Had she been out? Or simply fallen over from exhaustion? She couldn’t tell.
A little ways off, Gada fought on against Jarek and Drogan, his back and right flank thoroughly charred black. His fighting was still ferocious, though he moved as if he’d seen better days. Then again, so did Jarek and Drogan.
Johnny had circled around and was dragging Lietha’s body back from the fight, and—
“Rachel.”
Haldin’s voice.
She looked up and found him standing over her, but he wasn’t looking at her as she’d expected. His attention was fixed on Kul’Gada, cold rage plastered across his face.
“The lightning,” Rachel sent, her head still whirling. “It was working. Can you …?”
He dropped unceremoniously to the mud next to her and reached out his hand, his eyes never leaving Gada.
“Together?”
She reached out and grabbed his hand. Their fingers intertwined, and Haldin’s presence washed over her, strong and resolute and brimming with barely-contained fury.
“Together,” she sent, taking strength in his resolve.
She’d touched his mind once before, when the Enochians had first arrived on Earth and she’d needed to verify the truth of their story, but that had been different. Intimate, yes, but still a one-way arrangement, with Rachel in control.
Now, though, she was pretty sure that wasn’t going to cut it. For them to do this together, to share in each other’s strength … She’d never deliberately opened herself to anyone that completely. It wasn’t a welcome thought.
But the sight of Jarek narrowly dodging Gada’s blades reminded her that that didn’t matter one damn bit right now.
So she dropped the wall between her mind and Haldin’s, and he did the same.
Sights, sounds, feelings, even thoughts—everything doubled, pouring through her in an overwhelming rush. Most overwhelming of all, though, was the guilty rage coursing through Haldin’s veins.
At first, the heat of it made her flinch, but as their separate beings swirled together into a singular stream, that rage became hers as well.
Calm, she thought as best as she could. Focus. Gada.
The rage didn’t dim, but it did focus.
She—no, they—closed their eyes and bled into their extended senses, fixing on Gada, taking in the swirling dance of charged particles, beginning to draw energy from their surroundings.
It seemed to Rachel that she was guiding the process more so than Haldin, but the fact that she could feel his agreement as if it were her own confused the question of who was doing what.
It didn’t matter.
Together, they massaged the tendrils of charge down toward Gada’s spiky back. Together, they waited until Drogan had kicked out one of the Kul’s legs and hopped back to safety.
And, together, they touched the charge down on Gada’s hide and rained white-hot fury on the giant bastard.
The ground kicked beneath them, the sonorous boom of thunder buffeting their rain-soaked hair.
For the first time, Gada’s shriek was tinged with a desperate edge.
They felt him in their extended senses, whirling to face them, starting forward to put an end to what he seemed to have just realized was a serious threat.
Jarek darted in and hacked a deep, searing cut to Gada’s injured right flank. It didn’t stop the Kul, but it slowed him enough for them to build another charge and fry him a second time.
Gada dropped to his knees, nearly pitching flat over.
They built another charge and hit him again. Then again.
Clammy perspiration mixed with the rain streaming down their brow, sickly waves of channeling fatigue roiling in their gut. She couldn’t have distinguished whose brow and whose gut. Probably both of theirs.
It doesn’t matter, she thought. Or was that Haldin?
Unimportant.
They had the bastard on his knees.
They drove Gada flat to the ground with telekinesis, their combined consciousness wavering with the enormous amount of energy they were slinging, and hit him with yet another bolt of lightning.
The Kul stopped struggling.
They drifted awash in a sea of channeling fatigue, leaning on one another for support.
Nearby, someone was yelling.
Jarek.
But why?
She tried to focus on his voice through the mental haze and realized it was her he was yelling at, bolting toward them all the while.
“I said look out!” he cried, leaping over her and Haldin.
He came down on the other side and planted his armored boot into Kul’Armin, who’d slithered his way up behind them while they’d been raining fury down on Gada.
