One of the Draenir nodded. “Ta’Zan created the plague. Rakkhan saved us. He took us away before the disease spread to our towns.”
Cassiel frowned. Clearly, Ta’Zan had yet to tell anyone about his involvement in the plague. That worked in our favor, in the end, because it gave us the opportunity to tell the Perfects and the Faulties about it—about what Ta’Zan had done to an entire species, simply because he could. It spoke volumes about how cruel and vicious he could be.
“You didn’t know,” I muttered.
“No,” Cassiel replied, then let a deep sigh roll out of his chest. “We weren’t even made yet, at the time, and he was already committing mass genocide on the Draenir, huh?”
I shrugged. “He’s a monster. An intelligent and well-spoken one, from what I’m told, but still a monster.”
“Why are you here, then, Cassiel, if not to pursue Ta’Zan’s agenda?” Nevis asked, his pale brows furrowed and his eyes cold enough to freeze the upgraded Perfect’s very soul.
“I know what you’re all trying to do. I know, and I understand why you’re all still here, trying to talk to us, instead of running or sending more ships. You’re not idiots, and I can’t help but appreciate that,” Cassiel said. “Frankly, I’m interested in you. I’d like to help.”
A moment passed, the silence weighing down on us.
“How?” I asked.
Cassiel shot me a confident grin. “Ta’Zan is three, maybe four days away from his first flight tests,” he replied. “His Faulty engineers have managed to study and rebuild your starships. Also, he’s gathering more genetic material from his prisoners, now. He’s convinced he can make more like me. In his mind, the Perfects aren’t that perfect anymore. He thinks he can do better. No one but Amal knows his thoughts on the matter. If you’re looking for something to turn the Perfects against him, I’m quite confident this, along with the plague, qualifies.”
“Why are you helping us?” Raphael breathed. “What’s in it for you?”
It was Cassiel’s turn to shrug. “I just don’t like him. I pretend to like him. I obey, to a point. I just want someone to knock him off his pedestal. He’s too smug. He gets on my nerves.”
“So, you want him to fail,” I concluded.
“I want him to spend the rest of his life in a glass box, watching as the rest of the world goes by, as people of all species get along. He’ll be foaming at the mouth, because he’s a hypocrite. He doesn’t want the ideal society. That’s a lie, and he actually thought he could dumb me down to a level where I’d actually buy such crap. He just wants his precious specimens to live because the Draenir were mean to him.”
I crossed my arms, cocking my head to the side. “Hence, your reward will be watching Ta’Zan fail and lose.”
“Yes. From the moment he tried to teach me about how my species is the only one deserving a life in this world, I knew I wouldn’t take this for too long.”
Nevis nodded slowly, putting his weapon away. I looked at him, curious as to what he had to say. He didn’t disappoint.
“It turns out that the more physically and intellectually advanced his Perfects are, the more likely they are to rebel, to object, and to disagree with Ta’Zan’s dogma,” Nevis replied.
“Aw… Is that you saying that I’m physically and intellectually advanced?” Raphael asked, his tone more pitchy than usual. “You’re complimenting me, ice-man!”
“Don’t get used to it,” Nevis muttered.
“Well, if you think about it, it does make sense,” Kailani agreed. “Cassiel is intended to be a superior specimen, and someone like Ta’Zan would want him and his kind to excel, going forward. I suppose Ta’Zan didn’t consider the possibility of Perfects, upgraded or otherwise, being smart enough to doubt his teachings.”
“That sounds like a rookie mistake, if you ask me.” Hunter sighed.
“It kind of is. After all, Ta’Zan didn’t have much in terms of role models. Mudak taught him everything he knew, but he, too, was… limited. Also, a mere Draenir,” Raphael said. “After that, Ta’Zan ran off and surrounded himself with Faulties. They all worshipped him, but I doubt any of them challenged him. He was always the smartest guy in the room.”
Hunter chuckled. “Which is incredibly ironic, since now that’s no longer the case.”
“That being said, I need your help,” Cassiel interjected. “If I’m to support your endeavors—”
“Who says you are?” Varga retorted, raising an eyebrow.
