The Complete Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  “Knock yourself out,” Lilly muttered, weaving through the next intersection to more indignant horn blaring. “And while you’re at it—”

  “Oh dear, there seems to be a problem,” the car said. “Net ID invalid.”

  “What?”

  “Oh dear, there seems to be a problem,” the mechanical voice repeated with maddening apathy. “Net ID invalid.”

  Cold emptiness crept through her stomach. Suddenly her failed messages made sense.

  As rare as they were, dropped connections did happen. For her Net ID to have suddenly gone invalid, though… This was their work—the vampires. It had to be. They must have pulled strings high up, gotten her Net ID frozen. Or hell, maybe the good old government humans had traced things back to her and Jeff and done it themselves in preparation for moving in.

  It didn’t matter now.

  “Try to get a message to Robert,” she said quietly. “Tell him I’m getting Rachel and we all need to get out of town right now.”

  “Understood, Lilly.”

  She’d have to get her mom too, but Rachel had to come first. If Robert got the message, maybe Lilly could tell him to get her mom and meet her in—

  “Oh dear,” the car said. “There seems to be a problem. Net ID invalid.”

  Lilly pounded the steering wheel, eliciting a sharp honk. “Shit!”

  She hadn’t expected anything else, not really. But she had hoped that maybe, just maybe, the stupid car bot would find a way.

  It didn’t matter. Rachel would be getting out of school now. Lilly would get her, make sure she was safe. Then she’d get Robert and her mother. Or find a way to contact them, at least. She could use Rachel’s comm.

  Assuming they hadn’t frozen her ID too.

  She turned left down Henry, driving closer to the realm of what was legal and decent now that she’d left the vampires behind. It wouldn’t do to attract too much unnecessary attention her way and leave an easy trail to follow.

  Of course, it didn’t help that her car was missing a rear hatch and that half the cars around her were giving honks of warning, or maybe just irritation.

  That didn’t matter either. There was nothing she could do about it now. All that mattered was getting out.

  The thought of Jeff and Koren sitting defenselessly back at Drexel was an icy weight on her guts, but there was nothing she could do for them—not until she knew her family was safe. Not that there’d be much she could do for them after that, either.

  But as long as she could get her family out safe…

  Lilly didn’t know what came next, only that she had to do it. They could figure out the rest later. They could lay low somewhere, anywhere. They just needed to—

  She was almost to the overpass when it hit.

  Lilly had a single hairs’ breadth of an instant to wonder what “it” was, and then the world was turning over through her windshield, and her stomach felt odd and weightless and—

  The crash slammed through every inch of her body at once, limbs whacking into one another and steering wheel and hard console while the seatbelt sought to cut her into three discrete pieces. To her right—or was it below?—asphalt scraped by, ripping hunks of polymer and shattered glass from the passenger door of the car, which her hammered brain informed her had tipped and was sliding on its side.

  The revelation didn’t stop her from slamming the brakes in a futile attempt to regain control.

  “Collision alert!” piped the car voice. “Collision aler—”

  A second impact jolted through her as the sliding car hit something large and unmovable—the overpass rail, she realized. The thick mass of concrete and rebar had saved her from going over, but…

  But what? That was a good thing, right?

  Move, a voice whispered past the blaring horns around her from some remote corner of her spinning head.

  Move. Now. Because…

  “Rachel!” she cried. Or tried, at least. What came out sounded more like a drunken moan.

  “Collision alert,” the car voice said, sounding drunk itself. “Please remain calm. I am alerting the authorities.”

  There wasn’t time for that. Something had hit her. Something…

  She looked at the askew rear view mirror and caught a glimpse of someone approaching. Their upper body was hidden from sight, but they padded across the pavement with bare feet—bare feet tinged with streaks of scaly green and inky black.

  “Oh dear,” the car’s mechanized voice sputtered, dropping an octave with each word. “There seems to be a problem.”

