Infinitely more importantly, they’d brought the rakul. The rakul who were only minutes gone and were no doubt calling for the rest of their brethren outside. And meanwhile, their frazzled group stood here in the antechamber, good and safe and trapped, their momentary celebration fading to dumb stares as those who’d been excited to simply be alive a minute ago turned to wondering what came next.
She wasn’t sure anyone in the room had an answer to that one, but looking at Jarek and Michael and the rest of the men and women safe and alive around them, Rachel knew she would’ve done it all over again anyway.
“I’d rather thought,” Dola finally said when silence had crept back over the room and he’d pushed his way over to them, “that you might be gone for longer than a couple hours. And”—a red glow lit in his angry eyes —“that you wouldn’t be returning with the cursed Masters themselves breathing down your cursed necks.”
A worried glance at Zach and his men told Rachel that Dola had them telepathically on heel for the moment. But a few disillusioned Complex zealots were probably the least of their concerns right now.
Drogan was stepping forward—probably to remind the Nan of his station, judging by the fire in his eyes—when Krogoth cut him off and gave Dola the full, scaly red-eyed stare-down first.
Krogoth hadn’t dropped his rust-red raknoth appearance to appease Dola or anyone else. He’d never dropped it at all, as far as Rachel could remember. She didn’t even know what his human host looked like. It was hard to think of him as anything other than raknoth.
Even standing to the side as an observer, the raw ferocity of his presence made Rachel want to shudder. Dola held for all of three seconds before taking a step back and bowing his head in begrudging deference.
“Tend to your flock, young Nan,” Krogoth rumbled, the calm of his tone seeming all the deadlier for his menacing posture.
Dola shot a bitter look at Drogan and Rachel, and, deflated, quietly keyed the rear door open and marched Zach and the rest of his puppet crew off.
“You had best prepare them for the truth,” Drogan called after him. “There will be no hiding from it henceforth.”
Dola paused to look back, gave a hesitant nod, and then was gone.
Why did Rachel feel bad for the manipulative bastard?
Maybe because, no matter which way Dola tried to swing it, there was no way explaining away his decade-plus monument of demon-vamp lies was going to be a fun time. Not for him, and not for the inhabitants of The Complex—provided they had an ounce of free will left in there, at least.
But Dola had brought this all on himself.
So maybe it was Zach and the rest of the radicals down here she actually felt bad for.
“Is it just me,” Jarek asked quietly beside her as they watched Zach and his men funnel through the door after Dola, “or am I picking up a real creepy-culty vibe, here?”
She shook her head. “It’s definitely not just you.”
Krogoth and Commander Daniels took charge of moving everyone along into The Complex, with Drogan taking the lead in guiding their forces to the barracks where Nelken and the rest of their people would be.
There was little talk of touching the vehicles that were still in the tunnel outside. There was nowhere to run now, and they’d already grabbed what little supplies they had on their way in.
No one pointed out just how scant those supplies were. Just like no one spoke the thought that was probably on most of their minds.
If the rakul were converging on The Complex, which seemed all too likely, they might not all be living long enough for a food shortage to become a serious problem in there.
Still, when the flow of foot traffic started jamming up in the wide, open tunnel around the corner from the building where Nelken’s people and the Enochians were staying, it quickly became apparent that—food or no—Zach and Dola hadn’t been wrong about the space issues.
“—pick their spot and clear out for now,” Nelken was calling up ahead. “We’ll see what we can rustle up for extra padding and blankets in the meanwhile.”
There was no doubt about it. A lot of troops were going to be bunking in the tunnels tonight, no matter how they played it. Luckily, the tunnels were wide, and vertically more spacious than any of the rooms she’d seen so far in The Complex.
Maybe they could build themselves a nice network of bunks if they lived long enough to need them.
For the time being, though, no one seemed particularly upset at the thought of camping out in the tunnels. At least they were relatively safe. And, after weeks of roughing it out on the road, a bed of stone and bundled clothes and blankets probably didn’t sound so bad to most of their people anyway.
Even so, it was impossible to miss the dark cloud creeping over their forces as they went about getting settled and finally turning their attention to the problems they hadn’t had the bandwidth to take care of for the past hours—minor injuries, empty bellies, and other nuisances.
Pryce rounded the corner with several Resistance soldiers on his heels, though he appeared to be talking more to himself than to them.
“—should’ve started working on bunks the minute we got here.” He shook his head. “Stupid. Stup—”
The words caught in Pryce’s throat when he looked up and caught sight of Jarek.
Rachel couldn’t help but smile at the excited whoop that escaped the older man. Then Pryce took closer stock of Jarek’s battered face and armor, which Rachel saw was even more battle-scarred than she’d had time to realize earlier.
Finally, Pryce’s eyes returned to Jarek’s bruised face.
“You look like hell, old man,” Jarek said.
Pryce’s shocked gape broke into a grateful smile. “Yeah, well, it’s been a tough few weeks.” He glanced away from Jarek and took in Michael’s ragged appearance. “Clearly not something you two would know much about.”