“Didn’t you hear what I said earlier? I gave you some pretty hot intel, Elonora, regarding his starships and his genetic upgrades,” Cassiel said. I offered a faint nod in return, and he continued with his own demands. “Ta’Zan has implanted a new type of tracker in me. I don’t know where it is, but I need you guys to get it out. It’ll take some time, though, so, until you do that, I can’t be around you for too long. I killed these ten soldiers, so it’s already just a matter of time until Ta’Zan is alerted to my actions and sends an entire squadron after me.”
That posed a dilemma. We already had our hands full with disabling the comms towers and infiltrating the colosseum. Surgery to remove a tracker added to our charged schedule. We could also remove the ten Perfects’ memory chips to further slow them down, but that, too, was time-consuming.
“We can set these guys on fire and lengthen their recovery time to about twelve hours,” Raphael suggested. “That should buy us some time.”
Varga and Hunter didn’t wait to be told twice. They used some of the burning oil we’d gotten from Rakkhan’s stronghold to douse the decapitated Perfects. The Draenir watched in awe as the bodies were set on fire. They were going to burn for a while.
“That’ll do,” Cassiel replied. “Second, after you remove my tracker, I can still be found through the memory database, since it’s wireless. Knocking these towers down won’t change that.”
“That’s fine. We’ll put a serium blocker on you, once we get you back to our base,” I said. “Amane is the only one who knows how to build one, for the time being. We’re not quick learners like you,” I added with a half-smile.
“Sounds like a plan,” Cassiel replied. “Okay. Now what?”
Raphael pointed at the circuit system mounted on the tallest palm tree, towering above us. “We disable this,” he said. “Then, we take down the others.”
“And after that?” Cassiel asked.
“We infiltrate the colosseum and wreck his starship prototypes,” I replied.
It sounded easy, but we all knew it was anything but that. Disabling the towers was manageable, to say the least, with creatures like Raphael and Cassiel on our side. But I both looked forward to and dreaded infiltrating the colosseum. It wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. A walk in a diamond structure riddled with hostile Perfects, maybe…
Frankly, I was stunned by the twist of events. I had been certain we’d have to battle Cassiel, too. Instead, we were going to do surgery on him. Sheesh.
Kailani
Raphael and Elonora climbed up the palm tree. First, they clipped the circuit lines for each of the red-and-white light devices mounted on the trunk. Then, they proceeded to cut the serium cords. Whenever they did that, the severed lines lost their blue glow. My heart thumped, loaded with the energy of a possibly successful outcome to all this.
Hunter and I kept a lookout by the tree’s base, joined by Nevis, Varga, Kallisto, and Cassiel. The Draenir boys were positioned approximately thirty feet away from us, making sure that no one took us by surprise.
I kept thinking about Cassiel’s tracker, along with his decision to help us, instead of hunting us. Hunter had his eyes on me, making my cheeks burn pink.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked.
“I’m thinking we could do something smarter with Cassiel’s tracker,” I replied.
“Pray tell,” Cassiel interjected. “What’s the plan, witch? Wait, you’re not an ordinary witch,” he added, narrowing his eyes at me.
“There’s nothi
ng ordinary about a witch, to begin with,” I murmured, doing my best not to slide into a defensive attitude. We’d just gotten him on our side. I didn’t want to say something to maybe put him off. I did not leave my foot-in-mouth syndrome back on Calliope, that much I knew.
“No, no, but there’s something more to you,” Cassiel replied. “You have your natural magic, much like the witch Corrine, but there are other powers brewing inside you. Not Druid or Dhaxanian. Not from Strava… So, what is it? What kind of magic is it? I know there’s more than one type.”
I gave him a flat smile. “Nothing you know of, believe me.”
There was no way in hell I’d tell Cassiel, whom I’d just met, about the single most powerful weapon I had against Ta’Zan. He may have breached my cloaking spell, and he’d probably figured out a way to disrupt the interplanetary travel spell bubbles, too, but there was still enough in my arsenal to throw him and his Perfects for a loop. My fusion with the Word was incomplete, a work in progress, in fact. I didn’t want to risk it.
