Star Angel: Rising (Star Angel Book 4)

by David G. McDaniel

  I come alone.

  She strode across the bridge to the rear lifts. She wore her robes, her finest fur wrap, looking her most regal, her most commanding, and as she completed that short journey below and stepped from the lowest point, exiting the hull that was several times thicker than she was tall, she felt the oppressive heat of the Earth atmosphere close about her. Wrapping her with its thick, clinging presence as she stepped to ground in the deep shadow of the dreadnought. It was spring here, in this hemisphere, heading toward the local summer, and it was hot. Nothing like the cold of Kel.

  For an instant she debated leaving the wrap but decided against it. It was part of her overall bearing and, like the rest of these carefully laid plans, must remain intact. She gave herself a few moments to adjust. The underbelly of her flagship loomed long and wide above her, several stories off the ground even landed, dark and ominous. Far across and at this side the struts bore into the ground, deep depressions crushed into the surrounding concrete and asphalt. She turned slowly in place, sniffing the dust that hung in the air, smelling the scents of this place, the grass, the dirt, the stink of human constructs, smashed beneath the dreadnought’s arrival; mortars and fuels and other things. The larger part of the park covered the ship’s underside, taller trees bent against the ceiling of armor, shorter ones still erect. Like a terrarium under a giant, flat, metal roof. Buildings unfortunate enough to have been in the ship’s line of descent stood crumbled or as piles of wreckage, some remaining intact at the base right up to the point of contact with the hull, others completely collapsed. To survey the vast space beneath the ship was a scene of both destruction and …

  Peace. The park in the shade of the dreadnought was quiet. A few benches in sight even looked inviting, like one could go sit and take a rest for a while.

  Cee turned to her objective. Out the front, beyond the wide, overhanging prow, lay the front of the building where Kang waited. Stone façade shining in the sun. The dividing line between the shadow of ship and the sunlit city was sharp. She started walking. The grass of the park had a certain bounce to it. Soon she veered to a walking path, took it and followed it out into the sunlight. She squinted but did not raise a hand to shield her eyes. Chin up, shoulders back, burning in the harsh brilliance, she maintained a perfect stride to the front doors. They were double doors, or at least had been. Ripped from their hinges they could less be considered doors now, more a door-way. This was no doubt where Kang entered.

  Before stepping across the threshold into the dark lobby she took one look back. The dreadnought was a colossus, spanning her entire field of vision at that close range, dwarfing everything in sight. It dominated the scene utterly. High atop it she saw small figures, Kel warriors, tiny at those heights and lending further scale to its size. Rifles were visible as part of their dark silhouettes. They’d come topside to watch for any human activity, anything that might assault her on the trek to her goal. Not a violation of her orders directly, as they were not, technically, accompanying her, but she hoped it would not be noticed and misconstrued. Nevertheless she begrudgingly appreciated her admiral’s effort to protect her. She turned, putting them from her mind.

  Inside the building she would be on her own.

  Across and into the cooler darkness she kept walking, knowing it was better at that point to move and not think. Decisions had already been made, now was the time to execute. If she paused to consider the best way forward she might, finally, decide against this altogether.

  And so she went. There was power in the building. An elevator at the far side of the lobby. She got on and went up, to the top floor where, she assumed, Kang would be. It was keyed, some sort of special access, so she had to go to the floor below, get off and find her way to the stairs. In the same way no army would help her neither would a weapon and so she brought none. Only the translator she would need to speak with the beast. Alone, not even wearing armor; nothing but the simple regalia of her station. Moving, not pausing to consider. Soon she found the door to the stairs, ripped aside as had been the doors below, determined Kang must not have been able to use the elevator either, he could just leap, she thought, as she went up the stairs and found herself entering the topmost floor, an expansive level that covered the entire length and breadth of the building.

  Inside was Kang.

