Blood Binds the Pack

by Alex Wells

  Relief flooded through her like a wave. Not today. No one had to die today. And they’d taken their one step, so maybe they could get another. But there was a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as well, a little voice asking if Bill had said that on his own, or if she’d made him somehow, even that far away. She felt stronger now, after that strange, fading dream of not quite talking with the Bone Collector. Did it matter?

  The crush of people began to relax away, miners moving down the streets. Mag went with the flow of them, watching the guards still lined up along the buildings. Most of them looked ready to kill, and she half-expected to hear a shot, shouting, someone picking a fight. But maybe the greenbellies had drilled on this too.

  Beside her, one of the miners let out a quiet whoop. “We fuckin’ won.”

  “We drew our battle line,” Mag said as they continued to walk. She saw, streaming down the hill now, the miners of the night shift stark against the red-purple sunset sky, come to join in with the day shift. There were some sounds of celebration, but most were like her: waiting for the ax to fall, wondering if they’d be able to catch it. She’d better write a note to Hob, let her know what was happening. She wished she’d done it when the strike decision had been made. “Now we gotta hold it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  23 Days

  In the nearly two days Geri was gone, run back to base, Hob and Freki had a chance to get the rhythms of the little mining camp, map out chow times and break times, and note which of the small contingent of guards was the laziest. It was also ample time to see another round of excitement go out, for Hob to feel that blue shine crawl up out of the ground and lick along her skin. She didn’t like it one bit. Not long after that, a company man in a dusty blue suit and a greenbelly got into one of the solar-powered trucks and hightailed it out of there quick, in the general direction of Newcastle.

  The sun was low in the sky when Freki spotted a dust cloud in the distance, oblique to the camp. He confirmed there were four riders in the cloud, and recognized them all by profile when they were still just specks in the distance: Geri, Dambala, Maheegan, and Coyote. They met a safe distance out from the mining camp.

  “Diablo know you’re out here?” Hob asked Dambala.

  “My leg’s fuckin’ fine, and I don’t need you motherin’ me,” he rumbled. But he tilted his head slightly toward Coyote and murmured for her ears alone: “He didn’t want to come.”

  Hob nodded. After everything Coyote had said, she was damned surprised Geri had managed to drag him out here. “From what we seen, camp really quiets down a couple hours after dark,” she told the group, once they’d all got settled down into the lee of a dune. “We go in quiet-like then for a look.”

  “This big of a group isn’t terribly quiet,” Coyote observed.

  “Most everyone’s gonna be waitin’ out of sight. We’ll fire off if we need help, then we make like it’s a raid. But I’d rather get in and get out with no one the wiser.” She looked at Coyote. “You’re the best at quiet we got. Think you can take down whoever’s on watch?”

  “I’ll need to have a better look at the situation,” Coyote said. “But provisionally, yes.”

  The rest of the crew they parceled out jobs to, with thin, dark brown Maheegan going to find himself a good vantage for sniping; it was his specialty. Not something that would come into play if things didn’t go sideways, but he was one hell of an insurance policy.

  As the sunset faded to purple-black, Coyote bellycrawled to the top of a dune to overlook the camp and Hob followed him, still curious as hell about his presence. She noticed his hands, normally rock steady, fumble out the small pair of binoculars he’d stolen from a Mariposa guard shack years ago.

  “You need a smoke?” she asked dryly.

  Coyote shot her a narrow-eyed look, then blew out his breath. “I can feel it. Like ants crawling all over my bloody skin. Like someone whispering in my ear.”

  She didn’t have to ask what, though she hadn’t noticed a damn thing yet. The mine works had stopped at sunset; they weren’t bringing anything up to the surface. “You think this is the place?”

  “I don’t know.” He finally got his binoculars out, lens caps off, and looked down through them at the camp. “But I don’t like it.”

  Hob fell silent. She fished her cigarette case out of her pocket and tucked one between her lips, but didn’t light it. That would be too easy for the guards to spot. “Think I should call up the Bone Collector?”

  He frowned, still focused down on the camp. “I think… I’d feel better if you did.”

  Hob realized that she trusted Coyote more than he trusted himself right now. “All right. We’ll see if he shows up.”

  “I thought he always showed up for you.”

  “Watch your fuckin’ tone.”

  Coyote grinned, like needling her had put him back on an even keel. Hob slid back down the dune, standing once she knew she was well out of sight from below. It was dark now, and dark hat, dark coat didn’t tend to show up too well. She was just a shadow against the endless sky. But she wasn’t going to count on that. Bold and stupid were two different things.

