Hell to Pay: Book Two of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  Golga twisted his way wide with that uncanny speed anyway.

  Only, before he cleared the spearhead, Golga ran into an invisible wall of thin air. His red eyes flared almost white hot, and then he crashed onto the spear full-tilt. As fast as he was moving, the narrow spearhead punched clear through his hard hide and plunged far enough that it must have emerged from the other side.

  It wasn’t enough to stop him.

  Golga bellowed a roar and aimed a club swipe at Elise’s raven-haired head.

  She flattened herself to the ground with startling agility, evading the sweeping club by a hair’s breadth.

  Jarek sprang forward and swept his sword at Golga’s neck.

  Golga ducked the strike so narrowly that the broad side of the blade scraped his scaly scalp.

  Before either of them could recover, Alton flew past Jarek’s left and planted a devastating front kick right beside the spear in Golga’s chest.

  The kick must’ve been on par with, if not beyond, anything Fela could manage, because it sent Golga sailing across the field like a dark green missile. Elise reached a hand after him, and her spear tore free of Golga and flew back to her hand.

  “Ship!” she cried, whirling around. “Now!”

  That sounded like a plan.

  Elise was the first to take her own advice, leaping to the hovering ship just as Rachel had done. Alton was barely a second behind her. Jarek, seeing Toady approaching from the stands and Slender Face picking himself up from his bad date with their guardian sniper, wasted no time in following on their heels.

  “Got ’em,” the burly guy said in a low rumble of a voice when Jarek reached the hatch. “Get James.”

  The ship banked to the right as four or five hands unnecessarily grabbed Jarek and yanked him through the open hatch and into a corridor whose walls resembled the dark, purplish material of the ship’s hull. Alton scrambled off down the odd corridor. The bullets thudding against the ship’s hull sounded distant and ineffective as the ship veered around in the rough direction Jarek had pegged the sniper to be firing from.

  “Well.” Jarek looked between Elise and Rachel, who he’d narrowly avoided smooshing into the corridor wall when they’d pulled him through. “I’d say that went swimmingly.”

  Rachel’s hard eye-roll was interrupted by the ship’s sudden dip and deceleration.

  A few seconds later, a small, tweaky-looking blond guy came scrambling through the hatchway toting a long, silvery rifle that was clearly of Enochian origin. Suddenly those odd pops Jarek had heard in place of normal gunshots made marginally more sense.

  “I’m in!” cried the sniper in a frazzled tenor. “Go, go, go!”

  Whoever was at the ship’s helm complied with gusto.

  Everyone braced against the ship’s acceleration. The sniper, who was the only person without a handhold, a staff, or an exosuit to keep himself stable, stumbled and nearly fell. Jarek reached to steady him, but the little guy pulled it together on his own.

  Finally, the acceleration eased off, and the thud of bullets on the hull ceased, leaving only tense silence hanging in the corridor until they all collectively unclenched at once.

  “Thanks for the assist back there,” Elise said.

  “Oh, you know,” Jarek said, waving his free hand and sheathing the Whacker with a practiced motion. “I like to think I do it for the children.”

  “Yeah …” A small smile tugged at Elise’s mouth. “I was talking to her, actually.”

  Jarek glanced at Rachel, who showed him a smirk.

  “I probably would’ve been trampled to paste back there if Rachel hadn’t kept Golga on the rails.”

  “Uh, right.” Jarek rubbed at the back of his head, playing back the moment in his mind. “I knew that. Totally.”

  “I think what he means to say is that we should be the ones thanking you,” Rachel said.

  Jarek inclined his head. “Also that. Wait …” He narrowed his eyes at Rachel. “You knew they were coming. That’s who you were talking to when we hit the ground back there.”

  Rachel shrugged.

  “Tricksy little arcanist,” Jarek muttered.

  “People were worried you were gonna run off all half-cocked into a trap for some reason,” Elise said. “Crazy, I know, but we figured it couldn’t hurt to be nearby just in case.”

  Jarek opened his mouth and closed it. There wasn’t much to say to that.

