Reaping Day: Book Three of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  Seemingly out of nowhere, Lietha’s demeanor shifted like a dog who’d just seen the treats come out. “Yes,” she hissed. “We will end them.”

  Drogan leapt from Krogoth’s fortification twenty yards away and landed beside them with a thud.

  Without preamble, he turned to Jarek. “Join us in bringing justice to the traitors on the western flank, Jarek Slater.”

  Jarek touched a hand to his chest. “Little old human me?”

  Was that what Lietha had meant about ending them?

  It was damn confusing—not to mention damn creepy—working with an outfit whose members could all communicate telepathically.

  Drogan nodded. “You can keep pace with us, yes? Al’Brandt requires our aid.”

  Jarek glanced over at Daniels, but she was more than a little occupied directing arriving Resistance forces by comm and shouted commands. “And the eastern flank?”

  “Those who had followed Taga have been dispatched to bolster the other half of Al’Brandt’s clan on the eastern flank,” Drogan said. “Our forces will hold here for the time being, but we must go now.”

  “Go,” Rachel said beside him.

  “We’ll hold the fort here if anything green comes flying over that wall,” Haldin added.

  Jarek wasn’t crazy about parting from Rachel’s side when the shit was so heavy all around them, but at least with the raknoth, he could move fast enough to be back in short order if need be.

  “Give us a ring if the big guy shows up to play?” Jarek asked.

  They both nodded their agreement, and Jarek set off beside Drogan and Lietha.

  Whatever else there was to be said about working with the raknoth, Jarek couldn’t deny that being able to truly stretch his legs without fear of leaving his allies in the dust was a major perk.

  If he’d had time to pause and survey the soldiers they passed, he liked to think they would have used phrases like “with all the speed and grace of a majestic jungle cat” to describe his passage as he bolted along, dodging and vaulting over debris and old, rusted cars as needed.

  Drogan and Lietha, on the other hand, were more like leap frogs. Big, scaly, utterly deadly leap frogs. They bounded along on either side of him, keeping pace with a steady stream of tremendous jumps that carried them thirty or forty yards at a time.

  After the first minute, the sounds of fighting began to dim as they left the main conflict behind. Within the second minute, new sounds appeared and grew louder—gunfire intermingled with the screams of men and the battle roars of raknoth. It sounded like they’d found that flanking party. Soon enough, the fight came into view.

  The defenders on this flank looked to be a mix of Resistance soldiers and Krogoth’s men. Among the numerous dead lining the streets, Jarek spotted several broken raknoth bodies that looked like they’d died tearing each other to shreds.

  Three raknoth were still moving through the defenders’ ranks like forces of nature, tearing and biting and smashing into their human foes with reckless abandon. On the far side of the battle, the raknoth Jarek thought was Al’Brandt was tangled in a vicious struggle with two more raknoth, fighting like a caged animal.

  As Jarek and his allies closed in, a Resistance soldier found her way to the heavy machine gun mounted in the back of a humvee, pried aside the man who’d died there, and opened fire on one of the three rampaging raknoth. The raknoth staggered to the pavement with a shriek. Before the gunner could finish the job, though, she was gunned down by one of Ashida’s soldiers pushing through the opening their raknoth had cleared.

  Jarek pulled his new sword free, triggered the pommel, and leapt into the fray.

  He caught his first enemy unaware. The raknoth was stalking toward a soldier who was frantically scrambling away on hands and haunches. Jarek’s horizontal stroke cleanly removed the raknoth’s head in a flash of azure heat. The smell of seared flesh filled the air, and the raknoth’s body fell slack to the pavement beside his own head.

  The remaining enemy raknoth turned to face Jarek. Even the two struggling with Brandt paused. Most of the Resistance and Team Krogoth soldiers wisely took advantage of the distraction to clear away from the impending melee and return to the task of holding off Ashida’s encroaching soldiers.

  Lietha landed to Jarek’s right side just as the two closer enemy raknoth sprang forward with hungry roars and one of Brandt’s foes disengaged to likewise come deal with the new threat. Before the leftmost of them had made it more than two steps, Drogan descended from on high to smash him into the pavement with his own battle roar.

