Harvester of Light Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by S. J. West

  I stormed over to my mother’s desk determined to shut the hologram off when I felt the floor beneath my feet tremble.

  Ash and Zoe pulled away from each other with an audible smack as their lips separated.

  “Did you just feel the earth move?” Zoe asked out of breath.

  Before Ash could answer, the hologram dissolved, the lights went out, and the floor beneath my feet heaved before giving way. The last thing I remembered was falling through the air and hitting my head against something hard enough to knock a Harvester unconscious.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Two angry voices surrounded me. I couldn’t make out what they were saying at first because of the ringing in my ears, but their words slowly filtered through.

  “We should cut her damn head off!” I heard one man say.

  “And have the Queen hunting you down like a dog?” another man’s voice replied in agitation. “Do you really think she’ll let you live very long if you kill her daughter? No, we get what we came for and leave. That’s the smart move.”

  “Who gives a shit about being smart? I want that bitch to know what it feels like to lose someone she cares about.”

  I heard the movement of rubble around me but couldn’t seem to open my eyes or move my body. The injuries I sustained in the fall seemed to have not healed sufficiently to make me mobile. I felt someone grab me roughly by the hair and bend my neck back at an awkward angle. The sharp, cold edge of a blade was pressed squarely against my throat.

  “I hope you rot in hell,” I heard the man say, just as he made the first slice through my skin.

  “Get away from her!”

  My head was suddenly released as something or someone slammed against my assailant. I heard the popping sound of flesh meeting bone and the scuffle of feet. Grunts of pain and heavy breathing told me the fighting was ferocious. Finally, I was able to pry my eyes open enough to see what was happening around me.

  Ash was slamming his fist into the face of the man I had to presume tried to slit my throat just seconds before. The man finally lifted his hands, palms forward in surrender before dragging himself as quickly as he could in the opposite direction of Ash. The other man quickly ran after his friend not wanting to attract Ash’s wrath upon himself.

  Ash spun around to face me. His lower lip was cracked and bleeding but other than that I couldn’t see any other injuries. With quick strides over the rubble of brick and wood around me, Ash was by my side in a matter of seconds, cradling my head in his hands.

  “Skye, are you all right? Can you get up?” he asked worriedly.

  “I need a minute to heal,” I whispered, willing my body to heal itself with my innate power faster than the Harvester nanites could.

  Ash laid my head back down gently and stood to survey what remained of the mansion my mother grew up in.

  “What the hell happened?” he said more to himself than me.

  When he looked back down at me, he said, “I need to get back to Zoe. She’s trapped under a beam over there.” He pointed to some point behind me. “I can’t move it by myself. I’m going to need your help.”

  Before I could ask him why he thought I would help, Ash strode off to wherever Zoe was. While my body healed itself, I had time to ponder Ash’s question. What the hell had happened? As I looked at the devastation around me, I had to assume some sort of bomb had been set off in the house. But who would have the audacity to do such a thing to the Queen’s residence?

  In only a matter of minutes, I felt completely healed of the wounds I sustained in the explosion. I sat up and looked behind me to find Ash crouched near a large section of the roof. I got to my feet and walked over to him. Even though I was under no obligation to help them, I felt compelled to rescue Zoe. I knew my mother wanted the children Zoe carried and reasoned with myself that was reason enough to help extricate her from the rubble.

  “Here comes Skye,” I heard Ash say in a reassuring tone to Zoe as I approached them.

  Both of Zoe’s legs were pinned beneath the beam. Tears born of pain streamed from the corners of her eyes, marking telltale trails of her distress through the caked on dust covering her face.

  Ash stood to his feet.

  “It’s too heavy for me to lift,” he confessed, not ashamed, just stating a fact.

  I couldn’t stop staring at Zoe’s face for some reason. Her anguish reminded me of the first time I ever saw her cry. Back then, her pain stemmed from the full weight of realizing she had lost her entire family years before. The sorrow filling her eyes now pulled me in, making my heart ache uncomfortably.

