I know I did, though maybe for different reasons.
Kublich didn’t seem to notice our reactions as my mom put on a thin smile and said, “It’s going quite well, thank you. I’m just putting the finishing touches on a bit of an anthology.”
“Hmm,” Kublich said, raising his wine glass in cheers. “I look forward to reading it.”
As if.
Having spent enough time watching my mom interact with people about her writing, I’d pretty much come to interpret those six words as polite-speak for, That’s great, but I don’t really care.
Then again, the High General wasn’t really one for idle scudspouting, so who knew?
“And what about you, Haldin?” Kublich said, yanking my attention back to the table. “How goes the training?”
“Good, sir,” I said reflexively. Then, feeling like that was a weak answer, I added, “Getting better all the time.”
Great. Much better.
But it was a loaded question anyway.
If he had the slightest inclination to know how my training was going, he could have performance reports and assessments about my abilities, psyche, and a dozen other things all with a few swipes of a finger. One peek at my file, and he could probably know more about me and my training than I could tell him if I talked all night.
“Word around base is that you made a bit of a spectacle of Docere Mathis this morning,” he said, his expression unreadable.
Ah. So that’s where this was going.
My parents turned to me, each bearing their own brand of frown.
“I…” I swallowed. “Yes, sir. I acted… beyond what was required.” He kept staring. It made me feel hollow, despite the fact that I was decidedly full of the meat pie that had seemed so delicious until only a moment ago. “I will apologize to Docere Mathis, sir. Formally. And it won’t happen again.”
“What did you do?” my father asked, glancing between me and Kublich.
“It was nothing,” Kublich said, his mouth finally breaking into a small smile. “Haldin is simply outgrowing our ability to challenge him, I fear.”
Why did that smile make me feel like I was about to be eaten?
Whatever it was, I did my best to keep my eyes on the food and avoid Kublich’s gaze for the rest of the meal.
After we’d finished supping, Kublich retreated to my father’s study to discuss some manner of classified business with him.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” I asked my mom as we worked on the dishes together.
Under her bangs, her eyebrows shrugged as she started scrubbing the dish I’d just handed her. “You know the drill. Classified means classified.”
Something about the way she said it…
She held out her hand for the next dish, then turned to look at me when it didn’t come. I searched her face, the white serving dish in my hand all but forgotten.
“Are you guys…” I faltered, the words caught in my throat. “Are you, uh, okay?”
“Sweetie,” she said, pulling the dish from my hands and setting it aside so she could grab my wet hands in hers. “Of course we are. Dad’s just been… Well, I don’t know exactly what he’s been. He’s worried about something. Something he can’t talk about. That’s why we’ve been… tense. But we’ll get past it. He’ll fix whatever it is.” A small smile pulled at her lips. “He always does.”
I was surprised to feel the light hint of tears not far off. I couldn’t even say why. Just something about the look on her face. “Promise?”
Her smile sweetened, and she reached her wet hands to the back of my head and pulled me down to plant a warm kiss on my forehead. “Promise.” She stepped back and waved her hands in a shooing motion. “Now you go relax. Watch a storyvid or something. Whatever the kids are doing for fun these days.”
I smiled. “Yeah, I’m not sure you want me doing what the kids are doing these days, Mom.”
Her smile grew as she shooed me again, and mine did the same as I turned to head for my room. I thought about messaging Johnny to see if he wanted to fire up a sim, but then I saw my bed and the big, inviting screen on the opposite wall and thought I might just take my mom’s directions to heart.
Why not kick back and watch a vid?
Outside of Sanctuary’s thick walls, in the loud, bustling city of Divinity, kids my age were playing smashball while we ran combat drills. While we practiced small unit tactics, they went on dates. While we slept, they snuck out and did all the things their parents told them not to—throwing parties and otherwise flipping the middle finger to people like me, who spent their lives in service to make sure their kids would likewise be able to flip the middle finger to ours.