  “We need to get to back to HQ,” Rachel said.

  “Already headed that way.” Elise fiddled with her staff, which compacted rapidly down from five feet to about half that. She tucked the half-staff into a sling on her back and set off down the corridor. “Come on.”

  Jarek followed the group down the corridor, which he now noticed looked so odd thanks in part to its smooth lack of ninety-degree angles.

  “This is James and Phineas, by the way,” Elise said, pointing first to the wiry blond sniper and then to the burly, balding bear of a man.

  James gave them a nervous wave. Phineas gave a deep grunt from behind his dark beard without really looking at either of them.

  “Nice shooting back there,” Jarek said, inclining his head toward James’ otherworldly rifle.

  “Oh!” James said. “Uh, thanks.”

  They arrived at what appeared to be the cockpit in short order. The room was similarly devoid of sharp angles, and the front half of it was … transparent? No, something else.

  He could see outside to the Hudson river below and the buildings of New York City off to the left, but he wasn’t simply looking through a large, semi-spherical window. The image bent in odd, subtle ways here and there, following the curves of where the room’s walls would have been, like the wall was projecting the view from outside.

  “Neat-o,” Jarek mumbled.

  The sight of the landscape rushing by, coupled with the lack of any clear window panes, display edges, or wind created a strange, slightly unnerving, sensation in Jarek’s head and gut. He shook it off and focused on Alton and the man with the dark mustache—Franco, was it?—over by what looked like a control console.

  “We still need a way inside,” Franco was saying to Alton. “We can’t very well expect to be much use heckling their army from behind.”

  Jarek was just about to point out that the main entrance was concealed and that said army might still be standing around with their thumbs up their asses when a section of the weird wall-screen zoomed in across a miraculous distance to show a swarming mass of armed, dark-clad figures rushing about the lot above HQ. A fleet of transport trucks and a few ships were arrayed behind them among the shipping containers.

  One small group of dark figures all turned to jog away from one section of the lot. A few seconds later, there was a flash of fire, followed shortly by smoke and dust. Explosive charges.

  Son of a bitch.

  They didn’t need to find the entrance. Not when they could just blow the lot to pieces until they found something interesting.

  As the dust and smoke began to thin, Jarek saw they already had.

  A section of the lot had caved in to a tunnel or room below. Golga’s forces surged forward, plunging down into the opening a couple men at a time.

  “Shit,” Rachel muttered beside him.

  He couldn’t disagree.

  “There must be a back door,” Alton said. He turned, his eyes now devoid of raknoth fire, and directed a questioning look at Jarek and Rachel.

  “There’s an underground garage entrance,” Rachel said, “but I doubt we could land anywhere near it without bringing that whole horde down on us.”

  There had to be another way.

  That was a big army down there, and right now the Resistance’s only saving grace was that Golga’s forces were being funneled by the size of their entry point. Once they’d blasted a few more entryways, though, things were going to get ugly fast.

  “Sir, I’ve got it,” Al said in his ear. “A back door.”

  “How—”

  “I’
m on the comms,” Al said. “For some reason, they seem rather willing to share sensitive secrets with allies right now.”

  “Well Jesus, Mr. Robot, share it with the class!”

  “Right, sir,” Al said, speaking through Fela’s external speakers this time.

  The Enochians stifled their confused looks and listened along with Jarek and Rachel as Al rattled off a series of directions. Alton’s gaze became distant as Al spoke, and the ship veered gently starboard, changing course to take them around Golga’s army to Al’s secret entrance in the old park northwest of HQ.

  Alton’s eyes drifted shut, and Jarek’s stomach confirmed the wall-screen’s story as they dipped low to the ground.

  He wasn’t sure how the ship’s hull would fare against modern scanners, but they were close enough now that Golga’s men could have visually spotted them if they happened to be looking in exactly the right spot. Fortunately, they seemed rather occupied with their full-on assault.

  A minute later, Alton slowed the ship at Al’s instruction and descended to land in the grassy clearing beside what looked like an old sewer outlet set into the hillside at the park’s edge.

