A Creature of War, Book 4, CH21

For weeks a harsh cold settled on the city. It was such that unless the fire in the room burned hard, EL could see his breath. This was one place Artell had planned ahead, there was a lot of wood for people to burn. Unfortunately, it might not be enough was what Malcolm was telling them.

“And with this arctic cold, we can’t send anyone out to gather more wood.” He looked up. “Unless there are Anthro who could stand it?”

Vee shook his head. “Even we have limits. This takes a Specialist to survive it. White Fur probably could, but she isn’t here.”

“Sorry, who?”

“She’s a squirrel out of Barrack three,” El answered. “She’s a cryokinetic. She can freeze things. She’s also pretty much immune to the cold. She could probably like this. But as Vee said. She isn’t here.”

Malcolm nodded. “Can’t you handle it? You can control your body, right?”

Vee shook his head. “I can’t make myself immune to cold. I could repair the damage as it happened, but I’d burn calories to do that, so I’d be left deciding what would kill me, the cold or the hunger.”

“Then we need to hope this cold will pass soon, we’re going through the reserve set aside for the greenhouse much faster than planned. We’re going to have to decide where we take the wood from in a few days at this rate.”

“If we take wood from the people,” Vee said, “we’re going to have riots that are going to put the food ones we had to shame.”

The door burst open. A panting jackal held on to it as he caught his breath.

“Sir,” he told El, “You need to come. There’s a gathering in the square, and it’s turning ugly.”

“Get as many officers there was we can spare.” El stood. “I need to go deal with that.”

Vee stood. “I’ll go with you.”

“I can handle it, Vee.”

“I know, but I want to see how bad it is. Seems like each time there’s a gathering it gets uglier. It might be time to stop allowing them.” He placed a hand on Malcolm’s shoulder as he passed him. “You should stay here. I doubt it’ll be safe.”

The human nodded.

“If you prevent them from gathering,” El said as they left the room, “It’s going to make them unhappy.”

“But alive. How many died during the last brawl?”

“Eight,” EL admitted. “I had to incarcerate two dozen people, they were three to a cell. Fortunately their time was up before this cold hit because I can’t put anyone in the cells now.”

Vee sighed. “Maybe you should put them on the hunting parties. Let them use that energy to something productive instead of fighting.”

“I don’t know that giving them weapons is a good idea, but I’ll keep it in mind.”

The sounds of the commotion reached them before they saw the crowd, but it wasn’t the sound they expected. This wasn’t fighting. It was restrained anger.

The crowd fell silent as Vee entered the square. El was sufficiently surprised didn’t think to look the crowd over for the usual agitators.

Then the screaming started.

It hit them like a wall, and the crowd pressed forward, barely held back by the officers and guards that had joined them. He noted the crowd was composed exclusively of humans as they yelled insults; monsters, cannibals, animals, but the words mixed too much for El to determine if there was a context to them.

“That is enough” Vee yelled before El could say anything. El let him talk, he didn’t see that anything short of sending officers and guards among them to force them to disperse would do any good. He noticed Alicia, and she looked particularly worried.

“I said ENOUGH!” The crowd didn’t become silent, but it quieted enough Vee didn’t have to yell. “I know you’re hungry, that you’re cold. We all are. We’re all waiting for Spring to come so we can get out of this place. When that happens, you’ll be able to grow your own food, eat as much as you want, but until then, it doesn’t matter how much you complain, there isn’t any more food for me to give you.”

A woman pushed her way through the front of the crowd to spit at Vee’s feet and then she disappeared as the screaming erupted again. El didn’t get as good a view of her as he’d like, but he was confident he’d recognized her. She’d been the woman with the group that had accosted Vee in the corridor. She’d been seen at most of the brawls, not in the middle of them, but watching.

“Silence!” This time Vee's voice was so loud El thought he felt the ground shake. “This isn’t accomplishing anything,” he continued in the quiet. “How much you hate me, how much you scream isn’t going to make more food appear.”

“You think this is about how little food there is?” a man said. His voice was strong, calm, had authority. And it was familiar. El couldn’t see where he was, but sounded like he would be at the back.

Alicia caught El’s gaze, and she was scared. He wished he could go to her, ask what she knew, what she’d realized. But the crowd was parting to let the speaker advance.

“No one here’s angry at the little food they have to eat. They’d rather go hungry right now.”

The crowd murmured in agreement, but stayed controlled. Whoever this man was, they listened to him in a way they’d never listened to Vee. They were used to listening to him.

El looked at Vee, who was focused. If he realized the danger this paused, he wasn’t showing it.

“They’d rather die of hunger than eat the stuff you’ve been forcing on them.” The man said. Malcolm stepped out of the crowd. “Did you really think they were too dumb to realize you were feeding them human meat?” The crowd began to rage again, but Malcolm raised a hand and silenced it.

