by Holly Hook
“Xavier?” I called once I got off the bus. By now, it was dim enough for me to take off my hat. The sun was sinking under the horizon now and a name-tagged man who was leaning against a gift shop said something in Turkish, probably about it being too late for a tour. The place did look closed. The shops were dark and there was a metal cage half-drawn over the entrance of a small restaurant. Other tourists grumbled and stood between the twin rows of tourist buildings while an argument broke out between a ticket holder guy and the name tag guy. I couldn't blame them. Maybe the atmosphere of the place was driving everyone's anger up and bringing out the worst in people.
A big part of me wanted to run. Nothing good could happen here.
But not without Xavier and not without saving the Underground.
I turned to the right first, towards a sign that hung above one of the shops. Exotic food smells flowed out of the little restaurant. The light was on inside and a woman was wiping a back counter. I rushed in and bought something that looked like a pita wrap from the now-irritated woman, but at least she gave me the last sandwich from behind the glass.
Xavier would need this.
The tingling on my mark had faded a bit while I was in the restaurant. Xavier was in the opposite direction, then. The ticket holder must have won the argument with the name tag man because he was waving the others towards the end of the little road, towards where the ruins must be. It was the way I had to go, too.
Xavier must be hidden, then, somewhere in the ruins themselves.
I had no choice but to follow the tour group with the possible pita wrap in one hand and my fake cane in the other. I wished I could eat Normal food but it would only make me throw up. It wouldn't be a good way to sneak around here. The tour guide clicked on a flashlight and turned onto a wooden walkway that was elevated over the rest of the place. Boards creaked and ropes kept people away from the site as we ascended a hill and then stood over the first set of ruins.
We all crowded together as we looked down at a ring of T-shaped stone pillars with faint animals carved into them. I caught glimpses of snakes, gazelles and other local wildlife, preserved even after so many thousands of years. The dread feeling rose from the ground, worse than ever, and yet tourists were talking amongst themselves about how amazing this site was in a variety of languages. Well, I thought. They all spoke with the same amazed tone.
And there was still no Xavier. I didn't care about the site right now. I knew the truth.
We moved on to another round set of ruins. There were many of them here. Too many, some of which hadn't even been unearthed yet. The tour guide spoke in Turkish, even though most of the crowd couldn't understand him, and he was absorbed in shining the flashlight on a large pillar with a snake carved onto the side.
My mark throbbed. Now was my chance.
I ducked and slipped under the rope. They wouldn't notice me missing unless the driver did a head count before people got back on the bus.
I slid quietly to the ground, crouching and ducking underneath the catwalk as the man above continued to speak. Check. I tapped the Hello Kitty cane on the ground and it snapped to its true form, the deadly sword I had taken from Thorne. The blade gleamed in the faint orange light. My mark throbbed now. I was very, very close to Xavier. I held my arm out to the left and the pulsing died a bit. I held it to the right. Stronger. He was somewhere beyond this circle of ruins.
I waited until the tour group moved on. The guide was in a hurry tonight. He shuffled everyone along and the beam of his flashlight moved on, getting further and further away from this site as more cameras clicked, desperate to catch something in the orange and purple light. Flashes accompanied the clicks. I remained underneath the catwalk until I was sure they had moved on.
“Xavier,” I whispered, creeping forward and past the second ring of pillars. I could move quietly and quickly, but if one of those lights flashed over here I would be caught. Every sense sharpened, despite my weak legs and my coming exhaustion. I climbed over a hill and then down again.
There were footsteps far behind me, crunching ground, not catwalk.
I stopped. They continued to approach and I sniffed the air, but the wind was going in the opposite direction so I had no way to identify my follower from smell alone. I turned and ducked behind one of the T-pillars and dared to peer out, but the hill was blocking my pursuer from view.
They might not even be coming for me but the thought vanished when the footsteps turned to a jog and a weapon cocked. A gun. Metal slid against metal and a bullet rolled around. I guessed whoever it was only a couple hundred feet away.
