Thornfalcon (The ARC Legacy Book 1)

by Matthew W. Harrill

  “It's been part of my remit since I formally agreed to work for the organisation,” Nina elaborated.

  Samantha stared, uncomprehending. The words registered, yet there was a sense of finality about them. “You—”

  “I leave immediately.”

  “That's crazy. It's suicide.”

  It is what it is, sister. I have to do this. They have to be stopped.

  Nina took her face in both hands, “You're headstrong, little sister. We all have our parts to play, and right now, yours is to listen to Aunt Clare, and try not to be a thorn in mom's side. I suspect there's more to all this than she's letting on. You may end up being her only outlet for that. Listen to her. Please?”

  Samantha felt cornered, the air pressing down on her. “Okay. I will.”

  Nina stepped back though the door into the press of people in the conference room.

  “Nina—” Samantha shouted above the throng, but there was no answer. Samantha searched the swarm of faces for her sister, pushing aside notables as though they were random strangers, but Nina was gone.

  “She's good at that, you know.” There was pride in Swanson's voice. “Practically invisible. She can get in and out unseen if she wishes, another legacy of your father.”

  “Yeah, she's a princess all right. I can summon a demon's image and I'm a dab hand at reading bird portents in a field,” Samantha replied, her face deadpan. “We all have our gifts. It seems hers don't lead to an inexhaustible energy source, right?”

  Swanson blinked. “True. If only you'd stayed, maybe this would have happened differently.”

  “Don't you lay the blame for your failure at my feet. I live to summon the image of Satan, not destroy the world.”

  Swanson appeared unmoved. “The 'image' of Satan. I daresay you can do more than that. Blood doesn't summon images. At least you have your father's sense of humour. A dry wit goes a long way. I'll be taking my leave now, Samantha. Major world crisis and all that.”

  Looking awkward, as if he had no real escape from the difficult conversation, Swanson turned and shuffled off through the crowd with none of the grace of Nina.

  “It gets easier,” her aunt Clare whispered in her ear, startling Samantha.

  “I didn't see you there, Aunt Clare.”

  Her aunt laughed. “The first time I spoke to him, he offered me a job with ARC. What could I do but give up my very meagre ambitions of becoming a detective? The problem was, becoming a detective had been my only goal for a decade. He was in control that day.” Clare indicated around the bustling room with her open hand. “This is anything but control. It is, in fact, pure chaos. Let's get out of here. We have to get busy and quickly.”

  Clare pulled Samantha through the crowd, ignoring those they bumped into. Only once did Samantha make eye contact with her mother. If there was any emotion in those eyes, any feeling, she could not read it. Her conduct over the next few days would affect the outcome of her reluctant ARC career.

  “Is it worth it?”

  Clare looked over her shoulder. “The job?”

  “All of it. The job, the lifestyle.”

  Clare shrugged. “Definitely. I only had my half-brother Jeff to grow up with. My mother and step-father weren't exactly model citizens.” The way she spoke about her family, the slight pause, the catch in her voice, revealed barely-masked pain. “I never met my real father, your grandfather.”

  “He died before I was born,” Samantha replied. “Grandma went not too long after. That was when I was very young.”

  “See? Your family's all here. I've spent the past decade hunting creatures that should not exist. It's an amazing job, all brought about by an organisation founded because of one immutable fact: Demons are real. You know this. Now you have to ask yourself where else would you really want to be?”

  “Not Dubrovnik, that's for sure.” Charlotte Benson appeared ahead of them, filling the corridor with the musical lilt of her voice.

  She reminded Samantha of an Amazonian Warrior—six feet tall with an imposing frame and well-tanned skin, towering above them with coffee-coloured hair tied back, sunglasses resting atop her head like a fashionable tiara.

  “Come on, boss. We need to brief you.”

  Inside the room, three people Samantha didn't recognise were seated, two men and a woman. Screens on one wall showed similar diagnostics to those in the conference room.

  “So this is it, then?” asked a rotund man of middle age in a green boiler suit with a black beanie hat. “Five of us against the world?”

