by Kallysten
She had thought all along that they ought to continue exploring with smaller groups. Daniel had heard her, but he had followed his plan anyway. Smaller groups might have evaded the demons more easily. In four nights, they had fought three times, and weariness was beginning to take its toll on the troops. They hadn't suffered any serious injury—at least not yet—but two soldiers had stayed behind tonight to nurse small wounds.
The call came from the center of the group, where Daniel stayed close to Simon. “Let's go."
They started marching, twenty soldiers armed with swords and axes, the twenty-first mumbling the chant that would mask them, to an extent, from demon senses. Simon's concealment glamour wasn't perfect, his nerves getting the better of him too often still, but he was improving every night. With the fog now so dense around them, they needed every little advantage. Every few minutes, Kate had to remind herself that squinting did not help in the least, and only tired her faster.
Not for the first time, she wondered how far the vampires could see in these conditions. Daniel had positioned them at the front supposedly so they would be able to use their keener senses for the squad, and in fact they had raised the alarm with plenty of time to prepare each time the demons had attacked. Kate couldn't help but think that Daniel had also put them there, in the front but on the edges, so that he would be able to keep an eye on them. She wasn't sure how well that worked, though. From the third line, she didn't think Daniel could do more than guess their shapes.
She shook her head and brought her attention back to her surroundings so she wouldn't stumble over debris on the uneven street. She couldn't see much, but she could hear the regular breathing of the soldiers around her, that matched the rhythm of her heart. She could feel the wind, weak but constant, push the fog against her skin in cold, wet fingers that made her shiver. She did her best to remain calm and attentive; lives were at stake. Her own, the squad's, the lives of the people in Claremont...
Try as she might to remain focused, Kate's mind started wandering as it did much too often lately. Somehow, it seemed more difficult to keep Marc and Blake out of her thoughts now that they had both backed off as she had requested. She hadn't expected them to do it, and she was still surprised they had. She could still feel Blake's eyes on her every so often, and Marc sometimes looked as though he wanted to talk to her, but neither had made a move in four days beyond the necessary communication from soldier to soldier.
If she was completely honest with herself, she missed sparring with Marc, and his surprisingly motherly ways. She missed Blake's banter and deadpan humor just as much. The mere thought that Blake might have been right when claiming she liked them both was robbing her of too many hours of sleep—and of too much attention when she needed it all. She bit back a curse when she realized the other four people on the front line had stopped. She hurriedly did the same and raised her closed left fist like they had, signaling for the rest of the troops to stop. Both Blake and Marc stepped forward and disappeared into the fog. Kate held still despite the tickling down her spine that tried to push her forward. They knew what they were doing, she told herself firmly. There was no need to check on them.
They reappeared after a few moments, side by side and almost straight in front of her. The fog swirled at their backs and parted for an instant, giving Kate a glimpse of what had stopped them. The wall of debris, behind them, rose twice as high as they stood. She followed them to Daniel, already knowing what they would report.
"A couple of high rise towers collapsed right on top of each other,” Marc said, grimfaced. “The street is blocked."
"Can we go over them?” Daniel asked.
"It's too high,” Kate answered, right as Blake said, “We could. You? Probably not."
Daniel threw him an annoyed frown but didn't comment. He pulled out a map from inside his jacket. Before he had finished unfolding it, both Kate and Marc were pointing slim torchlights at the paper in his hands.
"We are...” His finger traced their path so far. “...about here. If we backtrack to this street, we can go around and resume our original path."
And this, Kate thought, was only one more reason why it would have made more sense to explore in small groups, and come back as a squad once they had found the breach. She said nothing but, glancing up, met Marc's eyes. He seemed as frustrated as she felt. It was only when he answered in kind that she realized she was smiling at him. She looked away, flustered, and fumbled to turn off her light. Shoving it back in her pocket, she moved through the group, spreading out the word of what they were doing and why.
It could have been nothing more than an effect of her imagination, but when they started again, Marc seemed to be closer, on the other side of the soldier standing between them. She shook herself. It was going to be a long night.
* * * *
Another night in the City; another dead end. Frustrated, Marc raised his hand, signaling for the group to stop behind him. He didn't bother to glance to the other end of the front line to see whether Blake had stopped as well, and strode forward. As had happened twice already that week, a mountain of debris blocked off the street completely. He slid his sword back into the scabbard and started climbing onto the mass of broken concrete and twisted metal. It creaked menacingly beneath his feet and hands. He tried to step forward, only to start falling when the stone on which he had stepped collapsed under his weight. He clung to a jagged piece of metal, stopping his fall but cutting his hand.
"What are you doing?” Blake hissed, somewhere behind him. “Did you hurt yourself?"
Marc closed his fist over the shallow cut and gingerly found his way back to the ground.
"It's nothing,” he said as he reached Blake. “And I was trying to see if we could go through."
Blake's eyes trailed over him, stopping on his hand, though he didn't reach for it as Marc expected.
"So?” he said, looking back up. “Can we?"