  “We can’t leave the ship unguarded,” Alton said as they made their way back to the hatch.

  Given the look James and Franco exchanged with each other and then the others, that was shorthand that the two of them should stay behind.

  “We have it under control,” Franco said, disappearing into a nearby room behind Phineas. He emerged a second later, sporting a sleek weapon that looked something like an assault rifle. Phineas came behind him, laden with several new weapons in addition to the rifle he’d carried in.

  “What about you?” Jarek asked Alton. “I can’t imagine they’ll be too excited to see red eyes popping in through the back door. You got a pair of shades or something?”

  Alton frowned. “I’ll try to keep it under control.”

  “Splendid,” Jarek said. “What could possibly go wrong?”

  “Let’s move,” Elise said.

  The back door was unsurprisingly locked, but the code Al’s panicked contact had provided opened it without issue. The hallway beyond was dark and, like the rest of HQ, cramped.

  “How far are we from HQ exactly, Al?” Jarek said.

  “A little under a mile, sir.”

  “Awesome,” Rachel muttered.

  “Well.” Jarek gave Alton a meaningful glance. “Guess we better give you guys a ride then.”

  Rachel narrowed her eyes at him but hopped into his waiting arms with no additional protest.

  “Come on.” Jarek waggled his eyebrows at Elise and turned in invitation. “You know you wanna.”

  “Is he always like this?” Elise asked as she planted her hands on his shoulders and hopped onto his back piggyback style.

  It couldn’t have been the most comfortable mount, especially considering the enormous sword strapped across his back, but she managed.

  “Always,” Rachel confirmed with a nod.

  “Alpha save us,” Elise mumbled.

  Beside them, Phineas gave Alton a long, hard look before finally raising his arms and allowing the raknoth to scoop him up in a bridal carry.

  Elise shook against Jarek’s back with silent laughter.

  “Tell anyone about this,” Phineas grumbled, glaring at Alton, “and I’ll kill you.”

  Alton stowed his smile and tilted his head from Jarek to the dark hallway beyond. “After you.”

  “All right, ladies,” Jarek said as he stepped into the darkness and Al flipped on Fela’s external lights to illuminate the way. “Get ready for the ride of your lives.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Back at the stadium, when the ship had been going down and they’d had to bail, Rachel had been scared. Scared, but not terrified. She’d had an ace up her sleeve. She’d known that the Enochians wouldn’t be far away and that they’d be waiting to swoop in if things went wrong—as they most spectacularly had.

  Now, though, plunging through the dark, dank hallway toward HQ, a growing terror tugged harder at her heart with each fluid step of Jarek’s inhuman pace.

  Some of that terror was for herself. They were charging into what amounted to a large deathtrap, after all, where enemy forces would literally be raining down on their heads.

  Part of the terror was for Jarek and the rest of her friends, for similar reasons.

  When Jarek had nearly fallen to Zar’Golga back at the stadium … Ace up the sleeve or no, she’d felt a moment of true terror when Golga had scored that hit, when she’d thought maybe Jarek was already dead.

  But he’d pulled through as he always seemed to, and now most of her terror was free to focus on Michael, who, for all she knew, was still lying helplessly unconscious in the med rooms, probably defenseless but for Pryce. Assuming the older man was even still with him.

  The report of a distant explosion reverberated through the darkness ahead, fanning the flames of terror in her heart.

  This was bad. Worse than bad.

  And this time, her sleeve was woefully devoid of aces.

  It was hard to tell what was ahead by the shaky light as they charged forward, but she thought she saw the suggestion of an end to the hallway in the far reaches of the light. Jarek couldn’t have been running for more than a minute. Even with her in his arms and Elise clinging to his back, Jarek could really haul ass, she’d give him that—even if Fela deserved most of the credit.

  The ride was surprisingly smooth, too, considering. She wasn’t sure whether Elise could say the same back on her perch, but Jarek managed to keep Rachel steady enough in his arms that she almost could have forgotten she was being carried by a running man if she closed her eyes and tried.

