Page 14

King

Three planes and three hundred additional Warriors took off on schedule. Beck was on one plane, Nokita on the second, and I led the third. We had different destinations. My plane was delivering me and my men closest to Washington, though still about three hundred miles away. Beck was landing near the northwestern Canadian border, and Nokita would be in the Florida Panhandle. Our mission was to gather information on the human population as we moved closer to Washington.

Falling asleep the first night without Marinah was damned near impossible. Beast wouldn’t settle down and most likely needed a run, but I wanted sleep. We had found an old barn that some of us were using. Others were sleeping outside under mounds of hay to keep warm.

The days were mild, but the nights were bitterly cold. After living in Cuba with its wonderful year-round temperatures, I wasn’t used to this kind of chill. Cold simply was no longer in my vocabulary, or so I told myself.

My worry over Marinah didn’t help my restlessness. If our plan went accordingly, she would prevail quickly, and we would return to the island sooner rather than later. Labyrinth would do everything he could to keep her safe. And she was no lightweight but asking this of her so soon after coming into her Warrior form was unfair.

She’d discovered in our history texts that there had been other female Warriors with her unique ability to control their beasts shortly after their first transformations. Yet still, Marinah was special. I often dwelled on the reason the females left the first colony so soon after landing on Earth. They didn’t agree with the men. Those same men had destroyed the home planet. When they refused to concede to the women’s demands for peace amongst themselves and humans, they had no alternative but to leave.

Compared to male Shadow Warriors, we had little information about the women, but maybe someday, if we could trace Marinah’s mother’s roots and possibly discover more texts written by them, we would know more. Their departure had a huge effect on the men they left behind. It was the catalyst that transformed them from killers into good-natured, hard-working farmers. Maybe it would explain why some of us never fit in with our fathers, who denied their Warrior side and spent most of their lives living as human.

Marinah had changed the way I thought about humans. Even before I knew she was a Warrior, she proved there were good people in the world. Her father had shown me the same truth, and I realized how much I needed a reminder of his lessons. Marinah assured me there were more like her, and I hoped she was right. We needed to find a balance and join our forces again. After so many years of war, I yearned for peace. There had to be a middle ground.

The unknown pieces of the Federation gnawed at me too. They had tried to kill me and Marinah, and then out of the blue requested her return. Why? That question burned inside me even more than thoughts of the past.

∞∞∞

Dreams consumed by Marinah made sleep all but impossible. I woke with a heavy ache in my chest, which began the day on the wrong foot.

We broke camp an hour before sunrise, quickly clearing out of our overnight spot so it showed no sign we had been there. We moved through the devastated countryside on high alert. So far, we hadn’t encountered humans or hellhounds, which surprised me. Locating humans outside Washington was essential to proving the Federation’s lies.

Two hours after the sun rose, we came across our first small group of hellhounds.

I needed the fight.

Me and three Warriors dispatched them quickly. We kept moving and stopped at abandoned farmhouses, which provided valuable resources. At first glance, most places appeared stripped of essentials, but we had once been farm boys and knew where farmers hid their stash. While we didn’t find much, every bit we uncovered helped extend our food supplies. If this mission lasted longer than expected, we would need them.

The men kept their distance from me. Each time I was forced to speak, I either metaphorically snapped someone’s head off or growled. Beast and I were completely in sync on this. Both of us were struggling with worry over Marinah, and it showed.

Around noon, we entered what had once been a small, rural town. Most of the buildings had crumbled to rubble, their remnants standing as silent witnesses to the destruction. Even though two years had passed since the first hellhound war ended, the air carried the stench of death.

At the edge of town, we discovered the reason why.

Inside a church, we found over two hundred decaying bodies.

These people hadn’t died years ago. They’d been killed possibly a month earlier. And they hadn’t fallen to hellhounds.

They’d been shot.

It was clear they’d been herded into the church and executed. Among the dead were women and children.

It was hard to stomach, but we did what needed to be done, beheading them all to ensure they wouldn’t rise as hellhounds.

The grisly task set me even more on edge.

We found a few bodies of men who had tried to defend the town and were left where they died. It appeared the main group of people had been overwhelmed by numbers and surrendered quickly.

Across the street from the church, in a building that once might’ve been a small store, we found two more bodies. These wore Federation uniforms with red stripes on their sleeves. They lay with folded towels beneath their heads, like someone had tried to make them comfortable before death. From their wounds and the blood that stained the floor, it was clear they had died slowly. Most likely, they were left behind while still alive.

The pieces fit together too easily, and the picture they painted turned my stomach.

Federation soldiers had attacked the town, slaughtered the residents, and left their dead when they moved on.

What we’d feared most had become fact.

The Federation was murdering U.S. citizens.

And Marinah was in the middle of their stronghold.

Beast roared inside me.

For some crazy reason, President Barnes had changed tactics and decided he needed her for some purpose.

My one hope was that she was too valuable to harm.

But there were too many ifs in this scenario, and each one felt like it was tearing me apart from the inside, though that was most likely Beast. His frustration and rage mirrored my own, making it harder to hold myself together.

If my insides stayed intact through this ordeal, it would be nothing short of a miracle.