Jarek’s smile mirrored Pryce’s, and Rachel was reminded of the first time she’d met the older man—when they’d just busted out of Drogan’s Red Fortress and Jarek had brought her and Michael to Pryce’s shop and had a good giggle about all of it.
Christ, it seemed like a lifetime ago now.
How had shit fallen apart so fast?
Thinking back on it, it felt like she’d been a different person then, consumed with nothing but pulling Michael out of his mess and getting the hell away from it. Away from Jarek and the Resistance, and back to Unity to stick her head in the sand, right where it belonged.
And now?
Now, she would’ve given pretty much anything just to not feel hunted for a little while, just to—
“—right, Rache?”
Rachel snapped out of her reverie to find Jarek, Pryce, and Michael all staring at her expectantly.
“Uh…”
“Yeesh,” Jarek said, shaking his head. “I’m the one with the head injury here, Goldilocks.”
“We should take a look at that, by the way,” Pryce said, wrinkling his nose as he leaned in to inspect the scarred, bruised mess of Jarek’s face. “How’s that poor brain looking in there, Al? Scrambled?”
“You have no idea,” Michael said with a small smile.
“Only marginally more scrambled than usual, sir,” Al added from Fela’s speakers. “I haven’t monitored any particularly troubling developments… Though I would recommend avoiding any traumatic head injuries in the near future, if anyone were so inclined to listen.”
“Yeah, tell that to Mos—”
Rachel had never seen one of Jarek’s smiles die so fast.
“—to the rakul, buddy,” Jarek tried and failed to cover up the slip. “Tell it to the rakul.”
“Right you are, sir,” Al chirped, just a bit too brightly for it not to sound like an act.
Silence stretched a few moments too long between them.
“Maybe you three can help me out,” Pryce said, clearly picking up that a new topic was prudent, if unclear as to exactly why. “If you’re not busy, I mean.”
“I think our schedules are wide open,” Michael said.
“Right.” Pryce bobbed his head, licking his lips nervously. “Well I’m just going to see about finding anything that might be used as bedding. I could use the extra hands.”
“We’ve got those,” Rachel said, waving for him to take the lead.
“You guys go ahead,” Jarek said. “I’m just gonna—I need to check in with Nelken.”
“Yeah,” Rachel said, searching his face for… she wasn’t quite sure what. “Yeah, sure. We’ll be right back.”
He held her eyes for another moment, and she thought he might say something, but then he turned and strode away through the crowd.
She watched him go with an odd, churning feeling in her stomach and turned back to find Pryce watching Jarek’s retreating back as well, worriedly nibbling at his lip all the while.
He noticed her looking and met her eyes with an unhappy shrug. “He’ll tell you, I imagine. When he’s ready.”
“Yeah…” Rachel tilted her head down the hallway, suddenly wanting nothing more than to move on from the subject. “Let’s just go find pillows or whatever.”
They’d been walking for a couple minutes and Pryce was leading the way back into the narrower beige hallways of one of the underground buildings when Rachel’s legs stopped seemingly by their own accord.
She had to go check on him.
“Rache?” Michael asked, watching her from the stairs to the building’s entrance.
It was stupid. They’d only be a few minutes here. She knew that. But suddenly she couldn’t stand the thought of letting Jarek wallow alone a second longer. Not after everything they’d been through to make it here. Not when the rakul were out there, probably circling the mountain like hungry sharks.
What good was waiting for “ready” when they might not live long enough to make it there?
Not much good. That was what.
So she swallowed and hooked a thumb back down the tunnel. “I gotta go…”
“Check in with Nelken?” Michael asked with the faintest arch of an eyebrow.
“That’s the one,” she said, trying to stifle the embarrassed smile.
For a second, Michael didn’t seem to be quite sure how he felt about that, but then he shrugged and gave her a nod. “We’ll see you in a few, then.”
Rachel started back the way they’d come, her pace quickened by some half-formed worry she couldn’t quite put a finger on. She pushed into the bustling crowd of troops, searching, searching.
Jarek was nowhere to be seen.
She spotted Nelken through the throng and started pushing her way over.
“Haven’t seen him yet,” Nelken said when she asked. “But let him know I’d like to whenever you find him.”
The first touch of panic flickered in her gut.
It was irrational. Crazy.
Jarek was fine. She was sure of it. He’d probably just stepped away from the crowd to have a moment’s quiet peace.
So why was her heart pounding like she was staring down a Kul?
She nearly jumped at Drogan’s voice by her ear.
“Jarek Slater retreated to the southern tunnel.”
There was thoughtfulness—concern, even?—on the raknoth’s face when she turned.
“Never does a weight feel so heavy,” Drogan added slowly, “than the moment one realizes they have born it just as far as was required. No more. No less.”
She wasn’t sure what to say to that.
Drogan just tilted his head in the direction of the southern tunnel, not seeming to expect anything more.
Unsure what else to do, she mumbled a thank you and set off through the crowd.
Voices echoed readily after her well after she’d left the heart of the throng, though their intensity dropped precipitously when she turned the corner into the next tunnel.
Finding Jarek didn’t take long.
