CHAPTER 8

Almost the entire group, including Daniel, had turned to look at the hurt tank.

There was something about the pitch of his voice and his despair that caused a reaction. The hopelessness he had expressed in those words.

“Roberto, we’ll be able to fix that.” Ivey promised.

Roberto ignored her and prodded his ruined foot in disbelief. It was a club like mass. A flash of movement in the corner of his eyeline made Daniel spin back to the true threat.

Blood Drinker screamed a warning at him. Priscilla froze time, and he prayed he was the only one stupid enough to stop focusing on the dangerous perimeter they had set up.

Daniel even with limited vision recognised the tactic the pack of devil dogs had chosen to use this time. They were cunning predators and in the first strike they had announced themselves in an attempt to paralyse their prey in fright. That didn’t work, so for this attempt they had chosen the silent approach to wrench back the ambush advantage.

On him, because of his inattention it had nearly worked. A lucky glimpse and his allies had mostly protected him, but even with time slowed, his body reaction was still unenhanced. He considered engaging speed despite knowing how limited the resource was. His club told him not to, and Daniel accepted the advice. He hadn’t recovered fully from the previous uses, so he needed to watch its use. With Priscilla helping, at the least he had a complete view of the battlefield and if needed Speed was always available for now. He could use his other resources. Electricity had passively gathered on the club. Not much, admittedly, but a little. Then again, a small zap could definitely dissuade a dumb canine. Ever so slowly, his eyes rotated back out to the perimeter to bring his targets into focus. Two of the devil dogs were targeting him. His friend from earlier with its patch of red and a second smaller one but given how a single devil dog had almost won a tug of war against four men Daniel wasn’t about to judge based on size alone.

Boom!

The lightning shot off and struck the smaller dog and then guided by Blood Drinker he swayed back his club held up ready to brain his nemesis if it over committed. He was ready to transition into a devastative blow aided by both speed and strength if the dog gave him an opening.

The second creature recoiled as he had hoped instinctively exiting the battlefield by dashing under the car. That left a single target that had paused just beyond in his range, but it was ready to dive in if it could. He mimed a strike with a small step.

It was the opportunity it was looking for. It dodged to the side before springing forward to claim his foot. Expected, was all Daniel thought. He had not committed to the blow and could easily pull his limb away from harm even while he reversed the weapon once more, restraining his instinct to go for broke at his weapons urging. There would be time for overwhelming power, but not till it was a guaranteed kill.

It tried to retreat, but it had leapt too far forward. Daniel slapped its snout with a club that changed composition at the last moment.

It yelped, retreated and abandoned the battlefield.

Daniel’s eyes flicked from side to side to assess the surrounding situation without leaving the dangerous shadowy sections under the car unobserved for more than a moment. There was chaos around him, but nothing concerning.

A group of seven had run forward to protect someone who had been taken down and almost been dragged away. They looked like they had got him. Elsewhere, the line had collapsed backward and at least two other fighters had hit the ground to escape the dogs. Both of them were pushing back to their feet.

“Get back into formation.” Alex yelled.

The enemy pack retreated once more. Daniel continued to assess it all. There were streaks of blood on the concrete, but none of them extended beyond the well lit area around them. No one had been dragged away yet.

“They’re deadly,” he whispered, but it was not like anyone heard him. They were fast agile and capable of dragging an armoured human.

Defeat felt inevitable, but he didn’t lower his head. They had resisted two feints maybe collectively they could withstand this. He deliberately did not think about the flies above them. They were probably a larger threat especially with a maturing queen.

“Healers, only triage the critical injured and then focus on tanks. Everyone else holds the line. We haven’t won this.”

Won? Daniel mocked the comment in his head. Surely everyone else realised how stuffed they were.

Alex gave no orders to launch a counterattack. Defence was their best option until they knew what they faced. It felt like even with forty highly levelled humans they were outmatched. At least until Daniel got his mana back and could use lightning, or they had rearranged the battlefield into a format that suited them better.

As dangerous as these dogs appeared to be, he was pretty sure they would not survive a full level lightning strike. Even his mini one had disrupted the dog he had hit.

There were a series of thumps on the door to the fire escape. Toby grunted and when Daniel’s flicked over to him. Sweat was running down his face, but the wood and concrete held.

Purple blurs charged toward them. None were directly opposed to Daniel, and the tanks blocked them. In the end, he didn’t even have to lift his club.

They retreated, but it was clear it was temporary. The monsters had started up their yelping and growls. The sounds echoing in the corridor and seemed to come from everywhere. Daniel was sure it was a trick. There couldn’t be that many of them, but they made it sound like they were up against dozens even if the largest strike had contained fewer than ten.

“Thoughts?” Alex asked loudly.

“My lightning should be able to thin them.” Daniel answered immediately.

“Defend for now.” Another person said.

“Let one through,” Ingrid suggested. “Then pin it inside the group till we can kill it.”

