Reaping Day: Book Three of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  Jarek was a touch surprised when Rachel settled into the seat beside him, but he had the good sense to hold his tongue as she strapped in and met his eyes.

  For just a second, it was like old times, and he couldn’t help but think about the night they’d spent in silent fear awaiting the duel with Zar’Golga that’d gone so messily sideways. In that second, he even thought about reaching out for her, about saying quiet thanks for her support or an even quieter sorry for something he wasn’t quite sure how to articulate.

  But then the ship banked gently beneath them and drew their eyes to the front as the sun swung into sight and steadied out right-center in the viewport. At the center console ahead, Alton’s gaze was distant with whatever he was doing to control the ship.

  They accelerated—fast.

  Jarek relished in the raw power of the ship, as communicated to him by the prolonged backward lurch of his stomach, until the acceleration lulled off and left only the sure weight of Rachel’s presence beside him, the ominous pull of dread somewhere in the distant mountains, and the burning guidepost of the sun ahead—the same sun they’d already chased halfway across the world today.

  Quietly, so quietly that only Al and Rachel could hear, he murmured, “This day just keeps getting longer and longer.”

  Eleven

  In just over an hour, they were closing in on the Himalayas. Despite everything—the danger they were quite possibly approaching, not to mention the frightening pace at which they were doing so, or the fact that it was largely at the behest of Alton Parker—Rachel couldn’t help but stare in wonder at the snowy, sun-doused peaks of the great mountains as they rushed toward them.

  At least things were under control back at HQ—or at least headed that way. They’d received that news as soon as they’d found their way back to net coverage, right along with a hefty dose of cursing chastisement and orders for an expedient return from Alaric.

  So maybe Alton had been right. Maybe the furor back at home base had simply been a distraction. The thought didn’t exactly make her feel any better. Especially since it only meant it was that much more likely Kul’Gada was bound for the Himalayas and that they were indeed hot on his trail.

  What would happen when they caught up to him … Well, they were probably about to find that one out.

  She looked over at Jarek, strapped in beside her, and suppressed the faint urge to reach for his hand.

  Why had she been so insistent on pushing him away since that kiss? Sure, shit had admittedly gone sideways in the past few days for their own reasons—namely the enormous cargo bag of unresolved shit she’d somehow managed to convince herself she’d dealt with in years past. But before that … Why had she spent two weeks being so stubborn when they could have had each other and …

  And Jesus, why was she thinking about this now of all times?

  Maybe because it felt a little too much like they were flying into a rumble with a creature who’d singlehandedly torn five raknoth to literal pieces.

  She glanced around at the Enochians, all strapped in ahead of them along with Michael, and wondered if similarly doomy thoughts were drifting through their heads.

  The nav marker on her comm map put them about forty miles out from Al’Brandt’s mountain temple when Alton began gently decelerating and dropping elevation. As they leveled out, Alton took a sharp intake of breath.

  The translucent viewing section of the cockpit’s wall zoomed in to reveal the distant shape of a rustic wooden temple nestled into the side of one of the larger mountains. And there, below, was what must have startled Alton.

  Rachel breathed a soft curse as the zoom focused in and the small shapes resolved into dozens of humans charging up the mountain path toward the temple. Some of them were bloodied and lacking the appropriate clothing for the frigid mountain air. None of them seemed to care. They charged on with maddened intensity.

  As if they’d been caught in a furor.

  “Son of a bitch,” Jarek murmured.

  “Gada,” Alton hissed at the head of the cockpit.

  The viewing panel refocused downhill from the charging berserkers to a level, diamond-shaped butte set a good ten feet higher than the slope around it. And there on the plateau stood a figure Rachel was instantly certain would be haunting her nightmares for years to come, provided she was around to have them.

  Kul’Gada. There was no question about it.

  He was like a twisted nightmare mashup of a tyrannosaurus rex and the big evil turtle from those old Mario games—plus a shot of Satan himself and a set of disturbingly crimson eyes, of course. Those glowing orbs slowly turned to face them as Alton slowed the ship to a distant hover.

