Roger was standing at the edge of the crowd, Liza saw. He was by himself, as usual. He wasn’t particularly popular. He had cuts and bruises and scrapes on his face from where Jaspar had thrown him into the bushes. Served him right.
Roger caught Liza’s gaze and glared at her. Liza looked away. Roger was the one thing she would not miss if – when – she had to move off the Christmas Colony.
Feeling his gaze boring into her, she turned and walked away, and bumped into Barbara, who was also by herself. That was unusual; Barbara always had her children with her.
“Hey, Barbara, where’s the family? They’re not still working, are they?”
“They’ve all come down with a cold,” Barbara said with a frown. She looked a little pale, and she had circles under her eyes. Liza felt a twinge of sympathy. This was the worst time of year for her husband and kids to be sick; they would all be working twenty hours a day at the post office. This night of caroling was the one night that Barbara always took off.
“Do you need some Cure-All?” Liza asked. “I’m sure we can rustle some up.”
“Oh, no thank you,” Barbara said. “They took some just a little while ago, and they’re just resting up. I’m sure they’ll be fine tomorrow.”
Cure-All normally cured the common cold within an hour or two. Liza hoped they weren’t sick with anything more serious. What was there left that Cure-All couldn’t fix? She couldn’t think of anything.
Oh well, if Barbara’s family was seriously ill, she would see to it that an off-world medic was called in.
The crowd started murmuring and pointing.
Liza followed their gaze, and saw a group of shifters who could only be Harbingers walking around. Up until now, she hadn’t seen them in town at all. They weren’t known for having much in the way of Christmas spirit.
They were as tall as the Balthazar Clan Drakken, and they had reddish scales on their foreheads. They wore fur boots, leggings and fur capes, and to Liza’s horror, she saw that they had skulls and bones as adornments.
They also were carrying spears, and stalking through the crowd, giving haughty, threatening looks to the humans.
Oddly enough, Liza saw one of them exchange a glance with Roger. Roger nodded slightly, and his thin lips twitched into a smirk.
What was that all about?
Jaspar and his clan hurried over and surrounded the Harbingers. Their leader, Liza knew, was called Deathbringer Fabian.
“Let us pass,” Fabian snarled at Jaspar. “Or it will not go well with you.”
Deputy Mayor Kristoff, a portly man with a white beard and curled-up mustache, had been singing with the carolers, but now he hurried over.
“There are no weapons allowed here in town!” he said indignantly. “You are frightening the families with your spears and your…” He gestured at the skulls sewn onto Fabian’s cape. “Those things. You must leave at once.”
“We will own your world soon,” Deathbringer Fabian sneered, his lips curling.
Jaspar walked right up to Fabian, shoving his face close to his. “Leave now, or we take to the skies.” His eyes glowed. “And we know that you won’t do that, because you are the weaker Drakken. You are all weaker than us, or you would have formally declared war long ago.”
Fabian’s eyes glowed bright red, and smoke curled up from his nostrils. Several children in the crowd started crying, and their families grabbed them and hurried away.
“Perhaps that is about to change,” Fabian boasted, and then turned and stalked off, followed by his clan members.