  To her surprise, Coyote followed. He shrugged when she looked at him. “It isn’t that big of a camp. I’ve had enough of a look.”

  And he kept following her, past the Wolves who were talking quietly amongst themselves, barely audible over the ever-present wind, and sharing a cold dinner. “What’re you doin’?” Hob hissed.

  “I’m curious.”

  She drew a knife out of the sheath in her sleeve, and Coyote took a step back, his hands coming up. Hob smirked, half because it was damn funny, and half because it hid her own sudden uncertainty. There wasn’t anything weird or private or embarrassing about this, but it felt that way. Maybe because this was her one moment where the Bone Collector was hers.

  Well, she didn’t need anyone to be hers, she told herself. That was some fool thinking, right there. She drew the knife across the pad of her thumb, enough to make it bleed freely. She squeezed a couple of drops into the sand. “Now we wait and see if he shows up.”

  When Coyote didn’t answer right away, she looked at him and didn’t like what she saw. His eyes were fixed on her hand.

  “Get your head together,” she said, sharper than she intended. She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and wrapped it around her thumb.

  He blinked, swallowed, and took a measured step back. “How long does it usually take him?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On somethin’ he ain’t ever bothered to tell me.”

  Maybe twenty minutes later, she felt that subtle shift in the air. She turned to find him at her blind side, orange sand still rolling off the pale gray shoulders of his duster, draining from the empty eye sockets of the small animal skulls that decorated his buttonholes.

  “I didn’t expect you to call me again so soon,” he said. His gaze went down to her hand, thumb wrapped in a less-than-white handkerchief. He reached for it, but Hob caught a look of curiosity and amusement on Coyote’s face. She stuck her hand in her coat pocket.

  “Got something you might be interested in,” Hob said. “Little wildcat mine.”

  The Bone Collector’s head snapped up, face turned toward the camp like that had been the cue. His eyes narrowed, head tilting slightly like a man who was trying to make out whispered words at a distance. Then without saying anything else, he started walking toward the camp.

  “Hey,” Hob hissed, alarmed. Which went to pissed off as he kept walking and just ignored her. “You fuckin’ asshole!” She reached out to grab his sleeve; the dusty, well-worn leather of his coat slid downward out of her fingers as he sank below the sand in the space of a few steps. “Oh, you gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me.”

  “What in the hell just happened?” Coyote said.

  “I don’t fuckin’…” A waving mote of light caught her attention: Maheegan, from his vantage looking down at the camp. Some
thing big had to be going on to get him to light up like that.

  Cussing under her breath, Hob ran back toward the wildcat site, her boots sinking ankle-deep into the sand with each step. Coyote didn’t even blink, keeping up with her, but she’d noticed he didn’t leave footprints any more just like the goddamn Bone Collector. She tore back through the temporary Wolf camp, and heard the shuffle as the rest of the group dropped what they were doing and followed.

  She crested the final dune, the cool, dry air of the night tearing at her throat, just in time to see the Bone Collector walk through the center of the wildcat camp, pretty as you please.

  Geri fell in next to her, not breathing nearly as hard since he hadn’t had to run half as far. “Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me?”

  “I wish I fuckin’ was.” It was possible, Hob supposed, that the Bone Collector would keep walking, and whatever charmed, ridiculous luck had kept someone that fucking stupid alive all this time would save him from being noticed. But with each step he took toward the open shaft, that humming she’d almost learned to ignore over the last two days got louder. She felt it in the roots of her teeth, in the ends of her bones: they were fucked.

  “Get on the motorcycles. We’re gonna make like we’re bandits, be a distract–”

  Too late, already. She heard the shout of the one goddamn sentry she’d been planning to have Coyote take out. And then a pop, a loud retort, as he suddenly went silent, his head disappearing in a dark spray. Maheegan, thinking quickly. Maybe too quickly.

  “Go!” she shouted.

  Below them, the camp came alive, the security guards scrambling to hit the floodlights. Hob shielded her eye as the area went yellow-white, even as she drew one of her revolvers with the other hand. When she could see again, she saw a man in green aiming at the Bone Collector.

  It was like the goddamn train all over again, him just not paying attention. And this time, he didn’t even have the Weatherman as an excuse. All thoughts of going back to get her own motorcycle fled Hob’s head and she slid down the steep slip face of the dune. Fire wreathed her hand, bright and sudden and fierce, roaring up like it felt that same hum coming out of the ground. She saw Coyote right next to her, a knife glittering in his hand, and had a vague thought that at least he was planning on that instead of his goddamn teeth.

