Rachel cursed her own inaction and cast her mind around the thing like a net, drawing energy from the air around her to give strength to the mental construct.
Meanwhile, Drogan, Brandt, and the other two raknoth from Nelken’s camp were shifting into battle mode and forming a semi-circle to corral the thing from the soldiers frantically slinging bags over shoulders and heading for the exit behind Rachel.
The invisible Kul shifted to face them, the movement so quick and easy that she wondered if it even noticed the drag of her telekinetic restraints.
She sure as hell did.
Cold sweat was already beading on her forehead. She released the hold. It was futile to kill herself trying to telekinetically wrestle down something so tremendously strong. She had to think of a better way to help the raknoth with their enraged master.
Getting eyes on the thing would be a start.
She looked around the room for inspiration and found little.
Johnny was busy squeezing off more careful shots past their raknoth allies.
A hand grabbed her arm, and she spun to see Pryce, panting and gripping a fire extinguisher to his chest like a life vest on a sinking ship.
“Can you condense water from the air?” he asked in a shaky tone.
“I—what? Yeah, maybe, but—”
“When I say,” Pryce said, his eyes wider and more frantic than she’d ever seen, “you soak that thing.”
“What’s that gonna—”
Ahead of them, the invisible Kul shrieked, and one of the raknoth hit the floor with his own pained cry, one leg missing from the knee down.
“Just do it!” Pryce snapped.
Then, taking the extinguisher’s hose in his hand and tucking the cylinder beneath an arm, Pryce charged toward the fight he had no business being anywhere close to.
Rachel tried to cry out after him to wait, but—
“Now, Rachel!” Pryce cried.
Shit.
No choice but to trust the crazy old bastard.
She closed her eyes, focusing on the task. The moisture in the air was easy enough to feel. It was the large-scale action of accumulating it that was hard to wrap her head around.
If she’d had time, she could have thought of an efficient way to accomplish the feat. Pressed as she was, though, she simply held the moisture in her focus, opened her body to the energy, and channeled it all into a singular thought:
Soak the son of a bitch.
More energy buzzed through her than seemed reasonable for the job, and it felt about as efficient as pushing a car uphill with a rope, but it worked.
By the time she heard the turbulent whoosh of Pryce’s extinguisher discharging, the invisible Kul was beading with a thin layer of water, and Rachel was beginning to grasp Pryce’s plan.
She opened her eyes and watched as Pryce, reaching over Drogan’s shoulder, emptied the canister of dry flame-smothering powder on the screeching Kul with a wordless cry of his own.
Moments later, they were looking at the stumbling, goop-caked outline of something large, spindly, and vaguely insectoid.
Pryce stood frozen, mouth agape, transfixed on the Kul as if he was only then realizing what he’d just done.
Drogan shoved Pryce back and stepped aside himself just in time to avoid the goop-coated appendage that came swooshing through the air for Pryce’s head.
The Kul’s spindly form flickered once more, then it dropped whatever it was doing to stay camouflaged, and Rachel saw that the insectoid descriptor was accurate, if maybe a little too benign.
The thing looked like the spawn of a demon and a giant praying mantis.
All attempts at stealth dropped, the six-legged monstrosity scuttled forward to engage the raknoth with another grating howl.
The three remaining raknoth fought bravely while Johnny dragged away their wounded brother and recruited Pryce to help him lug the one-legged raknoth to his remaining foot.
That done, Johnny turned back to the task of taking what shots he could without hitting any of their allies.
Rachel did much the same, though her attempts to telekinetically harass and unbalance proved largely ineffectual against the Kul’s six spindly legs.
When the Kul caught one of the raknoth off guard with a lunging stab, Rachel telekinetically clamped down on the sharp appendage with everything she had.
The effort of matching that strength and the bulk behind it nearly took her to her knees, but the insectoid Kul drew up short in his attack.
His narrow head and oversized eyes twitched around in confusion.
The three raknoth took advantage of the moment and drove into him with a chorus of battle roars.
Rachel was surprised the wall didn’t give out completely as the combatants all slammed into it, a writhing mess of growls and mismatched appendages.
Pound-for-pound, out in the open, it was clear the Kul was stronger than any of the raknoth. But they knew what they were doing. With one raknoth pinning each of the Kul’s two sharp arms to the wall and Drogan wrangling its frontmost pair of legs, they had the thing tenuously trapped.
“Rachel Cross!” Drogan cried, struggling with a spindly leg in each hand. “Left leg!”
Assuming he meant an implied direction to hold said leg in place, she shook off the woozy tinge of channeling fatigue and prepared for another exertion.
She knew Drogan was strong, but the power it took to keep the Kul’s left leg trapped in place made her marvel at how the hell he’d been wrestling down two of them.
As soon as she had control of the leg, Drogan dropped it and turned his full attention to the other.
“Now would be a good time to leave, guys” Johnny shouted over the growls.
Rachel risked a glance over her shoulder and saw most of the Resistance forces were clear of the lobby and hoofing it across the lot to a nearby parking structure. They were also, she realized with a sinking stomach, already dealing with the vanguard of the furor horde they’d heard approaching.
