Reaping Day: Book Three of the Harvesters Series Read online

  The speakers crackled.

  “Nice of you to invite us along,” came Haldin’s voice.

  “Hey, you know how it is,” Jarek said. “You step out for a quick run to Japan thinking no one’s even gonna notice and then all of a sudden you’ve got no net coverage, and you can’t turn back ’cause a wise old raknoth master—who coincidentally happens to be acting pretty freaking unwisely—has his life hanging in the balance. You know, that old chestnut.”

  “Uh-huh,” Haldin said.

  “Speaking of which, how did you guys—”

  The dark purple hull of the Enochians’ raknoth ship raced by overhead with a roar of rushing air. It gained at least a hundred yards’ lead in the space of seconds before slowing to match their pace. The odd material of its hull seemed to eat the sun and then give it back as a fluid glow rather than a gleam or a shine.

  “This ship is pretty fast,” Haldin said. “We left HQ two hours ago.”

  Jarek cocked his head in a not bad expression.

  “I’m assuming you didn’t come out here for a race,” Rachel said.

  “Not exactly.”

  Jarek looked wary. “Alaric didn’t happen to send you out here to throw us in irons, did he?”

  “He did express pretty explicitly that we should bring back you, uh …”

  “Chicken-chasing fools,” came Johnny’s voice.

  “Right,” Haldin said. “That. But they decided we might as well try to grab Kole too while we’re at it.”

  Huh. Maybe—just maybe—this whole expedition might not end up being the worst decision ever.

  “Huh,” Jarek said. “Well rock on, then, team.”

  There was a pregnant silence, the kind that sat heavy in Rachel’s stomach for some instinctive reason she couldn’t quite place.

  “There’s something else,” Haldin said. “New intel.”

  Rachel traded an uncertain look with Jarek. “What is it?”

  “Michael had another episode—a mild one, but he caught flashes of some kind of attack, maybe another furor. He didn’t recognize the place, but Alton thought it sounded like it could’ve been Japan, from what Michael told us.”

  “What?” Rachel heard herself say.

  “What?” Lietha echoed from the cockpit doorway, eyes blazing scarlet fury. “The attack has already begun?”

  “We’re not sure what’s happening,” Hal said, “but—”

  “You must fly faster!” Lietha spat, and the floor hissed and smoked where the stuff landed.

  “Dude!” Jarek said. “Not cool. We’re flying as fast as we can.”

  Lietha spun and punched a hole straight through the cockpit bulwark. “Cursed void!”

  “Motherfucker!” Jarek cried. “You wanna get your pal under control back there, Stumpy?”

  Lietha’s skin was shifting to mint green scales as he rounded on Jarek. “You think to—”

  Drogan grabbed Lietha and dragged him, biting and gnashing, into the back cabin. There was a loud crash and then Drogan’s low growl of, “Control yourself.”

  The ruckus calmed.

  “This is why we can’t have nice things,” Jarek muttered.

  “Is Michael …” Rachel started to ask toward the console. Then it dawned on her.

  New intel. Interpreted by Alton. Out here where net coverage was largely nonexistent.

  “When did Michael see all this?”

  “Twenty minutes ago,” came Michael’s voice, “give or take. And I’m fine.”

  The sound of Michael’s voice—of Michael’s voice on the local broadcast, more specifically—made her feel like she’d just fallen out of the moving aircraft.

  “You brought him with you?!” she cried.

  “I’m not luggage, Rache. Or an invalid, despite what everyone seems to think.”

  “I know that, Spongehead. But you’re also sleeping eighteen hours a day and having routine seizures. You don’t belong in the middle of a fight right now.”

  “With any luck, there won’t be a fight,” Haldin said. “Assuming it’s another furor, we’ll stabilize the situation in Katashina and get Zar’Kole’s people out safe. Then, if we can, we should get word about all this to Al’Brandt in the Himalayas. We haven’t been able to reach them by comm. Having the one guy who seems to be able to see what the rakul are up to might help us do those things and get everyone back and ready to fight before they find us.”

  “Or home base,” Jarek said.

  “Right,” Haldin said. “Which is why we need to move fast.”

