A quick backward sweep with her extended senses confirmed she was within a few yards of the pit trap. Unfortunately, that was also when Gada ceased his stalking. He regarded them silently as the war continued to rage on around them.
Then he began to laugh.
It was an odd sound, a series of airy hisses punctuated by brief, low rumbles.
More troubling than the laugh itself, though, was its implication.
“Ah,” Gada hissed, this time out loud. “A trap.”
A crack of thunder punctuated his words, and Rachel’s stomach fell.
“Clever,” Gada said. “So clever.” He leaned toward them, crimson eyes pulsing brighter with what might have been excitement. “But what if I told you that I have a trap of my own?”
Rachel glanced toward the concealed pit, so damned close, and met eyes with Alaric, who’d scooted discreetly over to the trap’s manual switch, ready to spring it by hand if it should fail to activate.
So close. They’d been so goddamned close.
For a long second, there was nothing but the sounds of the fighting raging on around them. Then a cry descended from above, shrill and piercing.
Rachel risked a glance upward and caught a glimpse of a craft not unlike the Enochians’ ship descending from the dark clouds. There was the flicker of motion—something falling from the craft—then Krogoth was grabbing her and they were flying away from the pit.
What the hell was the bastard think—
A flash of brilliant orange. The air split with a tremendous boom. A torrent of hot air slammed into them, and then they were hitting the ground, rolling to a rough, jarring halt.
Farther down the line, a second explosion lit the night.
Rachel tried to scramble out from under Krogoth, her head reeling from the blast. Krogoth ignored her struggles for a second, then scrambled to his feet and pulled her up after him.
She nearly pitched over as her weight settled back on her shocked legs. Then she took in the damage, and shock twisted to nausea in her gut.
Twenty yards off to the left, Alton was crouched over Haldin and Elise, his back badly burnt, trying to pull them to their stunned feet. Gada stalked toward the three of them, steady and confident despite his own blackened right flank.
To the right, the traps were in shambles—the thin decoy covers of soil and earth caved in, gouts of blue flame licking up from the exposed pits to join the more steady orange flames that burned almost cheerily in the wake of whatever had been dropped from that ship. Even at a distance, the heat was intense.
And all they had now was a pair of big fiery holes in the ground.
It was possible the proper lids might still be triggered to slide over the pits and trap Gada inside, but good luck getting him in there now that they’d lost the chance of surprise. Even then, it’d probably require manual activation now that—
Shit. Alaric.
She scanned to the right of the pits, where she’d last seen the commander standing.
There.
He lay still, tendrils of smoke drifting up from his stringy gray hair and his battered long coat. Clearly, he’d taken some serious heat in the explosions. But not nearly as much as the charred, limp figure draped over him.
Mosen.
A roar to the left snapped her addled attention back to the moment.
Krogoth was charging Gada’s turned back, Alton stepping away from a recovering Haldin and Elise to approach the Kul from the front.
Gada sprang forward, only to come to an abrupt halt and round on Krogoth instead. The Zar saw it coming and was ready to duck Gada’s swipe. What Krogoth wasn’t ready for was Gada’s feint.
In mid-swipe, the Kul broke and spun clockwise, catching Krogoth with a powerful tail slap that sent the raknoth flying.
Alton hopped back just in time to avoid the follow-through swipe Gada aimed at him, then returned a hard kick to the Kul’s lowered head. Gada spun with the kick and tried his luck with another tail whip. Alton managed to jump over the heavy appendage, but that only left him floating helplessly in the air as Gada completed the revolution and came around with another bladed strike.
The blow caught Alton at mid-thigh and took both of his legs.
He smacked to the ground with a very human cry. Gada followed, ready to finish him, but then Alton sprang back, yanked seemingly by thin air, and landed beside Haldin, who was on his feet now, looking seriously pissed.
The closest of the fires that had spread from the explosions at the pits died out around Haldin as he gathered energy, preparing to let loose.
