Blood Binds the Pack

by Alex Wells

  Then, with his desk at last clear in front of him, he headed home. Or at least that was his intention. Instead, Shige found himself in the sub-basement, turning down a particular hallway. One wall was synthcrete and punctuated with doors; the other was glass, revealing a plain set of rooms: bedroom, dining room, playroom filled with reels of multicolored string and bits of construction frames.

  The Weatherman ought to have been asleep, if sleep was something Weathermen even did. Instead he was up, dressed, and waiting at the door.

  It was only polite, Shige rationalized as he swiped his security card and opened the door, feeling curiously like his hands belonged to someone else. Only for the best that he maintain his contact with Mr Yellow. All of those rationalizations fell away when he felt his gaze dragged upward to the Weatherman’s face.

  Fatigued and mentally muddled, he didn’t have the will to stop. It wasn’t until the Weatherman’s dry fingers closed on his chin that he felt in control again. Gasping, he jerked back, though it was useless against the Weatherman’s strength. But he was able to force his gaze down, to Mr Yellow’s chin.

  The Weatherman sighed, leaning in. Shige’s back met the smooth glass wall, as breath that tasted like blood flowed over his lips. “We know,” the Weatherman whispered.

  “What do you know?” Shige asked, feeling hollow.

  “We know you want to kill us,” Mr Yellow said, his voice a bare whisper. “And we know you wanted to kill Mr Green. We know because Mr Green knew.” Cold, dry fingers combed through Shige’s hair.

  He pressed his palms flat against the glass wall, as if the solid touch would make him feel less disoriented and trapped. “I didn’t kill him,” he whispered. Not a lie, though he bore some responsibility and had no regrets.

  “We are not angry. We know you.” He leaned yet closer.

  “What do you want?” Shige asked. He turned his fingers, easing a microinjector, one of the few weapons he always carried, between two of them.

  Mr Yellow’s hand closed over his, pinning it firmly against the glass. “You don’t want to hurt us.”

  For all the terror gnawing at him, the thought sounded clear in his mind: it was true. Mr Yellow hadn’t hurt him, after all. Mr Yellow had gotten him here, quite early. There was so much work still to do. “What do you want?” Shige asked again.

  “We are thirsty,” Mr Yellow said. He tilted his head, and Shige felt lips press against the hot pulse in his temple. “We have always been thirsty. All we wish is to drink.”

  He knew that the Weathermen drank blood, and ate far less neat things. Shige shuddered. Some strange thing in him said yes, that might be rather nice. That couldn’t be a part of him. “No.”

  “Not you,” Mr Yellow said. “Not yet.”

  “Then what?”

  “The water of this world flows in one direction. Take us there. Promise.”

  He would have promised anything, if he thought it would get him out of this moment alive. “I promise,” Shige whispered.

  “Mr Green thought we should keep you.” Mr Yellow turned his head so their foreheads rested hard together, and then there was nothing for Shige to see but the darkness of a universe without stars. “We will.”

  Shige jerked as his head met the hard wall of the shower. The water streaming over him had gone tepid, when he usually preferred his showers close to scorching. He was lucky he’d leaned that way as he fell asleep, rather than toppling over.

  It said a great deal about his fatigued state that he didn’t recall leaving the office or returning home. Perhaps he ought to have used one of those stimulants after all.

  As he watched the water swirl down the drain between his pale brown feet, he saw threads of red uncurl in it. Frowning, he brought his hand to touch his nose – his fingers came back bloody. Lovely, he’d even managed to bump his face. Hopefully there wouldn’t be a bruise.

  Annoyed, he turned off the shower and stood, shivering, though it didn’t feel at all cold. Fatigue and hunger, perhaps. Without the network at his call, he checked the wall display to see what time it must be – right, he had an hour before he had to be back at work.

  Shige scrubbed his face with his hands, grimaced at the reminder of the bleeding nose, and took a deep breath. Now was not the time to lose focus. He had too much to do, particularly a better analysis of those survey reports. Perhaps, the thought came unbidden, this was a job for Mr Yellow.