El forced himself to get over his surprise and look at Vee. He had to say something. He couldn’t let Malcolm control the way this went. But Vee looked stunned. El did the number. He didn’t have anywhere the number of officers needed to deal with this. He’d expected an uncontrolled mob. This was anything but that.

“I warned you,” Malcolm said, his voice carrying over the crowd. “I told you they weren’t like us. I promised I’d try to control them, control him,” the disgust in the man’s voice surprised El.

And Vee it seemed because he found his voice. “Malcolm, what are you doing?” the confusion in it was audible.

“I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago. I tried to trust you, but all you did was lie. Did you think anyone here would believe you’d found more animals? There haven’t been animals around here since last year. The last straw was the ‘nursery.’ Did you really think we wouldn’t find out what your twisted babies did to ours? How you forced the humans watching over them to watch?”

Vee took a step forward, and the human straightened in defiance. “Malcolm, stop this. You’re going to cause a riot.”

No, El thought, don’t plead. Didn’t he see? This was the enemy. They’d been infiltrated.

Malcolm smiled. “Oh, don’t worry, a riot is the least of your worries today.”

“Why? Malcolm, why are you doing this?”

The man’s voice became hard. “Because animals like you have no business telling us how to live. You filthy beast take orders, you don’t give them. You forgot your place and now I’m going to remind you of it. You don’t lead here, I do.”

“Lead?” Vee had trouble getting the words out. “This is about leading them? Malcolm, you don’t have to do this. I’m going to pass the leadership on to you once we leave.”

The human scoffed. “Pass it on to me? As if you had any right to it in the first place? You think you can bribe me with promises, like you’ve done to others? What you think I wouldn’t find out about the others you said could lead once you left?”

“Damn it, I told them they were welcome to try,” Vee’s was getting angry and El could see the smile on Malcolm’s face broadened. “I never promised them anything. Everything I did was to protect you.” He raised his voice, “all of you. To keep you alive, to ensure you’d survive until Spring.”

“For us, oh, how magnanimous of you. If you’re so generous, how is it only animals took part in preparing the meat? Why did you hide it away where no one would know?”

“Damn it, Malcolm, you have to see I did what I had to, and the meat was your idea, not mine.”

Malcolm beamed. If anyone in the crowd were to see him now, they’d know he had planned all of this. Unfortunately all they saw was Vee get angrier as the man spoke.

“Mine? Do you hear that? This beast has the gall to claim I would want all of you to eat human flesh as if you were animals yourselves. This beast thinks he’s so much above all of us he doesn’t even want to take responsibility for his actions.”

Vee began growling.

“Hear that?” Malcolm said. “Hear how he lost all power of speech, how he’s revealing himself for the animal he is?”

El looked around, trying to come up with a solution that wouldn’t make this situation explode. He saw Alicia grab her sword and shook his head when she looked at him. Any violence on their side would only incite the crowd to react the same way. They needed to find a way to diffuse this without violence.

The gasp made El focus on Vee and Malcolm again. He’d lost track of the conversation. He saw the hard look on Vee first. “I worked hard to ensure as many of the people here would survive.” His tone was as frigid as the air outside. He made a jerking motion and Malcolm gasped again. “Do you think I’m going to let you ruining it just because you’re hungry for power?”

El noticed the look of surprise on the human’s face, then the blood appear between his lips. He looked down as Malcolm slumped, pulling off the knife that was in his gut, falling back and letting the crowd see the bloody knife in Vee’s hand. The blood all over his hand.

El had to do something, give an order, but he was as stunned as the crowd by what he’d just seen.

“You want to blame someone for all this?” Vee yelled. “Blame him! He’s the one who told me what you needed, how to use human meat to feed you.”

El knew those were the wrong words to say. Were there any right words anymore? Was there any way to salvage this? The noise from the crowd became an angry thing, and it snapped him out of his stupor in time to see the archer on the second level balcony. He threw himself in front of Vee and felt pain in his shoulder.

“Protect the civilians!” El yelled as he slumped. “See to the children and mothers!” He didn’t know if anyone heard over the crowd’s screams.

Vee pulled him out of the erupting chaos. “Don’t move, you’ve been shot.”

El indicated the arrow in his shoulder. “That’s pretty clear.” Vee grabbed it and pulled. El bit down on the pain for the instant it was there.

“I’d have survived it, you know that.” Vee pressed on the wound, bring in the sides closer. El looked at the arrow. Fiberglass shaft, broad-head tip. If they’d hit Vee’s heart, he could have died.

“I didn’t think, saw the threat and reacted.”

“Getting yourself killed isn’t going to help anything.” Vee patted El’s shoulder. “All healed up.”

The last of the soreness disappeared as the lynx stood. “It’s easier for you to heal me than heal yourself, especially if that had hit you.”

