The Complete Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  “I won’t hold my breath,” Jarek said, as Michael started down the steps with Alaric a few steps behind. “I’ve heard these people aren’t my biggest fans.”

  “Guess I buy that,” she said, “given that this doesn’t look like a brothel or a bar.”

  Jarek held up a finger as he composed his retort. She turned away to follow the others down the stairs, hiding her grin.

  “Hey!” he called after her. “I never pay for the sex!”

  The stairwell was uncomfortably cramped. No one would ever dream of calling her tall, but she still had to duck her head to avoid the ceiling. God knew how Jarek was doing behind her. A pang of claustrophobic anxiety clutched at her chest when the hidden door began sliding shut behind them.

  The room at the bottom was considerably more open than the stairwell but far too cramped to be described as anything close to spacious or comfortable. Four men were waiting for them, all dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts and pretty much looking the part of everyday citizens, minus the guns and armored vests. Aside from the few appreciative glances they turned her way, they stared at Alaric with something like awe.

  At the end of the firing line stood a beautiful woman with raven-dark hair and light brown skin that somehow glowed even under the sterile lighting. Her scarlet Henley clung to a build that looked like it had some ass-kicking potential under the hood.

  Beside her, Jarek was looking at the woman as if he’d be happy to volunteer for said ass-kicking.

  “So there you have it, boys,” the woman said in a commanding tone, the fine line of her brow arching in an amused expression, “just in case any of you were wondering—Jarek Slater earns his lays.”

  Apparently, they’d been listening.

  The firing squad snickered.

  Jarek ran a hand through the back of his hair. “And satisfies them, for what it’s worth. You know, within reason.”

  It really never ended. Rachel stifled a smile.

  The woman inclined her head toward him, still amused. “Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Slater”—she turned to Alaric—“though not as much as Alaric Weston’s precedes him.”

  To Rachel’s surprise, the woman stepped forward to hug Alaric.

  “It’s good to see you again,” she said quietly as she pulled away.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Lea,” Alaric said, a warm smile cracking through his usual stoic visage.

  “I’ll second that,” Michael said as Lea turned to embrace him next.

  This hug was longer and, she thought, more intimate. She couldn’t quite make out what Lea murmured in Michael’s ear, but she almost rolled her eyes at the awkward pat her brother laid on Lea’s back before she pulled away.

  Smooth move, Spongehead.

  “And you must be Rachel Cross,” Lea said, turning to face her. “So nice to finally meet you.”

  She gave Lea a polite smile, not particularly enjoying being on this side of the catch-up game.

  “We should move, Lea,” Michael said.

  Lea nodded, looking back to him and Alaric. “The commanders will want to see you two right away. We’ll probably have to wait until the morning to gather the full council. Most of the base is asleep.” Lea glanced at her and Jarek. “We can show you guys to the guest quarters if you’d like to get some sleep yourselves.”

  Jarek shrugged. “Whatever gets this party moving, sister.”

  Lea turned her questioning look to Rachel. She mirrored Jarek’s shrug. “I’m with stupid here.”

  The corner of Jarek’s mouth twitched up, and a few of the men chuckled.

  They set off down the lone hallway leading out of the small room. Like the room they’d just left, the hallway was composed of cinder-block walls and smoother concrete floors, giving it a cold, hard feel under the buzzing lights. The entire place was a claustrophobic’s nightmare. They passed by a few rooms before coming to a slightly more open space that acted as a hub between multiple hallways and a common room of sorts.

  The few Resistance members who were still awake and lounging in the small, sparsely decorated common room stared openly as they passed. Most of the stares were directed toward the legend himself, Alaric Weston, but she and Jarek got a few baffled looks as well. It didn’t seem like the kind of place that saw many new faces, and between Jarek’s ninja-commando aesthetic and her glyphed staff clanking along on the concrete floor, she supposed they made fairly odd strangers at that.

  In the next hallway, they paused in front of an important-looking set of wooden double doors.

