Canes of Divergence (Dusk Gate Chronicles)

by Puttroff, Breeana

She put a finger over her lips and stood up with Samuel. He stirred, but his little eyes didn’t open. She carried him into the bedroom and held her breath as she laid him in the little borrowed cradle next to their bed.

  For all of her worry, though, he nestled right into the blankets and stayed asleep. Thomas had been right – after three full hours with Mia this afternoon, Samuel’s mood had turned around completely. He’d been happy and content for the whole evening, eating well, and napping better than usual. Quinn wouldn’t be surprised if he gave her a few hours of peace now.

  “Where have you been?” she asked William, once the bedroom door was safely closed. “Did you go out to Mistle Village?”

  He nodded. “So you know, then.”

  She walked over to him, and reached to put her arms around his waist, needing to be next to him, to feel him against her, safe – at least for tonight.

  But to her utter shock, he took a step back from her, actually holding his hand out to keep her away from him. The crushing rejection was instant, like the wind had been knocked out of her, and she blinked up at him in hurt confusion.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just … the fox for sure had rabies, Quinn. If I have it, I don’t want to risk infecting you, or anyone else.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “By hugging me?”

  His hand stayed up. “It’s just too dangerous.”

  “It doesn’t happen that fast, William.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Anyway, you can’t get me sick. I’ve had rabies shots.”

  “What? When?”

  “A few years ago.” She told him the same story she’d told Thomas earlier, but when she was finished, he still wouldn’t let her get any closer to him.

  “The shots don’t last that long, Quinn. They’re only guaranteed for about two years. After that, they’re not always effective unless you have booster doses. We’d have to test you to see if you’re even protected at all right now.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. That’s one of the reasons we don’t just give them to everybody – aside from the fact that even in your world they’re pretty complicated and expensive to produce. You have no idea how long it took Nathaniel to be able to build up a supply line, or how lucky we are that gold is a lot more valuable in your world than it is in ours.”

  “This is my world too, William. Don’t do this. Don’t pull away from me now.”

  “I’m not trying to pull away from you; I just really can’t take any chances with you – and especially not with the baby.”

  She could tell by his expression that he wasn’t going to relent on this. It was suddenly hard to breathe. Swallowing hard, she took a step back from him and leaned against the arm of an overstuffed chair. “So what’s going on with the vaccine in Mistle Village?”

  “I don’t know for sure. It’s incubating, but I don’t know if it will work or not when it’s finished. We’ve never really known exactly what we’re doing with it. Studying it in your world only gets us so far, because we can’t make it the way it’s made in your world. We don’t have the technology, or the cell lines to grow the virus on. We don’t even have all of the same animals. We have to use other methods. Sometimes what we try seems to work, other times, we mess it up. We won’t really know if it’s safe or if it will work until we give it to somebody, which we’ve never done before – at least not to people.”

  “So you’ll be the first?”

  He nodded. “The batch we have going in Mistle Village should be ready in a little over a week, hopefully, if nothing goes wrong.”

  “Is a week soon enough?”

  “There’s no way to know how long it takes. We have until I start showing symptoms. That could be in about ten days, or it could be a couple moons. This bite,” he held up his arm, “is a pretty severe exposure, so I’d say we’re probably looking at the lower end of the scale. And, of course, the longer we wait, even if I don’t have symptoms yet, the more time the virus has to replicate and spread. The other problem is that even once I have the vaccine, it doesn’t protect right away, and we don’t have any of the immune globulin at all. We don’t even have a way to make it right now.”

  “But there’s still time.”

  “There might still be time. If the vaccine we’re making works, and if it’s effective in time without having the immune globulin. This is bad news, Quinn. I’m not trying to scare you, but, tonight, as I was riding, I decided – you need to know.”

  “Oh, well, gee, William. Thanks so much for deciding to include me in your little life-and-death situation here.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Yes, it is what you meant. You just didn’t mean for me to catch that bit.”

  “I’m trying not to scare you.”

  “Well, you are scaring me, Will. You’re scaring the hell out of me, actually.” She pressed her hands together tightly, trying to keep them from shaking, but it didn’t work.

  His eyes widened a bit, probably at her language, but he only nodded. “I know.”

  “Is Alice even safe, without the immune-stuff?”

  “We hope so. We treated her quickly. As long as the vaccine can work faster than the virus, she’ll be okay.”

  “But possibly not?”

  “Possibly not. What else do you want me to say? I’m also still worried that Emma could have been exposed, and I’m even more worried about Ben.”

  She nodded, staring at the floor, and blinking back the moisture that was filling her eyes as quickly as she could force it back. “You’ve been bitten by an animal before. Why weren’t we worried about this then?”

  “River boles never carry rabies – or at least we’ve never found an infected one. I don’t know why. Rabies is a lot rarer here than it is in your world – and I don’t know why that is, either. Maybe it’s the different animals.

  “In any case, that bole bite you saw wasn’t what we consider a concern. And thank the Maker for that, because if it had been, we would have used up the doses of vaccine we’re giving to Alice. It’s not like we’ve been back to your – to Bristlecone – to restock since then.”

