Alaric Weston stood with his arms crossed, the battered, grayish-brown long coat he wore billowing lightly in the faint breeze. He wasn’t particularly tall or built—hell, underneath his gray beard and his stringy gray hair, he looked at least sixty, if not older—but even at a distance, Rachel could see the hard resolve in the man’s face.
“And you called me a cowboy,” Jarek murmured, his cheek nearly touching hers.
She met his eyes for a moment, then they both snapped back to the scene as Weston called, “These boys hurt anyone, Bobby?”
“M-M-Mark’s dead,” came a reply, high with fright.
“Stupid, Bobby,” the head marauder said.
She wasn’t an expert, but the sound of a gun hammer being cocked was recognizable enough. A cloud of tension coalesced in the following silence, a heavy, tangible pressure that would only be alleviated in one of a few ways.
“Get ready,” Jarek mumbled next to her.
Ready for what, exactly? She swallowed and gripped her staff more tightly.
Jarek hopped to his feet and began waving his free arm around like he’d spotted an old friend in a crowd. Aghast, she half stood to pull him back before anyone noticed, but it was too late.
“Alaric, you old coot!” he cried. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”
Dozens of heads, marauder and hostage alike, whipped around as if connected on a single track.
She was too focused on the several guns rotating to face them to notice said old coot had moved until the gunshot roared and the two rightmost marauders fell to the ground.
Two?
Things clicked into place a second later as she saw Weston had a revolver in each hand. Two shots so perfectly synchronized they had sounded like one.
As soon as her mind caught up with that, all hell broke loose.
Weston fired again, but his next shots must’ve missed or hit armor, because none of the marauders fell. Instead, they began to return fire.
Jarek’s pistol cracked out beside her.
“Take cover, Deadwood!” Weston cried as he fired another pair of shots and ducked out of sight behind the building next to them.
The few hostages who hadn’t already hit the dirt promptly did so.
She was gathering energy in preparation to defend their position when Jarek yanked her down behind the car with him.
She slapped his hand away. “Asshole!”
He opened his mouth to say something, but the air filled with man-made thunder. Shattered glass rained down on them as a tidal wave of marauder lead sought them out. A few bullets tore through the car door beside her. Her head buzzed as she pulled a barrier into existence between them and the car.
“Great plan!” she shouted, glaring at Jarek. “Really fantastic stuff!”
He calmly pointed a finger upward. A second later, three steady, well-paced shots rang out from the top of the building next to them—Michael, she realized.
On the crack of the third shot, Jarek poked his head up long enough to fire two shots. She rose beside him, holding her barrier in front of her and partially in front of Jarek. Weston’s and Michael’s weapons rang out again to their right.
“Inside!” the marauder leader snapped, yanking one of his men along as he scurried for the stairs. “Get inside!”
A third man turned to join them and promptly fell to a shot from Michael or Weston. More shots followed, kicking up chips of concrete and brick around the leader and his sole getaway partner as they cleared the crowd and scrambled up the front steps.
Next to her, Jarek let out a long, deliberate breath. His gun cracked once, and the marauder leader stumbled and fell on his way through the doorway. The second marauder scurried into the church, pulling the door shut behind them.
Rachel reminded herself to breathe as her heart began climbing down from record speed.
Then a girl in the crowd screamed.
An icy knife twisted in her stomach as a marauder who’d taken cover in the crowd stood, yanking the dark-haired girl who’d screamed up roughly by the throat. He hunkered behind her, firing a few blind shots from his revolver as he staggered back toward the church.
The ice in her stomach melted into a bubbling rage that rose up and propelled her from the cover of the car.
“Rachel!” Michael called from above.
The marauder’s surprise gave way to a sneer as he took her in and turned his gun on her. What harm could this little blond chick be, right?
She would show him.
She extended an open palm toward the cowardly bastard without breaking stride. He pulled the trigger. Thunder clapped, and a lead slug crumpled against thin air five feet in front of her. The harmless lead clanked to the pavement at her feet. The stunned marauder tried again, to similar results, and dead silence descended on the yard.
“What the—” he said quietly. “What . . .”
He yanked his human shield tighter to him and jammed the muzzle of his gun against her head. “I’ll kill her! Stay the fuck away from me!”
The girl’s eyes were wet with tears, but she didn’t make a sound. Rachel met the girl’s eyes and willed her to be brave. The marauder jerked her tighter, digging his pistol into her temple, and the girl let out a soft whimper.
She wrapped her mind around his hand like an iron glove and yanked it away from the girl with vicious force. Something in his shoulder made a loud pop, and he staggered back, crying out as his pistol clattered to the ground.
She pulled more energy and turned her hand palm up to focus her will. Waves of electricity crackled through her as she lifted the bastard eight feet into the air. He flailed and cried out in undignified protest. Beneath him, the girl scrambled clear.
She turned her palm over and slammed the thug to the ground. He groaned, feebly shifting to pick himself up. She took care of that for him, then slammed him down again, a wordless cry boiling out of her throat. She panted, preparing to lift him up a third time, intending to bring him down harder yet.
“Rachel!” Jarek bellowed.
Then something crashed into her from behind.
