• • •
We reached one of the poorer districts of Luray first. Our presence raised more than a few eyebrows, and at first we thought it was our clothing. My jeans had seemed pretty basic back home, but the slim cut and embroidered pocket details made them stand out like a sore thumb here. Rita had on cargo pants with a zillion pockets, and there was nothing remotely like them that we could see. As for Devon, whatever subtle elements had made his normal clothes look expensive back home were ten times more conspicuous in this environment. A business man in an Armani suit driving down the street in a Rolls Royce couldn’t have appeared more out of place than he did.
So, after deciding that Devon and I had no clue about how to steal laundry from clotheslines without getting caught—a pretty accurate appraisal—Rita pilfered new wardrobes for all three of us. Simple woven shirts and loose denim pants, not stylish but comfortable. We found a narrow alley in which to change our clothes, each of us taking a turn at guarding the entrance. Rita had grabbed a few dingy sheets for us, too, so we wrapped up our backpacks hobo-style to disguise them, then shoved our original clothes inside.
But when we got back on the street, we realized we had a bigger problem than clothing.
Back home in the DC suburbs there was so much ethnic diversity that you just took it for granted. Last year in English class I’d had a Korean kid sitting to my right, a Somali kid to my left, and the class as a whole could have hosted World Culture Day without needing to import anyone. After a while you just stopped noticing that kind of thing. Rita and Devon came from similar settings, and they didn’t notice either.
But this place didn’t have any Korean, Vietnamese, Pakistani, or African kids running around.
Special stress on the African.
No one in sight was black except for Devon. And he was pretty aggressively black, not some coffee-and-cream biracial who could pass for a suntanned white guy. Add to that the fact that he towered over most of the local kids, and it was damned hard not to notice him. Which meant that while we were with him, we were all damned hard to overlook.
None of us dared say anything about that. Such a conversation would have inevitably led to the question none of us wanted to ask out loud: What if the hominids are the only people here with dark skin? What if the locals are staring at Devon not just because he looks different, but because they think he’s one of them? Instead we just hiked on in silence, our makeshift packs slung over our shoulders. You could feel Devon’s anxiety radiating from his body like a heat wave, but we knew there was nothing we could do about that, so we didn’t try. Sometimes silence is best.
Eventually the wretched slums gave way to the city proper, and we began to see more familiar features: glass storefronts, street vendors hawking their wares, even a few small parks tucked between tall brick houses. There were beggars all over the place, and most of them seemed to be children. Dirty, ragged children, all different ages, weaving in and out of the crowd in search of a brief sympathetic nod and a handout. Some looked injured, and they huddled against the brick walls of apartment buildings, tin cups in front of them, begging for charity with their eyes. I tried not to think about whether their injuries were real or feigned, or maybe imposed upon them by someone who would take a cut of their profits later that night. It wasn’t the kind of thing that a Manassas teenager normally had to deal with, but I knew that it happened.
There were horses moving up and down the streets; apparently that was the favored means of transportation in this place. Most were hitched to some kind of wagon or carriage, and the resulting traffic was pretty chaotic; at times it was hard to cross the street without getting trampled. Evidently the locals were used to it, because we saw kids dash across the street without sparing a glance either way to see what was coming at them. I wondered how many of them got trampled each day.
Devon—font of trivia that he was—noted that there were no horse droppings in the streets. As he started to explain why that was significant, we spotted a small dark-skinned figure coming down the street toward us. One of the hominids. He was dressed more neatly than the ones we’d seen in the woods, but otherwise his appearance was much the same. He walked with his eyes cast downward, quickly scurrying out of the path of any larger person headed toward him. I could sense Devon stiffen by my side as he watched the ballet of submission, but he said nothing. Ultimately the hominid ducked into a butcher shop, and we lost sight of him.
There were fruit stands all around us and a sausage stand at the end of one block, so the air was filled with luscious and inviting smells. After a day of eating nothing but energy bars, it made my stomach growl. But with all the street urchins running around, the outdoor vendors were watching their wares like hawks, and I didn’t see how we were going to manage to take anything. I started to go through a mental list of my supplies, wondering if I had anything I could barter for food, when Rita nudged me from behind. “You two go over there,” she said, pointing to a café halfway down the block. “Hand in hand. Then kiss.” She pushed us gently forward. “Make it look good,” she urged.
I hesitated, then I thought, what the hell, and I caught up Devon’s hand, and we both started to walk to the spot she’d indicated. But when we reached the café I was suddenly so embarrassed I couldn’t look him in the eye. But he touched a finger softly under my chin and tipped my face up, until my eyes met his. Such gentle eyes! There was a touch of humor in them, like he knew just how awkward this moment was, and it was okay if we laughed about it together. There was also a touch of gravity in them as well, because we were lost in a strange world, and we were all more scared than we were going to admit. But that was okay, too, as long as we faced that fear together. So I closed my eyes, went up on tip-toe, and kissed him.
