Children of Enochia

by Luke R. Mitchell

“The timing of everything,” I said. “You turning up at Haven. You sending us to that tavern, sparking an entire world war on Shapers. And this… this mutiny of Haven, or whatever it was… I can’t help but notice that suddenly everyone I care about is in danger, and you’re here walking free, with me conveniently stuck to your boot treads.”

  He studied me for a long time, then finally raised one bare, dirt-blackened foot, as if to remind me that he didn’t have any boot treads. “I won’t claim I’m disheartened by the way events have turned out,” he said, “but no schemer alive or dead could rightly take credit for setting all this in motion.”

  “And yet it’s happening.”

  “Because your people have spent a thousand years stoking the fires of fear and good faith.”

  Because of your bastard pal, Sarentus, I wanted to snap back. But I still wasn’t positive about what exactly I’d even seen in Parker’s memories, much less its implications for Enochia. I was too busy worrying about my friends, who most certainly had not escaped the boot treads.

  “What are they gonna do to Glenbark?” I asked quietly, not really expecting an answer.

  Elise and Johnny would be safe enough with Franco and James, I thought. But the rest of my people, the ones who’d put themselves out there to help me these past cycles…

  “I imagine you would know the answer to that better than I,” Parker said. “It is a Legion affair, after all.”

  I scowled. “I’m not sure there is such a thing as a Legion affair anymore. Not with the Sanctum pulling all the strings. They must’ve helped Auckus pull this off.”

  “It hardly matters now.”

  “How can you say that?” I snapped, before I could remind myself who it was I was talking to.

  “Because it is done, and because the situation is beyond our control now.”

  “Like scud it is. Just because you don’t care about anything but your own hide doesn’t mean I can’t still out the Sanctum. Sarentus was a fraud. You showed me that much. And if that’s true, then it’s provable too. If we can just—”

  “Haldin.”

  “What?” I met his patronizing look with a glare. “What the scud do you want? Why else even bother showing me these things if you don’t—”

  “I showed you because you asked,” he said calmly. “And if we hadn’t been so rudely interrupted, I might have finished showing you why a few petty squabbles over Shapers and Legion leadership are less than pressing in the grand scheme of things.”

  I gritted my teeth, not really sure why I bothered resisting the urge to telekinetically cast the raknoth over the bluff’s edge and into the rushing river below. It’s not like a little tumble would’ve been all that pressing for him, after all, in the grand scheme of things.

  “I don’t care what you think you know,” I said slowly. “I need to protect my people. There’s nothing petty about that.”

  Parker shrugged. “Perhaps not. But, setting aside the fact that you are all in fact hopelessly infantile blips on the journey to true maturity, your friends are all what you would call adults. They made their decisions. They will live their journeys. Perhaps they will even overcome the trials before them. It matters little.”

  I opened my mouth, but he cut me off with a sharp look, his dark eyes taking on a faint crimson hue.

  “You wish to protect this planet of yours? All I can tell you with certainty is that you will fail unless you come to grips with the fact that you will never be able to save every life, or control every outcome. Not even close.”

  “That’s bullscud,” I said. “I’m not trying to control everything. I’m trying—”

  “To butt heads with the strongest, most stable spiritual leadership this planet has ever known?”

  “To tell the truth,” I countered. “To make sure this planet sees justice and never has to deal with your kind again.”

  “Mmm,” Parker said. “The truth. Well, then I suppose you had best learn the entirety of it before you…”

  He drifted off, a light frown creasing his brow as he tilted his nose skyward and took a sharp sniff. I was about to ask him what it was when he rounded on me, eyes blazing with crimson fire. He opened his mouth—

  And disappeared, rocketing from his perch and over the cliff’s edge as if smacked by the hand of Alpha himself.

  I saw nothing. No hostiles. Just the flash of a powerful mind appearing out of nowhere right above me, and the scream of my extended senses telling me to move my ass. I leapt aside the instant before the newcomer slammed down, shaking the rock beneath my boots. A raknoth. It had to be.

