The Complete Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  “Things like the rakul?” Jarek asked.

  He might as well have stuck a cattle prod to each of their backs for how they tensed. They traded a shocked look, all hints of amusement and smugness draining away to be replaced by… was it horror?

  Alton turned to Jarek, red embers awakening in his eyes. “Where did you hear that name?”

  “One of your friends told us,” Jarek said. “Why? What does it mean? Who are these harvester guys?”

  “Impossible.” Alton rose to his feet and took a step forward. “You don’t even know of the blood bond yet one of my kin told you of the harvesters?”

  “Back off, asshole,” Rachel said, brandishing her staff.

  “Alton,” Haldin said, his tone calming.

  “Something’s happened,” Alton growled at him before snapping his red-eyed gaze to Rachel. “Have you felt anything? A psychic disturbance?”

  Rachel traded a glance with Jarek, and he was pretty sure she was thinking the same thing he was: a disturbance like that nest thing going off?

  So much for this all being a made-up scare tactic of the Red King. Whatever the rakul were, they had Haldin and Alton shaking in their boots too.

  The buzz of an incoming comm message yanked him back to the present. A second later, Rachel’s buzzed as well.

  That wasn’t good.

  The list of people who might be contacting him was short enough. The list of people who’d be messaging both of them at the same time was considerably shorter.

  Something was going on.

  “Message from Lea, sir,” Al said quietly in his ear. “Oh dear. One word: help.”

  “Uh, can you guys just…” He held up a finger to Haldin and Alton. The look on Rachel’s face told him she’d received the same message. “One second.”

  He slid his faceplate closed. “Message her back,” he said quietly. “Find out what’s—”

  His wrist buzzed again, and this time the message appeared at the bottom of his in-helmet display: Mosen here. Help.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Trouble?” Haldin asked.

  Beside him, Alton straightened and began sniffing the air.

  That didn’t bode well. None of this did.

  The Overlord’s most dangerous errand boy just happened to be showing up right when they were sitting here talking to a mysteriously well-informed stranger and his raknoth pal?

  Jarek looked at Rachel and wished he could beam his thoughts straight into her head. “We have to check on something. Don’t suppose you two would be willing to stay put for a few minutes?”

  Alton cocked his head and sniffed again. “I think we’d better not. I smell raknoth.”

  Rachel tilted her staff toward Haldin and Alton. “Friends of yours?”

  “I doubt I have any friends left on this planet,” Alton said, “but they are likely here because of us.” He looked at Haldin. “We should leave.”

  Haldin stood without argument.

  “Like hell,” Rachel said, taking a step forward.

  Jarek grabbed her arm and shook his head.

  If Mosen was in town, they needed to move now if they didn’t want to lose Lea and Alaric. Of course, he didn’t really want to say that in front of Haldin and Alton. Storming off into a fight with two powerful unknowns at their back was bad enough without calling attention to the fact.

  “This isn’t over,” he said. “But our friends might need us right now.”

  “I have a feeling we’ll be seeing you again,” Haldin said.

  Then he and Alton turned and set off into the woods at a brusque pace.

  “Dammit,” Rachel hissed beside him. “Let’s go.”

  Jarek watched after Haldin and Alton for a few more seconds, wondering if he and Rachel had been playing into some manipulative trap this entire time.

  Either way, they’d made their choice. He nodded and turned to follow Rachel out of the amphitheater clearing back the way they’d come.

  Out of all the questions whirling through Jarek’s mind, one thing seemed sure enough: whichever way things panned out, their day probably wasn’t about to get any less boring.

  8

  As unhappy as Rachel was to leave a strange arcanist and his raknoth buddy roaming free in Unity, the need to find Lea and Alaric was twofold.

  For one, they were allies—maybe even friends—and she didn’t want to see them captured, hurt, or worse. On top of that, though, if Seth Mosen was here, it seemed unlikely he’d be alone. He’d have brought plenty of reinforcements—Reds or the Overlord forces, it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that Seth Mosen was a wild dog and that his presence put the entire community at risk.

