Halfblood Heritage Read online

  Halfblood Heritage

  Halfblood Heritage

  Book One of the Halfblood Series

  By

  Laura Rheaume

  Ebook Edition

  Second Edition

  Copyright © 2011 by Laura Rheaume

  All rights reserved.

  Halfblood Series:

  Halfblood Heritage

  Halfblood Journey

  Halfblood Legacy

  Father Willow's Daughter

  www.halfbloodheritage.com

  Contents

  Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2

  Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5

  Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8

  Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11

  Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14

  Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17

  Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20

  Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23

  Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26

  Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29

  Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32

  Chapter 33 Chapter 34

  Excerpt from Halfblood Journey

  About the Author

  Dedicated with affection to

  my first reader and good friend Beth Habring.

  Prologue

  Not finding her in the light, he followed where the darkness led him. The smoke stung his nose and burned his eyes, and he knew it wasn’t safe, but Scythe stumbled still further into the house, calling, “Mother!”

  The explosions, the gunshots and the screams had coiled themselves around his mind until he was gasping for a thought. All of the good ones had fled, had been scared off, and he was left with the rest, the ones too dumb to run.

  Where is she?

  A shape scurried toward him, making an urgent shushing sound.

  “Mother?”

  A strong hand grabbed the ten-year-old and yanked him sharply to the floor, where he looked into the wide eyes of his Aunt Dren. “Quiet, boy! They’re just outside. Do you want to get yourself killed?”

  “My mother…where is she?”

  “‘Quiet,’ I said!” She pushed down his head while lifting her own and peering with puffy, red eyes through the smoke. “We have to move out of this room. I can hardly breathe! Here, cover your nose and mouth with this.”

  She shoved a rag over his face and he raised a shaky hand up to hold it in place. She turned and ushered him along the floor toward the kitchen. Inside, they leaned up against a cupboard and peered around the corner at the back door. The smoke was not as thick there, and, through the cracked door, they saw two people in helmets and black uniforms running past, dragging a third that was wounded.

  “Dren,” Scythe whispered, “I need to find my mother.”

  “She’s not here,” she hissed back. “The idiot went looking for you. You’ll have to wait here until she comes back.”

  Wait? The thought made him hunch in on himself, his shoulders curving forward and his back pressing painfully against the knobby handle of the door he was leaning against. He shifted his body until it rolled to the side, and tried not to think of what could be happening to his mother out there.

  “Dren, why are the Humans attacking us?”

  “That’s what they do, Scythe. They’re savages.”

  “All of them?”

  “No, stupid boy. Most of them are weak and useless, but some they train to be like beasts.”

  “But, why?” His father had never told him anything like that, and he knew a lot of Humans.

  “Haven’t you been listening? Humans are like animals. They don’t need to have a reason. Look around you. Did we give them reason to burn my home? What did I ever do to a Human? I’ve only ever seen one in my whole life.”

  “My mother isn’t...”

  “Shh!” Someone was approaching from outside and talking in a language Scythe barely recognized. “What are they saying?”

  Scythe listened for a moment to the words floating in through the door. He wasn’t very fluent in Human. The only Human in their settlement was his mother and she spoke Kin.

  “They’re looking for someone, a boy, but they think he can’t be here because of the fire. They are arguing about whether or not they have to search.”

  “I won’t let them take you, Scythe, so don’t worry. Just stay here and we’ll be fine.” She put her arm around him and pulled him closer to her.

  She sucked in a startled breath and lifted her hand off him, finally smelling the blood through the smoke. “Heavens above! Are you hurt, Scythe?”

  His throat closed when he opened his mouth to speak. He tried to look away from the red blood that covered her hand, but only his head would turn. His eyes were fixed on the dark smear that lay across her palm.

  He had finally managed to keep the way it clung to his back from clinging to his mind, but it didn’t look like it was going to allow itself to be ignored anymore. While she ran her hands over him, looking for a wound, he arched his back, trying to get the cold, sticky shirt to peel away from his skin. He tried to not think about how his shirt had gotten wet, why he was so late, or why he was alone, but, what was behind him kept finding its way, fighting its way to the front.

  “Aunt Dren...it’s not mine...”

  “Not yours? Then...” She stopped. He watched her begin to understand: a slow, painful process that left him wondering how the stricken face of a woman who usually had trouble tolerating him could so well mirror what he was feeling inside. “My Scythe...”

  Seeing his own pain reflected in front of him seemed to make everything worse, so he closed his eyes. He needed something to hold on to. He needed to find...

  A voice wound its way through the house to them. The Human soldier he had heard talking before yelled, “Scythe! Scythe! Are you in there? Your mother is waiting for you. She sent us to come fetch you, boy. She’s been hurt and needs you right away. She’s calling for you.”

  Mother.

  The blood rushed through his head. He could hear it surging through his ears, a low, whirring sound that blocked out everything else.