It should have hurt more, hitting the ground. Something helped break the fall. An arm. Jarek’s arm. He was lying next to her. What the h—
Gunfire erupted from the front of the church, tremendously loud and fully automatic. The voice of a second weapon joined it. Jarek, lying prone on his stomach beside her, was already squeezing off several rounds in return.
The enemy fire abated for a moment, replaced by shouts and the sounds of shattering glass. Jarek was somehow already on his feet, pulling at her arm.
“Move.” There was a level intensity to his voice that set her feet scrambling.
They took off for the front of the church, keeping low. More gunfire cracked out from behind as Michael and Weston covered their advance. The gunmen didn’t manage much more than a few potshots from the church windows before she’d bounded up the steps and out of their line of fire.
Jarek was right on her heels. He methodically tucked an empty mag into his belt and slid a fresh mag into his pistol, then he holstered it and reached back to draw his sword with a smooth, practiced motion. The edge of the blade glinted in the sunlight.
“Plan?” she asked.
“Stick ’em with the pointy end.” He drew his left pistol. “Or something like that. Cover me?”
No matter what his words said about him, the guy clearly had some idea what he was doing. She nodded.
Jarek moved to the right of the double doors, indicating she should mirror him. Satisfied, he reached over and yanked the right door open, and she immediately learned why he’d taken the time to scoot them clear of the doors.
Gunfire roared from within. Bullets slammed into the heavy wooden door. Some stopped there, but several tore through the thick wood, showering them with splinters and dust.
Through the chaos, Jarek caught her eye and wiggled his eyebrows.
Christ, was he enjoying this?
He held his gun hand
up to point his index finger at his own eye, then he wiggled it toward the church, raising his eyebrows. It wasn’t the most inspired sign language on the planet, but she took his meaning nonetheless. Before the door across from her had completed its slow swing closed, she jammed her staff through the crack and began pulling energy.
He gave her a wink and said, “Give ’em hell, Goldilocks.”
She was surprised to feel her mouth pulling into a tight grin as the energy built inside her. She met his eyes and let loose with her finest arcane flashbang.
Blinding light flashed out of the narrow door crack, along with a resounding crash of thunder. Jarek was already moving, tearing the door open and darting through. She rocked back to her heels as the fatigue hit.
Inside, crisp, controlled shots were quickly joined by shouts and more sporadic gunfire.
She cleared her head as best she could, wrapped herself in a telekinetic shield, and slipped into the church after Jarek.
Two dead marauders waited for her inside. She jerked her gaze up the hallway at the sound of another gunshot just in time to see a third man crumple to the thick red carpet. Jarek stood over him, smoke dissipating from the barrel of his extended gun.
Another marauder leaped into sight and swept a tiny, vicious-looking sawed-off shotgun toward Jarek. The shotgun roared, but Jarek had already ducked past the marauder.
The dark wall spit sawdust as the shot tore into it. Jarek swept his sword up. A shudder rippled through Rachel as the blade passed through the marauder’s arm and everything from the elbow down unceremoniously flopped to the carpet, gun and all.
The man stared in shock at the place where his right arm used to be. Jarek placed a solid kick into his side, and he toppled to the ground, twisting to clutch at his fresh stump. An agonized scream escaped his throat. Jarek kicked him in the side of the head, leaving him unconscious or at least stunned out of his misery.
“Come on,” Jarek said.
She felt hypnotized. His blade was oddly free of blood after having passed through all that flesh and cartilage. It seemed such an odd thing, that—
Jarek clucked his tongue twice, tugging her back to the present. “They made their choices. No time to hold back. Come on.”
He vanished around the corner at the end of the hall. She squeezed her eyes shut for a long second and then followed at a hard run.
She pulled up at the corner to the deafening chaos of two gunmen firing at Michael and Weston from the windows of the next hallway. One of them had an assault rifle of some kind and the other, an old bolt action.
Jarek leaned out of an empty doorway ahead, pistol raised. The closer of the two gunmen, the one with the bolt action, turned. Jarek fired twice, the crack of his pistol paltry in contrast to the roar of the assault rifle down the hall.
His first shot went wide, kicking up a puff of drywall dust next to the first gunman’s head. The second shot found the man’s throat. The gunman fell against the wall, a horrified expression frozen onto his features as he clutched at the bleeding mess of his neck.
By then, the thunder had quieted as the second gunman turned to see what was happening. Jarek took a hurried shot and missed, and then the thunder promptly resumed. Jarek threw himself through the doorway he’d been using for cover as the wooden doorframe exploded into showers of sawdust and splinters.
With his first choice of targets behind cover, the gunman turned to her. She made like Jarek and threw herself back around the corner. A stream of hot lead tore into the corner behind her, and she scooted away. No reason to tire herself butting heads with an assault rifle when there were perfectly good walls, right?
The hallway fell silent. Was the gunman reloading? Or just waiting?
Jarek must have been wondering the same thing. Maybe if she distracted the gunman . . .
She pulled her barrier back in place, took a deep breath, and stepped into the hallway—just as the gunman slammed a fresh magazine home. His rifle tracked toward her. Before he could fire, Jarek appeared and sent three shots at him. The first went wide. The second and third must’ve struck his armored vest, because he jerked back but swept his rifle back toward Jarek.