  That didn’t slow the other two raknoth, who were upon Jarek and Lietha in seconds.

  Jarek dipped back from the first swipe of the raknoth who closed on him. When the raknoth telegraphed his intent to make a lunging grab, Jarek took another long step back, spun left, and brought the Whacker around in a strong upward sweep.

  The attack felt clumsy with the extra resistance of Rachel’s workings, but it was still fast enough to sear and cut through the raknoth’s right wrist and a good chunk of his torso.

  The raknoth staggered, let out an ugly, hissing scream, and, despite the considerable injuries, pressed on, batting Jarek’s blade aside with his remaining hand.

  Jarek ducked right and drove his shoulder into the raknoth’s side. The raknoth shuffled and barely managed to regain his balance. By the time he did, the Whacker was already descending to tear from right trapezius to left armpit with a flash of blue fire.

  The Big Whacker 2.0, it seemed, worked like a freaking charm.

  The cut wasn’t quite deep enough to split the raknoth in two, but he definitely wasn’t moving anymore after collapsing to the pavement, so Jarek turned his attention to scan for the next target.

  His concerns were unnecessary. To the right, Lietha had her foe in a firm headlock. With a savage yank and a sickening crunch, she severed some internal part of the raknoth’s anatomy, then she went to work with her claws, intent on removing her foe’s head.

  Across the intersection, Brandt seemed to have gained the upper hand on his challenger now that it was a one-on-one fight.

  Jarek turned toward Drogan in time to see him deliver the last of what looked to have been several brutal stomps to the head of his opponent, who gave a few twitches then lay still on the pavement, flattened head oozing a disturbing combination of fluids.

  Drogan’s glowing gaze turned toward Jarek.

  “Smashing work, Stumpy,” he said weakly.

  Heavy thunder boomed overhead.

  “Sir,” Al said in his ear. “Kul’Gada has been spotted heading for the front lines. We’d better get back there.”

  Jarek clutched his sword tight, memories of Gada’s unbridled fury setting his shoulder to aching and trickling cold dread down into his gut. But Rachel was back there, and all the others too. They had to stop Gada here—fear be damned.

  Brandt told them to get back to Krogoth, he, Drogan, and Lietha apparently having already heard the news of Gada’s approach via the voices in their heads. They spent a precious minute helping him and the humans push Ashida’s soldiers back to restore the line, then they turned and headed for the central battlements at full speed.

  Leaving a single raknoth to guard the flank wasn’t ideal, but it might well take all of them to put down Gada, and if they didn’t do that, none of this would matter anyway.

  Rain began to patter down in thick droplets as they went, and above, the sky was growing positively foreboding.

  Without a doubt, the storm was coming. And, as they raced to the aid of their friends, it looked like it was in no mood to dither.

  Twenty-Five

  Rachel pointed her staff, gathered her will, and let loose a telekinetic blast that drove one of Haldin’s attackers into the rampart fifteen yards behind. One problem accounted for, Haldin ducked a savage swipe from the other enemy raknoth, sent the creature stumbling into Krogoth’s deadly reach with a telekinetic shove, and whirled into telekinetically catching a live hand grenade
and hurling it back over the wall.

  A distant boom, a single instant of peace, and then they reset to take their next challengers.

  Things had been stable for all of two minutes after Jarek had departed with Drogan and Lietha. With little else to do on the ground, Johnny and Phineas had climbed up onto the battlements to add their firepower to the line. Beyond the wall, intermittent explosions had punctuated the cacophony.

  Rachel had hovered near Haldin and Elise, unsure where best to apply herself.

  Then the first section of wall had blown inward about thirty yards down the line, and the answer to that question had become far too obvious far too quickly.

  The first men through the breach had clearly felt the effects of the cloaking generators, reeling in confusion as the devices severed their connections with Ashida or Gada or whoever was controlling them.

  Then the enemy raknoth had come charging in, over and through the wall, and all hell had broken loose.

  On either side of the wall, men and women killed each other in droves while raknoth attempted to do the same.