  8

  Lilly braced herself as best she could in the sideways wreck of her car and fumbled for the seatbelt release. There was a low growl from behind, the vampire’s rumbling threat audible despite the sounds of traffic and car horns nearby. She got herself situated and managed to keep from falling when she unbuckled the seatbelt.

  Rustling from behind. The light trickling of shattered glass falling.

  Lilly shifted one leg free, thinking to try to kick the windshield out.

  Someone dropped down onto the concrete guard rail just ahead from god knew where—a well-built black man. She didn’t have the faintest idea who he was, but the speed and poise with which he landed set off her internal alarm an instant before his dark eyes lit with red fire.

  Behind, the bearded vampire from the parking lot was watching from the opening he’d torn into the rear of the car.

  “Take her,” he said, his voice bored and entirely too human-sounding.

  The burly black vampire leaned forward, his upper body disappearing from Lilly’s view. The driver’s side door ripped free from beside her with a groan and a crack, and then the vampire was there on top of the car, hauling her out by an arm and a handful of her shirt.

  Lilly screamed.

  Around them, dozens of cars were stopped now, their drivers all transfixed on the freakish scene in front of them. Some were getting out of their vehicles. A few took cautious steps forward.

  “Help!” Lilly screamed. “Help me!”

  The vampire cuffed her over the head.

  The windup looked almost dainty, as if he were being careful to avoid breaking something fragile. But then his hand hit, and Lilly’s world exploded into a swirling dance of floating spots and throbbing pain.

  Something jostled her, and when the world started making sense again, they were back down on the pavement, beside the car, and the vampire had her effortlessly tucked beneath one arm.

  “Hey, asshole!” someone yelled.

  The vampire turned, and Lilly caught sight of a thickset guy stepping forward from the gathering crowd, a pistol in hand and raised like he knew how to use it.

  “Put her down and back away,” the gunman called.

  The beginnings of hope fluttered in Lilly’s chest.

  Then the vampire laughed.

  Ahead, the gunman dropped to his knees, eyes wide and mouth trembling. He placed the tip of the barrel against his own head.

  “Wh-wh-what the fuck?” he managed through a tight mouth.

  The vampire continued shaking with laughter.

  “Hurry it up, then,” said someone behind them—the bearded vampire from the parking lot, she realized. “He’ll be waiting for our lovely little witch.”

  Lilly had no idea who “he” was—probably another vampire—but she realized what was happening, why her would-be-rescuer had gone spontaneously suicidal.

  The vampire holding her must have taken his mind.

  “Fine, then,” the mind-jacker mumbled.

  Ahead, the captive gunman tensed his arm, finger reaching for the trigger that would end his own life.

  “St-stop!” he cried. “No, stop!”

  Lilly closed her eyes, telekinetically flipped her mind cloak off, and threw herself into her extended senses. Her captor tensed against her, sensing the sudden mental bonfire of presence, but she was already channeling the energy.

  Her car might be dead, but the battery wasn’t. She formed the
link in her senses and let loose, becoming an open conduit that swapped electrochemical potential for boiling hot vampire skin. She tried to keep her target refined to the vampire’s arm and the back of the hand holding her, hoping to avoid burning herself. She felt the heat anyway, but it was mercifully distant, immersed as she was in her extended senses.

  The vampire, on the other hand, felt the heat with crystal clarity.

  He gave a hissing growl and tossed her away.

  Lilly came back from her extended senses just in time to hit the pavement, head reeling with channeling fatigue and disorientation and, a moment later, the dozens of fiery pains left across her body by her car wreck and subsequent pavement dive.

  She rolled around in time to see her valiant gunman regain his senses and level his gun at the vampire who’d just tossed her like a hot potato.

  The gunman pulled the trigger.

  Thunder cracked once, twice, three times.

  For each shot, the burly black vampire jerked as if hit, and yet he didn’t go down, didn’t trail streams of dark blood. Didn’t even cry out in pain.

