The Uprising (The Julianna Rae Chronicles) (11 page)

‘It gets easier.
’ Julianna leaned her head back in frustration. The sofa smelt musty. How Daniel ever managed to sleep so solidly on the thing, was beyond her.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

Julianna squeezed her eyes shut against the noise outside.

Thwack!

‘So, of the two of them, who’s the evil brother?’ she was making light of the situation, wanting to block the sounds coming from outside. The prisoner screamed again, but she didn’t think for long.

Thwack!

Devo looked up. ‘Caden.’             

A no frills, definitive without a thought
, answer.
Great! I’m banging the wrong one.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

She jumped with each one. Devo sat beside her.

The prisoner gave a monstrous howl.

Thwack! Bang!

It was done. Julianna closed her eyes and shook her head. The prisoner was dead. The long sigh that she released didn’t go unnoticed from the girl beside her. She felt Devo’s soft hand resting gently on her leg.

‘But Cade keeps us safe,’ Devo said quietly. ‘I don’t like him, and he don’t like me much, but we have our understanding. He keeps us safe. That I know for sure.’

Julianna took in Devo’s words. She wondered who
pulled the trigger before deciding it didn’t matter after all. They were all out there, all guilty.

Yeah, you too, J Rae, you’re gu
ilty like the rest of them too – by association.

The stairs creaked outside
under the heavy footsteps. Three sets of pissed off boots stomped their way toward the door. The scrupulous killing may have yielded some results, but she doubted it from a nocturno. She only heard his screams.

The door slammed shut. Caden’s glaring eyes met with hers.

‘Not a lot to tell,’ Daniel said. She felt the need to look away from Caden. ‘But we did find out the comms have a two hour lapse every evening, for Militia communication – and that we can tap into it with the code he gave us.’

A smile crept over her face.
‘Isis?’

‘But
you,
Miss Rae have some cleaning to do.’ Caden dragged the old blue chair, from the blue table, in the blue and white kitchen, to straddle it over the floorboards.

Just as he had you last night, J Rae.

She looked up from his thighs. ‘What?’

‘The body – get rid of it before it starts to smell, and not near the water for fucks sake, or I’ll belt you some more.’

Her mouth tightened and she twitched her nose. There was no point arguing. In the warmth of the air the stench wo
uld reach the house, probably by night fall. Get the job done and go for another swim. Then it’ll be all okay.
Talk to Isis too.
He can fix this mess.

Julianna lifted herself slowly from the cushions imprinted with her bum cheeks.

‘Would you like me to bathe afterwards for this evening, or will you take me any filthy way you can?’

‘Told you not to go there, son,
’ Bas stated.

She stood in front of Caden and his eyes flickered black before turning
brown. It was a brief second. He lifted his gaze toward her. Daniel slammed the door on his way out and Caden ignored Bastiaan. 

‘I’ll play dirty if it pleases you, Julianna,’ Caden held her with his gaze. He wasn’t letting go. ‘Maybe you can let me in on your secrets while we’re at it
.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Have a way of making people talk, you know?’

She shuffled her feet, feeling herself sway drunkenly to his hypnotic heartbeat inside her mind
– echoing a steady
boom, boom, beat—

He released her. She stumbled away, loosing balance and touching the floor with her fingers
. His eyes flickered again; the known serpent of the preternatural world: cunning, charming, intelligent, and hypnotic.

‘What’s with Daniel?’ Julianna replied. The door still swung in the breeze, his temper failed to latch it. 

Caden licked his lips. ‘Jealous, maybe. Go ask.’

His
eyes bored through her. Right now, she didn’t feel the need to push him for details, but Daniel was pissed. She didn’t know him well, but she knew the slam of the door meant something else, and she hoped Caden’s words were just teasing.

‘Fuck me, you’re all so fucking useless.’

Julianna turned. The obscenities rolling from Devo’s sweet pout hinted the reason for her nickname. Bastiaan’s hands grabbed her arms, pulling her against him.

‘They didn’t tell you, did they?’ Devo asked.

Julianna didn’t want the answer.

D
evo said it anyway. ‘Julianna,’ she stated. ‘Daniel’s your brother, and you’re the freaking Seer.’

The numbness raced over
Julianna like a fever. Caden held his head in his hands, feigning interest or dismay at a floor that suddenly fascinated him. An ant farting in the room would have been louder than her reaction.