  At the center, sitting in a stuffed recliner set atop a long, shiny table. The stench in the room was strong but not yet overpowering. He’d knocked out some of the windows and a breeze blew across, from side to side. Carnage lay piled in one corner, tossed there as if in a half-hearted attempt to clean up a mess. Those Kang had killed. Rather than at least throw them out the window he’d put them in the corner, bloody corpses, mangled body parts and innards. Flies buzzed around the pile, not yet a swarm. It set Cee on edge. Not so much from disgust—she was quite used to death, especially violent death—more from the fact that it indicated Kang had only further descended. How bad had his insanity become? He regarded her, not surprised to see her in the least. Of course he would’ve watched her from the window, could not have missed the arrival of the dreadnought, and so would have had plenty of time to let any surprise pass. Still, she could not shake the feeling he’d been completely unfazed from the moment the ship appeared in the sky.

  Like nothing at all might ever trouble him again.

  “I’ve realized I probably don’t need you after all,” he said in his deep, rasping voice. She tried not to shudder as the translation came through her wand in its corresponding Kel voice, overlaying the travesty that was Kang. The ridiculous “throne”, the bloody mess heaped in the corner, the chaotic destruction of the large room, sign of the struggle that had gone before … all of it spoke to one who had gone completely mad. At least when Kang had been with her last she understood a small measure of his madness, could work with it, predict it, guide it toward her desired ends. Now …

  Now she was not so sure.

  Suddenly she couldn’t recall why she was even standing there.

  “I am unstoppable!” he raised his voice; not a shout, as she knew what a shout from the beast could do, yet loud enough to shock her. She took an involuntary step back. Almost ran, suddenly a little girl again; then broke into a cold sweat as she realized what the results of that would’ve been.

  She had to see her way through this.

  “What fate is mine now?!” he wanted to know, then chuckled. It was a gurgled, malevolent sound, deep within his chest. He sat naked, no doubt all of his Kel wardrobe having been burned away in the massive cannon attack, any remaining shreds lost in his rampage across the countryside. He’d made no effort to find anything to replace it. And as he shifted in the chair she noticed for the first time he was definitely a man. In every regard. Yet he was such a monster, such a yellow-skinned, scaly, horned beast she’d never thought of him that way.

  She suppressed a hard swallow.

  “Why do you think I came?” she asked. The translator kept perfect pace in Kang’s native English.

  He snorted. “To bring me back under your wing, of course. So that you might use me the same way I intended to use you.”

  So he hadn’t lost all faculties. Was his mind still sharp?

  “True enough,” she decided not to deny it. “Then you must also realize that sitting here you make a fine target. I could’ve called for the destruction of this city and you with it.” It was a bold declaration. Hopefully it would work.

  “Do you expect me to come willingly?”

  “I will honor all prior agreements,” she said. “Nothing has changed.”

  His visage twisted, a fleeting shift, immediately back to the haughty disdain she’d found him with—but in that instant she realized with certainty she was dealing with a maniac. It should’ve frightened her further.

  Instead it compelled her in ways she could not explain.

  He regarded her with a calculating eye. Said: “Perhaps I have leverage for more.”

  “My forces will not bow to you in or
der to save me.” Though it wasn’t clear if he was seriously considering holding her hostage. “We’re a different breed, Kang. By now you should know that. I am a queen of warriors. I will die a warrior.” Inwardly she knew that was more bravado than fact. The Kel as a culture may have embodied that sense of duty. She, however, was in no hurry to die.

  Of a sudden Kang stood. Tall atop the table, and again she took an involuntary step back. He stayed there a moment, swinging distractingly from the sudden movement, his arousal beginning to show; staring at her as a fanged grin worked its way across his face. Then he stepped to the floor with a heavy thud. This time she held.

  “You miss my meaning,” he displayed what could only be described as a twisted expression of seduction, one side of his mouth turned up, head cocked a little to the side—the subtle tilt exacerbated by his uneven horns.

  “How much greater your position with a powerful consort at your side?” His mind had definitely not suffered. He was as scheming as ever. She should be repelled by what he suggested but …

  Wasn’t.

