Retribution: Book Four of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  They plodded on anyway.

  Haldin was at least a hundred feet in the air now, taken along for the ride when Naga had recoiled from Elise’s attack.

  Elise called something, and Haldin sprang away from Naga’s fangs. Or tried to, at least.

  The instant Haldin gave him the room, Naga struck like an oversized viper, catching the Enochian by the left arm with fangs the size of Haldin’s body.

  Elise’s scream joined Haldin’s cry of pain and Naga’s satisfied rumble.

  “No!” Rachel heard herself shout.

  Elise cocked Jarek’s sword back, preparing to throw.

  Naga whipped his huge head before she could, and Haldin tore free like a speeding bullet, minus his left arm.

  The Enochian hit the mountainside in an explosion of rock and dirt, faster than Rachel’s mind could process until he’d skipped a couple dozen yards toward them.

  Ahead, Elise threw the sword. Naga jerked his head to the right, taking the blade on the snout to protect his remaining eye.

  Jarek hurried forward to where Haldin was already picking himself up.

  “We’re fine,” Haldin growled as Jarek reached to help him.

  We’re?

  It seemed to take Jarek aback too, but they hardly had time to worry about that—or about the fact that Haldin was apparently going to pretend like he hadn’t just lost an arm.

  Elise touched down beside them with a heavy thud, Jarek’s sword in hand.

  “You’re okay, my love?” she asked with a quick look at Haldin’s arm—or lack thereof.

  Haldin stood to his full height by Elise, his gaze never leaving Naga. “It’ll take a lot more than that to stop us.”

  Ahead, Naga shifted, seeming to consider Haldin’s words as he watched them with his single crimson eye. His left eye only sputtered with a feeble glow, spilling clear fluids down the side of his enormous head.

  Rachel and Jarek drew up beside the Enochians. Elise offered Jarek his sword. He waved for her to keep it, which seemed like a good call, seeing as she could probably swing it about ten times harder than he could right now.

  Together, the four of them faced Kul’Naga, who’d grown silent and still.

  The huge dragon tilted his snout skyward, considering his allies’ ship, now hovering far overhead. For a second, Rachel could’ve sworn the ship wavered under Naga’s gaze.

  Then it surged forward, quickly fading into the distance as it ascended to the clouds and beyond.

  Naga’s enormous head tipped back down, and he swept his gaze around the wreckage of Cheyenne, taking in the extensive damage and casualties before finally settling back on them.

  He was going to charge. She was sure of it.

  But then he raised a massive forepaw to the ruined mess of his eye. Slowly. Almost absentmindedly.

  Tense silence stretched. Then Naga slammed his forepaws to the earth, gave a gale-force snort and a shake of his head, and leapt into the air on tremendously powerful haunches. His wings shot out, catching the air in a series of quick, sonorous beats, and then he was rising.

  “We should stop him,” came Haldin’s voice in her mind. Or maybe it was Alton’s. She could barely tell.

  And given that it looked an awful lot like Naga was fixing to leave, she wasn’t even sure whether to agree or argue with the sentiment. But she also couldn’t fathom what the hell they were supposed to do about it either way.

  Each beat of Naga’s wings hit them like a small tornado. Rachel would’ve fallen if Jarek hadn’t been holding her. And given how damned beaten he was, Jarek might’ve fallen too if Elise hadn’t been holding him. Even Haldin staggered, finally starting to show hints of looking like a guy who’d just lost an arm.

  When Naga was nearly two hundred yards above, he angled around to face them and hung there, bobbing a good twenty yards up and down with each humongous beat of his wings.

  “You think yourselves heroes?” came a voice like the stone of an ancient mountain. “You are but dust, waiting only to be swept back to The Void from whence you came. When this world has moved on, when your distant descendants have forgotten … That is when we will return to see it done.”

  And with that, Kul’Naga turned with a few mighty beats of his wings and began climbing for his waiting ship, each thunderous beat drawing him higher and higher.