  He just laughed.

  The gunman managed three more shots before the bearded vampire came sailing through the air in an impossibly long leap and landed directly in front of him. The gunman, to his credit, reacted with calm coolness, adjusting his aim to the new target. Just not quick enough.

  The bearded vampire caught his gun hand and drove a flat palm into the guy’s chest hard enough that he dented the car a few yards behind him at the end of his flight.

  He hit the ground with a sickening thud, unmoving.

  “I told you to watch out for her tricks,” the bearded vampire said as he turned back toward Lilly.

  “And how do you propose I accomplish such a feat?” asked his companion in a low rumble.

  The bearded one rolled his eyes and strode toward them. After a couple steps, he paused and glanced back at the horrified crowd of onlookers.

  As one, they flinched at his crimson gaze.

  “You should all run now, by the way,” he said.

  Most listened wholeheartedly. Those who remained backed away slowly, their gazes darting from Lilly to the vampires.

  “Go!” she shouted.

  They hesitated a moment longer and turned tail to go join the growing traffic jam crowd on the other end of the overpass.

  For now, it was just Lilly and the vampires.

  The bearded vampire watched them go, chuckling, then started toward her at a leisurely stroll. “Who knew you’d be such a valiant little flower, Lilly?”

  The sound of her name from his mouth was like a kick in the gut.

  They knew. And if they knew who she was, they probably knew about her family, including where to find them.

  Sirens blared in the distance.

  She needed to move, to run. To escape. But how? How the hell could she get away from these things that could outrun cars, tear them apart with their bare hands, and shirk off bullets like flies?

  “It’s kind of rich, isn’t it?” the bearded vampire asked, still coming toward her. “You do what you did to us. You—you—”

  His hands clenched to fists with violent suddenness, and he whirled with a wordless roar to kick a car he was passing. The kick landed with a loud crack, and the car tumbled through a couple of crunching sideways rolls before slamming to a halt against the overworked guard rail, narrowly saved from a fall to the train tracks below.

  The train tracks!

  It was a long shot, but if she could keep them talking…

  “What is it?” she croaked, scooting herself back to lean her weary body against the guard rail. She didn’t have to put on an act to appear pathetically slow and weak. Every inch of her was on fire, from her pavement scraped knees and hands to her whiplashed neck and back. “What did I do to you?”

  “Do not think to toy with us, witch,” the burly black vampire said in a low rumble.

  “Maybe she needs a reminder.” The bearded vampire stopped a few paces away and jutted his chin upward, giving her a good look at the network of sickly black lines working their way across his skin. “Remember laying any blood curses lately?”

  “I didn’t…”

  But there was no good denying it, was there? They’d clearly pieced together at least the gist of what had happened.

  “You were hurting people,” she said quietly. “Hiding in plain sight, killing and pulling strings as you pleased. I couldn’t let it go on. Not after you killed my friend.”

  He frowned down at her. “Your friend?”

  “Ren. He was a good man, and you bastards killed him.”

  He glanced back at his burly companion, who shrugged.

  Was it her imagination, or was that a faint rumble in the distance?

  “Yeah…” The bearded vampire shook his head and turned back to her. “You’re gonna have to be more specific than that.” He flashed her a chilling grin. “Lots to keep track of, what with all the killing and pulling strings as we please.” He pointed to his neck. “But first, you’re gonna come with us and fix this bullshit.”

  There. Definitely a rumble. And it was getting closer.

  Talk. She needed to keep talking.

  “Why?” It was the first word that came to her lips, and she fumbled to keep going. “Why would I fix it? You’re just going to kill me anyways.”

  The bearded vampire held a hand up and crossed his fingers, still grinning that murderous grin. “Promise we won’t.”

  “Enough of this tallying,” the black vampire said. “Master will deal with her himself.”

  The bearded vampire sighed. “Fine.”

  He started forward, reaching for Lilly.