But maybe I was just a touch judgmental toward the undisciplined madness that was civilian life.
Either way, taking the evening to relax was probably acceptable. I was excelling in the eyes of the Legion, and even those of the High General himself, apparently. My parents were going to be okay. And, demons to the wind, I was allowed to casually watch a vid if I damn well pleased. Plus, it’d probably help take my mind off things for a little while.
Eager energy bubbling through my chest at my little act of defiance, I waved the screen on my wall to life and began navigating through menus with little flicks of my fingers.
It took me all of two minutes to realize I had no idea what to watch.
I sighed, the excitement draining, and flicked on my palmlight, reaching for Johnny’s name. “So much for—”
A pair of loud thumps sounded from elsewhere in the house, burning all thoughts of vids and leisure from my mind.
No. Not thumps. Gunshots. Distorted and dulled by thick walls.
Thick walls like the ones in my father’s study.
I was already on my feet, though I didn’t remember deciding to move. I tore the door open and bounded down the hall. A crash from the living room goaded my legs to move faster.
Then a horrible wail filled the air, clawing at my insides, and my step faltered.
My mom’s voice. There was no mistaking it. She cried out again—a scream that ended with an abrupt, sickeningly wet noise.
I fell forward into a dazed run.
She was dead. Something about the sound told me that even before I came barreling out of the hallway. But I refused to listen. I stumbled into the dim living room, straight into a nightmare darker than anything I could have imagined.
It was odd, the way my mind took in all the inconsequential details first. The couch, uprooted and overturned. The blue ceramic vase, shattered, its pieces strewn across the neutral tones of the big soft rug in the center of the room.
The fresh spots of dark crimson staining that rug.
My knees buckled. I caught myself on the wall. I was going to be sick.
Feet thrashed next to the dark stains. Blood. It was blood. My eyes traced upward, unable to stop, my stupor too complete to do anything but stare. My mom’s dress was soaked across the front with blood. A dark figure held her, arms wrapped tight around her from behind, face pressed against her throat, where a soft crimson glow illuminated her ghastly wound.
Her attacker shifted at the sound of my entry, looking up and—
My mind went blank. I couldn’t move.
It wasn’t possible.
Where the thing’s eyes should’ve been, it stared back at me with twin orbs of demon fire. They pulsed crimson, lighting the dark rivulets of my mom’s blood still running down the thing’s chin.
I tried to scream. Tried to charge the demon. To save my mom. It was like my brain had been disconnected from my body. Like those impossible glowing eyes had cast some dark sorcery upon me.
I strained with everything I had, and I couldn’t move a damn muscle.
“Haldin,” it said. “I was hoping you’d join us.”
Merciful Alpha. That was Kublich’s voice. Deeper and rougher, maybe. But it was his. And behind those glowing crimson eyes and the bloody fangs the demon bared in a grin, that was Kublich’s f
ace.
Impossible. It was impossible. And yet it was his ruby tunic on the creature clutching my mom’s bloody body. His High General’s insignia.
My stupefied gaze dropped back to my mom, my mouth hanging open in a silent cry. Her body was so broken, so limp, her head dangling against the Kublich-thing’s arms at an unnatural angle. Her legs kicked weakly, the last bits of her life ebbing away before me.
I met her frightened eyes just before she died.
The haze hung heavy in my mind. I couldn’t move. I was trapped in that moment. It stretched, independent of time, the image of the fire-eyed demon holding my mom’s broken, bloody body carving its way deep into my brain.
A thud to the left, and my father stumbled into the room, leaning heavily against the wall for support. His dark shirt hid the details of his injury, but judging from the trail of blood he left on the white wall, he was hurt, and badly. Still, his hand barely wavered as he raised his sidearm and fired three shots into Kublich’s back.
In the confines of the living room, the shots were painfully loud. Kublich staggered forward as the slugs tore into him. But he handled it too well, recovered too quickly.