  Another slammed down behind me, and before I could so much as twitch, a force fell over my body like a mountain of hardsteel, wrapping me tight until I could barely draw breath. I was hovering. Suspended a foot from the ground, completely paralyzed by the pressure.

  By the telekinesis, my shocked brain realized.

  And no sooner had I stumbled through the implication of what that meant than I found myself rotating in midair to face the short, red-eyed raknoth whose face I’d never seen. But I didn’t need to recognize that dark-haired, square-jawed face to know I was looking at the possessed body of one of the Seekers who’d been missing since Oasis. The one who’d been known as Five, I guessed. Which meant the sandy-haired, red-eyed woman behind me was the one who’d been Seven.

  “Haldin Raish,” said the former, drawing the name out as if it brought him no small amount of satisfaction. “The mighty Demon of Divinity, brought to heel with a snap of the fingers.”

  He actually snapped his fingers as he said the words, and what little breath I had was squeezed out, the invisible cage tightening until I thought my ribs would crack.

  Five tilted his head to look at his partner behind me, favoring her with a reptilian smile.

  “If only Zar’Faenor could see us now.”

  15

  Riverside Roar

  Alton Parker had betrayed me.

  That was the first thing—and pretty much the only one—that flashed through my mind as the Seeker-turned-raknoth prowled forward to end my life.

  I couldn’t have said why I felt so surprised. Certainly, Parker had never given me any reason to expect otherwise. He’d tried to kill me himself more than once. And trekking here through the forest, all the while pretending he was simply evading capture… All the while leading me to the slaughter…

  And now there was nothing I could do.

  Against Frosty, I’d barely managed to break free of her telekinetic hold. Against two of her supercharged kin, it was pointless to even try. Their raknoth bodies were simply too strong, too robust—capable of channeling far too much energy for my human flesh to ever hope to compete with.

  I was dead.

  Which is why I was properly, scud-to-sunshine flabbergasted when a dark green beast in a tattered brig jumpsuit came flying up from the edge of the riverside cliff and caught my first would-be killer in a ferocious tackle.

  Parker and Five hit the ground in a growling mess of limbs, bouncing across the gray rock like skipping stones. Bound straight for me.

  Some semblance of good sense caught up, and I telekinetically dialed my cloaking pendant in, close enough to cut me off from the raknoth still holding me. I hit the ground and dodged clear of the speeding double-raknoth missile—just in time to whirl around and find Seven rocketing straight for me, claws outstretched.

  I rolled backward on the rock, kicking straight up to catch my incoming attacker in the stomach with both feet as she flew by. I rocked with her momentum, driving with my legs and adding a heavy hit of telekinetic force. She went flying. Literally.

  Riding on the back of my telekinetic springboard, the raknoth had sailed a good twenty feet and was well on her way to plunging off of the cliff to the river below when her legs and hands shot out and she simply stopped right in midair. It took me a moment to register she’d caught herself with telekinesis. Then a wet crack and a stomach-turning shriek from behind yanked my attention away.


  If Alton Parker had betrayed me, it wasn’t working out well for him.

  Parker was pinned, his foe holding his arm at an unnatural angle in both hands. As I turned, Five gave another wrench, digging his claws in at the shoulder, and Parker roared as something tore and his entire damn arm nearly came off. I reached out and ripped Five off of him with telekinesis, yanking the enemy raknoth right between us.

  Just in time to remember I didn’t have so much as a dinner knife to drive into his fiery red eyes.

  I pivoted outside of the staggering raknoth’s first swipe, planted a telekinetically-enhanced fist on his jaw, then tucked into a roll as my extended senses flared with a sharp alarm. I hadn’t made it more than halfway through the maneuver when what felt like a loaded transport landed square on top of me, crushing me to the rock hard enough that it seemed a minor wonder I didn’t simply splatter open.

  Our flying raknoth had rejoined the party, I realized. And they had me pinned again, so firmly I couldn’t even turn my head as the two closed on me.

