Fence

by Ava Benton

  We already had. It made no difference if I warned us against it when we’d harbored opinions and concerns for weeks, ever since Pierce first noticed the absence of the heartbeat. How could any of us hope to keep our thoughts from running away after that? It could only mean one thing, probably: the death of the clan.

  Perhaps I was being a bit morbid.

  Who would do it? There were groups out in the world whose existence I never would’ve dreamt of. Like the group who’d blackmailed Carissa into delivering Cash’s blood by kidnapping Tommy. The poor boy had recovered well enough from the ordeal—he was resilient, for sure—but Carissa still woke up screaming at least once a week, reliving the nightmare of finding him gone.

  None of us had been aware of that group’s existence until that point. It was one thing to know our blood was potent, special, but another to find out there were others who were just as aware. And willing to stop at nothing to get their hands on it.

  Had our original clan fallen prey to them? Or a group like them? Or perhaps they’d been killed flat-out, simply for the fact that they existed? No matter how I warned myself against jumping to conclusions, it didn’t matter. I’d already jumped. I’d practically leaped.

  So had they. It didn’t matter how they denied it. We all had ideas about what we would find. No wonder none of us was in any hurry to get started. If the clan was gone, no more, there would be no reason to rush.

  And we might be walking straight into our very deaths.

  3

  Fence

  “This is a hotel?”

  The three of us looked up at the long building which looked much more like a string of townhomes than the hotel we’d been promised.

  I turned my gaze to Gate, who scratched his head. “Are you sure you brought us to the right place?”

  “I followed the directions. If there’s a problem, take it up with Mary.” He was barely holding onto his temper.

  We were all worn a little thin.

  My dragon thrashed and raged in my head, demanding I take control of the situation. To hell with Mary’s instructions and my brother’s sense of direction.

  We should never have allowed anyone else to determine the plans for the trip.

  My dragon was irritated and roaring. I silently pushed back. Mary knows more about this than we do.

  He was tired, too. Sometimes, it was like struggling with a bratty child. A bratty child strong enough to crush a truck, with a thirty-foot wingspan.

  As we walked down the block, bags in hand, it became clear that we were in the right place when a doorman helped two guests into a waiting car, then turned his attention to us.

  “Staying with us, are you?” His thick brogue was thick enough to slice with a knife.

  “Aye,” I replied, slipping back into it without thinking.

  Gate chuckled, but I paid him no mind.

  The helpful doorman tipped his cap in greeting, and took two of our bags up the walkway and through the doors.

  Inside was a different story.

  I would never have imagined the sleek, coffee-colored walls, the clean, modern lines of the furniture and lighting fixtures. It fairly screamed masculinity, luxury, comfort. I could instantly understand why Mary had chosen to book us here.

  None of that mattered at the moment. I’d enjoy it later, after a long, deep sleep. I relished the chance to drop down on the wide, firm mattress. At least we’d each gotten a room of our own—one of the few points we were firm on. After each of us having our own space for so many centuries, it would have been torture to have to share.

  We were here. We had really done it.

  I gazed up at the ceiling with my hands behind my head, wondering if I should call home to confirm we’d made it. What time was it there? I slid the burner phone out of my jacket pocket and chose Smoke’s number from the list of contacts. We’d all gotten identical, pre-paid devices for the purposes of the trip.

  “Tell me you’re calling from the hotel,” Smoke ordered on answering.

  “I wonder why you don’t have more friends than you do.”

  “Perhaps because my circle of acquaintances is so small,” he chuckled. “You’re safe, then?”

  “Safe as can be. All of us in our rooms. It’s a nice place—very nice. Comfortable. I might never want to leave.”

  “Eh, you wouldn’t be missed, anyway.”

  “Thanks a lot. How are things there?”

  “The usual. Cash and Tommy roughhousing, the girls helping Carissa create more of the antidote. Me wishing I could get away with wearing earplugs when the three of them start giggling.”

  I grimaced in agreement. None of us were used to constant female companionship. It would take time to adjust.

  “We agreed to start out in the morning,” I reported.

  “Good enough. Keep me posted. And be safe out there,” he added, like a casual afterthought that was anything but casual or an afterthought.

  The potential gravity of what we were embarking on was lost on none of us.

  I dropped the phone beside me on the bed and fell asleep fully clothed, on top of the covers.

  My dreams were full of shadows, fog, questions. Faint memories of the way things used to be.

  4

  Ciera

  “This has to be it.” I glanced down at the thick, heavy textbook I’d been lugging around in my backpack all day long, comparing the hundred-fifty-year-old photos to what I saw in front of me.

  I could’ve brought photocopies of the pictures, and I would have if, I hadn’t lost them. My shoulders and lower back would’ve cursed me out if they could’ve. I’d be spending the evening looking around the apothecary shops for a heating pad.

  None of that mattered when I confirmed that I was in the right place. My body hummed so hard with excitement, it was a wonder my hair wasn’t standing on end.

  I ran a self-conscious hand over the top of my head just to be sure it wasn’t.

