The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (45 page)

Ashlyn pressed her hands up
against the glass, heart sinking as she surveyed the lines of ninjas crossing
the cliffs below. Kou’s troops were moving towards Toryn, and although their
ranks had thinned significantly after the two attacks yesterday, there were
still more than enough soldiers to potentially overpower the inexperienced
Toryn army.

“Crap,” she muttered.

“That’s one way to put it,” Aaron
observed.

“We can’t take my dad to Toryn,
not with them so close,” Ashlyn said, glancing over at the pilot. “Can’t
you…can’t you just drop me off and take him to Cosmea?”

“Already talked to Skye about
that last night,” Aaron replied. “He said Cosmea’s the first place Devlyn’s
gonna look.”

She bit her lip. He was right,
and Kou had been to Cosmea once before so he was already aware of the layout.
“Skye thinks we should move my dad somewhere…what, out of the way or
something?”

“Somewhere they’re not gonna
think to look for him.”

“Somewhere like…North Camp?”
Ashlyn said, picking the most obscure location that popped into her head. “Do
they have healers there?”

“Sara’s not leavin’ him. He’ll
have whatever healin’ there is to be got from her.” Aaron scratched his chin,
chewing thoughtfully on his cigarette. “North Camp ain’t such a bad idea, kid.
I could take ya both there, keep them from gettin’ anymore of your blood. It
ain’t likely they’ll track you there, either.”

“I can’t leave FLD here to fight
alone,” she protested hotly. “You can drop me at the city and head for North
Camp. I’m not running away.”

“I’ll go with you,” Vargo spoke
up from behind her.

She turned to see both Drake and
Vargo standing there. Vargo tapped his electro-baton against his thigh,
trademark smirk affixed on his lips, looking more like his usual sarcastic
self.

“The Toryn army can use all the
help it can get,” Ashlyn said, “but I hate to ask you guys to put your lives on
the line. There are gonna be a lot more
shift
monsters down there than there were last time.”

They acted as though she hadn’t
spoken. “We’ll need to destroy the
shift
stanes
after this is over,” Drake said. “You and your father will be targets, for your
blood, for as long as the magic is in existence.”

“Might as well start with that
one,” Vargo said, motioning with his baton to Ashlyn.

She frowned. “What?”

“The stane in your armlet,” Vargo
said. “It’s
shift,
right? Let’s get
rid of it now, before the battle. You don’t want it getting back into Kou’s
hands.”

She opened her mouth to respond,
then closed it. Hmm. She didn’t really feel comfortable giving up
shift
. It had saved her life in the
forest.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea
just yet,” she said at length. “I had to use it in the forest when I was
attacked by some other ninjas, and then again when I was in the cave with Kou.
I might have died without it.”

“Dangerous magic, Ash,” Aaron
spoke up. “Shape-shifting ain’t natural.”

“But it kind of is, for me. I
mean, it felt really natural. I wasn’t in pain and I was in total control of
myself even when I was in animal form. I think maybe the craziness and the
addiction just comes from the…the dishonest part of what Kou’s doing. Injecting
with blood because he’s not really a Li, and all that. I feel fine.”

“You don’t feel addicted?” Vargo
asked.

“Of course not.”

“Then you won’t mind if we
destroy the stane.”

Ashlyn rolled
 
her eyes. “Be serious, Vargo. I’m telling you
that there’s no need to destroy it. That magic could really come in handy for
me in the next hour or two.”

“Or it could snare you even
further under its spell,” Drake said. “You agreed that it was necessary to
destroy
shift,
Ashlyn. What has
changed?”

“That was before I used it,” she
retorted, and paused, considering her answer. After watching Tag transform in
her basement, she had sworn to destroy
shift,
but that had been…before.

Was this what the beginnings of
addiction felt like?

She reached over and pulled the
stane from her armlet, staring down at the gem with some trepidation. Drake was
right, of course. For as long as
shift
existed,
there was always a danger that someone like Kou would try to steal Li blood so
they could wield the magic.

