Pryce shuddered.
She didn’t blame him. It had only been yesterday that the Red King had carved the protective glyph off Pryce’s chest and mind-jacked him to find out where she, Jarek, and Michael had gone. From what he’d told her, it had been brief and “painless,” but having someone break in and root around in your head like that would be beyond disturbing. That kind of thing could probably leave psychological scars on par with the worst of traumas.
“And that would be super not good,” Jarek said. “I get that much. But what’s the worst that happens? He sees some thoughts and memories before we throw the cloak back on and shut him down?”
“That,” Rachel said, “and pretty much anything else he’d want to do. When you mind-jack someone, they basically belong to you. He could make me do a chicken dance, or, you know, unleash everything I have on the base before you even knew something was wrong.” She watched Jarek, waiting for that to sink in. “Theoretically, if things went south, I’d be almost powerless to stop myself from blasting this place to embers and carrying him out of here. Unless you think you could stop me.”
Jarek nibbled at his lip. “So you’re saying it’s complicated.”
“Sure. We can go with that if ‘potentially suicidal’ doesn’t have the right ring to it.”
“Ah.”
“Is there some way we can tip the balance?” Pryce said. “I’m assuming these mental engagements require careful focus, yes?”
She nodded, knowing where he was going and not the least bit surprised he’d figured it out. “Yes, laying the hurt on him would probably increase my odds, but—”
“Stumpy doesn’t seem to be too put off by pain,” Jarek said. “Although he does make noises when you chop his appendages off, so we could call that a maybe. What about hitting him while he’s asleep?”
“Assuming he does sleep,” Pryce said.
There was a creepy thought. He had a point though.
“Assuming he does,” Rachel said, “I still don’t think it’d be a good idea to attack a strong telepath like that. Tangling with sleeping minds can be pretty damn trippy.”
“So it’s complicated,” Pryce said. He shook his head. “I would very much like to inspect this raknoth for myself at some point. Especially if he ever decides to talk.”
“We need to get you glyphed up again first,” Jarek said.
“I can do you,” Rachel said and immediately regretted saying when Jarek turned a wolfish grin on her. “Oh, shut up. You know what I—oh, hey guys.”
Lea and Alaric had appeared in the doorway, lingering as if they were afraid they might be interrupting something private or important, neither of which described the direction the conversation was heading.
“Hey,” Lea said, stepping into the room, her eyes lingering on Michael’s resting form. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“Pretty ladies need never apologize for such things,” Jarek said. “Old Resistance fighters, on the other hand …”
Rachel shot Jarek a dirty look. “Sexist.”
Lea’s golden-brown eyes twinkled with amusement.
Alaric paid no mind to Jarek’s ribbing and sank into one of the chairs on the opposite wall with a tired sigh. “Hell of a show you put on back there,” he said.
Rachel wasn’t entirely sure who he was talking to until Jarek said, “Ah, didn’t realize you were in there. Too many glares to sort through, I guess. Thanks for the backup, by the way. A word or two of praise from the father of the Resistance might’ve been helpful.”
Alaric shrugged. “No one wants to hear this old man ramble. Seems to me like you handled yourself just fine.”
“Clearly,” Jarek muttered.
“So what’s up?” Rachel asked as Lea came to stand at Michael’s bedside.
Not that Lea needed a reason to stop by. She’d already been in to see Michael more times than anyone besides Rachel herself.
“Just stopping in to say hi.” Lea carefully took Michael’s hand and held it in both of hers for a moment. “Can I get you anything?”
Rachel gave her what she hoped was an appreciative smile and shook her head.
Lea’s interest in Michael was clear enough, but Rachel was pretty sure they hadn’t ventured beyond being anything more than friends. Knowing Michael, the Spongehead was probably entirely clueless about Lea’s affections. Either way, Rachel was pretty sure she liked Lea.
She could only hope the girl would still get the chance to tell Michael how she felt if she hadn’t already.
