Michael thought about it and shook his head. “I can’t really put it into words. Just something about the … I don’t know, the feel of the presence or something. It’s hard to explain. But something’s telling me it was Gada out there, and that he was looking specifically for me.” He swallowed. “And that he’s really pissed.”
That much, at least, made sense.
They’d nearly taken Gada down when he’d arrived on Earth ahead of his brethren. Had taken him down, actually. The vicious bastard had only gotten away because he’d run for it while they’d been busy ending his last-minute reinforcement, Kul’Armin.
Regardless of the extensive devastation that fighting had wreaked on Earth’s combined human and raknoth forces, Jarek couldn’t imagine the situation had earned Gada any points with his elder Kuls.
Plus, Gada had also realized his influence over Michael when they’d confronted him in the Himalayas.
The pieces all fit. The question was whether there was anything to be done about it.
“We beat him once, Mikey. We’ll do it again.”
They felt like empty words, and Michael didn’t look overly convinced by them, but it was all he could think to say.
“We just need to find our people,” he added. “Once we’ve regrouped …”
He wasn’t exactly sure how to finish that statement without more empty words.
Michael didn’t seem to expect him to.
“Just promise me something,” Michael said after another lengthy silence.
Jarek met his eyes, listening.
“If something goes wrong,” Michael said slowly. “If things get … out of hand. Promise me you’ll stop me if it means saving the group. Promise I won’t have to live with anyone’s lives on my conscience.”
Jarek hesitated, jaw tight.
Michael’s eyes were imploring. “Jarek.”
He wouldn’t be able to keep that kind of promise if it came down to it. He was sure of it.
Saying the words, on the other hand …
“I promise, Mikey.”
Michael searched his face, weighing his words, and finally nodded and settled back into the recliner.
Jarek stayed awake for a long while after Michael had fallen back asleep, in part because he wanted to make sure Michael wouldn’t slip straight back into zombie sabotage mode, but also because sleep hardly seemed an option with all the questions and half-formed plans racing through his mind.
There was no getting around it, it wasn’t going to be smooth sailing for the next few days. Maybe not after that, either. Still, Jarek had meant what he’d said to Michael about making this work.
Until the rakul themselves came crashing down on their heads, Jarek wasn’t about to let anyone tell him he couldn’t take it upon himself to keep Michael safe.
But what if this wasn’t just a one-way issue for them to take precautions against?
He didn’t want to think it, but there it was, staring him in the face as he sat against the bulkhead, wondering the worst.
What if it was only a matter of time before the rakul tracked Michael straight to them?
9
When Rachel woke, it was to light jostling and a sweeping wind that made the warmth of her pillow all the more alluring by contrast. She wrapped her arms tight around herself and nestled into the warmth, wanting nothing more than to enjoy it for a few moments longer.
Then she remembered.
Kul’Shimo. Kul’Ahgo.
The tunnel.
She snapped her eyes open, looking frantically around, half-expecting to find Kul’Ahgo soaring down on her.
All she found was Lea’s concerned face hovering over hers. Her pillow, she realized, was Lea’s leg.
Rachel tried to sit up and groaned. “What happened?”
“What happened,” came Johnny’s voice from the direction of her feet, “is that you kicked rakul-league ass back there.”
Rachel looked around and saw they were still in the back of the Humvee, with her strewn across the back seat, head on Lea’s lap, feet on Johnny’s. Drogan, back in his sandy-haired human guise, sat on the floor against the tailgate.
Johnny gave her a grin and patted her leg. “I’m not even sure Hal could have pulled that shit off. Well played, lady.”
“The tunnel—”
“Came down like a charm,” Johnny said.
“And by ‘like a charm,’ he means ‘almost killed us all,’” Lea said. Then, realizing what she’d just said, she quickly added, “Not that—I mean, it was amazing work, Rachel. You definitely saved our lives back there.”
“She most certainly did,” Nelken called from up front, leaning back long enough to give Rachel a somber nod. “It’s good to have you back, Cross.”