  The rakul’s shape couldn’t fairly be described as humanoid beyond the fact that he was an upright biped with two arms. Gada stood at a slight forward incline, the line of which continued on from his sandy yellow haunches and into his thick, powerful-looking tail. His back was a mess of jagged-looking bony protrusions that ran from upper back down the length of the tail, and his long arms and thick legs ended in viciously clawed appendages.

  Silence hung in the cockpit, at least until Johnny disrupted it.

  “Ahh, he doesn’t look so bad!”

  Obvious bravado aside, the sound of his jest still made Rachel feel just a touch less paralyzed with fear.

  “Okay, guys.” Haldin unstrapped his harness and stood. “This is it. Probably goes without saying, but let’s not underestimate the thing that just slaughtered five raknoth. We keep him busy and buy time for Brandt’s raknoth to either join us or escape.”

  Jarek raised a hand. “How do we feel about cutting the bastard’s head off?”

  Haldin made a have at it gesture. “That seems like an ideal outcome.”

  “Well Christ.” Jarek unbuckled, stood, and strapped his Big Whacker across his back. “Why didn’t you just open with that?”

  Alton turned from the viewport. “Let’s just try to keep our own heads here, shall we? Gada will be faster than he looks, and far stronger than any raknoth you’ve ever faced.”

  Rachel didn’t miss the way Jarek tightened up, maybe at some memory of his nearly fatal duel with Zar’Golga a few weeks ago. She unbuckled and stood as the rest of the Enochians did the same, gripping her staff tightly for stability—and maybe just a bit to help calm wild nerves.

  Alton waited for Phineas to take over the ship’s physical, and apparently more clumsy, controls and then followed Michael and the Enochians in filing back toward the exit hatch, checking weapons and murmuring last calm words to one another.

  Rachel turned back to find Jarek watching her. “Well”—his faceplate slid shut and locked with a click—“let’s get ready to rumble, then.”

  She opened her mouth to say something—she wasn’t entirely sure what—but anxious fear clutched at her chest and halted her tongue.

  Then Jarek cocked his head. “On second thought …”

  His faceplate slid open, and before she knew it, he’d slipped a hand behind her head and was pulling her to him.

  The kiss was as heated as it was unexpected, and as soon as she got over her surprise enough to even realize she wanted to respond, he was already pulling back.

  His faceplate slid closed once more. “We can decide later who’s pissed at who for what”—he shook his head—“but don’t dare go dying on me, Goldilocks.”

  It all kind of sounded like macho Jarekism until the soft, “Please …” that followed.

  That single word yanked at something deep inside her. Then she caught sight of Michael watching this all unfold from the doorway.

  It was as good as any splash of cold water.

  “Come on.” She started after the Enochians, Michael trailing after her. “You don’t wanna miss your chance at Whacking the galaxy-conquering dinosaur, do you?”

  “God help me,” Jarek muttered somewhere behind her, “I really don’t.”

  “Rache …” Michael’s voice was low, worried.

  She kept walkin
g, waiting for him to tell her not to go.

  “Just be careful,” he finally said.

  “I will.” She squeezed his arm. “And you just keep your head down for this one, Spongehead.”

  She filed in around the open hatch with the Enochians and steadied herself as Phineas not-so-gently brought the ship around to face them toward the butte. Kul’Gada watched them from sixty feet below, motionless but for the slow sweeping of his tail.

  She half expected Johnny or Jarek to call something ridiculous down at the rakul, but everyone was silent, which was probably for the best. It seemed wise not to taunt the uber-powerful alien when they were within what she wouldn’t be too surprised to find was jumping reach for the massive creature.

  At least they had three people on board who could telekinetically swat the bastard down if he tried.

  “Ahh,” came a voice behind them.

  Michael’s?

  She had to look to confirm it had indeed been her brother. There was something wrong with his voice, something that made her skin crawl, and he looked rigid, his expression vacant.

  “The boy has been touched,” Michael continued in a monotone. “And he has informed you of my movements? How irritating.”

  She processed what was happening just as Michael shoved James against the wall, yanked the Enochian’s pistol free from his side holster, and raised the weapon toward his own head.