  She realized her tongue had begun dancing behind her lips. She made it stop. He came closer.

  “No longer mere allies,” he said with a low, sensual growl. “A bond like no other.”

  “You assume too much,” she cautioned, words weak. This change in the conversation was most abrupt.

  But, damningly, not unwelcome.

  “You crave power.” In no time he was standing right before her. She could touch him if she but lifted a hand. He smiled. “I am power.” He was giving off an animal heat that was at once imagined and very real. His body was generating waves of it. An absolute furnace of virile energy. Her tongue was in motion again, feeling the hard surfaces of the backs of her own teeth; mind imagining what his must feel like, imagining running it across their sharp edges.

  It was all wrong. Terribly wrong.

  She wanted him.

  “Open yourself to me,” he said, temptingly close but not reaching for her. Not coming any further. As if making her want him more. Making her come to him. “Together we can rule the stars.”

  A shudder gripped her and she fought it. An icy chill ran up her spine in its place and … she reached without thought. Grabbed him, with both hands; an instinctive reaction, no consideration behind it, mind filled with the prospect of pain, of ecstasy—of all things, and she could no longer bear it. Someone might see through the windows but she no longer cared. Reason left her. It had been so long, so very long, and now here, like this, to have a freak of nature with unlimited vigor right in front of her, pressing the issue …

  She fell into him. It was primal, it was raw, and she ceased all resistance. He was her complete and total master.

  Never had she felt such as this.

  With Kang she felt as though a god.

  CHAPTER 35: A GATHERING STORM

  Willet grunted, aware enough not to yell yet unable to stop the guttural unnn! forced from his diaphragm.

  “Hang on,” Zac said right next to his ear, voice clear over the rising roar of the wind. They’d popped out high in the air, as Zac warned, relatively motionless at first but accelerating rapidly to terminal velocity. Back in the prep room Zac gripped him, twisted the Icon and … POW! all at once the air smacked and the floor disappeared and Willet was now staring at trees and neighborhoods and roads, all of it sprawling hundreds of feet below. That pop of instant displacement was followed immediately by vertigo, then the pull of gravity and with the floor gone they were falling, wind rushing hard as they raced to their doom.

  Willet had experience with drops. He’d jumped from ornithopters and other heights, but always with jet assist or chutes. Here they had neither. “Wisely” they’d decided not to risk any of those options in order to minimize detection. Right then Willet wondered what was so wise about that decision.

  He was going to die.

  Zac rolled them, pulling him around in his grip so Willet was staring up into the clear blue sky. The Kazerai held him in a deadly bear hug, beneath him now, twisting in some deliberate way—Willet could sense he was trying to aim them—as if to catch the wind in those final instants and fly. You’ll be fine, Zac said earlier. I’ll get you down safe. Willet recalled those ridiculous words now. Remembered how willfully he’d believed them. How foolishly. The wind howled. Zac’s words flashed in his mind.

  Idiot.

  CRACK! they punched through the top of a tree. More cracks and Willet retained just enough awareness to know it was trees and not the ground, catching flashes of green to the sides and above, feeling Zac as he continued to twist this way and that as they crashed through—like the big guy was picking branches to hit, one after the other, each a fraction of a second after the previous as they bounced from one to the next, snapping them crack! crack! crack! until—

  Whump!

  They stopped all at once and Willet finally had the wind knocked completely out of him.

  They were down.

  The falling was over.

  In those first moments of stillness he struggled to take a fresh breath. He was laying on top of Zac, on the ground.

  Done falling.

  Alive.

  He stared up through the ragged hole in the canopy overhead, eyes blinking, all the way up to the sunny blue sky. Gasping until he was at last able to suck in a lungful of air. A shower of leaves floated and fluttered in the wake of their passage, swirling downward, raining all around. A few branches swung loose in the mess above, many ready to fall the rest of the way. Others lay on the ground nearby. A few big ones. Willet blinked away a leaf that made it to his eye. Another was coming, slowly, twisting this way and that in the air. Zac held his arms pinned at his side.