  “Well excuse me if my primitive subsonic flying machine isn’t up to your standards,” Jarek said.

  “Looks like we’re almost there anyway,” Haldin said.

  Well wasn’t that all just tidy and swell, then? Never mind that they’d dragged Michael out here like a defenseless rakul compass.

  Jesus, when was life ever going to be simple again? Or safe? Hell, she’d settle for just getting back to an average of non-life-threatening.

  Something told her that wasn’t going to be happening anytime soon, though.

  As they closed on Katashina, Jarek caught the Enochians up to speed on Kole’s bold plan for martyrdom, taking particular care not to say anything too insulting about the decisions of Lietha’s Zar. Judging by the fact that the steady growling from the back cabin never got above a low rumble, he must have succeeded.

  They were flying high over Tokyo and Jarek was leading a discussion on how they might best accomplish a snatch and grab with a stubborn super-powered raknoth when they first noticed the dark spot on the northwestern horizon.

  Something about the spot made Rachel immediately uneasy. They were already too late. She was suddenly sure of it.

  “No …” Lietha hissed from the doorway. He was gaping at the steadily approaching dark spot ahead. “It cannot be.”

  “Oh dear,” Al said quietly. He zoomed the view on the cockpit display, and the cause of Lietha’s consternation became clear.

  The wafting columns of darkness were unmistakable.

  Katashina was burning.

  Nine

  Jarek had seen a lot of bad shit in his life. Hell, he’d made some pretty grisly displays with his own two hands. When they crested the last ridge and stared down into the wide ravine of Katashina, though, even he wasn’t ready for the magnitude of the violence that had taken the sprawling village.

  On the flight in, the long-abandoned ruins of Tokyo proper had been peaceful and quiet. The sight of the smoke that had filled up more and more of the skyline as they’d reached the northwestern edge of the city and skirted over low mountains had planted the seeds of dread.

  Now, crawling slowly over the carnage, those seeds blossomed into much more. Shock. Revulsion. Anger.

  He wanted to cover Rachel’s eyes and tell her not to look, but he couldn’t seem to look away or move, and the sounds of her raspy breaths beside him told him it was already too late anyway.

  Some buildings were already burnt to ashes, but several of the bigger ones were still in their death throes, spewing their contribution to the thick plumes of smoke they’d spotted from a distance. The property destruction was the least shocking feature of the scene, though.

  Dozens upon dozens of bodies littered the streets between the smoking shells of the village buildings, twisted together in a sick collage that told of brutal violence and reckless abandon. The disturbingly meaty smell on the air made him think plenty more must have been caught in the burning buildings as well. Most disturbing of all, though, were the smaller bodies tangled in the bloody mess. Children …

  A wave of nausea hit him, harsh acid rising in his throat.

  “Jesus Christ,” Rachel whispered.

  Jarek reached over to grab her arm for support, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  Thankfully, he had Al to set the ship down. He knew better than to think Al wouldn’t be disturbed by the sight below, but his companions “hands” would still be far steadier than Jarek’s right now.

&nb
sp; Al guided the ship past the horrible scene and into the low mountains where Kole had built his isolated home. They touched down to a soft landing a little ways from the perimeter of Kole’s estate.

  Like much of the village below, the house was in the late stages of its transition to burning embers.

  The groan-clack of the ship’s boarding ramp beginning to descend snapped Jarek out of dark thoughts and back to the moment. He turned in time to see Lietha slide through the crack of the still-descending ramp and take off running.

  “Hey, wait!” he called, but it was only half-hearted.

  Drogan held his gaze for a long moment, his expression unreadable, and turned to follow Lietha down the ramp at a more controlled pace.

  Jarek said nothing. There was no danger here anyway. He was fairly certain of that. They’d seen it all from above, and shocked or not, Al would’ve been scanning to spot anything they’d missed. Whatever had happened here, they’d missed it.

  They were too late.

  He stood and numbly made for the back of the ship, stopping on the way to grab his sword and wait for Rachel. She stopped beside him, leaning heavily on her staff.

