Page 118 of Alchemised

She could see herself through him. Her consciousness kept flickering back and forth along the connection forged between them. He turned then and saw Luc, and she felt the pull towards him. He looked for Lila next.

Luc saw Soren standing, and for an instant, relief flooded across his face. Then vanished.

Luc knew. In an instant, he somehow knew.

Still Soren started towards him. Helena stopped him.

“You need to protect Penny and Alister,” she said, both in her mind and aloud, pointing, turning his focus away from Luc. “Get us out.”

Soren turned and obeyed. Helena watched, her mind swimming from the disorienting secondary awareness in her mind. Her consciousness didn’t know where to go.

A chimaera leapt towards her face.

She dodged. A scythe flashed before her eyes.

Soren.

She blinked, trying to make out her own surroundings.

Soren killed the chimaera without breaking his stride as he reached Penny and Alister, shoving Penny to safety before turning back.

A blur from the left. Helena lurched sideways, trying to dodge, not sure if she was seeing her assailants or Soren’s. Her focus narrowed for an instant, bringing her surroundings back into the forefront of her own mind.

If she died, Soren would be gone, too. She had to stay alive until they got Luc out.

She tried to block out Soren, but he was rooted in her mind. She sensed something and turned an instant before it slammed into her. The air was knocked out of her lungs. She looked down, blinking through her fragmenting consciousness.

Soren. Helena. Soren.

There was a knife driven to the hilt into the right side of her chest.

Helena.

If she’d turned a split second later, it would have gone through her heart, but—as she squinted, struggling to focus—she didn’t think it had hit anything immediately vital.

Pain was what it took to drag Helena’s consciousness securely back into her own body.

She managed to slice off the hand of the necrothrall that had stabbed her before it could pull the knife out. Using her throbbing right hand, she held the knife in place, trying to keep it from being jostled as she stomped down on the inside of the necrothrall’s knee.

She stumbled away, gasping, the edge of the blade slicing the wound wider as she moved.

A chimaera’s fangs closed around Soren’s leg, tearing it open. He cut off its head, unmindful of the injury.

He was being torn apart. She could feel the injuries, even though pain didn’t register. She hadn’t brought that part of his brain back.

He didn’t stop fighting.

Get the knife out, close the wound. She went towards the far wall.

She huddled in the freezing water. Another chimaera had attacked Sebastian and Luc. The size of it, it had to be part bear. Luc’s strength was flagging.

The chimaera was huge, mostly mammal but with longer, reptilian jaws and skin so thick, their weapons glanced off. It screamed like a human.

She tried to focus, biting down on her lip, bracing herself to pull out the knife.

Fingers dug into her braided hair, and Helena was abruptly dragged up until her toes barely touched the ground.

Basilius Blackthorne peered at her, teeth bared in a grin, bloodstains from mouth to chin.

He ate his wife and children with those teeth …

“The Eternal Flame has a necromancer, I see.” His voice was raw and rasping.

She tried to stab the arm gripping her, but he batted her hand away with a blow so hard, her left hand nearly went numb. Her knife hit the water with a splash.

She grabbed for his wrist.

Her fingers grazed his skin, her resonance lashing out.

But Kaine had always warned her: Once the Undying knew what she was, they’d be wary.

Before her resonance could connect, he wrenched her hand off, fingers closing around the knuckles of her left hand, squeezing and twisting. His grip was like iron, and her bones broke like twigs.

Helena screamed. The knife in her chest shifted, painful pressure growing inside her lungs.

Blackthorne looked at her shattered hand expectantly and then laughed. “Forgot, you won’t regenerate.”

His gaze turned to her right hand, eyeing the awkward way she had the knife braced. “I think this one is already broken, but let’s make sure.”

With unexpected gentleness, he pulled it away from the knife hilt and snapped her wrist. Black spots of pain danced in her eyes as another strangled scream burst out of her.

“I should keep you alive,” he said as he pulled the knife from her chest very slowly, savouring the glide of the blade.

Helena was in so much pain that her mind kept flickering over into Soren’s, seeking an escape.

He was mobbed by necrothralls. The chimaeras were dead, but there were too many necrothralls, dozens of them, shoving him down into the water, tearing him apart. His leg twisted as teeth bit down, tearing out the tendon behind his knee.

He was still fighting. His weapon was gone, but he had a knife.