  “Six,” Clare corrected. “This is my niece, Samantha Scott.”

  “Ah,” said boiler suit. “Okay.”

  Clare snorted, pointing at the beanie capped man, “Don't worry about Jim, here. Clever and inventive? Sure. Able to get you out of a tight spot? Always. Wary of outsiders, though.”

  “Especially rebels with your reputation.” Jim watched her with suspicious eyes.

  “Live with it,” Samantha replied. “I haven't exactly covered myself in glory recently. Nobody here has. Besides, once you have a low self-opinion, it's much easier to perceive the faults of others.” She patted Jim on the shoulder. “Nice to meet you, Jim.”

  Behind him, a man in his early thirties bellowed a laugh and slapped one hand on his thigh. “That's genius,” he said, wiping a tear away from a face bedecked in a short blond beard. His hair was tied back in a bun. While not as large as Jim, he radiated strength.

  “Sammy, meet Mitch Russell,” Claire said. “We're not exactly sure what he does. Comic relief, mostly. Good in a tight spot.”

  “Though how he fits into a tight spot is beyond me,” commented a small woman with long dark hair and a friendly smile around the English accent.

  “Are we ready, Carrot?” Clare asked.

  “Carrot?” Samantha repeated.

  “Natalie Scarrot,” the small woman explained. “I'm sure you can see how that one stuck very quickly. You can call me Nat.” She glanced at Mitch who smiled back.

  This wasn't lost on Samantha. The relationship was the core of the team.

  “Carrot's our pilot,” Charlotte explained. “She's got a knack of getting in and out of some very tight spaces. We might need that tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “You think that injured people are going to wait until morning for us to rescue them?” Clare asked. “What's the situation?”

  “We're out of here just as soon as the ground crew give us the green light on the bird,” answered Jim. “As you can imagine, the world is in a bit of a state following the satellite malfunction.”

  Clare snorted. “They're really going with that?”

  “What choice do they have? It's much more diplomatic than 'terrorists reprogrammed our technology to open a black hole'. That's the least of the problems, though. Look at the charts. Weather's all screwed. Jet stream's realigned south to north and as of now, it's ignoring the rotation of the earth.” Jim pointed at one of the screens. “The earth's atmosphere looks like a peeled orange, segmented by weather patterns. Many of those leaders were caught in the attack. Aeon Fall pulled off a master stroke. The President of the U.S.A, the British Prime minister, Russian and Chinese premieres, just the tip of the iceberg. They were all caught in the storms, and so far, no news.”

  “What makes Dubrovnik so special?”

  Jim pointed to a second screen, showing a coastal city from above. An ugly scar cut across from the inland, east to west near the sea.

  “Two things. First, Tien Tran, the Secretary General of the United Nations was en route to Dubrovnik following the launch. He likes to see the sights. Second, it wasn't weather that hit the city. Whatever the radar picked up just now came down and smashed into the hills behind with such force that they crumbled halfway to the sea.”

  “The satellite?” Samantha guessed.

  Jim frowned. “Or something else.”

  Chapter Eight

  What else could cause an avalanche? Samantha struggled to consider this as s
he followed her aunt onto the runway. The sun failed to reappear following the waterspout; clouds streaked across the sky in a pattern of parallel lines more akin to jet trails than any normal formation. Everything had changed.

  The few lights that hadn't been destroyed pierced the twilight, leaving the enormity of Hunter's Ridge shrouded in the darkness and foul-smelling silt. It filled Samantha's nostrils and muffled her footfalls. She took a moment to lament for Brusnik, which surely would have been swamped in the violent conditions. Her once peaceful and calm demeanour was overtaken with chaos.

  Up ahead, the whunk-whunk noise of a helicopter powering up revealed their destination. Carrot was already in the pilot's seat, her face revealing a frown in the glow of the instrument panels.

  Clare handed Samantha a headset and placed another over her own head. “How's it looking?”

  “Jessica took a hell of a hammering, boss. The waterspout sideswiped her, leaving her in a heap of debris with muck everywhere but the ground staff did a stellar job.”

