Ch 26

Official Report
The Downing Building
New Hebron, California

The girl sashayed across the chamber, moving towards the agent her hips swaying and a coy little smile on her face. Had Amelia, not known who lurked behind those eyes she might have found the display arousing. Chemosh had pinned her against the wall and she was at his mercy.

Chemosh stopped standing inches from the agent and leaned in locking her lips around Amelia’s and closed her eyes. Amy remained frozen, locking her lips closed ensuring that the kiss was one-sided. She would not play into whatever game the once-god was playing.

She frowned and brought her lips away, but pressed her chest into Amy’s. “You know, there would have been a time I would have been perplexed by someone like you. Taking hormones, and transforming yourself into a facsimile of a woman, even undergoing drastic surgical procedures at the hand of your clumsy human doctors. The more time I spend wearing the skin of such a ripe young female, the more I appreciate human appetites.”

Amelia remained silent, she heard a gurgle from beside her, but trapped in Chemosh’s mental grip she couldn’t even turn her head. She was certain that the sound must have originated from Awẹ́, but she no idea what had prompted it. She hoped that he was still alive and kicking. She gritted her teeth and eyed the young woman pressed into her chest before allowing herself to speak.

“What the hell is it you want?” She asked her voice trembling as she forced out each syllable.

Chemosh spun away, turned her back to the exemplar and stepped forward a few steps. She glanced back at Amy over her shoulders and smiled. She ran her hands down her body before cupping her hands over her breasts and let out a long sigh. “I can give you this. I can sense the desire deep within you. You might play at being happy with your current form, but I know better. Deep within you there is this nagging voice that wants more. With my help you could experience the joys of carrying a child within you.”

“And you’ll just do this for me out of the goodness of your own heart?” Amy replied between gritted teeth.

“Oh, Agent, of course not. You humans can are so deluded. There is nothing you people do unless it benefits yourselves. Suffice it to say if you join me I will give you everything you ever wanted.”

She turned back to the agent before turning back and leveling her gaze on her. “I believe we would benefit from such an alliance.”

“And I believe you would benefit from my connections within AEGIS or my influence over Sapphira.”

“I believe we’ve already established that my motives are not selfless, but that’s not to say you can’t benefit,” she leaned in and locked her lips around Amy’s. The agent clamped her mouth shut again, but this time she felt something stir inside.

Chemosh had struck a cord and while she’d put on a good show of resisting the offer the truth she saw the allure. She felt his power. The ability to strike down a perp with a simple wave of a hand, to sense within the mind of would be criminals and stop them before they could hurt anyone.

This time the agent returned the kiss. She shuddered experiencing a yearning the like of which she had ever experienced. Amelia wanted this girl, with a wild animal passion. Why shouldn’t she? All her life she had kept herself in check, never acting on her more wild impulses. Hailey, was a very attractive girl.

Hailey.

Amy jerked her head back and broke contact with the other woman. She had almost forgotten herself. The face he was looking upon did not belong to Chemosh, but rather Sapphira’s granddaughter. Hailey was a prisoner within her own body, unable to talk or move. Helpless to do anything but watch through her own eyes as the alien entity lied, seduced, and murdered dozens of innocent victims.

Amelia’s stomach heaved and she tasted vomit. This was the being she had come so close to giving in. Even if Chemosh didn’t betray her, the price would be her soul. Her whole body sagged as the once-god pulled away. Hailey’s soft featured contorted into a grotesque scowl and the agent gasped for air.

Chemosh narrowed her eyes and gritted her teeth. “I could have shown you pleasures the like of which no living mortal has experienced, but you had to make this difficult didn’t you? You are of no further use.”

Amy’s lungs burne, her concentration slipped and her senses dulled. Her eyelids were heavy, and she thought maybe, she’d take a nap. She closed her eyes and drifted away.

“Chemosh!” A voice rang through the open air and Amy’s eyes snapped open just before she slammed to the ground. Air flooded back into her lungs and as she came back to her senses, she looked up.

Sapphira hovered in the air across from Chemosh fists balled at his sides.

