The Druid Gene

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  He woofed out air and his hold loosened a fraction.

  She closed her eyes, turned her head, and created a flash of blinding light. She thrashed until she got her arm loose and crashed her fist into his mouth, her knuckles grazing his teeth, scraping off a layer of skin. His head rocked back. Her feet finally found purchase on a root or a stone and she pushed off, squirming out from under him.

  Darcy got to her feet and landed a kick to his neck, then swung around for a roundhouse kick to his face, knocking him onto his side. Another kick to his chest flattened him on his back. Her legs harbored her most powerful muscle groups, so against a bigger, heavier, stronger opponent, kicking was her best offense. He had taught her that.

  He managed to catch her leg as she delivered another kick. He twisted it and threw her back to the ground. She scrambled away before he could pin her, backing into the clearing.

  He rose, cobalt-blue blood flowing freely from his nose. She reached for the bolt in her pocket, but he came at her again too fast for her to do anything with it, so she left it there. This time it was like the sparring they’d done in the dark on the Vermachten. She blocked his punches with the open-handed slap-fighting technique and darted in to deliver stinging blows to any part of him she could reach. She kept moving constantly to keep his punches at bay and push him back.

  Somehow he wedged a foot in her path and got her off-balance. He latched onto her arm and twisted it behind her back. A cry of pain hissed out of her as she struggled to break free. His other arm came up around her neck, squeezing like a python. She grappled with his arm and pulled, lifting her feet off the ground to use her entire body weight, but she couldn’t get his arm to budge. Nor could she breathe.

  There had to be a way to dislodge herself. She punched with one hand at his wounded leg, but she couldn’t reach low enough to get at the injuries. He pulled her up harder.

  She wheezed in. It felt like breathing through a collapsed straw. She aimed a kick with her heel behind and up, aiming for his groin, but missed when he jerked her backward.

  Dropping her weight again, she dug her heels into the ground and pushed him farther back, plowing him into a tree. Immediately, she jumped as high as she could, curling her body, then let herself fall forward in an arc, using her weight and momentum to pull him down and flip him over top of her. This time it worked. He lost his grip as he landed. She rolled out of the way.

  “Improvisation. I like it,” he said with a sneer. “You are a worthy opponent, Leebska.”

  “My name is Darcy,” she grated at him. “Stop this. I don’t want to do this.”

  She hurt all over. She tried not to think about it and dragged ragged breaths into her throat as she rose into a wary crouch. She grabbed the bolt again and launched it at him.

  The bolt narrowly missed him, landing in the leaf litter. It was gone.

  “But you must.” He leered at her, then leapt.

  She pushed his punch aside, letting it propel him past her, and elbowed him in the head as he went by. She turned and kicked his kidneys. Then a blow to the spine. She jumped on his back and wrapped her arm around his neck to give him a taste of his own medicine.

  “Why are you doing this?” she cried.

  “The why is not important,” he gasped.

  “The why is always important!” she shouted, hanging on stubbornly.

  He lurched forward, bending at the waist, and came back up with a heavy branch, striking her with it. She slapped the branch away with her other hand. It slipped from his grasp.

  Raub staggered forward, ducking under a branch to scrape her off him. She fell to the ground, the impact of the limb against her skull causing her vision to narrow to a small tunnel.

  She had to get up. She had to fight. She rolled to her side.

  He kicked her in the stomach. She groaned, writhing in the soil, tasting damp leaves, humus, and blood.

  “Can you feel it? It’s magnetite, Leebska. This whole area is charged. Your supply of energy is limitless here. I chose this place very carefully.”

  He went for another kick but she lunged up with her lower body, grabbing his outstretched leg between hers and pulling him off his feet.

  Then she was up again, panting. How much longer could she do this? Her apochondria might be full of energy, but her body was tired of this abuse. Her muscles ached. She spat a mouthful of blood on the ground.