I hadn’t kissed a lot of boys in my life. I certainly had never kissed anyone who made my heart speed up the way he did, or who made my legs tremble so much that I had to put a hand on his chest to steady myself. Maybe the kiss wasn’t objectively that great, and it was just the power of that two-lost-souls-connecting moment … but for whatever reason, it shook me to the core of my soul.
You could feel that every eye in the place was on us—mostly because of Devon—but I didn’t care. It no longer mattered who was standing around us, or what world we were on, or anything else. The really great kisses of the world are like that.
“Jeez, guys.” Rita’s voice was pitched too low for anyone else to hear it. “Get a room.”
Startled and embarrassed, we quickly broke apart. She put a hand on each of our shoulders and pushed us gently forward. “To the corner, then turn right.” She seemed to have some kind of plan in mind, and we didn’t, so we obeyed. Then she had us go another short block and make another turn, and we had gone far enough from her, and we stopped.
We had reached a pretty quiet street, with a little park just ahead of us. She motioned for us to sit down on its low retaining wall, in the shadow of a large tree. Then she reached into her hobo bag and brought out three apples, one for each of us. And then warm pastry wraps with some kind of meat in them. And three twisted pieces of warm bread that looked vaguely like pretzels.
“You guys were good,” she appraised, as she started eating. “I could have put that that whole damned fruit stand in my bag, and no one would have noticed.”
I was glad that Devon and Rita were focused on their food, so they wouldn’t see me blushing.
It was the first real food we’d had since leaving home, and it seemed pretty delicious, but after a diet of dry energy bars and distilled water, that wasn’t a very high bar. For a few minutes we all concentrated on eating—which, in hindsight, was not our brightest move. As I wiped my greasy hands on my hobo bag, I realized that someone was watching us.
He was a thin boy, roughly our own age, and he was lounging against a storefront across the street. His pose was casual enough, but there was something about his expression that warned us not to take his relaxed posture at face value. And there was no missing the fact that we
were the focus of his attention.
We tensed as he started to walk toward us; something about his stride suggested that he wasn’t alone, but I didn’t want to look away from him long enough to check for his allies. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rita’s hand creep to where she had her kitchen knife hidden.
He came up to a spot about five feet from us and stopped. He looked us over, his gaze fixing finally on Devon. “You Maasai?”
Devon blinked. I could tell he was having a hard time transitioning from no one here has ever seen a black person to this guy knows the name of an East African tribe. So he opted for just staring at him and saying nothing.
“I saw the Maasai ambassador once,” the boy explained. “You look like him.”
The Maasai ambassador? Half the assumptions I’d made about the place of black people in this world suddenly went flying out the window, and I could see that Devon was equally startled. But he just nodded slowly, as if he knew exactly what was going on. I made a mental note never to play poker with him. “Others have said that to me,” he offered warily.
The boy’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You Guild?”
“Do I look Guild?” Devon’s voice had a disdainful edge that could be interpreted as either, “Of course I’m Guild, why are you asking such me such a stupid question?” or “Of course I’m not Guild, why are you insulting me with such a stupid question?” Damn, he was good!
“Are we on someone’s turf?” Rita asked suddenly. Plainly, she’d gotten something out of this bizarre exchange that Devon and I had missed.
The boy’s expression shifted slightly. It was a subtle change, and I sensed I was missing nine tenths of its meaning, but Rita looked as if she understood him perfectly.
“You were pretty good back there,” he told her. “But taking so much at one time gets you noticed. Security will be tighter tomorrow. The locals won’t be happy about that.”
She was about to respond when a dark shape suddenly passed overhead. Muttering a curse under his breath, the boy moved quickly into the shade of our tree. The shadow of something with broad wings swept down the center of the street, heading east. He shielded his eyes with one hand as he gazed up into the sky.
“Shit,” he muttered. “Shit. That’s a Hunter, for sure.” He eyed us suspiciously. “Is it one of you he’s after?”
“How do you know it’s a Hunter?” Devon asked.
He jerked a thumb toward the east. “Those lazy Guild bastards don’t come into town to do their dirty work, they just grab a host from wherever they are and hitch a ride. Nine times out of ten if you see an animal that doesn’t belong here, it’s one of theirs.” He gestured toward the sky. “That one was a mountain hawk, which means—”
His expression darkened suddenly. “You didn’t answer my question,” he challenged Devon.
“No,” Devon agreed calmly. “I didn’t.”
For a moment they just stared at each other, like two dogs trying to figure out if they needed to fight. I saw Rita’s hand close around the grip of her knife, though I wasn’t sure what she thought she’d do with it in the middle of a city street.
“Shit,” the boy muttered. “If the Hunters really are after you, then we should talk. But not here, with the whole world watching.”
Without another word he started to walk away from us. The three of us looked at each other in confusion, no one quite sure what to do. Then Rita nodded slightly, and since she seemed to understand the situation better than anyone else, that was good enough for Devon and me. We grabbed up the last of our food, threw our packs over our shoulders, and hurried off after the boy.
Somewhere in the distance a mountain hawk screeched.
17
BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS
VIRGINIA PRIME
WHEN THE WOLF REACHED the edge of the clearing, it stopped.
