Scavenger Blood Read online

  JANET EDWARDS

  SCAVENGER BLOOD

  Scavenger Exodus 2

  Copyright

  Copyright © Janet Edwards 2019

  https://www.janetedwards.com/

  Janet Edwards asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or localities is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Janet Edwards except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design by The Cover Collection

  https://www.thecovercollection.com/

  Cover Design © Janet Edwards 2019

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Message from Janet Edwards

  Books by Janet Edwards

  About the Author

  Preview of Telepath

  Chapter One

  A grey shape launched itself from the top of one of the abandoned skyscrapers of Manhattan. I watched it glide across the Hudson River towards a cluster of buildings downriver, bank sharply to avoid one that was smothered in ivy, and then make a neat landing on the stone facade of its neighbour.

  I frowned. That was the fourth falling star that I’d seen come across the river in the last hour. Half a dozen of the alien creatures had escaped from a New York Central Zoo exhibit decades ago, and bred so quickly that Manhattan was infested with them now. The falling stars loved its crumbling skyscrapers, but this especially harsh winter was driving increasing numbers of them into crossing the river to Unity City in search of prey.

  “Perimeter breach zone one.” The voice of my Armed Agent weapon spoke in my head. “Hostile alien lifeform.”

  The falling star that I’d been watching had landed far outside the range of my gun’s tracking system, so this must be a different one. I turned to face the imposing building that had once housed the United Earth Americas Regional Parliament, and was now home to the last seven hundred people living in New York.

  My gun’s tracking display appeared, superimposing glowing dots on my view of the mob of children and two adults who were digging for wintereat in the vegetable garden. I had it set to use different colours to make the tracking more helpful, so the children were marked with white dots and the two adults with turquoise. Beyond them, what looked like an ageing patch of concrete on the front wall of the Parliament House was outlined in purple. As I studied it, I saw the surface give a distinctive ripple.

  Falling stars didn’t have proper eyes, so I assumed they either hunted through scent or sound. Whatever their method of finding prey, the ripple was a warning that this one had spotted a boy pushing a cart of wintereat towards the door of Parliament House. It was readying itself to release its grip on the wall and attack.

  I pulled off my right glove, revealing the flickering lights of the gun tendrils on my hand and wrist, and pointed my forefinger at the falling star. The instant the red targeting light focused on it, I fired.

  The falling star plummeted downwards, its six starfish-like arms convulsing as it fell. I wasn’t sure if I’d killed it or only injured it, but that didn’t matter. As it hit the ground, a shout went up from the children, and the older ones drew their knives and swarmed to attack it.

  Seconds later, blue dots appeared on the edge of my tracking display, and two archers came running from the corner of the building with their bows poised ready to fire.

  “Trouble, Blaze?” Knave demanded.

  “Only a falling star. The children are making sure that it’s dead.”

  Knave grunted in disgust. It wasn’t clear whether he was expressing his opinion of me or of falling stars. It was best if I assumed it was the falling stars. Everyone in the alliance was still adjusting to having an eighteen-year-old girl as their deputy leader. I mustn’t add to the problems by being over-sensitive.

  The brothers, Knave and Deuce, turned to continue their patrols of the western perimeter of the building. The children were going back to their work in the vegetable garden as well, leaving the two adults with them to bring an empty cart over to the dead falling star.

  I frowned as the two men, one heavily muscled and in his mid-thirties, the other slimmer and barely nineteen, stationed themselves on either side of the falling star ready to lift it into the cart. The alliance had been hit by an especially deadly type of winter fever back in November, and thirty-two people had died over the following weeks. When three off-worlders came to New York to retrieve an ancient component from the Wallam-Crane Science Museum, they’d badly damaged their aircraft, had to come to beg us for shelter, and inevitably caught the winter fever too.

  The older man, Braden, would probably have survived the fever anyway, but Tad and Phoenix were only alive now because Tad had helped me track down a store of ancient medicines. Even with the help of that medicine, Tad had been dangerously ill, while Phoenix had come to the very brink of death. Tad’s recovery had been straightforward, but Phoenix had suffered a secondary infection, and was still seriously ill in our hospital area.

  Braden had been working in the vegetable garden for a week now, but this was Tad’s first full day outside after the winter fever. The temperature was a crucial couple of degrees above freezing point, so the falling stars had come out to hunt, but the weak February sunlight of earlier in the day had been blotted out by a thick bank of cloud.

  The winter fever left people vulnerable to cold, so I was worried how Tad was coping in the bitter wind. He had his hat pulled down tightly over his brown hair, but his face still looked pale, and the habitual strained expression in his eyes was more obvious than usual.