Rachel started forward on shaky feet to help but froze when a horrible shriek cut through the air, just like the one that had preceded the blast. The sound made Rachel want to curl up and cover her ears, and the thing that fell from the sky with it only deepened the desire.
It slammed down beside the pits with ground-shaking force that sent a circle of mud and rainwater exploding out from the point of impact. The creature was shorter than Gada, but not by much, and nearly as wide as it was tall. The initial appearance of a swirling, amorphous blob soon resolved into the wriggling movements of hundreds of tentacles ranging in size from the width of a small finger to that of a tree trunk, the thickest tentacles extending down to the ground—not unlike legs.
From the depths of the countless slithering appendages, a pair of large, burning red eyes stared out at them.
Before they had time to process the shock of the thing or properly wonder where the hell it had come from, Krogoth came barreling in to attack it.
At the same time, Gada took advantage of their surprise and lunged for Haldin.
Helpless shock ensnared Rachel as Haldin turned, focus broken, hands shooting up in an action that screamed pure, useless reflex, eyes betraying, for the first time, the fear of the terrified teenager that still resided in there.
The one who was about to die.
Rachel couldn’t move, couldn’t process anything but that look in Haldin’s eyes, the look of finality, of—
Elise slammed into Haldin in a low tackle and drove him clear of Gada’s path like the world’s smallest freight train.
Rachel felt an instantaneous flood of relief at the Kul’s frustrated cry. Then horror at Elise’s agonized one.
The Enochians hit the ground together. Haldin bounced straight to his feet and back to his senses, coming into a protective crouch over Elise.
On the ground, Elise wasn’t moving. Haldin bent to check on her, trying to keep an eye on Gada at the same time.
Whatever he saw on her still body made him go pale and shaky at the knees.
Gada watched, fangs bared in what looked to be a sneer.
Rachel had to get his attention, had to give Haldin time to get Elise to safety.
“Hey!” she shouted.
She pelted the side of Gada’s face with a hefty fireball and tried again telepathically.
“Hey, asshole!”
She gave him a firm telekinetic uppercut on the snout, moving closer.
Gada rocked back, but didn’t seem to particularly care.
Haldin didn’t appear to be noticing much of anything around him. His jaw was clenched, his eyes filling with tears as he reached down to touch Elise’s head. Alton was crawling toward them, his severed legs dragging behind.
Alton reached Elise, and Haldin stood, rigid with a fury like Rachel had never seen before. It radiated off him in waves, the air crackling around him as he prepared to unleash untold hell on Gada.
And Gada simply watched all the while, looking, if anything, excited about what was coming. The sick son of a bitch.
A shrill screech pierced the air from where Krogoth had attacked the tentacular monstrosity.
Then, Krogoth’s thought, tinged with urgency. “Rachel Cross!”
She tore her eyes away from Haldin and Gada in time to see the creature hurl Krogoth straight for the farther of the flaming pits.
She reached out, not taking the time to think about it.
He was far, farther than she was used to working any serious channeling, but she found him in her senses and gave him a hard telekinetic shove, enough to carry him over the pit rather than into it.
It took more out of her than it would have at a reasonable distance, but she turned back for Haldin, refusing to fail him again for something as surmountable as channeling fatigue.
Too late.
It wasn’t hard to imagine how Haldin hadn’t seen it coming. He was out of his mind with grief-stricken rage. And the wriggling bastard had moved so fast—one second tossing Krogoth to the fire, the next, ensnaring Haldin from behind with half a dozen tentacles at once.
Haldin cried out, thrashing against the creature as it pulled him smoothly away from Elise. It was no good. The tentacles gave no more than if they’d been solid bands of iron.
“Brother,” Gada hissed.
The voice that answered from within the swirling mass of tentacles was like sheets of rusted metal scraping together.
“Brother …”
Rachel wanted to cry out for help—for Jarek, for Krogoth. For anyone.
But there wasn’t time.
So Rachel reached for the energy her exhausted body wanted nothing to do with as Haldin snarled a helpless curse and Gada, baring his fangs in a wide smile, started toward Elise.