Amy knew it had been the other exemplar who’d freed her. She glanced over her shoulder and found Babalawo’s inert form resting on the ground a few feet away. She could not see if his chest was rising and falling from where she lay. Still dazed from Chemosh’s attack Amy didn’t yet have the strength to check him for signs of life.

The agent returned her attention to Sapphira and Chemosh, but neither had moved. They hovered opposite one another, fists clenched at their side and gazes locked. She frowned and creased her brows. A gasp escape her lips as she realized what she was seeing. It was not a conventional battle which they fought, but instead a contest of minds.

Amy grunted and pushed herself up with her elbows. She crawled on the ground toward Babalawo. Unwilling to distract Sapphira or to bring Chemosh’s wrath down on her, she moved at a snails pace, but she found herself within arms reach of the other exemplar. She slipped a hand over his neck, checking for a pulse, and found one. She shook his arm, but the Awẹ́ did not stir.

“Goddamnit,” she cursed under her breath. When she realized that she’d spoken aloud Amelia winced and craned her neck around. Neither Chemosh nor Sapphira seemed to have heard her.

Amy frowned and watched the pair. What was she supposed to do? She considered drawing her weapon and unloading the clip into Hailey’s body, but robbed of his host Chemosh would only take control of another body. If only she…

There was a rumble, and Amelia’s head jerked to the side her eyes roving the room for the source and found it as another thump resounded through the chamber. “What now?” she mouthed under her breath and drew her weapon training it on the section of the wall from which the sound was coming.

Several more thuds, and the wall gave way revealing a familiar misshapen hulk.

“This just gets better and better,” Amy muttered under her breath before scrambling to her feet to face the newcomer.

Official Report
The Downing Building
New Hebron, California

Harrier watched Psyren descending the elevator shaft and gritted her teeth. She turned back to the unconscious form of Aether and hot tears stung her eyes. She wasn’t one for such displays of emotion, but Gus was the love of her life. Though small and diminutive for a man he had shown himself an able warrior.

She had remained with Aether rather than continue on with Psyren. She feared moving him, but neither would she risk leaving him there. He would die if his wounds were untended. She moved toward the hole in the wall left by the giant and peered down.

What she saw below was what she had expected. The giant’s remains rested within a crater, no doubt left by his impact. AEGIS personnel and their exemplar allies were doing battle against the Gallu, but while she had superior eyesight, much like her namesake, amidst the chaos of battle she could not determine which side was winning. One thing was for certain, the Gallu were formidable creatures, their defeat would come at great cost to the fighters below.

Harrier squared her jaw and glanced back at Aether her mind already made up. She moved across the chamber and lifted him from the ground. Careful not to injure him, she cradled his head in her arms and walked back to the edge. Unnerved as she always was when diving from such a height, she closed her eyes, and leapt from the precipice. As the wind whipped around her, she let out a primal war cry. For the briefest of moments she let a smile touch her lips, caught up in the joys of flight, but as her eyelids flicked back open and the battle below snapped into focus her smile turned to a scowl.

Garos had risen from the crater and was fighting off Indigo Knight, Borrum, Tennyo and the Equalizer. Harrier wasn’t certain why the latter three hadn’t made it into the building, but seeing them set her nerves on edge. She gritted her teeth and swooped down toward the outer edge of the fighting where ambulances and other emergency vehicles had gathered.

She touched down beside an AEGIS ambulance identified by its color, a brilliant fluorescent green, where a pair of medics were already treating wounded AEGIS personnel. Her interference might mean death for their patients. So she waited. Harrier stood there just far enough to stay out of their way and turned her attention back to the fighting.

Garos swung the back of his fist sending Borrum reeling away. Borrum face did a face plant into the concrete and didn’t get back up. Harrier had seen the other exemplar in action once before and knew the man possessed superior endurance and strength. The ease of his defeat did not bode well for the others. Tennyo and Indigo Knight didn’t miss a beat, they dove forward, the former slicing into him with a pair of short swords and the other blasting him with an energy weapon that had come blasting out of his forearm.

Harrier sensed movement and turned, cursing herself under her breath for letting herself become distracted. A slender man in all black EMT garb stopped a few feet away and eyed Harrier with raised arms and opened palms. “Easy, I’m here to help.”