“What can you do with the tracker, Kale?” Hunter asked, changing the subject.
I would’ve kissed him for how smoothly he’d swooped in, but I saved it for later. Leaves rustled somewhere nearby, to our right. My head snapped in that direction. The Draenir aimed their weapons at the source of the noise—a curious deer-type creature, with soft, pale brown fur and huge green eyes. A grin stretched my lips.
“Guys, I need that deer alive,” I said. “I know what to do.”
An hour later, the Perfects we’d killed were still burning. The beauty of dousing them with Draenir oils was that they prolonged the flames for hours on end, making it harder for their bodies to regenerate. Raphael and Elonora were close to the tree’s base, snipping and cutting away at what was left of the comms network, while Nevis, Kallisto, and two of the Draenir boys watched their backs.
Hunter covered mine, while I surgically removed the tracker from Cassiel’s shoulder blade, after I’d pulled Elonora down from her job for five minutes, so she could use her True Sight to locate the device.
Extracting the tracker was much easier than a memory chip removal, since there were no delicate and slim wires to cut without affecting the nervous system. The other two Draenir boys held the pale brown deer in place—they’d performed quite a sprint to capture her alive.
I implanted the small device in the deer’s thigh, after I knocked the animal out with a puff of swamp witch powder. A few minutes after I was done stitching her up, she sprang to her feet and darted off into the jungle.
Cassiel grunted from the pain of the incision, but his wound had already stopped bleeding. In less than an hour, it would be completely healed. By the time Elonora and Raphael came down from the palm tree, we were all done and ready to move on to the next comms tower.
“What’s our time?” Elonora asked.
Hunter checked his watch. “An hour and thirty-two minutes,” he replied.
Elonora and Raphael exchanged glances, then smiled at us. “I think we’ll do better at the next one. I know my way around the cables and circuits, now,” Elonora said.
“Then let’s hurry,” Nevis said, the temperature dropping slightly around us. “We need to get moving.”
Cassiel chuckled. “It’s a good thing my tracker’s already somewhere else.”
“Smart move, Kale,” Elonora said to me, finishing off with a wink.
“Let’s get cracking, then,” Raphael replied. “Time is not on our side.”
“It never was,” I murmured.
But we never let that stop us. We trekked through the woods, leaving the burning Perfect bodies behind, with Raphael and Cassiel on our side. Kallisto was practically speechless, in genuine awe of both Perfects. I couldn’t blame her, though. They were both gorgeous, tall, and dashing. In addition, she had Varga walking by her side—equally handsome eye candy carrying a confident smirk as we darted across the gnarled tree roots twisting out of the ground along the less beaten paths.
When we reached the shore, it was my turn to teleport everyone to the next island. We repeated the cycle several times until we reached the second comms tower. Cassiel and Raphael handled the Perfects, while we saved some pulverizer pellets in the process. Varga and the rest of our crew doused the bodies in oil, then set them on fire, while Elonora helped Raphael with the comms circuits.
It was a rinse and repeat process until we were left with one last tower—the central pole, the last item on our list prior to infiltrating the colosseum. We took a break on the edge of a hilltop jungle, just half a mile away from the last comms tower. Beyond the trees, I could see Ta’Zan’s colosseum rising from deep layers of green and yellow tree crowns trembling in the dawn’s pale orange light.
As Elonora pulled up her hood and put on her daytime goggles, I settled on the edge of the woods to take the whole view in.
The diamond colosseum glistened like a titanic gem, each facet of that majestic construction gradually kissed by the morning sun. The flaming disk rose beyond the horizon, and the whole world seemed to awaken at the same time. Perfects flashed in the distance and above the colosseum, leaving faint streaks of white across the sky. Birds sang in the trees, welcoming the new day.
Inside, Perfects were probably going about their chores. Some Faulties were most likely busy in one of the bigger halls that Raphael had mentioned, toiling on Ta’Zan’s starships. We had to get in there and destroy their work. Chances were we’d have to take those Faulties away, too. We couldn’t have them just start over. Ta’Zan had to be slowed down as much as possible, while we rallied his people and turned them against him.