  “Move,” I told Ash, “or you’ll just be in my way.”

  In no time at all, I had the section of roof trapping Zoe moved to the side, releasing her from its weighty hold.

  I knelt down beside her legs and forced myself to meet her eyes.

  “Can you move them?” I asked.

  “No.” Zoe’s voice quavered, fighting against the pain she felt to answer me.

  Ash sat down by Zoe, gently wiping away her tears.

  For a split second, I debated with myself about the pros and cons of healing her legs, but there really wasn’t any other choice, not if I wanted to make her mobile. I placed my hands on her thighs and felt the heat of my healing power take over. The process of healing was becoming like second nature to me now. I no longer had to struggle to concentrate on what needed to be done. It was like the nanites that helped me tap into my ability were on an accelerated learning curve now that they had been awakened. I only had to think about what needed to be done, and they helped me accomplish the task.

  In less than a minute, Zoe’s legs were healed and her cries stopped.

  “Thank you, Skye,” she breathed, finding relief from her physical pain.

  “There’s the bitch!” I heard from a great distance. My eyes were drawn to a crowd down the street. I saw the man Ash had beat up leading a pack of at least twenty humans. “Let’s kill her!”

  I bent down and lifted Zoe easily into my arms, cradling her like I would a child. Suddenly, I felt the front of my shirt become drenched with water. Zoe’s whole body began to tremble.

  I looked at her and saw the same worry I felt mirrored in her eyes.

  “Did your water just break?” I asked low enough so Ash couldn’t hear. All I needed was for him to devolve into an expectant father with a lynch mob on our trail.

  Zoe bit her bottom lip and nodded.

  “Where are you taking her?” Ash asked warily.

  “Honestly, I have no idea,” I said crisply, “but unless you want to fight that crowd of humans heading this way, I suggest you follow me.”

  Not wanting to make us an easy target, I headed for the woods behind what was left of my mother’s house. A few Harvesters were nursing their own wounds as we passed, and I ordered them to take care of the approaching humans.

  “Should we kill them?” one Harvester asked.

  “Only if you have to,” I answered, “but try to incapacitate them first. I don’t think the Queen would want to waste so many breeders unnecessarily.”

  I was vaguely aware of how much my logic sounded like the Queen’s. The thought didn’t settle well, especially with Zoe staring at me so intently. Just from her expression, I knew she was hoping to see the old me return to her. Just a glimpse of who I was would be all she needed to feel safe in a place where safety was an illusion.

  In no time at all, we were in the shelter of the forest, hidden from prying eyes.

  “So where are we going?” Ash asked behind me.

  “Anywhere that seems safe,” I told him.

  The irony of the role reversal between Ash and me wasn’t lost on me. In the old days, I asked him the exact same question hundreds of times as we traveled through the Eastern Kingdom. Back then, he was the decision maker—the one who kept track of where the breeding camps were as well as the hot zones so we didn’t run into them. I depended on him to keep me safe in a world where such a word shouldn’t even exist a
nymore. Now, he was depending on me to keep him and Zoe out of harm’s way when I wasn’t even sure that was my goal.

  After twenty minutes of walking, we came to a narrow river. There was a boathouse and a medium sized fishing boat tied off at the dock in front of it.

  “We need to stop here,” I told Ash. “See if you can find something soft for Zoe to lie on.”

  Without question, Ash did as instructed. There wasn’t a lot in the boathouse except for some life preservers, sail cloth, and rope. Ash laid the preservers down then piled the sail cloth on top of them to construct a makeshift bed.

  After I lay Zoe down, Ash saw that my shirt was soaked. His eyes grew wide.

  “Take that bucket over there in the corner and get some water out of the river,” I told him. “See if the boat has a galley so you can boil it first. Search around for any towels or cloth while you’re in there too and bring it all back here.”

