The Druid Gene (27 page)

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.

D
arcy 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.

D
arcy 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.

* * *

“
D
arcy
?” 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.

“Hold still, foolish girl,” Nembrotha spluttered. “She’s awake!”

Darcy just stared at him, her mouth gaping.

Clattering steps and soft, padding feet sounded on the decking. Then Selpis and Tesserae71 were staring down at her. Selpis blinked frequently, her brow ridges coming together in that worried way of hers. Tesserae71’s antennae waved and his mandibles worked.

Darcy looked down at herself. Her jumpsuit was stretched all out of proportion but was at least modestly draped over her body. Under that, her skin glistened with the same bright-blue regen gel she’d used on Tesserae71 in the tern many days ago, and her hands were swathed in the same kind of bandages she’d used on his leg and thorax.

“Water?” she rasped.

“Rehydration-and-nourishment fluid would be better,” Tesserae71 clacked. He lifted a pouch from a nearby compartment between his pincers and held it close to her mouth. Selpis kneeled behind her to brace her head and shoulders. The liquid tasted funky and metallic, with an earthy B-vitamin flavor, but she lifted her head and drank until her stomach was full, leaving a million questions forming on her tongue.

She stayed in that position for a while, Selpis’s hands gently draped over her shoulders. She felt unbelievably weak. She needed contact with the planet as much as she’d needed that liquid. In here, she couldn’t recover at the same rate, if she could at all.

She was already depleted. The apochondria would help her, if she gave them what they needed. It was strange how she could sense that, when she’d never known what that feeling had been before. She recognized it now—the emptiness, the yearning—it was for the energy the Earth could provide. Was this emptiness what her mother had been trying to fill all her life? Was she the one who had given Darcy the druid gene? Would she ever be in a position to find out?

It didn’t feel like the tern was in motion. She looked toward the windscreen and saw green canopy overhead. “Are we still on Ulream?” she croaked, her voice sounding strange to her own ears.

“Yes, mistress,” Tesserae71 clacked.

“I need to go outside. I need to sit on the ground.”

No one questioned her. Tesserae71 stooped and slid his forelegs under her while Selpis triggered the door and scooped up Nembrotha. Tesserae71 deposited her gently on a soft mound of dirt against a tree with plenty of spongy orange moss to cushion her back. It was shady and comfortable. She instantly felt the flow of energy return. They were some distance from the strongest source near the compound, but this was enough.

“That’s better. Thank you. I…this helps me a lot.” Darcy fumbled with the stretched-out jumpsuit in an attempt to cover herself, but gave up. Her fingers still didn’t work and her arms felt like lead.

Her three companions seated themselves around her in a semicircle with solemn looks on their faces. No one spoke for a long time.

“Were you working for him?” Darcy wasn’t sure if she’d be able to discern whether they were telling the truth or not, but she had to ask.

“For the Lovek?” Nembrotha said incredulously. “That brute? It’s not like someone can recognize that dreadful species on sight.”

Selpis was nodding earnestly as Nembrotha spoke, her dewy eyes blinking rapidly. “We were as much in the dark as you were. I thought the rumors that there was a lovek aboard were meant to keep us docile. One expects such tactics. That species is the stuff of myth and legend. I honestly thought it was fiction. I never expected to meet one in person. How could we know that it was the truth?”

Darcy couldn’t help but look at Tesserae71, though she knew Raub had left him for dead. That wasn’t typically how one treated an ally, but Raub was just ruthless enough to do that.

“Not even I knew his true identity. Hain runs the ship for him. I had never seen his face before that day in the corridor when we left the
Vermachten
.”

Darcy sighed. She believed them. They were here now, caring for her, which acquitted them at any rate. She felt a little guilty for ever doubting them.

“Is he dead, Darcy?” Selpis asked quietly.

“Yes.” She still had a hard time believing that was true. But it was. The electricity had probably stopped his heart, and the sheer amount of energy she had discharged had done a lot of damage to his torso. He had looked very dead. The fire had probably consumed his body after she left.

Another one of her victims.

“It was necessary,” Nembrotha said solemnly. “I would have butchered him five times over if I’d gotten the chance. And tortured him too. And then played a tune on his bones.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that I’m a killer.”

Selpis tilted her head. “It was you or him. He killed for sport. You killed to save your life. There is a difference. And who knows how many others you’ve saved from a terrible fate by ending his enterprise. You can go on to do good.”

Darcy looked down at her hands, now raw and pink. “Thank you for taking care of me. How did you find me? What happened after he kicked me out of the tern?”

Tesserae71’s antennae quivered. “It was much the same as before you left. We stayed in the corner. He exercised, ate, and slept.”

“We tried once to overpower him,” Selpis said, her eyes cast down. “But we failed and he bound us. He said he would have killed us if he didn’t need an incentive to force your cooperation.”

“Put me in a blasted box!” Nembrotha cried sloppily, flecks of spittle flying from their tiny O-shaped mouth.

“I believe he underestimated our resourcefulness, though he bound us well. It took us days to free ourselves.” She rubbed her wrists self-consciously, and Darcy noted that her scaly skin was discolored and raw in places. “We began immediately to search for you, but you were well hidden in the woods,” Selpis said.

Darcy drew her brows together in confusion. “The tern can still fly?”

“Apparently,” Nembrotha spluttered.

She turned to Selpis. “You can fly the tern?”

But Tesserae71 spoke up. “All hymenoptera are trained at least cursorily in every department. But my skills at flying the craft are rudimentary.”

“Very rudimentary,” Nembrotha said derisively. They stretched out, their brilliant orange sensor stalks waving, bright spots of color in the deep shade. “Then there were the fires. We assumed you were both dead.”

“But we kept looking,” Tesserae71 clacked forcefully.

“And we tried in vain to gain entry to the belastoise compound,” Selpis said. “The wall is continuous and impervious. No gates. The only way in is from above, and there’s some sort of field that keeps ships and flying insects out.”

Darcy heaved a deep sigh. The long day of walking had been futile then. Nembrotha had been right about the belastoise all along.

Tesserae71 gestured with a pincer in the direction Darcy assumed led to the compound. “All attempts at communication were met with silence.”

“There is just enough fuel left to achieve escape velocity, but no more. Not enough to get anywhere. We wouldn’t even be able to maintain orbit for long. We were on the verge of trying out the tern’s weapons on the wall—we hoped to steal some fuel if we could manage it—when we spotted you lying out in the open.”

Stealing fuel. Could they manage that? How fortified could the mining colony be if this was such a remote world? Surely the defenses were mainly to keep out the giant insects…

“A good thing we did, too,” Nembrotha said wetly. “You were nearly dead.”

Darcy nodded. She was feeling sleepy again. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the energy flowing into her. Something vibrated on her leg, rousing her. She blinked, opened her eyes, and was surprised to see the others were resting as well. She must have slept for some time. She fumbled with the pocket on her leg, realizing the buzzing had to be the device she’d taken off Raub’s body.

Tesserae71 lifted his head and leaned toward her. “If I may, mistress?”

“Yes, please.”

He slipped the tech out of her pocket. Once he had it in his pincer, his mandibles began to work and his antennae to tremble. The red light was still flashing, but now with more frequency and the device kept buzzing. Symbols flashed over a small square screen, but Darcy couldn’t read them because of the angle at which Tesserae71 was holding the device.

“What is it?” Darcy asked.

“It is a communication device,” the hymenoptera said. “Someone is calling.”