“Nelken also wanted us to ask you about cracking the Red King,” Alaric said. He turned an amused glance at Jarek. “For some reason, he didn’t seem to have much faith in your diplomatic skills.”
“Ha,” Jarek said. “Well Nelken can suck it, because we’re already trying to figure out how to extract the juicy vampire secrets from Stumpy’s thick skull. And since when did you become Nelken’s errand boy? You building up steam to take back your old seat or something?”
Alaric waved away the question as if it were ludicrous. “He just asked. Why don’t you tell us how your ingenious plan is coming along?”
“Oh,” Jarek said. “Well …”
“We’ve got jack,” Rachel said. “And plenty more on the horizon.”
“Unless we decide to use our heads,” Jarek said, giving her a pointed look.
Lea looked back and forth between them, her smooth, honey-brown forehead crinkling. “Wait, you can, uh, do that stuff too? To one of them?”
“It’s an ongoing point of debate,” Rachel said, still holding Jarek’s stare.
She was thinking about adding that Nelken should probably come and ask her himself if he wanted her to stick her neck out for the Resistance, but Jarek broke their stare and turned to Lea first. “It’d be dangerous, though. Probably too dangerous.”
“Which puts us more or less back at square one,” Pryce said.
Too dangerous? That didn’t sound like the Jarek she knew and tolerated. Was he baiting her? At second glance, she didn’t think so. He really seemed to mean it. He’d heard her concerns and paid them heed.
It was kind of weird.
But too dangerous … She looked at Michael laying there, barely breathing, and wondered for the thousandth time what was happening in there beneath those spongy locks of his. Was he utterly unconscious? Dreaming?
Could hear them right now?
She’d been hoping so as she’d sat with him, whispering words of comfort, but now the thought struck something in her chest.
What if Michael was listening from some distant dark place? What if he could hear her agreeing it was too dangerous for her to take a crack at their best chance of finding out what was wrong with him?
She knew what he’d say. He’d tell her not to risk it. He would try to protect her no matter the cost to himself.
Which was exactly why she had to do the same for him.
There was no guarantee the Red King even knew anything that could help Michael, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to find the answer sitting here, either. Maybe it was time to stop waiting for good news and go grab it by the stones.
Not that it’d be so easy.
The King’s mind was stronger than anything she’d ever encountered. When he’d caught her by surprise back at the Red Fortress, he’d nearly overwhelmed her in the brief mental clash. And that had been a purely defensive challenge. She wasn’t exactly a telepathic war veteran. She had no idea if she could really hope to pull off a successful attack on such a powerful mind.
But as she watched Michael’s still face, she knew she had to try.
She looked up to find the others watching her.
“On second thought,” she said, “let me at him.”
Three
As far as makeshift mind-jacking setups went, Rachel thought they hadn’t done half bad.
Tiny didn’t adequately capture the feel of the Red King’s cell, which was nothing more than a simple cot-and-a-pot deal. She stood crammed into the tight space wit
h Jarek, Lea, and Alaric. Pryce, lacking an intact cloak, had stayed back in medical with Michael. Rachel’s own cloaking pendant—or her primary one, at least—was still adorning the Red King’s neck from last night when they’d brought him in. The little trinket was the only thing keeping him from lancing out and taking over any unprotected mind nearby.
Rachel had whipped up a rudimentary spare to keep her own mind hidden in case any other raknoth should stray within a mile or two of HQ, but she’d left the good one on the King, in part because of its handy ability to be remotely controlled. Those controls, she’d handed over to Alaric in case they should need to abort the mission. Who better to have at the cutoff switch than a quick draw artist?
Jarek was kneeling beside the King with a long dagger in hand in case things managed to deteriorate further.
Lea, she supposed, was really only there for moral support, but given what she was about to try, she’d take as much as she could get.