Armor. He was wearing armor.
Kublich turned away from me to face my father with a low, guttural growl. He tossed my mom aside as if she were no more heavy or important than a sack of potatoes. I reached out helplessly, the knots in my stomach tightening as her body tumbled over the couch and thudded to the floor in an undignified mess of slack limbs.
“Martin,” Kublich said calmly, starting toward my father. “You see the price of your meddling? I—”
Another crack of thunder from my father’s sidearm, and Kublich’s head snapped back as if the shot had found his forehead. I waited for him to fall dead to the floor.
He didn’t.
He just gave his head a little shake and reached up to rub at his forehead. I could’ve sworn his skin was turning green. If my eyes could even be trusted anymore. The small, dark object Kublich flicked to the rug at his feet told me they couldn’t.
It was a crumpled softsteel slug. The one my father had just shot him in the head with.
“HAL, RUN!” my father roared.
I barely registered the words.
My mind couldn’t work through the haze—the impossibility of everything that was happening. Adrian Kublich, the damned High General of the Legion, had just murdered my mother, survived a direct gunshot to the head, and was now stalking toward my father. My father who was screaming at me to run.
But I still couldn’t move. Except… My hand. Still raised toward my mom’s body.
Whatever force had been restraining me was gone.
By the time the thought fully registered, I was already charging. Not toward the entryway, but straight for Kublich’s turned back.
Run? Leave my father behind with this… this monster?
Grop that. I was going to strangle the demon bastard with my own hands. But before I could close the distance and tackle him down, Kublich sprang forward, crossing the room with alarming speed, and clamped a clawed hand around my father’s throat.
“NO!” I screamed, reaching helplessly out for the second time. Too late.
The demon with Kublich’s face turned its fiery eyes to me and broke my father’s neck.
After that, things became a blur.
I’d like to say that I threw myself at Kublich. That I gouged those burning red eyes from their sockets. But the part of my adrenaline-soaked brain that had watched him survive a gunshot to the head and break my dad’s neck with one hand told me to run for my life. And I listened.
I was halfway down the entryway hall when my legs locked, that same full-body paralysis taking abrupt hold of me. I hit the floor hard, air exploding from my lungs.
“You cannot run, Haldin,” he called from the living room.
I tried to fight, cold dread seeping through me.
Footsteps approached from behind. “Such a pity your father had to—”
A scream erupted from my throat, and my hands smashed into the floor as the paralysis inexplicably vanished. Behind, Kublich growled low in his throat, far too close. No time to think. I planted my hands and feet, launched halfway into a sprint for the door… and froze on wobbly feet.
Someone was striding toward me from the open front door. The strange civilian from the mess hall. Even in my panic, I recognized him. But he didn’t look unassuming anymore.
The air crackled around him with some intangible energy, sweeping at his hair and clothes. He raised a hand, palm out, and a nebulous light breathed into existence there, intensifying from faint to threatening before I so much as had time to wonder what in damnation was happening.
I didn’t understand. But the too-close growl at my back told me I didn’t have time to understand. Kublich behind. The stranger ahead.
I was dead.
Except the stranger’s eyes weren’t focused on me, were they? I tensed to throw myself into a mad sprint past him. Before I could, his pale eyes caught mine, and he flicked his head almost calmly to the side, radiant palm held at the ready.
I didn’t have time to ask questions. I dove out of the way and hit the floor with a hard thud. The hallway erupted like an entire crate of detonating snap flares and thumpers.
Blinding white light. A sonorous crack like thunder.
A violent rush of air smacked into me, my vision too bleached from whatever had just happened to see anything but vague outlines. I felt more than heard the enormous crash behind me—the monster, I hoped, blasted back into the living room by the stranger’s… whatever.
It didn’t matter.
I had to get out.