  “I’ll fetch the commanders,” Lea said to Michael and Alaric. She gestured to two of their escorts. “Please take our guests to their quarters and see to it they’re fed if they’re hungry.” She turned to them. “I’ll see you two tomorrow.”

  “And here I was thinking I didn’t have anything to look forward to,” Jarek said, giving her that stupid roguish grin of his.

  Lea’s smile looked as if it might have come at least partially against her will, but she quickly pulled it under control and gave him a polite tilt of her head.

  Rachel refrained from rolling her eyes. Jarek was one of those guys with that subtly assholish magnetism that made girls want to sleep with him somewhere on a fundamental level well below the lines of social stigma and self-respect. Worse, he knew it. For some reason, it irritated the shit out of her.

  A couple of hallways and some tense silence later, their escorts deposited them in guest quarters that were as cramped as the rest of the base. At least the rooms were adorned by a few carpets and boring pictures. It almost made them seem a tad warmer than the bland halls outside.

  Their escorts returned with sandwiches a few minutes later, and soon after that, Rachel sat on one twin-sized bed with a contentedly full belly while Jarek finished his sandwich on the other. She pulled out Michael’s nearly complete bullet catcher to work on the final touches as they awaited news from him.

  “You’re claustrophobic, aren’t you?” Jarek asked after a while, not looking up from the comm holo game he was occupying himself with.

  “No,” she said too quickly. “No, I’m fine. Why?”

  “You’ve looked around at the walls every single time you’ve paused from your enchanting.”

  So he’d been paying attention.

  “And you’re creepily watching me because . . .”

  “You’re easy to watch.”

  Oh. She looked at him uncertainly.

  He killed his holo and grinned at her. “Don’t deflect. You can’t hide your fears from me.”

  “I’m not claustrophobic.”

  Not claustrophobic enough to label herself, anyway. That was her story, and she was sticking to it.

  He pulled back the blanket on his bed, his grin widening. “Let’s test, then. Come crawl under this tightly tucked blanket with me.”

  “You know I’m not gonna do that.”

  And here it came . . .

  “Ha!” he cried. “Undeniable proof!”

  She smiled. “Because clearly it’s impossible that a woman wouldn’t otherwise be dying to crawl into bed with Jarek Slater to be ‘satisfied within reason,’ right?”

  “At least implausible. And I might even be willing to consider going beyond reason for you.”

  She snorted. “Well, if that doesn’t make a girl feel special . . .”

  They sank back into a comfortable silence. When she was focused and ready, she gathered the will and the energy to empower the last glyph on the catcher. She let it flow, holding the enchantment tight in her mind until her head buzzed with the effort. Then it was done, and that was that.

  Now she just had to give it to Michael and make damn sure the Spongehead never even thought about taking it off anywhere near a dangerous situation.

  She opened her eyes carefully, consciously refraining from looking around at the cramped walls this time.

  “So what are you gonna do if they try to get stingy about handing over your suit?” she asked.

  He
glanced in the direction of the council room, as if he could see right through the walls. “I’ll figure something out. These boners aren’t just gonna keep Fela for their own. She’s—”

  He paused, frowning down at his comm. “. . . mine . . .”

  His expression went flat.

  “What is it?”

  He looked up, his face a little pale and his expression more uncertain than she’d ever seen it.

  “It’s Pryce.”

  21

  Jarek couldn’t think of a time he’d been more afraid to press a button.

  Part of him (and not a small part) had begun wrapping itself around the idea that Pryce was gone. It was easier that way. But now here his comm was, buzzing with the dead man’s call. So maybe he was okay. Maybe he’d managed to give the Reds the slip.

  While holding onto his life and his comm in the process?

  Not probable. The more likely scenario was that the Reds had held Pryce to use as bait in case Jarek and the others managed to slip Mosen’s team. And the Red King would know by now that they had.

  Of course, there was one easy way to find out. At the end of the day, it didn’t matter; if Pryce was alive, he was going after him, trap or no.

  He gritted his teeth and reached for the Accept button. Rachel watched from the other bed, looking almost as tense as he felt.