  The approaching train was clearly audible now, but it was still too far.

  She raised her hands, preparing to fight with telekinesis and whatever else she could manage. But the vampire flinched back, snarling at her hands, his eyes coming aflame with with red light. To his side, the black vampire reacted in much the same way.

  She glanced at her hands, wondering what on earth she’d done, and saw nothing but scrapes and blood. Her blood. That was it.

  They were afraid of her blood.

  She could have laughed.

  In truth, it should already be too late for them. Imbibing more infected blood probably wouldn’t radically accelerate the course of their sickness. But they didn’t need to know that.

  The train was nearly to the overpass now. She couldn’t see it from her stoop against the guard rail, but she could feel it. Five seconds. She couldn’t hesitate.

  “That’s right,” she snarled. “Come and have a drink. Let’s see which one of us hits the floor first.”

  The vampires exchanged an uncertain glance.

  “This is ridiculous,” the black vampire said. “She has already wreaked as much havoc as she is capable. Master will see to it that the damage is undone.”

  He stalked forward, and Lilly could see it in his glowing eyes that there would be no hesitation this time.

  So she gave him the best telekinetic chest punch she could spare, then she turned to the guard rail, gathering as much juice as she could.

  And she jumped.

  9

  Lilly had been born on the tail end of the last generation for which riding bikes in childhood was commonplace. She’d taken her fair share of spills at a young age—enough to vividly recall the supremely alive feeling of dread that came with falling off a bike that was moving too fast, with watching the inevitable ascent of pavement to knee and hand and face. Most of the poor saps in the generations to follow never got to know that particularly exquisite brand of panic.

  Except for maybe the ones who decided to take a telekinetically-enhanced leap off a high overpass to escape a pair of unstoppable vampires.

  Those ones, Lilly was sure, would understand the feeling just fine—with interest.

  Channeled energy buzzed through Lilly’s head and chest like liquid electricity as she flew over the emp
ty train tracks. Too high. Too fast. She’d mistimed the jump, had gone too early, was going to—

  The silver box of the train flew into view, rocketing by just a few yards below her feet.

  She tried to brace, tried to slow her fall with telekinesis, but then her feet hit on the third compartment, and she was falling, tumbling, bouncing roughly across the top of the train. Sky and train and trees and grass all spun around her from one jarring bump to the next. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t get her bearings until—

  She gasped as the train top ended and the speeding ground stretched out beneath her. She fell, flailing, and caught a handhold by sheer dumb luck just before the inexorable pull of gravity carried her too far to reach.

  As happy as she was not to be battered paste on the stony track side, that left her dangling precariously on the side of the train. She got a second hand onto her trusty handhold and took a moment to glance to the back of the train.

  She half—or maybe wholly at this point—expected to see the two vampires dropping down on the rear compartment from the overpass, but the train top was clear of any other wild hop-ons from what she could see. She didn’t see the vampires on the overpass either, but that was a problem to wonder about once she wasn’t dangling from her exhausted arms above the speeding ground.

  A quick check in the other direction revealed she’d had the good luck to fall fairly close to the sliding door at the front of the fourth compartment. She willed her burning forearms to hold on just a bit longer, closed her eyes, and reached out with her senses.

  The latch, once she found it, was easy enough to slip loose with telekinesis. The door ground open with only a bit of a fuss after that.

  Lilly took a deep breath and threw herself at the opening. She caught on, nearly toppled backward, pulled herself forward, and then she was on the train, staring straight into the wide-eyed gaze of a kindly-looking old lady in a long fluffy coat.

  Lilly flipped her cloaking pendant on and made a half-hearted attempt at straightening her bloodied shirt under the old lady’s watchful gaze.

  The only other occupant of the four entranceway seats, a guy that looked like a cookie-cutter model from a Young Professionals pamphlet, gave her only the most cursory of distasteful eye flicks before he buried himself back in his comm holo.