  With the considerable aid of Krogoth and his raknoth, Rachel and the Enochians had helped put a sizable dent in the number of intruding enemy raknoth.

  The sky had grown dark as they fought, the beginnings of what promised to be a heavy rain joining the rumbles of thunder just in time to greet the arrival of Alaric and a convoy of Resistance forces.

  The reinforcements had been a welcome sight—a hopeful one, even. At least until the first cries had gone up.

  Kul’Gada had been sighted.

  Even Krogoth looked worried for a second. Then he caught the raknoth Haldin had shoved his way and swung his traitorous kin like a flailing bat to smash into another raknoth who’d leapt over the battlements, tore through the men atop, and lunged straight for Krogoth.

  That done, Krogoth tilted his rustred snout skyward and let out a primal roar of challenge that was taken up by his raknoth all along the line. It was the most fearsome sound Rachel had ever heard. Until Gada answered.

  She didn’t know—didn’t want to know—how close Gada was on the other side of that wall, but the sound he made seemed to dwarf even the fury of the battle around them, reaching down through her chest and shaking the ground beneath her.

  When the Kul’s roar ended, the sounds of the ongoing battle seemed almost mild for its absence. Rachel jabbed at her comm with shaking fingers and snapped a quick report to Al.

  “I’ll tell him to hurry back, ma’am,” Al said. “Do be careful over there.”

  She didn’t voice the thought that careful might not be enough, just killed the call and turned to fight on alongside Alton and the Enochians, who were facing down two more raknoth.

  The rain wasn’t yet steady enough to dampen the small gout of flames Haldin conjured to hurl into one of their faces. The raknoth turned with an aggravated yelp, swatting at his snout, and was promptly met by Elise’s spear in the under jaw. The blade pierced hide, but not deep enough to kill the raknoth.

  His ally roared and lunged at Elise, who threw herself to the side, clearing the way for Alton to step in and catch the over-eager raknoth off guard and drive him to the ground.

  As Alton set to work severing the spine and removing the head, Haldin moved toward the second raknoth, spear at the ready.

  Rachel gathered her energy and was preparing to reach out and tell Haldin she’d pin the raknoth for the killing blow when another stomach-wrenching roar shook the field, and a wave of telepathic pressure crashed down on her.

  Gada. He’d crossed into the cloaking generator field. There was no question about it. Nor did there need to be.

  As soon as she turned to the wall, Gada’s enormous bulk appeared, flying over the fifteen foot wall with an ease that shouldn’t have been physically possible for a creature of his enormous size.

  The rakul slammed down to a landing near Krogoth and his guards, shaking the ground even twenty yards away.

  “Hal!” Elise cried to the left.

  Rachel looked back in time to see Haldin whirl into blocking a raknoth’s overhead pound with a raised forearm—and, presumably, a considerable dollop of channeled energy, considering his arm didn’t snap like dry kindling as it should’ve.

  The raknoth stopped in his tracks, staring in obvious confusion at Haldin’s clearly-not-obliterated forearm. Before it could get over its surprise, Haldin dropped his shoulder into the raknoth’s chest. Rachel added a blast of telekinetic force and sent the creature sailing backward into Alton’s waiting arms.

  “We need to help Krogoth,” Haldin sent to them as Alton set to the gritty work of finishing the raknoth.

  They fell into a tight group and moved to join Krogoth and his three remaining raknoth guards in circling Gada. The Kul watched with little evident concern for them or the numerous bullets pelting his hide.

  Four more raknoth leapt the wall on Gada’s trail. Rachel whipped her staff up and managed to cut one’s jump short with a well-aimed blast. The other three touched down and wasted no time moving in on Krogoth’s raknoth.

  Gada chose that moment to spring into action.

  In the blink of an eye, the first of Krogoth’s raknoth lay dead on the muddy earth.

  Krogoth didn’t stand idly by, though. He followed Gada through his lunge, ducking smoothly under the Kul’s heavy tail, and tore a sizable hunk of flesh from the back of Gada’s right leg with his claws.

  Satisfying to watch, but it was going to take more than that to hobble Gada.

