The Druid Gene (26 page)

I
t was about midday
, but the sky had been growing steadily darker instead of lighter for hours as the rainfall grew more intense. Faint flashes of light penetrated into the dank copse. Thunder rolled seconds later, rumbling in Darcy’s chest wall.

She could sense Raub. He was near.

Panic rose in her throat and she bolted forward, ignoring everything except putting one foot in front of the other. She saw snatches of pale, reflected light indicating something solid beyond the trees. It had to be the wall around the compound.

The sense of Raub’s proximity grew stronger. He had to be right behind her. Her heart whomped against her rib cage and she picked up more speed.

She’d made it. Now she just had to find a way into the belastoise compound before he caught her. She waded through the thick undergrowth at the tree line, barely registering the branches holding her back in her rush to get out, to get free of the forest and to sanctuary. Lightning flashed nearby, searing her retinas.

Her eyes adjusted to the difference in ambient light. She stopped in her tracks. Her stomach lurched. Raub stood in the clearing between her and a solid wall in the pouring rain.

He was waiting for her. He leaned forward slightly, his expression wolfish. Despite the rain, dark blue wounds stained his jumpsuit on his shoulder and one calf.

Her traps had worked, but they hadn’t stopped him.

Her nostrils flared. She shook her head.
Dammit.

She took out her flask, drank deeply, then let it fall to the ground along with her pack. Energy crackled under her skin. Lightning flashed over the compound, and as the sound of thunder reached her, she felt a wave of energy roll over her. The lightning was calling to her.

Raub strolled forward, a predatory smile slowly quirking his lips.

She tensed and looked around, taking in all the details she could about the lay of the land. She considered darting back into the trees and using her camouflage ability to hide from him.

“I’ll find you, Leebska! I’ll always find you!” he shouted above the rain, as though he could hear her thoughts. Could he? Or had he guessed based on whatever bleak and desperate expression had passed over her face?

He broke into a run, barreling straight for her.

She put herself in a fighting stance, weighing her options as she watched his long stride lengthening. His intent seemed to be to slam her bodily into the massive tree behind her. He didn’t slow, and in the last split second she decided to try to use that against him.

She sidestepped and swooped down to grab his leg to pitch him off-balance and hopefully throw him, but even as she moved he was seizing her hair and twisting. She swung around violently in his wake and they fell into the scrub in a tangle of limbs and branches.

She was arched on her back with something hard and sharp projecting up into her shoulder blade. The air had been knocked out of her. She struggled to breathe and to right herself.

He recovered faster and rolled on top of her, pressing her down into the brush painfully, a handful of her hair savagely clutched in his hand. One of her arms was pinned beneath her and his weight made it impossible to get it loose.

If she didn’t get out from under him she was as good as dead.

It couldn’t be over this soon.

She tried to use her free hand to claw at his eyes. She had to do some damage. She had to break free.

“You make it too easy,” he growled, grasping her flailing hand and pressing it brutally into a knobby tree root.

She head butted him so hard she saw stars.

He laughed.

She bucked under him with everything she had, pushing him up with her hips, and twisting under him until she could hook and sweep his leg. Once she had wriggled partway from beneath him she viciously stabbed one foot into his groin.

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 they 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.