Twenty-Six
Rachel was pointing her staff at Kul’Gada and preparing to throw every ounce of force she could muster to get the bastard away from Elise when a flicker of movement to the left caught her eye, and a large, dark figure came blurring in toward the Kul with impossible speed.
She almost cried out in relief as she realized it was Jarek.
Jarek planted his feet several yards out from Gada and drew his sword as his considerable momentum carried him the rest of the way in a muddy slide.
Gada began to turn, no doubt hearing him coming.
Jarek was quicker.
In one smooth motion, he slid to a halt and brought the sword down full power on the Kul’s heavy tail.
A flash of blue light and a hiss of steam.
Gada let loose a gut-wrenching shriek and spun on Jarek with a savage, bladed backhand, but Jarek had already leapt back and out of reach.
Rachel saw with grim satisfaction that the rear third of Gada’s tail now lay on the muddy ground, completely severed.
“C’mon you ugly bastard,” Jarek called as Drogan and Lietha caught up and joined him on either side. “I’ve got a tale for you.” He tilted his helmeted head. “No, wait—I can do better.”
Rachel didn’t have time to process the exasperation and relief before the tidal wave of energy building behind Gada drew her attention.
Haldin.
A cry that barely sounded human rang out, followed by a sound like a dozen shotgun blasts in a small room, and the tentacled thing holding Haldin stumbled backward with a scream like a discordant chorus of fiddles from hell.
Haldin’s knees buckled as he hit the ground, clearly exhausted after whatever channeling he’d just worked. That didn’t stop him from crawling toward Elise the instant he was free, a few amputated tentacles still dangling loosely from his arms.
Rachel started for them at a run.
Alton looked up from whatever he was doing to Elise’s wounds and growled something at Haldin, which the Enochian seemed to ignore. Alton pointed emphatically toward the tentacular monstrosity, which Rachel realized now could only be another Kul—and a Kul that appeared to have recovered from its shock, at that.
It was starting to glide forward when Johnny and Phineas pushed in through the surrounding chaos, planted themselves in front of their fellow Enochians, and opened fire.
The Enochian artillery filled the rainy air with rapid, rhythmic pulsing sounds, quickly joined by a furious scream from the creature. It lashed out, simultaneously smacking the rifle from Johnny’s hands and Phineas from his burly feet.
Rachel drew up beside them, leveled her staff at the swirling mess of tentacles, and fed the thing a heavy column of force right at center mass.
The creature didn’t fly so much as roll back a dozen yards, tumbling through something like a perpetual cartwheel, its tentacles working quickly to roll it smoothly through the motion. It came to rest back on its thickest tentacles, utterly uninjured and ready to attack again.
Before it could, Krogoth landed beside her with a deep thud, followed shortly by one of his raknoth.
“What the fuck is that thing?” Rachel asked him quietly.
“Kul’Armin,” Krogoth said, tilting his head to the Kul in acknowledgment and flexing his clawed fingers in anticipation.
“Right …”
So they’d scored two Kuls for the price of one. Fucking fantastic.
With her reinforcements stalking forward to confront Armin, Rachel risked a glance over her shoulder, to where Jarek, Drogan, and Lietha were doing their best to corral Gada.
Her heart leapt as Jarek raised his sword to parry a series of Gada’s swipes, her mind flashing back to the sight of the Kul tearing through his previous blade, but her enchantments did their job. On each strike, Gada’s enormous claws slowed considerably before they impacted the blade, almost as if they’d encountered an invisible body of super viscous goo along the last foot of their path.
Kul’Armin must not have had much to say to Krogoth, because, when Rachel turned back, the tentacular Kul was surging forward, tentacles working in bizarre synchrony to propel him as smoothly over the ground as if he were hovering.
Krogoth sidestepped the rush and landed a hard claw rake that removed a few smaller tentacles from the Kul’s back.