‘Sarah,’ Bas moaned. He dragge
d Devo into their room quietly.

‘Someone had to tell her,’ Devo muttered before the door closed in
front of her face. Bas locked her in. His face contorted with an expression Julianna didn’t fully understand. Was it concern, sympathy, maybe even as far as the
I’m fucked
look because
I’ve just been caught out
look. She didn’t know.

Caden reappeared from his hands. ‘Ahhh shit, Julianna, wanted to tell yer.’

‘Brother?’ she fell back into the sofa. ‘I have a brother?’

A few minutes of banter had turned her world upside-down
and inside-out. She had family right beside her, in the flesh, well and truly alive.

‘You kept this from me?’ She frowned.

Caden’s eyes narrowed and she frowned some more.

Why would you do this? Why, oh why, would you keep this from me?

‘Julianna,’ Caden searched for words. He gave up under her stare and turned to Bas for support.

‘And what’s this Seer crap?’ she turned to Bas, too. He was cautiously sitting down on the old sofa beside her. ‘Come on, you always have something to say about things.’

But this time he didn’t.

*   *    *

The worn out steps gave her presence away. Daniel turned his head from studying the lump of a prisoner lying on the ground, to Julianna pushing through the tall grass. His eyes ran across her face and he nodded, turning back to the heaped mess before him.

‘So they told you then,’ he shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed.

Julianna didn’t answer. There weren’t any words stretching out for her to use. She shrugged, took another step and examined what she was about to move. A hole where the bullet had entered, had caved in the nose, dead center, and it gapped. From a distance the skull looked intact. She gave the head a nudge with her foot – to see if anything fell from the bigger hole in the back. It did, and she recoiled from the white spongy matter spilling out.

‘Need to move him soon, it’s a warm day,’ he said. ‘I’ll help if you like.’

She reached under the arms and Daniel grabbed the legs to lift the heavy weight up.

             
First brother, sister act
, she cringed at the thought.
Now there’s a bonding moment worthy of a happy snap. Is this how all my relationships are destined? Bury the dead over a trivial conversation?

Their eyes met as they shuffled sideways, toward the large grassy area to the side of the property. The wild birds would feast tonight, she thought. Maybe
a pack of wild dogs will finish with the picked bones. 

‘Should’ve said something,’ he dropped his end of the body first. Sweat beading on his forehead was rubbed away with his sleeve. ‘Isis wanted me to keep quiet, Hal too.’

‘Last I looked you were a grown man.’

‘You went there with him
, after what I said?’

Julianna rolled her eyes. ‘Maybe if you’d added something like, oh I don’t know, I’m your
brother
, it may have held more weight.’ she let the head drop to the ground. Blood splashed, and she jumped back. ‘Right now, Daniel, you’re in no position to lecture.’

‘He’s your watcher—
’

‘Yeah, yeah, so everyone says. Like I give a fuc
k about Senate rules and family-fucking-traditions. Like any of it counts anymore.’

Caden leaned cautiously on the old railing circling the house veranda, while pulling apart his Glock. He glanced in their direction and she glanced back. The first of the gun’s three parts balanced on the banister, and he returned to the task of cleaning. She faced Daniel. His eyes were those of a person who understood, not one who was
about to lecture.

‘Seems the chief is keeping you close in his sights.’ Daniel brushed his hands together and glanced over to the porch where he stood. Caden’s middle finger rose in Daniel’s direction. ‘Seems he has what he wants.’

‘Being stupid,’ she looked over her shoulder to Caden. His hand quickly lowered to his task of cleaning his gun.

He pushed past her. ‘He’s Council, Julianna.’

‘Was,’ she argued.

‘
Is,
you idiot,’ he stormed off in the direction of the lake, disappearing between the trees in a maddening pace that forced the grass to bend at his whim, before he strode over it.

Caden followed from the corner of his eye as he cleaned the slide with an oily rag.

She turned back to the corpse staring up at her, the flies were hoarding around the congealment on the side of his face.

‘What are you fucking looking at?’ she held her hands on her hips.

Caden’s restrained laugh travelled to her on the light breeze, and when she glanced back he hid his smile. Caden continued to clean his weapon, shinning it with the rag forcefully, until he was happy with his reflection staring back. When Julianna finished negotiating the long grassed return to the farm house, Caden gave her a fleeting look before moving the rag along the slide again.

