They cleared the garden and burst into the open space between the two spires, Lucas ahead and she, out of breath, a few dozen yards behind. A group of people stood by the spires, where the road out of the settlement rolled down the hill. A familiar face looked at her with merciless sky eyes. Arthur. Daniel’s golden mane swung into view. He grinned at her, a deranged wild grin that had too much mirth. On the periphery a few yards away, Henry stood with his eyes closed, tense, his face raised to the sky. A young girl, barely a teenager, stood next to him in an identical pose. To the right an older, dark-skinned woman and another man, tall and gaunt, imitated them.
“Good of you to join us,” Arthur said.
Lucas walked up to stand next to him.
A huge sound came from the distance, deep, booming, as if someone was playing a foghorn like a trumpet.
The girl at Henry’s side inhaled sharply and dropped to her knees, breathing in ragged, painful gasps. Henry’s eyes snapped open. He thrust his hand out and clenched it into a fist. “Oh no, you don’t.”
A desperate scream of pure pain came from the distance.
Henry smiled. His face glowed with vicious joy, so shocking that Karina took a step back. He stared into the distance. “Not as fun to pick on someone your own size?”
The scream kept ringing higher and higher, pausing for the mere fraction of a second that it took the agonized being that was making it to gulp some air.
Behind Henry the fallen girl opened her eyes and rose to her feet. The older couple awakened from their trance.
Henry twisted his fist and jerked it, as if ripping something in half.
The scream died.
“Thank you,” the girl said.
“It’s all right. Next time remember to cloak.” Henry turned to Arthur. “They have two hundred civs, fifty pigs, two heavy field artillery batteries, six squads of twenty-five men each, and seven Mind Benders. Minus one.”
He’d killed an enemy Mind Bender, Karina realized. Kind, shy Henry crushed him, but not before he made him suffer.
“Too many,” someone muttered.
“It’s overkill,” Daniel said.
“There is at least one Demon, too,” Henry said.
Lucas laughed, a bitter, self-assured chuckle.
They had a Demon like Lucas. Lucas would fight it. She saw it in his face. She didn’t want him to die.
Something climbed over the crest of the distant hill, spilling onto the prairie. Karina squinted. What in the world . . .
Arthur’s face remained serene. “Begin immediate full base evacuation.”
A dark-haired woman on Karina’s left held out binoculars to her. “Here. Looks like I won’t need them.”
“Thank you.” Karina lowered Emily to the ground and took the binoculars. “Stay with me, baby.”
The woman turned and ran, back toward the garden. A moment later the alarm sounded again, but this time in two short bursts.
People peeled off from the group and headed back, deeper into the base. Now was her chance. If she could slip away and go through the gate, she could get away. Nobody would find her in the confusion . . .
“Lady Karina,” Arthur’s voice rang out.
She snapped back to look at him.
The gaze of his blue eyes bore into her. “Stay close. We must hold until the evacuation is complete. Lucas may have need of your services.”
His voice was soft but his eyes left her no doubt—he knew what she was thinking and escape was futile.
Arthur turned and looked out to the plain. She looked, too, raising the binoculars to her eyes. The mountains swung into view, suddenly clear. She tilted the binoculars lower . . .
People came walking over the hill. To the right a middle-aged man in filthy khakis and a ripped shirt with thin blue stripes climbed over a rock. Next to him two dark-skinned men in jeans helped a third limp forward. On the left a woman in business clothes walked on, stumbling. The binoculars captured her face. Her features, caked with grime and dust, twisted into an expression of abject terror.
Karina inhaled sharply. A red-haired teenage girl followed the woman. Her ruffled black skirt hung limply around her skinny legs in torn stockings. She shuddered as she walked and Karina realized she was sobbing.
Karina jerked the binoculars down. “There are people out there!”
“They are captives,” Lucas said. “People the Ordinators snatched up here and there, the missing. The pigs are running them at the net. It’s designed to stop high-impact projectiles, but if enough body mass hits it at once, it will overload and collapse.”
The memory of the bird shocked by that red glow flashed before her. “They will die!”
“That’s the idea,” Daniel said. “They’re trying to break through before we have a chance to detonate the network.”
“Can’t they just use a tank or a vehicle?”
“The net would fry it,” Lucas said grimly. “Biomass is the best way to go.”
The people on the right broke into a run. Karina raised the binoculars.
A creature bounded over the hill. Huge and brown, it looked like a seven-foot-tall boar moving too fast on surprisingly long and skinny legs. The pig paused. Its long crocodilian jaws gaped open, flashing fangs as large as her fingers, wider, wider, until the pig’s entire head seemed to split in half. A hoarse roar burst forth. The daeodon.
The people in front of the creature scattered like minnows, sprinting across the rough ground toward the net in a ragged herd, a blond man in a once white tank top leading the run. The daeodon roared again and gave chase.
On the left, a second pig crested the hill, sending another group of prisoners into flight. An older man in a torn flannel shirt stumbled and fell, splaying in the dirt. The pig bore down on him. The long jaws dipped down. A shriek rang out, vibrating with the sheer terror of a man who knew his life was ending, and vanished, cut off in midnote.
On the right, the blond man ran headfirst into the net and jerked, caught by a deep carmine glow. His body convulsed, his legs and arms flailing, as if he were being shocked by a live wire. The man directly behind him tried to slow down, but his momentum carried him right into the red glow and he shook, caught in a similar seizure.
Karina whipped to Lucas. “Can’t you do something? Anything? They’re dying!”
“We can give them a quick death once they break through,” Lucas said.
“But . . .”
“Lucas is correct,” Arthur said. “We will spare them the pain.”
The air around Arthur shimmered. People backed away. He bowed his head and stood very still.