Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2) Ben Stevens (best contemporary novels txt) 📖

related to Jon and Carbine what Ratt had seen while he’d wandered the city on his own. Ratt had witnessed something horrible that put everything else and their possible courses of action into perspective.

“You see?” Maya went on. “After spending the whole night with Don Luis, even after seeing the urchin demon, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the lesser of two evils was to just try and get out of here during the day, slipping away from Don Luis Fernando, and leaving the sleeping dogs to lie. I hate the idea of allowing such a demonic entity to exist, but everything actually seemed to be fairly decent here, by post-Storm standards. Then, after Ratt came stumbling back in, and Lucy returned, and they told me what transpired, what they had each experienced, I realized that things may not be as they appear.

“They killed a human baby, Jon. For sport. And its mother. They made Ratt watch. There is evil here. It may be slow and hard to see, but it’s here. Last night, Lucy encountered a poor family who had their father taken from them. The oldest child of this family told Lucy that no one is allowed to leave the city, that they are viewed as property, possessions. He also told her that he and many others are wanting to form some kind of resistance, but don’t know where to start. Later this morning, Lucy went among the people, after the vampires had gone to sleep, and she collected many, many tales of people going missing. Especially anyone that can shape Strange. Sound familiar? They don’t go missing so frequently as to lower the population noticeably, but enough to keep the population right where it is. Everyone here pays in blood, but some more than others.”

Jon listened, but in the back of his mind, he was dreaming of revolution, freedom, liberty, revenge, and a spark of an idea began to form in his mind. Something that had happened to them out in the desert a week ago. He wasn’t one hundred percent positive that his hunch was correct, but he quickly became willing to bet on it.

The brew of revolution was a heady one, and as his mind sipped on it, the sips turned to gulps, and before Maya had finished her tale, he was drunk on it.

Reeling, possessed, riveted. What Ratt had seen and experienced made their path clear. The people, the human people of New Puebla, had to be freed. It was Jon’s duty to open the eyes and minds of the unconscious slaves who suffered, sometimes in a subtle way and sometimes overtly at the hands of blood-drinking monsters who killed mothers and babies for sport.

It might come at a steep cost, and the burden of self-responsibility was a heavy one, but the people of New Puebla would have to learn how to defend themselves from the chaos, without serving darkness.

The vampires all needed to die.

And Jon believed he knew exactly how to do that now.

15

Miller rapped his thick metal fingers on the table over and over again.

“Hey,” Candice said, waving her hand in front of Miller’s thousand-yard stare. “Can you please stop that? You’re making me nervous.”

“Huh? Oh, sorry,” Miller said, stopping his subconscious finger-drumming and pulling his hand back from the table. He flashed Candice an unenthusiastic, wry half-smile and looked around the council chambers. Nearly everyone who was supposed to be here had arrived and was going about the business of giving and receiving greeting pleasantries, organizing papers in front of their seats, and dodging aides that were making sure the council members wouldn’t want for coffee, tea, or water.

“Almost everyone is here,” Candice said. Miller shifted his eyes to her. She had followed his gaze across the room and read his mind correctly. They should have started by now, a fact that only added to the palpable anxiety Miller wrestled with.

“Yeah…” he mumbled, rubbing his chin. “Everyone except To-Kan.”

Another long minute passed. Miller watched the present council members settle into their seats and make small talk with their neighbors as they waited. Despite the assurances he had given everyone, most notably and recently Candice, Miller began to wonder if he was making a mistake in trusting the fate of the New Republic to such a diverse and rag-tag group of people.

Nah, man. That’s just the old Army training talking. We want, no, need people up in here. Not jus’ soldiers.

“Are you trying to rub the stubble out? They make these things called razors, you know.”

Miller found Candice staring at him again, a plea written on her freckled face.

“Huh? Oh. Sorry. Again,” Miller said and took his hand from his face, where his chin-rubbing had replaced his finger-drumming and had almost reached neurotic levels. “I’m just nervous. Something didn’t sit right in my craw, ya know? And To-Kan being late is killing me. I want to get this show on the road.”

“I know, I know. But don’t worry. Everything’s going to be just fine.” Candice smiled and patted the big man’s hand. “Hey, speak of the devil!” she said and together with Miller turned to the set of double doors as they opened, revealing councilwoman To-Kan with a child in tow.

“What the—?” Miller asked out loud, but quietly enough that only he and Candice heard it.

Regardless, To-Kan seemed to know exactly what was on Miller’s mind, and probably everyone else’s as well and rushed to explain herself before she was barraged with a volley of questions.

“My apologies to the council,” To-Kan began. Her breathing was labored and her wrinkled face slightly red. Suddenly, Miller felt a twang of guilt for being upset at the senior woman’s tardiness.

“Councilwoman To-Kan,” Miller said loudly, hushing the murmuring room as he stood up and leaned on the table. “You know you have nothing but our respect, but the chambers are not the place for a child.”

The child in question was Wyntr, the foreign girl who had come to Home and who knew the resting place