All he’d told me was that we had business together, he and I. I almost didn’t want to know what the scud he meant by that, but it wasn’t like I was in any danger of finding out anytime soon, by the looks of things.
While I wanted to assume that even raknoth had to eat and drink at some point, Parker had yet to show any sign he was suffering—had in fact declined when I’d offered him water for information on Day Two. When they’d instructed me on Day Three to insist he drink water for fear that our raknoth prize might simply die of dehydration, he’d sipped at the water casually, all placid predator, as if three days without drink had meant nothing.
On Day Five, when Glenbark had finally authorized the use of pain to make him talk, our interrogators had quickly come to the conclusion that, in addition to their ridiculously resilient hides, the raknoth had an almost sickening tolerance—bordering on ignorance—for pain.
The only other thing left to hope on had been his inevitable need to feed on human blood. I’d seen it in Al’Kundesha’s memories just as clearly as Therese Brown had demonstrated to us in her Haven lab: without fresh infusions of human blood, even a raknoth would eventually die. And yet here Parker stood, unshaken, displaying not even the faintest trace of the dark spider web lines I’d seen on the flesh of hybrids and raknoth who’d gone too long without feeding.
And so it was that somehow, even trapped in the heart of a Legion fortress, sealed in an unbreakable cell that I’d thoroughly cloaked against telepathy, Alton Parker was still somehow succeeding in making us play this game of his.
He’d tell me what he wanted to, when he wanted to. So for now, all I could do was walk away, or play. It wasn’t much of a choice.
“Your friend tried to kidnap my people,” I said.
His brow furrowed in a way that somehow made him look genuinely thoughtful and yet supremely all-knowing at the same time. It was a look I was getting used to seeing on him. “You’re going to have to be more precise. To the best of my knowledge, friends are not a commodity in which I’ve much invested.”
No kidding.
“Your contact, Dex,” I said, not wanting to get sidetracked into some pointless discussion on the value of friendship—or lack thereof in the eyes of the raknoth. “He tried to grab two of our people.”
“Did he?” Parker considered that. “Well, I can’t imagine that turned out well for him. Tell me, was Elise Fields one of his intended targets?”
I searched his calm face, looking in vain for some indicator as to what he was playing at. “Why do you wanna know?”
He just studied me for a short while longer then waved the thought aside. “It matters little. I assume that slippery coward failed to provide any valuable information?”
“Then why the grop did you send us after him in the first place?”
A faint smirk touched his lips. “I hadn’t realized I possessed the power to send you anywhere, Haldin. Forgive me. If you’ll recall, I never suggested that I believed the cretin would be of particular use to your hunt. I merely said that, seeing as my extensive list of potential hideouts had proved fruitless, Dex was the most likely of my contacts to have the information you were looking for.”
“So you’re telling me you really don’t know how to find them.”
“No. I’m telling you that any other leads I provide will be less likely than Dex to know where my brethren are hiding.”
“Well thank you for that clarification,” I said through gritted teeth.
It was like arguing directions with an autoskimmer.
“You’re welcome, Haldin,” Parker said with a sincerity that raised my blood temperature a few degrees. “Though I feel compelled to remind you this hunt of yours is hardly the most pressing of our troubles.”
Alpha, it made my skin crawl when he used words like we and our. Like he actually believed there was any world in which I would ever willingly work with the creature who’d helped turn thousands of Enochians into feral beasts and drained even more innocents to keep those pet beasts well-stocked in blood.
“Great,” I said. “We’re back to The Big Bad Threat again? The one you’ve so conveniently refused to tell me a single thing about since you decided to step this game of yours up and ‘surrender’ yourself to us?
He hauled back and slammed a fist into the thick window with all his considerable raknoth strength, and without a moment’s warning. I couldn’t help it. I jumped. The sound was like a full speed skimmer collision a foot away from my face. I shuffled backward to catch my balance, my heart thundering at the unexpected violence.
“Does this look like a game to you?” Parker asked, watching my shaky recovery with a calm that was all the more disturbing in the wake of his bestial outburst. “I did not surrender myself to this pathetic imprisonment for the petty amusement of watching your Legion trip over its own clumsy feet to stop two of my brethren.”
“Then why are you here, Parker? Why won’t you tell me?”
“I already have,” he said, the first hints of frustration creeping into his eyes. “Nine times now. I am here for my own safekeeping until it is time for us to confront the greater threat facing your planet.”
“Which you won’t tell me the first gropping thing about.”
“It is not yet time.”
I barely managed to restrain myself from taking my own turn pounding on the thick window. What I wouldn’t have given to reach in there and give him a good, strong telekinetic uppercut. But there was a damn good reason I’d laid down the cloaking runes to seal the room in its own little bubble. The inability to reach in and smack the raknoth around with my powers was a small price to pay to assure he couldn’t reach out and start mind-jacking any passing legionnaires to come let him loose.
Still, it would’ve been nice.
“Most of the generals are calling for your execution, you know,” I said, deciding to try another angle.
“I find that perfectly unsurprising.”
I’ll bet he did.
