by Lara LaRue
CHAPTER 15 / DEKKIR
Grace was not doing well. I sensed it in my mind, my heart; she grieved for the upcoming battle. And no wonder: either her adoptive people would die or the people of her blood would. Either way, she would suffer terrible loss before this fight was over.
I watched her as we took our places at the crenellated outer wall of Highfort’s rooftop. She was ashen beneath the brown and golden tones of her skin; her bronze eyes threaded with deep brown and sparks of gold held a deep fear and an even deeper sadness. I knew in my heart her instinct was right: this battle was pointless and a tragedy for both sides. But sadly, that was often the case with wars.
For centuries, I had fought in skirmishes between forts when diplomacy had failed. It was always tragic. Always a horror. But I could hardly tell her to get used to it. She had the heart of a seer. Not a warrior. She had the ability to sense the interconnectedness of all things, but like some empaths before their training, it left her vulnerable to the suffering of others. My lady had no armor against the world’s harsh realities.
“I need you to be focused for this, my love, and I apologize. But with Neyilla monitoring our troops in the jungle and the rest of the seers preparing their defenses, I need someone to monitor our troops here.” At her nervous look, I smiled reassuringly. “Do not worry about your inexperience. I just need you to ‘watch,’ not relay messages.”
She swallowed. “Neyilla trained me to monitor single individuals and small groups. What if I get overwhelmed?”
I offered my most reassuring smile. “Have some faith in yourself, my love. I have no doubt you can handle this. Just reach out with your mind and feel the men on the walls and the ones beside their mounts.” None of the Rilleen riders were airborne yet. “Once you make contact, they can engage your stream of consciousness and feed you information on what is going on.”
“I’ll try.” She closed her eyes, leaning on one of the fuel barrels we used for fire arrows. Her brows drew together, and she twitched slightly. I reached out to her with my heart and felt the strain of her connection with multiple minds at once. “I think I’ve got it,” she mumbled, her voice light and dreamy.
“The men on the battlements?”
She frowned thoughtfully. “Yes, and the Rilleen riders. They’re impatient. It’s what they are letting themselves feel instead of fear.”
I nodded, stroking a thumb across my chin. “Any word from Tabirus?”
“I’ll check in with him. Hang on.” The strain deepened on her face. She drew a few deep breaths and struggled to focus.
As I waited, I looked up and down the row of battlements and the men and beasts manning them. Warriors—my people. Tabirus had warned that the attack would be coming from the west. He didn’t yet know how deep into the jungle he could mislead them or what tactic to use once he did. Perhaps he could lead them into a beastvine field or near enough to a giant insect nest. I could only hope it would be enough to slow them down and let some of our guerrillas pick them off.
My hand reached out by itself to stroke down the soft, dark cloud of her hair, and she smiled slightly, then relaxed. “I’ve got Tabirus. He says he’s leading them to the swamps half a day’s march from here. He may be able to convince a few dropship pilots that the jungle is several meters lower than it actually is.”
“He plans to crash them?” Not bad.
“Some of them.” Her lips trembled, but she set her jaw and focused. “He can’t manage it with all the dropships. Some of those pilots have unreachable minds, including Norcross himself.”
“I see.” I squinted out over the rolling plain to the west, where the jungle started thinly and rapidly thickened. Far off, I could see something sparkling high in the sky in that direction. “Then he should focus on misleading those he can to as deadly an effect as he can. The seers monitoring the jungle can aid him in the effort.”
She nodded, and I saw her lips moving as she relayed the message. A pause, and then a flicker of sadness crossed her face. “He says he may be able to remove a quarter of them by this method, and then they will be forced to hike in. That is when our troops in the jungle can start picking them off.”
“That should thin their numbers considerably. Under the cover of the jungle, we will have the advantage. We can pick a good number of them off and lead survivors into the various jungle hazards.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “Keep monitoring. See if you can reach the men in the jungle.”
