She caught it then: the faintest flicker of motion at the doorway leading out of the front right corner of the sanctuary. She did her best not to react.
Beside her, Jarek sat down in the pew. “Everyone wants to blame this shit on the raknoth. I say it’s people like you that have kept us in the dark ages for the past fifteen years.”
That’s when Alaric Weston strode in from the corner opposite them with his dark revolvers raised, one for each marauder.
By the time they caught a hint of his presence, it was already too late.
A few of the children screamed, but their peers saw to them, quieting, soothing. After it became apparent they were more or less okay, her attention shifted back to Weston.
He stalked toward them, guns still drawn if no longer pointed at anyone. She shifted her barrier to cover them as he approached, although her head buzzed and her limbs were beginning to feel heavy with the prolonged effort.
“Hello again,” Jarek said. “Thought I saw you lurking back there. You’re, uh, not gonna try to kill us now, are you?”
Weston stared at them, his dark eyes stoic. “Son,” he said finally, holstering his revolvers in a smooth movement, “I don’t know who the hell you are, but I reckon I owe you a thanks rather than a bullet. Now, can you two help me get these kids outside?”
She released her barrier as Weston went to the altar to begin restoring order.
“Whew!” Jarek patted the spot over his heart. “Guess that’s a no on the killing us thing, then. Go, team!”
He bounded over to help with the children. She watched him go and couldn’t help but wonder: would that no stay a no once Alaric Weston found out why they were here?
15
Jarek fancied himself a hard man, more or less. He’d certainly been known to rough it often enough. But as he shifted his numbing butt on the thick stump that was his seat at Alaric Weston’s round wooden table, he decided that proper chairs wouldn’t have been too much to ask for after having saved the day.
Michael was pointing at him. “You’re telling me that you, Jarek Slater, talked your way through a hostage situation?”
He shrugged. “I was gifted with a silver tongue, Mikey. I’m not sure why you’re so surprised.”
Michael glanced at Rachel, who sat at the table with them as they waited for Alaric’s return.
She gave her own shrug. “Yeah, as long as you consider having two marauders gunned down in front of a roomful of children a victory, Jarek totally nailed this one.”
He held his palms upward. “Hey, no one died. You know, except the guys who—ah, I’ll take it anyway.”
Michael leaned his elbows on the sturdy bulk of the table and frowned. “I’m not seeing it.”
“Ye of little faith,” Jarek said, sitting on his stump as sagely as he could manage.
Michael rolled his eyes and looked around the room for about the trillionth time in the past hour. “Well, I hope that silver tongue’s ready to make the hard sell to Alaric when he gets back.”
It wasn’t hard to tell that Michael was restless. He understood. Fighting was stressful enough, and they had what might very well turn out to be the hard part still ahead. Repetition, like obsessively looking around a room over and over again, could be soothing. It could help convince someone they were doing everything they could despite not really doing anything at all. But try as he might, it wasn’t as if Michael were going to suddenly spot Alaric hiding behind the bread box or under the table.
They’d barely had the chance to exchange more than a sentence with Alaric, but saving an altar-full of kids had a way of breaking the ice. He’d asked that twitchy Bobby kid who’d nearly been executed before the fighting started to show them to his cabin and insisted they take a breather while he helped the townsfolk cart the surviving marauders to their small jail, which turned out to be next to Alaric’s house anyway.
According to Bobby’s ceaseless chatter, the location wasn’t coincidental.
When Alaric had fled the east coast five years prior, he’d apparently arrived just in time to liberate the town from a violent batch of would-be rulers. When they’d realized he was a local returned home, they’d named him sheriff. He’d refused the badge but accepted the call of duty. As thanks, they’d pitched in as a community to build him the rustic cabin they were sitting in, made with wood cut from the trees of the very hillside next to them, if you could believe it. (Thank you, Bobby.)
