SNAFU: Hunters

She nodded, pulling her hair back into a quick braid to keep it out of her face, baring the tattoos that arched over her left ear. “A human. A woman who knows the conjuration, to affect the aethyr and achieve Kalfou. Crossroads.”

“Crossroads?” Tighe asked, not taking his eyes from the road as he floored the accelerator.

“The rift,” she said.

“Shit.”

At the rate they were traveling, Tighe nearly overshot the turn onto the overgrown track. Expertly he downshifted and turned the wheel, rocking the truck onto two tires before sliding off the pavement and onto the new trajectory. Sig followed in the second vehicle, managing not to be quite so reckless and so fell behind a bit.

“Where are they?” Tighe called into a radio.

A moment later, Bronze replied. “Tchaz says they’re at the far southwest edge of the meadow.”

“Got it.”

While Tighe drove as fast as he could through the rough terrain, Rakehall handed Vida her rifle and readied his own weapons. As soon as the truck slid to a stop, they were both out and headed toward the clearing. Sig slammed to a halt behind them, and Esfir raced by the humans, a silver-grey streak amongst the trees. Bronze caught up quickly, his blade prosthesis making his gait uneven but fast.

“There,” Tchaz called, and Vida caught a glimpse of Kai through the trees. She veered, heading for the girl with Tchaz and Sig on her heels. The other men all went past, spreading out and aiming to reach the edge of the meadow at different places.

“Where’s Nate?” Vida asked, crouching low beside Kai when she reached her. The young girl was shaking, and there were scrapes on her hands that oozed blood. Two gashes raked her right upper arm, but she held her pistol at the ready.

Kai nodded toward the clearing just beyond where they’d met her.

The man stood near the middle of the meadow with his weapon seated against his shoulder. There was blood on his arms and upper back, and Faina held her ground beside him with her shoulders hunched and tail lashing. She wailed; a high-pitched warning to something they couldn’t see. Behind them on the ground was the misshapen corpse of something that had no right to have ever been alive.

While they watched, something pulled itself through an invisible rip in the air. It wasn’t a ’ponera or belos’; it wasn’t like anything they’d seen before. It was sinuous, moving as though boneless, and three sets of appendages gripped the edge of the rift as though for purchase.

“What the–” Sig breathed, and then the shooting began.

Harris fired repeatedly, but the thing coming through the rift only moved faster. It squeezed through, casting to the left as another behemoth began to pull itself into the world. Tighe, Bronze and Rakehall came out of the trees then, maneuvering around Harris to fire at the monsters emerging from the portal. Esfir raced to her sister, and together the two Cobalts launched themselves at the first creature. Like dancing smoke, they evaded its tentacle-like arms, biting and clawing at its dappled black hide.

Kai and Tchaz leaned their heads together for a moment, and Vida wondered, not for the first time, if they could communicate with each other through their links to the Cobalts. Then the girls entered the clearing, obviously going to the aid of their feline charges.

The second thing had completely emerged, and a third was on its way through when Sig and Vida joined the others in the fray. The battle seemed like a fever dream, held as it was in the pristine meadow beneath a vault of cloudless blue sky. Vida moved her hands on her weapon to activate it, and caught back a cry of pain and frustration. The damage to her implants was greater than she’d thought; she was unable to activate the tech in the rifle. Useless, except as a club, she dropped it in the flower-dotted grass and raced toward the rift. From her belt she pulled a 1911 pistol with her right hand, a double-edged knife with her left.

For her, the day slowed. Sunlight fell like warm golden syrup, a sweet weight against the crown of her head and the points of her shoulders. The Bani moved sedately, flashes splintering the air as bullets erupted from their weapons. The Cobalts, living sculptures of steel and brushed pewter, danced between the wide-flung limbs of the creature out of nightmare. Blood, a deep ichor more black than red, sprayed in sparkling droplets as they bit and clawed their adversary. Tighe and Bronze were shooting at the second beast, aiming for its multiple eyes, while Harris and Rakehall concentrated on the third still attempting to breach the eldritch doorway.

Vida joined them, firing into the rift, hoping to keep the creature from coming through. The bullets seemed to have little effect, and she wished for the exploding rounds from her useless rifle. The monsters were screaming, bellowing, the sound so deep it made the ground shake. Long feet with prehensile toes dug into the floor of the meadow, keeping it from being blown back into its own world.