The southern corner of The Complex wasn’t busy, save for the few resident engineers she passed going about their routine upkeep operations. She paid little attention to their wary stares.
When she heard the trickle of running water from the showers that ran right off the adjacent reservoirs, she cast out her senses, and there was Fela, curled in standby in the otherwise empty room. She couldn’t feel Jarek’s cloaked mind, of course, but when she pushed the door gently open and padded into the room, he was there.
She nearly gasped at the evidence of the beating he’d taken on the road. Bruised skin might’ve actually covered more territory than the unbruised across the surface of his scarred back. The sight left her knees wobbly.
He stood with his hands planted against the tiled wall, his head fully immersed in a steaming downpour. Probably why he hadn’t heard her yet.
She watched him, scared to interrupt now that she was here, unsure what she’d even come here to say.
He turned before she could figure it out.
Her breath stopped. She waited for the wave of embarrassment at having been caught staring. Waited for Jarek to make some half-hearted jab about eyeing an innocent man’s goods while he tried to clean up. But the embarrassment didn’t come, and Jarek only held her gaze, searching her eyes for she didn’t know what.
There was something there in his dark eyes. Something she was certain now he’d been holding in since she’d found him at that saloon—maybe since well before that. Something that made her heart ache.
He’d lost a part of himself out there.
She wasn’t sure how she knew it. Only that she did.
And the way he was staring at her now, like he was standing on the precipice and she was the only thing on the planet that could hope to keep him from tumbling over…
The weight of hot tears settled against the backs of her eyes, as sudden as it was unexpected.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Not after how hard they’d fought to make it here, together.
They were supposed to fall into each other’s arms and joke and laugh and pick right back up where they’d left off in Jarek’s ship a few weeks ago, before Gada had had to go and start his war and tear them apart.
They were supposed to be happy—if only for a moment.
But looking at him now, Rachel’s lips threatened to tremble. The full weight of just how close she’d come to losing him crashed down on her—somehow so much heavier than when they’d been apart.
Losing him…
It was a terrible emptiness, that thought.
She couldn’t—wouldn’t—let it happen. Not again.
Just like she couldn’t let him stand there alone, drowning in steaming water and self-doubt. She needed to go to him. To hold him to her—tell him that she had him and that it was going to be okay. She needed to hear him tell her the same.
So she let her hands move. Ignored the voice of doubt in the back of her head. Pulled her jacket free and tossed it to the tiled floor beside Fela.
Jarek watched her, his somber gloom not quite concealing the flicker of hunger in his eyes.
Her shirt followed the jacket as she kicked her boots off. Then went the jeans, their eyes locked all the while.
Her breath was coming faster now, apprehensive trills tingling up and down her body.
No more waiting.
She’d waited long enough. Too long.
If the rakul were going to tear this mountain down and stomp the Earth until they were all dead and gone, so be it. Let them come.
She and Jarek would fight them till the last—would die together if they had to.
But the bastards weren’t keeping them apart any longer.
She didn’t need telepathy to know Jarek felt the same.
He stood tall, all but trembling with need, hands clenched at his sides as if he were fighting to restrain himself from tearing across the short distance between them and consuming her.
Instead, he waited, open and bare before her, silently pleading that she come—and that she come to stay.
So she reac
hed back to fuse the door lock shut.
And she went to him.
25
When Jarek blearily woke, naked and ungodly sore in a nest of damp clothes and towels, his first impulse was to roll over and go straight back to sleep. He’d barely had more than a few winks in damn near going on two days now, after all.
But then he registered the soft, equally-naked warmth stretched across his left side. And that seemed to warrant proper attention, sleep deprivation or no.
Growing up in an apocalyptic wasteland, Jarek had never really had occasion to understand the phrase, heart-melting.
He’d come close, maybe, with Rose. Back before Conner and everything else had driven them apart. He’d quietly felt the stirring hints of it again on a dozen different nights, cooped up in the ship watching cheesy old movies he’d verbally scoffed at in some obstinate attempt to convince both Al and himself that such things were beyond the scope of any potential future for him.
Yet the warm, syrupy melting sensation right in the pit of his chest indicated that heart-melting was precisely the right choice of words when he beheld the sight of Rachel’s oh-so-lovely nakedness pressed against his side. Then she nestled more cozily against his chest with a grumble and an adorable little sleep frown, and his heart went full gravy.
It was as alarming a sensation as it was an undeniably good one, and, for a few seconds, he thought he’d simply burst with it.
She was beautiful. Beautiful in ways that had little to do with the lean athleticism of her bare back and the intriguing curves along the rest of her posterior chain (though he didn’t exactly mind those, either).
Looking at the sleeping arcanist, it was as if someone had flipped a switch and revealed the hidden aha feature of every lovey-dovey cliché he’d ever had the bad fortune to suffer.
Some stubborn part of him tried to point out that he was getting carried away—that this was all probably just his mildly-concussed brain reeling from what had undeniably been a pretty enormous hit of the feel-goods. But even the undying cynic in him couldn’t quell the truth.
This was irrefutably different.
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 105