She still remembered her reasons
for wanting to destroy it. Those had not changed.

Reluctantly, she held
shift
out to Vargo.

He took the stane and put it on
the control table, then raised his baton above his head and widened his stance,
ready to smash the glittering gem.

“Wait!” Ashlyn said, hardly aware
that she was saying the word until it had already passed her lips. She took a
step forward, but Drake stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

Vargo brought the baton down hard
on the stane, shattering it into a dozen pieces, and she flinched, acutely
aware of the sudden loss of power, feeling the broken magic dissipate within
her.

There was a long silence
following her exclamation. Ashlyn stood very still, trying to make sense of the
conflicted emotions within her.

“I don’t know if I was addicted,”
she said.

“Better safe than sorry,” Aaron
said, moving to the helm. “I ain’t gonna land in the city, we don’t got the
time.”

“We’ll use the rope ladder,”
Ashlyn said. She shook her head, trying to clear it. Whatever had happened with
the
shift
magic, addicted or not, she
felt very strange now that it was gone.

As Aaron maneuvered the airship
to hover directly over Toryn, Ashlyn briefly considered saying goodbye to her
dad, but thought better of it. He was probably still unconscious, and she
didn’t have any time to spare.

She was still wearing her gloves,
fortunately, and as she climbed onto the first rung of the violently whipping
ladder, she looked down, estimating how much of a jump it would be.

It was too far down to just let
go, but she could slide a bit. Ashlyn kicked her feet off the rung and relaxed
her hands. Without letting go completely, she let the ladder slip through her
fingers and allowed herself to slide towards the ground. The wind whipped her
hair around her face and the palms of her gloves warmed to an almost unbearable
heat from the friction, but Ashlyn’s concentration was firmly focused on the
ground below, trying to gauge the distance.

At last she tightened her grip on
the ladder, and came to an unceremonious, abrupt halt. The sudden stop felt
like it almost yanked her arms out of her socket, and Ashlyn grimaced as she
found the next rung with her feet. Maybe sliding down wasn’t such a great idea
after all.

Climbing down the last two rungs,
she stepped off the ladder and looked up to see Drake and Vargo making their
way down, much slower and more carefully than she had. Ha. Wimps.

“Ash!” Restlyn enveloped her in a
hug. “Are you okay? Where’s your father?”

Ashlyn returned the hug and
looked around, curious at the empty state of the city streets. “He’s on the
ship, still,” she said. “Aaron’s not going to set down. My dad’s gonna be okay,
but he needs major medical attention, and it’s too risky to keep him here.
Where is Skye?”

“Right here,” Skye said from her
right. He nodded to Vargo as the Spartan stepped off the ladder, followed
shortly by Drake.

The crew began pulling the ladder
up, and Ashlyn waved to them, her heart in her throat. They had her dad’s life
in their hands, and she was letting them leave without her. But he would be far
safer in North Camp, especially considering they had mere moments before Kou’s
army attacked.

“Did you kill Kou last night?”
she asked Skye as the airship departed.

The blond shook his head, his
dark glasses obscuring his eyes. “No way to know for sure.”

“I’ve heard that before,” she
muttered. “Kou’s troops are on their way. Almost here, in fact.”

“Ellis and Aik are coordinating
the army behind the- well, behind what’s left of the pagoda,” Restlyn said.
“Skye and I got everyone else inside. We were going to head back to help the
soldiers.”

Ashlyn looked back, seeing the
first of the black cats scaling the city walls. They were already pacing the
top, looking for a way down. “There’s no time,” she said. “When will the army
be ready?”

“Thirty seconds, maybe,” Skye
said, drawing his sword. “They were distributing weapons when we left them.”

“Not fast enough,” Vargo snapped.

Ashlyn reached back and grabbed
her sword. Her heart was pounding, but she refused to let her nervousness show.
“Are you telling me a Spartan can’t stay alive for thirty seconds until
reinforcements arrive?”