Krogoth’s underling wasn’t as fast. The raknoth roared as the Kul caught onto one of his arms. He thrashed wildly, scoring a few hits but doing little to prevent the inevitable as the Kul reeled him closer, wrapping him more tightly.
Rachel tried telekinetically prying the tentacles off and yanking the raknoth free, but Kul’Armin’s grasp was too strong, too pervasive.
She focused down to one of the smaller tentacles, no wider than a finger, and, with a surprising amount of effort, pulled until it tore free from Armin.
Rewarded with a small yelp, Rachel moved on to the next one.
At the same time, Krogoth harried the Kul from all sides, light on his feet despite the long fight and foot-sucking mud. Another raknoth joined him from the fray, desperately seeking to free his shrieking kin from Armin’s grasp.
It wasn’t enough. For every tentacle they removed, another took its place until, finally, the ensnared raknoth’s head came free with a sickening tearing sound.
Armin tossed the lifeless body into the adjacent burning pit and the severed head at Krogoth’s feet.
Rachel expected Krogoth to roar and charge, but, instead, he and his underling only circled Armin, dividing the Kul’s attention and watching for any opening with smoldering red eyes.
A furious roar to the left demanded Rachel’s attention.
She traced it to Drogan, who faced Gada side-by-side with Jarek, eyes burning brighter crimson than she’d ever seen. Behind them, Lietha lay torn open in the rain and the mud, either dead or too wounded to move.
Phineas was carrying Elise away from the fight now, Alton crawling leglessly after them. Haldin watched them go, paralyzed, oblivious to Johnny’s words as the Enochian held him firmly across the chest and spoke something in his ear.
Every way Rachel looked, they were losing, and if she didn’t do something and do it fast, they were all going to be dead—likely within the next minute or two.
A streak of lightning licked at the dark sky, momentarily illuminating every single glob of rain and all the other bloody details around her. With it struck a solution, and as the accompanying thunderclap filled the air, Rachel found herself grinning a mirthless grin.
Jarek apparently had a similar thought in the wake of the lightning. “We sure could use some Lady Zeus action right now, Rache,” he called as he dodged clear of a charging Gada.
“I’ve got some Lady Zeus for you,” Rachel muttered, a fresh surge of adrenaline buzzing through her head as she prepared for what would surely be an exhausting last ditch effort.
But maybe she didn’t have to do it alone.
“Hal,” she cried.
No response.
She beamed the thought at him like a battering ram.
“HAL!”
He might as well have been catatonic.
Johnny, coming to a similar conclusion, released Haldin with a loud curse and turned his weapon on Gada.
Rachel saved her curses, gripped her staff for support, and closed her eyes, casting out her senses.
It was there all around them, a veritable ocean of ions, dancing and swirling on the stormy winds, casting tentative but persistent tendrils down from the clouds, seeking a ground, a path of least resistance.
So Rachel focused on Gada’s position in her senses and gave it to them.
A brilliant blue-white bolt of lightning flashed through her eyelids, searing through Gada’s back and lancing into the clouds above, the rushing crack of thunder instantaneous and nearly deafening in such close proximity.
Charred flesh and ozone wafted to her senses as Gada dropped to a knee with a deep roar.
Behind her, Armin gave an angry shriek of his own.
Rachel did her best to ignore it and reach through the channeling fatigue to prepare another strike.
Had she somehow been manipulating this amount of charge within a range of a few yards, it would have been an effort, but a manageable one. As it was, exerting her will over so far a distance and so wide an area, the first strike had left her head spinning. The second one wasn’t going to be any easier, but she gritted her teeth and forced it down anyway.
Another tremendous boom. Another roar, this one clearly pained.
Darkness.
Cool wetness on her knees, her chest, the side of her face.
“Rache!”
Jarek’s distant cry, strained as if he were still fighting.
“Hey! Get your shit together, Haldin!”
Jarek again.
She opened her eyes to find she’d collapsed in the mud.
Reaping Day: Book Three of the Harvesters Series Page 29