The Kul gave an aggravated roar, but even as he recoiled from the kick, several tentacles shot out and wrapped themselves around Jarek’s leg. The tentacles held firmly as the rest of Jarek’s body fell victim to gravity and toppled downward. His back slammed into the muddy earth, and Armin wasted no time in wrapping him up more tightly.
Jarek managed an awkward one-handed sword swing that took off a few smaller tentacles, then he tried a few kicks with his free leg, but Armin continued to bind him and reel him in.
Then Krogoth slammed into Armin’s side with a lowered shoulder, and Drogan landed on the Kul’s opposite side and began ripping at the tentacles holding Jarek.
Rachel and Haldin gathered their combined focus and capitalized on the distraction to telekinetically yank Jarek and Armin in separate directions.
One of Jarek’s legs came free, and, with one last kick, he parted from the Kul’s deadly embrace with a wet ripping sound.
Jarek hit the ground with several tentacles still dangling off his legs. He pulled himself to his feet, shaking them off, and readied his sword for another round.
Behind them, Gada’s smoking form remained thankfully still in the mud, face down.
None of them were in much better shape.
Exhaustion pressed in on Rachel and Haldin, heavy and insistent. Jarek was panting and moving as if every part of his body hurt, and Drogan and Krogoth both appeared to be literally missing pieces.
But it was just them and Armin now.
So, taking solace from that fact, they pushed aside their fatigue, gathered their will, and prepared to call the storm down once more.
Before they could, Armin surged toward them on a wave of tentacles.
Jarek planted himself between them and the Kul and met his tentacled rush with a blazing sweep of his sword. The attack seared through the Kul’s flesh, but Armin pushed on.
Drogan rammed into the Kul’s flank, ripping and tearing until a thick tentacle swept one of the raknoth’s legs out and slammed him to the ground.
Jarek spun to the side and whipped his blade down on the tentacles holding Drogan. Rachel and Haldin waited until the stroke fell to lash out with a telekinetic blast that sent Armin rolling several yards back. Krogoth, apparently sensing what came next, had the good sense to abort his own charge and dive clear as Rachel and Haldin called down a lance of lightning.
Armin shrieked and went rigid as the bolt struck him, his tentacles stiffening like a giant sea urchin, then he wobbled around and started shakily toward them.
They felt as shaky as the Kul looked, clinging onto their combined consciousness by mere threads.
They should hold off. Recover. Allow Jarek and the raknoth to buy them time to safely prepare another strike.
But there the wriggling bastard was. Shaky. Isolated.
They could feel his confidence eroding, could sense it in his movements.
They could end it right here, right now—take back some small semblance of justice for Elise and all the others who’d suffered today.
So, together, they called one last brilliant flash down from the sky.
When Rachel rose from the darkness and became aware of her surroundings once more, things felt oddly foreign. It took her a long moment to remember why.
She was on he
r own. No Haldin.
Rain washed over her, far more vivid now that she wasn’t lost in her extended senses—as was the lengthy list of pains parading through her body.
A flash of azure lit the falling rain to the right and ended with a soft, wet thunk.
Another. And another.
Rachel blinked and woozily shifted around to see Jarek’s blade descending on Armin for what was at least the fourth time but probably more like double digits if the Kul’s appearance was any indication.
Haldin was sitting beside her, watching the execution with a pale face and grim satisfaction.
The stench of burning and death clung to the air, only partially alleviated by the cleansing rain.
If Armin had been struggling at some point, he wasn’t now.
Drogan and Krogoth stood vigilantly by as Jarek continued to hack away, Drogan still holding one of the tentacles he’d ripped from the Kul’s body.
Not trusting herself to try to stand yet, Rachel watched, the wet thunk of each strike turning her stomach despite the part of her that cried out with savage glee.
After nearly a minute of Jarek’s hacking, she pulled herself to her feet by her staff. She turned to offer Haldin a hand, but he was already up. She followed his gaze and her stomach fell through the floor.