“Yeah, always a fun time,” Rachel said, then she frowned and turned back to the others. “What about Kul’Ahgo?”
Johnny pursed his lips and looked expectantly at Drogan.
“I am hesitant to simply assume Kul’Ahgo perished in your collapse,” Drogan said. “But,” he added with the faintest traces of a satisfied smile, “if he did survive, he will likely require extensive excavation, at the very least.”
Rachel blew out a breath and laid her head back on Lea’s leg. “Well, that’s something then.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe he followed us into that tunnel. All he had to do was wait for us on the other side. We would’ve been fucked.”
Drogan tilted his head in acknowledgment. “Too long have the rakul lived in a position of utter dominance. They have forgotten what it is to fear death. It is perhaps our greatest advantage in this fight.”
Huge advantage. Clearly.
She reached to scratch an itch on her nose and realized then that her scraped palm was miraculously cleaned and healed, just like new. Which was weird. Unless …
She looked at Drogan. “Did you feed on me?”
He shook his head. “I only tended to your wound.”
“And then we skipped your turn and he fed on me,” Johnny said. “Something about not wanting to weaken you,” he added, with air quotes. Then, at a mumble, “We’ll just weaken ol’ Captain Flame Head instead.”
“It was but a taste,” Drogan grumbled.
Lea’s hand came to rest on the top of Rachel’s head, warm and gentle. “You should get some more rest for now, Rache. I can’t imagine how much you need it after all that. We’re safe for now.”
Safe.
Rachel was pretty sure that was an ambitious choice of words. But Lea’s invitation to rest called to her like siren song all the same. She felt hollow, her body little more than an aching husk after having played conduit to what she was certain had been more energy than she’d ever channeled before.
Just a little nap, maybe. Then she could figure out everything else. Where they were headed next. How they were going to find—
Panic trilled through her chest as she had a horrible realization. “The others. Hal. Elise.”
“It’s okay,” Lea said. “The rest of the Enochians are all in the convoy ahead of us.”
Rachel sat up, turning her confused look to Johnny. “Where’s the ship?”
Johnny’s expression had soured. “Well, we grabbed our stuff and turned off the cloak. And then Brandt took it to lead any would-be pursuit on a bit of a detour while we fled the scene.”
If Johnny’s expression was sour, Drogan’s was pure lemons.
“I should have accompanied him, at the very least.”
The tailgate, Rachel noticed, was dented where the raknoth gripped it.
“We’ve been over this,” Lea said. “We need you here in case they find us anyway, and it didn’t make sense to send more than one with the ship.”
“Drogan volunteered to be our decoy rabbit first,” Johnny said to Rachel. “And quite bravely, I might add. But Brandt pointed out that he’s faster if it comes to running on foot and that …” Johnny’s gaze dropped to the floor, suddenly somber. “And that he’s already lost his clan anyways, and that D
rogan should stay to protect his people while he still can.”
Rachel looked to Drogan for any further thoughts, but the raknoth just stared sullenly at the wheel well opposite him.
“Right,” Rachel said slowly, unsure whether it was wise to even try to reassure the clearly surly raknoth. “Wait, how long have I been out? Where are we?”
“About five hours,” Lea said, consulting her comm.
“And about one hour west of that Columbus place,” Johnny added.
“What?!” Rachel was halfway to her feet almost before she knew it. “Stop!” she called at the driver—Williams, was it? “Stop the car, Williams!”
Williams looked to Nelken, who spoke a command into his comm and nodded to the driver.
Rachel mantled the side of the Humvee and hit the grassy shoulder of the highway just as the vehicle crawled to a halt. Voices followed after her, surprised and concerned, but she barely registered what they said—could barely connect a single thought through the boiling pit of apprehension in her core.
Columbus.
That was all the further she’d made it with her instructions to Jarek. 70 West to Colombus.