  Chapter Seventeen

  35 Days

  “And how are we this morning?” someone sang out, loud and disgustingly cheerful.

  She recognized that voice, Hob thought blearily through the endless, red-hot-spike throbbing of her skull. It was the voice of Satan. And here, she hadn’t even thought he was real. There was a thump that echoed through her goddamn teeth, and she smelled… coffee. Satan had brought her coffee. How nice of him to be hanging around the base after a night of celebrating Diablo gaining his Wolf’s name.

  Hob grunted and hoisted her head up enough that she could fumble to locate the cup. She didn’t open her eye yet. She was pretty sure if she did, her brain would slide out her empty eye socket and then she’d die. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

  “Really,” Satan continued in clipped, amused tones. Satan spoke like a snooty offworlder. Huh. “I would have thought you’d go to your bed instead of curling up in your office. It smells like… stale beer and vinegar in here. What on earth were you drinking?”

  Oh, she realized as she scalded her tongue on the first blessed sip of coffee. No, it was worse than Satan. It was Coyote. “I don’t know,” she croaked. Talking did not make her head explode or her stomach empty, to her vague surprise. “Lobo gave it to me.”

  “Oh. That was your first mistake.”

  “Startin’ to realize.” The next sip of coffee was more tolerable, or maybe she’d just burned out all the nerves in her mouth and throat already.

  “Are you alive enough to accept a message?” he asked with relentless cheer.

  “No.”

  “Good!” He slid a flimsy in front of her.

  Hob stared down at the wavering letters and couldn’t make any sense of them, though she at least recognized the handwriting as Mag’s. Her eye throbbed. The goddamn ends of her hair throbbed. She shoved the flimsy back at Coyote and took another determined haul of her coffee like it was a cigarette. “You read it.” Thinking of cigarettes had her hand automatically searching for her case, which was… not there.

  He picked the flimsy back up. “Your coat is on the floor in the corner, presumably with your cigarettes in it. I’ve no idea why you left it there.”

  She stared at him as best she could. It must have still made an impression, because he grabbed her coat and handed it over. Hob fished a cigarette out. “Comfy?” Coyote asked.

  Hob grunted in answer. She hadn’t found an ill yet that a sufficient amount of tar-black coffee and cigarettes couldn’t beat into submission.

  Cheerfully, Coyote read: “Got a job proposal. We need training to fight, and a safe place to learn shooting. Send three people who don’t have a price on their head and you can spare for a week.” He regarded the flimsy. “The price she’s offering is… to the low side of decent. Family discount?”

  “Somethin’ like.” Though Hob wasn’t sure how she felt about teaching the miners. Felt a little like trying to put themselves out of a job.

  Coyote made a noise that Hob wasn’t quite certain how to interpret in the back of his throat. He thought it was his job to needle her, she reminded herself. He flipped the flimsy over idly. “Oh, and there’s a postscript: yes, and this means you, Hob.” He checked the original message. “Ah, yes, the bit about having a price on one’s head is underlined. Twice.”

  “Fuck that,” Hob muttered. “I been in Ludlow plenty of times.”

  Coyote shrugged. “Not for any length of time, let alone using that time to try to beat a bit of skill into some raw recruits. So who will you send?”

  “Ain’t said I’m gonna s
end anyone yet.” The look of disdain he gave her was eloquent. Hob rubbed her temples. “Well, go on.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Go on an’ tell me who I’m sendin’. That’s why you’re here, ain’t ya.”

  “Well, I do have a few suggestions, if you’d like to entertain them.”

  Like she could manage to remember her own name right now, let alone figure out the few people in the group who had the skill to teach and the patience to go with it. She flapped her hand at him, get on with it.

  “Lobo, of course. He’s the best knife man you’ve got. Geri isn’t bad, and also isn’t nearly as much of an asshole when he’s standing somewhere you can’t see him.”

  Hob grunted, not willing to rise to the bait.