Vee picked up the arrow. “Where did they find this? The guards have had to work with homemade shafts and tips since we’ve been here.”

“I think that’s one of those we brought.”

“How long was Malcolm planning this?” Vee growled.

“Long enough.” El noticed that what he’d thought was a cubbyhole was in fact a wall of officers, with Alicia in the lead. “Vee, we need to protect—”

“The food,” the bull said

“The children,” El said.

They exchanged a look and nodded.

“Alicia—” El began.

“I’m with you,” she pointed at half their wall. “Go with the governor, the rest with us.”

El ran in one direction, Vee the other.

Three floors up. They fought their way there with claws and swords. El didn’t bother being gentle. This was for their survival, for his people’s survival. If someone stood in his way, he couldn’t afford to care.

Caring would delay him and as it was, he couldn’t hope to reach the nursery before the humans. He had to hope no one in the nursery was in on this plot. He couldn’t imagine how any of the caring people he met there would ever hurt a child, but the fear he’d been duped there too pushed him to run faster, to strike harder.

He had to save the children.

When he reached the floor, he saw two elderly women on the ground, dead. Younger men and women, humans and Anthro were trying to keep people from making their way to the nursery. El threw himself in the fight.

With the officers helping they quickly pushed them back. “Inside!”

The civilians obeyed and El was about to follow them when he saw the group rush in their direction. He slammed the door shut and looked at the officers. “They only get to this door if we’re dead, is that clear?”

“Yes sir,” Alicia replied. There were only four of them left, and all of them had small injuries.

Before he could think on how that would affect them they were in the middle of another fight.

The enemy had number superiority, but El and his officers had combat experience, and, it quickly became apparent, training with the sword. This human hadn’t bothered learning how to use them since they’d become one of the few reliable weapons.

The humans killed some of their own people in their carelessness, but they didn’t seem to notice, there was always someone there to take the place of the fallen. While he only had three other officers. Two, when one of them took a sword through the chest.

They’d finally made a dent in the group of humans, having lost another officer in the process and Alicia getting an ugly cut on her left arm, when El saw the new group of humans appear behind those they were fighting.

They were lead by Anya. El heart sank. She’d always treated him with respect. One of the few team leaders who hadn’t allowed the humans under her to cause trouble for the Anthros. How could she be part of this?

She clobbered the man at the back with a sledgehammer, and before the group could react she brought two more down, then the people with her had the rest on the floor.

“Thanks,” El panted. “I was getting worried.” He ripped Alicia’s sleeve and made a tourniquet with it.

“Someone came down yelling about fighting,” Anya replied, trying the survivors with whatever she could find. “What is going on?”

El gave her the quick rundown.

“Mal? Mal caused this?”

“He wanted to be in charge. Acted like he couldn’t stand us.”

“He never showed any dislike for Anthros before, not even in private.”

“Maybe he doesn’t, maybe he was just playing to the crowd, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Where’s the governor?”

“He went to protect the food supplies. I came to protect the children.”

“Just the two of you?” She motioned for her people to form a perimeter. They were armed with hammers and metal bars. Anything they could grab as far as El could see.

“There were more,” Alicia said. “We’re all that’s left. Thank you for the assistance.”

“You’re welcome.” Anya paused. “A coup, really?”

“Yes. Can you hold off anyone who comes? I need to check on the children.”

“Go, we’ll deal with any troublemakers,” Anya replied.

He entered the nursery with Alicia. A quick look told him everyone was there, except one person.

“Where’s Maria?” he asked the elderly man, who shrugged.

“She stayed home,” a panda said, holding her baby. “Walter’s sick from the cold, so she stayed with him.”

“Where’s their room?”

“Why?” she asked.

He wanted to shake some sense into her. “I need to get to her before any of the humans do. I need to get the three of them here where they can be safe.” He looked at the baby. “What about his father? Where is he?”

“He died last month.” There was no emotion in her voice. Either they hadn’t been close, or this winter had already taken too much of a toll on her.

“Where is Maria’s room?”

“Second concourse over, the ground floor.”

Alicia stopped him before he could leave. “You can’t go alone.”

“You’re in no shape to deal with fighting. Stay here and look after the children.”

“Sir, you can’t—”

“Alicia, this is what we were made for. I’m going to go save Maria and bring her back. Believe me when I tell you that anyone who stands in my way is going to regret it.”

She nodded and let him go.

“Keep guarding this door,” He told Anya. “Anyone with a child goes in, anyone else is kept outside. If they force the issue, do whatever you have to to keep them out.” He didn’t wait for her reply.

He ran through the halls, shoving those who didn’t get out of his way fast enough, dispatching those who stood in his way. When he reached the concourse, he looked down. People were running everywhere, mostly scared, but they were leaving space around a man holding a sword. El watches as the man threw something aside and grabbed an arm covered in rusty brown fur.