The only part of their prep that had gone decidedly sideways was the “rest and recharge” bit. In hindsight, it had been stupid to expect she’d be able to get a wink of sleep with Michael lying in a coma and a no-holds-barred telepathic slug fest with the Red King looming at dawn. But they’d dragged out a cot for her right beside Michael and she’d hesitantly agreed to try anyway.
She’d needed the sleep, they’d been right about that. It was finding it that had given her issues all night.
At least they’d brought coffee this morning.
Now she stood there, half fried and half tweaking on caffeine, preparing to duke it out with the strongest telepath she’d ever met.
The Red King had been eerily silent since they’d entered. According to the guards, he’d taken neither food nor drink when they’d been offered. He hadn’t spoken a word. They had him so thoroughly chained up it was a wonder he could breathe at all.
Assuming raknoth needed to breathe, of course. The soft, periodic jingle of shifting chains suggested maybe they did. As for Pryce’s point, though, as far as the guards could say, the raknoth hadn’t slept a wink.
He’d just laid there, regrowing the arm Jarek had severed with the Big Whacker at a rate that was spooky fast. The eye Jarek had taken with a lucky jab of a broken sword hilt (the blade of which the King had apparently snapped with his fist, no less) was already mostly regrown, the iris oddly muddled but intact. If the King were to do his red eye trick, she had a feeling the fledgling eye would come aglow along with its intact counterpart.
And all that healing in the absence of food or water. It was creepy.
Studying a raknoth would probably be a physiologist’s wet dream. Or Pryce’s.
Rachel was too anxious to get much amusement out of the thought. The Red King’s steady stare didn’t help. He cycled his gaze between their faces, every bit the predator looking for his opening.
They’d sorted all the details out before coming in, but he must’ve understood what they were about to do anyway, because his gaze finally settled on her.
He gave her a cold grin, and a faint hint of that creepy red glow crept into his eyes. “You think to challenge my mind, arcanist?”
“Holy shit!” Jarek said. “You remembered how to talk.”
The King said nothing.
“Here’s the deal, Stumpy,” Jarek continued. “We need to know what the deal is with that nest of yours. Namely what it did to our friend and what you meant about the call for retribution. Are you familiar with the whole easy way, hard way spiel?”
The King ignored Jarek completely and continued staring straight at Rachel, his eyes flaming brighter. “I will break you, Rachel Cross. And then I will use you to break them.”
Fear and doubt wrapped their heavy arms around her, and her reply stuck in her throat.
Jarek saved her the trouble. He punched the King in the face. The raknoth shook the hit off and growled. Jarek punched him again, then glanced back at her and winked.
“Looks like it’s gonna be the hard way then.”
Seeing Jarek seemingly in control of the raknoth made her feel a tad more secure, but the blows also had the unfortunate effect of starting the King’s face shifting to that unsettling scaly green the raknoth adopted during battle.
Whatever. She wouldn’t be looking him in the face during the action anyway.
She nodded to Alaric, who nodded back, jaw chomping steadily away at those leaves he chronically chewed, then she turned back to Jarek. “You guys know the drill?”
The King gave a growl-hiss of laughter. “You think these men can protect you? Jarek Slater who could not even protect his armor skin and Alaric Weston who could not protect his own wife and son?”
Knuckles cracked like old tree branches from Alaric’s corner. He was glaring at the King with murder in his eyes, his perpetual chewing halted for the tight clenching of his jaw.
Lea put a hand on his shoulder. “Alaric.” She held her other hand toward the comm he clutched. “Maybe I should—”
Alaric shook his head and fixed his determined gaze on Rachel. “I’ve got her covered.”
Rachel believed him. She closed her eyes, preparing to work, then opened one to peer down at the Red King. “Just in case it wasn’t clear”—she tilted her head toward Jarek—“Jarek Slater here is going to gouge your fucking brains out if I so much as give a weird twitch.”