  Haldin looked like he was considering trying to take telekinetic flight after the Kul. “If he escapes now—”

  “Peace,” came Elise’s thought. Or maybe it was Lietha’s. “We are not yet ready to see it through to the end.”

  Haldin radiated frustration and displeasure, but he didn’t argue.

  Above, Naga reached his ship and climbed up through the open hatch. Rachel thought she caught a glimpse of his crimson eye staring down at them. Then the enormous hatch drew shut, and the ship began to rise.

  They watched in silence until it was a distant speck in the clear blue sky.

  Then Jarek collapsed to the ground with a monumental groan that sounded equal parts pained, exhausted, and relieved. Rachel went with him, not even bothering to try for balance with her support pillar gone.

  She lay beside him on the dusty, sun-kissed stone, enjoying every grateful breath of air she took in. Much as they’d earned it, she was still a bit surprised when Haldin and Elise likewise hit the dirt, both of them shaking from their exertions—or maybe from something else entirely, something to do with their new bodies.

  “You guys okay?” she asked, having to work to even find the energy for the simple act of speaking.

  “We are …” Elise started, looking a little uncertain as to how to finish.

  “Tired,” Haldin provided.

  Elise nodded. “But we will survive.”

  “Amen,” Jarek croaked. “I’m never moving again.”

  He could say that again.

  Rachel couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so utterly drained. Probably because she never had been.

  There was work to be done. Maybe more now than ever before. She couldn’t buy that it was over. Not just like that. But, for the moment, it seemed they were safe and relatively stable.

  So Rachel lay her head back, closed her eyes, and, for a while, allowed herself to enjoy the simple pleasure of being alive to feel the sun on her face.

  Then a voice broke the silence at the edge of her senses.

  “Rachel Cross.”

  She perked up. “Drogan?”

  A moment’s pause.

  Then, “I believe I require your aid in escaping this confounded furry prison.”

  35

  “Hang in there, buddy,” Jarek called, dubiously eyeing the gigantic furry leg they needed to move—or at least budge—to give Drogan a shot at crawling out of what Jarek figured was best referred to as Mada’s furry armpit.

  Until we get the world’s largest crane in here, he wanted to add.

  Somehow, it didn’t seem like the most productive comment.

  He shifted his gaze to the mammoth’s building-sized torso, looking for alternative options, and sighed. No strokes of brilliance. And much as he wanted to get Drogan out of there, the thought of trying to lift any part of the dead Kul was just making him feel even more exhausted than he already was.

  Elise, though, was having none of the idle waiting, which struck Jarek as curious until he remembered that it wasn’t just Elise in there. It was also Lietha, who seemed to have something of a special bond with Drogan, as far as those things went (or didn’t) with raknoth.

  It was going to take a little getting used to, this Enochian-raknoth hybrid thing. For now, though, he was just glad he wasn’t the one having to do all the heavy lifting. Or any of it, hardly.

  Elise put her back into the effort with frightening strength. Haldin raised his remaining hand, presumably to lend his own telekinetic aid. Jarek limped forward to add Fela’s strength to the mix.

  Mada’s leg felt like the kind of thing creatures their size simply had no business lifting. The Enochians l
ifted it all the same with a bit of help from Jarek. Or shifted it, at least. Not far, but far enough.

  When Drogan was finally able to claw his way out from the furry prison between Mada’s leg and body, they gratefully let the leg shift back to its original position. Drogan rose to his feet with the utmost dignity, straightening out his clothes and trying for all the world to look as if nothing of note had just happened. Almost as if he was … embarrassed? Something like it, at least.

  One of his arms was hanging oddly. Drogan frowned at it and was reaching for the shoulder with his good hand when Elise—or, probably more accurately, Lietha—reached out and touched his cheek.

  It was a small touch, gentle and quickly over, but Drogan’s eyes pulsed brighter for it, and his embarrassment only seemed to grow. Then Elise gripped his shoulder and popped it back into place with a smooth, confident movement.

