Fated Curse

by Skye Malone

  “Booby-trapped,” Yasmeen whispered behind her.

  Lindy kept moving. The main road lay only a few blocks farther on, and at Anthony’s muttered direction, she headed left again. Long stretches separated the buildings, as if the owners had all the space in the world and hadn’t cared that dozens of yards of empty terrain lay between them and their neighbors. Fast-food restaurants and gas stations and car dealerships stood like islands in a snowy sea, some marked by symbols from the Order and others providing a final resting place to burned and abandoned cars.

  But nothing provided much cover, and she found her feet moving faster and faster, trying to reach somewhere that at least would give them a place to hide.

  Whispers carried from the edge of her mind, and her eyes snapped to the right. “Back. Back now.” She motioned frantically toward an array of construction equipment lined up in a parking lot to her left, as if the vehicles had once been for sale. Frantically, the group rushed behind the large machines.

  “What did you—” Anthony started.

  “Shh.” Wes’s command was sharp. He peered past a nearby forklift, his eyes skimming the road in an unfocused way, as if sight wasn’t the primary way he was surveying their surroundings.

  Swallowing hard, Lindy didn’t move from her crouch behind the wheels of an orange-painted bulldozer. Even with the bulk of the machine beside her, she felt painfully exposed on every other side. The cold seemed to seep deeper into her now that she wasn’t moving, and all around them, the wind was the only sound.

  Was she wrong? Maybe the whispers in her mind were only delusion. Maybe she was losing her mind, and now she’d dragged these innocent people out into the cold, when she couldn’t help them at—

  Groans and chittering sounds like bones clacking together carried on the breeze. Distant footsteps dragged through the snow.

  Lindy froze. Behind a backhoe, the teenage girl, Julia, bundled a fist into her mouth like she was trying to keep from screaming, while Eloise closed her eyes, her mouth moving silently as if in rapid prayer.

  Yasmeen stared at Lindy, expectation in her eyes, and Lindy looked away, the darkness at the edge of her mind stirring as if in anticipation of gaining more of a hold on her. Already, she could feel the mark on her arm tingling, waiting for her to call on the curse.

  She dug her fingers into her thigh, barely daring to breathe. The shuffling sounds grew louder, and trembling, she risked a glance through a gap in the machine.

  Half a dozen of draugar staggered out from behind a warehouse across the road, one of the dead still wearing a hard hat and another in a reflective vest stained in grime. Their heads lurched left, then right like guard dogs spasmodically sniffing the air, but they didn’t rush at the construction equipment, continuing instead along the road until they disappeared into a neighborhood buried beneath the snow.

  A slow breath left Lindy. No shapes drifted at the edges of her mind, and after another moment, she nodded to the others.

  She could feel the group staring at her while she walked cautiously away from the bulldozer.

  In silence, they continued through the snow, hiding twice more when draugar and the Order passed. But none of the creatures or their glowing green handlers came too close to the humans or the wolf hiding nearby.

  But she wasn’t reassured. Not when, as the minutes crept past, the shadows in her mind started to change. At first, it was only a tumbling feeling up ahead, like a little wave lapping onto a shore and then slipping away again. But the farther along the white stretch of snow and nothing the group walked, the larger it felt. There weren’t any shambling figures ahead of them, nor any slippery eels darting from the shadows.

  There was an ocean. A tidal storm rising on the horizon.

  And they were heading right toward it.

  She chewed her lip, her heart pounding. There was no going around it. The sensation stretched as far out on either side as she could feel. But the closer they walked, the more solid it felt, even as it kept roiling and churning in her mind.

  The bridge came into view ahead. The broad stretch of cement had probably been pretty before the world went to hell, with green lamp posts and a matching metal railing with wide walkways on either side for pedestrians. Abandoned cars cluttered it now, most of them crashed into each other or hanging from the side of the bridge where they’d slammed into the fence. A tiny park waited to the left, right where the bridge began, with clusters of bushes, benches with the engraved names of whoever donated them, and an old-world lamppost like they’d all fallen back into Victorian England.