  The circled each other, warily. The rain came down harder. The thunder was upon them now. Lightning kept flashing in her peripheral vision. There was a charge growing in the air all around her. She felt a tantalizing urge to pull the lightning itself to her.

  He was relentless. He attacked again and again. They became coated in leaves, mud, and red and blue blood. It became harder for him to grip her skin because it was slippery from rain and their mixed gore.

  She hit and jabbed him with sticks. She hurled a log at him.

  He picked her up by her jumpsuit and threw her.

  She swung around trees, plowing into him feet first. She swept his legs, his weight dropping him to the forest floor.

  He grabbed her neck and rammed her head into a tree, then stood over her as she lay dazed, blue blood mixing with the rain, dripping down from his face onto her as he panted.

  No.

  Not panting. He was gulping air, working himself up into that state she’d seen on the ship, in the hallway, against the boarding party. Against her in the VR game. He was turning purple.

  He was going to be even more dangerous now. How could she fight him like that?

  She scrambled back, crablike, and got to her feet, swaying.

  She called up her power. It was all she had left. Her hands glowed blue in the gloom. They crackled with fire and light.

  “It’s the vasdasz,” he called after her. “A secondary circulatory system of red blood, like yours.”

  “I’ll have to kill you,” she cried, sounding plaintive and weak. She attempted to sound stronger, angrier. “I don’t want to. Please don’t make me.”

  He moved toward her without a word.

  She stepped back, stumbling over the uneven ground. She reached out and touched a tree to stop from falling. It instantly burst into flame. She backed away, aghast.

  “High-oxygen atmosphere. It doesn’t take much to start a fire under these conditions. Just a spark. Soon the entire forest will burn. You will have burned it all.”

  “No, I—”

  But he was right. The flame spread quickly, despite the rain, leaping from tree to tree. It didn’t seem to matter that everything was soaked. It went up like dry tinder.

  She was appalled. She’d forgotten about the oxygen for just a moment. How many of the creatures she’d seen in the woods would die because of her? How big was her body count already?

  She tottered away from the searing heat, into the open with Raub stalking her, taking his time, a black shadow against the blazing light of the burning forest.

  “Help me!” she screamed, praying that someone inside the compound was listening. “I don’t want to do this!”

  A raucous, high-pitched screech sounded overhead.

  She darted a look up. The mammoth spider loomed above them, moving toward the flames, its massive head split vertically in a deafening shriek. It went on and on over the sound of the blaze. Darcy wanted to cover her ears but she couldn’t. She had to fight.

  Raub glanced up but was undaunted. He took another step toward her. His face was a maniacal mask of joy in the flickering light.

  Behind him, she saw movement—dark shapes pouring through the gap in the trees that marked the opening of a trail like the one she’d been following several days previous. She darted back a few steps, the source of her fear shifting to this new threat. “Oh, shit!”

  Raub huffed. He thought it was a misdirection.

  A giant black leg stabbed the ground ten feet from where Darcy stood. The screaming pierced her eardrums. Her head felt like it had been plunged underwater. Her ears seemed full, but th
ey continued to ring with the bellows of the massive arachnid.

  She was bound to the spot, unsure of where to run. There was a wall at her back. An inferno before her. A towering beast overhead. And still Raub strode straight at her.

  He jerked his head to one side as though scenting the air and finally caught sight of the horde of spiders just as they came even with him. Their bodies were the size of water bottles, leg spans the width of frying pans. There were thousands of them, swarming out of the trees in a river of hairy legs and mirrorlike, globe-shaped eyes.

  Then they were on him, crawling up his legs faster than he could react. He roared and batted at them fruitlessly. That was a mistake. They dug their fangs into him, either to hold on or in self-defense—she wasn’t sure.

  As they reached Darcy, she flamed to life, her entire body glowing blue. Lightning struck just a few feet away. She felt it almost like an extension of herself and she…wanted it, needed it. It called to her. The tail end of it arced toward her. She tingled and buzzed as she absorbed some of the discharge.