  I watched anxiously as he and Braden lifted the bulky falling star, and then realized I was letting my feelings for Tad distract me from my guard duties. The alliance’s elderly head nurse, Nadira, was confident that he’d recovered enough to work outside. It was both unnecessary and dangerous for me to stand gawping at him like this, because I mustn’t betray how much I cared for him.

  Everyone in the alliance hated off-worlders
because they lived luxurious lives, while we struggled to survive on an Earth ruined by the effort of founding their bright, unpolluted worlds. The invention of interstellar portals a century ago meant that almost all the respectable citizens had now left Earth to start new lives on one of five hundred colony worlds scattered across three sectors of space. We had been left behind though, forever excluded from both the colony worlds and the remaining civilian settlements on Earth, because we or our parents were on record as being rebels or criminals.

  My loyalty to my father – the legendary Sean Donnelly who’d formed the Earth Resistance – meant I’d had extra reasons to hate off-worlders. Now I was, bewilderingly, in a fledgling relationship with my enemy.

  I didn’t really understand my feelings for Tad, but I did know it was essential to keep our relationship hidden from the rest of the alliance. People were grudgingly tolerating the presence of the three off-worlders, because they knew they had a key part to play in the alliance plans to leave New York this spring and find a better home. There were limits to that tolerance though.

  The alliance members would react badly if they learned Tad’s true identity, and be utterly furious if they discovered their new deputy leader was involved in a relationship with him. My father and his officers were currently the only people in the alliance who knew Tad wasn’t just from Adonis, the first and richest of Earth’s colony worlds, but was the heir of the fabulously wealthy Wallam-Crane family. My relationship with him was an even more closely guarded secret, known only to the other two off-worlders, my father, and his oldest officer, Machico.

  I mustn’t risk betraying that secret, so I turned my back on Tad to look around for potential threats. For the last week, I’d been spending my days out here on guard duty, and the constant strain was making me increasingly tired, but I had to concentrate on keeping Tad, Braden, and the children safe.

  The voice of my gun spoke again. “Perimeter breach zone one.”

  As before, the gun sent its tracking display directly to the visual centre of my brain, and I saw a purple dot to the south-west. I’d only had my gun for a couple of weeks, and was still learning to interpret the tracking display, but the height of this falling star and the speed of its movement had to mean it was incoming on an attack run.

  This whole area had been redeveloped when the Americas Parliament complex was built, and none of the neighbouring buildings had been allowed to be taller than Parliament House. I guessed the falling star had launched from the roof of one of the apartment blocks to the south-west, and turned to look up for it, but only caught a glimpse of the creature gliding in before it struck its target.

  The falling star had chosen to attack one of the archers of course, since the two men were a long distance from the rest of us. It hit Deuce perfectly, enveloping his head and upper body, and knocking him to the ground.

  The six arms of the falling star had been stretched out rigidly while it was gliding, with the flaps of skin at the edges of the tentacles all fully extended to make it into a smooth, flat disc. Now the tentacles separated, and wrapped around Deuce, pinning his arms to his sides. This was how a falling star killed its prey, holding the victim a helpless prisoner to be suffocated and covered in digestive juices.

  “Hostile alien lifeform,” my gun completed its belated warning message.

  Knave dropped his bow, pulled out his knife, and stabbed at the vulnerable centre of the falling star which held its brain. The children started running to help him, but I screamed at them to stop. They obediently skidded to a halt, but frowned at me in frustration.

  “I know you want to help fight the falling star,” I said, “but we have to stay near the main entrance of the Parliament House. Knave and Deuce don’t need our help anyway. Look!”

  I pointed at the battle with the falling star. Knave had stabbed it enough times to achieve his goal. The falling star’s tentacles were convulsing now, releasing its victim. Deuce crawled out from beneath the leathery mass, and spent a few seconds on his hands and knees, gasping for breath and vomiting. Finally, he staggered to his feet, and drew his knife to join his brother in killing the falling star.

  Satisfied that the situation was under control, I continued lecturing the children. “My job is to guard both you and the front door to the Parliament House. We can’t go running off, because the door won’t run off with us, will it?”

  The children giggled, shook their heads, and went back to work.

  I put my glove back on, tugged my hat further down over my ears, and took another careful look around the area. I’d only lived in New York for six and a half years, arriving in the summer of 2401 as a refugee from the London firestorm, but I’d been told that the area in front of the Parliament House had once been a lovingly manicured expanse of grass. That had all been dug up to let us grow vegetables, but the ground was still perfectly flat with no hiding places.

