Hell to Pay: Book Two of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  Eight

  As unhappy as Rachel was to leave a strange arcanist and his raknoth buddy roaming free in Unity, the need to find Lea and Alaric was twofold.

  For one, they were allies—maybe even friends—and she didn’t want to see them captured, hurt, or worse. On top of that, though, if Seth Mosen was here, it seemed unlikely he’d be alone. He’d have brought plenty of reinforcements—Reds or the Overlord forces, it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that Seth Mosen was a wild dog and that his presence put the entire community at risk.

  What was he even doing here?

  Probably tracking them. They had captured one of his superiors, after all. The Overlord probably had half his army out looking for the Red King and the other half looking for her and Jarek. She hoped that was all there was to it. Because if it was something else, if the raknoth had learned about her and Michael’s connection to Unity and decided to turn the screws by attacking their home …

  She swallowed against a dry mouth. Baseless worrying wasn’t going to help anyone.

  Given that time was short, Rachel held the protest and stuck with a dirty look when Jarek moved to scoop her up into his arms. With Fela, he could move more than twice as fast as a normal human, even while carrying her. In less than a minute, he was setting her down at the tree line of the quad. They stepped out of the woods and proceeded more cautiously toward the market, which was where they assumed Lea and Alaric still were.

  And there they were, face-to-face with Seth Mosen and two other men. They were removed enough from the crowd that it wasn’t hard to spot them, but that may have been mostly because the crowd was giving the tense little huddle a wide berth—not to mention a fair amount of nervous glances.

  The sight of Mosen started the adrenaline racing through Rachel’s chest and brought the unbidden, vivid memory of the crushing pressure of his hands on her throat. She focused on his two backup goons to clear her mind. One was short, with dark hair and a face that reminded Rachel of a toad and seemed immediately untrustworthy. The other was tall and narrow, right down to his slender face.

  “We’re just gonna walk up to them?” Rachel asked. “No plan or anything?”

  “I can take Mosen with Fela no problem,” Jarek said beside her. “But we need to be close to Alaric and Lea if the shit hits.” He opened his faceplate and winked at her. “Guess we’ll see what happens from there.”

  “This isn’t a fucking game, Jarek. There are innocents everywhere. Good people. If he has reinforcements nearby—”

  “We’ll do what we have to.” He glanced at her comm. “Might wanna get word to campus security in the meanwhile.”

  Shit. Why hadn’t she already done that? She swiped at her comm and, quickly as she could, typed out: Trouble at quad. Lock and load.

  She sent the message and looked up to see Mosen and his two goons watching them approach. Mosen’s grin injected a hit of pure cold creepiness straight into her chest.

  “Shit,” she murmured.

  Was it just her imagination, or had the toady goon grinned as she said it?

  “We’re good,” Jarek said. “Deep breath, Goldilocks. We’ve got this.”

  The words might not have been particularly meaningful, but she had to admit she was glad to have him next to her right now. As off-beat and immature as Jarek could be, she couldn’t think of anyone more capable of watching her back in a hairy situation.

  They were about twenty feet away when Alaric and Lea followed Mosen’s line of sight and saw them approaching. Both of them looked wired with tension, and Alaric was a few shades paler than normal. Understandable enough. How else could someone be expected to react when their son-turned-raknoth-slave-turned-matricidal-madman came calling?

  “Here they are,” Mosen called, hands splayed wide. “The wily arcanist and the Soldier of Charity himself.”

  Rachel drew up to Lea’s side and placed a supportive hand on her shoulder. Jarek crossed in front of them and took position beside Alaric.

  “Mosen,” Jarek said. “How awful to see you here.”

  Mosen made a pouting face.

  Rachel reached out with her senses to sweep for any lurking threats, starting with Mosen himself. Despite whatever the Overlord had done to him to grant him his exceptional strength and durability, she was pretty sure Mosen was still mostly human. His presence did feel a bit off, but she didn’t linger on it.

  “We were hoping to catch you closer to home,” Mosen said, “find out what you’ve done with poor Al’Drogan.”

  That made Mosen’s two thugs frown at him for some reason.

  “With poor what now?” Jarek asked.