  What was he even doing here?

  Probably tracking them. They had captured one of his superiors, after all. The Overlord probably had half his army out looking for the Red King and the other half looking for her and Jarek. She hoped that was all there was to it. Because if it was something else, if the raknoth had learned about her and Michael’s connection to Unity and decided to turn the screws by attacking their home…

  She swallowed against a dry mouth. Baseless worrying wasn’t going to help anyone.

  Given that time was short, Rachel held the protest and stuck with a dirty look when Jarek moved to scoop her up into his arms. With Fela, he could move more than twice as fast as a normal human, even while carrying her. In less than a minute, he was setting her down at the tree line of the quad. They stepped out of the woods and proceeded more cautiously toward the market, which was where they assumed Lea and Alaric still were.

  And there they were, face-to-face with Seth Mosen and two other men. They were removed enough from the crowd that it wasn’t hard to spot them, but that may have been mostly because the crowd was giving the tense little huddle a wide berth—not to mention a fair amount of nervous glances.

  The sight of Mosen started the adrenaline racing through Rachel’s chest and brought the unbidden, vivid memory of the crushing pressure of his hands on her throat. She focused on his two backup goons to clear her mind. One was short, with dark hair and a face that reminded Rachel of a toad and seemed immediately untrustworthy. The other was tall and narrow, right down to his slender face.

  “We’re just gonna walk up to them?” Rachel asked. “No plan or anything?”

  “I can take Mosen with Fela no problem,” Jarek said beside her. “But we need to be close to Alaric and Lea if the shit hits.” He opened his faceplate and winked at her. “Guess we’ll see what happens from there.”

  “This isn’t a fucking game, Jarek. There are innocents everywhere. Good people. If he has reinforcements nearby—”

  “We’ll do what we have to.” He glanced at her comm. “Might wanna get word to campus security in the meanwhile.”

  Shit. Why hadn’t she already done that? She swiped at her comm and, quickly as she could, typed out: Trouble at quad. Lock and load.

  She sent the message and looked up to see Mosen and his two goons watching them approach. Mosen’s grin injected a hit of pure cold creepiness straight into her chest.

  “Shit,” she murmured.

  Was it just her imagination, or had the toady goon grinned as she said it?

  “We’re good,” Jarek said. “Deep breath, Goldilocks. We’ve got this.”

  The words might not have been particularly meaningful, but she had to admit she was glad to have him next to her right now. As off-beat and immature as Jarek could be, she couldn’t think of anyone more capable of watching her back in a hairy situation.

  They were about twenty feet away when Alaric and Lea followed Mosen’s line of sight and saw them approaching. Both of them looked wired with tension, and Alaric was a few shades paler than normal. Understandable enough. How else could someone be expected to react when their son-turned-raknoth-slave-turned-matricidal-madman came calling?

  “Here they are,” Mosen called, hands splayed wide. “The wily arcanist and the Soldier of Charity himself.”

  Ra
chel drew up to Lea’s side and placed a supportive hand on her shoulder. Jarek crossed in front of them and took position beside Alaric.

  “Mosen,” Jarek said. “How awful to see you here.”

  Mosen made a pouting face.

  Rachel reached out with her senses to sweep for any lurking threats, starting with Mosen himself. Despite whatever the Overlord had done to him to grant him his exceptional strength and durability, she was pretty sure Mosen was still mostly human. His presence did feel a bit off, but she didn’t linger on it.

  “We were hoping to catch you closer to home,” Mosen said, “find out what you’ve done with poor Al’Drogan.”

  That made Mosen’s two thugs frown at him for some reason.

  “With poor what now?” Jarek asked.

  Mosen sneered. “Don’t worry your pretty little head over it, Slater. We’ve got other business to take care of. Speaking of which, you didn’t happen to notice anything odd on the way—”

  Rachel missed whatever else he said as she reached her senses out to the two men behind him. The two men who were in fact not men at all. They couldn’t be—not with minds that felt like that.