  Ash’s eyes seemed glued to my shirt. I snapped my fingers in front of his eyes, forcing him to focus on my face.

  “Did you hear what I just told you?” I asked in exasperation.

  “No,” he admitted. “Sorry.”

  I repeated my instructions, setting him into action.

  After he left, I looked down at Zoe in the dim light of day filtering through the windows. She had her eyes closed and was slowly breathing in and out. How had the little girl I rescued from Simon’s shield come to this? She was a child having children of her own. Was this her destiny? To be the mother of Rose and Simon? Future me said Rose and Simon were destined to save the world. Should I even let them live? Since what was left of the world belonged to the Queen, then that made them her enemies, right?

  “Are you in pain?” I asked Zoe, feeling confused about what I should do.

  Zoe looked up at me like I had completely lost my mind.

  “I’m about to give birth to three babies,” she grimaced. “What do you think?”

  I found myself almost smiling at Zoe’s show of spunk.

  “I think you’re in a great deal of pain,” I answered. “Why aren’t you screaming?”

  She grimaced as a contraction hit her. When it passed, her face relaxed.

  “I’m trying not to scream. I don’t want to worry Ash.”

  “You really do love him, don’t you?”

  Zoe’s eyes widened in shock.

  “I saw the two of you kissing before the bomb went off,” I explained. “I heard your little confession to him. But I’m wondering why you never mentioned it to me.”

  “I know how you feel about him,” Zoe said, trying to control her breathing. “I never would have told him if I thought you actually loved him.”

  “Ash has been a part of my life for eleven years. You’ve known him for less than a month.”

  “You only knew Jace for a few days before you told him you loved him,” she reminded me. “Or was that a lie?”

  “No,” I admitted. “It wasn’t a lie when I said it.”

  “Then stop badgering me about Ash and help me have these babies.”

  Zoe finally let out a bloodcurdling scream. It was like an alarm went off because Ash came barging through the door of the boathouse just as I knelt down between Zoe’s legs to check the progress of the birth.

  I could see the head of the first baby crowning as Zoe pushed for all she was worth. Ash sat behind her back, helping to prop her torso at an angle and letting her squeeze both his hands as she continued to push. After a few pushes, I had the first baby in my hands. It was a screaming baby boy. I laid him down on the sail cloth quickly because the second baby was following right behind. The second baby was a girl and just as vocal as her brother. Both had tufts of blond hair crowning their heads. When I looked back expecting to see the third baby’s head, I saw the baby’s bottom instead.

  “Something doesn’t feel right,” Zoe moaned.

  “Keep pushing,” I told her. “You’re almost done.”

  She shook her head vehemently. “No! Something’s wrong!”

  I looked up at Zoe’s face and met her eyes. “The baby’s in a breech position,” I explained. “But it’ll come out if you just push.”

  “No! You’re lying to me. You just want the babies to take to the Queen! You don’t care about them.”

  “Either way, you have to push or you might kill the baby,” I tried to explain to her. “In this position, it’s possible it won’t break any bones, but the longer you talk about it the most likely outcome is it’ll suffocate to death or get choked by the umbilical cord. Now if you want this baby to have a chance at living, you need to push now!”

  With one final cry, Zoe pushed for all she was worth, spilling out the baby and the afterbirth. The umbilical cord was wrapped around the little girl’s neck. I quickly tore it away from her throat to allow her to take her first breath of the world. If that had been the only problem, I would have felt relief. But the true horror of the situation must have been written on my face.

  “What’s wrong?” I heard Zoe scream at me. “What’s wrong with my baby?”

  I stared in disbelief, finding it hard to find the right words to explain what I was seeing. With a shaky hand, I gently traced the edges of the baby’s exposed heart, feeling its life force thump gently against the tips of my fingers. I felt hypnotized by its rhythmic pumping of blood.

  Before I knew it, Ash was beside me staring helplessly at his child.