Marc turned back to the mound of rubble. Unstable, treacherous, with no way to know how far it extended; the breach might be just behind it.
"We could,” he said slowly. “It'd be a pain, though. I'm not sure it's worth it."
"Problem?” Kate said, emerging from the fog.
She remained just a step further away than Marc and Blake were to each other, just far enough that Marc had trouble reading her expression.
"Another dead-end,” he told her. “We'll have to backtrack again."
She groaned; they had all had enough of these seemingly unending detours. “We're going to spend the night on this again. Help me convince Daniel we should break the group to explore faster?"
Although surprised that she would ask for his support, Marc readily agreed. He had tried to avoid power struggles with Daniel, but if his second in command was ready to contradict him, Marc could lend her his voice. Blake tried to help as well, though his particular brand of arguing rarely worked with Daniel. After a few minutes and a careful observation of his map, Daniel grudgingly gave in. The squad broke into three groups. Daniel led one to a side street on the right, taking Blake along, while a second, under Simon's glamour, remained in place. Kate took the last group to the right. Marc went with her—as she had too casually requested.
They took the lead, with the other three members of the group spread out behind them. They stepped through the fog, stumbling over broken pavement and looking for the way forward for about the length of a block in perfect silence. Kate then stepped closer to Marc and, never taking her eyes from the road ahead of them, murmured, “Is that it?"
A jolt of energy rushed through Marc, and he followed her gaze, trying to see what she had seen. There was nothing there, however. He glanced at her, puzzled. “What do you mean?"
She moved yet a little closer to him, and their shoulders brushed against each other. She spoke even more quietly now. “Did you really give up?"
"Didn't you want me to? Blake said—"
"I didn't expect you to listen."
What an interesting develo
pment, he thought. He had been suspicious when he had noticed that, like him, Blake was leaving Kate alone, and he had asked him what he was now planning. Blake had answered with a cocky grin that she would come back to them soon enough. It looked as though he had been right.
"Did you want me to listen?” he asked, glancing down at her again.
A swirling gust of wind brought her scent to him. Beyond the scent of lavender, that had been absent for the past few days, she only smelled of confusion, the jumbled notes of it resembling frustration without the hint of acridness.
"I don't know,” she said in a sigh. “You're just making things too complicated. Both of you."
Marc couldn't disguise his chuckle. She glared at him, letting out a little huffing sound. He shrugged, apologetic.
"Sorry?"
She shook her head as she looked away, but she was smiling. Almost forgetting where they were, Marc started humming quietly. He caught himself before anyone—including demons—noticed, and tried to focus his mind on what they were doing. It was difficult. He had missed her smile.
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Chapter 14
Blake was many things, but he wasn't an idiot. When Marc and Kate returned from their exploration, both trying to hide smiles despite the lack of progress their group had made, he knew something had happened. He spent the next day trying to ferret out from Marc what had changed, without much luck. Marc merely told him not to push Kate and to let her go at her own pace instead. That might work just fine for Marc since he knew what was going on, but Blake had used just about all his patience in the last days. He refused to let his chance pass him by just because Marc wasn't in a sharing mood.
Convincing Daniel took less effort than he had anticipated. He waited until they had arrived on the edge of the City, where they usually left the trucks, and took him to the side.
"We're doing the separate teams thing again tonight, aren't we?"
Daniel eyed him suspiciously. “Yeah. Why?"
"Marc and I should switch. That way—"
He had prepared an explanation about how they ought to keep everyone from falling into a routine because routines could be dangerous, but Daniel didn't let him finish.
"Great idea. Have Kate deal with you for a while."
A little taken aback, Blake chuckled and pretended to be offended. “Keep it up and I'll think you're glad to get rid of me."
Daniel didn't even blink. “I am."
Blake rolled his shoulders, feeling the weight of his sword and wishing he didn't feel like drawing it out. “I'm a good fighter. You should be sorry I won't be by your side."
"You are a good fighter,” Daniel agreed. He crossed his arms and looked intently at Blake. “But you're not a soldier. If you ever applied to join the squad, you'd be kicked out in hours. It's not enough to know how to hold a sword. Your partners need to be able to trust you. And I don't think anyone here can honestly say they trust you."
With a dismissive snort, Blake strolled away. Why should he care about Daniel thought? Human or vampire, he had never wanted to join the army. He didn't react well to orders.
Pushing Daniel's remarks out of his mind, he went to tell Marc of the change for the night. He didn't take it too well, and warned Blake against “doing anything stupid,” whatever that meant. Kate had apparently been informed by Daniel already, and she showed no reaction when Blake joined her group. Her scent held just a trace of amusement. It irritated Blake. He realized it was silly, since there might have been dozens of reasons for her to be amused, but he couldn't help feeling as though she were making fun of him, somehow. Rather than remaining close to her as he had planned, he fell back when the group separated from the others, bringing up the rear.
For some odd reason, Daniel's words kept coming back to him. He scowled, annoyed in retrospect that he hadn't replied. Of course people trusted him. Many of them. His Sire, for one. They had fought more battles than Blake cared to remember, and Marc owed him a few lives. The reverse was true as well, but it didn't change the fact that Marc trusted him, and so did others. It was nothing more than a temporary lapse of his memory that he couldn't come up with any other name.
