Wind spilled through the mercenary’s hair, past his fingers, past his hips. Cans clattered as he shoved past, papers crushed and crinkled beneath his sneakers. Eyes straight ahead while he ran, he heard a siren of a scream, the distressed cry of a woman in his keen kytan ears. His heart caught fire with the pitch, and like a shot he was off, tearing down the alley to rescue her, as he’s known to do, and been trained to do.
His right foot slipped on a wrapper when he rounded the brick-lined corner, but the hastened dash never missed a beat. Pedestrians blurred on either side of him, all of the running in fear, not unlike a tide, fighting his advance.
The sound of metal bending, a groaning, a clashing, welcoming his arrival. His sprint halted as he scanned the scene. Cars lining the wide downtown road, up and down, lay in shambles before him, as if they’d been stomped on. Strips of bare metal marred their shining, beaten surfaces. His heartbeat quickened as he waited for the girl’s terrified shriek to call him toward her.
Onlookers formed a circle, distant and far from mangled cars. Besides those people, he heard nothing. His fingers twitched with energy, his chest heaved slowly and gently. His eyes were cameras, capturing every broken window and tattered store curtain, every slight movement. Police sirens faded into earshot, but he couldn’t wait.
The girl’s shriek, accompanied by a new voice, overshadowed the sirens, and shattering glass ensued. His adrenaline eyes caught shards flying on the right, falling like raindrops on the sidewalk.
Its enormous claws rapped against the mahogany floors as it loped about with a droning yawn. Its tail, long and springy and vast, broke the clear glass of the jewelers’ counters, meandering three feet behind the juran itself.
It leisurely approached, its bright green eyes glaring into theirs. The long-haired girl grabbed her friend as they shivered in the back of the room. The clerk was long gone. Gold and silver lay strewn at their feet like pebbles. Drops of hot saliva trailed the juran, whose muzzle hung open, revealing a pair of six-inch fangs, two rows of glinting teeth, a rolling dripping tongue, and a growl so deep its chest grumbled with the bass.
The long-haired girl shut her eyes tight. Her white attire, dirty and stained in places, quaked with her every move. Tawny strands fell over her trembling forearm.
The juran’s ear twitched as it advanced. She shut her eyes, grabbed the prayer beads around her waist, held them in her fists, and prayed.
Its ear twitched once again. Its muzzle turned up with its ears, like a deer at alert. Her clasped fists flinched when a raucous roar filled the area. Her friend dropped to the ground in a maniacal holler, but the girl, lost in prayer, remained.
The mercenary leapt and sank his claws into the juran’s back. It tumbled almost instantly, shocked by the ten stinging spikes in its spine, and slammed itself into the cedarwood, swinging its dingy claws in protest. The juran chopped an inch from a lock of dark hair before the mercenary could roll away and stand. Its long neck craned and it flailed its leg, still facing away from him, unable to stand.
While reaching for his holster, the juran’s tail swept him off his feet and sent him to the floor. The juran rose before he could jump to his feet, slammed one giant paw on his stomach and heard him scream. Without hesitation, the juran lunged for his throat, but all a sudden choked; saliva sputtered and it jerked away, blood leaking from its underside. A blade eight inches long, stuck halfway in, the young man fingers still grazing the handle.
He kicked it near the wound, but it faltered only slightly, raising its leg just enough that he could push from under it. Lockets and bracelets fell from his back when he scrambled once again to his feet, dodged a flying pack of claws as the juran swatted on its hind legs like a hungry bear. The praying girl’s friend flinched and gasped as one rough arm in the bleeding gut sent it staggering back, collapsing into the tattered counter where the mercenary proceeded to jump him.
The praying girl whispered prayers into her beads with a delicate, furrowed brow, as her friend watched him remove the sword from the juran, gently, like a calm old doctor. He looked no older than fifteen.
The girl tapped her praying friend’s shoulder. “Savy, look at this!” she whispered. But Savarem was still at work. “Savy, are you listening? He killed it all by himself!” She treaded lightly over misplaced gold and jewels, leaving Savarem kneeling at the wall, and inched her way towards the juran and the mercenary. “He’s dead isn’t he? Excuse me.”
The mercenary, straddling the giant beast, had all four of its paws in both hands, struggling to bind them together with a thick twine rope. He’d already taken care of its muzzle, tying it tight with the same rope, quick as lightning. He looked at the girl in the baby blue dress, her hair tied up in a beautiful display of chestnut brown. “He’s not,” he replied, pulling the rope taut around the juran’s wrists. The girl stepped back cautiously with a nervous grin. “It’s okay though. See, ah’ve got ‘im covered.”