  Mosen sneered. “Don’t worry your pretty little head over it, Slater. We’ve got other business to take care of. Speaking of which, you didn’t happen to notice anything odd on the way—”

  Rachel missed whatever else he said as she reached her senses out to the two men behind him. The two men who were in fact not men at all. They couldn’t be—not with minds that felt like that.

  She yanked the tendrils of her mind in and bolstered her mental defenses.

  Shit. This was bad.

  Around them, over a hundred people continued their business about the market, blissfully unaware they were within easy throwing distance of a supercharged mad dog and his two raknoth comrades.

  Could the four of them contain Mosen and two raknoth if—or probably when—it came to a fight? Hell, could they even survive themselves?

  They needed to clear this place out before things got messy. She should have told Myers to evacuate, not to lock and load. It wasn’t like him and his men would be able to do much against raknoth anyhow, aside from get hurt.

  What she needed to do was warn Jarek somehow.

  “—ame here for a pit stop on the way to drop off this old cowboy,” Jarek was saying. “Didn’t see any strange ships on the way in. You know, not that I’d tell you if I had.”

  “Really,” Mosen said, his expression flat. “A pit stop.”

  Jarek shrugged. “Little out of the way, but where else can you find a community like this? Nice to remember there are still people being people on this planet.”

  Mosen sneered, looking around as if only now seeing the sprawling community around him. So maybe he and his raknoth masters didn’t realize it was Rachel’s home they’d come to. And if they’d come here looking for that confounded ship and not tracking her and the others, maybe they had no reason to hurt the people of Unity.

  Of course, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t do it anyway.

  “People are always being people everywhere,” Mosen said. “It’s just a little more interesting out there in the wild. Right, Pops?”

  Alaric met Mosen’s sneer with tired eyes for several seconds before he said, quietly, “You’re not my son.”

  Mosen’s eyebrows shot up and he place a hand over his chest in mock offense. “Well Jesus, I guess not with that attitude. Words hurt you know, Pops. No wonder I turned out this way.”

  Alaric’s face was carved from stone, but his Adam’s apple betrayed a hard swallow. “I believe he’s still in there somewhere, my son. And I’ll do anything I can to help him. But—”

  Mosen shifted his weight, leaning closer to Alaric. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, old man.”

  Mosen’s voice was deadly quiet. Behind him, the two raknoth uncrossed their arms and prepared to move.

  Mosen held Alaric’s gaze for several seconds, then he rocked back and threw his hands up. “Enough with this touchy-feely bullshit! We have a job to do here. If you four haven’t seen anything, I suppose we’ll have to call in the troops to search the place and bring you home for proper questioning.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit. They needed to stop him, or distract him, or—

  “Why don’t we just tell him?” Lea asked.

  Everyone looked at her, waiting.

  Jarek turned a wary look her way. “I don’t know if that’s such a good—”

  “Come on,”
Lea said. “I hate the raknoth as much as the next girl, but these are innocent people here. It’s not like we’re about to go chasing it down anyways.”

  “Chasing what down?” Mosen asked, leaning in like a dog at a dinner table.

  “If you don’t tell him, I will,” Lea said.

  Jarek looked at the crowd and blew out a short breath. “Fine.” He narrowed his eyes at Mosen. “I lied. We picked up something on the scanners passing over Philly—something like I’ve never seen before. Couldn’t spot it through the clouds, but it was headed down for south Jersey, or maybe Delaware.” Mosen opened his mouth to say something, but Jarek held up a finger and added, “And this part’s not important, but if you want to know why I lied, it’s because I think you’re a huge cock-hat.”

  Mosen crossed his arms and considered the four of them.

  Rachel did her best to look the part of the weary traveler who was simply hoping Mosen and his cronies would fuck off and leave them alone.

  It wasn’t a hard act to keep up.

  “We don’t believe you,” Mosen finally said. He glanced between Jarek and Rachel with a cold grin. “Where were you two just now?”

  “You really need to ask why a man and a woman snuck off into the woods?” Jarek asked. “I think you need to get outta the Fortress more often, buddy.”