I tried for my feet, shaking my head in a futile attempt to restore my sight and clear the steady ringing in my ears. I’d made it to my knees when something grabbed my shoulder. I lashed out blindly, but a deft hand turned aside my wild defense.
There was time only to scream a wordless challenge.
Then something pressed against the side of my head, and the world went black.
4
Rude Awakenings
I woke at the dinner table.
But that wasn’t right. Why wasn’t that right? I couldn’t recall, but as I looked over at my parents, I was sure something was wrong.
Everything in the room glowed white and pristine. The walls, the table linens. Even our clothes. Kublich sat across the table, smiling amicably over his wine glass. I frowned at the sight of him. There was something there, some muffled unpleasant feeling that—
I gasped as images flashed through my awareness, too fast to comprehend. There was blood. I was sure of that. Blood and darkness. And, in the darkness, for the briefest instant, a pair of fiery red—
No, a voice said in my head. No, everything is fine.
Was that my voice?
It didn’t matter. It was clearly right. We were all laughing and chatting at the table. Everyone seemed perfectly happy. At the sound of the doorbell, I hopped up from my chair and walked down the hall to greet our guest.
Before I reached the door, though, it burst open on a powerful gust of wind. Total, utter darkness filled the doorway, so thick it might’ve had physical substance. Smoky tendrils of it began to creep in past the threshold, and in their wake came a man with gray hair and pale eyes, wreathed in darkness. There was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t place it.
Then his eyes came alive with red fire that blazed against the darkness, and cohesive thought fled my mind. His skin shifted sickly green as he reached for me with a clawed hand.
I turned to run.
The hallway leading back to the dining room and to the safety of my parents seemed to stretch longer as I ran, the end an ever-distant speck in my vision. A choir of growls and howling wind filled the hall around me. I ran faster—as fast as my gelatinous legs could manage, sure that every moment would be my last.
After what felt like ages of failing to draw any closer to the end, I looked up
to find I’d somehow reached my destination. Something was wrong, though. The pristine white glow of the room beyond had faded, replaced by an ominously pulsing scarlet. Silence hung heavy in the air, all the thicker after the cacophony that’d filled the hall moments before. I stood there on the threshold, suddenly afraid to enter.
One step. Then another. I entered the dining room to find my parents and Kublich all slumped forward in their chairs. Horror gripped at my chest. They were covered in blood, tar black against their white clothes in the red glow of the room. The man with gray hair and a cloak of swirling shadows stood behind them, his face split in a smile full of glistening fangs. It was only then I realized that the scarlet glow pulsing through the room was coming from his eyes.
He started toward me, murder in those fiery eyes, and—
I sprang awake only to be met with a hard blow to the head.
Darkness. Complete, constricting darkness.
I pawed frantically around, head throbbing, desperate to fend off the next blow. Except one wasn’t coming, I realized as my probing hands found the ceiling my head had struck. I was quite alone in a space not much larger than my huddled body. No room to extend my legs, to sit up. Only darkness, and a low, steady hum. I flicked my fingers straight. Nothing. My palmlight was gone.
Panic tried to take me then, darkness pressing in, squeezing my lungs tight. Tighter than the walls of my new prison.
I closed my eyes—not that it made a difference. I wiped cold sweat from my brow and tried to calm my rapid breathing. Control. I needed to get myself under control and figure this thing out.
At least my hands and legs weren’t bound. That was something. But where in damnation was I? And how did I get there?
I focused in on the steady hum permeating the cramped darkness.
A skimmer engine?
It was the best guess I had. Which meant I was probably in a skimmer trunk, bound for Alpha knew where with Alpha knew who. The floor shifted beneath me, and my stomach informed me of an unmistakable change in velocity and direction.
Definitely a skimmer.
And if I was in a skimmer trunk… I swallowed, panic making another bid for control as I felt around in the darkness to confirm what I already knew deep down: unless I found some magical way to force the latch from the inside, I was stuck here until someone decided to let me out.
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 140
