Emberclaw Protocol

Chapter 7: the Eternal Bite

In the ruins of Neverwinter after the nuclear blast, Cole leapt across the last chasm with Erin curled in his tail. The remains of the Altar burned beneath them as legions of Kaiden's clones poured in from all directions, each bearing Erin's face and Cole's golden pupils.

"It's time." Erin ripped off her protective suit, the holy tattoo on her abdomen having spread into a thorn totem. Cole ripped the mechanical heart out of his chest, and a two-toned glow pulsed between the cracks - the blue was the viral progenitor, and the gold was her holy blood.

Kaiden's essence rose from the pile of clones, his mechanical heart exposing Erin's brainwave receiver, "What a perfect closing of the loop, my dear sister." He maneuvered the hundreds of clones to speak in unison, "Your children will be the new world..."

Erin suddenly pressed Cole's heart into the center of her holy tattoo, "We don't need children to continue." She yanked Cole's hand through and stabbed herself in the abdomen, gold and blue intertwined liquid splashing through the cluster of clones, "Because we are eternity itself."

Cole went fully bestial in excruciating pain, clone after clone spontaneously combusting wherever the one eye erupted and swept by. Kaiden screamed and maneuvered the mechanical wolves to pounce, only to be strangled by the genetic chains Erin drew with her holy blood.

"Remember anatomy class in med school?" Erin kissed Cole's bloodstained lips amidst the smoke, "The deadliest viruses are often hidden in the most beautiful places." She chewed on the nano-chip hidden between her teeth, and all the mechanical wolves suddenly turned their guns on Kaiden.

Cole curled his tail around his wedding ring and slipped it back onto her ring finger, "And the strongest of all covenants..." He tore the skin of his chest to reveal the same thorn pattern as Erin's abdomen, "It requires a branding in both directions."

Kaiden struggled and crawled through the ashes of his clone, his mechanical heart cracking from Erin's brainwave frequencies, "You can't kill me... My consciousness has been uploaded..."

Erin held up Cole's shattered mechanical heart, the Holy Ripple refracting iridescent light in it, "But love can." She tossed the heart at Kayden, "It's a program you can never replicate."

The moment the heart embedded itself in Kayden's chest, Cole detonated the self-destruct code that had been buried for twenty years. The foundations of Neverwinter began to crumble, and Erin tugged Cole to leap for the final escape pod, behind her was Kayden's wail as she dissipated in the data stream, "It's not fair! I obviously met her first..."

The moment the escape hatch closed, Cole jammed his wolf paw into the gap, "Time to wake up, my queen." He kissed the tears of blood from the corners of her eyes, "The true altar is within you."

Erin abruptly ripped off the oxygen tubing and snapped the mask over Cole's face, "And here's your throne." She sets the escape pod coordinates to the interstate where they met three years ago, and initiates the manual docking procedure over the vacuum alarm.

Cosmic dust flowed into a galaxy outside the pod as Cole held Erin in weightlessness. Their blood floats in a double helix inside the pod as the remnants of the mechanical heart automatically reorganizes itself into the final form of a wedding ring.

"It's going to be ugly when gravity returns." Erin poured holy blood into Cole's newborn heart.

"Then float forever." Cole wrapped his tail around her waist, "In my universe."

When the landing shockwave shattered the hatch, they were collapsing at the scene of an accident twenty years ago. Beside the rusting wreckage of the SUV, the actual skeleton of Cole's father glowed phosphorescent in the moonlight, the skull embedded with the silver crossbow bolt Erin had lost back then.

"So it was you..." Cole stroked the sacred engraving on the end of the arrow.

"I shot it off course when I escaped the lab when I was eight." Erin rested the arrow on the silver bow Cole had morphed from his tail, "Now it's time to correct the trajectory."

The Wolf Elders' hovercar lights up at the end of the highway. The tip of Erin's arrow was aimed at Cole's heart, "Scared?"

"As long as you hold the bow." Cole rubbed his canines against the calluses of her tiger's mouth, "My forensic lady."

The moment the arrow left the string, it turned into a sky full of silver butterflies, each carrying the fusion gene of Cole and Erin. The Elders' chariots stalled one after another when they touched the silver butterflies, and the control chips inside the vehicles all melted down.

"Now," Erin stepped over Cole's bestialized spine toward the wolves, "who wants to discuss blood purity?"

As the new moon emerged from behind the dark clouds, Cole crowned her on a throne made of ruins. The moment the wolves bowed their heads, Erin suddenly ripped off the crown, "That's not what I want." She melted the crown into two wedding rings and slipped one of them into the tip of Cole's paw, "What I want is a contract of equality."

Cole's laughter shook the snow off the branches. He tore off the upholstery from his throne and spread it out under the stars, "Then we'll start with an equal share of the bed."

"No," Erin tugged him backward toward the mat, "start with an even split of heartbeats."

The last fragment of the mechanical heart fell from the sky as the holy tattoo on their chests pieced together into a full circle on the ground. Cole curled his tail around the fragment and crushed it into the shape of a cradle, "Looks like someone's in a hurry for a bedtime story."

Erin's silver crossbow turned to stardust in the moonlight, falling to form a line of ancient wolf-speak on the rim of the cradle: "Our eternity begins with the bite of each heartbeat."

The cries of newborn wolf pups were heard in the distance, and Cole suddenly rolled over and enveloped Erin in shadow, "You stole my genetic sample."

"And you remodeled my pregnancy test." She laughed softly as she nibbled on his newborn wolf's ear, "Tie."

As the first rays of morning light pierced the clouds, silver roses quietly bloomed on the ruins behind them-the same variety that Cole had planted for her the night of the Scarlet Wedding. The howls of the pack faded into an ancient benediction song while Cole was braiding the tips of Erin's hair with the tip of his tail.

"Bring sunscreen next time you run away." Erin looked at the rising sun.

Cole licked the night dew off the back of her neck, "How about just escaping to a planet without darkness?"

"And then let you have the moonlight all to yourself?" She rolled over and pressed her tail against his, "Good thinking."

To the sound of a newborn's cry, the last of Neverwinter's rubble dissolves into stardust. As Cole puts the wedding ring back on Erin, they realize that the same code is engraved on the inside of the ring - the very same number that paired the two incubation pods in the lab twenty years ago.

"So we've been handcuffed together by fate for a long time." Cole nipped her ring ring with his canine teeth.

Erin shoved the pregnancy test into his mouth, "And now we're going to handcuff the entire future."

The howling of the wolves turned into a blessed salute, and above the ruins, two figures were framed in the morning light as the title page of a myth.