“Leave it, there’s no time,” she whispered, grabbing for my wrist.
“I need it,” I hissed. I knew I was being illogical, but I really felt like I needed that blade. I needed to at least feel like I could defend Seanna, Aoife, and myself without making myself pass out. Could I actually use the blade on another living creature after nearly throwing up looking at that wound? I can’t say, but I knew having the thing in my hand would make me feel better if nothing else. I wasn’t going to leave without it.
“Gaige.” She dropped her voice even further as the rustling in the grass grew closer. “Take it. Leave the belt.”
I nodded, wondering why I hadn’t thought of that myself. The sheath and rope belt would have been nice, but the dagger was the real prize. I’d carry it by handle if I had to. I grabbed the bone handle, hoping it wasn’t human, and slid the blade from the sheath. It was double-sided and looked deadly sharp. I turned to Aoife and felt my eyes grow to the size of plates. “Behind you!”
Before she could react to the warning, there was a thunk and the balataur standing behind her jerked. His thick brows knitted together and his unnaturally dark eyes rolled to the back of his head. There was a tearing sound like a knife slicing through a leather couch and the thing fell to the side with a thump. It didn’t move. I looked up from the body to find another balataur standing in its place with a bloodied ax held in its massive hands.
25
A Savior
The thing snorted, steam expelling from its large nostrils. Its muscles twitched under the mat of fur covering its body. I held the knife in front of us. The threat it might have conveyed was severely diminished by the way the point shook.
“We must go if we are to make it out of this field alive,” the thing grunted.
The words didn’t register. They came across as a threat to my mixed-up brain. I held the dagger out further, squeezing the handle in an attempt to stop my hands from shaking. The balataur looked at the knife, then at me.
“You are a dense one, aren’t you?” he growled.
I guess at some point I should stop being surprised by the speed of the beings that inhabit this world no matter their size. In a blur, the balataur swept my hand aside. The jarring impact sent the dagger flying. He grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet and into the grass with little effort.
“We must move. They’re everywhere. Come, girl,” he growled.
I glanced back at Aoife in a panic. She looked like she was debating following or bolting in the other direction. Faced with that decision, she did the only sensible thing. Gold poured into her eyes like a blacksmith molding a bowl of solid gold. She blinked and a moment later, followed.
What had she seen? Had she really seen a color that told her she could trust this balataur? That was the only explanation for her willingness to follow us into the tall grass. She’d been dealing with this ability of hers for a while as far as I could tell, but I was still new to the whole special abilities thing. Everything I knew about those beasts was they would stop at nothing to drag me off to some guy who wanted to use me to get to Earth. I wasn’t willing to put that much trust in Aoife’s golden eyes. I balled a fist and jabbed the balataur in the side right at the bottom of the ribcage. It was like punching a wall covered in a fur pelt.
He rolled his eyes at me, not slowing his pace. “I am trying to help you, Gatekeeper.”
Did I have that title tattooed to my forehead? It’d been a while since I’d seen myself in a mirror, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t gotten a tattoo in the past few days. Then again, who knew what Seanna had done up there when she healed the gash. I was relatively sure Aoife would have told me if that were the case. Pretty sure, anyway. Kinda sure. Maybe.
“How am I supposed to believe that?” I demanded. He dragged me along by my arm. I kept pace the best I could while pushing through the grass in the half-light of morning.
He held up his ax as an answer to the question. Dark blood dripped from it.
And the obvious dawned on me. More like snuck up behind me and punched me in the kidneys. “You killed them.” The image of that ugly gash across the dead balataur’s chest popped in my head. The echoes of the metal on metal clanging rang in my ears. The life draining out of the eyes of the balataur that stood over Aoife. This one had killed them?
“Why are you helping us?”
“Does the why matter,” he asked, “when somebody is saving your life?”
Aoife caught up to us. “Your color is different.”
I looked over the creature’s black fur. “No, it’s not. I’ve seen the same color before.”
“Not his fur you idiot.” Her eyes still burned gold.
“Oh,” I said.
“He’s right. You are dense,” she said.
The balataur snorted a laugh.
“You know what?” I asked the thing. I yanked my arm from his grip. It kind of hurt, but I did manage to accomplish it. “I really do think the why matters. There are so many after me for the gateway. How do I know you’re not, too?”
“I care not for you or your gateway, Gatekeeper,” he replied. He produced a scrap of cloth from his belt, wiped the gore off the blade, and tossed it into the grass.
“That’s hard for me to believe,” I said. “Everybody cares here.”
“Believe as you wish.” He shrugged a shoulder nearly the size of a basketball.
“I will,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “And I’m not going with you.”
“As you wish,” he said without breaking stride. “Luck be with you out there. Keep your head down and they might not find you again.”
I continued to walk alongside the monster. “If you’re so willing to let us go, why did you help us in the first place?”
“The balataur wanted you,” he replied. “If saving you and your mate frustrated them and allowed me to kill a few in the process, then it was an undertaking I was willing to put effort into.”
I frowned at the label he had attached to Aoife, but let it slide. “Why are you so willing to kill your own kind?”
“His color is different,” Aoife put in.