Good time to leave was putting it lightly.
“Drogan!” she called, her head starting to spin with the effort of keeping the Kul held in place.
There was a loud crack from the Kul’s direction, and Drogan tore one of its front legs clean off.
“Go!” Drogan thundered to all of them.
The word was nearly lost to the head-splitting shriek that escaped the Kul. The creature tripled its efforts to escape, bucking in a wild frenzy and spewing a steady stream of god-awful noises.
Drogan managed to take the leg Rachel had immobilized with another sharp crack and a wet tear.
The Kul’s struggles only grew more intense, finally bucking one of its arms free and knocking the raknoth who’d been holding it halfway across the room with a long gash in his chest.
Drogan narrowly ducked a swipe that would’ve taken his head and peddled furiously backward, still holding the Kul’s second severed leg.
He cast the leg aside, hauled up the raknoth the Kul had batted over, and herded them all toward the exit.
“Come on!” Johnny shouted, pausing from firing at the Kul only long enough to nudge her toward the door. “Let’s move!”
Seeing Drogan and the others doing just that and the now-four-legged Kul tripping over itself in its attempts to follow them, Rachel didn’t argue.
Pryce was waiting for them just outside, hunkered down with a couple Resistance soldiers and the one-legged raknoth, who was busy swatting away any of the furor puppets who got too close.
As soon as they were all clear of the entryway, a van Rachel hadn’t even realized was idling backed up and slammed into the lobby door, rear end first.
A grim-looking Lea crawled out through the opening where the windshield should’ve been, having apparently already thought that far ahead.
Rachel gave the younger woman an appreciative nod and a clap on the back as she caught up with them and they all set off across the lot after their allies.
The van probably wouldn’t stop a
Kul long—even an injured one—but it was something.
Raging berserkers pushed in at their group from both sides, numerous, but not enough so for Rachel to believe this was more than the leading edge of the horde. Though, from the sounds at their backs, the rest of the party wasn’t so far behind.
And, on the tail end of a frustrated howl and a wrenching crash that sounded a little too much like a van being flipped, Rachel was pretty sure their mantis Kul wasn’t either.
She could feel him well enough back there, pushing past the overturned van, but she couldn’t help take a peek anyway. The poor wreck of the van quickly drew her eye, but the Kul was nowhere to be seen—until Rachel noticed the outline of extinguisher goop and the trail of orange blood it left in its wake.
“He’s doing the invisible thing again!” she shouted.
More of those thrumming pulses filled the air, and more blood spattered the pavement.
Rachel turned back in the direction she was running to see Johnny moving at a rapid backpedal that kept him just steady enough to keep shooting. It was actually pretty impressive.
Just not as impressive as the car Brandt threw at the oncoming outline of the Kul.
Even missing its two front legs, the creature still somehow managed to scuttle clear of Brandt’s car-missile.
And straight into Drogan’s.
The Kul flashed back to visibility with a shriek, nearly tumbling over backward as it absorbed the momentum of the projectile with its rear legs.
Rachel didn’t wait to see what it’d do next. She just kept running, keeping even with Johnny and Lea. It was only as they closed on the parking garage that Rachel remembered she had no idea what the plan was from there.
Now clearly wasn’t the time to ask.
Their allies were waiting at the door, waving them in.
Drogan dropped back to swat a few berserkers off their flanks and watch their backs as they filed into the building and yanked the door shut behind them.
Rachel took a few seconds to fuse the door’s lock to the frame, hoping it might at least slow down the Kul and his horde.
As soon as she turned to continue into the parking garage with the others, the meaning of tunnel plan became clear.
In addition to the concrete maze of ramps and tight spaces she’d been expecting, there was also an offshoot leading down to what looked to be some kind of underground rail station.
There was no tram or train to be found, but there also wasn’t really any choice but to follow the Resistance crowd down the stationary escalator steps and trust there was more to the plan than trying to outrun a horde and a pissed off giant mantis in an underground tunnel on foot.
Then again, judging by the stream of soldiers disappearing down said tunnel on foot, maybe not.
Nelken was there, waving them on and waiting to see to it everyone made it in. Pryce was well ahead of them, ushered on by a pair of troops.
Rachel did a quick headcount to make sure they hadn’t lost anyone in the dash, then she gritted her teeth and pushed into the dark tunnel, fumbling to switch on her comm light.
Nelken and his escorts fell in with them as they passed, and for a handful of moments, they all ran side-by-side, lost in the long echoes of their pounding boots and the storm of shaky comm lights and exhausted panting.
At least until a loud crash echoed down the tunnel from behind—the Kul busting in the door, Rachel could only assume.
“Blow it,” Nelken said.
The woman on Nelken’s left tapped at her comm, and a thick boom shook the tunnel, shortly followed by a sound like a thousand crumbling stones and a drastic decrease in ambient light.
Rachel didn’t need to look back to know they’d just collapsed the entryway of the rail tunnel, but she did anyway and was rewarded with a sharp flare of claustrophobic anxiety.
She didn’t notice she’d slowed until Johnny nudged into her, encouraging her to continue on down the tunnel. For a second, she couldn’t seem to do it.
