by Rhys Ford
There wasn’t a mirror anywhere in the supplies we loaded onto the centipede, but it wasn’t like I was expecting a fashion show. Having that much breakable glass in a moving vehicle that would probably take a few rough shots over the next couple of weeks wasn’t a good idea. Still, it would’ve been nice to actually see my back. I was just rigging up a double-camera system off of the imaging console when Ryder came up behind me.
“Oh, by the gods, Kai….” Ryder sucked air through his teeth in a low, soft hiss heavily laden with concern. “Sit down on the bunk over there. Let me help you.”
Kerrick came in behind him. If there was any doubt about him being related to Sebac, it was wiped away by the expression on his face. He looked so much like the Spider Queen that he could have been cut off from her flesh and grown in a test tube. The Sidhe lord held himself stiffly and moved as though his joints hurt. Rage set fire to the depths of his jewel-toned eyes, and his mouth was a thin slash above his firm chin. Of the three of us, he was probably the cleanest, and he was certainly much more dressed than I was.
“Why don’t you sit up here with me, Kerrick,” Cari suggested as she fired up the transport and the main door locked down. The centipede rumbled, its hydraulic system lifting up to level out its ride. “You’ll get a better view of the caves as we move through them.”
“I thank you for your offer, but I’ve got a few questions for your… fellow Stalker.” He settled down into the chair near the door and swiveled it about to face me and Ryder. “It seems my illustrious cousin has neglected to share vital information about the person he believes is key to the survival of the Southern Rise Court.”
“The only person key to the survival of the court is Ryder. I feel like I’ve said that already. Hey, watch the hands,” I grumbled at Ryder’s pat on my ass to move me over toward the bunk. The transport rocked a bit and shifted us on our feet. “Fine. I’ll sit down.”
The transport’s environmental systems were working hard to cool the air inside of the centipede. After a couple of cold blasts across of my abdomen from a nearby vent, I shouted to Cari to ease back on the temperature. She complied with a rumble of profanity, but the chill dropped quickly… or least it did from the air system. Kerrick still looked as though he were encased in a block of ice.
“This would be better done on a chair where you could straddle it while I work, but this will have to do.” Ryder braced himself against the wall, clutching the medical kit he’d retrieved from one of the holds. “I also would like to do this without moving.”
“We’ve already blown off a couple of hours dealing with Mink’s eggs. I’d like to get us farther into the quadrant before we break for the night.” I positioned myself on the corner of a free-floating bunk and hooked my legs on either side of the frame. There was nothing to lean forward on, and Ryder would have to bend over while he sat on the opposite bunk to work on me, but it was the best we could do.
“There’s a suction stool in that bottom drawer by your right foot, Kai.” Cari glanced back at me. “Ryder can sit on that, maybe?”
“I’ll get that. I would like to be able to be closer while I work on you.” Ryder handed me the kit. “Especially if I’m going to have to dig this fabric out. You heal too quickly, Kai. Even for an elfin, it’s too fast.”
“Well, next time you see Tanic, tell him. So he knows for the next time he tries to grow another kid.” Ryder winced with the sting in my voice, and I sighed, knowing he hadn’t meant to be an asshole. “If you want to punch him in the face instead, I’m good with that too.”
Tanic probably tinkered with my healing ability early on, ensuring I could take anything he dished out. I’d survived everything he’d done to me. Sure, I’d passed out from shock and blood loss along the way, but I kept ticking, coming back from horrors I refused to let my mind scrape up to the surface. The animalistic state Dempsey found me in was at least good for suppressing the memories of my time with Tanic. The less I recalled of my father’s exploratory endeavors, the healthier my life would be.
But now it looked as though Kerrick was more than happy to dredge it all back up again.
“Sebac told me you were a chimera, something she hadn’t seen before, but I wasn’t told of your lineage.” Kerrick’s voice was flat, but it held the metallic taste of outrage and long-held prejudice. Or maybe I was just hearing what I expected to hear. He cleared his throat and continued, “Explain something to me, cousin. Do you not have concerns about taking the progeny of the Wild Hunt Master into your bed? Into your court?”