She gritted her teeth and scowled realizing that she had struck a defensive pose. She let out a long sigh and glanced toward the ambulance. “He’s been injured. Get a stretcher.”

The EMT scrambled away returning, with another medic in tow and collapsible stretcher on wheels. As the pair loaded Gus up, they grilled Harrier on his medical history and on anything ‘special’ about his anatomy. Though, Aether was a powerful exemplar in his own respect, he had no abilities or traits that would interfere with standard medical practices. She answered in the negative and gripped the rail of the stretcher before they were able to wheel him away.

“Promise me, that you’ll do everything you can for him,” she said and the second EMT, a woman smiled and touched her shoulder. There she saw understanding mirrored in the other woman’s eyes. She was no psychic, but she sensed that the woman also had someone for whom she cared. A woman could always tell.

“We’ll do what we can,” though the words had a certain degree uncertainty tied to them, the exemplar saw she was leaving her lover in good hands.

She nodded and watched the pair wheeled Gus away before she lurched forward and took off running. That did little to assuage her worry, but she would not stand by while others fought and died around her.

She let out a high-pitched war cry, soared into the air, extended her talons and dove toward the battle. She pounced on a nearby Gallu, and it shrieked as her claws raked its side. The wound was only superficial, and the creature lurched forward passing through the exemplar’s chest as she dove in for another attack.

She spun around to face her opponent and lashed out again. This time slashing through the Gallu’s face with her talons. It shriek and did a nose dive to the ground collapsing into a puddle of the same green goo that the creatures left as residue all over the place. She did not linger to see if she had finished it off or inflicted serious injury. Instead, she took off running moving toward the hulking form of Garos who was pounding both fists into the building’s side with no sign of resistance.

Borrum and Tennyo lay on the ground. Harrier wasn’t sure if they were dead or unconscious, but she feared the worst. Neither Indigo Knight nor the Equalizer were in sight. She wasn’t aquainted with either, but the former’s reputation was that of a valiant warrior. She doubted that man in the mechanized suit would have fled the fight. She knew nothing of the latter, but he didn’t strike her as coward either.

The giant sure seemed to want into the building. She didn’t understand his reasons, but she damn well needed to stop him. She gritted her teeth and rushed forward, but it was already too late. The wall fell away before him and the giant wasted no time lurching into the opening.

Harrier was about to follow him in when she spotted something approaching in the distance. She cursed under her breath and dove forward dodging an incoming attack from a Gallu. She slashed at it and cursed as it lurched toward the ground sailing past her outstretched talons. The creature plunged toward her, but then it paused in the open air letting out a high-pitched screech almost as if it were in pain. Before Harrier had the opportunity to take advantage of the beast’s disorientation, there was a bright flash of light and it exploded in a shower of green slime.

She sensed movement, turned to face the newcomer and looked upon the armored form of Indigo Knight. “I imagine that thing blowing up was your work?”

“I crammed a remote grenade down its gullet a few minutes ago. Wasn’t able to detonate it before Garos sent me on a ride across town.” The armored vigilante spoke and glanced into the hole left by the giant.

He didn’t speak, but rather stood there motionless. Harrier could not guess what the man was thinking, but she would not wait to find out. “Are you going in or not?”

Indigo Knight turned his helmeted head and gazed upon the exemplar. “If I do, Chemosh will sense me. He will know I am there. He might already. My presence will inflame him. He is unpredictable at the best of times, but if I go into that building I fear he may well level the entire block just to spite me.”

Harrier scowled and gritted her teeth. “And if you stay out here and do nothing. He might do it anyway. Psyren, and whoever the hell else in there needs our help. Are you telling me you will stay out here because you fear what might happen?”

Instead of waiting for an answer Harrier lurched into motion slipping into the building through the hole Garos had just created.

Indigo Knight watched her disappear inside. She was right to call him out, but still he hesitated. If there was one thing he’d learned over the millennia, family stirred up a lot of complicated feelings and time did not seem to diminish them. Millenia ago he would have found such sentiments foolish, but that had been when he still called himself Moloch.