For a long moment it stood still, its nostrils flaring as it drank in the layered scents of the place. Then it began to pick its way forward, its sharp eyes taking in every detail of its surroundings. Many animals had passed through here recently, leaving behind a host of traces for him to detect. Over there, to the far left, a wild cat had sharpened its claws on a tree. Over there to the right, several deer had foraged. On the ground directly beneath, a rutting squirrel had rested for several moments, leaving the damp grass perfumed with its lust. There was another scent here as well. Not animal. The wolf felt its heartbeat quicken.
Human.
Slowly it turned its head about, tasting the air in every direction, seeking the source of that smell. In one corner of the clearing was a mound of leaves and grasses that did not appear natural in formation. The wolf walked over and sniffed, its indrawn breath strong enough to make the leaves stir. A human male had lain here recently. Beneath his scent was another subtle sign, deliciously familiar. Fear. Whoever had stopped here to rest had not slept easily.
But who, exactly, did the scent belong to? Many humans hiked through these woods during the summer, with the result that a thousand scent trails could be found along the moist, pine-laden trails. Under such circumstances, the wolf’s chances of identifying the one trail it was looking for were low. The only memory it had of its quarry’s scent had been passed from species to species, and then dulled by passage through the Gate, so it was all but worthless for comparison. The wolf needed to locate a clear, strong trace, before it could track its quarry properly. But would it recognize that trace when it found it?
It had to. There was no other option. The hawk had been unable to locate the fugitives, which meant they were likely under cover somewhere. If so, a thousand more flights would not root them out. A scent trail, on the other hand, could lead a Hunter directly to them, regardless of what path they had taken.
Circling the clearing, the wolf found two more carefully arranged beds of vegetation, each bearing the scent of a young woman. That was a good sign. Three empty gurneys had been found at the Gate, implying that there were three fugitives, and the letters from Terra Colonna suggested that a boy and a girl would be among them. So the numbers were right. And the location made sense: far enough from the Gate that three young people fleeing pursuit might have pushed themselves to get this far, yet not so far that exhaustion would have crippled them.
A lesser Hunter might have declared victory at that point and set off after his prey, but the one that was soulriding this wolf hadn’t risen as high as he had in the world of the Shadows by jumping to conclusions. Following the wrong trail now could result in precious hours wasted, during which time the quarry might put enough distance between them that pursuit was no longer possible. The Hunter needed to be sure this was the right scent.
Around and around the clearing the wolf circled and sniffed, looking for more clues. It found a place where the humans had defecated, and a few crumbs of nuts and honey that ants were diligently dismembering. All of which neither confirmed nor denied the identity of these particular humans.
Then, just past one of the bed-mounds, the wolf thought it saw something glistening in the brush. At first it looked like a scrap of silver foil that had gotten lodged between two rocks. But as the wolf drew closer, it could see that its movement wasn’t right for metal foil. Despite its mirrored surface it looked strangely lightweight, and it fluttered like fine tissue in the breeze.
As the wolf drew closer it could make out words, apparently the end of a sentence. Bright red block letters, shiny as glass.
The wolf stared at the torn plastic wrapper for a moment, then pushed it down further between the rocks and covered it over with dirt, so that no one else would find it. It didn’t need to have the nature of the thing explained to it, because the Soulrider who was sharing its body had seen such things before, and the wolf had access to all those memories.
It had found its prey.
Together they began to search for the place where the scent trails of the three humans exited the clearing, so the real hunt could begin.
18
THE WARRENS
W
E FOLLOWED THE BOY through a dizzying maze of alleys, past broken fences and through a few half-collapsed buildings. The neighborhood grew more and more slum-like as we progressed, and our route grew less and less comprehensible.
Now and then our guide would pause, look about intently, then suddenly change direction. At first it seemed he was leading us in a bizarre serpentine route just to skew our sense of direction, but as I observed more closely, I soon realized the truth: he was trying to keep us under some kind of cover at all times, to protect us from overhead observation. It was an unnerving discovery.
From what he’d said, it sounded like the bird that had been looking for us was possessed by some kind of hunter. Could that be the explanation behind the animal murders back in our own world? Had the deer, bees, and bears that killed DNA orphans been under the same kind of control? It would certainly explain a lot. But it raised many new questions also … like what those hunters wanted, or whether they were even human.
Now and then our guide would pause, cup his hands before his mouth, and utter a bird-like warble. I couldn’t have picked it out from all the natural noise around us if I hadn’t been listening for it, but apparently others could, for similar cries soon started answering him. Some kind of signal. After a few repetitions he added new notes to his bird-song, and the answering cries also became more complex.
After picking our way through a final garbage-strewn alley, we came to what looked like an abandoned building. He scanned the sky warily, then directed us to scurry quickly across an open street, to a basement window that had been masked by a carefully arranged pile of debris. The frame had been cleared of glass, but wooden planks had been nailed across it. Apparently those were just camouflage, for they pivoted on the anchoring nails as our guide pulled them to one side, and he motioned for us to climb in.
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