

She shook it off, the
pain lasting only a moment, and as she turned over, she saw Holt flying over
her legs and launching into the Marine with full force. The two men punched and
wrestled with one another as the man carrying the Admiral’s arms let go,
dropping him to the ground to go join in the fight.

Larissa’s eyes rolled.
All around, she noticed small groups of people fighting. Marines battled
pirates who had emerged from their own fallen ships. Swords clashed, pistols
fired, bodies grappled in the mud. Utter chaos descended around the burning
wreckage.

She crawled forward,
ignoring Holt, who seemed perfectly capable of fighting two men on his own,
presumably still fueled with strength from the
Anthonium
shot. While she
knew he wouldn’t last long at such a pace, she intended to take advantage of
the distraction.

Admiral Vries was on
the verge of death, blood pouring from his wounds. The rise and fall of his
chest as he took final breaths seemed laboured. Larissa began with the biggest
wound on his neck, unsure if she still had the strength to heal such a cut
after healing both herself and Holt. The headache blooming across her forehead
pulsated angrily as soon as she reached out to him, but she refused to give up.
Fingers spread across his neck, her hands grew slick with sickly hot blood, and
she struggled to maintain her grip. She concentrated on the slash, visualising
knotting the muscle back together, invisible stitches forming in her mind, heat
cauterising flesh piece by piece. Slowly but surely, the wound healed under her
touch, though it took longer than expected.

Sounds of fists
smashing into flesh and bone, swords clashing, and pistol shot faded into
background static. Though Larissa was vaguely aware of Holt nearby grappling
with someone, she didn’t dare stop to look up.

Finally, the Admiral
opened his eyes and looked directly at her, his face a pale shade of grey. “My
men…will you do the same for them?” he asked, his voice gravelly and shaking.

Larissa looked up. Holt
had knocked one of the Marines to his knees, though the fight with the other
had turned into a larger brawl of men fighting to the point where it almost
looked as though Holt and the Marine were working together against a group of
pirates.

Two pairs of boots
landed in the mud beside her, and a body slumped down, a man doubled up and
groaning. Larissa noticed the problem right away. He had a large wound bleeding
down his back and clutched at his chest; he’d been shot. She grabbed hold of
the man, barely thinking about what she was doing as she placed one hand over
the exit wound and battled at his hands clutching the entry point. When he
finally gave in and let go, she set to work.

By the time she had
finished healing one Marine, she looked around to see a group of other bodies
in varying states of distress piling up around her. Vries was up on his knees,
and had stripped off his shirt, ripping it to pieces as he tried to tie strips
around wounded arms and legs of the Marines nearby.

“Go on, heal them,” he
yelled to her.

“I can’t heal them
all.”

“Do what you can,
please.”

Holt was nowhere to be
seen. She had wanted to save Vries—felt the need to save him for some reason—but
now she just wanted to leave. The flaming canopy disintegrated entirely, though
the ferocious heat from the fire now spreading throughout the rest of the
downed ship did not abate. If she’d been entertaining any notion of climbing
aboard to look for Cid or any of the others, that idea had gone quite literally
up in smoke.

“Miss Markus,
Larissa…please,” Vries said as he laid a hand on her arm.

As yet another body was
laid out in the mud behind her, she took in a deep breath and silently told the
headache to go away. Not that it did much good.

She turned in the mud,
her entire body caked in a layer of brown-grey dirt from top to toe. She
scanned the collection of injured men spread out around her, as if she were a
one-woman hospital capable of performing healing miracles on the entire crew.
The injuries ranged from cuts and scrapes to missing limbs and crushed bones.
All of them disappeared from her mind when she saw one body in particular.
Different from the rest, dressed in odd Eptoran clothing with gnarled, knotted
red hair on his head, Cid stretched out nearby, unconscious. A great, bloody
gash split across his forehead.

“Cid,” she breathed as
she stumbled towards him, already concerned that it was too late.

“Captain,” he murmured
as she knelt beside him.

“Shush, let me heal
you.”

“Bloody hell.”

A glint nearby caught Holt’s attention as
he ducked a punch; a sword lay half-buried in the mud. He slammed his fist into
his attacker’s chest and followed with a punch to the throat. The man hit the
ground with a grunt, and Holt vaulted over his prone body. He rolled sideways
and grabbed at the sword, extracting it from the ground, and immediately swung
it across his body to deflect yet another attacker. Since entering into the
fray, the numbers of Marines and pirates on the ground had increased steadily,
and it was fast becoming an all-out battlefield.

In the craziness of the
milieu, the fighters couldn’t tell which side Holt was on, and so he found
himself fighting both Marine and pirate alike, no matter how much he tried to
avoid battling with those he considered his own. He couldn’t exactly stop them
mid-fight to reason with them or prove he was on their side. The battle
disintegrated into nothing more than a mess of fighting, small groups of people
battling amongst themselves, with no strong leader to coordinate the Marines
into formation. If he had their backing, he would have pulled back to gather
them together into a cohesive unit. Every attempt he made to collect a group of
men together quickly turned on him, leaving him no choice than to plough on
regardless.

Bodies lay strewn about;
severed limbs dotted the ground, already half-buried with kicked-up clumps of
mud. The rain persisted, though the cool air did nothing to dampen the
ferocious fire of the downed
RDS Eagle
, its carcass turned to a bright
orange ball of flame. The rain seemed equally unable to cool the heated blood
running through Holt’s veins. He ducked punches and swings from swords, barely
flinched when a bullet grazed his arm, and drew blood from the necks of any man
foolish enough to get close. Sweat poured down his face, the salty tang of it
playing on his lips.