“C’mon,” he said. “Better trapped in a tunnel than running free with a big angry insect, right?”
She pried her eyes away from the dark wall of debris she couldn’t help but think of as their new tomb entrance.
“Yeah,” she said, picking her pace back up. “Better. Sure…”
7
Once the dull pressure of the tunnel’s darkness seemed to have alleviated the excitement for everyone—or for everyone else, Rachel thought with yet another claustrophobic shudder—it became abundantly clear Nelken’s limp was their limiting factor. Of course, no one was eager to say it.
No one but the raknoth.
Before they could, though, Nelken spoke up himself.
“Al’Drogan.”
He didn’t have to say more. The grim frustration that showed on his face in the reflected light of their comms said it all.
Drogan didn’t say a word—just scooped Nelken over one shoulder and turned to continue on. Brandt likewise took the moment to shift from merely supporting his one-legged raknoth kin to throwing him fully over one shoulder.
They probably hadn’t made it more than a hundred yards when the first faint scrabbling sounds echoed their way to them from the direction of the collapsed tunnel entrance.
Great.
Even better, Rachel bit it while she was turning back around, and scraped her hand nice and good trying to catch her fall in the dark.
“How long do you think the debris’ll hold him?” Nelken asked Drogan quietly while Johnny helped Rachel back to her feet.
“Not long,” Drogan said. His breathing, like that of the other raknoth, was far more stable than theirs. “A minute. Perhaps two.”
“Goddamn tunnels,” Rachel wheezed out as they pressed on.
“If that part’s bothering you,” came Johnny’s reply between breaths, “now’s probably not the time to point out that I’m pretty sure we’re under a river.”
“Then why the hell would you do it?” she snapped, wincing inwardly as the crushing weight that was apparently already over them settled over her mind as well.
“Well…” More panting. “Doesn’t everyone kinda wanna run faster now?”
In the darkness, someone blew out what was either a breathless laugh or a particularly heavy pant.
Rachel wasn’t enough of a masochist to keep track of the time on her comm, but it felt like they’d been running for far too long.
Her lungs were on fire, and each step only increased her certainty she was going to die down there, either by the hands of the Kul or under the impossible weight of a tunnel collapse.
She was just finally convincing herself that the tunnel was indeed growing brighter ahead when the woman who’d blown the other entrance confirmed it.
“Almost there.”
Thank Christ.
Rachel could see a few heads poking into the tunnel now from the platform ahead, waiting to make sure everyone made it. They nearly had when a furious shriek echoed down the tunnel to them from the way they’d come, clearly no longer cut off by a wall of debris.
Goddamn tunnels.
“Up the stairs!” Nelken shouted as they reached the tunnel’s aperture. “Into the trucks!”
“With haste,” Drogan added, setting Nelken down on the platform.
He didn’t have to tell her twice.
Rachel clambered onto the platform beside Johnny and Lea and headed for the stairs behind Nelken’s group, the raknoth bringing up the rear.
Up the stairs. Through the hall.
Outside, several trucks were already lined and loaded, idling as they waited for their commander.
“Go!” Nelken shouted. “70 West! Columbus if we’re separated!”
The lead trucks pulled away while the last few waited to fill their remaining spaces.
Nelken’s directions, coupled with the sight of the trucks departing put a pause in Rachel’s step.
Jarek. Michael.
“Wait.”
She had to leave something.
/>
“Not the best time for waiting, Rache,” Johnny said.
Another shriek echoed after them, emphasizing his point.
She ignored both, already busy at work sketching out a hurried pair of glyphs on one of the entryway columns using the blood from her own scraped palm.
One more damn thing she’d never tried before. But it had to work.
“Rachel Cross,” Drogan said, quiet urgency in his voice.
“Move your ass, Cross!” Nelken added from his seat in the rearmost Humvee.
“Get to the trucks,” Rachel snapped at the others still hovering around her.
Then she planted her hand to her blood glyphs and closed her eyes, focusing on the thought of Jarek as completely as she could. She bent close, opened herself to the energy, and began speaking.
It was only a few seconds—she didn’t have time for more—but she still expected to find Johnny, Lea, and Drogan loaded and ready to roll when she turned.
Instead, they were waiting for her with grim determination on their faces.
“Let’s go!” Rachel snapped. “Stubborn bastards…”
Any retort they might’ve made was killed in inception by the blood-thirsty howl from the station.
Not an echo. The Kul was coming.
The four of them scrambled into the back of Nelken’s open-top Humvee. The soldier at the wheel gunned it. Tires squealed, and they rocketed forward just as the hellacious mantis came bursting through the station’s glass-paneled doors hard enough to tear them from their hinges.
Johnny started to raise his rifle. Then, when it became apparent they were clear of the Kul’s reach and his injured legs, Johnny settled for flipping the mantis his middle finger instead.
“Classy,” Lea said between pants, shaking her head. “Real classy.”
Rachel just slumped bonelessly into her awkward position in the Humvee bed, leaning against more than sitting on the seat between Lea and Drogan, too tired to do anything about it but groan.
“There, there…” Johnny patted her head. “We’re all safe and sound for at least ten minutes.”
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 89