“Well good for you,” I growled. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you might find yourself staring down one scudstorm of a firing squad soon if you’d rather keep stringing us along instead of actually telling me something useful.”
“It is not for personal satisfaction that I delay. It is because you are simply not yet ready to do what must be done when the time comes.”
I chewed on that, opening my mouth multiple times to tell him he was full of scud, that he didn’t know the first thing about what I was or wasn’t ready to do for my planet. But it wasn’t worth the breath. Not when anything I said could—and probably would—just further reaffirm his smug assurance that he saw and understood far more of the whole picture here than my sad little human brain could ever hope to comprehend.
“You wanna know what I am ready to do?” I asked. “I’m pretty damn sure I’m ready to tell Command that they’re right: that I’m never gonna learn anything useful from you and that they might as well pull the plug on this whole bullscud exercise and see just how many pulse cannon bolts it takes to put an end to you. Scud, some of the generals might even start liking me after that. You have any good reason I shouldn’t tell them to simplify my life, here?”
For a few moments, I actually thought he might crack. Then he showed me a cold smile instead.
I turned to leave, having handily reached my bullscud threshold for the day—or for the entire damn season, for that matter—and thinking maybe I should tell the generals to do their worst and have at Parker. Not that many of them actually gave a scud about what I thought—least of all General Auckus, who had a hold on Legion Command nearly as strong as High General Glenbark’s and probably would’ve paid his own personal coin to see me dead if he’d thought he could get away with it. But even Auckus would be happy to play along this one time if it meant the end of seeing me in a place of leverage with the alien asset who would talk to me, and to me only.
If I declared defeat here, if I refused to meet with Alton Parker again…
I paused at the door, wanting little more than to walk the rest of the way out—maybe to go sign the raknoth’s death warrant, or maybe just to make it clear that I wouldn’t be so easily yanked back and forth. But I’d already hesitated. There wasn’t any pretending like I hadn’t. Parker was a predator, and I’d just shown him that, on some level, he still had his hooks in me.
Because I couldn’t deny it: I wanted to know what he was hiding. Badly. It was probably stupid. It was definitely pathetic. I hated myself for it a little more with each passing second I failed to step through the doorway. But I needed to know. So I turned and watched, waiting.
For the first time this visit, his eyes were not on me, but fixed on some thought or distant memory. It took him a little while to finally speak. “I’ve given thought to the problem we previously discussed.”
I opened my mouth to give him a dose of his own bullscud and tell him he might have to be more precise, but he roused and pushed on before I could.
“The degrading hybrids,” he said. “It’s possible I could design a solution that might reverse the transition process.”
I tried to hide the flicker of excitement I felt in my chest, not only because I didn’t want him to see it but also because this was Alton Parker I was talking to. If not an outright liar, he was at least a bender of words even at the best of times. But if there was even a shot he could help undo what had been done to the hybrids…
Devastating as their hit-and-run campaign across Enochia had been—especially as the oldest of the hybrids had begun maturing and adopting more of their progenitors’ strength, resilience, and telepathic prowess—the hybrid army had never been all that large. The Legion analysts estimated they’d peaked around 5,000 active members leading up to the battle for Oasis. After Oasis, the army had been broken and scattered.
I didn’t love that there were still a few hundred hybrids out there, roaming freely in the aftermath of Oasis, but the Legion trackers were dealing with them, and it was hardly as troubling as the other half of the hybrid problem: the roughly 1,000 innocent people still stuck in hybrid breeding chambers, irreversibly transitioning into the wild beasts who would thirst for human blood day by day until the demand eventually outgrew even their ability to violently procure it.
I thought of Johnny’s sister, Annabelle, lying in stasis in one of the cells they’d constructed outside of Therese Brown’s lab as Therese and her team labored to find some way to help her, and all the others like her. The familiar tinge of nausea swept in, thinking about the way the sweet red-haired girl had looked the last time I’d seen her, caught somewhere between her meek human self and the beastly raknoth influence taking hold of her. Even removed from the breeding chamber, her too-pale skin seemed to grow rougher every day, the sickly green hue of raknoth hide slowly but surely creeping in.
Johnny could keep pretending like it wasn’t happening. I could keep telling him that Therese and her people would figure it out in time. But if Parker had the answers...
“What’s the catch?” I asked. “What do you want in return?”
“If it should work, consider it a gesture of good faith.”
Good faith? Seriously?
“Why now, then?” I asked instead. “Why not make this gesture of good faith days ago, when I first asked?”
He frowned at me. “Believe it or not, reversing a complete species transmutation is not particularly easy. I told you I’d think about it because I needed time... to think about it.” He said the last words slowly, as if he were worried about my ability to keep up with such a challenging thought.
“And that’s it?” I asked, ignoring his jibe. “You’re telling me this sudden good faith has nothing to do with whether or not I might walk out of this room and let the generals have their way with you?”
His lips twitched in a faint smirk. “Perhaps I feel some remorse for the lives my actions have effectively ended.”
“I buy that about as much as I buy all this, ‘You’re not ready yet,’ bullscud.”