  He wanted to pull her to him, to hold her so tightly that her physical presence would force every single thought from his mind, but something stopped him. Maybe it was the look in her eyes.

  “You don’t need to see this, if you wanna stay on the ship,” he said.

  She set her jaw and walked down the ramp, staff clunking heavily with each step. He braced his stomach and followed.

  The Enochians were gathering outside of their own ship, most of them looking green at the gills. Michael looked the worst of all, his revulsion at the scene behind them only stacking onto the sickly look he’d been cultivating since the messenger nest had burst.

  Rachel went to give her brother a somber hug, spoke a few quiet words with him, then told him to stay put while they went to have a look.

  By unspoken agreement, Hal, Johnny, Elise, and Alton peeled off to join Rachel and Jarek while the rest of the Enochians hung back to watch the ships with Michael.

  Jarek took deliberate care to place himself between Rachel and Alton as they trekked along the path to Kole’s house.

  “You guys sense anything?” he asked.

  “No survivors,” Alton said. “Not here, at least.” He took three heavy sniffs of the air. “And Kul’Gada has been through here.”

  Ahead, an awful wail split the smoky afternoon sky. Lietha, he could only assume.

  “Yeah,” Jarek said quietly. “I kind of got that impression.”

  They reached Kole’s house and passed under the stone archway to find Lietha staring numbly up at the smoldering wreckage of his home. Ahead, Drogan was prowling around the perimeter of the rubble, sniffing here and there for some scent.

  “Where are they?” Elise asked quietly.

  Across the courtyard, Drogan snapped around and pointed. “Kul’Gada came here from the west.”

  Lietha stirred from his stupor. “Our ship.” He straightened, his voice more urgent this time. “The ship!”

  With that, Lietha sprung into a wild sprint and leapt over the west perimeter wall with no signs of stopping on the other side.

  “Lietha!” Drogan called.

  No answer.

  “Someone really needs to have a teamwork talk with that guy,” Jarek muttered.

  “We should follow,” Drogan said. “Zar’Kole would have been using his ship’s messengers to speak with Kul’Gada before his arrival. Perhaps he is still there with his clan.”

  It was clear enough that Drogan didn’t really believe they were about to find Kole and crew alive and well, but no one argued. They headed back to the ships, swapped Michael over to fly with Jarek and Rachel, and headed west, flying low and slow enough for their telepaths to sweep for Lietha. It turned out they didn’t need telepathic senses to find the raknoth.

  “There, sir,” Al said only a couple miles later, zooming the display.

  Lietha had somehow already managed to make it to the top of what the map identified as Mount Hotaka. And he wasn’t alone.

  “Cursed void,” Drogan said behind them, his voice uncharacteristically soft.

  A raknoth ship, similar to the Enochians’ but smaller, had come to a rough landing near the crest of the mountain. Four green raknoth bodies scattered the trail between the ship and the peak, most of them in multiple pieces. And at the peak was a fifth body, the one Lietha stood over now.

  Drogan dropped the ramp and leapt out of the ship before they’d landed. Once Al had set them down, Jarek and Rachel followed along with Michael between them.

  Outside, Lietha had fallen to his knees and was huddled over the still form of Zar’Kole. Jarek knew it was Kole only by the kimono he wore, the same one he’d been wearing when he’d last seen the Zar. It was the only thing he could be recognized by.

  The raknoth’s head had been hacked clear of his shoulders and crushed into an indiscernible pile of gore. Dark raknoth blood stained the grass all around it.

  As they watched, Lietha gathered Kole’s body up in his arms and tilted his head back to bellow a mournful shriek at the sky. Drogan fell in behind Lietha and rested his hands on the raknoth’s shoulders in support, or maybe restraint.

  Even the most hate-filled Resistance soldier might have felt a stirring of sympathy at the sight.

  Rachel turned away.

  When Jarek finally tore his eyes away from Kole and down the trail, the sight of the other four dead raknoth was no less gruesome. One had been cleanly beheaded. Two lay with their heads caved in but still attached. In addition to severe head trauma, the last raknoth had been ripped clean in two, straight through the torso.

  The sight sent a shudder through Jarek, for more reasons than one.