  She yanked the tendrils of her mind in and bolstered her mental defenses.

  Shit. This was bad.

  Around them, over a hundred people continued their business about the market, blissfully unaware they were within easy throwing distance of a supercharged mad dog and his two raknoth comrades.

  Could the four of them contain Mosen and two raknoth if—or probably when—it came to a fight? Hell, could they even survive themselves?

  They needed to clear this place out before things got messy. She should have told Myers to evacuate, not to lock and load. It wasn’t like him and his men would be able to do much against raknoth anyhow, aside from get hurt.

  What she needed to do was warn Jarek somehow.

  “—ame here for a pit stop on the way to drop off this old cowboy,” Jarek was saying. “Didn’t see any strange ships on the way in. You know, not that I’d tell you if I had.”

  “Really,” Mosen said, his expression flat. “A pit stop.”

  Jarek shrugged. “Little out of the way, but where else can you find a community like this? Nice to remember there are still people being people on this planet.”

  Mosen sneered, looking around as if only now seeing the sprawling community around him. So maybe he and his raknoth masters didn’t realize it was Rachel’s home they’d come to. And if they’d come here looking for that confounded ship and not tracking her and the others, maybe they had no reason to hurt the people of Unity.

  Of course, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t do it anyway.

  “People are always being people everywhere,” Mosen said. “It’s just a little more interesting out there in the wild. Right, Pops?”

  Alaric met Mosen’s sneer with tired eyes for several seconds before he said, quietly, “You’re not my son.”

  Mosen’s eyebrows shot up and he place a hand over his chest in mock offense. “Well Jesus, I guess not with that attitude. Words hurt you know, Pops. No wonder I turned out this way.”

  Alaric’s face was carved from stone, but his Adam’s apple betrayed a hard swallow. “I believe he’s still in there somewhere, my son. And I’ll do anything I can to help him. But—”

  Mosen shifted his weight, leaning closer to Alaric. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, old man.”

  Mosen’s voice was deadly quiet. Behind him, the two raknoth uncrossed their arms and prepared to move.

  Mosen held Alaric’s gaze for several seconds, then he rocked back and threw his hands up. “Enough with this touchy-feely bullshit! We have a job to do here. If you four haven’t seen anything, I suppose we’ll have to call in the troops to search the place and bring you home for proper questioning.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit. They needed to stop him, or distract him, or—

  “Why don’t we just tell him?” Lea asked.

  Everyone looked at her, waiting.

  Jarek turned a wary look her way. “I don’t know if that’s such a good—”

  “Come on,” Lea said. “I hate the raknoth as much as the next girl, but these are innocent people here. It’s not like we’re about to go chasing it down anyways.”

  “Chasing what down?” Mosen asked, leaning in like a dog at a dinner table.

  “If you don’t tell him, I will,” Lea said.

  Jarek looked at the crowd and blew out a short breath. “Fine.” He narrowed his eyes at Mosen. “I lied. We picked up something on the scanners passing over Philly—something like I’ve never seen before. Couldn’t spot it through the clouds, but it was headed down for south Jersey, or maybe Delaware.” Mosen opened his mouth to say something, but Jarek held up a finger and added, “And this part’s not important, but if you want to know why I lied, it’s because I think you’re a huge cock-hat.”

  Mosen crossed his arms and considered the four of them.

  Rachel did her best to look the part of the weary traveler who was simply hoping Mosen and his cronies would fuck off and leave them alone.

  It wasn’t a hard act to keep up.

  “We don’t believe you,” Mosen finally said. He glanced between Jarek and Rachel with a cold grin. “Where were you two just now?”

  “You really need to ask why a man and a woman snuck off into the woods?” Jarek asked. “I think you need to get outta the Fortress more often, buddy.”

  “Well now I know you’re lying, Slater.” Mosen winked at Rachel then, and for a brief moment, his irises glinted with red light. “Girl like this needs a real man, not some wise-ass who hides behind his toys.”

  “You’re only saying that because you haven’t seen what I can do with my toys.” Jarek waggled his eyebrows at Mosen. “Yet.”