  Rachel reached for the gun with her mind, but Haldin was faster. The weapon yanked down toward the floor, pulled by an unseen hand, and then James and Franco were on Michael, struggling against the younger man’s possessed strength. Johnny joined in to help the others wrestle her brother to the ground. Michael thrashed and clawed at them all the way, until he was pinned too tightly to move. That was hardly the end of it, though.

  She could only guess at what Gada did next, but the agony in Michael’s scream was every bit as real as if a hot poker had been pressed to his dark flesh. The sound ripped at her insides and made her want to scream herself. Haldin adjusted his cloaking pendant and dropped down next to Michael, trying to shield him.

  Michael screamed again, his voice already raw from the intensity of it.

  Rachel took a step toward him and stopped.

  They couldn’t keep Gada’s messengers out of his head. She’d tried. She’d failed. She couldn’t do a damn thing. Except to stop Gada from inflicting the torment.

  Except to kill one of the monsters who’d started all of this—the Catastrophe, her family. Everything.

  She turned to the hatch.

  Gada had helped engineer the destruction of her world and more.

  And there he was, staring up at her, trying to take Michael too.

  “Rachel, don’t!” Jarek’s cry seemed to come from somewhere far behind.

  And far too late.

  She felt him swipe at the empty air just behind her as she leapt out and plunged toward the hulking rakul.

  Twelve

  In the brief moment after her feet left the hard security of the Enochian ship deck, Rachel was certain she’d made a critical mistake. She’d acted in anger, utterly without rational thought. Jesus Christ, she’d thrown herself at the most powerful thing on the planet. And what’s more, the ferocious snarl on Kul’Gada’s snout and the hungry flare in his eyes told her she’d played precisely into the bastard’s hands.

  But none of that mattered now. She was falling, and she had t-minus two seconds to get her shit together and focus on stopping Gada from driving Michael mad with pain—not to mention keeping herself alive.

  She gathered her will and, just before she impacted the snowy butte, threw the energy of her falling body into a hard, concentrated uppercut of force, directed straight at Gada’s ugly face.

  The attack sent the rakul staggering backward from her landing space, but not nearly as far as she’d hoped.

  Gada’s tail shifted to root him back to balance after only a couple steps. Before she could think, the rakul lunged forward with a thrilled howl.

  She swung her staff around in a horizontal arc and threw a telekinetic blast behind the blow as it slammed into the rakul’s side. The hit budged Gada off course just enough that he didn’t trample her, but he rounded on her too quickly, sweeping out with a massive clawed hand.

  Time slowed. Her mind went numb. And then a gray figure rocketed down and landed on Gada’s head in the mother of all flying kicks.

  She heard herself cry out in relief as Jarek completed the kick with a wobbly backflip dismount and Gada tumbled to the ground with a startlingly solid thud.

  Jarek landed beside her and drew his sword. “I said don’t die, dammit! Nice entrance, though.”

  Gada rolled awkwardly back to his feet, his bulk rumbling the ground beneath them, a low growl bubbling in his throat.

  Rachel caught Alton’s descent with her extended senses just soon enough that she didn’t jump when the raknoth landed on her other side with a thud.

  She barely had time to think cautious thoughts about another potential turncoat episode from Alton before Gada gave a bone-rattling roar and rushed forward.

  Jarek stepped to meet him, sword at the ready. Rachel skirted back to offer ranged support as Jarek dipped under Gada’s first swipe. He whipped his sword around and brought it down on the rakul’s tail, which stayed unfortunately attached. The strike did, however, earn Jarek an irritated growl and a moment’s attention.

  Alton took advantage of the distraction to dart forward and drive a kick into Gada’s chest. The rakul stumbled then pivoted unexpectedly and swept his tail around to catch Alton with a torso slap that sent him flying clear off the snowy butte.

  One threat eliminated, Gada whirled on Jarek.

  Just then, Haldin and Elise landed beside Rachel, each bearing a spear. A low thrum shook the air as they touched down together, and Gada jolted to the side as if he’d been hit by a small car.