I could see Kerrick reflected in the glass to my right. Cari had shut down the floods on the roof of the centipede, but she left the lights on in the cabin so we could see what we were doing. Ryder clamped the stool to the transport’s floor and tested it with a jiggle. For a moment I thought he was going to ignore Kerrick, especially when he made himself comfortable on the stool and arranged the medical kit on the bed next to my left leg.
Then Ryder spoke very softly, nearly in a whisper, but I knew him well enough to hear the steel cage he’d soldered around his anger. Maybe Kerrick knew him that well too, because he stiffened as soon as Ryder began to talk.
“I do not yet have the enormous honor and pleasure of having Kai in my bed. And on the day that I do, cousin, it will not be the Wild Hunt Master’s son I hold against me but the man who risks his life time and time again so our people may live.” Ryder drew out a scissors and a few scalpels from the kit and held the instruments out to me. “Can you open the scalpels, please? I’m going to use scissors to cut off as much of the fabric as I can, and then I’ll see if I can tease the rest out.”
“I don’t care if you slice the bits out of me.” I snuck a look at Kerrick from under my arm. “Just… we have to burn anything with my blood on it. I don’t want Chuckles over there to use any of me to call up Tiamat while none of us are looking.”
Kerrick nearly shot up out of his chair, but Ryder laughed, his breath warm on my spine. “Don’t be silly, Kai. Everyone knows Tiamat only responds to sacrifices involving hot dogs and gummy bears. I believe one of Jonas’s little girls told me that. And seeing as she’s a devoted follower of our five-headed goddess, I feel she speaks with authority on the matter.”
“Really?” I laughed. Pretty hard too. I never thought I would see the day when Ryder would not only make a joke but make one about dragons and elfin religion. “Paula’s only seven. You going to take religious advice from someone who still drinks pretend tea from a plastic cup while surrounded by an ocean of stuffed animals in chairs?”
“I beg for you to take this seriously, cousin,” Kerrick spat out. The transport jerked to the side, and Cari let out a halfhearted apology, but Kerrick acted as though we were cruising smoothly over one of San Diego’s freeways. “I now understand why Grandmother is so concerned about this court. It is one thing to take in Unsidhe, but it is quite another to embrace the bloodline of one of the most evil clans ever to emerge from the Dusk Court. Tanic cuid Anbhás is the Lord Master of the Wild Hunt. He is a monster who creates other monsters, including the one you are now—”
“Be very careful about your words, cousin.” Ryder stopped snipping away at the fabric stuck to my back and turned to face Kerrick. I watched their faces in the glass. Its smoky opaqueness blurred their features, but it was clear enough to make out the battle they waged with fierce expressions and tight body language. “Kai is not only someone I wish to have by my side as a lover but also as a friend and companion. Yes, his blood speaks to me with a fire that I haven’t felt from anyone before. He may be mostly feral and too human for your liking, but he is my friend. And I will always rise to his call, because he comes to me when I ask for help.
“He has proven to be more loyal to me in the past year that I’ve known him than any of my own people have been through the centuries that I lived in our courts. You call me cousin because that’s our connection—a thread woven in blood only. You speak against Kai, who sits here and waits for me to cut into him bec
ause of injuries he sustained defending my life.” Ryder shifted on the stool, turned his back to Kerrick, and lifted up a piece of fabric from my back, the tug on my skin sharp but brief. “Your words are filth, cousin. They’re nothing but old rotten eggs from an impotent clutch. You may try to challenge me over the court, and I won’t fight the land’s decision should it respond to you. But hear me, if you speak or move against Kai in any way, it will be my knife you should fear, not his.”
“THIS SHIRT has tiny unicorns on it. Why?” The offending shirt was comfortable, but the mockery of a line of flowing-maned horses with golden horns sprouting out of their foreheads prancing across my chest was almost too much to deal with. “Do you have any idea how much of an asshole a unicorn is? Seriously, I’d sooner face a dragon with a sore tooth and indigestion from eating a nightmare than deal with a unicorn.”