  Drogan just nodded his thanks, no sign of appreciable pain.

  Haldin said nothing but watched the interaction with a slight frown. That was probably fair enough. Raknoth pain-killing techniques or no, Jarek couldn’t imagine losing an arm would make anyone less irritable.

  Then again, Haldin didn’t seem too upset about the loss. He and Alton were pretty certain they could simply grow another.

  In the meanwhile, though, Haldin’s irritability and Drogan and Lietha’s proximity colored the silence a tinge of awkward.

  “Thanks for the catch back there, Stumpy,” Jarek said, trying to break it up. “Sorry we left you sniffing mammoth pit. I was worried you were, well …” He looked around at the destruction that littered the mountainside.

  The lack of survivors seemed to speak for itself.

  “It will take more than one falling colossus to end me,” Drogan said, though he looked a shade less confident than he sounded. “I only regret I was unable to finish the fight alongside the six of you.”

  Six? Once again, it took Jarek a second thought to remember the raknoth riding in Haldin’s and Elise’s bellies.

  Definitely going to take a little getting used to.

  “It appears the merger was successful,” Drogan continued, looking between Haldin and Elise.

  “Short-term heart attacks aside,” Rachel added.

  That might’ve been putting it mildly on both accounts, but especially on the former. Granted, before their little scare below, Jarek had expected the two—or four, rather—would be impressively strong upon waking.

  Powerful arcanists with the strength of raknoth at their disposal? How could they not be?

  But the two beings who stood before them now …

  Suffice it to say, the new Haldin and Elise were more than a little bit intimidating.

  “Sorry for the scare back there,” Haldin said, “but the … reboot was necessary for us to properly function together.” He spoke slowly, as if he had to search deep within himself for the answers. “We’re going to need time to fully understand the extent of our abilities.”

  “Fortunately,” Elise added, “it appears that time is exactly what we have won today.”

  “Yeah …” Jarek said. “Call me crazy, but are we really so sure it’s time to breathe easy and go back to our happy little lives?”

  He knew Naga had telepathically said something to the effect that he wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon. Rachel had hurriedly explained that much to him, but they’d been in too much of a hurry to come free Drogan to delve into it more. Still, it didn’t exactly sound like irrefutable proof of their safety.

  “To go back to your lives?” Haldin said. “Yes. To breathe easy? No. We don’t believe Naga will return within the millennium. Certainly not within the century. But preparations must begin. This world must be rebuilt.”

  There was something subtly unnerving about the way Haldin kept using that word, we. At first, Jarek had thought he was simply referring to himself and Elise. Now, though … Jarek kind of wanted to ask about what exactly was going on in there, existentially. But then, he also kind of didn’t.

  “Remind me again how we can be sure he wasn’t lying,” Jarek said. “Or that you’re not just misinterpreting.”

  Not for the first time, Jarek wished he could’ve been privy to telepathic radio. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Rachel and the Enochians. It was just frustrating, always flying blind in these situations.

  “He did say they wouldn’t return until our distant descendants had forgotten about all of this,” Rachel said.

  Jarek looked around the group. “What else did I miss?”

  Rachel shrugged. “Not too much. Mostly just a few lines about how we’re nothing but star dust that’ll imminently be returning to The Void.”

  “So dude basically ripped off Dust in the Wind and then ran off like an angsty little nihilist?”

  Rachel considered that, then tipped her head with an expression that said more or less, pretty much.

  Jarek tried to laugh, but it came out uneasy. “Shit. Maybe that scaly a-hole knew what he was doing. Skip forward two generations and everyone’s gonna start saying we probably just sat out here smoking peyote and made all this up. Give it fifty years, and we’ll be ripe for invasion.”

  “We cannot let that happen,” Elise growled with an intensity that made Jarek tense and almost take a step back.

  “Yeah, all right, all right,” Jarek said, patting the air with his hands.