  Rachel watched in horrid fascination as the rakul shook the blow off and the already considerable claws of his three-fingered hands began to elongate into long, chitinous blades.

  “Looks like someone’s getting excited,” Jarek called.

  Gada said nothing. He simply lunged at Jarek.

  Jarek leapt backward to match, then reversed and stepped past the charging Kul, batting his way under Gada’s bladed swipe with his sword. As Gada turned to follow him, Rachel gave his tail a telekinetic yank. Gada, having been relying on the tail to break the momentum of his charge, fell ungracefully to his ass with a furious roar. Jarek closed in and brought his sword down with all of his might.

  Gada raised an arm in helpless defense. Only it wasn’t so helpless.

  The blow that would have lopped a raknoth’s arm off met the Kul’s arm with a dull thud and sank no more than an inch into his flesh. Jarek overcame his surprise in time to leap backward and avoid Gada’s counter swipe. The rakul lurched to his powerful haunches and followed hungrily. Haldin and Elise were charging in to engage now. Rachel cursed and followed after them.

  She telekinetically flung snow in Gada’s eyes and yanked at his feet and tail to keep him off balance as best she could. She even hurled a small fireball at his face. Haldin and Elise harried at Gada’s thick flanks with their spears, dancing out of range of his tail strikes with impressive agility. Nothing they did slowed him for more than a second here and there as he bore down on Jarek, raining strike after furious strike.

  Cold fear settled in the pit of her stomach as Gada swatted Jarek’s sword aside so hard it nearly left his hands. Jarek was looking flustered, and Gada’s attacks seemed to be growing in strength, as if he’d only been testing them thus far.

  Gada raised a bladed hand to strike—and froze.

  “Now, Jarek!” Haldin shouted. His hand was raised in a closed fist, and he was trembling.

  He was holding Gada in place, Rachel realized with a jolt. She cast her own telekinetic bubble around the rakul and added her strength. Even split between them, the effort was immense. Gada strained aga
inst their hold with unbelievable strength, lancing out telepathically at the same time.

  She couldn’t hold. Wouldn’t hold for more than a few seconds. She fell to her knees.

  Jarek lunged forward and hacked at Gada’s exposed neck. Dark blood trickled, but the strike didn’t do much more damage than the first had. What it did do was piss Gada off beyond belief.

  She lost track of which part of his bellow she heard mentally and which part was out loud, but the sound was ferocious, and the swell in power even more so. Her hold on the rakul broke, and she collapsed to the snow in exhaustion. She must’ve lost it for a second or two, because when she looked back up, there were people climbing onto the butte—maddened, wild-looking people.

  Gada was calling in his ramshackle army.

  Haldin hadn’t fallen from exhaustion like Rachel, but he looked like he was about to. Next to him, Elise was shifting to face the mindless villagers running toward them.

  “Alton,” Haldin called, swaying on his feet. Then, louder, “Alton!”

  Elise retracted her spearhead and moved, staff twirling, to meet the first of Gada’s furor puppets.

  Meanwhile, Gada roared and resumed his mission to destroy Jarek with a single-minded animosity he’d apparently been holding back for the beginning of the fight.

  Across from their furious shuffle, a pale-faced Haldin hesitated, clearly torn between helping Jarek with Gada or Elise with the overwhelming tide of berserkers.

  Rachel scrambled woozily in the snow, trying to regain her feet, to gather her focus, but it was no good. Her head spun with residual channeling fatigue, and she slipped and fell forward into the cold white powder.

  She looked up, desperate, just in time to see Alton alight on the butte at Jarek’s flank. Haldin, seeing Jarek had help for the moment, whirled to face the horde of villagers dangerously close to swarming over Elise.

  Alton darted to Jarek’s side, but Gada was beyond caring now. The rakul stomped on without a moment’s pause, lashing out relentlessly with claw and tail.

  Jarek and Alton dodged and weaved clear as best they could, Jarek taking the brunt of Gada’s fury, both of them backpedaling all the while. They couldn’t keep this up. Couldn’t stop him.