Maybe the kid’s verbal flatulence wasn’t unreasonable given he’d almost been killed thirty minutes earlier, but Jarek had a sneaking suspicion that Bobby never really stopped bouncing off the walls, near-death experience or no.
At least the kid had shown them to the food before scurrying off. A large bowl of beans and a few glasses of water later, Jarek was sated and well prepped for flatulence of the nonverbal variety.
After another twenty or so minutes of idle chatting, heavy boot steps sounded on the porch. The screen door screeched open, and Alaric Weston strode into the room.
He went straight to the wooden rack by the door and unburdened himself of his battered long coat in a way that was clearly ritual for him, revealing a simple shirt of some light beige, rough-spun fabric. Next, he made as if to remove his gun belt, then thought better of it and came to settle on the last of the four stumps at the dining room table. He brushed his stringy gray hair off his forehead and behind his ears.
The four of them sat still for a long moment, silent but for the sound of Alaric’s steady chewing. God knew what he was chewing. Maybe tobacco leaves.
“Right, then,” Alaric finally said. “You’re Resistance?”
Michael nodded. “I am.”
More chewing. “Figured as much. We don’t get many new folk ’round here.” He looked at Jarek, then at Rachel. “Especially not ones that can stop bullets in thin air. Much as I appreciate the help back there, I made it clear to Hux that I was done with the fight. Not much left to say there.”
Michael looked down at the table, his face tight. “Hux stepped down from Command a while back. Sloan wormed his way into replacing him before I got there.”
Alaric’s expression darkened. “Nelken and Daniels still there?”
Michael nodded.
“Well, they knew the score too, so either they’ve succeeded at shoving their heads so far up their asses that they forgot, or something’s seriously wrong.”
“We’ve got a pretty big problem,” Michael said. “And you might be the only one who can help us.”
“Although I think you’re pretty spot on about the heads-in-the-asses thing too,” Jarek said. He smiled and shrugged at the stern look Michael shot him. “Just one outsider’s opinion.”
“You two are freelancers?” Alaric asked, looking from him to Rachel.
“Just friends,” Rachel said.
“Rachel is my sister,” Michael said, earning him a frown from Rachel.
The honesty didn’t surprise Jarek. Michael was a believer, and Alaric had basically founded the Resistance. Michael would probably have licked Alaric’s boots if he’d asked. Plus, pedigree aside, Michael was about to ask something of the guy—something that wouldn’t be easy or pleasant for him. A little honesty probably didn’t hurt their chances.
“And Jarek,” Michael continued, “is—”
“His indentured love slave,” Jarek said. “Wait, no, I’m getting my roles all mixed up again.”
“Jarek is a mercenary who is astoundingly unclear on how being a mercenary works,” Rachel said.
“That,” Jarek said, holding a finger up for pause, then dropping it back down and nodding his agreement, “is actually pretty true. Thanks, sweetheart.”
A flicker of surprise (among other things) shot through his core as she gave him a sultry wink. The very next moment, order was restored to the universe as she waved her hand in a shooing motion. An invisible hand shoved him backward. His stump tipped over, but he managed to land in a deep squat right behind it.
She rolled her eyes as he grinned,
righted his stump, and plopped back down.
“She doesn’t like the S word,” he explained to Alaric.
Michael was clearly not amused. “Getting back to the matter at hand . . .”
Alaric, who clearly was amused, turned the fading spark in his tired, dark eyes back to Michael. “What is it you think I can do for you?”
“Well . . .”
“I got it,” Jarek said, holding a hand up. He turned to Alaric. “Mikey and your mutual pal Huxley stole one of the Red King’s toys and stuck it in a safe because they thought they could use it against the raknoth, but now”—he hesitated, realizing he’d just talked himself into the corner of breaking the news of Huxley’s death—“they can’t get to the goods, and we got a call from the Reds saying that it’s gonna be Doomsday 2.0 up in here if they don’t get it back in”—he glanced at his comm—“twelve-ish hours, and uh . . . what?”
