Nightfall

by Elizabeth Hartwell

  I fall silent, and we finish filling the water bottles. Just as I cap the last of my bottles, Cerena reaches for my hand. “You don’t have to feel that way.”

  “What way?” I ask, sitting down on the ground.

  “Like they’re more manly than you,” Cerena says, swinging her leg over and straddling my hips. “Lance, I don’t give a fuck what anyone says about what makes a man. You want to hear my definition of what makes a man?”

  My hands come around on their own to her hips, cupping the curves that wind their way through my dreams, through my soul, and into the very essence of me. “I would.”

  Cerena strokes my face, touching her forehead to mine. “It’s not being rough. It’s not about taking charge, or big muscles, or tough looks. And before you say it, it’s not smooth cheeks, wiseass smirks, or enough puns to overload my brain. What makes a man is being strong enough to stand up and be there when shit hits the fan. When everything’s looking like it’s going to hell and there’s a hard job to do, he does it. What makes a man is being strong enough to tell the woman who’s important to him that she means something to him and that he’s willing to be honest with her. Even when he’s not sure if he’s honest with anyone else in his life. A man spits in the face of the gods with a smirk just to support his family. In this and every other way I can think of, Lance . . . you are one tremendously perfect man.”

  Her words ignite a fire in me, and I pull her in tight and kiss her deeply. I pour everything into it, words I haven’t said, feelings I’ve never felt before, promises I haven’t yet uttered. In one kiss, with all the passion, tenderness, and devotion that I have in me, I give and take from Cerena everything I need.

  When we pull back, I can see tears shimmering in her eyes, and I’m pretty sure I’m close to them as well. “I swear to you, Cerena, you have me. Every thought, every muscle, every ounce of strength inside me is yours.”

  “I don’t deserve such a great gift . . . but thank you.”

  “One more thing,” I promise her, squeezing her delectable ass and looking into her eyes. “When we have a chance, when it’s just you and me, I’m going to thrill you so deeply, bury my tongue inside you and give you so much stimulation that you’re going to scream my name so loud that from the frozen north to the burning tropics, from poisoned sea to poisoned sea, they’re gonna know that I’m your man. And you’re my woman.”

  Cerena laughs softly, stroking my face. “I look forward to that opportunity, Lance. In the meantime, though, we’ve got a girl to defend. A little girl who seems to have developed a crush on you.”

  “I’ve noticed,” I reply with a smirk. “It’s not too bad, really. I mean, it’s a lot better than kidnapping Brandon.”

  Chapter 30

  Brandon

  It’s noon the next day when we see the pass over the mountains. It’s just in time, too, because for the past five hours, Sophia White’s been an invisible anchor, dragging us down with every step we take. Whether it’s the cold, the continued shock of what’s happened to her quiet farm life, or the paralysis of fear, she’s moved slower and slower as we’ve climbed.

  More than once, I’ve had to restrain myself from putting a boot in her ass just to hurry her up. It’s not the threat of her husband that stops me but the disappointment I’d see in Cerena’s eyes that stops me. That, and it’d probably give Sophia just one more thing to complain about and slow her down even more.

  It isn’t five minutes after we see the first patches of frost on the ground that she slips for the first time, claiming that she’s uninjured but still slowing down even more. It’s actually harder to move at her pace than it is to press ahead, and Cerena starts rotating the three of us between front and rear guard, letting either Lance or me go up with Tym as he scouts the trail before waiting for the group to catch up with us.

  Finally, the sight of the saddle between two towering peaks helps motivate her, even if we don’t know what’s on the other side of the pass.

  But we know what isn’t . . . thousands of hungry zombies that have shadowed us every time we look down the mountain. The mass is so huge that even from this high above them, we can see them, a rolling, grayish mass that drives the dust in front of them as they shadow us. They can’t climb, so their progress up the slope has been even slower than ours, but they have mirrored us on the valley floor below.

  I don’t know how. It’s not like they could detect us at this distance, but I suspect that Bane or one of his allies has something to do with it. After all, he is the god of death . . . and zombies are kind of dead.

  Either way, the pass is just what we need, and Sophia White looks encouraged when she sees it. “It’s not above the timberline.”

  “Nope,” her husband says encouragingly. “It’ll be cold up there, but we can get over the gap and down the other side quickly. Who knows, maybe there’s a town on the other side? I’d even take a winter stalker encampment at this point.”

  So would I, if only to give Sophia a chance to see that camping in the woods isn’t so bad a deal. Last night’s debacle in the trees is something I do not want to repeat, and I don’t think anyone else does either.

  “If we push hard, we can be over that gap in an hour, maybe two,” Cerena says encouragingly. “Sophia, I want you, Anton, and Tym to be rear security for this push. Don’t ever take your eyes off that gap, understand?”

  “Remain calm, carry on, mind the gap,” Lance says with a chuckle, faking some sort of accent. When he sees his joke’s fallen flat, he shrugs. “Something my mother used to say. I think she got it from Loki and it stuck with us for some reason. Doesn’t matter.”