  “Well now I know you’re lying, Slater.” Mosen winked at Rachel then, and for a brief moment, his irises glinted with red light. “Girl like this needs a real man, not some wise-ass who hides behind his toys.”

  “You’re only saying that because you haven’t seen what I can do with my toys.” Jarek waggled his eyebrows at Mosen. “Yet.”

  Myers chose that moment to pull the Gator around Kohlberg and into the quad. He had four of his men with him, all of whom had taken her lock and load advice to heart. Of course, she’d given that advice before she realized there were a pair of raknoth standing smack in the middle of a crowd, but it was too late now. Three more of Myers’ men, also armed, were sweeping around the other side of Kohlberg on foot.

  “Ah,” Mosen said. “Sneaky little bastards.”

  Shit.

  “Well,” Mosen said, “we tried the nice way. Looks like it’s time to call in the—”

  Jarek sprung forward without warning and drove a fist into Mosen’s face. The punch landed with a thud and a crack, and Mosen’s head led his body through a short flight that ended with a hard crash to the ground several feet back.

  Jarek was already grabbing the toad-looking raknoth and pivoting to slam him to the ground.

  “Jarek, no! They’re—”

  Too late.

  The raknoth’s eyes came ablaze with red raknoth fire. She saw a flicker of surprise on Jarek’s face before his faceplate whirred shut, and then the raknoth reversed Jarek’s throw and hurled him ten yards across the quad.

  Jarek turned through the air with a long cry of, “Shiiit!” and managed to turn his fall into a rough roll. “Rachel!” he shouted. “Raknoth!”

  She was already channeling energy from the batteries on her belt into a hard barrier in front of her, Lea, and Alaric.

  Just in time. The slender raknoth lunged forward and slammed to a halt against her invisible wall a few feet from Alaric. His toady friend turned his fiery gaze to Rachel and prepared to throw his weight into the assault as well.

  She resisted the urge to blast them back to buy time. Aside from the fact that they were ridiculously strong and heavy, it wasn’t really an option to launch a pair of angry raknoth into the crowd behind them—a crowd which was quickly beginning to panic as more and more people looked over and saw what was happening.

  Rachel pulled more energy to prepare for the second raknoth’s charge. Instead, though, the raknoth whipped his head around and rolled to the side. The next instant, Jarek slammed down to the soft earth, sweeping his ridiculously hefty sword through the space where the toad’s head had just been.

  Both raknoth leapt back with dual roars to square off with Jarek as he stepped in front of Alaric and Lea. The one with the slender face bumped into a market-goer hard enough that the guy hit the dirt as if he’d been struck by a low-speed truck. Luckily the raknoth were both focused on Jarek, and the guy’s buddies grabbed him and dragged him off with the rest of the frantically dispersing crowd.

  The sounds of rushing air and the low hum of electric motors rose through the din of the evacuation, capping the adrenaline-fueled pounding of Rachel’s heart with a dose of cold dread. She met eyes with Myers, who was pushing toward them through the fleeing crowd, and they both turned their gazes skyward.

  Ships.

  Three of them, two larger carriers and one smaller ship about the size of Jarek’s. They could have belonged to the Overlord or the Reds. It didn’t matter. The victorious, bloody-nosed sneer Mosen shot her from the ground as he waved away his comm holo told her everything she needed to know.

  Rachel tightened her grip on her staff, gathered her focus, and prepared to fight as enemy forces swept in from above to attack her home.

  Nine

  By Jarek’s reckoning, facing unfavorable numbers in a fight pretty much boiled down to two options: refraining from direct engagement to buy time to enact a more clever plan, or focusing on a single target and attacking it decisively in hopes of leveling the playing field before things had a chance to get messy. Or dying.

  Okay, so three options.

  Jarek tended to fall into the reckless attack school of thought, so when he caught sight of the three ships descending with what he expected would be dozens of troops to join Mosen and the two raknoth in the Unity quad, he didn’t hold back.

  He picked the slender-faced raknoth on the left and leapt into battle with a wide horizontal sword sweep intended to drive both raknoth back and apart.