‘You think this funny?’ she looked up from the base of the steps.

‘Nope,’ he was trying not to smile. The rag was pushed into his back pocket hastily. He slipped the spring back into the slide to reassemble the weapon.

It wasn’t Julianna’s expertise, she knew the rifle better. He slipped everything in place with an ease and quickness that even in anger, she admire
d. He was a capable man, and with it came high expectations of everyone surrounding him. Hearing Daniel’s words out loud, hammered it home for her.

‘You Council?’ she asked. He looked up. ‘I mean cut the bullshit, does the Council still exist, and are you still a part of it?’

‘We having angry sex tonight?’ he pulled the slide back, let it fall into place and lined her up in the sights before dropping the gun. ‘I like angry sex.’

The trees swayed, where she looked. Daniel leaned
into one with his back turned and an embarrassment crept over her.

‘Bas told me after he cut the IDM from me, that
the Council existed. I thought he was trying to get a rise out of me. Are you Council, or not?’

Caden became serious. He tucked the gun under his shirt. ‘Corporal Rae,’ she glanced up, he
shook his head and folded his arms. ‘You had no right telling the world about us.’

‘You had no right belting me,’ she replied quickly.

‘Nice watchers don’t exist. The sooner you realize, the sooner you’ll find some peace in our world.’

She took the steps up and leaned
into him. ‘I-am not-a
watcher
,’ she brushed past and reached for the door.

‘You keep telling yourself that, sweetheart, but like attracts like, don’t you think?’

4th May, 2018, 1745 hours.

The Farm House, 7 miles west of Camp 2.2.1

Isis had been antsy with them during their discussion over the comms. It wasn’t about the situation, Julianna picked something else in his voice, and it was directed straight at Caden. Caden noticed too, and as a result
, Bas did most of the talking. Now Caden, Devo, and Daniel were on their bikes, heading toward the sectors to meet with a group of men to repopulate their camp while she sat quietly on the sofa listening to Bas strum Caden’s guitar, simmering at the last word “No” being shouted at her.

Julianna glanced at Bas. His eyes gave her a fleeting look before returning to E major. They returned to their own worlds again. No love lost; nothing to say.

He knows I’m pissed, I should be riding too.

‘Going for a walk,’ she said.

Bas looked again. His hand rested against the strings to mute the music. ‘Don’t go far, dark soon.’

She nodded. The words she wanted to shout disappeared, as her tongue tied, and her mouth dried. He would have been her High Priest, living at the family estate, just for her benefit. She cursed the memories she couldn’t retrieve.
She had no recollection of the first year with her Uncle at the estate or Bastiaan, none what so ever.
It’s no surprise
, she thought.
Kids had the habit of blocking the worst
.

The comms rested on the kitchen table, where they had left it. Devo had used
a stack of books to prop it on its side. Isis had studied each and every one of them from his platform, notably frowning when he reached her, until they had closed down the communication.

Isis had instructed that she stay with the brothers and away from the city. She argued, and it was useless. Bas had flicked the back of her head, flicking every time she opened her mouth to speak. Her comment about bitch-slapping Isis
– if they ever met – didn’t go down well in the group either, though Caden had smirked with the first flick, and with the second one, she got a wink.

She lifted the glass slide
from the table and balanced it in her hand. Right now it was a piece of fragile glass that didn’t work, that magnified the specks of blue in the table underneath it. She moved her finger, tracing a scratch in the table made from a knife carving food, and screwed her face. How things changed with a five minute conversation, a single conversation that dictated who may live, and who may die in the next twenty-four hours. Not to mention the silence she received, when she asked what a Seer was. Their response was deafening.

Julianna laid the comms down, letting it rest flat on the table. She thought about Daniel’s reaction. He was gutted.
They have Hal. The Gatehouse doesn’t exist. Maybe a conversation tomorrow evening is pushing their luck, Taris is closing in. If we’re all killed, who would Isis talk to?
Bas heard her sigh.

‘We’ve dealt with worse,’ he said. The guitar slipped where he leaned it against the chair beside him. It matched the sofa, the same pea-green material that clashed with the sea-blue kitchen. ‘We’ll have men to battle with
this time, not kids. Weapons – we always manage to regroup.’ 