  Cerena takes point security with Lance for this interval, leaving me with Sienna in the middle. It’s a genius move, really. By separating the girl from her mother, Sophia will be encouraged to keep up with the rest of the group, and Sienna’s been a trooper. She’ll keep up with me.

  We start off, and soon, we’re pushing faster than we have since leaving the trucks. We’re making more noise, our boots crunching on the stony ground as the trees start to thin out, but I don’t care right now. It’s comforting, really. It’s reassurance that we’re actually going somewhere and not silently trudging in circles in some torturous parody of escape.

  “Brandon?”

  I glance over and see Sienna’s looking up at me. Her face isn’t quite the same as Cerena’s. It’s too innocent and immature, but the startling blue eyes are similarly shaped, even if Cerena’s are green. While I don’t think she’s going to end up as tall as Cerena, she’s still going to be a remarkably beautiful young woman when womanhood finishes blooming in her.

  Already, I bet she was turning heads back in her village from the young men her age, maybe even some of the slightly older ones, too. “What’s on your mind, Sienna?”

  “You’re not like the others,” she says, tilting her head. “What’s it like, being reborn?”

  I hum, thinking. “Honestly, I don’t remember much it. I sort of remember the fight before that, but not a lot of the details. I know I got my ass kicked, though.”

  Sienna laughs a little but still sounds nervous. “But you came back.”

  “I did . . . glad I did, too. Because while I don’t remember almost anything about my life before meeting Cerena, I do remember one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Sienna asks. “Names?”

  “Nope . . . a feeling. I spent my entire life before meeting her, Tym, and Lance wishing for one thing. For someone to give a damn about me.”

  Sienna grins. “Now you’ve got three. I mean, you know—”

  “I know. And I appreciate them, I really do. Still, if you want to know the truth, I’ve been sort of jealous of you all this time.”

  Sienna makes a surprised sound, almost choking as she sips on her water. “Jealous of me?”

  “Yeah. You see, you’re going to remember what it was like, growing up with a mother and father who love you. You’re going to remember that, and when you find that special s
omeone someday who’ll do things to your heart that make anything any of our special powers do look like nothing, you’re going to have your mother and father to thank for it. Because you’re not going to make the same mistakes I have.”

  “What mistakes?” Sienna asks.

  “I’m a bit . . . difficult to get along with,” I admit. “I’ve fought with my people almost as much as I’ve gotten along with them. But I’m working to be a better person.”

  Sienna hums. “So, does it scare you? I mean . . . the powers and all?”

  “Every day,” I admit honestly. “Like I said, I don’t remember much of what life was like before I was reborn, but I do know that I didn’t have any powers. And what I do have seems to be very dangerous. But I’m practicing, and I’m going to use my powers to protect you and your family. We all are.”

  Sienna smiles, but we’re pushing too hard for conversation to continue as we make our way over the gap between the mountains. Instead, for the next hour, the thin air whistles in our lungs, and even my legs start to burn as we assault the final stretch of uphill through the gap.

  At the top, we pause, a little thrill going through me as I look out at the valley stretched out in front of us. It’s beautiful and pristine, greener than almost any valley I’ve seen before, and hopefully, it’s a ‘clean green,’ as Tym called it when he first saw it.

  If it is, it’s an untouched pearl in the Scorched Earth, really a place where a community could grow.

  And there’s a town down there. Somehow, by some miracle, it looks to be in good condition, relatively untouched by the ravages of time and war. Sure, it’s worn down some, but most of the buildings I can see are in decent shape. It doesn’t look occupied either. It’s a ghost town . . . but that’s exactly what we need. A place to rest and recover a little.

  “What do you think?” I ask Cerena as we take a ten-minute break to chew on some food and drink water. Tym’s a few meters away behind a rock, draining a piss into his catch bottle, while Lance is stretching out his left calf, which apparently started to bother him on the last bit up the slope.

  Cerena and I stand side by side, surveying the valley below, and she nods her head slowly. “I haven’t seen a sight that pretty in a very long time. Too bad we couldn’t just move a full town here.”

  “I was sort of thinking the same thing,” I admit. In my mind, I can imagine it. Starting with Cerena, Tym, Lance and me, we settle down. Maybe the Whites join us. From there we find the people who are on our side, slowly building the community. With good land, buildings available, and protective mountains surrounding the town on most sides, it’d be easy to find—

  “Problem,” Tym says, jogging over and wiping his hands on his pants legs. “Movement in the valley.”

  “What?” Cerena asks, her eyes tightening.

  “Down below, to the east,” Tym says, pointing. “Small group.”

  I peer in the direction that Tym’s indicating and see a few dust trails in the air. Vehicles. Or large animals, but I’m betting on vehicles.

  “Shit. Tym, we still have those binoculars?”

  “In my bag,” Tym confirms, dropping to a knee and pulling out the small set. He passes them to Cerena, who looks through them for a long time before cursing.

  “Shit . . . we gotta move.”

  “Why, what is it?” Lance asks as he gets to his feet, pulling his pack on. “Werewolves?”

  “I don’t think so . . . and lighten the packs,” she says. “Food, water, weapons. I think those are Hunter vehicles coming. We need to get to cover in the town quickly.”

