Kain retched, and vomit splashed into the water.
“Oh, come on, Pooch.” Mary-Anne’s nose wrinkled beneath her dark cloth coverall. “The water’s already filthy enough already without you splurging your insides into it.”
Kain raised his head from the back of the boat. All blood had drained from his face, his eyes taking on a glassy look from the moment they set off from the shore.
“Hey, more food for the fish—”
He whirled around and let out another jet of vomit.
Caitlin, Mary-Anne, Izzy, and Miriam laughed while Jaxon sprinted excitedly up and down the shoreline. They had all grown so accustomed to Kain’s quick-wit and—sometimes—irritating cockiness. To see him so washed out and vulnerable was something they’d never experienced before.
“You going to be okay?” Caitlin asked.
“Sure. Just give me a few minutes and a chance to wash the chunks off my chin.”
“Charming,” Izzy chuckled.
Kain raised his head again. “Hey, we all have our weaknesses, okay? Some people don’t like heights, others don’t like flying. Lucky me, it turns out I hate bobbing along on the water in a friggin’ dingy.”
Mary-Anne folded her arms, looking at Kain in the way a teacher would look at a schoolchild who had cried wolf one too many times. “And you had no idea you were water intolerant? In all your years of existence, you’ve never known you can’t handle boats?”
Kain sawed his chin with the back of his arm and turned around. He slumped his arms over the sides of the boat and let his head flop back as he gasped for breath.
“I’ve never had the opportunity, sweet fangs. It’s always been city living, sewers, or wandering around the open land. Believe it or not, there ain’t too many Weres out on the open water.”
“Are there any Were…fish?” Miriam asked.
Kain gave her an incredulous look
“What?”
Caitlin chuckled again. Miriam had fast become someone she had grown fond of. After all that she had been through during the battle at the Broken City—being forced to stand in as the vampire’s double while she herded Mad like cattle and ran them through the city streets in a bid to take over all—Miriam turned out to actually be refreshingly normal.
She was nothing more than a woman who wanted right in the world, and after her experience with the dark forces still around that determination had grown several notches. Miriam had even asked for fighting lessons from Caitlin in return for showing the group around the old city where she had lived some years ago under a group of “not very nice people.”
“You think there are werefish?” Kain repeated. “As in, people who turn into fish at will?”
Miriam shrugged. “It could be possible. We saw more of those freaky, wet, dark-skinned Mad on the shore at the other side. Who’s to say that there aren’t any werefish?”
“Surely, they would be mermaids?” Mary-Anne answered. “Y’know, half-fish, half-woman?”
Miriam rubbed her eyes. “No, I mean the full shebang. Not half and half. Someone who can blink and become a full, scaly catfish or bass. Maybe even a shark or whale.”
Miriam’s eyes widened with wonder as she spoke that last one.
Kain’s face was a picture. “Are you kidding me? Of course, there are no werefish. Weres turn into mammals. I’ve seen bears and cats and wolves, but never someone who blinks their eyes, sprouts gills and scales, and throws themselves into the water.”
“They’re called drowners, y’know?” Izzy chipped in. “The Mad at the water’s edge. They’re drowners.”
“Oh, I remember,” Caitlin told them darkly.
Jaxon yipped.
Caitlin turned her attention to the German Shepherd with panda rings around his eyes. He was hopping about on the sand like a brand-new pup. The tiny particles of rocks were something that his furry feet were unfamiliar with.
It was all sorts of confusing and exciting for the dog. The smells, the sounds, the sights. He saw three seagulls fighting over something buried in the sand. His ears pricked and he tore after them, barking madly as they took off into the sky squawking in protest.
“Jax!” Caitlin called between chuckles. She stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled. Jaxon immediately sprinted back toward her, tongue hanging out of his mouth. When he reached his master, he jumped at her body and knocked her to the ground, slathering her face in licks and kisses.
“Well, we finally know Caitlin’s true weakness,” Izzy said, arms folded. “If we ever need to revolt against the Revolutionaries, we just need to clone a thousand Jaxons and set them free.”