It sounded complicated—and the execution was even worse. We were dealing with a highly capable enemy. Thousands of them, to be precise. All trained and indoctrinated by Ta’Zan to despise and destroy those they deemed inferior. Yet, we held on and fought even harder, unwilling to surrender or to give up. I stared at that colosseum for a while. It was our greatest challenge, a cluster of trouble and possible death. My stomach churned as I thought of all the ways in which this could go wrong.
Then, I noticed something else. The dome was visible from our position, too—even better, now that the sun was rising. My heart ached as I tried to see beyond its crystal panels, wondering what my grandparents were doing in there.
Hunter sat next to me, quiet and respectful of my contemplation.
“They’re there, you know,” I mumbled, without taking my eyes off the dome.
“Yeah. I can’t wait to see Mom and Dad,” he replied.
“We’ll get them out, Hunter. My grandparents… Aiden, Kailyn… Derek, Sofia… All of them.”
“You’re damn right, Kale. And, after that, we’ll kick Ta’Zan’s ass, shove him in a dark hole, then get on with our lives,” Hunter said, smiling. “Speaking of which, what’s your favorite food?”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “I’m a classic Italian kind of girl.”
“Perfect. I know the best spot in Hawaii. They make a mean lasagna, and they bring their wines straight from Tuscany.”
“Oooh, fancy,” I quipped, giggling like a teenage girl.
Hunter dropped a kiss on my cheek. I stilled, almost unraveling as he stayed there, with his lips pressed against my skin. His hot breath made me swoon, and I feared that, should I move, I’d lose him.
“I’m pretty sure we need to go on a date,” Hunter said.
I turned my head to face him, and nearly lost myself in his blue eyes. “Part of the whole shebang, right?”
“It’s the one thing we never did,” he replied. “And, given that we clearly should’ve done this a long, long time ago, it appears that we have a substantial number of dates to catch up on, right?”
I laughed. “Absolutely. But first, let’s kill the evil genius overlord and stop the Perfects from killing us, eh?”
He kissed me on the lips this time. My heart sang, and the entire world felt better for a moment.
In fact, looking at the diamond colosseum again
, it didn’t seem like such an impossible task. It wasn’t a death trap. It was one hell of a challenge.
With Hunter by my side, and with Elonora and Nevis and Rose and Ben and everyone else who had joined us on this insane mission… I felt as though we stood a better chance.
Bring it on, I thought, my gaze fixed on the diamond colosseum.
We’ve got this.
Draven
Our mission was slightly easier—and that was a good thing, since most of the members of my crew were relatively new to this planet and its incredibly hostile inhabitants. This was our chance to explore and observe both Perfects and rogue Faulties from a reasonably safe distance, while we scoured the strongholds hidden deep underground on the major islands.
The four young Draenir that joined us on this trip were a mixed bunch. Two males and two females, quiet and observant, but also obedient as far as orders were concerned. They were the most fragile in our group, and close to extinction as a species. They were good at navigating the terrain, and were well acquainted with the flora and fauna—which made them perfect to work as our guides. They carried pulverizer weapons, but had them set to discharge bullets, since we had plenty of those and could make more, if needed.
The females led the way, while the boys stayed in the back of the line, watching our six o’clock. Serena and I walked behind the girls, with Lumi, Taeral, and Bijarki following. Avril and Heron were last, with four of their seven wards flanking our sides.
The other three were in charge of the carrier, a wagon-type vehicle with all-terrain wheels and a hermetically sealed storage container mounted on top. It was about ten feet long and five feet wide, light and low enough to be easily pulled or pushed around as required. We’d found it in the first stronghold we’d visited, based on the pre-established itinerary on the map tablet that Rose had given us, with updated locations and enemy markers. It had two solid metal and rubber arms with handles—one at the front, and one at the back, both of them rigid and on hinges, perfect for pushing and pulling.
A Shade of Vampire 65: A Plague of Deceit Page 15