  “Jessica?” Samantha asked.

  “My little sister,” Carrot answered. “She's a redhead, and temperamental. Not unlike this bird. You'd have to see her in the daylight to understand.”

  “Who? Your sister?”

  “Either.

  They climbed in, Charlotte Benson up front, next to Carrot, Mitch and Samantha seated mid-row, and Aunt Clare and Jim at the rear. Clare pulled the door shut as Carrot announced take-off.

  “Okay, here we go.” The speed of the rotors now whined as the helicopter struggled to gain lift. The bird rolled skyward as its wheels pulled free from the suctioning silt. Samantha's stomach lurched sideways; she was thankful she hadn't eaten.

  “How far to Dubrovnik?”

  “About a hundred fifty miles,” Jim answered. “This is a retrofitted Huey, so just over an hour at best speed.”

  The helicopter leaned over as they banked to the southeast. Samantha gasped when she saw the damage done. Half of Hunters Ridge had collapsed into the sea. Had that missile taken off any later there would be no one to rescue.

  “Yeah,” Mitch added as if reading her thoughts, “we were damned lucky.”

  Hunters Ridge disappeared into the twilight, the Huey staying true except for the occasional buffeting. After half an hour Samantha's curiosity got the better of her.

  “Jim?”

  “Huh?” The big man dropped a map and pen to the floor.

  Samantha reached down to retrieve the lost items, looking at the map. “They're isolated.”

  “What's that?”

  Samantha indicated the city of Dubrovnik with a finger. “If the rumbling we heard was the ridge collapsing, we will have to drop right into the city.”

  “Thanks,” he grunted. “How'd you figure that?”

  “I studied.”

  Jim appeared surprised. “That's not the reputation you bring.” He spared a guilty glance for Clare.

  “Just because you've heard something about me, doesn't mean it's not true.” Samantha said while looking at her aunt. “I could fly this bird if I had the opportunity. I don't agree with much ARC does, or my assumed place in this organisation. There is too much that is hidden from the public; the very same secrets used to develop enhanced technology—a technology that ultimately failed.”

  “Yet,” Jim countered, “you're the daughter of the Devil. Not only that, you're on this mission to rescue people who may be victims of that specific technology.”

  Samantha grinned. “Victims of circumstance, aren't we all? Now what do you want with Barbegazi?”

  This appeared to catch Jim off guard. The big man looked down at his crossword, avoiding her gaze. “I dunno what you mean.”

  Samantha leaned back with a smug smile on her face, the leather of her jacket creaking against the seat. “You've written the word 'Barbegazi' on the map. We're on the way to a site of devastation and the exact word you've written names a creature that has a legendary reputation of bringing down mountains.”

  A slow smile crept across his face. “She's her mother's daughter, no doubt. It's just a theory, though. We don't discount much with what we've seen.”

  “Such as?”

  Clare handed her over a tablet. On it was a picture of what looked like an emaciated man with glowing eyes. “Viruñas,” she explained.

  “The creature that started this twenty years back—right about when your mom was pregnant with Nina, it was chasing me and those like me around Massachusetts. It killed my mother and stepfather. But for my cat Steve, it would've killed me too. That creature and others like it exist. As time went on and my ARC career unfolded, I was exposed to many more of these mysteries. Every single one of these creatures has some sort of foothold in reality. It's almost as if, what happened…”

  Clare looked out at the sea, “…down there affected everything up here. All the bad things we were told as kids: the boogieman, the dark creatures in tales, all stepped it up a notch while your father was being a hero.”

  “You're right,” Samantha agreed, “he was a hero.” Finally, someone saw the world the same way as her.

  “And yet, there were unintended consequences. There always are. Look at your little tribe. Did you foresee Lucas Rossi using you the way he did? Or the reactions of the crowd on Brusnik? They fished the body of one out of the Adriatic just before Aeon Fall hit us, in case you were interested. Most of the others had already been sent ahead to Dubrovnik's airport. You should understand sometimes consequences can be good. Just look around you. I picked up this lot and others over the years while on the trail of such creatures. As it stands, not one of us on this mission now would be anywhere else.”