  “Lykaios will round out the team decently. And of course, you’ll be sending me to lead it.”

  “Will I, now?”

  “There’s no one better to send onto hunting grounds than a known corpse,” Coyote said primly. “And you know if you send Geri along without someone to play moderating influence, he’ll have far too much fun being in charge. Oh, and–”

  She held up a hand. She didn’t know how long the list kept going, and didn’t want to find out. She had a feeling he’d thought of every argument she could make if she’d had a clear head, and already come up with a counter. “If I say you can go, will you get the fuck out of my office?”

  “It would be my pleasure.”

  The sun was high in the sky before Hob felt human enough to venture forth. The base was damn quiet; Coyote had already collected his crew and got the hell out before she could change her mind. Freki and his crew of twelve were on their way to get past Shimera, trying to locate another pack of raiders with a thirst for Federal Union credits that had mysteriously sprung up.

  The garage was warm and silent, but for the building shifting and the faint snoring of Hati in the corner. Hob quietly pulled out her motorcycle and checked it over, loaded it up with camping gear and a few days’ worth of supplies, and walked it out to the gate. While most everyone else was working or down, she might as well make herself useful.

  Hob headed away from the base, from the hardpan and rocky ravines that must have carried water in some forgotten age, into the drifting sands. There, she parked her motorcycle in the shadow of a dune and drew one of her knives. She put a cut on her thumb, right alongside a line of old scars. Nothing dramatic, just enough to squeeze out a few drops of blood. The Bone Collector had always claimed that was all it would take.

  He’d also disappointed her before. He’d probably disappear entirely one day, and she’d never know when to stop waiting. She hated that feeling.

  A great eagle moved in to circle overhead, its shadow stark whenever it passed between her and the sun. Hob’s stomach sank more with each minute. Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades.

  Then she felt it, a shifting in the air rather than any kind of sound above the breeze that sighed over the sands. She turned, and there the Bone Collector stood on her blind side, the hem of his coat flapping around his calves. He hadn’t brought his staff today. “’Bout damn time,” Hob said, stuffing all her worry under a blanket of temper.

  “Did I keep you waiting long?” he asked.

  “Long enough I was thinkin’ ’bout leavin’. I got better things to do with my time than cool my heels while I’m waitin’ for you to make an entrance.”

  He approached, his feet leaving no tracks in the sand. She held her ground against the urge to back up a step and resented it. “Time doesn’t pass the same for me as it does for you,” he said, like that was an apology.

  “Ain’t the first time you told me that. But that don’t change how time is passin’ for me, now, does it?”

  He spread his hands. “I am sorry.”

  That disarmed her. She wasn’t used to many people telling her they were sorry, unless they were either Mag – and that was damn rare, since if anyone was wrong between the two of them, it was almost always Hob – or someone looking from the wrong end of the barrel of her bone-handled revolvers. “Apology accepted,” she said, somehow feeling like an asshole for it. “You busy right now?”

  One of his eyebrows arched up. “If I were busy, I wouldn’t be here.”

  When the hell had talking to him gotten harder? She was Hob Fucking Ravani, and this was ridiculous. “Good. I got a project you get to help me with.”

  “Get to?”

  She ignored both the words and the tone. “That well you and Coyote talked about. Where all the witchiness comes from. Sure as shit that’s what TransRift is lookin’ for, so we’re gonna find it first.” And after, she’d come up with a plan once she knew more.

  “I told you, I don’t think it’s a place like you understand places to be.”

  “It’s gotta be somethin’, if Coyote’s been there. And the idea of ever goin’ there again scares him shitless. Don’t sound like some kind of… woo-woo thing to me.”

  “Woo-woo thing,” the Bone Collector repeated, tone disbelieving.

  “You got somethin’ to say?”

  “No. Just marveling at your way with words.”

  If she wasn’t going to let Coyote bait her, she sure as shit wasn’t going to let the Bone Collector do it either. She dug the map she’d been making out of her pocket, the one with all the wildcat sites marked on it. “If you’re right and it ain’t a real place, then we won’t find it but they can’t either. If I’m right, then we all got a big damn problem. You know the shit they do to witchy ones. So let’s go lookin’.”

