Swimming in the Rainbow by Rebecca Lochlann

Author:Rebecca Lochlann [Lochlann, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780998267852
Publisher: Erinyes Press

Part III

Evolution

May-June, 2091

Chapter 1

I screamed.

Robert Louis grabbed me, pulled me to his chest, and turned his back to the cyclone. Wind whipped dust and dirt into my eyes and mouth. Monsters, standing upright like men but with black featureless faces and round greenish-reflective eyes, surrounded us, holding rifles with bayonets.

I heard Elena shriek.

The air thrummed in a rhythmical beating roar. Even through my terror I couldn’t help noticing how flowers were being ripped out of their pots.

Three of the manlike creatures grabbed Robert Louis and tore us apart. He struggled. “Do you know who I am?” he shouted.

“Oh yes,” one replied. Raising his weapon, he brought the butt-end smashing against my husband’s skull.

He fell. They dragged him into the house.

Two others prodded me under the pillars and into the sunken library.

Robert Louis lay on the floor, pallid and still. Blood ran from a bruising gash on his temple. When I was released, I knelt, using the hem of my dress to blot the flow.

One of the beasts removed the thick greenish things he wore over his eyes then stripped off a black balaclava. He was indeed a man— hair tufting out in spikes, black paint or charcoal smeared across his cheekbones.

I knew him. At first, I couldn’t pinpoint from where, then it returned— the journey through my homeland, hiding during the day and riding by night. Once a company of soldiers nearly flushed us out. This man’s grim expression and relentless lashing of a weary horse had terrified me.

Robert Louis had named him. Karl von Bäumer.

A rough white scar started on his forehead and ran through one eye, emerging beneath a black patch and deforming his cheek. “Secure,” he said into a round nodule at his collar. He pressed his fingers to his right ear, listening and nodding, though all I heard was my own shallow breathing and thudding heartbeat. He came closer, his working eye squinted. The scars were countless and startling, some raised and some indented. As wounds, they must have been agonizing.

“Stand up.”

I obeyed.

“You have the look of your mother.”

I thought he meant to say something else, but the entry of another man stopped him.

“The transport is ready, Herr Oberst,” the new soldier said as he peeled off his headgear. Clicking his heels, he bowed in the ancient military polonaise.

The man beside me nodded.

“He needs a doctor,” I said.

Von Bäumer glanced at Robert Louis and sneered. “He won’t die. The great Odenwylde will live to stand trial for his crimes.”

Three black-shrouded, faceless men appeared in the doorway, their heavy guns pointed at my chest. Even I, a very, very ignorant girl, knew escape was impossible.

I was handcuffed along with Robert Louis, who groaned but remained unconscious. He was tossed carelessly onto a stretcher and we were taken through the forest, the trees whispering their alarm all the way.

A pulsating gigantic basilisk sat on the beach in the cove. My terrified struggles were futile— the soldiers dragged me to this thing and hoisted me into its heaving metal gut.

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