Kul’Gada was gone.
She turned wide eyes to Haldin. “Gada—”
“Bolted,” Jarek called from Armin’s motionless form. He’d finally stopped hacking and was doubled over, panting. He straightened to face them, his face plate sliding open. “He took off when you guys hit Cthulhu here with the Zeus juice.”
“The coward,” Krogoth growled.
“But a living coward,” Jarek added, looking none too pleased about it.
The sounds of fighting were dying down, coming mostly in small bursts here and there. The fact that they weren’t currently being overrun and that the sounds seemed to be fading into the distance made Rachel think the Resistance and Krogoth’s forces must have Ashida’s army in retreat.
The beginnings of hope fluttered in her chest but died quickly enough when she looked down at the butchered mess of Armin’s body and thought about their own wounded.
She gestured toward Armin with her staff. “Is he …?”
“Kul’Armin’s true body has been mortally wounded,” Drogan said. “Here lies the first in five thousand years to relinquish the title of Kul.”
“He will not be the last,” Krogoth said.
“Yeah. All hail the Whacker,” Jarek said weakly before strapping the weapon to his back and sinking down to the mud for a breather. “As much as I know you party animals wanna celebrate, though, I think we’d better hurry with the cleanup duty.”
Krogoth was already stalking off toward the battlements to do just that.
“Yup,” Jarek said, still breathing heavily. “That’s good. You creepily untiring bastards got it under control. Put her there, Stumps,” he added, extending a fist to Drogan.
Drogan ignored the offered fist in favor of patting Jarek on the head like a small toddler, then he stalked off to find Lietha.
Rachel turned to ask Haldin about Elise, but the Enochian was already gone.
Jarek was right. They had a whole hell of a lot to clean up—and then some.
She should go find Haldin and Elise—go do something to help someone, at least. But, for the moment, she couldn’t bring herself to do much more than sink down by Jarek’s side and lean against his bulky shoulder. She didn’t complain when he wrapped a muddy arm around her, or when he bent down to plant a warm kiss on her forehead.
She just rested her head against his shoulder, let out a long sigh, and, for a short while, allowed herself to think of nothing but the feel of the rain on her skin.
For now, at least, they were alive.
Twenty-Seven
To say Jarek had been in his fair share of fights throughout the years seemed like a bit of an understatement. Hands down, though, the battle they’d just been through had utterly and completely dwarfed anything he’d ever been a part of—hell, anything he’d ever even heard of.
It had probably been the largest conflict the world had seen since the wise old world powers had been dismantled—or, rather, obliterated—in the Catastrophe.
Everyone was still trying to come to an accurate conclusion on how many lives had just been lost. Looking around at the carnage, Jarek decided it had to be well north of a thousand, maybe even closer to two.
Men, women, and raknoth lay dead in droves. The recently barren soil of Central Park would have drank their spilled blood hungrily, had the rain and fighting not left it so muddy and churned up. Hundreds of recovering combatants rushed here and there, helping the wounded, looking for friends, and, in a few cases, looting the ripe spoils of war.
“Jesus Christ,” Rachel whispered beside him.
“Yeah.” He didn’t know what else to say. He certainly didn’t have anything productive to tell her. Somehow, the enormity of the death and suffering all around them had sapped him of any desire to joke around.
At least the sun was poking out now.
Thank god for the little things, right?
Like how, with their crude battlements and home field advantage, the combined forces of Team Earth seemed to have at least come through with fewer losses than Gada and Ashida’s camp.
But fewer didn’t always mean few, did it?
The stretch behind their defenses was more than plenty littered with bodies, human and raknoth alike, and Jarek had felt the immediate urge to hurl upon looking out over the wall.
“We should check on Alaric,” Rachel said. “Looks like the medics are done with him.”
Jarek followed without argument, glad to have something else to think about. At least until they found him.
It wasn’t that Alaric was terribly wounded. Aside from some singed hair and some surface-level burns on the right side of his face, Alaric actually looked pretty good.