  I had a clear view along the riverbank as well, but that cluster of apartment blocks to the south-west worried me. There were probably more falling stars climbing their walls right now, positioning themselves ready to launch an attack against us, but the much bigger danger was that a murderer might be lurking inside one of them.

  Two weeks ago, Cage’s bid to seize the alliance leadership from my father had ended in Cage murdering Marsha, our custodian of knives and bows. Cage had fled into the New York snow, and none of our search parties had found any sign of him since then, but we knew he’d taken a knife, bow, and arrows with him. The man had a long history of taking revenge on those he felt had harmed him, so I was here to guard the children and off-worlders working in the vegetable garden, and the other people still inside the Parliament House.

  Donnell was the only other person with an Armed Agent weapon, so he was keeping watch over the women fishing in the river. The men out hunting geese would have to defend themselves, but I couldn’t believe Cage would risk attacking large groups of expert archers.

  “Perimeter breach zone one,” my gun repeated its warning words, and a swiftly moving purple dot showed me that there was another airborne falling star approaching. I knew it would do the same as the last, and target the two young men who were on their own.

  I pointed at the sky and screamed a warning to them. “Falling star! South-west!”

  Knave and Deuce had been dragging the corpse of the previous falling star towards us. Now they dropped it, turned to look up at the falling star silently swooping towards them, and dodged rapidly sideways out of its line of attack.

  Falling stars could only glide downwards, not fly, but they could use their bodies to guide their descent. This one made a midair turn towards Knave, but it had lost the vital element of surprise. Knave dodged a second time, and the falling star didn’t have enough height left to follow him, so it landed on the ground. The two men instantly ran in to attack it, and less than a minute later it was dead.

  Knave and Deuce looked from one falling star corpse to the other, as if unsure which one to deal with first. The situation was getting dangerous, so I shouted at them and made frantic beckoning gestures.

  “Knave! Deuce!”

  The brothers hurried towards me. “Is something wrong?” asked Knave.

  “No, I just want you to leave the falling star bodies where they are.”

  Deuce had been smothered in stinking falling star saliva when he was attacked. He nodded his acceptance, and took a scarf from his pocket to wipe the worst of the mess from his face and hair, but Knave frowned and spoke in a contemptuous voice.

  “I know women aren’t bright, and you’re the most stupid girl in the alliance, but even you should realize there’s a lot of meat on a falling star that size. We can’t afford to waste it when we’re rationing food.”

  Chapter Two

  Knave had spoken loudly enough for all the children to hear him. They stopped work and stood watching us intently, waiting to see how I’d react to his insult. I noticed Tad and Braden had stopped work too, and Tad was glowering at Knave. I hoped Tad had
learned enough since he came to New York not to try to interfere in something that I should, no absolutely must, deal with myself.

  The alliance had just been through a succession of drastic changes. Cage’s defeat, my appointment as deputy alliance leader, and another woman, Raeni, taking over the leadership of Queens Island division. There would be even more changes ahead of us when the alliance left New York to find a new home. While all five division leaders, and most of the alliance members, were in favour of these things, some people deeply resented them.

  Knave obviously disliked having women in positions of power, and it made sense that he’d particularly resent being given orders by a girl even younger than himself. He was being deliberately insulting to me, but I had to be extremely careful how I responded. There was an alliance tradition of putting a new officer through a period of ritual humiliation to test their character and authority.

  I’d escaped most of that standard initiation ridicule until now for two reasons. Firstly, I’d earned my deputy leader position by challenging Cage when no one else had dared to do it. Secondly, I had an Armed Agent weapon on my arm. My father had given me that weapon so I could protect myself from Cage, and I had no intention of using it to shoot anyone else, but it naturally had an intimidating effect on people.

  The fact I hadn’t faced many insults before meant it was even more important to handle this situation well. I was painfully aware that half the alliance children between the ages of five and twelve were studying me now, and they’d eagerly report every detail of my behaviour to their parents, especially any hint that I couldn’t control my anger.

  My problem wasn’t going to be keeping my temper though, but hiding my lack of confidence. It was only weeks since I’d been living in the shadows as one of the least important members of the alliance, so I was desperately worried that my inexperience would lead to me making mistakes. I knew that even the most trivial failure on my part would be severely criticized by people who didn’t want women in power. A truly serious blunder wouldn’t just endanger my deputy leader position, but reflect badly on my father as well, and could prevent other women from ever holding official posts in the future.