  “If it’s so rare, then how does a rabid fox manage to get into the castle?”

  “I don’t know. Does it really matter how?”

  “It kind of seems like it does.”

  “Well, right now it doesn’t. The fox did get in, and it was rabid, and Alice and I both got bitten by it. That’s where we are.”

  The tears would no longer stay behind her eyelids. She wiped surreptitiously at them with her fingers, trying to hide them from him as she stared down at the floor. As horrible as all of this was, it was still his rejection of her that was cutting her to the quick.

  After a long moment, he cleared his throat. “How’s Samuel? He seemed really upset earlier. I’ve never seen him like that before.”

  She shrugged, trying to make sure her voice would be steady before she answered. “He’s fine now. He’s asleep.”

  Will was quiet for another minute before he finally said, “Okay.”

  “Stay with him for a few minutes. I’m going to get some tea.” She couldn’t even bring herself to look at him as she walked around him to the door. “I’ll be back before you have to do anything crazy like touch the baby,” she said under her breath as she pulled the door shut behind her.

  Once she was out of the room, she realized she didn’t even want to get a cup of tea, because that might mean facing someone else in the common room or down in the kitchens. She didn’t want to discuss this with anyone else – not while she was so angry with William. That wouldn’t be fair, she knew – they’d made that rule together, not to involve anyone else in the heat of an argument.

  Instead, she took a short walk out to one of the balconies, needing to get some air on her face. She stayed there for a few minutes, trying to calm herself, trying to get her tears firmly under control. She didn’t want to be angry or crying when she talked to him
again. Not going to bed angry was another rule.

  She wasn’t gone long at all but what she found when she got back brought the anger and tears rushing back.

  He was already asleep. And he wasn’t even in their bed. Instead, he was under a blanket on the small sofa in their bedroom. A half-drunk cup of tea, still warm, was on the wooden arm beside him.

  If the electric kettle on their little table hadn’t still been filled with hot water, she might have thrown it across the room.

  ~ 11 ~

  Owen’s Strange Request

  Bristlecone, Colorado

  IT WAS THE strange feeling that woke him – the feeling of the hair standing up on the back of his neck and behind his ears. The feeling that he was being watched.

  Zander opened his eyes slowly, trying to remember where he was, and why he was so uncomfortable.

  He was being watched, he realized. Owen was perched on the very end of Quinn’s bed, by his feet, silently staring at him.

  Suddenly, last night’s events all came rushing back to him.

  He must have fallen asleep here on Quinn’s bed, with his neck propped at a strange angle against the headboard. Her phone was still in his right hand, tethered to the wall by the charging cord.

  “I’m sorry, Owen,” he said, quickly sitting up, and setting the phone on the table. “I shouldn’t have come in here.”

  “Quinn wouldn’t mind,” Owen said quietly. “She wasn’t using her bed. It’s nicer than the couch.”

  “I don’t think she’d much like me going through her private things, Owen. She didn’t give me permission.”

  “They’re not really Quinn’s things anymore. She said that me and Annie could have whatever we want. I don’t think it would bother her, but if you thought it would bother her then why did you do it?”

  He chuckled under his breath. “I don’t know why I did. Her room was just here, and … I guess maybe I thought I would find some answers here or something.”

  “What kind of answers?”

  Owen’s face was so sincere, his expression so deep and powerful, that for a moment, Zander forgot he was only eight, and that he shouldn’t be having this conversation with him. For a moment, he lost sight of all of that, and just spilled his guts. “Like where Quinn really is. Why she disappeared without saying anything to anybody. Why she didn’t take any of her stuff. I’m starting to worry that something really bad happened to her.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, of course, he regretted them. Owen was just a young boy, and now he was probably scaring him.

  But Owen was still just looking at him with those dark, wide eyes, waiting patiently. He was silent for several seconds, looking like he was waiting to be sure Zander had finished. And when he spoke, his words weren’t what Zander was expecting at all.

  “What if you got answers to your questions, and they changed your life?”

  “What do you mean?” His heart sped to a manic pace. “Did something bad happen to her, and everyone is just hiding it?”

  Owen slowly shook his head. Too slowly to convince Zander.

  “Do you know where she is?”

  He nodded.

  “Is she in Europe?”

  The pause was much longer this time, but finally, Owen shook his head again.

  “Do you know why she went so fast and didn’t take any of her stuff with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re not supposed to tell me.” He knew that, now.

  “Nobody told me I couldn’t.”

  He frowned. “Then why won’t you tell me the truth?”

  Owen blinked several times. “Why do you need to know?”

  It was a valid question. He didn’t – and yet, he did. “I don’t know why I need to know. Honestly, I’ve tried to forget about it, I’ve tried to let it go, and just accept what your mom is saying. I’ve told myself it’s none of my business – and I know it’s not. But I can’t help it, Owen. Something just keeps pulling me into this, and I can’t stop wondering. I need to know.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? That’s it? You’re going to tell me?”