  “Unless it was lying on the beach in Cancun sipping on a Margarita,” Mitch piped up. “That'd be quite good.”

  “Sorry buddy,” Jim countered, “Cancun got wiped from the map in the storms. Tidal wave.”

  “Oh.” Mitch looked crestfallen. “I'm sorry to hear it. Still, plenty of places to drink Tequila.”

  “The latest search we were undertaking was that of the Voydanoy,” Jim continued, glaring at Mitch.

  Mitch winked back.

  Jim smirked and went on, “Froglike humanoids that break dams, abduct people, and drown them. We have the remains of one back at the lab. We were en route to the Czech Republic to look for more when we were diverted—you know, so Boss could be invested in the special club. As soon as we heard about Dubrovnik, we went straight to the most unusual of sources.”

  “Folklore?”

  “Exactly. Witches, pixies, creeping bodysnatchers. They all have myth but behind them is fact. Have you heard of Krampus? Found him in Vienna. The legend is he turned families into dolls. Turned out, what he really did was abduct and eviscerate them. The myth feeds the legend. People accept what they think is truth, no matter how far-fetched.”

  “He's right,” agreed Clare. “I was so fixated on my parents' murderer being one person it almost cost me my life. Never the obvious. That's our motto.”

  “So, you think Dubrovnik is Barbegazi?”

  “Until we can prove otherwise, yes. It's a place to start.”

  “What about the assertion that it's part of the satellite? Surely that's a much more reasonable explanation?”

  Jim inclined his head, conceding her point. “I think when you've had as much experience as—”

  “Land ho!” cheered Carrot. “Now maybe you boys can do something useful rather than try and induct poor Sammy into your X-Files club.”

  Charlotte Benson turned and gave a mock-scary face, eyes wide, mouth 'O-ed'. “It's all a conspiracy…”

  Carrot flew the team in close over the city, just above sea level. In the darkness, there wasn't much Samantha could see.

  “It doesn't look bad from here,” she observed. High walls stood atop cliffs a hundred feet above the roiling sea.

  “The coastal side of the city isn't the problem,” Clare reminded them, “though I wouldn't make a point of walking the walls with what's
happened behind them.”

  Carrot pulled the Huey higher above the city. In the dark all Samantha could see was a scar in the distant mountain and a stain that spread across the metropolis a couple miles wide. Houses that once stood on the lower slopes were obliterated.

  Silence filled the cabin as darkness masked a thousand unseen horrors. Broken limbs, parents crushed under debris, orphaned infants lost with no understanding of what befell them.

  “I don't know if we should go down there.” Samantha found it hard to admit, but she was scared.

  “There's no choice, sorry.” Mitch's voice was full of genuine sympathy. He'd seen her moment of vulnerability.

  “Surely there's somebody else who—”

  “There is no one else,” Clare's tone was final. “Even if we didn't have an ulterior motive, we're the first to respond outside of the city and we're well-equipped.”

  “But we're ARC. The whole world just witnessed our response to Aeon Fall.”

  “There's nothing to indicate who we are or where we're from,” Clare shot back. “You signed on, under my supervision. Well this is where our first mission takes us. You think these people are going to care where you're from, or if you can speak their language? You offer them food, water, first aid. You give comfort to those in need, those who have lost more than you probably ever will. At the end of this night, you'll see the bigger picture.”

  “And if I don't get the bigger picture?”

  “Then I might just leave you until you do.”

  Samantha slumped back into her seat, avoiding all eye contact. This day was getting worse and worse.

  * * *

  Carrot hovered above the city. In the lights of the helicopter Samantha could see people waving at them, others shielding their eyes from the luminous assault. Dust billowed everywhere.

  Mitch handed Samantha a large backpack. “Medical supplies. Water. Clothing. Emergency gear. Keep your headgear on or you'll end up alone.”

  Samantha took the gear, nearly dropping the pack. “It's heavy.”

  Mitch turned back from handing out other packs. “Maybe you'd like mine?” He indicated a pack on the floor.