  Something told him Elise and Lietha were still working out who got the bigger half of the driver’s seat.

  Off in the distance, several trucks were approaching now from the direction of the lot and the north portal, probably coming to look for survivors—and, Jarek sincerely hoped, to give him a goddamn drink. Maybe a cookie too.

  “I must tend to Zar’Krogoth,” Drogan said, staring up at the mountain ridge, where a few soldiers had already arrived by lift to start looking for people to help.

  Judging by the way Krogoth’s broken body was half-strewn across the mountain beside Harga’s mangled head, Jarek wasn’t so sure Krogoth was one of those people anymore, but Drogan didn’t seem to pay that fact much mind. He set off with Haldin and Elise, bounding up the mountain in a series of long leaps.

  As the trucks pulled up by the wreckage near the south portal and the troops began to unload, several of them heading their way, all the shit Jarek had barely realized he was holding at bay started falling on him in earnest.

  All the aches and pains. The fear and the fried nerves. All of their wounded and dead.

  Pryce.

  Jesus, Pryce. And everyone else who’d been out there with him. Alaric. Michael. Chambers. Johnny and the other Enochians.

  He needed to know they were all okay. Or that they weren’t. Needed to know right now. But somehow, more by the say of gravity and his exhausted body rather than his own free will, Jarek found himself sinking to the ground instead.

  “Al?” he groaned. “Can you work your magic? Find out if—”

  “Pryce is alive, sir,” Al said, speaking through Fela so Rachel could hear too.

  Relief spread through him, light and warm until it was somewhat marred by Al’s next words.

  “It sounds as though he may be in quite poor shape, however. Fortunately, the others appear to have made it safely out of the south portal collapse as well.”

  “Michael?” Rachel asked.

  “Alive and well,” Al said. “I believe he and Agent Chambers are currently joining the relief effort.”

  Rachel nodded her thanks.

  Jarek tried to move—wanted to go see Pryce, to be useful—but he couldn’t seem to convince his legs it was worth the trouble. Then Rachel sat beside him, and that was that.

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. Wrapped her arm around his waist.

  It felt good.

  Tired and battered and emotionally drained as he was, it felt better in that moment than anything he could seem to recall right just then.

  Could it really be over?

  He wasn’t sure. Probably never would be.
r />   But for a little while, at least, he simply leaned into Rachel’s warm side and allowed himself to hope.

  There were no cheers or jubilant dances that day. For the rest of the long afternoon, there was little but wary silence and weary wound-licking, both literal and metaphorical. Once he managed to get back to his feet, Jarek did what he could to help what remained of The Complex do the same.

  It wasn’t all bad news.

  Within the first hour, those who’d evacuated during the fight—and had apparently gotten the all clear sign since—returned to help triage the wounded, tidy up The Complex, and get to work on the considerable task of excavating the south portal. Scattered friends reunited. Order began to restore.

  Still, there were no cheers. Not with the gravity of their losses and the not-so-distant threat still looming heavy in the air.

  There were, however, firm pats on the back—and a hell of a lot of them throughout the day.

  Much as he appreciated the sentiment, Jarek couldn’t help but wish they’d stop. For one because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this battered and bruised. It had to be some kind of record. It hurt to move. To breathe. Hell, it hurt to even think about breathing.

  But then there was the other reason. The not-so-tiny voice in the back of his mind that had been insisting since Naga flew off that, gratifying as it had been to watch the giant space dragon turn tail after his posse had abandoned him, it was too good to be true.

  For now, though, all he could do was try to offer help where it was needed.

  Jarek was surprised to discover Krogoth and Brandt were both still alive. They barely looked it. Both seemed a bit delirious, which was understandable enough, given the number of puncture wounds Brandt had sustained and the fact that Krogoth was missing a leg and had nearly had his torso torn in two above the waist.

  The rest of Krogoth’s raknoth hadn’t made it. Nor had Nan’Dola, which everyone seemed to loosely agree put Zach in charge of things within The Complex.