  “You good?” the Kazerai’s voice was dull through the ringing in his ears.

  Thpp. Willet spat away the dirt on his tongue.

  “I’m good,” he croaked.

  Zac released him and Willet rolled carefully from his chest, going to his hands and knees beside him, groaning. Zac got to his feet and Willet followed suit, stood carefully and checked for injuries. He rotated his head on his neck and heard a pop, then looked at Zac.

  “Why didn’t we ask Nani if she could fix that thing?”

  Zac seemed to be having the same thought. As if he, too, just realized their huge lack of insight.

  “Actually, that would not have been a bad idea.”

  “And we have to do that again going back?”

  Zac nodded. “Yeah.”

  Willet rotated a shoulder in its socket. “Great.” He rotated the other and got a sharp snap. “Can’t wait.” Then it hit him. We’re back on Earth. A whole other planet. Getting there in much the same way they’d traveled aboard the Reaver, covering an unknown, vast, impossible distance in the blink of an eye. Only this time they’d done it without a starship. This time they did it … just two guys with one amazing little device.

  He looked at the Icon in Zac’s hand.

  “So now we’re behind Jessica’s house?”

  “Yeah.” Zac was already listening to the forest around them. Smelling the air. A human detecting machine.

  Willet wished he had half his power. A tenth.

  “Come on,” and Zac was moving away through the woods. Willet popped his neck one more time and followed.

  These were not dense woods. Almost landscaped, though they were definitely wild. From the snippet of visual overload he’d gotten when first popping out over the trees Willet knew the woods fronted on a development of houses. The woods had probably been trimmed and shaped when the neighborhood was built but otherwise left in their natural state. He could see a few of the houses up ahead, atop a small rise at the other side of a wide, grassy field. In the field between the woods and the nearest house sat a dilapidated red structure. He studied it through the gaps in the trees as they walked. It was an old wooden barn, like something from a farm, though there were no farms around. Probably got left when the new stuff went in. Much like the woods.

>   “I hope no one saw us,” he commented as they reached the edge of the trees and held.

  “I don’t care if they did.” The sharp change in Zac’s voice gave Willet pause. “I’ll destroy anyone or anything that gets in our way.”

  Willet looked at him. With his new, dark beard, slightly longer hair … for an instant Zac looked way more menacing than he ever had, a dangerous flicker at the edge of those ice-blue eyes.

  Suddenly Willet feared for anyone who crossed them. Whoa be to any Kel, any human—any anyone who tried to stop Zac from getting what he was after. Zac, who was normally about as easy-going as anyone could be, always quick with a joke or a compliment or a few words to make you feel better. In that moment he looked, sounded like the deadly killer he was capable of being.

  And for a second it scared Willet.

  “You’re going to be smart about it, though, right?” He continued studying Zac’s profile. Zac just kept staring at the houses in the distance.

  Some of his normal demeanor returned. “I’ll be smart,” he agreed.

  Then he turned. Fixed Willet’s gaze. And there was a seriousness in his eyes Willet had rarely seen.

  “We’re all going home.” The Kazerai’s voice held certainty. “You’re going home. I’m going home. Satori is going home.” He put his attention back on the closest house.

  “Jessica is going home.”

  Then quietly, voice filled with an entirely different emotion: “We’re all going home.”

  **

  Galfar was the first off the boat. He led his horse carefully down the wide gangplank, onto the pier, finding each step difficult on the steep incline as he wove among other beasts being led off the ship by their owners or handlers. The gangplank was busy, the pier below even busier. Thronging with activity. It was morning and the giant vessel had just made port and tied off, the gangplanks were finally thrown down and eager people on both sides were springing to action. Those waiting below to receive, those waiting aboard to get off, families and friends to greet, cargo to be unloaded, new cargo in line to be loaded, fresh passengers for the next journey and all else. It was a zoo. The animals actually seemed to be the more tame element amid the furious bustle.