If you like music while you read, try "World So Cold" by 12 Stones. It's what I was listening to while writing this chapter.historical

*****

GAR

The masking around the human army flickered and then died.

Gar didn't breathe, waiting for it to go back up. But two breaths later, it still hadn't.

Then Rika screamed and his heart exploded.

Gar didn't even think. He pushed up on his knees, blowing the horn for attack, and the Anima, who he prayed had had enough time to circle the humans, all rose from their hiding places—the Guards shifted, and started running into the shocked humans. The Protectors hung back two seconds, then scrambled forward, staying low to avoid notice and try to sneak among the humans while they were distracted.

With a roar, Gar leaped into his lion and galloped into the fray, vowing he would find her, or die trying.

Despite the bare beginning of dawn, it seemed like there was light everywhere—blinding cones of white light that made his eyes ache broken and flashing only when a panicked form ran through them.

The scents were overwhelming—how had they hidden this?—then as suddenly s they'd appeared, there was a strange hum in the air that raised every hair on his body, and everything went black. Though his lion eyes could still see, Gar was left blinking away flash-blindness as he ran. Everything else in the low morning light looked suddenly dark behind the eerie green glow that mimicked the flash he'd just seen.

The humans, however, began to scream and moan. Footsteps pattered in every direction, but the sounds also of bodies falling, tumbling, grasping. They were blinded, he hoped, by the sudden change in light. The morning dawn would look night-dark to their eyes for a few seconds. And that was only more cover for the Anima to get among them.

Shifting back to his human form Gar bellowed "DISARM THEM! TAKE THEIR WEAPONS FIRST!"

Shouts, shots, and screams peppered the night, flashes of light where guns went off, and Gar prayed as he ran, prayed and prayed.

Rika had done it. She'd fucking done it. As he hit the line of vehicles and tore through them, yanking weapons out of blinded hands and felling men on the backswing, humans scattered before him. There was a huge BOOM as someone took a shot, but Gar just dropped for a breath to make sure he hadn't been hit, then shoved to his feet and began to run silently forward.

Vehicles stuttered to a halt, humans screamed, voices cursed. Most of their lights were gone, and their vehicles utterly silent.

Then voices cried out in horror as the Anima descended on them, and the shooting began in earnest.

*****

Battle was disorienting.

Many of the humans didn't even try to fight—only cowered and screamed as death descended on them. But some, especially those at the front, were clearly trained—immediately engaging their weapons, and fighting for their lives.

Gar shifted between lion and human form, using his beast to travel silently when space opened before him but taking human form when he got close so he could wrestle weapons and tools away from grasping hands.

All around him was chaos—some of the humans fleeing, while others fought. Some tried to hide, while others panicked and froze.

He heard Rika scream and, heart throbbing, he adjusted his line, desperate to reach her—but every time he stepped forward he was met with another human male, or a weapon leveled at his chest.

After smacking the barrel of a gun up and into a man's face just as it went off, Gar took a bare second.

The other inhabitants of this vehicle had fled or been killed. So for a moment there was space around him—and turning, he could see Protectors, low to the ground, camouflaged by the dim light, slipping between cars, taking humans by surprise from behind, and removing their weapons, breaking the necks of soldiers, and binding the females.

Rika screamed again and Gar turned—just as something hit him in the back and he tumbled to the ground, twitching, his entire body vibrating with pain. It felt like something had bitten him in the back of the shoulder, a snake. He wanted to reach around and yank it out of his skin.

Instead, he hit the ground with no catch, his head bouncing in the dirt, screaming in pain. His body wouldn't respond. He wanted to reach up, to push himself upright, to turn and fight, but he couldn't move.

Then a weight landed on his back, a stinking human male, panting.

He couldn't move. What the fuck, why couldn't he move?!

"GAR!"

She was close. So close. He'd gotten so close. He tried to open his mouth, to scream that he was there, that he was coming for her.

"GAR! NO!"

A male voice snarled from the same direction, then she cried out again and Gar couldn't breathe, his body rigid and boneless at the same time. He couldn't move. And he couldn't breathe.

Chin on the ground, all he could see were feet and legs, vehicle wheels, and humans running.

And the hands of the male on his back, that grabbed at his useless arms and pulled them behind his spine, wrenching them back until his shoulders almost popped out of joint.

Where were the Anima? Where were the disformed? Why couldn't he—

"NO!" the scream wasn't a plea like before, now it hummed with terror and rage.

Rika. Rika!

Voices rose on every side, instructions issued, organization, the humans beginning to fight back. The snap and pop and boom of guns, more screams and shrieks, more males calling to each other.

It was the chaos of battle without an enemy to fight.

Gar trembled, fighting with everything in himself to move, to fight, to flee, to go for Rika, but all he managed was to twitch the fingers of one hand.

A knee landed between his shoulder blades and the little breath he'd drawn was shoved out of his lungs as something cold and hard as rock pressed to his temple.

"You move," a voice said from over him in the position of dominance, "And I will literally blow your brains out."