‘I feel responsible,’ and she did. It had eaten away at her since her escape from Central. The thought of Katherine helping her
, then dying – the weight of it suffocated her body. She slumped at the table much the same way Daniel had, when Isis had mentioned Hal’s situation.

‘Too much responsibility for one person’s shoulders,’ he grunted.

She shrugged. Taris was closing in; she could feel him standing next to her. Their pact was catching up again. At least
they
were safe, Bas and her – she wasn’t so sure.

She opened her mouth to disagree, but her twitching fingers stole her attention. She held them in front of her.
They danced in a maddening twitch that worsened with her exhaustion. Isis had said medical supplies were on the way with the men and the weapons. He’d looked through her when he’d mentioned it, and had asked how she was coping with the headaches. He was the only one who knew, until he blabbed about the painkillers he was sending.

With love, thanks very much dumb fuck.

Caden had
mumbled about the fever making sense, how hard it had hit, and how quick.

After the comms
, Caden’s attention was unwavering, until the bike had taken him down the highway toward the city. Even when she’d yelled, pushing him in the chest after he’d snatched her bike keys from her grasp, he’d held her tightly in a bear hug until she calmed down. He’d promised to return quickly. He’d asked her obedience for Bastiaan.

‘You okay, kiddo?’

She nodded and slipped her hands underneath her thighs. Sitting on them helped.

If only I could sit on my head.

Her head thumped. Isis had been angry when Caden mentioned the
knife attack from Taris. Protective angry, she thought. Mentioning the fever upset him more, and he’d paced behind the black borders of the comms screen that concealed his true identity.

Why did he have to say something about the headaches?
She enjoyed the denial. Ignore something long enough it went away.

The night started to sparkle, displaying stars through the windo
w that bordered it nicely. Caden, Devo, and Daniel would wait at the rendezvous, the tunnels near the city limits. She shrugged when they talked about them. She’d lived in the city her entire life, never knowing about the tunnels they had mentioned. Caden knew exactly where they were. He’d agreed quickly.
Need a good sniper rifle
. Isis had agreed just as quickly.
Shouldn’t be a problem, I’ll have two waiting—

‘Julianna?’

Bas stood in the middle of the room, with the walls swaying behind him as she struggled to focus. Taris was reading her; he was close and on the move, searching in his relentless hunt to capture them. She fought to block his invasion into her head space. Something had changed within him, something big and all she could sense was the need to hide, but she was still weak.

             
She pushed up from her chair, scratching it along the tiles and sending a chill down her back with its screech. The walls danced, and her legs wobble under her weight.

‘
We need to leave.’

Bas sat her down at the table. ‘No, we don’t.’

‘We really need to leave, right now. Taris is coming.’

Julianna’s wide eyes met with his eyes as
the panic rose and she wondered what she looked like to him right now. When his eyes narrowed, she knew he knew.

‘How long have we got?’ his lips thinned.

              She shook her head. ‘I can’t block him this time, something’s changed with him. He has more power. He knows we’re here.’

Bas cocked his head, peering through the window.
‘They sure do,’ he pointed his finger. ‘Listen...’ and she did, to the engines pushing through the rough terrain in the distance.

Bas
crouched under the window and held out his hand, taking hers. The squeeze he gave, reassured her. Soon this will end – one way or another, she thought. The guilt ebbed for fear, when she saw the drones bobbing through the window.

             
Bastiaan’s broad body hunched further under the window. They peered together at the four drones waiting for their orders and biding their time. Their low hum dropped them to the ground beside the sofa and Bas took her close to his side with his strong hand, holding her protectively.

‘I am so, so, sorry,’ she whispered.

His hand squeezed her shoulder as he looked down his nose to her shrinking
image. ‘Can you sense anything else? How many patrols are coming?’

She needed to think. There were p
lenty of situations in the Sectors, where she eluded the drones and patrols. But the pain – her head was going to explode, and she knew Taris was taunting her with his new tricks. She needed to stop thinking, and when she closed her mind to everything, the pain went away.