  “This map shows where they are,” the Bone Collector pointed out. “It doesn’t mean that they’ve found anything.”

  Hob shrugged. “You ain’t givin’ me any better ideas. And these sure look like they’re movin’ in a direction.” There was a trend going to the north, she was sure of that. She’d had the good sense to write down the dates about when the sites had opened and closed.

  “If you say so,” he said, in the tone she’d come to interpret as him humoring her.

  She folded the map back up and shoved it in her pocket. “You got any better idea, I’m listenin’.”

  “A better idea might be to not embark on a fool’s errand.”

  “That ain’t a real idea,” she snapped, and then jabbed her finger at his chest. “You go actin’ like you know everythin’, but we both know that’s bullshit. It took me’n my whole pack helpin’ for you to kill that Weatherman. You as much as said that what the company’s doin’ right now ain’t good. Think you’re gonna stop it all alone any more than you did last time?”

  He held up his hands. “That isn’t what I’m saying at all.”

  “Good. Then start bein’ fuckin’ helpful. We’re on the same side, an’ I seem to remember you callin’ us friends a time or two.”

  “Yes,” he said. “That is still true.”

  “Then get on the back of the goddamn motorcycle.”

  They spent the rest of the day doing a modified search grid in sections of the dune sea, always moving north. Hob checked the map often and plotted it against what the simple computer on her motorcycle could tell her about course, speed, and time. And at every stop, she asked the Bone Collector if he felt anything. He’d make a show of sitting on the ground, eyes closed and palms flat on the sand, then shake his head and say, “No.”

  She kept them going into the night, not ready to stop too early. This wasn’t something they needed that much light for, anyway, and it was almost nice, the moons washing the normally orange dunes into something pale and ghostly. The Bone Collector wasn’t warm against her back, but he was solid, his hands ever-present at her waist. It also wasn’t nice, because there’d only been one other time she’d gone riding around like this with some man on the back of her motorcycle, and that hadn’t turned out well at all.

  Not knowing how she felt made her prickly and short about everything when they finally did stop. She did her best to just ignore the Bone Collector as she set up the little camouflage tar
p tent she’d brought. She didn’t need a fire, just pulled a couple of flat rocks out of her saddlebags and heated them up in her hands, then cooked her dinner on those.

  She’d figured out a lot of small, useful skills since Old Nick had passed. There was a joy in experimenting, and none of the Wolves gave a damn any more. Lobo had been the one who suggested this trick.

  Every second, she was aware of the Bone Collector’s piercing blue gaze on her. He squatted down next to the tent while she finished heating up some coffee, rubbing the smart camouflage fabric between his fingers like it was some kind of precious silk.

  “You hungry?” she asked. Her voice sounded loud, in the cool silence of the night.

  “Should I be?”

  “Shit, how would I know?” Most people would be. He wasn’t most people. They’d established that plenty long ago.

  He sat down next to her with barely a sound, so she offered him the cup of coffee anyway, and then a shallow bowl of beans with sausage cut up in it. Not exciting food, but enough to go on.

  “We’re gonna have to share,” she said. “Just brought my personal kit.”

  The coffee he seemed to know what to do with. He sipped it, smiled, and handed the cup back to her. He inspected the plate like it might bite him.

  Hob took her own drink of the coffee. “Figure tomorrow, we’ll keep heading north. I got enough food an’ water to be on the trail another two days. ’Less you got a better idea.”

  “If I did, you know that I would tell you.” Ignoring the fork, he delicately picked a single bean off the plate with his fingers and ate it.

  Did she? It had felt like this whole time, he was just humoring her. It wasn’t a feeling she liked at all. “You ain’t been that helpful.”

  He sighed, and pinched another bean between his fingers. “If you saw as I did, you’d know it isn’t so simple.”

  “Then show me.” She said it like a dare she expected him to wave off.