She closed her eyes again, and tiny droplets of sweat misted her forehead. “They’re pretty antsy over there. I think they’re almost too close to some of the insect colonies.” She paused and gasped aloud. “Neyilla says she’s anticipating a crash site with her precognition. The other dropships will land in the same area to attempt rescues.” She shook her head slowly, anguish twisting her features for a moment. “Of course they will. They’ll even defy Norcross to retrieve their own.”
“Do you have any idea why none have thought to try to rescue you while they are at it?”
She bit her lip softly, in a way that distracted me. It wasn’t the time for desire, but need flared inside me regardless. But then the sadness on her face deepened. “Norcross claims I was either killed in the last drone attack or have gone over to the other side. If they see me, I’m to be killed, not rescued.”
A tear tracked down her cheek, sending a small pang through me. I hated seeing her cry. And more than that, I hated the man responsible—this Norcross, supposedly a leader of men but actually a coward whose face I longed to smash open with my fists for his audacity. How dare he seek my mate’s life? In fact . . . how dare he make her shed even a single tear? I’ll destroy him.
“I am sorry. Just remember . . . despite what fools like Norcross may think, you did not betray them. You responded to their betrayal of you. They used you to gather information on us so they could defame us to your fellow humans and then gain justification to wipe us out.” I brushed the tear away, but more joined it quickly. Yes, definitely going to kill this Norcross. Slowly, if I can manage.
Still, Grace kept focused, despite her grief, impressing me. “I understand that. It’s just one thing to understand it intellectually and another to . . . feel it. The humans on that base that suspect I’m alive, they hate me, Dekkir. They think of me as the traitor.”
“Don’t absorb their hate. Don’t turn it against yourself. There is no need. You know you don’t deserve this.” I couldn’t keep the urgency out of my voice any more than I could keep the love out of my heart.
“Some of the ones being sent after us don’t deserve what we have in store for them either.” She swallowed, and I felt her grief pricking at my heart.
“That is war, my darling. It is hideous and nonsensical, and one ends up mourning the innocent more than rejoicing that the guilty are gone.” I stroked her hair again and felt her shivering. “Keep monitoring.”
“I’ll try.” She took several deep breaths and tried to focus again. “I can feel what Tabirus and Neyilla are doing. I’m afraid if I look too closely, I’ll mess it up somehow.”
I chuckled. “You worry too much. You would have a difficult time doing that when, from what I gather, they are far more advanced in experience than you are.”
“All right,” she mumbled in reply and then tensed. “They’re nearing landfall.”
“Keep watching. We need to find out how many survive this so the jungle forces may be warned. Any humans who find a hole in our outer defenses must be confronted here.”
She panted softly, eyes screwed shut. In the distance, the sparkling motes grew ever larger. They were streaking toward the jungle, barely slowing yet. I was reminded of her own precipitous landing, which had come to an abrupt end when a beastvine had grabbed her dropship from the air. Back then, I had not yet realized what she was to me, but I had felt a surge of panic I realized now had not been my own.
“They’re coming,” she whispered. “He’s convinced most of the pilots that your father and yourself are hiding in
the jungle in that area.”
“Good.” I watched as the shining dropships headed for the jungle canopy. A few moments later, the lead ones penetrated it, and a heartbeat later, I heard a ground-shaking explosion.
“Ohh!” she cried out, fresh tears suddenly tracking down her cheeks. “Oh, the panic, the panic, they’re so scared.” She buried her face in her hands, and I suddenly realized she had felt the deaths of the fallen humans. “They’re gone . . .”
“No.” I shook her gently by the shoulder with one hand and then cupped her face with the other. “No, don’t get entangled with them. Come back. Draw back to me and to the living.”
She sobbed, her skin alarmingly cold under my hands. “I trained with those guys in my self-defense classes. Some of them were just teenagers—”
I shook her firmly. “Stop. Come back. Do not dwell on them. The living need you! I need you.”
She nodded convulsively, and I sensed her struggling. Tabirus, I thought as I radiated love and support toward her. Neyilla. Help me.