“They are not my kind,” he growled at the same time.
“But you’re—” I started.
“They are not my kind,” he said again. “I am not a balataur.”
“Oh, okay,” I said skeptically. “What are you then?”
“A minotaur,” he said.
“Yeah, I thought that’s what they are, just called something different here.”
“We are not the same,” he stated.
“But you’re like, you know…” I held my hands to my head, pointing my fingers out like horns and let my lips fall loose. “Related like cousins or something.”
Aoife said something under her breath that I didn’t catch. I realized what I was doing and quickly dropped my hands.
“Are you cousins with monkeys?” the minotaur asked.
“Um. No,” I said.
“Genetically, we’re actually closer to pigs than monkeys,” Aoife suggested helpfully.
“Neither are we cousins, balataurs and minotaurs,” the beast said. “If you suggest such a thing again, I will rip your tongue out and make you watch while I eat it.”
I swallowed. “It’s just that—”
“Now is not the time, Gaige,” Aoife interrupted.
“But—”
“Let me put it in a way you can understand. Shut up!”
“I like this girl,” the minotaur grunted at me.
The sun rose fully over the horizon, casting a long light across the plains. I turned to look over my shoulder. I couldn’t see much, the grass was so tall, but I couldn’t see or hear any sign of the balataurs. “Where are they?”
“Fell back to regroup most likely,” the beast said. “They were not expecting resistance just as they received.”
I wasn’t sure if I should have taken that as a slight or not. “What about Seanna? She’s still out there.”
“Is this the
other girl you travel with?”
If Seanna had been gone before we woke up, I wondered how long the minotaur had been following us if he knew about her.
“She can take care of herself,” Aoife said. The tone of her voice told me she wouldn’t care if the Ashling was eaten by rabid prairie dogs or not.
“We don’t know where we’re going without her, Aoife,” I said through clenched teeth. What she said was true. Seanna could take care of herself. I would put money on the fact she could hide from the balataurs with ease if she didn’t have Aoife and me to worry about. But she would worry. We were in her care and if something happened to us…Well, I didn’t know. Would she just go home? Quest over? Would she come after us? Did she think we were captured? Would she confront the balataurs alone, thinking they had us?
“Can we outrun them?” Aoife asked.
“Not likely,” the minotaur snorted. “The best help for is to put as much distance between us and them as possible. Find a hiding place for you two. Then I will lead them away if I can. Hopefully I will kill many as I do.”
“That doesn’t sound like a great plan,” I said.
“You have a better one?” Aoife asked.
“We find Seanna.” It was a lame plan, but I wouldn’t admit that out loud. We had no clue where she was and searching for her would more likely send us right into the open arms of the balataur looking for us. They would not be inclined to be gentle with us after a few of their numbers fell to the minotaur’s ax.
“Yeah, brilliant plan.” Aoife said with sarcasm. “Where did she run off to, anyway? Why does she always run off in the middle of the night?”
“She doesn’t run off every night. She didn’t the night before last,” I added at a look from Aoife.
“Yeah, well, she did last night. Where is she now?”
“We must keep moving,” the minotaur said.
“I don’t know where she is, but we can’t just leave her,” I told Aoife.
“Why don’t you yell for her? She might answer.”
“I would not advise that,” the minotaur interjected.
“I’m not going to—”
“No,” Aoife said to me. “Why don’t I do that for you?”
She inhaled a deep breath. I’d like to think she wasn’t really going to yell for Seanna with all those balataurs out there, but I wasn’t about to take that chance. I jumped to cover her mouth with a hand.
“Okay! Okay! I get it,” I said. “But we can’t leave without her. She’s the one leading us to Delicia.”
“The city of Delicia is that way.” The minotaur pointed with a massive hand.
“See, we don’t need her,” Aoife said.
I rolled my eyes. “She’s taking us to Daresh.”
“Daresh,” the minotaur growled under his breath.
I glanced at him, but he said nothing more.
“He’s expecting us from what she said. Why do we need her? Does she need to introduce us as we make our entrance into the Grand Hall?” Aoife asked.
“If that’s what you feel like you need.”
All three of us came up short at the sudden appearance of Seanna. The minotaur swung his ax up into both hands, holding it out defensively. I nearly had a heart attack. Aoife did what she did best when startled. Swore.
To tell the truth, I felt like launching a few swear words of my own at her. “Where have you been?”
“Catching you breakfast.” She tossed something at me.
It hit my chest and I caught it on the rebound. I held the thing up to find a fuzzy animal of some sort. It looked like a cross between a badger and a rabbit with a flattened head. It was very dead. I did what any growing boy would have done. I squeaked in surprise and threw it to the ground. I rubbed my hands on the thighs of my jeans.
“That’s gross.” Aoife voiced my opinion. “What is that?”
“Food,” Seanna said. She sighed when Aoife made a face. “It’s edible. You don’t think I haven’t noticed you barely eat, Gaige? You need to eat more or you’re going to give out before you make it home.”
“I’m fine,” I said, unable to tear my eyes away from the dead thing on the ground.
“We really must be moving,” the minotaur grunted.