  Lindy couldn’t take her eyes from the space beyond the park. She couldn’t see anything there yet, but it didn’t matter.

  She could feel it. The churning sea waited just past the greenery, along with a white-noise whine that made no sense off to her left. While the others glanced around worriedly, checking their surroundings, she crept forward, feeling like a kid in a nightmare who knew the monster was behind the closet door, but still had no choice but to look.

  “Lindy?” Wes whispered, concern clear in his voice.

  “Stay low.” Her voice shook a little, and she didn’t think it was her imagination when she saw fear flash across the others’ faces from the corner of her eye.

  In silence, they slipped into the park. Behind the bushes on the far side, she crouched and reached out carefully, pulling a few branches aside.

  “Oh, Jesus have mercy,” Eloise whispered.

  Thousands of draugar filled the terrain below the bridge, continuing on either side as far as Lindy’s eyes could see.

  “Damn,” Wes murmured.

  Yasmeen made a desperate noise. “That… that’s more than before.”

  “Bastards have been busy,” Anthony muttered. “Fucking murderers.”

  Lindy stared. Underneath the bridge, a stretch of snowy field gave way to multiple train tracks with no shred of cover at all. A tall chain-link fence separated the field from what lay beyond, and one of the trains lay on its side where it had careened across the neighboring tracks, presumably derailed by the earthquakes that struck when the world fell. Past it all, a five-story parking garage beckoned like the promised land.

  But the draugar were everywhere. Countless monsters ambled about the snowy field, a wandering, mindless mass that stumbled into one another only to rebound away like the decaying embodiment of staggering, aimless chaos.

  Anthony was right. The Order were murderers. Nearly every corpse looked fresh. Some still had semi-wet blood glistening in their wounds. The Allegiants had taken a city full of survivors of the apocalypse, and if any refused to convert…

  Ready-made army of the dead for the Order to control.

  Somewhere inside her, she wanted to be sick.

  Lindy glanced over her shoulder at the snowy expanse of parking lots and abandoned buildings behind them. Exploded wreckages of vehicles made evident where former survivors had tried using them to escape. But there was no guarantee the six of them would get over to the parking garage and find a usable car there either. Why wouldn’t the Order have booby-trapped those vehicles too?

  Except the Order had to be getting around somehow.

  That didn’t mean they’d put their vehicles here, out of all the city. And what about finding keys for the damn things if she and the others could even reach them?

  Shit. There was no way this could work.

  “So?” Anthony hissed, looking at her expectantly.

  Lindy bit her lip, old lessons from tactics classes rising out of murky memory. It’d take a tremendous amount of power to hold a line like this around the whole town, though. Odds were the Allegiants wouldn’t even try. The point of their apocalypse wasn’t to barricade themselves inside random American cities like latter-day warlords laying claim to territory. The Order already thought they ruled the entire world. No, the point was conversion or annihilation. If they couldn’t catch every surviving human in the city, then they wanted people to try for this place so the Order could gather mo
re converts or create more draugar. Why else booby-trap every vehicle outside their perimeter, if not to force survivors to come here?

  But to make that work, there had to be credible bait, and the four people behind her said they’d heard engines running. Chances were, besides placing that impenetrable horde of draugar and perhaps some alarm systems on the other side of this expanse, the Order hadn’t wasted time or energy destroying much of downtown. After all, who was going to make it past those defenses? No, they’d most likely left the heart of their trap essentially untouched, barring killing or converting any humans who’d been in it.

  One big, multicolored expanse of temptation meant to make desperate survivors kill themselves trying to reach it.

  But that meant cars with keys in them might be over there. Maybe bodies who’d have keys in their pockets too, assuming the Allegiants hadn’t managed to turn every corpse into a draug. Meanwhile, given the kinds of destruction behind her—burned cars, burned buildings—she suspected the booby traps on this side weren’t solely made of seidr, which meant this weird ability of hers had precious little chance of picking them up if she tried to use these cars instead.