Bas tugged her arm, raised
his finger to his lips and nodded to the hallway behind them, their silence was imperative to escape undetected to the rear of the house. The bathroom was away from the drones. Julianna was surprised to see it moderately decorated in a finer interior than the mismatched kitchen. Minus the bathtub, and the gaping hole in the floorboards, it passed as respectable with its white interior and rotting brown drapes. Bas lowered her through the broken floorboards, letting her go when she reached the ground, peering over the snapped shards of wood on tip-toe.

             
Bas peeked through the gap at the door. He fumbled in his pocket to find the bike keys Caden had thrown to him in a game of keepings off, when she’d exploded in her rage earlier that evening.

They landed between her feet and when she looked up again he was gone. The old door that hung from its single hinge was closed tight.

She grabbed the rotting wood jutting out at her eye level, leveraging herself up.
Not like this,
she muttered, as she pulled. She wasn’t putting another notch on her blade with Bastiaan’s name in her mind. She wasn’t lurking under a rotting floor, while he took the fall for her.
Sure as hell not explaining this one to Caden.

Go!
Bas screamed inside her mind.

The floorboards groaned under her weight. ‘Not without you,’ she said quietly. She sensed
Bas listening. ‘Please don’t do this,’ she whispered as the boards snapped away.

             
Julianna fell into the dampness of muck below the house. The smell of dirt and damp with the mix of the rotting corpses of small rodents overwhelmed her, and when she felt the sting of the wood in her arm, she was shocked.

             
She pulled it out with gritted teeth, studying the chunk of wood with her blood dripping from its point and her arm where it stung, watching it close up neatly before her eyes.

The wire door slammed.

She flinched, her healed arm was forgotten.

Julianna crawle
d to the front end of the house where the uneven woodwork bordering the gaps between the ground and the veranda met.

             
The drones circled their prey, buzzing angrily around Bas stepping down the stairs. She crawled along the dirt, pressing her hand into a soft chunk of fur and recoiling, to stop at a hidden corner where she watched his arrest.

Bas ambled towards the Jeeps. The drones closely followed, dancing above his head with their red eyes aimed at his chest and shoulders. He held his hands above his head, and Julianna watched in horror as he stopped just short of the Sig Taris pointed at his chest.

‘Julianna, where is she?’

‘Tell me about Hal and I’ll tell you about Julianna. He’s no doubt at the camp singing a tune, I suppose?’ Bas responded.

‘No,’ the response from Taris was uneventful, very calm.

She crawled along, watching and listening, keeping her distance, and ducking when Taris looked in her direction.

‘No, no. He’s been a very quiet man. Far cry from the ol’ days where he used to beat us senseless with a stick.’ Taris moved his sights from the stairs. ‘He’s responding much more at Central, though. Maybe late tonight, who knows? What about Julianna?’ The patrols left the vehicles to stand guard behind him.

‘Thorn in my ass. Has the Rae spunk, for sure. Next question?’ Bas smirked. ‘Make them good, you only have two left.’

Will you go already?

Bastiaan’s voice exploded inside her head. His anger shook her, throwing her onto her back. Th
e echo finished, he spoke again.

Can’t hold him off much longer. Go find Cade, tell him about Hal.

‘Who you whispering to, Bas?’ Taris stepped in. The Sig swung quickly against his face, dropping Bas to his knees.              

Bas checked the blood on the palm of his open hand, and wiped his face. ‘No one man,’ he wiped it across his knee. ‘Been to the Senate lately, me thinks you’re about to open a whole lot of whooping on my ass?’

‘Where is she?’

‘Leave the girl alone
– what is it with you? Some jealous streak, or just the bloodlines?’

Thwack! Click.

             
She braced herself for the next sound to blast through her senses, hoping to the Devil himself that Taris wouldn’t pull the trigger.

‘Go ahead, Taz. I’ve had a long life and I’m not talking. If you really want Cade hunting you down to revenge my murder, pull the trigger.’ he said. ‘Just a thought, you know how my brother is.’

‘Arrest him. He can be a lab rat for the Order.’

Bas smiled. ‘I’ve heard Sector One is lovely this time of year,’ the patrols slapped cuffs over his wrists and pulled him to his feet. ‘Lucky-fucking-me.’

Julianna lowered her head under a beam of wood. The
exit was a small hole. Bas would never have squeezed through it. On the other hand, she could without much trouble. She went feet first. She cursed as she pushed herself through, ignoring the metal screws scraping along her sides. It was the least of her worries, and now she knew how to heal herself.