  The things he could do in that suit were impressive. Maybe not impressive enough to turn back an army and save the Resistance, but she could hope, right?

  No. What she could do was stand right beside the big wise-ass and turn the tide with him—maybe even while making sure neither of them died in the process.

  The darkness ahead gave way to Fela’s external lights and resolved into a door that looked old and heavy and rusted around the edges. Muffled shouts and a few gunshots came through the door as Jarek drew to a halt and gently lowered Rachel to her feet.

  Alton pulled up behind them and deposited a very disgruntled-looking Phineas to his feet.

  Elise hopped off Jarek’s back, shifted uncomfortably, and pulled her staff from the sheath on her back. “We should make you a saddle.”

  “Pryce would have a field day with that one,” Jarek muttered.

  Al must have provided the code directly to Jarek’s ear, because he tapped in five digits without hesitation.

  The gnawing fear in Rachel’s stomach was paralyzing as Jarek pulled the door open and stepped into the sounds of chaos. She found her focus through sheer force of will and followed after him.

  HQ was in tumult. That much was immediately clear, but at least she didn’t hear any gunfire at the moment.

  The back door emerged into a tiny side hallway that fed directly into the common room after a single turn.

  Rachel spared a glance back to make sure the others were through and the door was shut behind them—and, maybe, to double-check that Alton’s eyes weren’t glowing raknoth red—then she moved into the common room on Jarek’s flank.

  Large chunks of rubble were piled in one corner of the common room along with several dark-clad forms, still and lifeless on the concrete floor. The corner had apparently caved in, but it looked like the Resistance had somehow patched the ceiling. It wasn’t pretty, but at least it wasn’t open to the lot above. For now.

  Resistance troops lined the perimeter of the room, most of their weapons trained toward the corner despite the lack of any immediate threat. Alaric and Nelken stood with them, each holding an assault rifle. Alaric bent to say something to Haldin, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside him, eyes closed and back resting against the wall.

  Haldin see
med to rouse marginally. Rachel felt a tendril of his mind brush lightly against her own. He said something to Alaric, and Alaric’s gaze shot over to them, followed by Nelken’s. Nelken beckoned, and they hurried over to join the commanders.

  “Hell of a party you’ve got here,” Jarek said when they were close enough to speak quietly.

  Above, the boots stomping across the lot were numerous enough to be plainly heard over the whispers in the room like the falling of some obscenely thick rain on their humble shelter.

  “The Overlord?” Alaric asked.

  “Still alive,” Jarek said. “And probably not far behind us. They must’ve tracked Mose—Seth to find this place.”

  Alaric gave Jarek a look that might have been frustrated or accusing, then he gave a conciliatory nod. “Figured the same.”

  “What’s going on up there?” Rachel asked.

  “Haldin’s giving them hell, as far as we can tell,” Nelken said.

  A pair of detonations above shook the room and punctuated his remark, kicking loose a shower of dust in the process.

  Elise crouched down by Haldin and put a hand on his shoulder, her own eyes drifting shut.

  “He sealed up the first breach they managed,” Alaric added. “Not really sure how, but it’s still only a matter of time before they punch through.”

  “That’s a lot of men up there,” Jarek agreed. “Raknoth too, I’m guessing. Not sure how we’re getting out of this one.”

  Alaric scowled at Jarek. “Well I reckon killing their Overlord would’ve been a good place to start.”

  “You’re right.” Jarek jabbed a finger at Alaric. “I’ll let you have at him next round, cowboy.”

  “Gentlemen,” Nelken said, “I think we have more pressing matters at hand.”

  Matters like making sure Michael was alive and safe—or as safe as he could be right now, at least.

  “I’m going to medical,” Rachel said. “I need to check on Michael.”

  “I’ll come,” Elise said, rejoining their huddle. “I need to find Johnny.”

  Rachel nodded at her and the commanders. Her eyes lingered a moment longer on Jarek’s.

  “Be safe,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said, “coming from you.”