“That’s pretty aggressive.” Alex replied.

“Roberto’s foots crushed. He’s out of the fight.” Ingrid responded flatly. “I don’t think our healing is good enough to win in a war of attrition.”

They could see Alex looked strained to come up with a solution.

“We need to kill them.” Daniel interrupted. “Or at the very least, drive them away. The flies are behind us. It’s not like we can retreat.”

“Hold till Daniel gets lightning and then we’ll reassess if that doesn’t turn the fight.” Alex said.

A ring of steel was put in place. It did not deter their enemy. They were in the shadows, yipping and growling and not relenting. Every twenty seconds they would charge and attack from an unexpected angle. Sometimes singularly and other times in a full out assault of up to ten of them and they could come from any direction. Their size worked for them. The shitty Mazda, with its low undercarriage provided a barrier to all the devil dogs, but the two medium-sized cars allowed the smaller monsters to go under them, which meant they needed to defend from that direction. The LandCruiser on the right was a weekender four-wheel drive with a high suspension. It provided no deterrence for the dogs, as even the largest could sprint underneath it. Overall, the nearby cars afforded shelter for the monsters and were a negative for the gathered humans. There was effectively no warning before they attacked.

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Quietly, Daniel eased himself back from the front line into a secondary position. His club glowed with an unearthly luminosity and safe from immediate mauling his mind put the conditions in place for lightning to jump from him in a straight line to a metal drain near the gap between cars directly in front of them. Next time one of them came at them from that angle he would attack.

“Give me space.”

People shifted their eyes, noting the glowing club and recognising the ploy. It was time to take the offense to the hunters.

There were feints from other angels and they were repelled by the usual grunts and none of the screams of pain that had accompanied the first couple of clashes.

Humans were many things and one of them was they were adaptable. It was why they had dominated earth before this magic thing. Humans made the most of their advantages whatever they were.

He almost jumped even though he was expecting it. Directly in front of him, in the spot he was monitoring a dog appeared. It was rushing them. “Lightning,” He yelled his free arm going to cover his eyes as he triggered the power.

Boom!

He dropped his arm and despite his precautions there were still a few bright spots dancing in his eyes.

A devil dog with charred lines across its chest had fallen almost at his feet.

Daniel engaged Speed while his eyes flickered around the battlefield. To his right a clump of fighters was moving to attack a disoriented dog. Apparently, the unexpected noise and light and affected more than the dog he had targeted. There were no points of immediate danger. The three dogs striking from underneath the LandCruiser’s cover were being met as usual by the tanks stationed on that exposed spot. None of them appeared to be troubled by his lightning bolt. They had learnt to shield their eyes at the right moment.

With a savage grin and knowing he was moving so fast, he was a blur to everyone else; he brought the club up over his head and brought it down upon the prone dog with maximum power flexing his Strength ability at the last moment. Having witnessed how tough these things were he wasn’t sure how effective his attack would actually be. After all, the first blow he had landed had almost bounced off it.

The club in his hand distorted. Blood Drinker wanted him to change the angle of the blow, to target the neck as opposed to the skull.

He obliged.

The weapon slammed into the dog and sent vibrations through his arms that made his shoulder joint sting and every other piece of bone between him and the club groan and ache. He yanked the weapon back and blood spurted out from the dog like a coke bottle with a mentos in it. The dog stumbled to its feet and ran away and Daniel expected Blood Drinker to want him to go after it, but there were no such instructions.

The devil dog wobbled, crashed into a car and then fell over dead.

There were cheers. When he looked to his right, the other dog that had been disorientated had died a far more grizzly death. He wasn’t the only one with skills capable of doing damage far beyond human norms.

“No celebrating.” Alex yelled. “There are more of them.”

The whoops of excitement dropped and everyone moved back into defensive positions. Daniel retreated into the centre for safety, which was where he was supposed to be if he was not actively using his magic. He settled right next to Tamara. “I hate this.”

“Me too.” She said fiercely beside him. There was a purple blur to their right, and she extended Mystic Explosion and the dog veered away.

“What are you doing?”

“The sound attack seems to hurt their ears and force them to retreat.”

The monster she had forced back had been heading for a healthy Alex. There was no way Alex would have struggled with it. “Maybe hold off till it looks like someone is about to be overwhelmed.”

Tamara nodded. “I sort of have been. Just using it when it gets to full capacity to gather data. I’ve been testing how weak I can make it and get a response.”

They waited patiently.

Alex rocked backwards slightly as a devil dog slammed into him. This one had sprung at him, forcing him to deflect it at head height. “They’re damn persistent. Daniel was your last hit a thirty percent strike?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll hold till you’re recharged and then press. That’ll give us two extra bolts if they try to counterattack.”

“Fine.”

Eight tense minutes later Daniel once more shifted toward the front of the group. The dogs were adjusting. The attacks were becoming more infrequent, but when they came there was usually what they were guessing was the full pack struck at them as they tried to overwhelm their tenacious defence.