“Fine? Really?” Seanna demanded with barely a glance at the beast. “Don’t be stupid.”
“He can’t help it,” Aoife piped up.
“If you’re not going to eat the nuts and leaves I bring you, at least eat the meat.”
“Just think of it as a Meaty Madness,” Aoife said.
Thanks, Brian.
“Why don’t you eat it?” I demanded.
She pulled her empty pockets inside out to show me. “I clear my plate.”
“Aren’t you concerned about this?” I waved a hand indicating the minotaur to Seanna. “Don’t you want to know—”
“He’s a minotaur, clearly,” Seanna said. “Not a balataur.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“His color is different,” Aoife said.
“How do normal people know?” I amended.
“You think she’s normal?” Aoife barked a laugh.
“He’s tiny,” Seanna said at the same time.
The beast grunted and narrowed its black eyes at the Ashling. “It would be better to keep the noise down,” the beast noted.
“Are you going to eat this or what?” Seanna waved a hand at the thing on the ground.
“I’ll eat it if it will allow us to move,” the minotaur suggested.
“Can we not do this right now?” I asked.
“Indeed,” the beast grunted. The grass was tall enough to come over Aoife’s, Seanna’s, and my head, but his horns stuck above the tallest of the plants. He bent lower. “They’re coming.”
That killed the argument. I stood on my toes to look over the grass and saw large, horned heads. There were at least a dozen of them.
“We need to move,” Seanna said. She looked the minotaur over with a critical eye. I could see her brain working through her eyes. She was trying to decide whether to accept the beast’s help. I really didn’t know the difference between him and the balataur. How could I? But Aoife seemed to trust him. If Seanna did, too, I didn’t see any reason to question continuing to follow him. “Lead them that way.” She indicated to her right.
The minotaur nodded his large head and pushed through the grass in a crouch. Aoife moved into the wake of grass he made. I followed with Seanna close behind. She put a light hand on my shoulder, and when I turned, I saw her looking back the way we had come. She hummed softly and raised her hand parallel to the ground. A faint purple light shone from her palm. The grass we had pushed over lifted itself from the ground and stood straight.
“What are you doing?” Aoife said, glancing back.
“Masking our passing,” the minotaur answered for her.
“Keep moving,” Seanna said, her thin hand held out, steady as a rock.
We did. I was surprised by how quietly the beast could move. The balataurs out on the plains made enough noise to give a stampeding herd of, well, cows a run for their money. Even though our guide pushed over the grass with his passing, he did so with minimal noise. Soon, the sounds of the beasts searching for us faded until we no longer heard them.
The minotaur risked a peek over the grass and announced we had truly lost them. He stood up straight, twisting his thick neck. The pop it produced was on the level of epic.
I let out a soft sigh. Danger wasn’t anything like in the movies. The characters always made it seem like they got used to having their lives constantly on the line. Aoife and mine had been since we stepped through the gateway. I no longer panicked, but it still did something to me. Once the danger had passed, it always felt like I’d gone a few rounds with an MMA fighter. I felt tired, worn out, and hungry. Too bad we made such a quick escape—we’d left the thing Seanna had killed behind.
“What’s for breakfast?” I asked with a smile.
Seanna glared at me,
ripped out a handful of grass, and shoved it into my chest as she walked past.
26
Minotaur
I was astounded by how silently the minotaur moved through the tall grass when needed. After we had traveled about an hour, Seanna decided we were far enough to drop our stealth. The beast’s hooves crunched loudly on the dry grass underneath the taller stuff once he stood to his full height and walked normally. I watched him with fascination. Every step sent his muscles rippling under his dark fur. While he didn’t lack for muscle, I wouldn’t say he had a physique like a bodybuilder. It was more like those guys in strongman competitions. Large, beefy, and very intimidating. Everything about him was intimidating. From his size to the ax strapped to his back to the long, curving horns sticking out of each side of his head that ended in points.
“What?” He rolled his eyes toward me.
“Nothing.” I hurried to catch up with Seanna who was leading the way. The sun hung heavy in the sky and I had to squint just to see. I racked my brain for something to say. “The grass is getting shorter.” The vegetation was over our heads when we escaped the balataurs, but it had reduced to about waist high. We were able to see for miles—miles and miles of nothing but grasslands and a pathetic-looking tree here and there.
She only nodded. Her blue eyes glowed in the sunlight. It made me smile.
“That was a neat thing you did back there with the grass,” I said, wanting to get her talking. I didn’t care what about.
“A simple trick my people have done for millennia. Plant manipulation is how we form our cities.” Her voice sounded high and light, but a little tight.
“What else can you do?” I asked. “Magic, I mean.”
She shrugged a boney shoulder. “This and that.” When she saw me watching her expectantly, she pulled the wooden amulet out from under her sweater. “This is really where my power comes from.”
I had already guessed that, but the admission surprised me. It wasn’t the type of information she was willing to give up readily. In the few days I’d known her, she was nothing but private about herself personally. Maybe she was opening up to me. No, I knew she was. Since the night before last in the swamp, she’d started acting differently toward me. I was more than just a Gatekeeper. I was Gaige Porter. I was somebody to be trusted.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy Page 24