  The same mountain, shaped like an arrowhead, with five pointed rocks arranged in a semi-circle, roughly a hundred yards in front of the carved opening at the base. Behind the mountain was a chain of smaller peaks, nearly hidden.

  I checked this against the grainy, black-and-white version of the same scene in my textbook. After a century-and-a-half, the rocks were a little rounder, the edges softer, thanks to the elements.

  Thick clusters of trees grew everywhere, which was part of the reason for the trouble I had in finding the location. Even though that arrowhead stood out against the dark clouds which had started to gather, way up above the treetops, it was nearly impossible to figure out the best way to get to the mountain.

  Just when I was sure I was on the right path, I’d find myself getting hopelessly turned around. Just my horrible sense of direction, right up there with clumsiness and a penchant for losing things.

  I’d been out here for hours—most of the day, in fact. I checked my phone with a sigh. Nearly four o’clock. No wonder I was exhausted, not to mention starving. Still, none of that mattered as much as finding the cave.

  “I knew it,” I whispered.

  The wind carried my words away. There was nobody here to hear them, anyway. Nobody but me. That was enough. I had always known I was right, that the ancient cave was real and that it would still exist somewhere.

  “Grandma, I knew it. You were right, too.” My heart ached, and I wished she was with me.

  All the stories were true.

  Saighead Uaine.

  Loosely translated as Green Arrow. Very green. Almost supernaturally so. Green enough to nearly hurt my eyes, but I couldn’t stop staring. I had imagined it so many times, over the course of so many late-night bedtime stories.

  Seanmhair, as my grandmother had taught me to call her, should’ve been a writer. She had a way of weaving a story that was even more skillful than the beautiful knitting and embroidery she used to work on while she spoke in her low, soothing voice, setting my imagination on fire. Stories about ancient clans and curses and en
chantments. And dragons.

  So, this was how it felt, finally finding something after searching for years. Telling myself it existed. Refusing to listen to those who dismissed me and told me to focus my graduate research on something a little more concrete, a little less fairytale. I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or cry or strip naked and dance in the center of the upright stones.

  The first splashes of raindrops, on the top of my head, made the decision for me. I looked up at the ominous clouds and caught a fat raindrop right in the eye for it.

  I had wanted to explore the inside of the cave, anyway. Looked like this was as good a time as any. I held the book tight to my chest, the way I’d hold a baby to protect it, and made a dash for the cave mouth. I managed to make it inside just before the rain started falling in sheets.

  It seemed like a good idea to lose the pack for a little while, and my shoulders nearly screamed in relief when I let the straps slide over them and down my arms.

  I pulled out a protein bar before sliding the textbook inside, and sat cross-legged on the cave floor while eating and drinking from one of my water bottles. It was so strange, actually being in here, where so much had happened, according to legend.

  You don’t really believe that, do you?

  Even my inner voice seemed to be on a quest to piss me off and remind me how naïve I could be. Legends weren’t real—otherwise, they’d be called reality. And there was no way of knowing how much was legend and how much was added on over centuries of retelling.

  I was certain the dragon aspect of the stories was embellishment. Or, hell, they could’ve been part of the original stories, since people believed in that sort of thing back then. Before science, before the printed word. A thousand years into the past. Dragons and fairies and such—they were how people explained natural phenomena back then.

  Though I wasn’t sure how a dragon could provide an explanation for anything. And there were multiple civilizations whose members had produced drawings and paintings of what could’ve been dragons, civilizations who’d never been in contact with each other. Before ocean travel even was a thing. The drawings had to come from somewhere, and I didn’t believe in group consciousness. Not when the group was spread out over hundreds of years and thousands of miles in what were basically the Dark Ages—and before.

  When I was finished eating, I stood up and wiped the dirt from the seat of my cargo pants. It was still raining, though that initial burst of violence had turned to a softer, gentler rain which seemed to swirl around in a cloud. The sort of rain I was more accustomed to seeing in that part of the world.

  I’d only lived here for four months while studying at the University of Edinburgh, but it already felt like home. Maybe because Seanmhair was the closest thing to home I’d ever experienced—while I was in her birthplace, it was like having her all around me. Like she was with me again.

  I shook my head, like that would be enough to remind me my grandmother was dead and would be dead no matter where I went or how many mystical caves I explored. No matter what I found on my travels through the highlands, it wouldn’t bring her back. I knew it in my head, in the part of me that had helped me graduate summa cum laude from Columbia before pursuing my Master’s in Edinburgh. I was a frigging intellectual, for God’s sake. I should’ve known better.

  But the mountain from the old stories was real. How was I supposed to give up all those flights of fancy, as Grandma used to call them, when there was proof of the truth of at least these notions right here—over my head, behind my back, all around me?

  She would’ve done it herself, if she could have. She’d always sworn up and down that she was happy in America. It was her home, and it was my home, and she was in charge of making sure I grew up well. She’d put on a happy face and promised me that it didn’t matter, that she wouldn’t want to go back to Scotland even if she could.

  But I knew better. I could read that burning love of her homeland in her eyes when she told me the legends she’d first heard as a little girl. I could hear it throbbing in her voice. I could just imagine her hiking for miles at a time, probably outpacing me, never tiring.