Alaric had stopped chewing. He turned to Michael, his mouth in a tight line and his brows fighting to meet. “Hux is dead, isn’t he? That’s why you’re here.”
It took Michael several seconds to meet Alaric’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Alaric sat back, his eyes somewhere far away. After a while, he chewed once. Then again. His jaw slowly built pace like an old steam engine until he finally grimaced and said, “Well, shit.”
“Yeah,” Michael said.
Alaric came back from whatever distant place he’d ventured off to and focused on Michael, his expression stoic but not unkind. “What did he lock up in there? What could possibly be so important?”
Michael proceeded to spit it out: how he and Huxley had found the strange egg-shaped device, how the thing had felt when he’d touched it, how desperately the Red King and the Overlord wanted it back, the doomsday warning—all of it. Rachel and Jarek pitched in on the more recent parts.
Alaric listened patiently, chewing all the while.
“I don’t know what it is you’ve found,” he said when they’d finished, “but it seems to me the lady has the right idea here. This nest thing is already buried. All you have to do is walk away.”
“What?” Michael said.
Alaric studied Michael, sympathy creeping into his expression. “The Resistance isn’t going to take those monsters down, son. Probably never was. I learned that the hard way. You wanna help? Find some people that need helpin’ and give it to them. Find someplace you can forget the vamps, and forget them.”
Michael looked as if he’d just stumbled onto a dead pet. Jarek didn’t blame him. It wasn’t easy, finding out that one of your heroes has given up the good fight. He’d found that one out the hard (and violent) way back around the same time he’d met Pryce.
Of course, if this old cowboy didn’t play ball, Jarek could also kiss Fela goodbye for the foreseeable future—maybe forever. Despite whatever Al might say, that wasn’t an option.
He leaned forward. “While I generally agree with the philosophy, old-timer, it kind of falls to shit if this whole doomsday threat pans out.”
Alaric shrugged. “Vamps’ll do a lot worse than lie to get what they want. You really think they’d be the ones trying to prevent something terrible from happening to the planet after what they did?”
“They do live here.” He shrugged. “Maybe they’re feeling some bomber’s remorse.”
“I don’t buy that for a damn second.”
“Either way, this might be one of those if-there’s-even-a-slight-chance kind of scenarios.”
Alaric looked out the window toward the small jail. “I can’t leave this place. Especially right now.”
“We’re talking about a day trip here, man. It’s not like we’re asking you to throw in and reroot your life.”
Alaric narrowed his eyes. “And what exactly do you get out of this? What’s your angle?”
Jarek might’ve given any number of lies at this point, but the one that probably wouldn’t fly was that he was here out of some noble urge to save the world.
If the world were actually in danger, who knew? But he was less than convinced.
“I’m trying to help a friend get his home back,” he finally said. “Long story.”
Alaric pursed his lips, his gaze flicking between all three of them. “I could tell you where Hux would’ve hidden your nest, but it wouldn’t do you much good without me.”
Michael nodded. “Hux told me he booby-trapped the place.”
“That might be an understatement. And if he didn’t give you access, I’m assuming it’ll be my credentials you’ll need. My fingerprints, my voice, and my retinas, which all means you’ll be needing me.” He shook his head. “But I can’t leave. These people need me.”
Dammit.
He could see the wheels furiously turning in Michael’s head as the kid tried to figure out what to say—what magical combination of words he could string together to make Alaric see reason. It wasn’t just going to click into place, though; that much was clear.
Maybe it was time to strike a match under Alaric’s ass.
“Are you sure about that?” he asked quietly.
Alaric’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Sure about what?”
“That these people need you. You sure it’s not the other way around?”
Michael started to say something, but Alaric raised a hand and he fell silent, looking about as tense as a cat in a dog pound.
“Son,” Alaric said, his expression stony, “I appreciate what you did to help my people today, but you best be careful with your next words.”