I heard their voices overlaid in my head briefly even as my broadcast left my temples stinging. I was no telepath, but fortunately, they were monitoring us all. Dekkir, we cannot . . . You must bring her back! The survivors are emerging. They wear power armor. Most survived. Most are uninjured. They are gathering their forces in the jungle, and we must act!
I pulled Grace into my arms and hugged her tight. “Come back, love. Come back.”
Slowly, she did, her shaking easing off and the warmth slowly returning to her skin. “There are still . . . many. So many. Seventy, eighty . . .”
I nodded and sighed. “Tell Neyilla to coordinate the jungle teams. We will try and lead them into an ambush.”
She swallowed. “Okay. Okay.” She squinted for a few moments and then nodded. “The lead warrior is making contact—”
A thud and a flash of light from the jungle startled me; Grace flinched. “They’re shooting! The warriors have no armor against pulse rifles. Bodies falling—it burns . . .” Her tears started flowing again. “This is crazy. So craz—”
“How do they fare?” I shook her again lightly, and her eyes flew open but stared sightlessly.
“Neyilla says some of the men are leading about twenty of them off into the jungle. Norcross ordered them to stop, but these are impulsive and angry about the crash.” She started trembling. “If they go too near the hives—”
“The warriors will die, too. I understand that. Darling, so do they. This is acceptable risk to them. Lose one’s own life, save the world.”
“Oh God, they’re doing it. They’re doing it . . . no. No, please, don’t go near there!”
More flashes and thuds of pulse rifles going off, this time in rapid succession. Suddenly, several dozen gigantic wasp shapes, almost black, rose above the tree line and then dove back downward, stingers first. I couldn’t see the siege, but from the horror twisting Grace’s features and making her sob, she could feel it.
“Too many. The bugs . . . the warriors . . . they’re being overwhelmed. They pick off a few, but not so many. They can’t get through that armor!”
I frowned. “Tell Neyilla I want her and her seers to find a way to convince them to take off their armor.”
“It will only work on some,” she warned. “Norcross—”
“It will have to do,” I replied quietly. “It will at least thin them out.”
“O-okay.” She wiped her own cheek this time and just focused. “She says it’s possible. They’re working on it now.” But a moment later, she stiffened and started weakly clawing at the front of her tunic. “Hot . . . Oh God, so hot . . .”
“Not you,” I chided, snapping my finger an inch from her ear. She flinched slightly and then opened her eyes, which offered only that terrifyingly empty look again. I tugged at her hair lightly. “No, darling girl, no. Come back to me.”
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I can’t just ignore their suffering. I know they are the enemy now. But they’re also young men who have barely gotten to live yet.” She drew a shuddering breath to steady herself.
“Of course they are. I’m not angry you remember they are some mother’s son. But you must comply. I need you focused on the task at hand, not its emotional impact.” I stared into her eyes until they focused on me.
“Yes . . . I understand.” She didn’t seem happy about it, but she lifted her chin and struggled to focus.
I sighed relief, but prematurely. For the next second, just as the pulse rifle fire erupted again, she went rigid, going ashen again. “No . . . no! The arrows . . . those bugs . . . they’re stinging me!”
This isn’t sentiment or lack of nerve. She has more psychic power than she has self-control yet, and it’s turning on her. “They aren’t! You’re right here with me, Grace. You’re not out there! You’re not dying!” I did everything I could think of to get her attention: shaking her, holding her. But all she did was go completely slack, sliding down to her knees at my feet. The emptiness in her eyes had gone from blankness to a sort of void, as if her soul were falling down a deep well. “Grace? Grace! Grace! Wake up, love. Don’t leave me!”
Deep inside, I could feel her struggling against the tide of pain and death flooding into her inexperienced mind. But then all she did was fold up into a ball and cover her face with her forearms. Her mind was retreating into itself, away from the pain, away from this ugly reality . . . away from me. And I wasn’t sure how to call her back.
CHAPTER 16 / GRACE
The remaining troops are reaching the edge of the forest.
How did they move so fast?
Their suits have some sort of jets they can use for leaping. They’re just bounding over deadfalls and everything else and heading straight at us.