  Mother. Was calling.

  His mind fumbled.

  Mother was hurt and needed him.

  He tried to get up, but something was holding him down. He pushed at it, frustrated because it had him all tied up. He kicked and started to scream, and, when he couldn’t hear his own voice, he tried screaming louder. A hand slapped him, hard, and the fog over his mind was knocked away.

  He looked up from where he was pinned on the floor and saw his aunt’s panicked face above him. Then, behind her, a dark creature with a metal face stepped out of the shadows and struck her over the head with the butt of a large gun. She slumped over him instantly, falling heavily on his chest and driving the air out of his lungs. While he tried to suck in a breath, the mask reached down, pulled her off him and tossed her across the floor.

  His sight tied by an invisible string that connected him to her, Scythe watched as his aunt’s limp body slid to a halt against the cabinets. Her empty eyes held him still and so, so cold. Something left him then: it lifted right out of him and was pulled into her deep blue eyes. Now he was the empty one.

  “I got you boy. You are safe now.” The mask, reeking with the stench of Humans and the blood of his kin, reached toward him. Scythe fell away from those large gloves, down a long, dark tunnel.

  Chapter 1

  Scythe slouched in the metal chair they had given him and eyed a pair of men dressed in sharp, black suits. They sat stiffly across the desk from him, shuffling through their papers and typing on their keyboards and trying real hard to look as if interrogating a thirteen-year-old was an everyday occurrence for them.

  “I spent weeks giving this information when you fir
st brought me here, when I was too young and scared to know any better.”

  “Yes, we have reviewed all that data,” the man with the glasses tapped a screen next to him importantly, “but we’d like to have you share your experiences with some of our field agents. It could save lives, Simon.”

  Scythe’s eyes narrowed. “It sounds like it’s going to cost lives to me.” The computer was two and a half, Mr. Glasses was four, and standing was five and a half.

  “We assure you, this information is for defensive purposes only. The operation like the one where you and your mother were rescued...”

  “You mean kidnapped.” The door was ten and a half...

  “Um, well, the report here says...”

  “In which my father and my aunt were murdered, many innocent people were hurt or killed, and dozens of homes were burned?” Mr. Glasses looked to be about one eighty and standing about...

  “Yes, well, if you’ll let me speak, I’ll explain exactly what...”

  “Honestly, I’m not interested in helping you against my father’s people.” Scythe shrugged his shoulders, trying to loosen a tight feeling he was getting along his spine. He turned his head to look at the door.

  “What about your mother’s people?” the attractive woman said the moment she entered the small debriefing room.

  He watched her pass uncomfortably close to his seat and sit directly across from him on the edge of the desk, bumping into the computer display. The information tech scrambled to get a grip on it before it fell, his eyes boring into the back of her head.

  She had long, brown hair that hung untethered down her back and was dressed for traveling in rough country: well used, thick pants and matching long sleeved shirt. Her worn boots had laces that had been broken and retied more than a couple of times. She was probably around one hundred and thirty five pounds and fit, good balance. Really good balance for someone who had almost knocked a computer on the floor.

  Since his unimpressed stare wasn’t the answer she was looking for, she continued, “My name is Lena Young. I work for the border patrol and one of my jobs is protecting Humans in the bordertowns from Kin scavengers.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “Actually, I’m having a lot of bad luck and people are dying. Not soldiers...innocents, Simon. Families, like yours: women, children, fathers...”

  His eyes dropped down, following the buttons on her shirt, stopping at a seam and then running along it until he could jump off and settle on the wall beyond her.

  Families. He ground his teeth. Families, like his. That really burned him up. He wanted to turn the heat on them, light them up with it, or light himself up and reach over and turn them around so that they could see the shape of the shadows they cast on the wall. He wasn’t about to waste his breath though; he hadn’t been able to make one person see a damn thing in all the time he’d been there, not in three years.

  “I suppose you are going to tell me all about it.” Scythe’s eyes took a tour of the ceiling. There were forty-eight panels, including the partials. At three by five...

  “Nice, a sarcastic teenager. Just what I need. Okay, I will.”

  “I’m not interested at all. I won’t help you kill the Kin.” It wasn’t a full 720 though, because of the partials.

  “Then how about protecting your kin? What? You’re only loyal to half of your heritage?”

  “Mostly I’m loyal to the non-kidnapping, non-murdering half of my heritage.” Not that it mattered, because a rough was good enough for most purposes, but he adjusted anyway by rounding the panel fractions to the nearest sixth...

  “Well, I don’t know what half you’re talking about then, because we’ve had six kidnappings this month alone and thirty deaths.” She reached around behind her and pulled the display closer, turning it so Scythe could see a list of names, each with a picture alongside it. All the Humans were young, less than twenty years old, boys and girls. “These are the missing kids. Here are the people murdered when they were taken.” She swept her hand over the screen and up popped another list of names with photos next to each one and a label: Deceased.