  It felt amazing. She wanted more. As that thought percolated into her conscious mind she felt terrified. What was she doing? What happened if you overcharged a battery? Would she explode?

  The spiders parted into two streams around her, avoiding even the pool of pale blue light on the ground surrounding her. She turned and saw the arachnids converging behind her, scrambling up the gargantuan spider’s leg. All they wanted was safety from the fire.

  Raub continued to howl. Now on his hands and knees, he seemed to be enduring the punishment as the spiders raced over him. He was simply an obstacle in their way.

  The last of the spiders shimmied up and away to safety. The immense leg lifted, and the ground shook as the queen moved away from the blaze with her drones safely riding on her back.

  Darcy was burning up, but it wasn’t just the heat from the forest fire. It was inside her. She tried to call her energy back down to her core, but she couldn’t. She’d drawn in too much. She had to bleed some of it off before she could get it under control.

  Raub stood and staggered toward her like a drunk, his face swollen with hideous contorted lumps. All over his body, massive welts rose under the skin where the drone spiders had pumped poison into him. She wondered if he could survive that. It might slow him down. Maybe it was a perfect opportunity to run. The delay could give her time to find a way into the mining compound.

  Behind him the forest was a conflagration as far as the eye could see. Were Selpis, Nembrotha and Tesserae71 safe? Were they still inside the tern, waiting for Raub to come back? Were they friends or enemies? Should she even care about their well-being?

  She backed up to the wall and edged sideways, keeping her eye on Raub.

  “You will never get away from me, gildrut. I will haunt you like a bad stink that you can’t get out of your nose.” Raub’s voice sounded strangled. He barked a choking laugh.

  “It’s over!” she shouted at him.

  “Never.”

  He charged.

  43

  Darcy couldn’t do it anymore.

  There was no one to help her. No one to stop him but her.

  She trembled. Her body knew what to do even if her mind didn’t. She reached out for the energy in the air. It was fizzing in her brain, funneling into her whether she wanted it or not.

  Her arms stretched out over her head as the lightning coalesced above her, through her. She screamed like a wild animal as she lowered her arms, aimed at Raub, and redirected the energy at him.

  White-blue plasma shot from her hands.

  His face lit up from the burst of electricity, his eyes bulging in their sockets, nostrils flaring, mouth dropping open in a shout she never heard.

  It struck him with a force that blew him back nearly to the tree line.

  And then she was falling. She writhed on the ground, clutching her hands to her chest. The pain went beyond anything she had ever experienced. Her vision whited out. She thought she might be dying.

  She couldn’t tell how long she lay there, wracked with unbelievable pain. She held up her hands once and saw in the firelight that they were shriveled, black, and smoking. She’d disfigured herself, possibly killed herself, to be free of him.

  Eventually she struggled to her feet. She had to know, had to be sure.

  She couldn’t walk in a straight line. She stumbled toward him, spent with pain and anguish, though she was already pulling more energy from the ground beneath her.

  Raub’s body was steaming. His mane smoldered. There was a black hole in his chest. His eyes stared blankly at the dark sky, drops of rain pooling in them like tears.

  It didn’t seem real. Could she have done this, killed someone on purpose, just a girl from Ohio?

  Falling to her knees, she put her ear to what was left of his chest. She heard nothing but the rain and the roar of the fire, and even that seemed far away.

  She lingered, not really believing it was over, until the heat from the fire seeped into her, making her realize she was in danger. She stood and started to turn, then noticed something sliding out of a pocket on the thigh of Raub’s jumpsuit.

  Two things, actually. She prodded the pocket with her foot. A stake slid out, covered in mud and blue blood. So did a small, shiny piece of tech. It had a blinking red light. She scooped it up with the gnarled remains of one hand. It no longer hurt. It was just a dead thing at the end of her arm. She couldn’t feel the device at all and nearly dropped it. She handled it carefully, using her claw-shaped hands like scoops and hooks, and slid it into one of her own pockets to worry about later.