They had been advancing in the fog for a few minutes when he stepped up to Kate. She started when he touched her arm lightly and looked around, immediately concerned.
"Did you see something?” she asked, the words coming out fast and quiet.
"No, I just—"
"Then don't startle me like that! You almost gave me a heart attack!"
He mumbled an apology and fell silent, his eyes returning to their observation of the surroundings.
"What did you want?” she asked after a little while, sounding resigned.
"Nothing. Nothing at all."
She gave him an unconvinced glance but didn't press on. They took a few more steps before Blake blurted out, “Do you trust me?"
She looked at him again, a little longer this time, then glanced back at the soldiers behind them. “For the most part,” she finally answered, very quiet.
Blake scowled at the swirling fog in front of them. “What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that I trust you to give everything you have in a fight and kill as many demons as you can."
Satisfaction filled him. Daniel just didn't know what he was talking about. After a moment, however, when Blake replayed her careful words in his mind, he realized just how much wasn't covered by it.
"What don't you trust me with?” he asked, almost spitting out the sour words.
Walking very stiffly as he waited for an answer, he watched her from the corner of his eye. She opened her mouth, closed it again without a word, and gave a small shake of her head.
"Ask me another time."
She walked ahead of him. Blake didn't try to catch up with her and merely watched her go, pensive. He didn't like much the unpleasant feeling that had settled in the pit of his stomach.
* * * *
When Kate's group reported back to the main road that night, two unrelated thoughts were tearing her mind apart.
Her team had found nothing more than yet another blocked road. She had already shared her theory with Daniel that the demons had blocked some streets on purpose, creating a maze for anyone who dared to attack them. No doubt they had a way to return to their base easily, but that path, if it existed, had eluded the squad so far. How many nights would it take them to find the way, at last? Was it even leading to the breach?
She could only blame herself for the resurgence of her second problem. The two vampires had left her alone until the previous night. She was the one who had reopened the conversation with Marc. She should have guessed that Blake would take that as an invitation to do the same. Although why he had asked her whether she trusted him, she couldn't imagine. Why she hadn't been able to answer that she did was a mystery as well.
They had almost reached the rendezvous point when Wally, a few steps in front of her, stopped abruptly. His gloved fist raised and she mirrored the gesture. The faint footsteps behind her stopped. She looked around, intent on figuring out what Wally had heard or seen. She couldn't see anything, but with the always-present fog, it didn't mean anything.
Wally came to her, his eyes darting all around him. “I thought I heard something,” he said very quietly.
"Demons,” Blake breathed in the shell of her ear.
She shivered, and caught herself just in time before she could gasp and give their position away.
"At least eight. Fight or hide?"
She got a grip on herself and made her decision. She didn't have to think about it. Eight demons versus a team of six; she didn't like those kinds of odds. “Hide."
Quickly and silently, she gave her orders. Pointing at three members of her team, she indicated the left side of the street, and the gaping entrance of a building. Another gesture, and Blake, Wally, and herself hurried to the other side of the street. If the demons noticed them, they would have two fronts to fight rather than one.
She crouched on the right side of the gaping hole that had once been a wall. A pile of rubble would provide some cover for her, but she could still peek through to observe the progression of the demons. Wally, under her silent instructions, retreated farther inside the building to hide behind a half-wall that was miraculously still standing. She pointed at another corner for Blake, but he ignored her and crouched behind her instead. She felt him lean in toward her, so close that his chest pressed against her arm. Her heart jumped a few times inside her chest before she could calm it again. What was wrong with her? She wasn't a teenager who would react this way every time he came close to her.
"So, you still don't trust me?” he asked. The murmur tickled her earlobe. “If we avoid a fight, it'll be thanks to me."
Through a small opening in the pile of debris, she could see the first demons passing by, dark shapes stomping through the fog. The ground shook a little with each of their steps, and the smell of dust rose in the air. Very slowly, she turned to Blake and gave him an annoyed look.
"Now is not the time!” she hissed, the words no louder than a breath.
He leaned in again, resting his hand on the ground next to her for balance. “It never is time. We're at war. People die in wars. There's no time to wait for better days. If I don't kiss you now and I die in an hour, then it'll be twice the waste."
She rolled her eyes at him, realizing even as she did that she had started to miss Blake's sometimes absurd, sometimes extravagant pronouncements in the few days he had given her space. Refusing to even answer, she returned to watching the demons. They had all passed the building by now, and the stomping was slowly fading with each second. Nothing indicated that they had noticed the squad or would stop to investigate. She took in a deep breath and let it out very slowly. They would wait a few more moments and then leave their hideouts.
"Well, can I, then?” Blake asked, still as quiet.
She looked at him again. “Can you what?"
"Kiss you."
In spite of herself, she smiled. She should have seen this coming. Blake was nothing if not persistent. “You ask that a lot."