“That’s right, Sir Stumpy.” Jarek twirled the dagger around in his fingers and brought the blade to hover over the King’s left eye. “And god help you, man, because”—he lowered his voice to a whisper—“she’s got a lot of weird twitches to start with.”
The King said nothing, but Rachel thought his leer looked a tad less certain. She cemented that fact in her mind and closed her eyes to focus.
As with most practices in arcanism, there were about as many ways to defend one’s mind as there were arcanists in the world. Actually, probably a hell of a lot more, considering there weren’t many arcanists running around.
When it came to channeling energy for telekinesis and other large scale physical applications, the laws of conservation were obvious shackles for an arcanist. Creative mental techniques could improve control and maximize efficiency in utilizing channeled energy, but there was no breaking the rules.
When it came to telepathic struggles, on the other hand, creativity and willpower were everything. There still must’ve been some energy exchange involved, it was just abstract enough—and apparently insignificant enough—that she’d never deemed it necessary to worry about. But maybe she was just a brute.
She knew some arcanists used subtlety and trickery to protect their minds, but that had never suited Rachel. She conjured her defense in much the same way as she constructed barriers to protect from physical attack, forging her will into walls of heavy, impenetrable steel. In this case, instead of channeling the energy to actually conjure a physical construct, she simply held her wall of will in her mental space.
Somewhere, a particularly adept arcanist was probably rolling over in their grave.
She added layer after layer of hard steel to her mental fortress, leaving a tiny way open like a kind of mental arrow-slit through which she could launch her own attack. Finally, when the mental construct was ready, she nodded. As immersed in her mental space as she was, the physical movement felt odd, and her voice sounded distant.
“Now, Alaric.”
She didn’t need him to tell her when he’d deactivated the King’s cloak—no more than she would’ve needed someone to tell her she was going to get wet when she was already standing under a waterfall.
The King’s mind crashed into her ramparts like a force of nature. She fought down panic and held her ground as the alien presence backed away then slammed into her again.
On the third surge, she formed her will into a spear and hurled it forth at the oncoming titan. It hit with all the potency of a wood tip on steel armor. She drew back to her defenses to regroup. In the distance, something cracked—was it her knuckles?—as she grit do
wn and thrust her mental lance forward against the next attack.
The King’s presence plowed through her attack and slammed into her defenses once more.
This wasn’t working. She needed to do something. But what?
She might be able to stand her ground against the King’s battery for a bit longer, but the only minds she’d ever invaded had been non-telepaths, which offered as much resistance as unlocked doors. The Red King was a ferocious predator. Even if she had the raw chops to go toe-to-toe with him, she sure as hell didn’t have the experience. She might as well be a big lovable house dog trying to cross fangs with a wild wolf.
She might as well give up.
No. Not when Michael was lying comatose just down the hall. Not after all the pain they’d gone through in the past week—hell, in the past fifteen years. The raknoth had made a smoldering wreck of their planet. They’d hurt her and the people she cared about in more ways than she could count, and she had it in her to make the scaly green bastards pay for it.
If this son of a bitch had answers that could help Michael, she was going to take them.
Maybe she was a house dog trying to take on a wolf, but right now, that wolf was fucking with her family, and she’d be damned if she was going to run away with her tail between her legs.
She dropped her wall and surged forward with everything she had, vaguely aware that someone—was that her?—was crying out wordlessly in the distance as she did so.
The King met her head on in the telepathic analogue of a high-speed car crash. The constructs of their wills smashed together, deforming and twisting in upon one another. From there, the struggle morphed into something more akin to a wrestling match—intermingled tendrils of their wills struggling back and forth for control, clawing and scraping to find any weakness or purchase.
Rachel struggled for what might have been five seconds or five minutes. There was no burning of tired muscles or aching of beaten body parts, only an intrepid, creeping decline in the speed and efficacy of each one of her mental maneuvers as their conflict raced from one bulging weak point to another. Attack and counterattack. Back and forth again and again.
Hell to Pay: Book Two of the Harvesters Series Page 3