  The holo sprang up between them to reveal Pryce seated in a worn armchair. Jarek registered that he was looking at Pryce’s home. Pryce sported a few bruises, a patch of his shirt was stained with blood, and he looked sullen as all hell, but he was alive. As far as Jarek could tell, he wasn’t terribly injured.

  Jarek sat stunned silent by the warm relief that poured through him, so strong for a moment that he thought it might lift him straight up from the bed and have him bouncing on his toes. Quickly enough, though, the sensation gave way to the uneasiness tugging at his guts.

  He bit down the urge to start crying things like “Pryce! Are you all right?”

  Something wasn’t right. The way Pryce was sitting, the angle of his camera that clearly indicated his comm wasn’t on his wrist, the somehow intensely neutral look on his face . . . Someone was there with him. Three guesses who.

  “You look like crap, old man.”

  Pryce flicked an eyebrow. “You should see the other guy.”

  Before he’d even finished, the image in the holo whirled as someone moved Pryce’s comm. The image settled on the face of a man with sandy blond hair and a strong jawline. He might’ve been in his late forties, but Jarek had a feeling he wasn’t. He recognized the face. He’d seen it just last night. Only then, the irises hadn’t been pale blue. In fact, there hadn’t even been irises.

  “Your Highness,” he said.

  “Jarek Slater.” The Red King’s voice was less raspy than the last time he’d heard it. “I will make this simple. You give me back the nest, and I will give you Jay Pryce, alive and unharmed.”

  He thought about bullshitting the raknoth, but what good ever came of that? If this was going to be a hostage situation, what he needed was to make sure they’d actually bring Pryce to whatever meeting they arranged.

  “I need Pryce by my side before I give you a location.”

  “The exchange will happen at the location, once the presence of the nest is confirmed.”

  He wasn’t sure he particularly cared about what happened to this nest thing everyone was raving about, but he wouldn’t be able to find the damn thing either way without Alaric’s help. Bursting into their little Command meeting to borrow Alaric and go turn over the potentially uber-dangerous alien toy probably wasn’t going to fly.

  They should have gone straight to grab Fela when they’d had the chance. Without her, he didn’t stand a chance against the Red King. He was sure of that. But with Fela, and maybe with Rachel’s help, they might just be able to save Pryce and eliminate one of the Resistance’s most powerful enemies at the same time. Everyone could win.

  All he needed was enough time to get Fela back.

  “What if I don’t have the location?” he said.

  The raknoth’s eyes pulsed with a menacing scarlet glow. “Then you must get Weston to talk, if you want to save your friend’s life.”

  The King passed off the comm to a new cameraman and strode around to stand behind Pryce with ominous intent. Pryce tensed as the King placed a hand lightly on his head.

  “Hey—”

  “You have one hour.” The King said. Then he struck at the side of Pryce’s neck like a viper. He sank his teeth in, eyes coming alive with crimson fire as darker red pooled around his mouth and dripped down Pryce’s neck.

  Pryce gave a faint cry of pain and surprise but quickly grew subdued, even languid, as if the bite had some narcotic effect. The King continued lapping up his blood like a thirsty dog.

  “Stop,” Jarek said through gritted teeth. “Stop!”

  The King took a few more slurps of blood, then parted from Pryce’s neck to shoot Jarek a serious look.

  “One hour, Jarek Slater.”

  The call ended.

  Jarek held the icy hand of panic at bay long enough to set a timer on his comm. Then he squeezed his hands into fists and slammed them down on the bed.

  “Dammit!”

  He bounced to his feet and began pacing back and forth.

  What the hell was he going to do?

  The image of that sick bastard drinking Pryce’s blood hovered in his mind, pushing out all attempts at productive thought.

  “Focus, sir,” Al said quietly in his ear. “Deep breath.”

  Jarek suppressed the urge to tell him to take a deep breath of his ass. Al was right. Pryce needed him.

  Think.