“It was a present. From Cari’s mother,” Ryder replied. “Besides, I was not the one who placed an open container of fruit punch on your duffel bag. You needed something to wear, and that is what I had. Unless you would rather wear something of Cari’s. I wouldn’t mind staring at your belly while you drove, or your back either. At least that way I can make sure you don’t pick the dermafilm off before your injuries are fully healed.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve got fresh water, so I’m going to see if I can rinse out something. I don’t want to use the transport’s power cells to wash my clothes. We’ve still got a couple of days to go underground.” I eyed the large pond we’d found tucked into a side cavern off the main chamber. “Bad enough we used a big chunk of juice to scan the cave. I don’t want to waste our energy on stupid things. We might need it later.”
When we scanned the cave and shallow pond for any type of thermal signature and determined it was free of anything that would come up and eat our faces, parking the transport seemed like a good idea. Steam vents and hot springs made scanning difficult, but where we were was chilly, especially compared to the cave of the bearded flyer nest. That place lit up like fireworks, while this pocket of darkness left off tiny twinkles of sparks in the water and darting blurs that we could see were small fish.
I just really didn’t look forward to rinsing out my citrus-scented shirts in an ice-cold pond.
“I’ll do that really quickly so we can lock down inside the transport.” Cari had the interior lights on, a soft glow bright enough for me to see by. We pushed through the main chamber, a gray stretch of moist rock with the occasional flurry of bats and midnight butterflies that swooped in to investigate the moving lights. “I’ll be fast. How about if you guys pull out some of the self-heating rations so we can eat when I come back?”
“I don’t like leaving you out here by yourself,” Ryder grumbled. “I know you say it’s safe, but every time we stop to take a breath, something happens.”
“Promise you, nothing’s going to happen. Chances are we took out the biggest predator down here a few caverns back. It’ll be some time before something else moves in.” I hefted the tote with my soiled shirts. “Now, may I go take care of this? Because I refuse to spend the next couple of days wearing unicorns.”
“You just want out of that shirt because it smells like me,” Ryder responded, giving me a sly smile. “And it bothers you that you like it.”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Skippy.” I shoved at his shoulder and pushed him toward the transport. “Just someone try to come and save me if I’m wrong and there is a nine-foot-long alligator living in that pond.”
The water was damned cold, but I pushed my way through the icy grip that settled over my skin. Rinsing my shirts out required little effort, but it took a while until I couldn’t smell the juice on any of them anymore. Behind me the sounds of Cari bossing about two Sidhe lords kept me entertained, and by the time I got around to wringing out my first T-shirt, my teeth were chattering. I hunkered down and was shaking my hands out to get the feeling back into my fingertips when Kerrick joined me.
“I owe you an apology, Stalker Gracen.” He loomed up behind me, and his shadow fell on the water. The bioluminescent prawns living beneath the surface scattered, minuscule dandelion flecks of light rippling around the uneven floor of the pond. “We have, as they say, gotten off on the wrong foot.”
“I know exactly what foot I got off on, and it wasn’t the wrong one.” I bravely picked up another shirt, only to find that one as sopping wet as the first. Gritting my teeth, I began to roll it up and braced for the bite of cold against my skin. “You want to take over the Southern Rise Court, and I don’t want you to. Pretty simple. I don’t see how we’re going to get over that.”
“There was a time not long ago when you did not want my cousin Ryder to take over the court.” He settled down on the floor a few feet away from me. I caught the wince when his ass touched the cold stone, but he braved it out. “In fact, you didn’t want him here at all. Perhaps you’ll have the same change of heart with me.”
“I doubt it, because you are your grandmother’s creature.” I twisted the fabric and hissed at the pour of water over my hands, but it would take several tries before I could dry it in the transport. “Which is funny because you think I’m my father’s puppet and I’ve somehow ingratiated myself into Ryder’s court so I can eventually betray him.”