  He was intimately aware just how hard it was to hack through raknoth hide, and they were no slouches on the battlefield. Something that could have ripped five of them apart like this … that wasn’t a creature he wanted to meet in a dark alley—or at all, really.

  He looked back at Kole’s body and clenched his fists, anger and fear beginning to bleed through the raw shock.

  Why the hell had Kole insisted on staying here when he knew that thing was coming for him? He’d said himself he had little hope of a peaceful resolution. And now they’d lost what had probably been their most powerful ally outside of Krogoth’s clan.

  The crazy old bastard.

  Jarek didn’t realize just how tightly he was wound until Rachel put a hand on his arm.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  She looked less than convinced but didn’t make a point of saying so as the Enochians slowly trickled over to join them near Kole’s body.

  For a while, no one spoke. The sun beat down on them, the wind buffeted at their clothes and hair, and they stared at the remnants of brutal violence, lost in their own thoughts.

  Jarek made the mistake of looking back the way they’d come, and the plumes of drifting smoke hit him like a bag of bricks with the reminder of just how many people they’d been too late to even try to save.

  “What the hell are we dealing with here?” he asked, not really to anyone in particular. “Was it really just one of them that did all this?”

  “I was just wondering that myself,” Haldin said, still staring at the four raknoth who’d been crushed or torn to pieces.

  “The rakul are warriors without equal on the battlefield,” Drogan said. “You should understand that by now.”

  “Yeah,” Jarek said. “Just a bit different seeing the aftermath with your own eyes.”

  “You can see why so many of our kind have been unwilling to believe the rakul were coming,” Alton said. “Easier to simply deny such horror.”

  Elise waved a hand at the dead raknoth and back toward Katashina, looking a few shades too pale. “What do we do against … against all of this?”

  Franco was reaching to put both hands on his daughter’s
shoulders when a horrible throaty voice startled them all.

  “We kill the Masters. Cowardly tyrants.” Lietha stood and shoved off Drogan’s touch. “We tear the rakul to pieces until their cold, shriveled bodies lay bared and we crush them into oblivion. We kill them all!” The last words were roared more than spoken, and with that, Lietha stalked off toward his fallen clan members.

  Jarek couldn’t say he disagreed with the general principle of the statement, but it was kind of hard to forget they were talking about a group of twelve immortals who’d never been defeated. Well, except for one of them, once, by one Zar’Gada—the same Gada who’d promptly taken his earned rank as Kul and just so happened to be the first on the scene to destroy them right now.

  One victor over god knew how many thousands of years, and apparently even that son of a bitch hadn’t thought it a good idea to press on. Or maybe that was just what power-hungry raknoth dreamed about—or fantasized, seeing as they didn’t really sleep—over the millennia: growing up big and strong so they could stick it to a Kul and take his place.

  Either way, the known history of rakul slaying wasn’t exactly an encouraging one.

  “So what next, then?” Rachel asked once Lietha was over mourning his kin.

  No one was eager to answer that question.

  All this destruction rained down by a single rakul. And eleven more out there … What could they do about that? The first pangs of true fear stirred in Jarek’s chest.

  What if there was nothing they could do about it? What if the rakul were just too strong—worlds out of their league?

  “Ah, c’mon guys,” Johnny finally said. “We’re not dead yet. Let’s say—hypothetically, of course—we’re all feeling good and fucked right now …”

  “Speak for yourself, fire-crotch,” Jarek said.

  He wasn’t in any manner of joking mood—not by a long shot. But faking a cavalier tone for the others was better than giving in to the part of him that wanted to simply sit down and stop. Give up. Do nothing.

  Johnny pointed appreciatively at Jarek. “There we go! Not your finest work, but I like the spirit.” He clapped Haldin on the shoulder, earning himself a somber stare, then continued on, unperturbed. “Look, we have three options.” He started ticking fingers. “We can all pile into our ship and hightail it the fuck off this planet—not very cool. We can sit here dreading these faceless horrors that eat raknoth for breakfast until they come around to eat us too—not very smart. Or, we can get our shit together and make sure that, if we die, we at least do it right. Way cooler. Now who’s with me?”