  After all, C-4 would do just fine for wreaking bloody destruction, and God knew the Order trained its people in that too.

  One wrong move and she’d blow herself and everyone else up.

  So forward was the only option—though that still left the question of how to actually reach the parking garage and what to do once they got there.

  “What now?” Eloise asked softly as if in echo of Lindy’s thoughts. At her side, Julia clung to the older woman, visibly trembling.

  Lindy shook her head, the white-noise whine in her head making it hard to think. Even what she’d done to destroy the draugar in the strip mall parking lot wouldn’t be enough to get them across that stretch of land—and that wasn’t even bringing into it the damage it’d do to her. There’d be nothing left of her if she tried to attack this head-on.

  But then, there was what she’d done to leave the manor outside Mariposa…

  She swallowed hard. God only knew if shielding them all with seidr would work against the draugar, let alone the Order members probably lurking in the buildings across the tracks.

  “You sure there aren’t any usable cars on this side of the bridge?” Wes asked the others.

  Anthony snorted. “You’re welcome to try finding one, big guy. Boom.”

  Rage erupted through Lindy in a violent, hungry wave. Her eyes snapped to the side, locking on the burly man with his sneering lips and his thick veins pumping fatty blood like a ruby-red milkshake waiting to spill onto the snow. He wanted to hurt Wes? Risk Wes? That contemptible bastard wouldn’t take another step if he dared—

  “Shut up, Anthony,” Yasmeen hissed.

  Shudders ran through Lindy, hungry and filled with anticipation. Yeah. Yeah, shutting him up was good. Shutting him up was what needed to happen right—

  “Lindy?” Wes prompted softly.

  His voice felt like hands pulling her back from a cliff. A ragged breath entered her lungs, the air cold like needles, and the wave of her rage receded only to have horror swell in its place. What the hell? Sweet God, she’d been about to—

  “Hey.” Wes took her arm and she gasped, fear spiking through her because it wasn’t safe. He couldn’t touch her or she might…

  Her heart rate slowed. The panic ebbed like a tide slowly slipping back out to sea, and she no longer felt like she was going to drown in it. When he met her eyes, his expression so concerned, she didn’t feel dangerous. Somehow, she just felt… steadied, as if she was held back by a force that wouldn’t ever let her fall. The impulses and the darkness seemed to recede, even if the hissing noise in her head didn’t change at all.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Staring at him, she managed a nod.

  “We can go back,” he said. “We’ll find another option that—”

  The white-noise rush in her mind spiked higher, like someone had suddenly jacked up the volume tenfold. She flinched back, clasping a hand to her temple, and Wes’s grip on her arm tightened as if to keep her from collapsing. Around her, the others threw panicked looks between her and the bushes as if they’d suddenly heard something. But she hadn’t felt a draug or an Allegiant in her mind.

  That didn’t mean this wasn’t a threat.

  A figure stepped from the shrubbery.

  And it didn’t even kind of look human.

  Lindy stared. Tall and lithe, with skin that glistened like it was touched by moonlight and a cold, remote face made of sharp edges like chiseled granite, the creature seemed to shimmer even beneath the overcast day. Pointed ears stuck up through his tangled white hair, and the silken robes covering his body were thin and clearly meant for warmer climates, though now they were stained and ripped.

  She winced with pain against the static roar in her mind. Oh God. This was an elf.

  “Who are you?” the elf demanded, his deep and imperious tone undermined by the slight tremble in his voice. “What is this place?”

  Wes glanced at Lindy and then stepped forward a bit, and she had the weirdest feeling he was putting himself between her and the creature. “Who are you?”

  “I asked you, wolf.”

  Alarm shot through Lindy, and she could see Wes stiffen. She didn’t dare glance back at the others, for fear of them asking questions.

  Or panicking.

  “Though,” the creature continued, “if you are here, I assume I am in Midgard.” His eyes slid to Lindy, a disdainful expression crossing his face. “Even if I have not heard of that one’s like inhabiting these lands before.”