  “Can you heal her?” he asked me, the hope for a miracle in his voice.

  I looked up at him, feeling uncertain but finally answered, “No. I can’t heal this. She needs a doctor.”

  “Heal what?” Zoe asked. “What’s wrong with her?”

  I explained the deformity to Zoe, which made her dissolve into a new set of tears.

  Ash’s eyes slid from the baby to look at me. “You know Lucena will never fix her. Why should she waste the time when she has two healthy babies to run her experiments on?”

  I knew Ash was right. The baby was deformed and expendable. The Queen would have it destroyed before spending time and resources to save its life. She had two perfect babies who would prove her hypothesis about hybrids to be true. Each would inherit their parents’ powers. I already knew that for a fact. But the small frail creature in front of me would never be given a chance at a normal life. She wasn’t worth the effort.

  I watched as Ash reached out to trace the side of his little girl’s cheek, needing to bring the small life some comfort from the world she had been born in. Just as his skin was about to touch hers, he vanished.

  I stared at the empty space and found myself shaking my head.

  I met Zoe’s eyes and saw she was leaned up on her elbows looking at the void Ash had left behind.

  With a heavy sigh and a new set of tears, she cried, “Seriously?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I found the river water Ash had boiled still sitting on the small gas stove on the boat. A pile of mismatched towels was sitting on the galley table also. I picked it all up and brought it back to the boathouse. After cleaning the babies off and wrapping them in towels, I laid them beside Zoe, so she could watch them sleep while I cleaned her up and healed the tear in her flesh caused by the babies’ births.

  “They’re so small,” Zoe said, staring at her children. “I’m not sure what to name them.”

  I looked up at Zoe with a frown.

  “You know what to name them,” I told her. “Simon and Rose.”

  I could literally see the lightbulb go off above Zoe’s head.

  “Oh my God,” she said, eyes wide. “I should have realized that.”

  When Zoe looked back at the babies, she seemed wary of them.

  “They’re still yours,” I said to her. “They need you now.”

  “I know,” she said, her voice sounding little. “But what about the other girl?”

  I pulled the hem of Zoe’s gown down and started to wash the blood from my hands in what was left of the river water.

  “I d
on’t think she’s going to make it,” I said bluntly, seeing no need to pander to Zoe’s human emotions. “She doesn’t seem to exist in the future.”

  As if knowing we were talking about them, both Simon and Rose began to cry. Zoe’s motherhood gene seemed to kick in as she sat up and picked one of them up. She exposed one of her breasts and coaxed the baby to begin suckling at the nipple.

  “Oww,” Zoe said as the babe began to draw milk from her body.

  I sat there and watched them for a minute wondering what it felt like to hold your own child in your arms and feed it with food your body made naturally in order to ensure your progeny’s survival. I knew I would never get the chance to experience the closeness between a mother and her child and felt a small part of myself fade away.

  After a few minutes, Zoe laid one baby down and picked up the other, who hadn’t stopped crying to be fed while its sibling ate its fill. The third baby remained still. I got up to check to see if it was even still alive. Content in its makeshift white towel wrap, the baby was quietly making quick observations of its surroundings. How much it could actually see probably wasn’t much. I remembered reading in a book once that babies could only see eight or so inches in front of them clearly. I bent down and picked the baby up, being careful to not touch its exposed heart. As soon as she was cradled in my arm, the baby’s eyes locked on my face. A hint of a smile curved her tiny lips as she continued to watch me.

  “I want to name her Hope,” Zoe said.

  “What do you think about that?” I asked the baby. As if in response, it closed its eyes and promptly went to sleep in my arms.

  After a while, I laid Hope back down beside her brother and sister.

  I heard a splash of water and looked behind me to find Ash. He had reappeared with one foot firmly stuck in the bucket containing the bloody river water.

  “Where have you been?” Zoe asked, not trying to hide her frustration with him. “We were worried sick. How could you leave when we have three babies to take care of?”