  She backed away and began to walk along the wall. It was cooler here. The rain felt soothing. She didn’t mind it pattering on her.

  She walked around the perimeter, leaving the fire at her back, until she couldn’t walk anymore. Then she curled up, made herself as small as possible, and blacked out.

  44

  Darcy woke with the twin suns baking her alive. She could see both of them now, the smaller star was just to one side of the larger one, when she peeped through her lashes. The eclipse was over.

  Her skin pigmentation had already responded to the exposure. The uncovered skin was somewhat darker, but dry, ashy, and reddened.

  Thirst was paramount. Her head throbbed and her heart was palpitating. She was probably suffering from sunstroke.

  Her hands were still charred but a little plumper now. Raw flesh was visible between deep cracks on the surface, weeping a thick, clear fluid despite the heat and her thirst. It was difficult to look at them, and she still couldn’t move them. The pain had returned to such a degree that her eyes pricked, but no tears came. She wondered how she’d slept through that kind of discomfort. The nerves under the skin must have been regenerating.

  So it seemed her hands would heal. She wondered whether they would be fully restored or if she would be impaired, perhaps limited for life. It hardly seemed to matter. She wouldn’t live long enough to see them fully healed unless she could get into the compound. She had no idea how to safely forage for food without poisoning herself, and the thought of catching and eating insects was repugnant.

  She licked her lips with a dry tongue—they were blistered and flaking from her ordeal. There was nothing to drink or eat. She’d left her flask and the pack at the edge of the forest. They would have burned.

  Getting to her feet was difficult without her hands to brace herself. She rose slowly, leaning against the wall for support despite the scorching heat. A wave of nausea and dizziness swept over her. She swayed in place for a few minutes, then set off again to walk the perimeter, hoping to find a gate nearby.

  She knew she should go look for a water source, but the compound was right here, if they’d only let her in. Or maybe if she could hold on for a day or two, the forest would cool enough for her to retrace her steps toward the stream she’d seen before, because that was the only sure source of water she knew of. She wanted to lie down in the stream until all
the pain and heat washed away.

  The forest, at least what she could see of it now, had stopped burning. All that remained were thick blackened sticks poking up into the sky. The smell of wood smoke and soot lingered, ash floating like snowflakes on the breeze. It was eerily quiet without the background cacophony of insect noises.

  Her body felt weak. It was pulling in energy in a steady stream, but that energy was being funneled into her worst injuries, and no amount of energy could make up for the fact that she was dangerously dehydrated.

  She panted with the effort of plodding around the wall. Her muscles were stiff, her body felt heavy and unstable, and her calves and feet cramped painfully. She kept on until night fell, but no gate was to be found. She gave up and eased down to the hard-packed earth to sleep again, no longer caring if she ever woke.

  “Darcy?” Someone jostled her shoulder gently. “Darcy Eberhardt?”

  She tried to answer but couldn’t. Her tongue was swollen and filled her mouth. Her lips pulled tight against her teeth and were slightly parted. Something was very wrong. Light blazed against her closed eyes. It was too bright. She couldn’t open them.

  Someone lifted her and carried her a short distance, then laid her down on something cool and hard. She started to shake like she was hypothermic.

  A set of hands smeared something cold and wet all over her body, and someone else dribbled water into her mouth, wetting her sandpapery tongue. She swallowed gratefully, her head coming up to try to find more, to gulp greedily, but a voice admonished her to take it slowly or she’d be sick, so she accepted the drops that were offered until she fell asleep again.

  When she woke for the second time she felt significantly improved. She opened her eyes and recognized instantly where she was: inside the tern. She gasped and tried to sit up, adrenaline seizing her heart painfully, though nearly every part of her hurt.