  At the edge of my vision, I saw Parker stumbling to his feet. I reached for my pendant with my senses, realizing even as I did that the raknoth were already too close for me to have any hope of effectively cutting myself off from their influence. For a moment, I clung to the hope that Parker would come lunging to the rescue. Then he slammed down to the rock beside me, clearly struggling against the same telekinetic restraints as I was.

  I pushed harder, gathering my will, thinking to tell Parker to fight it alongside me—to put his Alpha-damned raknoth back into it. But a pair of dark boots stepped into view beside my head before I could so much as send the telepathic thought.

  The thing that had been Five raised one dark boot, and I stared at the ridged treads, unable to think about anything but the fact that this must be some twisted joke of the universe—death by boot stomp not five minutes after I’d just made some smart comment about being stuck to Parker’s treads. Maybe Alpha was paying attention. Maybe he’d sent these monsters to end me.

  I stared up at that eager reptilian face, wondering what the holy bastard might have in store for the rest of my loved ones once I was gone.

  Then the thing that had been Five jerked back, spewing a trail of dark ichor from the back of his head. He jerked again, and again, sagging limply to his knees before Seven threw her hand up, and three more sharp projectiles yanked to a halt a few feet in front of them. Pulse cannon bolts, I realized.

  Legion bolts?

  I didn’t know whether to cry for joy or run for my life. I settled for throwing myself against my telekinetic prison with everything I could muster. Parker must’ve done the same, because after a moment of straining, we both bounced to our feet like we’d popped through an invisible membrane.

  I didn’t see the shooters, but the raknoth they’d hit was still down on his knees, sagged like dead weight, his eyes dim and vacant. Seven whirled to meet us with a deep roar, the crimson fire in her eyes burning more than bright enough for the both of them.

  More pulse bolts flashed in from the left as she tensed to spring, but they deflected off of whatever barrier she’d raised and pelted into the surrounding rock with a series of loud cracks and exploding debris. I reached out and telekinetically swept the raknoth’s legs out from under her as she tried to launch herself at us. She collapsed like the rocks were slick with ice, and caught herself on her hands.

  Parker lunged in for the kill and quickly found himself taking telekinetic flight into the nearest tree trunk, which gave way with a sound like a gunshot. More bolts from the left. Seven raised her hand toward me. I braced, preparing to counter her telekinesis. Then there was a flicker of movement to the right, and she whipped around—straight into a flying kick from a newcomer with glimmering red eyes and enough momentum to send the raknoth bouncing across the rocks with an aggravated snarl.

  I took in our savior’s green canvas jacket and violent smirk.

  “Garrett?” I croaked. Right before our raknoth friend caught herself and lunged back in for revenge.

  More by reflex than good sense, I telekinetically caught Seven before she could reach Garrett. In turn, Garrett stepped forward to take advantage of the opportunity, looking like he was ready to enjoy it. Alton Parker got there first.

  I hadn’t seen the raknoth jump from wherever he’d landed post-tree-crash, but Parker came down with enough velocity to tell me it had been a high one. I dropped my hold on our foe just as Parker crashed into his kin, feet first. The impact shattered the stone beneath them—which kind of seemed like it should have been the end of it.

  It wasn’t.

  The enemy raknoth’s hand shot up, and Parker took a blast of force that sent him flying back the way he’d come. I caught him before he flew too far, and dropped him back to his feet so he could try again. Garrett, meanwhile, was already stalking in to take his own shot at Seven. I charged forward to help him. Parker hit the rock beside me, and joined in without breaking stride.

  For a second, I thought the three of us actually had her.

  Then Seven reared her head back in a battle roar straight from demons’ depths, and the air detonated with a brilliant flash of light and a concussive boom that rattled my entire being and sent us all flying. I only barely remained conscious enough to siphon some velocity off my own flight and bring myself to a shaky landing. Parker and Garrett didn’t fare so well.