She dropped her defenses and let loose a telekinetic blast that caught the gunman like a small wrecking ball and threw him through what remained of the window.
Hopefully Michael and Weston would handle the guy from there, if he was still conscious and functioning.
Tingling fatigue licked at her limbs. She leaned heavily on her staff.
“Defenestration by magical whackin’ stick.” Jarek nodded approval from the splintered doorway. “Classic.”
She kept her eyes on the end of the hallway as she gathered herself and moved forward. He fell in beside her.
“You just wanted me to know that you know what ‘defenestration’ means, didn’t you?”
“Gotta use them there big words when I can. People need know me talk real good.”
She fought down a smile. Why did that even make her want to smile?
“God, it’s unbearable.”
“The charm?”
She spared a glance at his impish grin. “Sure. We can go with that instead.”
Was that what it was? Was she charmed by this man?
She’d have to deal with that irritating thought later.
They drew up to the sanctuary doors. There was a muffled thump on the other side and a few shouts.
She held the back of her hand out to Jarek’s chest to signal him to pause. If he had questions, he held them surprisingly well as she closed her eyes and reached out with her extended senses.
Her mind brushed against pinpricks near the head of the room. “Two at the front of the pews. Both armed. One seems to be in a lot of pain.”
“I would think so,” he said. “I shot him in the ass.”
Through the door, there was another loud thump and then a muffled voice: “No, you idiot! He shot me in the ass!”
She traded an unbelieving look with Jarek, fighting down the surreal fit of giggles that threatened to burst free. Every scrap of humor evaporated as she cast her senses up to the altar and felt a dozen young, frightened minds.
“Kids.” She felt as breathless as if she’d been kicked in the gut. “Sick bastards fell back to hole up using the kids as cover.”
Jarek sobered in an instant. “Son of a bitch.”
“What do we do?”
His gaze shifted from her staff to her eyes. “Can you shield us without that thing?”
She nodded.
“Then we give them what they want. They don’t know what you can do yet. Follow my lead, and please don’t let them shoot me.”
She nodded again.
He searched her face. “This isn’t the part where you just let them take me out, right?”
Was that real concern in his eyes? For a second, he actually looked vulnerable, and she actually wanted to reach out and tell him not to worry.
The second passed. She broke their eye contact and reached for the energy to conjure their barrier. “Just keep close to me. And no sudden movements unless you’re ready to abandon the shield.”
“Fair enough.”
The doors parted easily. The butt-shot leader lay on one of the pews at the front, groaning in pain but managing to keep his pistol trained at the altar, where a dozen boys and girls ranging from five or six through the early teens cowered. A second marauder stood watch behind them, but he looked like he was seriously thinking about making a run for it instead.
At the sound of their entrance, marauder number two whirled to face them, jumpy as could be.
She showed her hands. Beside her, Jarek did the same, letting his pistol hang loosely on his finger by the trigger guard as he held his hands up.
“Easy, guys,” he said.
The marauder leader swiveled to face them from his pew, keeping his gun trained on the altar. “Who the fuck are you people?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Jarek took a few slow steps forward, waitin
g for her to match each step. “It’s just us now.” Slowly, carefully, he bent and dropped his sword and pistol onto the thin gray carpet.
She followed his example, carefully maintaining their barrier as she tossed down her staff.
He nodded to her, and they slowly walked forward side by side, hands raised.
“Your posse is dead,” Jarek said. “You have nothing to gain by doing this.”
“That’s far enough,” the leader said, his voice thick with pain.
Jarek took one more step forward and stopped. Slowly, he removed his second pistol with thumb and forefinger and tossed it into the pews. “There. Our weapons are down. You two are free to slip out the back and be gone. Leave the kids and go.”
The marauder behind the altar took a small step toward the back exit, clearly thinking about it.
The leader shot an uncertain glance that way, then looked back to them, his face pulling into a sneer as he turned his gun their way. “You think you’re better than us? Walking in here and shooting up our crew when we’re just trying to survive too? You can go fuck yourself.”
“Dude. Not only did you decide to raid what might be the only half-decent town left on the planet . . .”
Jarek was slowly moving left into the pews as he spoke, keeping them moving without actually approaching the marauders. She followed closely, not yet sure what his angle was.
“ . . . you did it on a Sunday while the good folk were at church, for Christ’s sake. Or, you know, not for Christ. Whatever.” He spread his hands. “I think that goes a bit beyond just surviving, don’t you?”
The marauder leader only glared at him with murderous eyes.
“I get it, man,” Jarek went on. “At some point, you had to eat. You had to do what you had to do. But then you just kept on doing it—taking and taking and killing and killing. You couldn’t stop, could you? I bet it even got easy, didn’t it? Pulling the trigger? No problem. At least until you had to lie down to sleep at night.”
“Shut up,” the man said, fanatic energy creeping into his eyes. “Shut up and hold fucking still!”
Jarek paused and raised his hands higher in emphasized surrender. “You know what? I tried to reason with you, but fuck it.”
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 13