“You take knives and ropes wherever you go, boy?” Her smile regained its confidence. The mercenary held the juran by its shoulders, dragging it out of the counter.
“Eh…well…” He grunted as he set the juran down. Cracking his knuckles, he watched the hogtied juran thrash about in its bindings. “Ah never been outside mah home city ‘fore now. Don’t know any otha way ta go, but ta go prepared!” Then he smiled at the girl, and she stared at him, somewhat mystified. “What’s wrong?”
She tilted her head, as if confused. “I’ve never met a Southern boy before.”
His smile widened. “Ah’m a mershenai.”
“No doubt?”
“No doubt.” Eying the juran, still flailing down there, he put his hands on his hips with a sudden sense of accomplishment. “Wrangling jurans was mah job back home in the mershunary business. This one’s a wild one, just caught, ah bet. Musta got loose from somewhere, went lookin’ for food, trashed a car or two.”
“You gonna keep him, mercenary?” She closed in on him, watching him cut the remaining rope with his teeth. His kytan ears faced downward as he gnawed at the thick twine.
“Wish ah could. Ah don’t got time to train jurans right now.” As he tied the rope to his belt again, he noticed the girl dressed in white. Her eyes glowed in the afternoon light gleaming through bare windows. Pale sienna hair, matched perfectly with her golden brown skin, cascaded down her back, down to her knees. The silky white fabric of her top draped away from her shoulders, suspended in the middle by a golden ring, a symbol he knew quite well.
Yeah. He knew that type.
Turning back to the girl in blue, he flashed another suave grin and continued. “Mah name’s Ducé.”
“Junietta. My friends call me Junie!”
“And your friend?”
“That’s Savarem. She’s the city’s—“
“Vesta.”
“You got it! The Grand Priestess herself, Savarem Shoue.” Junie twiddled her manicured thumbs as the vesta approached them slowly, coyly tying her beads as she walked on shimmering trinkets of gold. For Junie’s sake, he strained not to stare. “How old are you? You look too young to be a mercenary.”
The sound of rushing chopper blades rang faintly in his ears, as well as the sirens, people, malfunctioning car alarms. Junietta. His foxlike ears heard anything and everything—and sometimes too much. “Fifteen. And ah been at it since ah was…twelve, ah think.”
“Oh, wow…”
Savarem stared at him with big eyes the color of milky coffee. The innocence in her voice caught him by surprise, though he knew it shouldn’t have. “You have a deep caring for jurans, don’t you? Will this one be alright?”
He looked at her for a short time before chancing a glance at the vesta and answering her question. “He’ll be a’ight.” Ducé gave the white-furred juran a concerned look. “Ah’ll get him to a vet. He’ll live. Beautiful coat on him. Ah couldn’t just leave him here to die—“
A deep green chopper whizzed rapidly in front of the jewelry store, shoving in gusts of wind and dirt all of a sudden. Ducé stepped in front of the girls, guarding his eyes with his forearm. Machine guns on either side of the cockpit glinted and caught his eye. Savarem clung to his arm in an instant.
Sharp blasts frightened the three of them, a shower of bullets raining out around them. Ducé grabbed the other girl and ducked behind another counter as shots haunted the room, shattering the remains of glass and finished wood.
Ducé, holding the girls’ shoulders tight, caught a gasp in his throat as he realized not every life was in his hands.
The juran.
As the machine gun cooled, the chopper touched ground, and a crowd inevitably followed. The side of the chopper read, “Furn Faction MA-0273,” with a brown barcode underneath. Murmurs from outside the store kicked up slowly.
Savarem opened her eyes to a wall full of holes. One hand rested on her bosom, waiting for her heart to calm after all the commotion, the other hand drifted to her beads. Her shoulder brushed against the mahogany arm of the mercenary, who still held her close, and she let out a staggering sigh.
Ducé nudged himself out from under the girls, peering through a gash in the counter. He gasped, his face hot with grief. He could hardly recognize the hogtied juran.
“Is anybody in there?” a voice called out through the chopper’s loudspeakers.
For the first time in his life, Ducé felt weak.
Savarem watched him collapse into a slump and cover his eyes with his hand. He said to himself, “What the hell’ve ah got mahself into…”
The crowd let it out:
“Well, that’s the last one…”
“Four of them, rampaging!”
“Look at the size of its horns…”
“Thank God the Furn Faction showed up, huh…”
“Wait, I think it was dead when they got here…”
Junie, knees shaking, stood in what used to be the doorway, waving her hand, shouting “There’s three of us, we’re okay!” Savarem wrapped her arms around Ducé. He hugged her back, not knowing what else to do.
The woman from the chopper exclaimed, “Good thing we got here in time, huh?”
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Submission Name: The Factionist Ch1