That was all he could see of her, but he acted. He jumped over the railing and called on the air to soften his landing. People were sent flying by the strength of the winds and the man holding Maria had to cover his face is his arm. Maria was trying to pull out of the man’s grip.

El recognized him when he lowered his arm. The man at the lead of the group who’d confronted Vee in the corridor, weeks before. He stabbed Maria through the chest without even looking at her. He was grinning.

El took a step in his direction, but was stopped by a man’s voice, and a name.

“Francis?”

El turned and saw the coyote on his knees. His fur was gray, dull and falling off in patches. He picked up something off the ground, whatever it was the human had thrown away. El watched in horror as he recognized the small form of a baby.

Walter was careful with his son’s broken body, cradling it against his chest. “Why?”

The cry pierced El’s heart. And he looked at the human.

“I said it wasn’t over,” the man’s grin broadened. “Didn’t I?”

“You killed a child. Tossed him aside like he was nothing.” El’s fists shook. “How could you do that?”

“You said it. He’s nothing. That wasn’t a kid, just a filthy animal, just like you. We’re going to slaughter and eat the lot of you.”

El growled

“Ohh, trying to scare me? You think you’re going to say something that’s going to send me running?” the man mocked.

“Die.” The word was filled with anger, an anger El poured into his power as he reached for the heat inside the human.

It was small, barely there, compared to the water and air in him, but there nonetheless. El took hold of that heat, fanned it, build it up.

The man staggered back. “What—”

“He was a baby!” the heat increased along with El’s anger.

The man dropped his sword and loosened his shirt. “What are you—”

“He was innocent!” the heat was on par with the air in him now.

The man wiped beads of sweat off his forehead and looked at them in horror. “St—stop it.”

“No.” The word was low, black with hate. He fanned the heat more and wisps of smoke came off the man. “Your kind doesn’t deserve to live.”

The man’s shirt began smoldering. Underneath his skin blackened. The man screamed in pain, tried to step away.

El saw motion out the corner of his eye and turned, never letting for of the heat. Walter had fallen on his side, still holding his son. His eyes were vacant now.

El’s head snapped to the human, and the man exploded.

Flames flew out to the closest piece of lumber and El encouraged them. Let them burn. They deserved nothing else for the pain and misery they had caused. Francis was dead because of them.

He pushed the fire hotter. It jumped from wood to metal. It spread ever higher, ever hotter. People screamed. Let them. He was Francis’ instrument of vengeance. They would pay for Francis’ death. They would suffer.

The smell of ash and burning flesh filled the air, and it was a sweet scent. He savored it. It would nourish him until none of them were left.

Someone grabbed his arm and spun him. “El, stop this!”

He unleashed his anger on whoever might want him to abandon avenging Francis and the person staggered back. He registered horns, brown hide burning, pain in those ever loving eyes.

The anger was quashed. “Are you okay?” he hugged the bull. “I’m so sorry. I — they killed Francis.”

He felt the arms around him and relaxed. “I’m okay. I’ll heal.” He was silent. “This is new. I thought you needed fire to manipulate. I thought Cooper was the only one able to generate fire.”

“Everyone has fire in them, cellular combustion. It isn’t the easiest fire to fan into something useful.” El motioned to the pile of ash that had been a man. “I was really angry.”

“Who’s Francis?”

El buried his face against the bull’s chest and tears feel. “An Anthro baby. One of the first. That human threw him aside like he didn’t mean anything.”

“I’m so sorry.” Lips on the top of his head. “But El, you need to stop the fire.”

“No.” The hate was back. He would never forgive them.

Vee forced him to look up at him. “El, you’re killing civilians.”

“They killed Francis.”

“No. He did that. Only him.”

“They allowed it to happen!”

“Not all of them. El, you’re killing people who had nothing to do with this.”

“This is war.”

The bull nodded. “But we're supposed to minimize the civilian casualties.” He took El’s face in his hand. “I get that you’re angry, El. I do, but we’re better than this. You need to keep control.”

“I want them all to die.” The words no longer had much anger in them. He’d burned it out, or Vee had doused it. And without anger to feed it, the fire died away too.

“I know El. I feel the same right now, but we have people to look after. We can rage when they’re safe.”

“The food?”

“We’re okay,” Vee said before El’s fear could take over. “We got to the reserve in time. We have control of them. But this is only the start.”

“Malcolm used us.”

“Used me. And I never saw it. And I think I played into his hand when I killed him. Now a lot of the humans want us dead. We can’t afford to make more mistake.”

“This isn’t going to help.” The concourse was melted in place. Blackened everywhere. Blackened bodies littered what wasn’t burned.

“You said it, this is war. Just remember, you didn’t start this war El. That isn’t on you. Now we need to make sure we’ll survive it.”