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Why wouldn’t I want to know? I thought you said nothing bad had happened to her.”

  Owen sighed – Zander had never seen him do that before. He was obviously struggling with this for some reason. All he knew was that this scared him, all of it. Actually, he also knew that he should just stop now, leave the little boy alone, but he couldn’t bring himself to let it go.

  “I don’t know if I should tell you, Zander. But…” For a second, Owen’s bottom lip trembled, and Zander’s heart leapt into his throat. Then the little boy took a deep breath and his eyes met Zander’s again. “But I need help. And I think you’re the only one who can help me.”

  Zander couldn’t even identify the mix of emotions that coursed through him then, but at least part of it was pure, unadulterated panic. Something was wrong. He knew his voice was shaking as he answered, “Help you how?”

  Owen took a deep breath. “Alvin told me that it has to be your choice. That I can’t bring you into this without warning you.”

  The encounter with the old man at the river came back in a rush. “You know Alvin?”

  “Yes. I’ve only really seen him once, but he talks to me in my dreams all the time. He said he met you.”

  “He told you that in your dream?”

  “Yes.”

  All right then. He’d somehow managed to meet Owen’s hallucination down by the river. This was getting better all the time. “What else did he say to you in your dream?”

  “That you could help me – you could help us, if you wanted to. But only if you were really ready for your life to change forever. Only if you are ready to learn something that you can’t unlearn.”

  Somewhere inside of him, a warning bell sounded. As crazy as all of this was, as little sense as Owen was making at the moment, as much as there was one part of him that wanted to call Megan and Jeff right now and demand to know what kind of stories they’d been filling Owen’s head with, and another part that was half ready to call the police, just in case something truly horrific had happened here – another part of him, one he wasn’t so familiar with, told him, unequivocally, that this was for real.

  Owen’s statement was serious. If Zander didn’t drop this immediately, if he pressed it even one step further, he was going open Pandora’s Box. And once he did that, once he let whatever was in there out, he would never, ever, be able to put it back in.

  He didn’t know how long he sat there considering the unconsiderable. His heart had slowed; everything was silent and still as Zander really and truly weighed the question in front of him.

  He thought of the weeks of wondering and agonizing over where Quinn had gone. He thought of his conversations with his parents last night, how they’d pointed so strongly to the fact that he didn’t even know where his life here was going anyway.

  He even thought about what it would be like to just drop this now. To take everyone’s word for it that Quinn was fine, and it was none of his business anyway. This wasn’t his problem, and if he got involved, he wouldn’t be able to take it back.

  In fact, that last option was almost tempting. Right now, right this second, he still had a chance to get his life back – a life that was familiar, and comfortable. One where he knew most of what he was doing, and would somehow be able to figure out the rest. He’d almost landed on this decision when he looked at Owen’s face again – really looked at it this time, deep enough to see the worry hidden in the very back of the little boy’s eyes. And he suddenly understood that, while walking away from this was probably the best choice he could make, it would also be the selfish one. And that, though he didn’t know how or why, in the end, leaving this behind was the decision he would regret.

  “Okay, Owen, where is Quinn?”

  The little boy nodded. He didn’t ask any more questions, didn’t double-check
Zander’s thought process. Whatever had just happened, they both knew the decision had been made.

  “I can’t tell you, Zander. I have to just show you. If you’re going to help me, you’re going to have to just follow me today, and do what I ask. I can’t explain it right now – not until later.”

  Zander closed his eyes. “Tell me she’s okay, Owen. Tell me you’re not going to take me to her body somewhere or something.”

  Owen’s eyes grew wide as dinner plates, and this time Zander knew he’d made a mistake. He hadn’t dared even articulate that thought yet in his own brain, even though it had been dancing around the edges. It had just slipped out on its own.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that … I’m just scared, Owen.”

  “She’s alive, Zander. And she’s okay right now. But she needs help. We have to help her. And you can’t ask me any more questions, and you can’t stop in the middle. If you’re going to come with me, you have to promise you’ll do everything I tell you.”

  * * *

  Eight hours later, Zander was well past questioning his sanity. He had also lost any desire to be the one to call the police to report any suspicions he might have about Quinn – mostly because he was now pretty sure that if anyone called the police, he was going to have to do some serious explaining of his own.

  After calling Megan and Jeff to let them know that Zander was staying at their house, and calling Zander’s parents with the news that Owen had been fine for the rest of the night, and they could relax and enjoy their trip to the Springs, Owen had flitted around the house for hours, gathering up items and putting them in a duffel bag, and writing some kind of note to his mother, which he sealed in an envelope and left on the counter without letting Zander see it.

  Zander, who had only gotten a few hours of sleep the night before, had actually dozed off for a while on the couch while Owen was doing his thing.

  But around five in the evening, Owen’s instructions got a little strange. At first, his request seemed almost innocent. After dragging the surprisingly heavy duffel bag out to Zander’s truck, Owen told him there were a couple of things he needed to get from Doctor Rose’s house. Apparently, Doctor Rose had signed the deed on the house over to Megan, and Owen had the keys to prove it.