Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2) Ben Stevens (best contemporary novels txt) 📖

the stage behind Maya. Its brilliant rays spread out from the floor to the sky like a peacock plume in full strutting glory. Although she could no longer see him, she knew that Don Luis was still staring at her, molesting her with his wolf eyes, and that his hands remained on the armrest of the chair and walking cane respectively, while everyone else’s clapped violently for more. In her mind’s eye, Maya gathered the last little bits of the spell strings and began to tie them together, tucked away and trimmed, thereby completing the tapestry.

Her voice sang out a cappella across the darkness and hushed the applause like a tsunami spreading out over the masses. The blue light silhouetted her and only added to the mystical ambiance of her last song. She sounded like an angel in mourning, and waves of gooseflesh erupted over the skin of undead and alive alike, sweeping out and over the city in the wake of the silencing tsunami. Her voice went higher and higher until her spell song culminated in a beautiful soprano note that sounded like the glory of Heaven, of the Celestial Court itself, and then all the lights came back on.

Her Strange complete, the lens of every light in the catwalk dissolved away, replaced by perfect miniature portals, a dozen mini-Drop-like windows to the other side of the globe, to a place near and dear to her, the homeland of Enki.

In an instant, the city center square flooded in brilliant, natural, yellow-white sunlight.

And the vampires burned.

18

Even from his position halfway up the small mountain, Carbine could hear the screams of the burning vampires.

Here we go. Hurry, Jon! The girls and Ratt are going to be under attack any second.

Through the telescopic sights, Carbine watched as Jon pulled himself back up into a chin-up position, this time directly behind the guard who had been sitting on the waist-high edge of the rampart railing. Just moments before, the guard had witnessed what Carbine and Jon could hear. Maya’s trap had been sprung, and the dozen spotlights up in the concert’s rigging were now waving beams of lethal sunlight back and forth across the city square.

Carbine watched the guard sit in stunned disbelief, his jaw slack, and just as he was snapping out of it and rising to his feet, he was grabbed from behind by Jon and flung off the wall.

Jon kicked his legs over the wall and came to a low stance, reaching behind him to unsling his hammer just as the two closest guards, left and right respectively, turned their heads from the spectacle of pyrotechnic death in the plaza to see why their companion had just screamed.

Carbine was as quick as he was accurate. He didn’t wait for Jon to let fly the hammer; he only had to see the direction Jon was looking in to know that he and his railgun had to look the other.

A slight shift of the barrel to the right and, freeze, squeeze.

The sentry to the right and slightly behind Jon had his head atomized by a super-sonic slug of depleted uranium before he could even take the safety off his rifle.

The boom echoed down through the canyon and swept over the city, but Carbine didn’t worry about anyone noticing. The rulers of New Puebla and their servants had other, bigger concerns at the moment. A slight shift back to the left, just a hair farther, and Carbine found Jon, retrieving his hammer from the crushed rib cage of the other guard. Jon made a quick look back over his shoulder in Carbine’s direction, nodded, and then jumped over the wall into the city.

“Egghead, remind me to thank you for your fine work,” Carbine said to himself. The rifle kicked considerably more than the Lawnmower he had grown up and trained with, but thanks to the egghead’s modifications, it was bearable. Forgetting his relief and gratitude for the moment, Carbine returned his attention to the task at hand.

He could have switched on the railgun’s scope to phase through the layer of stone that now separated Jon from his view and even follow him with his gun all the way to Jon’s destination and beyond, perhaps, but as previously agreed, Carbine wished Jon good luck and moved his sights to the city square to cover Maya.

If Jon failed, Carbine was to provide cover for Maya to escape. Above all, Maya must live to continue her campaign against the Harvesters. As grim as the thought was, guardians were replaceable, while goddesses were not.

Whoa. I knew things would be intense, but this…

The city was ablaze. Human-shaped pillars of flame ran amok, crashing into each other and buildings alike, spreading the fire everywhere as they went. Some writhed on the floor, and others had already become nothing more than smoking piles of ash. The initial shock of the surprise attack hadn’t worn off yet and nobody, neither human nor vampire, was making any move to launch a counterattack on Maya.

Carbine spun the knob on his scope back two clicks and took in a broader view of the plaza. He instantly spotted Ratt up in the catwalks, operating the twelve spotlights from a control panel, causing each of them to swivel like a machine gun turret, sweeping their beams of light over huge swathes of fleeing vampires.

The effect made Carbine think of a fire-fighter’s water cannon or a flamethrower with an incredible range. He also spotted Lucy, who had sprung up and out of the DJ booth and was now upstaging Maya, a Macuahuitl at the ready, and taking pot shots into the crowd with her BFG at any vamp not on fire.

Carbine decided to join Lucy in her endeavors and clicked in three turns.

Freeze, squeeze, repeat.

Maya opened her eyes the very second she had finished the high note. She watched the sea of darkness, flecked like stars with the glowing red eyes of her vampire audience, as it became whitewashed with the brightness of sunlight