  Myers chose that moment to pull the Gator around Kohlberg and into the quad. He had four of his men with him, all of whom had taken her lock and load advice to heart. Of course, she’d given that advice before she realized there were a pair of raknoth standing smack in the middle of a crowd, but it was too late now. Three more of Myers’ men, also armed, were sweeping around the other side of Kohlberg on foot.

  “Ah,” Mosen said. “Sneaky little bastards.”

  Shit.

  “Well,” Mosen said, “we tried the nice way. Looks like it’s time to call in the—”

  Jarek sprung forward without warning and drove a fist into Mosen’s face. The punch landed with a thud and a crack, and Mosen’s head led his body through a short flight that ended with a hard crash to the ground several feet back.

  Jarek was already grabbing the toad-looking raknoth and pivoting to slam him to the ground.

  “Jarek, no! They’re—”

  Too late.

  The raknoth’s eyes came ablaze with red raknoth fire. She saw a flicker of surprise on Jarek’s face before his faceplate whirred shut, and then the raknoth reversed Jarek’s throw and hurled him ten yards across the quad.

  Jarek turned through the air with a long cry of, “Shiiit!” and managed to turn his fall into a rough roll. “Rachel!” he shouted. “Raknoth!”

  She was already channeling energy from the batteries on her belt into a hard barrier in front of her, Lea, and Alaric.

  Just in time. The slender raknoth lunged forward and slammed to a halt against her invisible wall a few feet from Alaric. His toady friend turned his fiery gaze to Rachel and prepared to throw his weight into the assault as well.

  She resisted the urge to blast them back to buy time. Aside from the fact that they were ridiculously strong and heavy, it wasn’t really an option to launch a pair of angry raknoth into the crowd behind them—a crowd which was quickly beginning to panic as more and more people looked over and saw what was happening.

  Rachel pulled more energy to prepare for the second raknoth’s charge. Instead, though, the raknoth whipped his head around and rolled to the side. The next instant, Jarek slammed down to the soft earth, sweeping his ridiculousl
y hefty sword through the space where the toad’s head had just been.

  Both raknoth leapt back with dual roars to square off with Jarek as he stepped in front of Alaric and Lea. The one with the slender face bumped into a market-goer hard enough that the guy hit the dirt as if he’d been struck by a low-speed truck. Luckily the raknoth were both focused on Jarek, and the guy’s buddies grabbed him and dragged him off with the rest of the frantically dispersing crowd.

  The sounds of rushing air and the low hum of electric motors rose through the din of the evacuation, capping the adrenaline-fueled pounding of Rachel’s heart with a dose of cold dread. She met eyes with Myers, who was pushing toward them through the fleeing crowd, and they both turned their gazes skyward.

  Ships.

  Three of them, two larger carriers and one smaller ship about the size of Jarek’s. They could have belonged to the Overlord or the Reds. It didn’t matter. The victorious, bloody-nosed sneer Mosen shot her from the ground as he waved away his comm holo told her everything she needed to know.

  Rachel tightened her grip on her staff, gathered her focus, and prepared to fight as enemy forces swept in from above to attack her home.

  9

  By Jarek’s reckoning, facing unfavorable numbers in a fight pretty much boiled down to two options: refraining from direct engagement to buy time to enact a more clever plan, or focusing on a single target and attacking it decisively in hopes of leveling the playing field before things had a chance to get messy. Or dying.

  Okay, so three options.

  Jarek tended to fall into the reckless attack school of thought, so when he caught sight of the three ships descending with what he expected would be dozens of troops to join Mosen and the two raknoth in the Unity quad, he didn’t hold back.

  He picked the slender-faced raknoth on the left and leapt into battle with a wide horizontal sword sweep intended to drive both raknoth back and apart.

  It worked, and Jarek followed up with a feinted lunge in the toady-looking raknoth’s direction to drive him further away from his partner. As soon as Toady hopped clear of the feint, Jarek switched direction and darted toward Slender Face.