  “What about back over the gap?” Anton White asks. “At least we know the enemy over there.”

  “If those are Hunters, they may have already spotted us,” Cerena explains. “Edward’s guided by Bane, and I don’t want to face two sets of enemies at once. One minute, dump your stuff or leave the bags behind. I’d rather live on stuff we can hunt and glean from the countryside than carry excess weight. We move in two minutes.”

  Luckily, I packed my bag the way Tym showed me, and all my extra ‘weight’ is dumped quickly. Everyone except Sophia White is ready to go at the right time, and when she starts to argue, I’m shocked when her own husband takes out his knife and slices the bag in pieces.

  “Our daughter’s safety is more important than an extra set of clothing, woman!” Anton growls, throwing the bag back the way we came to prove his point. “Now move!”

  It’s a race, and we know it. On one hand, we’ve got maybe three-quarters of a mile down the slope and through the narrow ring of open space that separates the edge of the built-up parts of the town from the mountain. The vehicles are easily ten times that distance away.

  On the other hand, they’re on flat terrain and a lot faster. I don’t know just how fast a Hunter vehicle can go, but if they’re ten times as fast as us, I wouldn’t be surprised.

  The run down the mountain is hectic, with all of us taking chances that we normally wouldn’t. Tym and I lead the way, jumping down rocks and taking steep cutbacks to gain some distance while Lance and Cerena help the Whites with a slightly less treacherous path.

  More than once, I see someone start to slip, and Sienna even cries out once as she loses her balance, but each time, they move back onto a surer path almost before anyone can react.

  “See that?” I ask Tym through roughly huffed breath as he and I keep running. “Cerena?”

  “Probably,” Tym replies as we both leap, grabbing a large tree branch in front of us to slow our fall as we take the fifty-foot drop in just a few seconds. “We’re on our own though.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see two plumes of dust separate from the main body of the rest of the vehicles coming our way and speed toward town. “High-speed scouts?”

  “Motorcycles,” Tym says, pouring on more speed. For a man his size, carrying forty pounds of hammers and another ten pounds of water and pack, he’s fast. Not as fast as Lance, perhaps, but fast enough that I’m working hard to keep up with him with just my spear and pack. “One-man vehicles.”

  Tym and I reach the first building on the outskirts of town just as the scouts approach, and I see he’s right. There are two motorcycles, each ridden by a human dressed very similarly to the way Cerena wears her own Hunter leathers.

  “Think you can take a motorcycle?” Tym asks as he drops his pack and pulls his hammers. I follow, quickly deciding on my options. I can’t use my spear. I’d snap the shaft in half with even a glancing blow.

  Time to try unleashing some dark energy. “I’ll try.”

  “You’d better, because here they come!”

  The motorcycle scouts have seen us, and they turn toward us, gunning their engines up to a nasty yowl that reminds me of roaring cats. We’re still about fifty yards from the edge of town, and there’s no place to run. It’s fight or get cut down from behind.

  Tym clangs the heads of his hammers together, crying out to the sky and challenging the riders to attack. I swear the man grows three inches and his battle roar echoes over the space around us. One of the motorcycles swerves, the rider losing control in surprise. Somehow, though, he speeds up, starting to right himself when he hits a rock and goes flying, his head crashing into the side of a building and punching a hole in its fragile side. The building groans, and suddenly, the roof collapses in on him, taking him out of the equation.

  It’s so sudden that I freeze for a moment, but then a glint of sunlight off metal reminds me where I am and I duck just as a sword blade cuts through the air at neck height. That was too close, and it pisses me off. How dare this motherfucker try and decapitate me when I’m just trying to live freely and protect my people?

  I spin, seeing the motorcycle go roaring by, and unleash all of the pent-up emotion inside me.

  I discovered it the other night during my practice. My key is my anger. But this isn’t the blind, unfocused rage of my first encounters with my power. Just because I’m angry doesn’t mean it’s uncontrollable. Instead, the
energy flies from my hand as a focused beam, hitting the back wheel and making it just disintegrate. The cycle drops back and crashes, the rider tumbling along the ground.

  He tries to get up, but before he can do more than unsteadily get to his hands and knees, Tym’s hammer ends him.

  “How long for the next wave?”

  Tym looks, his eyes crackling with newfound power. He’s angry too. His key is similar to mine . . . but he’s also just as under control. “Two minutes, maybe less. I’d say stealth is no longer an option.”

  No shit.

  “What if we’re unable to defend the Whites?” Tym asks as he glances up the mountainside toward where Cerena, Lance, and the Whites are still making their way down. “I can see six trucks. I don’t think even your powers can take on sixty Hunters.”

  A howl lifts through the air, and I realize our odds just got worse. I glance at Tym, who nods in understanding.

  “If this goes to shit, we need to prevent Bane from getting Sienna,” I reply, looking over my shoulder toward where the howls came from. “The needs of the world outweigh her promise.”

  “But—”

  “If it needs to happen, I’ll do it,” I tell Tym, knowing the weight of my words. “I’ll take the sin. You just promise me one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Cerena lives.”

  Tym nods, his hands squeezing the handles of his hammers. “My blood spills before hers.”