Mary-Anne nodded. “Hey, Caitlin? I thought it might be prudent to say that we haven’t quite discovered if this city is safe, yet. It might be an idea to, y’know, not draw attention to ourselves by whistling and encouraging the dog to bark.”
Caitlin sat up and scratched Jaxon’s chin. “Oh, we’ll be okay. We’ve got a vampire and a Were on our side. I think we’ve proven that there’s nothing that can really hurt us anymore.”
Mary-Anne gave her a dubious look.
“Hey, what about us?” Izzy said, feigning hurt in her voice.
“Oh, you’re both useful,” Caitlin replied. “Or at least, Miriam will be once we’ve trained her some more. But you’ve seen their power, right? Let’s just say I’m glad they’re on our side.”
“We’d be nothing without you,” Mary-Anne smirked.
“Preach. Uh-oh…” Kain’s cry was lost as his body coiled, and another wave of vomit sloshed into the water.
When Kain was finally able to stand without his legs shaking, they abandoned the boat on the shore and took their first venture into new territory.
The city was ringed by trees. A mini forest in itself. As Caitlin and the others passed through, treading over fallen bracken and cutting through tangles and thorns, Caitlin was reminded all over again of her Silver Creek home.
She could almost imagine Dylan walking through the trees with his scouting troop, heading out on his first venture with her father when he had come of age. The gates of the town open wide as she and her mother stood and waved the pair off, before returning back to their duties at home.
The smells of the greenery were home. Since arriving in the Broken City, Caitlin hadn’t realized how much she had missed it. The city itself had been more than accommodating after the feud between the Weres and the humans was settled. Now that they were working together to rebuild the city and make it stronger than it had ever been, it could certainly become a home for people. But that wasn’t where Caitlin’s heart lay.
She wondered already how the others were getting on in the city. Whether Dylan and Sully were playing ball with Bryce, Cynthia, Alicia, and Tristan in making decisions to better the city. She felt a pang of sadness already at having to leave them behind for a short while, but her own mission was clear.
I’m going to find a way to cure the Madness if it’s the last thing I do.
The trees stretched on for several kilometers before breaking apart and revealing the city beyond. The group stopped a little inside of the forest’s shelter to grab some food and rest up before continuing on their journey’s end.
Only once did they have to silently take down a Mad who had been stumbling around in the undergrowth. Luckily, they heard it from a mile off, and its body was so degraded that it couldn’t do anything but make noise as it shuffled its feet in dry leaves and knocked into tree boughs.
“Think there’ll be many more of those in there?” Izzy asked.
Miriam finished chewing off a piece of gristle from the bone of a squirrel, a catch Mary-Anne had managed to secure by speeding through the trees as silently as the wind.
“I hope not. Years ago, there had been a colony living in there, not too dissimilar from the setup at the Broken City, but without all the…” Her eyes turned to Kain, who tucked greedily into his food. Fat dribbled down his chin. “…politics.”
Caitlin shook her head and sighed.
>
“What are you laughing at?” Izzy chuckled.
“I just find it incredible to believe that I thought we were the only ones. I spent over twenty years of my life living in a sheltered town, being told that the world outside was dead, and the only thing that awaited us behind our walls was Madness.
“Now… Now everywhere we go, there are more colonies. More huddles of people trying to find a way to survive this messed-up world. Who’s to say we’re not going to travel a few more miles and find an entire city living in paradise? Lush greenery, all the food you can eat, and working technology?”
They all nodded their heads, agreeing with Caitlin’s vision.
“Only one problem with that, Kitty-cat,” Mary-Anne argued, picking some food from her teeth with a sharp nail. “If such a place exists, that raises even more questions.”
“Like?” Caitlin encouraged.
“Well, for one, why haven’t they shared the technology? Why haven’t they traveled around the world and scooped people up to save them? Things might have been different a few hundred years back, but at least Bethany-Anne zipped around the world and helped those in need. If such a place exists, it doesn’t sound like they’re the good guys.”