  Scythe frowned at the long list on the screen. “How do I know this is real?” The layout was the default for versions 6 and 7… He skimmed along the bottom bar, taking note of every icon and the list of open programs. Then he glanced at all the names and the data that went with each picture.

  She shrugged. “You don’t. You could come with me out to the towns and see. Short of that, I don’t know how I can prove it to you.”

  “They don’t let me out much. It upsets the happy people.”

  Instead of objecting like he expected, she laughed. “I bet it does!”

  “Apparently, I offend people’s sense of security.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But then, some people are easily offended that way, right? Well, shit, that stinks, but, hey, I’ve always wanted to pee standing up. I guess I’ll never get to keep my New Year’s resolution either.”

  She grinned when Scythe reluctantly smiled at her joke, or rather, at the reaction it got from the men behind her. Then she continued, “Look, I’m sorry you’re a pet in the zoo here, but I really need your help with this. I’ve got kids missing, maybe dead, and I have no idea why they’ve been taken. There have been raids for supplies by borderland Kin outlaws ever since the last of the Human wars, but military raids haven’t been recorded in over forty years, and there is no record of kidnapping-specific raids. In the last twenty years, the politicians have been doing their jobs, the Kin have been trying to monitor their own, and the treaties have made things reasonably peaceful.”

  “It didn’t seem too peaceful three years ago.”

  “The operation in your settlement was unauthorized, sorry to say. To make up for it and to keep the peace, our government had to and continues to pay out enormous amounts to the Kin each year.”

  Scythe blurted incredulously, “Unauthorized? Are you serious? How does that happen?”

  The man standing behind the desk interjected, “That information is not available to the public, as a matter...”

  Without taking her eyes offScythe, Lena explained, “Units in the field are given some leeway to make operational decisions without command approval, and the action in which you were taken was one of those cases. The captain of one of our larger patrols got information that a Human was being held in Poinse. He ordered an immediate rescue operation, calling for reinforcements from the squads that were nearby. Because it was labeled an emergency operation, he was able to order the action without getting official approval. It was later determined to be justifiable, as you and your mother were rescued, but reparations were still paid.”

  She waved her hand in the air, “I don’t know how the diplomats worked it out; diplomacy is not my area.” She threw a piercing glare at the man who barked a laugh at her comment, causing him to straighten up and focus intently on the screen in front of him.

  “This information is not to be shared with anyone outside of this room, young man,” said his partner.

  Scythe didn’t answer him. He couldn’t think of a thing to say. All the lives that were extinguished...the destruction of his home, his life...all in the name of ‘freeing’ a pair of Humans who had no desire to be rescued. Finally, he whispered, “It’s disgusting.”

  Lena nodded her head and stayed respectfully quiet for another moment before she agreed, “You’re right. It turned out to be a huge waste.”

  He looked away from them and waited until he could leave. He had already mapped everything of interest so he listened. The place was alive with electronics, even though the computer was the only obvious...

  “Simon,” she sighed, “I’m not here to make excuses for what happened three years ago. I’m more concerned with what is going on now and how I can keep any more kids from disappearing. The attacks look like light strikes for supplies, mercenary runs by bandits, but one or more children are always discovered missing when the smoke clears. They have increased ove
r the last six months, and now we’ve got one or more raids on Human bordertowns each week.”

  She hopped down and started pacing, “Political tensions are so high out there that we are expecting open conflict any day. I’m not asking you to give me strategic information about the Kin settlement, and I’m not asking for some secret to defeating the Kin. What I need to know is why these kids are being taken.”

  While she talked, he found himself letting everything else go. He watched her pace back and forth and listened to her voice. She was surprisingly sincere for a Human. She was also the kind of person who liked to keep moving, which reminded him of someone else.

  Scythe thought for a minute before answering carefully, “I was only ten when we were taken, so I don’t know anything about what the Kin were doing outside of our settlement. I never even saw another Human other than my mother in Poinsea until the day of the raid.” He enjoyed her subtle appreciation of his use of ‘raid’: one raised eyebrow and a half smile. The men behind her clearly didn’t think it was amusing. “There were no kidnappings of Humans that I ever heard of. Can I see the missing kids again?”

  She tapped the keyboard and he tilted his head to take a closer look at the data on the screen. He frowned slightly, “These people are all thirteen or older.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  Seeing that she didn’t even understand the significance of that, Scythe shrugged, sensing a lost cause. He said, “Well, I don’t know how else I can help you. I’m sorry those people are missing, but I don’t know why.”

  “If I think of another question, can I give you a call?”

  He blinked, and then remembered to answer, “I guess.” Can I give you a call? she had asked so casually, as if it were no big deal.