Assuming he even managed to find her message. Or that the enchantment had even worked. Or that—
Someone laid a hand on her shoulder. Lea.
“What is it, Rache?”
Too much. That’s what it was. Too much for her to even formulate into words right now, apparently.
“Michael?” Lea asked. “Jarek?”
Rachel nodded, cursing the growing ache in her throat.
Pittsburgh was supposed to have been the solution to their problems—the pivotal point where they were all going to rally and figure out how to make their stand together. And now …
They hadn’t even made it to their allies’ door before the rakul had blown that plan wide open. And now they were on the run with nowhere to go, no hope of finding their people.
No hope of finding Michael and Jarek.
“We have to go back,” she said quietly.
Lea looked at her like she knew she had to tell Rachel no but couldn’t quite bring herself to.
The soft thunk of a car door closing drew their attention to Nelken, shuffling over by cane—no doubt to do the job Lea couldn’t.
“You’re leaving them behind,” Rachel said as he drew up to them.
Nelken’s face was a mask of careful control. “We’re in an impossible position here, Rachel.”
“Which is bullshit for you’re leaving them behind.”
Nelken let out a sigh and tapped the earth with his cane, thinking before he spoke again. “What would happen if we tried to stay where they might find us back in Pittsburgh?” he finally asked.
Rachel clenched her fists and dropped his gaze, refusing to give him the answer they both knew was true.
The rakul would come for them in greater numbers than before, and they would all die.
“We could have gone looking for them,” Rachel said.
Nelken nodded his agreement. “And we still can. But we’ve got a good hundred men and women here looking to us to survive. Roaming aimlessly around the countryside isn’t the way to see that they do. If we want half a prayer of making it through this, they need walls to defend. We see to it that the people with us are secure, then we can see about finding the rest of them.”
Rachel wanted to argue—wanted to tell him that this was Jarek and Michael (and god knew how many more) they were talking about and that neither hell, high water, or the goddamned rakul should keep them from roaming the streets, screaming their names.
But that was crazy talk, and she knew it no matter how badly her heart wanted to deny it. Still, she needed something more.
So she turned to Lea. “You’re okay with this? With going to find a new hidey-hole when your mom could be walking into Pittsburgh looking for you?”
The hurt on Lea’s face made Rachel immediately regret her words, but Lea set her jaw and nodded. “Wandering around trying to find our people is only going to get more of them killed. And finding them isn’t going to do us any good anyway without a secure place to bring them. We just learned that lesson pretty clearly. This is the right move, no matter how badly you might want to think we’re giving up on the people we love.”
Rachel winced. “Lea, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” Lea said, though she refused to meet Rachel’s eyes as she did so.
Dammit. This wasn’t helping anything.
“Where are you going, then?” Rachel asked Nelken.
Nelken frowned back at the Humvee before answering. “Colorado, we’re thinking.”
Back in the Humvee, Johnny, who’d been surreptitiously hunkered down, perked up at Nelken’s attention.
“Are you guys talking about Cheyenne?” he called.
He said something to Drogan, who nodded, and then he hopped out and hurried over to join them.
“So we’re all in agreement then? Next stop Cheyenne Mountain?”
“We’re thinking on it,” Nelkin said, looking decidedly less excited about the fact than the Enochian did.
“What’s at Cheyenne Mountain?” Rachel asked.
“Only the coolest mountain bunker on Earth.” Johnny shook his head. “Sweet Alpha, I swear I learned more about your planet watching documentaries than you people learned living here.”
“Cheyenne was Johnny’s idea if you can’t tell,” Lea added, looking slightly less upset now, if not quite amused.
“Hey,” Johnny said, “you tell me a better place on this continent to batten down the hatches and get our shit together while Hal and Elise sort their stuff out.”
For a second, Rachel’s mind flashed to her home village of Unity, and to her and Michael’s dad, John. That had been a safe place in her mind, once upon a time. But she couldn’t even think about going there now, for the same reasons she hadn’t been able to when they’d first fled HQ.