  Frazzled as my eyes were, I felt more than actually saw them strike the rocky outcropping beside the river lookout, but the impact felt hard enough to make me cringe. When I finally blinked my eyes clear, Parker was shaking it off. Garrett, not so much.

  And the raknoth were gone. Both of them.

  I scanned our surroundings, defenses raised, half-expecting a raknoth to drop down on my head or simply wink into existence behind me. But there was nothing. No sign of either of them. I shifted my efforts into maintaining the light barrier I’d raised, wondering next where our mysterious shooter had vanished off to. Because there had definitely been a shooter, hadn’t there?

  Even enhanced as Garrett was by whatever Parker and Frosty had done to him during his captivity, I was pretty sure he couldn’t move fast enough to shoot from one side of the clearing and then attack from the other a second later. Which meant he probably had backup. And I had a feeling I knew who.

  Before I could properly sweep the surrounding woods, though, a string of growled curses brought me back to the rocky bluff, where Parker was crouched down checking on Garrett, who clearly wanted Parker’s help like he wanted another rock wall to the head.

  “Back off, you son of a bitch,” he was growling at Parker as I limped over to join them.

  “Have it your way, then,” Parker said with a dismissive shrug. The fire had dimmed from his eyes, and his features were already reverting from green and scaly back to standard human as he stood and shot a contemplative frown at his own mangled shoulder.

  I almost asked if the two of them were all right before remembering that I probably shouldn’t care.

  “You look like scud, Raish,” Garrett growled, somehow still managing to smirk up at me through his clear pain.

  “Oh, be nice to the poor Demon,” called a perfectly sultry voice from behind.

  Siren.

  I turned to find the dirty blond goddess strolling languidly toward us, a light pulse rifle braced casually over one shoulder. She showed me a smile nearly as glib as Garrett’s.

  “He’s been having such a hard time lately.”

  16

  Schemers and Scales

  I was too exhausted and shell-shocked—and plain old normal shocked, too, I guess—to do anything other than stare as Siren strolled right up and wrapped me in a warm, rather chesty hug. I stood there, looking confusedly at Alton Parker, of all people, until she drew back from the hug and patted my cheek.

  “What,” she said, “no hello for old friends?”

  The memory of just how friendly she’d once tried to get with me finally snapped me ba
ck to my senses. I pointedly disengaged from her, taking a few steps back until there was nothing at my back but cold, trusty rock. As if that really made me any safer.

  Hard rock at my back. Three people who’d each tried to kill me multiple times at my front.

  Safe as safe could be. Totally.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, looking between Siren and Garrett. “How did you—Actually, never mind a second.” I looked at Parker, deciding those answers could wait. “Is she still nearby?”

  Parker shook his head. “I believe they’ve fled to lick their wounds for now.”

  And with that, he turned and walked away from us to go sit on his own private outcropping, as if that was simply that.

  “They?” I called after him. “Five looked pretty dead to me after”—I glanced at Siren’s pulse rifle—“you know.”

  She patted the weapon’s stock affectionately. “I think I’m finally getting the hang of this thing.”

  “That thing was still alive?” Garrett asked, quietly enough that I didn’t realize he was talking to Parker until the raknoth replied, loud enough that we could hear him.

  “I believe so, yes. Now, if you’d allow me to concentrate for a moment…”

  “Suit yourself, scudhead,” Garrett muttered, accepting the hand Siren offered him and rising to his feet with a grimace.

  I looked between the ex-Seekers and Parker, not sure what line of burning questions to follow. I settled on turning to the unknowns who were physically closer.

  “What are you two doing here?”

  “Breaking a few perfectly good ribs for your sorry ass, as far as I can tell,” Garrett said.

  “And protecting you,” Siren said.

  Garrett pointed at her, arching an eyebrow at me as if to say, See? Told you.

  “You’re welcome, by the way,” he added.

  I felt about as welcome as I did safe and settled. “How did you find us out here?”

  They traded a glance.