novelraw Chapter 371: Need Them To Break
Chapter 371: Need Them To Break
Some of the Saint Eaters started shouting to each other.
"Go for the leader!"
"Take out the crazy one!"
"Hit the one with the ice!"
They had started to understand who did what, and Alexei couldn’t help but bite back a curse as it gave the stupid men a second wind.
Three of them rushed him at once.
He fired at the first and dropped him. The second reached him and Alexei was forced to block the knife with his forearm.
The blade cut into his skin, but ice formed in the wound and pushed it out. He grabbed the man’s wrist, twisted, and broke it before he shot him in the head.
The third man charged from the side. Alexei ducked, drove his shoulder into the man’s stomach, and threw him onto the ice. The man slid, hit the wall, and lay still.
His pistol felt lighter.
He looked down. Two rounds left.
The street was louder now. Men were shouting over each other. Engines revved and stalled. Fire crackled. Trucks burned. The smell of fuel, rubber, blood, and burned cloth mixed into one heavy stink.
Another truck, this one not on fire yet, tried to push through the wreckage and reach the center where they stood. The driver went over a fallen bike and kept going. The truck was going to hit Sera from behind.
"Behind you," Alexei roared trying to get to her before she was hurt.
Sera turned just enough to look over her shoulder to see what was going on.
But she didn’t run away.
Instead, she stepped toward the truck, grabbed the edge of the hood with both hands, and braced.
Her feet dug into the pavement.
The truck slowed.
Its tires spun.
The driver yelled.
And Sera snarled, pulled, and the hood bent.
She climbed up and tore the driver’s side door off. She pulled the driver out and threw him under his own wheels.
The truck rolled forward without him and hit a burning bike before coming to a complete stop.
The men in the back jumped down to fight on foot.
Alexei shot one. Then his pistol clicked empty.
He dropped it.
He flexed his fingers. Ice formed over his knuckles and along his forearms. It was solid, not decorative, like armor made of the element instead of metal.
Satisfied, he stepped forward.
Lachlan saw him and grinned, sweat and blood on his face. "Now we do it the hard way."
"Technically, it’s the easy way," Alexei said. "No need to reload."
He met the first Saint Eater with a punch. The man managed to block it, so Alexei hit him again.
Ice on his fist split the man’s eyebrow and dropped him. A second tried to swing a crowbar. Alexei caught it, froze it, and shattered it, leaving only the metal handle. He drove that into the man’s throat.
More men came in behind them. There was no longer a clear front line. It had become a circle. The five of them in the middle, Saint Eaters all around.
Zubair stepped back toward them. "Close in."
They did.
Sera came in from the far side, blood up to her elbows. Lachlan shifted to the left. Elias stayed slightly behind them so he could heal without getting pinned. Alexei and Zubair took the front.
The Saint Eaters tried to rush them at once.
The first wave hit Zubair’s fire and Alexei’s ice.
Zubair sent a flat sheet of flame at knee height. It burned legs and forced them to jump or fall. Alexei froze the ground so that the ones who jumped landed hard and slipped. Lachlan finished those.
Sera took the ones who pushed through anyway.
But for every ten that fell, twenty more appeared.
Gunfire from the rear lines stopped being precise. Men at the back just fired in their direction, hoping to hit something. Bullets hit their own men more than the five in the center.
"Idiots," Rourke spat from the ground. He was still alive, arm gone, shirt burned through. He couldn’t stand, but he could still shout. "Spread out! Surround them! Stop shooting her! We want her alive. The General wants to see what all the fuss is about."
His men tried.
The ones at the edges began to move to the buildings, to the alleys, to the far side of the rail line. They wanted to circle around and come in from behind, where Zubair’s fire wasn’t reaching.
Alexei saw them. "Right flank," he said.
"I have it," Elias said.
He pulled a small pistol from his belt, one he hadn’t used yet, and fired at the men trying to move around. He hit three. Then that pistol ran dry too. He tossed it aside.
"That’s it," he said. "I’m out."
"Same," Lachlan said. He looked at his rifle, then threw it at the nearest Saint Eater like a club. It hit the man in the face and dropped him. Lachlan rolled his shoulders. Lightning crawled down to his hands again. "Come on, then."
Zubair breathed hard. "You can still leave," he called to the Saint Eaters. "Walk away."
Not one of them moved, although a few of them did scoff.
Some of them were afraid of the General. Some were angry. Some wanted to be the one who brought back one of the five. Some just wanted to see if these five could be killed.
They rushed forward again.
This time they hit all sides at once.
Alexei stepped forward to meet them.
He swung his arm. Ice spread in a wide arc at waist height. It hit the first six men and froze parts of them solid.
Lachlan punched the frozen parts and broke them. Sera went low, swept a man’s legs, and tore his throat out when he fell.
Zubair lit another group, but his fire flickered at the edges. He was still burning, but not like at the start.
Elias moved through them, touching the five whenever he could, keeping wounds from reopening.
He slapped a hand on Lachlan’s ribs and sealed a hole.
He touched Zubair’s shoulder and slowed the bleeding.
He gripped Alexei’s arm where a round had made it through the ice and closed it. He did it without stopping, even while men swung at him.
Sera pulled one of those men off him and broke his spine.
And still, the pressure did not let up.
More trucks reached the outer edge of the burning wreckage and stopped. Men got out and came on foot. The street could not hold any more vehicles. It barely held the bodies already there.
"Zubair," Alexei said.
"I know."
"We won’t hold like this forever."
"We don’t need forever," Zubair said. "We just need them to break."