The rakul would’ve rolled over Unity in the blink of an eye. She couldn’t risk leading them there.
What they needed was a real fortress. A place like this Cheyenne, apparently.
The look on Nelken’s face made it clear enough what he thought about hiding under a mountain waiting for a miracle, but Rachel swore she could see the moment the weight of his people’s safety settled back on his shoulders, pushing his skepticism down to the realm of irrelevance.
“I might not call it a good plan,” Nelken said, “but it’s the best one we’ve got.” He turned to Rachel. “Can you get behind that?”
She thought about Jarek and Michael out there fighting for survival—quite possibly fighting their way to Pittsburgh, expecting to find her. Pittsburgh, where, for all she knew, the rakul could be lying in wait.
The thought of walking away from that—of leaving them to wander aimlessly around at best or, at worst, to walk straight into a rakul trap …
She couldn’t stand it.
But she’d made a promise to the Enochians as well. A promise to keep them safe, no matter what, until they were able to take care of themselves and, if the universe decided to be generous for once, to take care of their persistent rakul problem as well.
On top of that, Nelken and Lea weren’t wrong about the wisdom of getting what people they could to safety before gallivanting off to scour untold amounts of countryside for a couple small groups that could be anywhere by now.
A couple days. Dammit all, it was a rough pill to swallow, but a couple days to get to Colorado, and then she could come back for Michael and Jarek when doing so would only mean her neck and not the entirety of the known surviving Resistance.
It would have to do. But she still couldn’t just leave without a trace.
“I need to leave a message for them,” she finally said.
Nelken traded a concerned look with Lea.
“We wanted to do the same thing, Rachel, but it’s not safe. If one of the rakul found it …”
“I’m not talking about leaving a hand-wr
itten note, here,” Rachel said. “I’ve got other methods. I already left one back at the station telling them to head west on I-70”—she winced—“for Colombus, which I apparently already missed.”
Nelken’s eyes had gone a bit wide. “You what?”
“It’s okay,” Rachel said quickly. “Only Jarek will be able to activate it.” She frowned down at her feet. “I think.”
It only then hit her that she was probably just as guilty as Nelken, if not more so, of leaving their allies high and dry. She’d only thought of Jarek and Michael. Should anyone else arrive in Pittsburgh looking to rendezvous, her glyphs would be of little to no use to them.
Part of her diligently reminded herself that it wasn’t like she’d exactly had time to consider contingencies and plan accordingly with Kul’Shimo scuttling after them.
The rest just felt worse than it already had.
“I didn’t really have time to think about it,” she added. “I just …” She shifted uneasily, looking back to the east. “It’s kind of crazy to even expect they’d ever manage to find it, but I just had to do something. I couldn’t …”
“I understand,” Nelken said. His gaze remained distant for a beat, his expression hesitant, then he seemed to come to some decision and focused on Rachel. “And if you’re sure it’s safe to leave another, I trust you.”
Nelken gave Johnny and Lea a meaningful look and turned to start limping his way back to the Humvee.
“Convoy’s back on the road in five minutes,” he called without looking back.
Rachel watched him go, an odd mix of worry, guilt, and gratitude swirling in her stomach. Then she scooped a rock up from the thick grass and scanned her surroundings.
Trees. Fields of wild grass. A crumbling wooden house in the distance. Her mind turned with thoughts of hiding spots and signs and secret messages.
“Drogan?” she called, her gaze settling on the line of trees that partially obscured the adjacent field. “I think I could use a hand making some stumps.”
10
It was by some combination of Jarek’s theatrics, Michael’s boy-scout-like innocence, Chambers’ wily charms, and maybe just a sprinkle of good fortune that their dysfunctional little platoon managed to reach Pittsburgh after three incident-free days and nights. Unless Mosen’s growing suspicion and the group’s growing unease were to be counted as incidents, that was.
Retribution: Book Four of the Harvesters Series Page 8
