With a roar of frustration, Gordon stopped. He looked at the arrow, snarled and snapped it off with a flick of his hand, leaving six inches inside his body. Then he looked up, straight through the leaves, following the arrow’s trajectory in reverse, straight to Hawkins.
“You’re going to need more than a children’s toy,” Gordon said.
The giant man took one step toward the tree while Hawkins nocked another arrow, but then he stopped and turned toward the east. Hawkins, never one to waste an easy shot, let the arrow fly. It struck Gordon behind his neck, but the man didn’t even flinch. Instead, he crouched down on the ground and rolled his body into a ball.
What the...?
Hawkins looked east in time to see a bright orange glob gliding through the air. The giant known as Karkinos roared and swung one of its massive, dual clawed hands at the thing. Then, there was light as bright as the universe’s creation.
Hawkins shouted in surprise, shielding his eyes, but he lost his grip on the tree in the process. He began to fall, but he clenched his legs tighter and stopped himself at an angle. He remained there, stuck at a sixty degree angle for all of a half second. Then the sound hit. And the pressure wave. And the heat.
Hawkins was torn from the branch and flung. His mind whirled as the explosion set his ears ringing. He spun through the air, growing dizzy as he fell toward his doom. But as his arc through the air turned downward, he felt cradled, held tightly.
Opening his eyes, he saw Lilly staring down at him. Her yellow eyes were alive and determined. “I have you.”
When they reached the ground, Lilly absorbed the impact with her legs as though they’d fallen just a few feet. She then put Hawkins on his feet.
He worried about her safety so much, but here she was, saving him. Lilly, in just a few short years, had grown up. She was a mother. A skilled hunter. A warrior. And now his rescuer, returning the favor he’d granted her by taking her off that island.
Before he had a chance to thank Lilly, he looked over her shoulder. The far side of the South Lawn was on fire, but that only mildly concerned him. A mushroom cloud billowed into the air in the distance. For a moment, he worried about radiation, but then he remembered the glowing orange glob he’d seen. He, like everyone else in the world, knew what happened when those orange membranes on Nemesis’s body ruptured. And Nemesis’s new trick had been to launch smaller globs of the stuff from her mouth.
If she wasn’t careful, Nemesis was going to kill the very people trying to help her. Or was it the other way around? Hudson’s plan had been vague on that area. In the end, Hawkins took it as an ‘enemy of my enemy’ situation. But how could a creature like Nemesis understand who was on her side and who wasn’t? He doubted the giant would even notice their presence, let alone act to keep them alive.
“Is this how people will see me?” Lilly asked, looking at the fresh destruction. “Am I a monster? A Kaiju?”
That question, from Lilly, was loaded. The word Kaiju to her was more personal. Her mother’s name. But she understood it now, knowing that monsters, in general, were ‘Kaiju’ to the world. And her mother was a monster.
“Not even close,” Hawkins said with a grin.
“I don’t want to hide anymore,” she said.
“It might not be that simple.”
“Only monsters have to hide,” Lilly said.
Hawkins understood the point, but wasn’t convinced. Then he thought about the number of cameras likely recording the White House and the surrounding area. Her battle against Gordon would be...
Gordon!
A black shadow tore through the night.
“Look out!” Hawkins shouted.
Before he could react to his own warning, Hawkins was lifted and thrown straight up. He reached out with his arms and caught a low branch. Looking back, he saw Lilly duck just in time to avoid Gordon’s swing. He followed up the roundhouse with a crushing blow. Lilly leapt to the side while Gordon’s fist punched a crater into the ground.
Rather than running, Lilly sprang back at Gordon, catching him by surprise. She raked her claws against his chest twice, narrowly missing the orange membranes she’d been warned about, leaned away from his hugging arms and kicking him in the gut. When Gordon pitched forward, she kneed him in the chin, snapping his head back.
She moved with grace and speed, but Hawkins could see she was losing herself. Some primal part of her was taking over, urging her to attack. Against anyone else, the tactic would have been lethal and bloody, but Gordon’s body absorbed the damage. Black flesh and brown blood flew away from his torso as she continued the barrage, but each strike seemed to have less effect.