  The Resistance wouldn’t care about Pryce, certainly not enough to risk losing this allegedly world-endangering artifact. Asking them to make an honest deal with the Red King was off the table.

  But getting them to back his reclaiming Fela so he could go kill one of their biggest problems dead? He might sell them on that one.

  He turned to Rachel. “I need Fela. And, uh . . .”

  Just say the words, you pansy.

  He held out a hand. “And I need help, Rachel. I can’t—”

  She clapped her hand to his forearm, then looked up at him expectantly. “Go on. Don’t let me stop you there.”

  “—can’t wait to see the looks on their faces when I . . .”

  Her brow arched.

  “Fine.” He pulled her to her feet so that they were less than a foot apart. “I can’t do this without you.”

  She looked up at him, searching his face, leaning in almost imperceptibly. His mind went momentarily blank, his chest fluttering in a way he’d nearly forgotten it could.

  Then she reached up and thwapped him on the forehead with a flick of her finger.

  “Ow!”

  She pushed past him and grabbed her staff from where it leaned against the wall. “Let’s go, dude!”

  He touched his forehead. What the hell had just happened? A glance at his comm timer reminded him that the answer to that question mattered about zero percent right now.

  He slung his sword over his shoulder just as Michael opened the door, looking frustrated.

  They all exchanged a look and then, at almost exactly the same time, all said, “What happened?”

  He pushed ahead. “Pryce is alive. The Red King has him over at the shop. Get me to Fela right now, and there might be a raknoth head in it for the Resistance.”

  “Oh,” Michael said, his eyes wide. “Oh, Jesus—okay.” He licked his lips, glancing between Jarek and Rachel and slowly nodding to himself. “Okay, well, the commanders want to move on Hux’s safe right away anyways, but . . .” His mouth drew into a tight line, and he looked down. “Shit.”

  The word sounded foreign coming out of Michael’s mouth, but it wasn’t the light profanity Jarek cared about. Something was up.

  “What is it?” Rachel asked.

  Michael glanced at her, then, s
eemingly with great effort, turned his gaze to meet Jarek’s eyes. “I need to show you something. Alone.”

  Rachel scowled at them. “Screw that.”

  “Now’s not really the time, Mikey,” he agreed. “We have less than an hour.”

  Michael directed a sobering look at each of them. “Please. It’s important, I promise.”

  “I think you should see what he wants, sir,” Al said quietly in his ear.

  A look with Rachel told him they were equally taken aback by Michael’s odd behavior. “Go find Alaric?” he asked Rachel.

  After a slight hesitation, she nodded.

  He turned back to Michael. “Two minutes, Mikey. Make it snappy.”

  They split in the hallway outside, Rachel turning back the way they’d came as Michael guided him left and then right at the end of the hall.

  “So what’s the deal?” Jarek asked quietly as they moved down the empty cinder-block hallway at a brisk pace.

  Michael didn’t meet Jarek’s eye. “I might have screwed up.”

  An uneasy feeling tugged at his stomach. “You might have to be a bit more specific, buddy. What’s going on? Out with it.”

  “I . . .” Michael shook his head. “Easier to just show you.”

  A minute later, Michael guided them into an antechamber that led to heavy vault door. The tiny room was similar to the others throughout HQ and empty but for the guard who sat behind a small desk, staring at his tablet.

  The guard frowned at them with a bulldog face as they entered, then nodded at Michael. “Carver. Glad to see you made it out alive.” He turned his bulldog stare to Jarek and added, “Who’s he?” in a way that strongly implied an unspoken, And what the fuck is he doing here?

  “New recruit,” Michael said. “Apparently, he might be able to work with that exo we found a few weeks back.”

  Jarek had taken punches to the head that left him less stunned than Michael’s words.

  “I didn’t hear about this from Command,” the bulldog said. His frown deepened as he glanced down at his tablet then back up at Jarek. “And it’s the middle of the night, man.”

  Michael shrugged. “Orders.” He crossed to the keypad by the heavy door.

  Could Fela really be in there? Had Michael been lying to him this entire time?