“Careful,” Jarek said. “Like you today, when you strutted up to face a company of armed thugs on your own? What were you planning to do next? It was blind luck we showed up when we did.”
Alaric’s jaws slowed briefly, then sped up as if to make up for lost chews. “I’d have figured out something. I always do.”
Jarek barked a short, harsh laugh. “You thought today might be the day, didn’t you? And then us meddling kids had to come along and spoil everything.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, please. I recognize a death wish when I see one.”
Michael leaned forward. “Jarek, this—”
“Shut it, Mikey.”
Michael rocked back. Rachel bristled.
Maybe he should just knock the geezer out and cart his ass back to Newark, but that would leave them still needing Alaric to show them where to go. Somehow, that didn’t seem like much of an option. Besides, he wanted—maybe even needed—to see this washed-up old fighter cut the shit and admit the truth. He’d wring it out of him if he had to.
“Your people can survive twenty-four hours without you. What are you scared of, old-timer?”
“Son, you need to—”
“Funny you’d use that word so much, considering.”
It was as if a switch had been thrown.
Alaric wasn’t chewing anymore. His breath came in long, heavy draws. He locked stares with Jarek, murder in his eyes.
Jarek felt his own pulse quickening, his nerves crying that he should bolt for the door, or draw his gun, or do something.
“Get out,” Alaric said, his voice trembling with barely controlled rage. “All of you.”
“Jarek . . .” Michael said.
“You can’t run forever,” Jarek said, ignoring Michael.
“Out,” Alaric said. “Now!”
“You can’t escape him out here.”
In the space of a second, Alaric was on his feet with a revolver drawn, cocked, and pointed straight at him. Rachel came to her feet too, staff in hand, but Alaric’s eyes remained resolutely locked with his.
“My son is gone,” Alaric said.
He leaned forward. “Say his name, then.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Say his name if he’s gone,” he repeated, his voice growing in intensity.
“Just go. Get out of here.” Alaric’s voice wavered, but his gun hand remained steady. Steady enough.
“Say
it.” He stood to lean over the table toward Alaric’s revolver. “Say it!”
Adrenaline roared through his body as Alaric jerked the revolver and pulled the trigger.
In the small cabin and directly in front of the weapon, the shot was nearly deafening, but not so much that he missed Alaric’s next words.
“SETH IS DEAD!” he roared, kicking over his stump as he turned for the door. He threw the screen door open hard enough that it crashed into the wall and bounced back, but he was already clear, stomping down the porch steps to storm off who knew where.
The bullet hanging in the air a few inches in front and to the right of Jarek’s head fell to the wooden floor with a small thunk.
None of them moved for several seconds. Jarek ran a mental sweep of his body and came to the same conclusion his eyes had told him: he had not been shot. Given where the bullet had ended up after Rachel stopped it, Alaric had pulled the shot on purpose. It was something, but it didn’t exactly quell the feeling that he’d just fucked up big time.
“Thanks, Goldilocks,” he murmured, picking up his sword and slinging it over his shoulder.
“What were you thinking?” she said.
“Is he coming back?” Michael said.
Jarek looked at them with unseeing eyes. What had he been thinking? Digging into someone like that—someone he barely even knew . . . It didn’t matter now. He was tired, and he was pretty sure that waiting around for Alaric to return wasn’t in anyone’s best interest.
“Hell if I know.”
He started for the door as his hopes of ever recovering Fela began cracking at the foundations.
16
By the time they made it back to the ship, the sun was a couple of hours past the day’s pinnacle. Jarek had barely spoken a word since Alaric’s cabin, much to the irritation of Michael, who was clearly in full-on what-are-we-going-to-do mode. Rachel, on the other hand, simply radiated disapproval at the way he’d handled the situation.
Whatever. They could both shove it. He wasn’t in this for the Cause, and he sure as hell wasn’t in it for the Resistance. Now, more than ever, he just wanted to get back Fela and get the hell away from this bullshit.
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 14