  I was doing it for her, just the way she would have. I couldn’t bring her with me, but I could at least fulfill her dreams.

  With that in mind, I pulled the big flashlight from my backpack before slinging it over my shoulders, and decided to go a little further into the cave. Not too far—I didn’t need to piss off any bears or bats or whatever. But wouldn’t it be cool to find some cave drawings or artifacts?

  I rolled my eyes at myself, but kept moving, anyway. Like there were thousand-year-old artifacts just waiting for Ciera Rivera to discover them. There was also a bridge in Brooklyn just waiting for me to buy it.

  I breathed deep through my nose as I took those first few tentative steps, paying attention to the scents in the air. I didn’t pick up anything that smelled like an animal. It gave me the courage to keep walking, even as the darkness grew deeper and more complete.

  Before I knew it, the light from outside the cave was almost completely gone. There was only me, the sound of my breathing, and the steady thumping of my heart.

  “What am I doing in here?” I whispered, then jumped when I heard my voice doubling, tripling back.

  I was way too keyed up. Being in there, knowing how many hundreds of years of life had passed while the mountain stood, it was all too much. I took a deep breath and chided myself before moving on.

  The tunnel widened.

  I ran the flashlight over the walls, then the ceiling. It was at least twenty feet over my head, maybe thirty, and there was a good twenty feet in all directions.

  I turned in a slow circle, the beam of the flashlight pointed straight in front of me.

  The walls were so smooth. That was what caught my attention first. Much smoother than they should’ve been, without a bump or jagged edge in sight. Same with the ceiling.

  “What is this place?”

  My voice didn’t echo that time. Something absorbed the sound. A chill ran up my spine and covered my arms in goosepimples.

  Wherever it was, I was alone. I could feel it just as clearly as I could’ve felt the presence of somebody—or something—else. At least that was what I told myself. It was the only thing that kept my knees from knocking together.

  What was going on? I went to the wall and ran my hand over the surface, then rapped against it with my knuckles.

  Painted sheetrock, with some sort of substance underneath. Probably to dampen noise and keep moisture from seeping in after it trickled through the mountain.

  I could hear it, too, all around me. A constant trickling sound that might have been pleasant, even comforting in any other situation. As it was, it gave me the creeps.

  A very large, very anxious part of me said run. Just get the hell out of there and never go back.

  A very solid idea—after all, there was no telling who did this, or why. Or whether they’d be back.

  Then why did I slide the straps over my shoulders and lower the backpack to the floor?

  “Probably because I’m an idiot,” I whispered, hands shaking.

  The flashlight’s beam moved back and forth over the walls. And I here I thought I was going to find cave paintings. What a quaint idea.

  I forced myself to keep walking deeper into the tunnel, which narrowed again after that room. Was it a room? I had no idea. The walls here were the same as back there.

  Until they weren’t.

  Until I shone the light on a door.

  “Oh, crap.” I had to pee all of a sudden. Desperately.

  What the heck was this? I looked back and forth down the hall—because that’s what it was, it wasn’t just a tunnel anymore, it was a hallway—as if I were making sure nobody was watching.

  When I was sure again that I was alone, I pushed the door open. The hinges didn’t even squeak.

  Dark monitors. Wires.

  What I immediately recognized as a fuse box. I ran the beam of ligh
t over all of it, my heart pounding harder than ever. Somebody lived here. They ran power here. They even had computers.

  And they might be back.

  And I was trespassing.

  I turned and ran blindly in the direction I’d come from, not caring anymore about what I might find. I had seen enough.

  This wasn’t the ancient home of the highland’s earliest clans, the ones I’d been studying for years. This was something somebody had taken great pains to modernize.

  And yet it was easy as pie for me to walk right in and have a look around.

  That thought ran through my head about as fast as my feet were carrying me through the tunnel.

  I didn’t have time to ponder it before I tripped over my backpack and went sprawling.

  Everything went black.

  5

  Fence

  “It would be so much easier if we could just shift.”

  “If you don’t stop harping on that…”

  “I know,” Gate grumbled as he hiked behind me. “I’m just saying.”

  I shook my head. “Yes. I know. It would be easier to make it to the mountain if we could shift and fly through the storm. We’d be there in no time at all. Would that we could—I’ve never been overly fond of hiking.”

  Especially in the rain. And not just rain, either. Pouring rain. Big, fat raindrops. I wasn’t overly fond of rain, either. Especially while hiking, when there was little chance of finding shelter until we made it to the mountain.

  I could see it up ahead, and just having it in my sight brought back a flood of memories I hadn’t visited in ages. When I first learned to fly, and I’d circled that arrowhead-shaped peak, I’d felt like I was on top of the world, literally. I’d felt as though I couldn’t be any higher than that. The rush of pride had made my chest puff out. I hadn’t known my father was watching from a distance until I’d heard his good-natured laugh.

  I was so sure I’d never come back here. I had no reason to, after all, not until the heartbeats went away. I’d been unhappy when we were assigned our mission. It had meant leaving the only home I’d ever known. And it had taken a long time to accustom myself to our new home, too.