  The Kul swept his tail at Krogoth—who narrowly avoided the strike— and spun to charge after the raknoth.

  Haldin pelted a small fireball at Gada’s face. The Kul barely flinched, but it at least bought Krogoth an extra fraction of a second to throw himself out of Gada’s path.

  The Kul rounded on Haldin with an irritated growl. Rachel timed her attack and formed a lance of telekinetic force that buckled Gada’s knee and sent him into a drunken stumble. Elise and Alton circled around while Gada regained his balance, Elise taking the opportunity to harry his wounded flank with her spear.

  Around them, more raknoth were closing in, some fighting on Gada’s side, others clearly not. Rachel caught a glimpse of Mosen rushing toward them from across the park alongside a pair of raknoth—drawing back from the eastern flank, apparently. Probably to help deal with Gada. But that hardly mattered now.

  The traps. They needed to start driving him toward the traps.

  She looked for the choppy ground where the closer of the concealed traps lay and realized Haldin was already circling around Gada, orienting to be able to push the Kul in the proper direction. Rachel followed along. The others shifted in kind, keeping Gada occupied as they went, apparently understanding the intent.

  “Say when,” Rachel sent to Haldin and Elise.

  With her senses extended, she could feel the vast pull of energy pouring into the Enochians from their batteries and their surroundings, chilling the rainy air further.

  Rachel took her own pull from her batteries and clenched her fists, relishing the crackling power buzzing through her core.

  “Now,” came Haldin’s voice.

  All at once, she let the energy explode out of her in a column of telekinetic force aimed straight at Gada’s chest. Additional cascades of energy pulsed out beside her—a swift river from Elise and a crushing tsunami from Haldin.

  Their triple whammy took Gada off his feet, but when the rakul’s hulking mass slammed back to the earth, he was still a good fifteen yards away from the nearest trap.

  More importantly, he was pissed, and Rachel was nursing a seriously spinning head and wobbly knees for her efforts.

  Around them, several smaller fights had paused to see what had caused the small earthquake.

  “Kill them!” Gada’s voice hissed in her head like a thousand disjointed whispers as he clambered to his feet. “To me, my children! Kill them all!”

  Those of Gada’s raknoth who weren’t already nearby
soon reconciled their error, launching over the wall and rushing in from multiple directions to answer their master’s call.

  “To me, free raknoth of Earth!” Krogoth beamed out for all to hear. “Let us clear the field of these traitors and finish this False Master!”

  Gada started after Krogoth with authority—so much so that no one saw it coming when he abruptly changed course and cut down another of Krogoth’s raknoth instead.

  On either side of Rachel, their circle was quickly falling away from containing Gada to defending against his reinforcements.

  Alton pounced on one of the incoming raknoth, driving him to the ground. Haldin and Elise whirled off to confront another.

  For a terrifying stretch, it was only Rachel and Krogoth facing the monstrous Kul, Krogoth taking the brunt of his fury and Rachel running what interference she could.

  Then the raknoth Haldin and Elise had engaged came sailing through the air like a live missile and struck the Kul in the back. Gada, expecting an attack, promptly turned and cut his flailing underling in two before his body hit the ground.

  Rachel couldn’t help but feel a touch of grim satisfaction watching it play out. That satisfaction took root and began to grow into determination as more of Krogoth’s raknoth arrived from the eastern flank to help with Gada and his raknoth. She caught sight of Alaric nearby, directing his troops into a defensive perimeter around their fight, isolating them with Gada so they could finish him without interference.

  All they had to do was get the rampaging monster into the giant hole in the ground.

  Rachel began to drift that way as they fought, and the others mirrored her, guiding the Kul swing by swing to his awaiting doom. A little further, and they’d be able to land him in the first pit with another good blast.

  Gada stalked after them, either not sensing the ploy or simply not caring. Their reinforcements aside, the Kul probably had good reason to be confident.

  Underfoot, the trodden ground was growing more muddy and restrictive by the minute in the thick rain. If they didn’t end this soon, Gada would pick them off one-by-one as they tired and grew too bogged down in the rain and the mud.