“You challenging me, princess?”
He tossed a grin over his shoulder as he faced the walls, baton at the ready.

“Just wondering if you’re going
to turn tail and run,” she retorted, “Not like you’ve ever done
that
before…on the metro tracks…in
Endro.”

“Hey now,” he complained. “Low
blow!”

“Less talking, more ass-kicking,
Spartan!” Ashlyn rushed forward, watching keenly as one of the cats jumped from
the top of the wall to the crow’s nest and began bounding down the stairs. Her
adrenaline hadn’t quite kicked in yet, but she still knew that being on the
offensive was a better idea than waiting for the cats to come to her. She met
the panther at the base of the stairs and dove into a roll as the cat jumped at
her. Ashlyn came up onto her feet and spun, casting an
ice
spell on the ground and sending the feline sliding. Vargo was
there to intercept where the ice patch ended, cracking his baton down on the
panther’s head with one swift movement.

Ashlyn charged up the stairs,
determined to stop the rest of the cats before they reached the ground. From
the corner of her eye she saw one cat jump to the ground from the top of the
wall- a risky move, considering how high the wall was- but there was nothing
she could do about that now. She’d just have to leave it to FLD to deal with
that one.

Three of the cats were already
departing the crow’s nest, and one began running towards her when it saw her
advancing. Ashlyn jumped up onto the railing and ran up the thin beam like a
tightrope, waiting until the cat was almost upon her before she launched
herself into a flip, slicing cleanly through the animal’s spine in mid-air. A
second cat lunged at her, and Ashlyn danced sideways, deflecting the cat’s
claws with her sword. She spun in a roundhouse kick, catching the panther on
the side of the head and knocking it over the railing.

The third cat was hanging back,
seemingly wary of jumping into the fray. Ashlyn yanked her knife from its
sheath on her thigh and flung it sideways. The cat drew back, snarling, but
didn’t move fast enough, and the knife embedded itself in the creature’s
shoulder. Ashlyn didn’t give it any time for recovery, dashing towards it and
leaping into a flip kick that brought the back of her boot down hard on the
cat’s head.

The black panther collapsed
against the staircase, either unconscious or dead, as Ashlyn scrambled to her
feet again. She jerked the knife out of the fallen creature’s shoulder, slid it
back into its sheath and continued up the stairs. It hadn’t occurred to her
before, but if she could get onto the wall, it might be possible for her to
hold the cats off for at least a little while with her stanes. She wasn’t sure
if the bears were able to climb, but she hadn’t seen any on the walls yet, so
it seemed unlikely.

A loud
boom
shook the crow’s nest as she entered it, and Ashlyn grabbed
the railing for support. The vibration had shaken the entire city. Kou’s army
was trying to break down the gates. Ashlyn looked over her shoulder, and
breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the Toryn army advancing. Skye and Restlyn
were already shouting orders to the troops, readying themselves to intercept
any cats that jumped down from the walls and defend themselves if the rest of
the monsters did manage to break through the gate.

She turned back to the wall, and
steadied herself before taking a running leap. She jumped up onto the crow’s
nest railing and used it to launch herself into the air.

She landed on top of the wall
just as another impact shook the heavy wood slats. Ashlyn lost her grip and
slid off the opposite side, but managed to catch herself before she fell off by
stabbing the knife into the wall for purchase. Grunting from the effort, she
dragged herself back over the edge, taking a moment as she regained her balance
to look down at the army outside Toryn.

There were perhaps forty
creatures milling about below, far more than she’d expected after the
devastation of the two attacks that she had made with Skye and Drake. Most of
them were bears, but there were a few snarling cats who were steadily climbing
the wall. Ashlyn blasted one with
fire,
and
smiled in grim satisfaction as the panther fell to the ground. She didn’t
typically take pleasure in hurting others, but after watching what they had
done to her father, she couldn’t bring herself to feel an ounce of sympathy for
these monsters.