As yet another body fell
at his feet, he paused, turning. He’d moved farther away from the burning
wreckage, and a sea of fighting people had closed in behind. He could no longer
see Larissa. Something pulled inside his chest, as though a hand had tightened
around his heart. As much as he tried to ignore the pain, the worry, and to
stop himself from panicking, it wouldn’t go away as he trudged back towards the
spot where he’d left her to heal people.

A great weight landed
on his back and sent him crashing down to his knees, mud splattering in all
directions. Something heavy clunked the back of his head, and black spots
danced across his vision. He fell farther forward, controlling the movement,
then spun around at the last second to flip the attacker onto his back. The
sword fell from his hands, and a flash of a blade caught his attention as the
heavy thug tried to slash his throat with a dagger. He grabbed at the attacking
arm, pinning the body beneath him with his own weight, angry grunts of
frustration ringing in his ears.

Holt shifted to the
side and let one hand drop. He curled his fist into a ball and shoved his elbow
into the ribs of the man beneath him. The man groaned, and the pressure on the
threatening dagger released for a moment. Holt took advantage, barrelling
round, throwing his weight into the arm, and sinking his teeth into the wrist
of the hand holding the dagger. The man screamed, and the blade released,
falling into the mud. Holt turned and smashed his fist into the face of the man
beneath him; the man was almost twice his size, a great hulk of a body, and if
it had been a pirate, Holt would have grabbed the dagger and slit his throat,
but the uniform was clear. The Marine lay stunned but not knocked out. Holt
grabbed the dagger, unintentionally clutching a handful of mud with it, and
stood up, backing away.

“I’m one of you,” he
said to the Marine, who looked at him quizzically, blood pouring from a cut
beside his eye.

“You’re a pirate. You
were in the brig.”

“Mistaken identity,” he
said. He flung the blade at the back of a nearby pirate who was gaining the
upper hand over a young Marine private nearby. The dagger turned end over end
and lodged neatly between the man’s shoulder blades, sending him crashing to
the ground.

“There aren’t many who
can best me,” the Marine said as he stood.

Holt had already
retrieved his sword and now headed back towards where he hoped Larissa would
still be. He twitched nervously when he saw the bigger man following.

Holt snaked his way
across the battlefield, weaving towards the burning wreckage and avoiding small,
skirmishing groups as best he could. He slashed at the neck of a pirate who
stumbled into his path and stepped over the flailing body as it fell at his
feet. Up ahead, someone’s voice boomed over the noises of battle—someone
shouting commands.

“Regroup!” The
Admiral’s voice rang clear. Holt hesitated, unsure if he should attempt to join
the Marines or not. Something bumped his shoulder; a body flew past his vision
as he stumbled to the side. The large Marine stood battling four pirates who
had thought to gang up on him. Two tried to climb up the man’s back and hack
his head off with axes.

Holt sighed and back-stepped
towards his new friend, sword at the ready. He drew the blade down the back of
one pirate clinging to the Marine’s shoulder, a line of bright blood soaking
through the mottled beige shirt in an instant. The man fell backwards into the
mud, and Holt stamped on his head for good measure. He pulled the second
attacker off with one swift yank, the axe in the man’s hand almost cutting
Holt’s nose off in the process. As soon as the man landed with a splatter of
mud, Holt jabbed the point of the sword into his neck, putting an end to one
more pirate.

The Marine spun around
and smiled, then clapped him on the shoulder “Ayers,” he said as he grabbed the
axe from the hand of the dying pirate, blood spurting from the hole in his
neck.

“Holt.” He nodded back.
At least he’d convinced one person which side he was on.

“To the Admiral,” Ayers
said, making a move towards the ship but in the wrong direction. Larissa was at
the bow—at least, that was where he’d left her—and the Admiral was near the
stern, a collection of Marines surrounding him, gathering into a formation.

Holt jogged alongside
Ayers, keeping watch for pirate attackers and straining to find Larissa. When
they reached Vries, a collection of at least twenty Marines had gathered to the
Admiral’s call. Vries nodded to Ayres, then nodded a second time at Holt.

“I want every last
pirate dead, do you hear me?” Vries yelled.

The group of Marines
called, “Aye,” in unison, and Holt answered as well, forgetting his place for a
moment.

“Attack,” Vries shouted.
The men charged forwards together as a unit, swords and pistols ready. Holt
joined the group at the edge of the formation. He pressed on, the blade of the
sword splitting flesh and sending sprays of pirate blood through the air. The
world descended into a ferocious heartbeat. One after another, bodies fell at
his feet, and his comrades fought at his side until they finally broke down the
attacking numbers, picking off the last of the bastards.

When it was over, the
dots dancing around the edges of his vision grew large and merged together.
Exhaustion tugged at his limbs; it seemed as though someone had tied weights to
his hands. He turned back towards the burning carcass of the ship. Mud clung to
his boots; each step felt like he was being dragged into a muddy pit. Through
the haze in his vision, he spotted Larissa. Her blond curls, which would
normally make her stand out in any setting, were brown with mud and plastered
to the side of her face. Her arms were covered in a mixture of blood and mud,
and she knelt amongst a plethora of bodies. Some men limped away, having been
healed by her touch, while others nursed wounds and waited in line. Several
were already dead.

The weakness in his
body took over as soon as he saw her, and he sank to his knees. She was alive
and home. He’d helped her achieve that much at least, and if he could help no
further, so be it. She was strong enough to carry on. Perhaps she’d always been
strong enough to survive without him. The drain took over, and he felt himself
falling. No
Anthonium
remained to prolong the inevitable nor prevent
fate from taking over. Through the mess of noises disintegrating into a garbled
fuzz in his mind, he heard her screaming his name, but as his body fell
forwards, face dropping towards the mud, heart slowing, mind regressed, he
couldn’t find the strength to say goodbye.