I struggled to make out all the brain chatter in my head, knowing I was supposed to be doing something with it. Dekkir. I need to tell Dekkir. But my lips wouldn’t move. It was if I were frozen in a block of ice and could vaguely hear him banging on it and shouting in at me, trying to help me break out. I tried to struggle . . . but pain laid that way. The pain of so many losses. The knowledge that so many more were to come.
A bolt of white light rips through my chest and the world goes black. An insect stinger as long as my arm pierces my shoulder. I scream, try to fight, seconds before its massive mandibles close on my head. Arrows thud into my back, three, four, five—the last one pierces something vital, and the ground swings up and hits me in the face. I’m dying. I’m dying. I’m dying, over and over, human and Lyran, no difference really in that final moment, when I go from a living, vital person to a twitching sack of meat.
Dekkir . . . help me . . .
He was holding me, as if trying to bring warmth back into my body with his own, his broad chest heaving against my face. I love you, his voice said into my ear and into my heart. I love you. Come back to me. Please, come back . . .
Dozens of dead hands clawed at my mind, gone too young, gone in the midst of rage and terror, their souls still outraged. Wanting to know why. Souls on both sides gone too soon, some of them hundred-plus-year-old Lyrans, but still—too soon, too soon. I wanted to tell them how sorry I was. I wanted to tell them I wished it had not happened. But their grief, pain, and rage was mindless, clawing at me in dead reflex, like the echo of a scream.
Grace.
I heard the voice, Dekkir’s voice, calling me back, shouting with all his strength and straining his mind. Other voices joined it in chorus: Tabirus, Neyilla, even Dorin. Joining together, boosting the strength of Dekkir’s call. Grace. Come back. Don’t stay with the dead. Don’t. You must come back, Grace.
I could feel love and concern in their mental voices, even if Dorin’s was a bit grudging. Their voices were like a beacon to me in the icy dark. I rose toward it, fighting against the clawing souls that tried to drag me down with them. But there were more important people waiting for me. Dekkir waited for me. He was my strength . . . but I was his as well, an endless wellspring the psyc
hic backlash of so many deaths was threatening to rip away.
Come back, precious one. Come back.
Dekkir?
I’m here. His mental contact overflowed with relief, and I rose toward it, toward my skin, which itched and tingled, toward my face with its tears wet and dried, my aching eyes, and my aching head. Toward my fallen body, which he held so tenderly.
I gasped awake, eyes flying open, and looked up at him. “Dekkir—Dekkir! They’re coming!”
He sighed his relief and then set his jaw grimly. “I know, my love. I know. We’ve only been able to kill a few of them. The beasts and our weapons are no match for their armor, and the seers can only convince some to disrobe or attack each other. Most of Norcross’s force is still on its way.”
I sucked in air and sat up painfully, fighting a wave of dizziness and terror. He helped me to my feet, and we looked out beyond the battlements. A wedge-shape of armored Earth soldiers bounded across the plain toward us, rifles at the ready, faceless in their heavy helmets. It almost felt as if I were back in the nightmare in-between place again, but my eyes were wide open, and these antagonists were all too alive.
“What do we do?” I whispered breathlessly.
He set his jaw. “We fight,” he replied. “We fight down to the last man.”
Keer squawked happily as she saw us, bounding out of her aerie atop the wall and crouching down in front of us. The gigantic creature was equal parts lion, bird, bat, and lizard, covered in jet-black fur, with golden eyes and claws of shining ebony. She had gotten a little chubbier since I had last seen her—but that might have been my imagination. She rubbed her head against Dekkir’s legs, then against my belly, and crooned.
“Is she excited to go to war?” I asked incredulously. I understood Rilleen were powerful, violent predators. I had seen her and her companions tear apart an entire swarm of giant insects and even eat them. But armored humans with pulse rifles were something else altogether.
“She always craves battle. But I fear even the Rilleen may be no match for their weapons.” Dekkir sounded grim. “Today, the riders hold the walls while the Rilleen attack on their own. We will direct them from the walls.”