“They’re probably Weres,” Izzy smirked, watching for Kain’s reaction.
Kain took the bait, speaking with a full mouth. “Hey! I thought we’d made it past our petty differences?”
Izzy wiped the spittle from her cheek. “Say it, don’t spray it. And besides, it wasn’t the humans who tried to steal your children and run experiments on them to boost their numbers.”
All heads turned to Kain. For the humans, it was like watching a ping-pong match.
“Don’t look at me! I abandoned them!” He rolled his eyes. “I’m never going to live this down. I didn’t even have anything to do with Geralt, and it’s still somehow my fault,” he mumbled as he tucked back into his food.
Miriam tossed another stick onto the fire, then turned to Mary-Anne. “Who’s Bethany-Anne?”
“She goes by a few names,” Mary-Anne replied. “Bethany-Anne. BA. The Queen Bitch.”
“Oh, you must mean the Matriarch,” Miriam nodded, eyes turning back to the fire.
“You’ve heard of her?” Mary-Anne said, amazed.
“Well, Felicia had. And as a stand-in for Felicia, I was privy to all the gossip of the vampires. Apparently, her maker gushed over the Matriarch—something about the Queen Bitch being the only true savior who could help lift us out of these trialing times. She told stories of the things she’d achieved before she vanished into the stars for good.”
Izzy found herself laughing, only stopping after Mary-Anne fixed her with a leer.
“What’s so funny?”
“Well, they’re all just stories, aren’t they? Every generation of people in dire straits looks for a god to fix the situation. But every generation learns that they are responsible for fixing their own problems in the end. I wouldn’t pin all our hopes on some mythical mistress swooping down from the stars and fixing everything.”
Mary-Anne glared at Izzy. “For your information, Bethany-Anne is real. Among my people, the legends and stories of which Bethany-Anne achieved her greatness, is common lore. Do not take the Matriarch’s name in vain.”
Izzy didn’t look convinced. “Okay, okay. You believe in your gods, I’ll believe in mine. We’ll see how long it takes for them to turn up and save the day.”
The conversation grew quiet after that. Jaxon lay asleep at Caitlin’s feet, worn out from his trek through the trees. The others finished their food in relative quiet and watched as the fire burned to its end. A short while later and they were all resting up, ready to wake and discover the secrets which lay ahead in the city which Miriam had named New Toronto.
Chapter Two
New Toronto, Ontario
“Woah…”
“I know…”
“What the hell happened here?”
They stood in the middle of the city. Skyscrapers loomed above them like stone monoliths, the city silent beside the occasional rustling of an animal or the call of a bird.
Everywhere they looked, there were signs of destruction. Glass was shattered, cars upturned and rusted. Buses were corroded to their barest structures, looking like elephant carcasses on the landscape.
Streetlamps were bent as if bowing. The grass had claimed the roads through violent cracks in the concrete. Flags hung ripped and torn at the front of buildings, flapping about in the wind as if hanging onto their final dregs of life.
“Well, this is miserable,” Kain muttered. “Where the hell is everyone? I thought you said people used to live here.”
“Used to,” Miriam breathed, a strange sense of awe in her words. “A long time ago.”
They explored the area, wondering if anyone was hiding in any of Miriam’s old haunts. She told them all of her experiences as a child living in this town. How a dark group of somebodies had taken over the town and formed a dictatorship that had people living on the edge. The memory was nothing more than a blur now, but she remembered the feeling of fear that had plagued her childhood.
“Bad people,” Miriam said as they walked into the remains of what had once been a museum, its external architecture jutting out from the rest of the flat building fronts like a freight liner breaking the waves. “People who hurt and control.”
“Well, I’m glad there’s just five of us searching for these people, then.” Kain turned up his nose. “I wouldn’t want it to be difficult when they ambush us and take us to their leader.”
“Shhh.” Mary-Anne’s eyes flashed red beneath the dark hood she’d donned to protect her from the sunlight.
