Page 157 of Alchemised

She had no idea how they’d managed to reanimate him with the nullium contamination. They must have made a special effort for the general. Beside Althorne stood someone else, a young man with wheat-coloured hair and a square face.

Lancaster.

Crowther had said his prisoners had all died in the bombing. Clearly he’d been mistaken. She looked around, dreading who else might emerge from the smoke.

“Look at that, you were right,” Lancaster said to Althorne. “There is someone out here.”

“Take her,” rasped the lich. Althorne’s eyes squinted through the smoke towards her. “She may know who attacked the laboratory.”

“If I get her, can I have her?” Lancaster said, eyes lighting up, glancing at Helena again. It was clear he recognised her in some way.

“When the interrogators are done with her,” the lich said. “Hurry up.”

Helena watched as Lancaster advanced, switching out the obsidian blade for her long titanium dagger. If he was being sent while the lich hung back, that was probably a sign he was still an Aspirant.

But it also meant the lich was the one controlling all the necrothralls. She had to get rid of him or she’d end up being chased through the city. Lancaster first, though.

Her primary advantage in this was being wanted alive.

“Let me pass,” Helena said as Lancaster came closer and the lich began to disappear back into the smoke. She tried to keep an eye on him, track where he was going.

Lancaster shook his head. “Come on, don’t make this harder for yourself. You’re outnumbered. Drop the knife.”

The necrothralls had fanned out around her. They had long-range weapons. Helena’s eyes swept left and right, looking for an escape, trying to plot out what to do. Her blood was roaring in her ears, telling her to move, to attack, to run. She had to be smart.

She gripped the dagger a moment longer, feeling the texture, all the finely wrought details, swallowing hard as she let it slip from her fingers and clatter to the ground. She lowered her head and moved submissively forward as her fingers slipped down to grip the other.

She walked hesitantly towards Lancaster.

“Take her.”

The necrothralls stepped forward, lowering their weapons as one started to seize her arm.

Helena struck.

Her knife flashed, transmuting mid-motion until it was double its length. She cut off the hand, gutted the necrothrall, and buried a shortened blade into the skull of another.

She dodged a sword that sang as it sliced over her head and lodged in a necrothrall behind her. He screamed.

They weren’t all necrothralls, then. Well, that made them easier to kill. She wasn’t trying to win, this wasn’t a battle; she only wanted to escape. She kept herself aimed in the direction that the lich had disappeared.

You cannot die here.

Her left wrist was caught in a brutal grip.

She twisted, wrenching to get free, hot white pain enveloping her shoulder as her arm rolled out of the socket.

She whirled back, getting a hand on the attacker.

She didn’t stop to think, she just ripped apart everything her resonance touched.

There was an animalistic scream of agony as her wrist came free.

She dragged herself away, trying to pull her shoulder back into its socket. She could barely move her fingers, but she refused to stop.

Fast and clever, Kaine had said. That was what she needed to be to survive.

Lancaster swung into her path, a grin of triumph on his face, thinking her beaten. She slammed her dagger into his chest. He dropped like a stone.

She found her feet and ran straight into the smoke. She could see the city beyond, glittering with all its false promises.

The necrothralls were still in pursuit; she could hear them through the smoke. She was winded to the point that her vision was blurring. The combination of stimulants and sedatives was doing a remarkable job of keeping her from feeling how injured she currently was.

She saw a large figure in the smoke and went towards it. Althorne. She reached for her obsidian dagger, wishing her left arm worked. She keyed up her resonance until it sang around her in a torus as she rushed forward.

Through the smoke, something huge and heavy swung towards her. She barely dodged in time. It slammed into the ground.

The lich was fighting with a glaive, the way Lila did, but with far less speed and elegance.

Helena had never fought a lich, but this one didn’t seem accustomed to the body.

If she could hit it with the obsidian once, it would sever the reanimation in the body.

If she stabbed close enough to the talisman, it would kill whoever he was.

“You’re quite the alchemist,” came Althorne’s voice. The glaive rushed past, so close its wind nearly sliced her cheek open. “What are you?”

Helena was too winded to reply. Her focus was on his weapon and getting past it. She could see Althorne clearly now. His face was grey, and he had a festering head wound. He was in armour, which made it harder to stab him.