Of course this wouldn't be easy. I thought of the bus driver and the restaurant lady. Maybe a guard had seen me sneaking around. Maybe they didn't allow Abnormals here and I'd been caught. I couldn't afford to get shot right now. I still had my sword and I could still move a lot faster than normal, but one good shot would end the fight. I would take forever to heal, if I healed at all.
I really, really needed Xavier to be on his game, so I turned and ran as fast as I could across the dust, passing a third set of ruins and following the growing sensation in my mark. I left the tour group far behind and their voices and footsteps faded to almost nothing. This entire hill was large, so big that it would take some time to cross, and there wasn't much cover.
“Oh,” someone groaned to my left.
It was Xavier. I picked up his wood smoke smell but it was weak and there was no food smell to accompany it. He was drained worse than I was.
And the footfalls behind me stopped. I guessed that the person was maybe a quarter mile behind me. I had put some distance between us.
“Alyssa?” Xavier asked, weak.
I turned. There was a fourth ring of pillars to my left, one that was still being excavated, because the soil here was fresh and the whole place smelled like dirt. A few of the T-pillars rose above the dirt, half-buried, and nestled in between two of them was the form of Xavier, still in his white T-shirt and jeans.
“Xavier,” I said, running across the earth to him. I kneeled. “We got separated.”
The pulsing in my mark died now that its mission was complete. Xavier was very pale and shaking. Weak. I listened again, but my pursuer hadn't moved unless I just hadn't been paying attention.
“Weak,” he managed. “I'm never doing that again. We should have made our bond stronger first.”
“I got you food,” I said, glad I had done that before coming out here.
“This place is horrible,” Xavier said.
“I know,” I said. He'd been lying here for hours, unseen in this distant part of the ruins and too weak to get up. The dread feeling was worse than ever. I caught some voices from the tour group and the guide sounded more excited. “Sit up. You need to eat.” I grabbed Xavier's wrist. His pulse was fast and weak. Panic filled me. “You need to eat!”
I put my hand behind his back and propped him up. Even my influence wasn't helping him heal from this. I couldn't lend him energy. I set him against one of the T-pillars (sure to be a huge no-no on such an ancient site) and handed him the pita wrap. “I'm sorry it's not much, but it's something.”
“Thanks,” he said. “How far away did you land?”
I crouched next to him. “In the nearby city.”
“Wow,” Xavier said. “I knew the Transposition was going to be hard, but that was more than we could chew.”
“We can't make our bond stronger,” I said. “That would be very, very bad for the world.”
Xavier took a bite of the pita wrap and chewed. At least he still had the strength to eat and I didn't have to hand feed him. But walking? I wasn't going to put a bet on it.
“I know,” Xavier said. “But it would make these things a lot easier. Unless we do it, we're going to keep having these problems. We'll both be more powerful if you would just bite me and get it over with.”
My stomach rumbled. “I am not biting you,” I said. “Besides, it's a bad time to do it right now. We're above where the D
ark Council likes to meet. Can't you feel it?”
The distant footsteps started again, then stopped. My pursuer was confused and didn't know where I'd gone, but sooner or later, they'd find me.
“Of course I can feel it,” Xavier said. “It's the worst sense of impending doom I could imagine. I bet that even some Normals can feel this. It's coming from underground. I've been going in and out of sleep all day here. And the nightmares...I don't even want to describe them to you.”
“You're talking more,” I said. He had gone through half the wrap by now. His strength was returning. He sat up off the T-pillar for a moment before slumping back to it.
“Alyssa, it could just be this dread messing with my mind, but when I was sleeping I saw things that shouldn't even exist. Or exist anymore, I should say.”
“Like?” I asked, checking the landscape around me again. I could no longer hear the tour group. It was almost as if they had vanished. Xavier was smelling stronger and stronger, though. My stomach roared.
“Well, Thoreau in his full demon form, or what I'd imagine it would be. And...other things.” He looked up at me, the purple in his blue eyes brightening with fear. “I saw things that are supposed to be extinct, for starters.”