Except for the deep-set my wayward son (who hates me, by the way) just nearly died saving me guilt plastered across his face.
The wayward son in question sat with his impressively burnt back turned to Alaric, glaring daggers at the distant wall as one of Krogoth’s raknoth treated his wounds with the good ol’ spit shine.
“I know this doesn’t change anything, Seth,” Alaric was saying. “I just …” Alaric waved a helpless hand. “I wanted to say thank you. And that I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “Always sorry.”
Mosen said nothing—at least not until Alaric began to turn away with an unmissable slump in his shoulders.
“Hey, Dad?”
The hesitant, almost vulnerable note in Mosen’s tone gave even Jarek pause.
Alaric, on the other hand, turned back with the air of a soldier who’d just stepped on something that could’ve been either a buried treasure chest or a landmine.
Mosen turned around far enough to meet his father’s eyes, an act that must’ve been excruciating given the state of his back. It wasn’t pain in Mosen’s glinting red eyes, though, but hatred.
“Go fuck yourself.”
And with that, Mosen turned back to glaring at the distant wall.
Alaric stared at him with unseeing eyes for a long moment, looking like he maybe wished that it had in fact been a landmine he’d stepped on after all, then he turned to head for where Commander Daniels was running her operational triage.
That Alaric caught sight of the pair of nosy onlookers named Jarek and Rachel as he turned was most unfortunate.
What Jarek would’ve given to have had some kind of optical camouflage on Fela right then …
Alaric looked like he might have been having similar thoughts, but he finally sighed and stepped over to join them.
“So what’s the deal, cowboy?” Jarek asked, tapping at the side of his face where Alaric was now sporting superficial burns. “Couldn’t stand not being a part of the band of badass facial scars?”
It was beyond a fool’s erra
nd to try to wrestle a glint of amusement out of Alaric right now, so Jarek wasn’t surprised when Alaric ignored him and focused on Rachel instead.
“Anything to report? Damn medics had me tied up since they found us.” He spat on the ground. “As if it matters. Commander, my ass.”
Rachel hesitated, clearly unsure how to respond and behave after what they’d just seen. When Alaric’s stare shifted to aggressively expectant, though, she started spitting words out.
“Uh, no. Sir. Nothing to report. We just, uh …” She practically winced with discomfort. “… wanted to make sure you’re all right.”
Alaric blew out a humorless huff, glancing surreptitiously back at Mosen, who clenched his jaw but otherwise tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed.
“All right,” Alaric said. “Sure. Goddamn dandy. Why don’t you two—”
Something across the field caught his eye, and he straightened to attention. “Zar!”
Jarek followed his gaze to Krogoth, who paused on his route to wherever he was headed, frowned at them, and finally turned and stomped his way over.
“How bad?” Alaric asked quietly as Krogoth approached, apparently having caught on to their freakishly good hearing.
Krogoth waited until he’d reached them to answer.
“Roughly half. Both humans and my own kin as well.”
Jarek tried to wrap his head around the raknoth’s answer. He didn’t need a formal report to know they’d taken a serious hit, but half? Half of all of their forces? Close to a thousand humans and maybe a dozen raknoth. All dead.
And for what?
If this was the price for taking down a single Kul, they wouldn’t survive the coming war—not without a serious course correction.
Not that it would have greatly evened the odds, but he might have felt a shade less despair about it all if they’d managed to take down two rakul instead of one.
That shifty bastard Gada had picked his moment of retreat carefully, and he’d executed it with a ruthlessly complete lack of concern for his fellow Kul. Sure, they might’ve had Gada on the ropes for a few minutes at the end there, but it had cost them far too much. And Gada was cunning.
He’d be back, strong and dangerous as ever. And with ten of his friends.
Krogoth, seeing they were all busy registering the shock of the news, turned to continue on.
Reaping Day: Book Three of the Harvesters Series Page 30