When she finally got too close for his glaive, he backhanded her.

She went flying but the obsidian caught his wrist, slicing the grey skin wide open.

She hit the ground so hard, she couldn’t breathe.

She forced her head up, gasping as she watched the reanimation unspool from Althorne’s corpse, like an infection moving up his arm.

She struggled to her feet. The necrothralls were still coming but slower. The lich didn’t fend her off as she closed in again.

Helena only had one fully functional hand, and she hardly managed to grip the obsidian in her left hand while her right ripped the armour out of the way.

The lich noticed then, tried to grab at her, but she caught him by the throat and wrenched.

Althorne’s oesophagus came out. He dropped.

She swayed, shoving his armour out of the way, trying to feel for the talisman, to identify where to stab.

Purple dead blood oozed from his throat, covering everything, the clothes and armour and the silver chain that hung around his neck.

A pendant, coated in blood, had nearly tumbled into the gaping wound.

It was a dragon, with wings arched above it and its tail caught in its teeth.

She paused, staring. This was Atreus Ferron.

She tried to grip the dagger, but her left arm was numb. Was it better to kill him, or to give the talisman to Kaine and let him choose what to do?

No. She had to do this. Kaine shouldn’t have to kill his own father.

She reached out with her resonance again, trying to feel for the talisman.

Thwack!

Red exploded in her vision as something slammed across her skull. She toppled across Althorne’s corpse, and when she tried to get up, everything spun. She got halfway up and collapsed again.

Lancaster stumbled towards her, half his chest coated in blood. He was gripping the glaive. He’d used the pole section to crack Helena across the back of her head.

“I’m going to kill you,” she said, trying again to push herself up.

He gave a wheezing laugh. “Try.” He gestured at her. “Get her up.”

Two Aspirants pulled Helena off the ground, kicking the obsidian knife out of her hand. Her legs would barely hold her. Everything swayed, but the drug still screamed through her veins, and her resonance was razor-sharp. She didn’t fight, instead slumping against the more heavily armed of the two.

They were stupid to fall for the same trick twice.

She found a knife loose enough to slip from its sheath as they dragged her over to Lancaster. Standard-issue combat knife. She was very familiar with the model.

Lancaster was pale with blood loss, but he smiled and kept his distance, clearly preferring to risk his compatriots. “I’m going to have so much fun with you. Once I’m Undying, I’m going to have them keep you alive as they turn you inside out.”

She used the last of her strength to lunge at him.

She would have stabbed him straight through the heart, but he managed to dodge. It was a pity for him that she had such broad resonance. She rammed the knife through his armour as if it were paper. She transmuted it, twisting, mangling his lungs before her hand went for his throat.

Fingers clawed into her hair, wrenching her off before she blew his brains apart with her resonance. She clawed at everyone gripping her, her fingers sinking through flesh, tearing at anything she could grasp.

“Break her hand. Break her fucking hand!” Lancaster was screaming as he clutched at the knife buried in his chest, unable to pull it out without ripping out his own lungs.

A hand closed around her forearm, and there was a horrifying crunch as a boot came down on her right wrist.

She watched the heel grinding her wrist into the stones.

They let go and she lay there in the street. Lancaster had already collapsed.

She tried to push herself up with her dislocated arm.

Run, Helena. You have to run.

One of the Aspirants had only one hand left, but he pulled out his sword and brought the hilt down on her head.

H ELENA WOKE TO SCREAMING.

She was lying on something cold and hard, and when she tried to open her eyes, they were crusted shut. She lifted a hand to rub them, and white searing pain set her entire brain on fire. Her eyes tried to wrench open, but they still refused to part.

“It’s all right. Gentle. There’s blood in your lashes.” It was a familiar voice. She felt fingers rubbing along her eyes. “There.”

Helena peered out, vision swimming, and found Matron Pace staring down at her. Helena was lying with her head in Pace’s lap. It was still dark, the only illumination torchlight.

Her senses trickled back. She was in so much pain, but she could tell that she wasn’t even feeling all of it yet. She could smell blood. Dried blood and fresh.

There was screaming that kept going on and on.

And laughter, too.

She tried to sit, but Pace held her down.

“None of that. You’re badly injured,” she was saying. “I got your shoulder back in place, but they took your chest brace and your wrist is badly broken.”