“Oh, please,” Kain continued. “You know this place is as dead as the people who once lived here. Can you smell anyone, sweet fangs? Because I can’t—”
Kain paused and sniffed the air. Jaxon stood next to him and followed suit, a growl emanating from his throat.
They were inside the foyer now, where large archways led off to separate exhibits in different rooms. The glass cases had all long been smashed in, and much of what had once been on display had been broken or stolen.
Mary-Anne’s ears pricked up, and she caught the same scent that Kain had. “Mad.”
“I know.” Izzy shook her head. “To think that people once used to pay to view these old relics.”
“Not that,” Mary-Anne whispered. “There are Mad somewhere nearby.”
“Oh.” Izzy blushed. “I knew that.” She moved her hand to her pistol.
“Don’t you dare think of firing that,” Mary-Anne chided.
“Why not?”
“We’ve got the element of surprise. What do you think’s going to happen when a gunshot echoes around the whole goddamn city? You think we’re going to still be hidden from any possible survivors if we break the silence?”
“Silence?” Izzy’s lip curled. “Your boy-toy hasn’t stopped running his mouth since we arrived in the city, and you’re talking about the element of surprise?”
Mary-Anne turned to Kain. Kain raised his eyebrows suggestively.
“Ew!” Mary-Anne exclaimed.
Kain looked hurt. “Hey! I’m a catch.”
“Trust me, vampire,” Izzy continued. “I know better than most the consequences of firing one of these when out in the wild, but if it comes to needing to make a quick decision and take down some Mad, I vote for this every time. We can run and fire these over long distances. I prefer that to getting up close and personal with something that wants to chew my skin.”
“Will you all shut up,” Caitlin hissed, Moxie already drawn and ready in her hands. Miriam sniggered. Jaxon had taken place beside her and now coiled back on his haunches.
They snuck ahead, flinching every time their boots crunched on fragments of glass. Led by Jaxon, they passed through several large chambers filled with shattered collections of precious gemstones and taxidermied creatures. Soon they could all hear the faint moans of Mad in the roo
m up ahead.
Caitlin motioned them forward until they were lined up behind the wall nearest to the room the sounds were coming from. She craned her head around the wall and could make out at least a dozen Mad shuffling aimlessly around a chamber where large skeletons of marine creatures Caitlin had only ever seen in picture books were hanging from the ceiling.
She held up three fingers.
The Mad nearest to them sniffed the air, eyes igniting as it caught their scent. At one point, it might have been a man. Its overalls now clung on for dear life by one strap.
Two.
One.
Caitlin ducked around the corner and sprinted into action, Moxie sang as she sliced before the Mad could even react. The blade cut deep into the Mad’s neck and stopped at the bone.
“It’s nice to see you’ve still got a spine.” Caitlin grinned as she quickly withdrew the sword, reared back, and stabbed through the center of the Mad’s forehead.
The light immediately died in its eyes.
“That’s one for me!” Caitlin called, her voice echoing around the chamber. “Lowest score has to do tonight’s hunting!”
Miriam moaned, holding her sword delicately as if trying to work out how to turn it on. Although she had been given a few brief lessons from Caitlin and Mary-Anne, it had still only been a couple of days since she first truly held a sword.
Kain rushed forward, his own blade flashing silver. He had a hungry look on his face, the competitive drive in him superseding all other thought.
Springing from a fallen rock, Kain leapt into the air, his feet landing on the closest Mad’s chest and knocking it to the ground. He maintained his balance until the last moment and drove his blade down into the Mad’s chest.
The Mad gurgled blood, using the last of its energy to reach in a vain attempt to grab Kain’s leg. “One for me—oooft!”
A Mad came from behind and Kain toppled forward, instinctively turning the momentum into a roll. Fragments of glass pricked his back, causing his eyes to flash amber.
Not now, Kainy-boy. Now’s not the time to lose control. The last thing I need is to be stuck as a Werewolf…
Chasing The Cure: Age Of Madness - A Kurtherian Gambit Series (The Caitlin Chronicles Book 5) Page 2