Penny was screaming behind him, but Alister held her back.

Soren kept stabbing, tearing, clawing his way through, following her instruction not to stop fighting even as he was ripped apart.

Dead fingers scrabbled across his face, finding his remaining eye.

His jaw was torn down, his throat left gaping.

Helena jerked reflexively each time a little more of him was ripped away, but the pain was all with Helena. She couldn’t feel her fingers; there was just a beacon of agony radiating up her arms.

A warm gush of blood ran down the side of her body.

She thought Basilius would stab her again, but he dropped the knife into the water. He touched her side, fingers light across the wound. Her raw nerves screamed in protest.

His fingers traced along the slit between her ribs, and without warning he shoved two of them into it. Helena screamed as her skin tore wider. The bones bowed as he forced his fingers inside the wound, slick with her blood.

“Did you know, my favourite things are wounds,” he said, the words breathless. “Wetter, hotter, and tighter than anything else.”

Helena’s legs thrashed, her broken hands scrabbling to push him away, the ruined bones grinding, but it was no use.

She screamed and screamed but no one noticed, bashing her head against his chest until he gripped her by the throat with his free hand, his thumb shoving hard against her trachea until she stilled. Her lungs seized, spasming.

“Yes, just like that,” he said with an approving groan. “Don’t worry, I won’t let you die. You’ll still be alive when I hand you over. Bennet is going to love you.”

Her consciousness had frayed to its outermost limit. Her vision blurred. She couldn’t even breathe to scream anymore.

She was only half aware as Soren was ripped from her mind, his body washed downriver, the connection unravelling like blood in the water.

“One more scream. You do it beauti—”

Blackthorne stumbled, gasping as if the breath had been knocked out of him. His grip on her loosened, fingers sliding free an instant before he was wrenched backwards.

Helena dropped like a stone. The frigid cold drove her back into consciousness or she would have drowned. She cowered back, looking for Blackthorne in terror and spotted him being dragged by his throat through the water, a wire or rope wrapped around his neck.

The person dragging him wasn’t one of the Resistance.

It was one of the Undying. Immediately identifiable by the helmet and black uniform.

By the time the two were in range of each other, Blackthorne had recovered himself and lunged at his attacker. He’d snatched up a sword from the water and swung, going straight for the head, but the other Undying sidestepped.

Blackthorne tried again, and again. His attacks were precise, the movements of a highly accomplished combat alchemist, but his opponent simply dodged.

No weapon. No counterattack. Quick and light, evading as if it were a dance, until Blackthorne left himself open for an instant. An instant was all it took.

The Undying stepped past a blow and with his bare hand, punched through Basilius’s armour and into his chest as easily as if reaching through water. A pale, long-fingered hand dripped red with blood as it pulled out a gleaming piece of metal from Blackthorne’s chest cavity.

Blackthorne collapsed into the floodwater, vanishing.

The entire fight had not even lasted a full minute.

In the chaos, no one else had noticed. Helena tried to breathe in but choked from the pressure inside her lungs. She pressed her arm against the wound, trying to prevent more air from seeping into her chest cavity.

The necrothralls began to drop. A few Aspirants noticed the newcomer and seemed confused about what had happened. Before they could react, they were dead. A weapon gleamed so quick that she barely saw it, just watched the bodies fall.

It was Kaine.

She’d never seen him fight. He’d never really fought with her. But she knew. There was no mistaking that brutal efficiency.

He was as deadly as she’d imagined.

She could see the techniques he’d tried to drill into her, the fluidity that she’d lacked, how quick he was. No movement wasted. The momentum of one kill led to the next.

Bodies fell like stars.

He stalked through the water towards Helena. Not a step wavering, cutting down everything that crossed his path.

When a chimaera leapt at him, he lifted his hand, and the instant it touched the creature, the body unravelled, limbs sloughing apart as if he’d ripped out all the invisible stitches assembling it. One minute a monster, and the next dead in the water.

It wasn’t combat, it was slaughter.

A numbers game. Minimum effort, high return.

It was impossible that he’d ever fought to his full potential before. If anyone had ever fought like that, everyone would have known about it.

He reached into a pocket, pulling out a fistful of something and flinging it outward.

They looked like shimmering bits of metal, and as they flew, she felt his resonance expand, carrying them.