“Let's hope they still are. I don't think we can handle running into anything worse than a demon, especially in this state.” My stomach rumbled again, enough for Xavier to look up.
“Alyssa, if you need to bite me, I'm ready.”
“You're not,” I said. “You're weak. I could really hurt you.”
Disappointment washed over Xavier's face, so much that I was forced to rethink every bad signal he had sent me over the last few days. He really wanted to make our bond stronger but there was no good time. I knew that when we were done with this mission, if we even survived, that I would back out the next time he asked me.
“I guess you're right,” he said. “You would. I might need more to eat before I go into battle.”
“There's a small restaurant out there but they're closed,” I said. “By the way, someone's following us and they have a gun.”
Xavier's eyes popped all the way open. The footfalls came again, much closer this time. I had failed to pay attention when I needed to the most.
“Can you move?” I asked.
“Maybe.” He struggled to his feet but I pushed him back down, ducking along with him. The closest T-pillar stood overhead and blocked the view.
The breeze blew in again and the footfalls stopped. The person was probably only about fifty feet away, on the other side of the hill that still shielded us.
“I heard that,” Xavier whispered.
I shushed him. “I'm not strong right now.”
A man asked a question in Turkish, then repeated it into the air. I could guess that he was asking if anyone was out here. Then he repeated his question in what sounded like Spanish, and then in English.
“Any intruders?”
I exchanged a look with Xavier. He shook his head. I had my sword, but I had been shot before. The last time it had happened, Xavier had to carry me from my house to the Underground and I had passed out. He was in no shape to do that now. He might not be able to do so much as summon a charge.
The man said another sentence in Turkish, then Spanish, and then what we could understand. “There is an Abnormal here.”
It was the bus driver. It had to be. Either the locals didn't want Abnormals at their ruins or, more likely, the Dark Council didn't want us near their secret meeting place that we could sense. This man might be some kind of gatekeeper working with them and he might be more than willing to shoot the two of us to protect the secret. I wondered how he had figured that out after I had gotten off the bus.
And then, his footsteps got closer. Closer, until at last the bus driver's head appeared over the T-pillar and he scowled, raising a rifle straight towards us.
Chapter Sixteen
I didn't wait.
I leapt over the pillar, legs shaking, and raised my sword.
A shot went off and pain exploded in my side, but I was already in midair. We collided. The man screamed and went down. Xavier shouted my name. The world got very dark but I held on, keeping consciousness, pushing him to the dust with one hand as my blade sliced his shoulder. Blood dribbled out. He dropped his rifle as the skin on my side tingled, trying to pull itself together. I took my hands and pinned his shoulders down. It was the bus driver, all right, and now that I was overpowering him, I spotted the flame tattoo on his neck. It glittered in an unnatural way and it was definitely not made of ink.
“Are you Bound?” I asked.
He reached for his rifle and tried to spit at me, but missed. “Let me go.” He called me something in Turkish but I could guess what it meant.
“That looks suspicious,” Xavier said. He was standing next to me on wobbly legs. “Is that a tattoo?”
It was the first I'd seen here in Turkey. “It sure is,” I said, thinking of my own flame power.
More blood dribbled out of his wound. It smelled faintly of spices. This man's cut wasn't burning. I hadn't slashed a Normal since Thoreau's fire number on me but his cut should be glowing with orange flame by now. I dropped my sword, which landed on the dust. Something was up here, protecting this man from the flames.
“Who are you Bound to?” I asked. There was some magic at work here.
“No one!”
“Who?” I demanded, lifting the man and slamming him back down again. I tightened my grip on the man's shoulders and my stomach rumbled again. He didn't have much scent but it was enough to send me into a frenzy. The monster I had worked to suppress for the last fourteen years was being unleashed again and I had the feeling that I couldn't hold it back much longer, but at least this wasn't Xavier.
“I cannot say. He will kill me.”
“It's the Dark Council,” I said. “I know it is. Just say how to get down there and we'll let you live.”