Daniel stood at the front lines with the lightning spell prepared and Priscilla on alert.

Nothing happened.

One minute…

Two minutes… three without an attack.

Five….

“Daniel, they know you’re a threat.” Alex told him. “If you back away can you use your magic?”

“Yes, I might lose a few percent in efficiency.”

“Do it.”

“A moment.” Daniel focused inside of him and connected to the electricity net. If he was shooting over people, he needed to curve the arc above and down. The moment he imagined what he wanted the cost of the spell skyrocketed. Metal piping, presumably some sort of sprinkler system, cris-crossed the garage and when his beams of lightning got too close to them he lost control of some of the energy.

“I need.” Daniel muttered to Alex. “To position over there.” He indicated with his head.

“Do it.” Alex ordered.

Daniel shuffled to the new spot and set up the change of his attack vector. The lightning would go up over everyone’s head and then down like a bolt from the sky’s onto a devil dog. From his new spot, he had around a parking space size he could strike without escalating cost. “I’m ready.”

He took a cautious step backwards. Alex slid in front of him.

There was a blur of movement but the moment he saw the first flash of purple out of the corner of his eye he activated speed and Priscilla did likewise.

Everything slowed down to let him target his spell accurately. The devil dogs, in terms of raw speed, were almost moving as fast as the flies. It was extraordinary to see them in slow motion. Their entire body was ripped with straining muscles, plus magic crackled over their limbs. They looked like a slightly too large Jack Russell that a four-year-old had assaulted with purple paint.

There were seven attacking from the side Daniel faced. Daniel thrust his club up as high as it could even as the calculations to get his lightning to work finished. He picked his target a group of three clustered together that was hitting their left tank near the wall. The path of lightning was a horizontal line along the roof and then straight down while splitting into three at the last moment to strike all of them.

Boom!

With speed activated, he stepped to the right away from the ones his lightning was going to disable. The other four dogs were all aiming to hit the front of the line, and there were only three tanks to meet them. Two devils leapt through the air. Another low and the fourth aimed for the gap between Alex and the tank next to him. Alex and the furthest tank were forced to lift their shields to deflect the flying brutes.

That one targeting the gap was going to get through.

Daniel golf swung his mind and club, calculating and agreeing on angles. The devil dogs had obviously calculated how fast humans could move and it thought itself safe and focused exclusively on its target a spearman who Daniel had seen show surprising skill against the flies and may have made the earlier kill. A warrior who was currently exposed as his spear was angling upwards to try to pierce the dog that was hurtling at Alex. Positioning himself to do maximum damage like the second layer fighter was supposed to and trusting that the tanks would stop the enemies from getting through.

The mutt’s mouth closed on the spearman’s ankle at the same time as Daniel’s club boosted with all of his speed and strength collided with its ribs. The dog tossed its head, yanking the spear man off his feet even as its ribs broke under the sheer brutality of his swing. The rear quarters of the dog lifted off the ground and it had probably planned to stop and try to drag its victim out, but instead it found itself airborne and had no choice but to let go of the badly mangled leg.

It was in the air, which meant it couldn’t adjust its trajectory. The club screamed orders and his speed far exceeded mortal limits. Daniel transitioned into a double handed wood cutting chop, which caught the animal just as its feet touched the ground. The club trembled and was converted into something closer to a pickaxe than a club, but the point rammed down onto muscle shoulders and penetrated. With a crash, it hit the ground impaled by Daniel’s weapon. He had expected the club to try to grow within the other animal, but no such action occurred. Instead, Blood Drinker wanted him to pull.

He did so and disrupted the animal’s attempt to get to its feet. The spike did not slide out, which was presumably a deliberate decision by Blood Drinker. He was instructed to reverse direction and put his weight down on the dog.

He did so

His sudden shift robbed the dog of coordination and caused it to scramble on his feet.

Weapons glowing with power hit it from all sides. A spear somehow went straight through the dog’s hindquarters like it wasn’t the solid metal it had felt like whenever Daniel had hit it. An axe strike was less successful on the head, bouncing off the monster’s skull. But a sword slid into the creature’s ribs. Another axe took off half a leg, and a spear impaled it in the back from the other side.

The club sent another instruction and Daniel responded, pulled hard, which had the effect of stopping it dead as it tried to jump away from him. The weapons descended again, and he felt satisfaction radiate from Blood Drinker. And he pulled it out and looked around, puffing slightly.

The dogs where he had launched the lightning had survived, but they had not got away unscathed. A significant amount of blood filled that area and the five fighters clumped in the position all had blood on the weapons. The devil dogs retreated. One had a skin patch larger than his hand flapping. Another a shattered jaw and the last had its leg as good as torn off.

A third dead, one maimed and at least two others injured. It was a rising total. A few more skirmishes like this and they could go on the offensive..

“Good job, but focus.” Alex ordered. “We haven’t won this yet.”