“Then perhaps you’d be willing to think of this as nothing more than a dastardly bribe. I am not your enemy on this planet, Haldin. Not anymore.”
It was my turn to frown. Not anymore? Did he mean since Oasis, or even before then? It was true that Parker had started his apparent rebellion against his own kin well before the assault on Oasis—right after we’d destroyed his hybrid breeding facility at the decommissioned Vantage labs, in fact. But that was hardly proof he was a sincere ally. Had something else changed since then?
“What would you need to implement this solution?” I asked. “You’re not getting out of here to visit the lab.”
He shook his head. “That won’t be necessary. I’m already developing the counter treatment as we speak. My only requirement will be a courier to carry the treatment to the afflicted.”
I didn’t like the way he said the word, afflicted. It was subtle, but there was derision there, or something like it. Like he was mocking me for suggesting that what had been done to those poor people was actually a tragedy at all. It hardly inspired confidence in this magical treatment he was suddenly touting. And what the scud did he mean, he was already developing this miracle cure as we spoke?
The heavy clacks of the antechamber door unlocking broke my wary train of thought.
I turned in confusion to find Johnny and Elise both standing there—which didn’t bode well, seeing as I knew neither of them would’ve interrupted a potentially useful talk with our raknoth captive for any trivial matter. Taking in their expressions, I was pretty sure they hadn’t.
They looked like they’d just watched someone die.
“What is it?”
They traded a glance before warily eyeing the raknoth over my shoulder. I couldn’t help but notice they both looked a few shades paler than normal.
“What happened?” I asked again, the first jitters of panic rippling through me.
Johnny tilted his head back toward the waiting room, a gesture that indicated I should join them. Something he didn’t want Alton Parker to know about, then? That didn’t make me feel any better.
I followed them out into the second chamber where they’d been waiting, not pausing to explain myself to Parker. Johnny keyed the security door shut behind me and looked at Elise again. She tapped her ear and pointed in Parker’s direction, suggesting the raknoth might still be able to hear us.
“Guys…”
Johnny waved for us to follow him and started across the chamber for the door that opened into the high security wing of the Haven brig. I caught up and grabbed Elise’s hand to stop her.
“Guys, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”
Elise glanced from Parker’s cell chamber back to Johnny, and they seemed to come to some agreement.
“The High Cleric just released a statement…” Elise started.
My stomach fell. “What, over the tavern brawl?”
“It’s not just that,” Johnny said.
“What? I’ve been marked Enemy of Enochia for almost a cycle now. What more can he do? As long as Glenbark—”
“This is different Hal.”
I froze at the gravity in Elise’s voice. Beside her Johnny was nodding slowly, not a single trace of humor on his face.
“It’s not just you,” she continued. “And I don’t think they’re posturing this time, either.”
I stared at them with unseeing eyes, my head floating with a memory of my recent meeting with the High Cleric. Had it only been a cycle ago? It felt like half a lifetime since our discussion, sitting high in the White Tower, as he’d so casually dismissed the entire subset of gifted Enochians as abominations—unholy accidents in need of correcting. As casual and scholarly as his demeanor had been, though, I’d never forget the look in his eyes in the one moment his mask had slipped. The righteous fury. The utter disgust at the mere fact of my existence.
I saw those keenly piercing eyes now, flashing with a deep, long-buried malice,
staring me down right there over the background of Elise’s and Johnny’s pale faces. I felt dizzy.
“What did they do?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
Elise’s hand was gripping mine too tightly, her lips parted but seemingly unable to find the words she sought. Johnny filled the silence for her.
“The High Cleric just declared open war on every Shaper on Enochia.”
4
The Call
Elise, Johnny, and I huddled over Johnny’s tablet, watching with mouths agape. The vid was a replay from not even an hour earlier, taken from the expansive courtyard outside the White Tower, where the High Cleric had reportedly taken to delivering his sermons while the Great Hall was being rebuilt atop the Tower, high above.
“It is with great humility and grave tidings I come before you today,” His Holiness started, “not only as High Cleric, but also as a concerned Enochian. Most of you have heard the rumors these past cycles, reports of true demons walking the streets, every bit as real as you or me. Even a cursory glance at the reels will reveal multiple mentions of the Demon of Divinity, who was formerly known as Haldin Raish.”
He looked around at the thousands upon thousands of loyal Sanctum devotees gathered below his dais, assessing their reactions.
“Perhaps you have heard more troubling rumors. Perhaps you have heard that he is not an anomaly—that there are, in fact, many more like him, hiding in the shadows, preying on the unsuspecting people of Enochia…”
Another look around. A big, fat dramatic pause.
“It is true.”
I shot a worried look with Elise and Johnny, who were both watching this for the second time now, looking sick.
“What’s he doing?” I asked, but Elise only nodded her head toward the tablet, silently urging me to pay attention. Not that I needed much goading.
Even from the camera up on the High Cleric’s dais, we could hear the murmurs of the sprawling crowd. The cleric himself raised his hands in a peaceful request for silence.
Children of Enochia Page 3