  It worked, and Jarek followed up with a feinted lunge in the toady-looking raknoth’s direction to drive him further away from his partner. As soon as Toady hopped clear of the feint, Jarek switched direction and darted toward Slender Face.

  Slender Face dipped, rolled, and backpedaled with the best of them to keep clear of Jarek’s flurry of sword strikes, his skin darkening slowly to scaly green battle-hide. The raknoth was quick, but that went without saying.

  Jarek was about to reverse direction and rotate into another strike when Al cried out. “Roll!”

  Jarek threw himself to the left without hesitation. Al was literally the eyes in the back of his head. When he said move, Jarek moved.

  What felt like a hunk of steel rebar clipped the back of his legs as he went, and he came back to his feet in time to see Toady stumbling straight into Slender Face after apparently having tripped on Jarek’s leg while trying to surprise him from behind.

  “Good call, Mr. Robot,” Jarek said, peddling back toward the others while he had a moment to breathe.

  Gunfire cracked from overhead as the enemy forces—the Overlord’s people, he was pretty sure—opened up on the four of them and the handful of armed Unity fighters approaching through the dwindling crowd. Jarek cringed at the lack of discrimination the shooters practiced for foe and fleeing innocents. A few town folk fell, along with one of Myers’ men. The rest of the armed Unity guards hunkered down behind whatever they could and began returning fire.

  A few shots pinged off Fela’s armor. To the left, Rachel was dealing with the new threat in her own way.

  A thin arc of spent lead slugs was accumulating a few feet in front of her, courtesy of that amazing bullet catcher of hers. Alaric and Lea were crouched behind her for cover.

  A few more bullets slammed to a halt in mid-air a few feet from Rachel as Jarek watched. Alaric leaned around her and raised a revolver, his breath condensing in the air the bullet catcher had drained of heat to power its arcane function. Alaric fired twice, and a dark-clad enemy soldier fell from a transport above to topple lifelessly to the soft earth.

  In response, the enemy fire picked up. The transports were pushing their way down to land in the quad when T
oady and Slender Face, now both in scaly green raknoth mode, pressed in to renew their attack. Mosen joined them, and after that, things got hectic.

  Jarek lost track of everything outside his immediate vicinity as he fell into a deadly dance with his three adversaries. He moved through sequence after sequence of attacks, dodges, and counters with trance-like focus. Kick there. Pivot. Swipe-dodge-riposte. Duck. Rising sweep. Take a hit. Give one back.

  Don’t stop.

  Impossibly strong arms grabbed him from behind. Jarek dropped his sword, grabbed an arm, and dropped his hips back, pivoting as he went to flip Slender Face over his shoulder and slam him to the ground. He raised an armored boot to stomp down on the raknoth’s head, then tensed as he caught sight of Toady charging in on his side.

  There wasn’t time to avoid the tackle. The instant before Toady hit, though, he was bowled off course by what could have been an invisible semi-truck.

  Score one for Goldilocks.

  Toady flew past Jarek instead of through him, and Jarek thanked his stars that he had a strong-willed arcanist watching his back.

  By then Slender Face had rolled out from under him. Jarek grappled with an oncoming Mosen and managed to turn and throw him at a now-oncoming Slender Face, buying him a moment to scoop the Whacker back up from the ground.

  The moment of peace only made him an open target to the enemy soldiers. Several bullets slammed into Fela’s armor before Mosen and the raknoth stepped back within potential-friendly-fire range.

  Jarek shook the shots off and brandished his sword at his three foes. “Bring it, bitches!”

  “Not your finest work, sir,” Al said.

  “Guess I’ll try to do better next time I’m fighting three—”

  Slender Face lunged forward recklessly, as if he thought he’d caught Jarek with his pants down. Apparently he hadn’t gotten the message that Jarek was a multitasker.

  “—superhuman assholes!” Jarek cried as he darted aside, swinging his back leg around to leverage a hard overhand strike.

  The blade cleaved Slender Face’s right hand off at mid-forearm. Jarek followed up with a powerful sidekick to the stunned raknoth’s ribs and a loud cry of, “Booyah!” He readied his sword, staring down Mosen and Toady. “Who’s next for the choppy-choppy?”