“What will you do?” the man asked.
My stomach burned with hunger. My mouth felt dry. I knew what I needed to do, what I could no longer resist doing. “Xavier,” I begged. “Don't watch.”
His feet shuffled as he turned around. “I'm not going to peek.”
I checked to make sure he was facing away. “I mean it. Don't watch!”
“No,” the man said, trying to stand, but my strength was still enough to hold him down. Our lives depended on this. I had to do it.
At that moment, I caught a whiff of something distant and terrible on the wind and sheer terror swept through me. It was the burning oil smell from the capital. Whatever being I had sensed coming from the airport had made its way over here.
I swore. “Xavier...that thing I smelled earlier...it's here.” I faced the man on the ground. All the color had drained from his face and real terror pumped through him, metallic and intoxicating. “Who's coming? Who do you serve?”
He gave in. “Gaozu!” the man shouted. “Gaozu will destroy both of you.”
“Who's Gaozu?” Xavier asked, turning back around. “Oh. Sorry.”
“A member of the Dark Council,” the man said. “They all meet soon. You need to leave.” He closed his eyes, waiting for the worst.
I couldn't hold out anymore. I did one last check to make sure Xavier wasn't really watching and I did the worst. The man bit in a scream and his blood flowed into me, pumping strength into my limbs and the rest of my body. It was so addicting and I couldn't stop. The man's screams got louder, and then weaker as I sensed his pulse getting fast and erratic like Xavier's had been.
“Alyssa!” Xavier shouted, wrapping his arms around my middle and pulling me back from behind. “You have to stop.”
Shock filled me and I stopped, letting myself fall back into his arms. We tumbled back into one of the T-pillars as the man grimaced on the ground and put a hand to his bloody neck. He muttered curses in Turkish as tears of pain filled his eyes.
“You monster,” he managed as I sat against Xavier.
&nb
sp; A new horror washed over me. He had seen. My battle partner had seen what I had to do and now he was staring at me, mouth falling open as if he had figured out what I was for the first time.
I stood, full of strength, which only punctuated my horror. The burning oil smell got a little stronger as whatever powerful Abnormal approached the ruins. The distant sound of a car got closer and closer. There were no other sounds. The other tourists had already gone.
I was disgusting.
Turning, I bolted across the dust, leaving the man on the ground to cradle his neck and curse in pain.
“Alyssa!” Xavier shouted.
He couldn't keep up with me now. I knew what I was doing was stupid, but I didn't care. Xavier's feet pounded the ground as he tried to follow, but it was no use. I was fast now, much faster than I'd been in the city.
I didn't stop until I reached the tourist area. I ducked behind a trash can, in the darkness where I belonged. The woman I'd bought the wrap from was long gone. The parking lot was empty except for the green bus.
And from the distance, a few miles away, the limo rolled down the road from the direction of the city. While I had been walking around, trying to find Xavier, whatever creature riding inside had been traveling across the country and now it had arrived at the ruins, just like I'd feared.
Xavier's footfalls got closer behind me. I let him catch up as I watched the distant vehicle draw closer. I could hear gravel crunching, could sense crickets going quiet as the being drew closer.
“Alyssa,” Xavier said in my ear.
I hadn't been paying attention to him. “Erase that from your mind,” I said. “Please.”
“I know what you have to do,” he said. “I just didn't expect it to be so, well, bloody. I thought you were going to kill that guy.”
“Well, what did you expect? Rainbows and unicorns shooting out everywhere?” I whispered as the motor of the limo got louder. Way back, the man's cries echoed over the hills. “Please. Just forget that you saw it.” I was shaking.
“I can't. We have a problem,” Xavier said. “What about that guy? He's conscious but he's hurt. He's going to alert whoever's coming. Are they still coming?” He scraped the rifle on the ground which I only just realized he had. At least he had taken the man's weapon...and mine. My sword glistened in the pale starlight as he held it in the other hand. I had freaked out so much that I had left that, too.