  She hesitated, not sure what to make of that. The creature sounded like she was a particularly repellent bug.

  But the pain in her head was lessening, though she had the feeling it wasn’t the elf’s doing. More like she was adjusting to the white-noise roar of his presence.

  Or the curse was adjusting.

  Chills ran through her.

  The elf drew himself up. “I command you to tell me, wolf. I was in my home in Elfhame when the sky split and the ensuing destruction cast me here. I do not choose to endure Ragnarok in this… place, so speak now and say where I shall find the nearest path back to—”

  Lindy gasped even as the elf’s eyes suddenly widened. As the white-noise rush faded, whispers came clear in her mind, originating from behind the group.

  And practically on top of them.

  Panic surged through her again, and on instinct, she reached out, taking Wes’s wrist. Beyond him, the survivors stared, clearly terrified, and she didn’t have another option. There was nowhere close enough to hide, not from the number of monsters she felt coming.

  Seidr was the only hope.

  “Grab on to each other,” she hissed.

  Their confusion only froze them for a heartbeat, and then they did as she asked. She turned to the elf.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  “Take my hand.” She reached for him. “Hurry!”

  The elf recoiled like she’d offered him a dirty diaper. “And what in all the realms makes you think I would—”

  Shrieks carried on the breeze. In the stretch of land below the bridge, the draugar there began to shriek too, charging up the slope toward the park.

  “Now!” Lindy cried at the elf.

  He ignored her. Horror on his face, the creature backed away from Lindy and the rest, casting a look around quickly as if seeking somewhere to go and then racing back the way he’d come and shoving past the shrubbery there.

  The shrieking got closer.

  “Dammit.” She drew in a sharp breath. This was going to cost her. God, this was going to cost her.

  Gritting her teeth, she willed the seidr to rise and spread across the others. All around her, the air seemed to grow colder while the tattoo on her wrist tingled and then bit at her skin like the snake it was designed to imitate. She winced, fighting not to cry out as the feeling carried along h
er forearm like needles stabbing into her skin.

  Draugar charged into the park, two Allegiants right behind them.

  Lindy and the others froze. She barely dared to breathe, and she felt Wes’s grip clench down on her hand, his eyes locked on the draugar. The monsters spread out through the park, snarling and shrieking, while the Allegiants paused at the edge, their eyes narrowing.

  But they didn’t point or shout, and as the draugar staggered around, the monsters didn’t come close to Lindy and the rest.

  “Something was here,” the taller of the two Allegiants insisted.

  “Indeed,” the shorter said.

  “You doubt me?” the taller snapped. “You saw the footprints in the snow too, for the Abyss’s sake.”

  Lindy’s stomach sank. Footprints. Of course they’d left footprints. Why the hell hadn’t she thought—

  Like there was anything she could have done about it?

  The shorter guy held up his hands as if to deny any doubt, though his humored expression wasn’t nearly so appeasing. She didn’t recognize the two men, though given the extent of the Order’s reach, she knew that didn’t mean much.

  Or that they wouldn’t recognize her if this defense failed.

  Irritation flashed over the taller man’s face. “Search everywhere!” he shouted at the draugar.

  Snarling, the creatures raced past Lindy and the others, flowing around them as if they were an invisible rock in a river.

  The shorter Allegiant’s brow furrowed at the sight. “Wait. Do you see—”

  A cry came from the far edge of the park, and Lindy’s heart hit her throat. That wasn’t a draug.

  The monsters hauled the elf from the bushes.

  Thrashing and shouting what sounded like curses in a language she’d never heard, the elf struggled to break free, failing miserably when the draugar didn’t react to him in the least. Under his blows, the monsters’ flesh shredded and fell away, but still they dragged him forward until they reached the Allegiants.

  “Told you,” the taller Allegiant commented to the shorter.

  “Yes, I see that. Though those footprints were more numerous than this one.”