“And my grandmother said that your intelligence was little more than a dog’s.” Kerrick’s laugh was as cold as the water on my skin. “She is losing her grip on our clan. There have been too many changes and too many power shifts for her to control. Some of her ideas I agree with. I will not lie to you about that, but I disagree with her methods. I came to the Southern Rise Court for the same reason Ryder did. It’s a central node of power that one of us can shape into a political dynasty—one outside of her influence.”
“I don’t care why you came down here,” I replied. “I only care about how quickly you’re going to leave.”
“There are people in Elfhaine who believe Ryder is insane for challenging our grandmother, but they’re blind to how the world is evolving. Do we need to learn to live with the humans? I cannot say we agree on that, but I do empathize with Ryder’s insistence that we increase our numbers.” He shifted, probably trying to ease the cold that was eating through the seat of his pants. “I understand why he believes you’re vital to his court. And he is right that we must make peace with the Unsidhe, because our races must find common ground before the humans overwhelm us.
“While you are proof that it’s possible for the elfin bloods to be combined, your existence is not sustainable. Or rather your creation is not. I do not bear ill will against the Unsidhe. In fact, I don’t believe we can survive if we don’t mingle our courts. That is why San Diego is so vital. That is why I wanted to come on this run. I need to hear for myself how the Dusk Court below the border would react to pledging fealty to me.” He shook his head at my snort of laughter. “This woman we’re rescuing is bringing three children with her. Three. That number is incredible now, when once we could easily have had fifty to a hundred children in Elfhaine at one time. The Unsidhe are fertile and increasingly birthing Sidhe offspring from a mixed coupling. They’re an answer to our biggest problem and one Ryder is not willing to entertain.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, because I know for fact he welcomes everybody into his court, regardless of what kind of elfin they are. The Dusk Court down in Tijuana has been a vicious cesspool of murder and kidnapping for as long as they’ve been down there. I’ve been on raids to rescue human children because the Unsidhe down there collect them as pets.” I worked on another shirt, suddenly not feeling the cold. “They put out bounties for kids with certain eye or hair color like someone getting the pick of a litter. Now I’m going to point out something that Duffy never questioned. Those three kids that woman is bringing up might not even be elfin, so if I were you, I would hold off on your plans about conscripting the Unsidhe. As another saying goes, don’t go counting your chickens until they’re hatched.”
Kerrick studied me
while I worked through the shirts. As I wrung out the last one until no more water could be squeezed out, he sighed. “It pains me to admit that you thought of something I have not considered. This little discussion of ours has drastically altered my view of you.”
I held my hands up, my wrinkled fingers now light blue. “Probably because I’m changing colors as we speak. I’m about to head back. Do you have anything else to say that I should really listen to?”
“I understand now—truly understand—what Ryder sees in you. You have a strategic but angled way of looking at things. You come at problems in ways that none of us anticipate or even dream of. I now know why he values you so much, and not just because you’re beautiful.”
He smiled in a way I’d grown used to seeing Ryder smile at me. My hands weren’t the only cold thing on me, because the chill that ran up my spine could’ve made ice cream. Kerrick stood with a graceful flow of Sidhe arrogance, but his smile never warmed.
“I look forward to the day I make you mine.”
Fourteen
I SPENT the first hour of my watch pacing the perimeter of our camp. Avoiding Kerrick seemed the best way to keep him alive, especially since he’d stalked off away from the pond with a righteous stomp. Dinner was a hastily gulped down Italian-style hero and potato chips Cari had stuffed into the space by the cooling unit Sparky told us about. It was her surprise dinner, something she thought we would enjoy on our first night. It was good—greasy and full of cheese and a few hot peppers. Ryder ate it in layers, because he’s a freak that way and likes to take things apart the first time he eats something. Kerrick sniffed at it and then chowed down as though he were suffering through the experience.
It was very difficult not to laugh when the pepper seeds hit the back of his throat. There are times when my sense of humor is on a par with Jonas’s youngest child, who thought flaming bags of dog poop were the best thing in the world. Ryder passed him a bottle of water and kicked me in the foot when he went by.
