CHAPTER 23 - THE DOORWAY

  Like eels, they peeled between the trees.

  And their skin was like eels' skin; it reflected the starlight above in specks of light and streaks as they sprinted down the hill.

  And like rain, they fell past him, a new wave from the doorway, rushing out and down the hill towards the palisades and the way back up.

  Some of the monsters caught, like trapped droplets.

  Levan brought his sword down to catch a pair of claws swiping at his left leg. He parried them, extra-long claws reinforced with a metal that looked blue in the darkness. It clanged out, and the Lost One recovered for a follow-up swipe, this time lunging at him overhead.

  Levan ducked and spun, and the creature cried out as its own momentum carried it tumbling down the hill, followed by a sickening squelching sound.

  [ Slain! Lost One Soldier ]

  Levan risked a quick glance backward where, behind him down the hill, his attacker was impaled on one of the protective palisade spikes.

  “Look alive, Bread,” Burton grunted, shoving a hard-soled boot in front of Levan, kicking another one of the creatures back a few steps.

  He was moving before he realized, following quick on Burton’s kick with a follow-up strike, driving his sword through the stumbling creature. It cried out in an oceanic croaking garble.

  The Lost One backpedaled up the hill, Levan’s sword in its stomach, turning up dirt and making its way up the hill.

  “Levan!” Burton called, but momentum had taken control.

  [ Slain! Lost One Soldier ]

  He’d chased the creature too far, and by the time it slid off Levan’s sword, Levan was a full twenty feet away from the protected mini-fortification where Burton and Trina were making their stand.

  Three Lost Ones charged down the hill at him, breaking apart from their usual split-stream to all descend on him.

  That was how it worked, this dance of offensive defense—the soldiers, specifically the training soldiers of Garrow’s Claim, picked specific points out in the field where mindless enemies naturally broke apart from one another and isolated.

  Against a horde of mindless enemies, these natural tributaries allowed the soldiers to fight, even find paths to close doorways, without being immediately overwhelmed.

  Against intelligent enemies?

  Well, Garrow’s Claim did not send their soldiers outside the gates by themselves to train against intelligent enemies.

  That advantage was now forfeit, for Levan at least.

  He swung the sword early and wide, screaming as he did, drawing it far across his reach then back again, again and again.

  Two stopped, one kept going a bit further, warned off by the arcing blade just centimeters from contact.

  They shifted slightly.

  “Bread! Get back down!” Burton called from behind him. “Damn it, what was his name?”

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  “Levan!” Trina screamed. “Levan, get back down!”

  Panic set in.

  He took a step backward, while also trying to hold his balance against the three Lost Ones as they surrounded him.

  His heel slipped against a hole in the road, and the next thing he knew, there was twisted grass where once there had been night sky and planetary rings.

  The Lost Ones raced after him, seeing the kill, the starlight shimmering on their taut and aquatic skin.

  He rose and steadied himself with a sway, trudging forward to meet the Lost One on his left.

  They crashed, mass against mass, and Levan was sent once again rolling to the hill.

  “Bread!” Burton called desperately. “Stake!”

  Every time, a small part of Levan had heard “steak” when Rose, Burton, Trina, or whoever was describing the wooden fortifications of Garrow’s Claim. Context told 90% of his brain they meant, “stake, as in—kill this vampire by driving a wooden stake through its heart,” while a loyal and desperate 10% of his brain repeatedly thought, “medium-rare.”

  In the chaos of battle, it was now more like 50%/50%.

  Steak? Now? Maybe he means like after the battle?

  Then he caught the wooden point with the corner of his eye, and, as Levan slipped down the hill, butthole-first, into the sharpened wooden fortification, his brain navigated immediately to the correct interpretation.

  He moved his weight forward as the Lost One fell past, and a familiar squelching sound followed as the creature impaled itself.

  He was up in a moment against the last two.

  He parried the one on his left again, just as pain erupted from his shoulder as one cut him with the trio of sharpened claws.

  A cry of pain turned into a roar. Levan didn’t think he was capable of making as he cut diagonally, his sword finding resistance, slicing deep into the Lost One who had hit him.

  My back is turned to the other.

  The thought came like a school-born nightmare, a fallen exam finally remembered just before class.

  He saw the shape in his peripheral vision, that purple-blue skin, the bright reflective teeth, the bright reflective claws jabbing straight for his abdomen.

  Levan flinched—he simply didn’t have the reaction time to spend on anything else.

  A twang and whistling sound zipped past his ear, and the Lost One to his left croaked out a cry of pain of his own, driven backward.

  Levan watched, breath caught, heart pounding in his ears.

  Zip.

  Zip.

  Zip.

  The Lost One staggered back, stumbling and catching each hit like a mob boss shot up in a gangster movie.

  Arrows stuck out from the creature’s tight skin, blonde in the moonlight, and here to save him. Like Valkyries.

  One two the shoulder, one to the arm, one to the shoulder again, as the Lost One staggered backward.

  Then one in the brain, and it fell finally backward one last time to tumble and roll down the hill.

  Behind him, from the wood, perched on different arms of the same large tree were the pale and ginger-headed forms of the cousins, Liam and Posey, each with a bowstring stretched.

  One of them, Posey, he thought, was already turned and firing down at the Lost Ones assaulting Burton and Trina’s position.

  The other, Liam, had his bow raised and pointed, one eye shut, freckled cheekbone clenched in concentration, straight at him.

  Levan went to the ground as the barest bit of light showed the bowstring thwap forward, and an arrow screamed through the air to fly above his head at one of the charging Lost Ones.

  Levan gave his best salute, fingers to his brow, and Liam returned the gesture before turning to a kneel and firing more.

  The heavy quivers—ones that looked more like duffel bags than the sleek, traditional Hollywood D&D quivers—hung from the tree by a leather strap, and, with hands that never conflicted, the cousins pulled arrow after arrow from seemingly endless depths.

  Burton and Trina were still halfway down the hill, fighting from an obstacle that forced the Lost Ones to separate and attack one at a time.

  He started down to rejoin them, then he stopped and looked back.

  There was something…there, in the trees, up the hill.

  The same sort of stretched light of the Lost One’s reflective skin, only this was drawn out, larger, seemed to bend into a circle.

  Right before his eyes, a Lost One materialized and pulled its way through it, joining the rest of the horde as they charged down the hill.

  The doorway.

  “It’s here!” he called to Burton, who looked up after decapitating a rabid-fighting Lost One.

  “We’ll get, come back down!” he called.

  Levan turned to follow. He hesitated.

  “Bread!”

  “I see it!” Levan called back.

  This is the type of shit soldiers in war movies with no backstory say right before they get shelled.

  An unpleasant thought, but…

  There was a lull in the river of enemies.

  Inexperienced as he was, he could see that. It was an opportunity.

  Below him, Burton and Trina fought.

  If I’m knowingly going to do something dumb, I’m not gonna make them pay for it.

  “I’m gonna go for it, don’t sacrifice yourself to save me!” he yelled.

  “Won’t!” Burton yelled back.

  Levan scrambled uphill.

  “What’s he doing?” one of the cousins called.

  “I think he sees the door!” another said. Liam, he thought. “He’s going for it! I’m going with him!”

  One of the ginger archers dropped from the tree with a roll and was up in an instant, convening with Levan.

  “Stupid boys! Lads, back!” Burton yelled.

  Liam shot him a sidelong glance, and a silent conversation took place.

  Then, at the same time, he and Levan fixed their gazes up the hill towards the doorway, and pressed on.