  She pointed at the aiming Mariposa man and slung the fire at him. It leapt across that long distance in an instant, easy as breathing, far easier than it should have been. He burst into white-hot flame.

  Ahead in the camp, people started screaming. Miners and more security guards boiled out of their tents in a confused mass. Which might have been useful, for the confusion of it, if the Bone Collector weren’t sticking out like a sore thumb and still just walking like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  I’m gonna fuckin’ kill him myself, Hob thought, as two guards came in, finally organized enough to have their rifles. One of them shouted at the Bone Collector, his words lost in the general confusion.

  And then–

  And then.

  The perimeter of devices that had been puzzling Hob and Freki – definitely not lights, it was obvious now – came alive. Hob saw an aura around them, something sucking and black, and then it felt like two knives had been jammed into her temples simultaneously. The pain was instant, splitting, and killed all thought. She fell to her knees, clutching at her head even with her revolver still in hand.

  Dimly, she was aware of Coyote pitching forward into a limp heap. Dimly, she saw the pale shape of the Bone Collector crumple, writhing, to the smoothed-out ground. She started struggling to her feet, even though a sound that wasn’t a sound but was somehow gravity and the absence of light and a scream of unearthly agony sought to smash her flat, smothering the fire she held to nothing.

  Then she saw lights, moving, weaving in and out of her wavering gaze. A hand grabbed the back of her coat, then a familiar voice said, “Got you.” Freki dragged her over the battery stack of his motorcycle.

  Hob managed to tilt her head enough that she vomited into the sand that flashed past rather than onto his boot, and then they were away, into the darkness, and she could think again. Sort of, over the residual pounding agony in her head.

  “I,” she ground out, more to convince herself she was still capable of forming words, “am gonna fuckin’ kill him myself.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  23 Days

  Consciousness came back in a series of snaps, like his senses restarting one by one. First a sickening sway and jolt that he recognized, after a dizzying moment of confusion, as the regular movement of one of Hob’s infernal machines as it skated over the land surface. That artificial separation between him and the sand, as small as it was, left him feeling ill and disconnected.

  Why, then, had this happened? When? He didn’t recall steeling himself to get on the back of Hob’s motorcycle, and the next snap of awareness told him he was head-down and feet-down toward the solid pressure of the world below, bent limply over the machine as it moved.

  Next, the hum of electricity came into place, to go with the sensation of the steadily spinning, tiny whirls of magnetic and electrical fields that tickled his skin and fluttered along his spine. Hum, electricity, hum, sand against chainmesh tires, the hum and rush of air across ears.

  He smelled metal and electricity, sweaty bodies, blood pulsing beneath thin skin, gunpowder, mineral-rich oil astringent against the back of his tongue.

  His own blood as well, he tasted that thick on the inside of his mouth, heavy with a different kind of mineral load. Then he finally remembered: a sound that hadn’t really been a sound, more like a physical blow that shocked every fiber of his nerves at once, and then nothing. He’d been switched off, short-circuited like some kind of human-made machine.

  There were other sensations to consider, though, another sense snapping back into focus. There, the tone and heat that he knew to be Hob, like a flame of music burning steadily in the night. The lesser sound and feel of the other Wolves, so dim they were like ghosts in his perception, but present – not like the person-shaped holes in the fabric of the world made by the TransRift outsiders, who kept themselves so carefully sterile. And the new, liquid golden growl shot through tendrils of the world, always reaching and trying to find themselves again, that was Coyote and his endless thirst.

  Oh, but he was tired. Going from sinking into the warm song that was the world, then suddenly finding himself face down on the back of a machine was a fantastic disorientation. He felt as if his blood had drained away, like it had before from the hole in his side that still ached in a distant way that he barely acknowledged.

  Nearby, Coyote screamed. Then another person screamed.

  The Bone Collector opened his eyes to the blur of sand, yellow-gray in the shadows of the night, flowing beneath.

  There was the slam of machine against ground, metal skidding on sand, and more shouting. He felt rather than saw Coyote running off, and then the motorcycle beneath the Bone Collector screeched to an abrupt halt.

  “What the fuck?” another Wolf shouted. Geri, that was right, he remembered Geri from long ago, from blood in water.

  “Where’d he go?” Hob’s voice was oddly slurred, but no less emphatic than normal. That’s what he’d always liked about it, what made her a point of stability in an endlessly flowing world, in ever-branching futures. There were certain things for which one could always count on Hob Ravani.

  With the motorcycle stopped, and then bouncing slightly as Geri got off, the Bone Collector slid to his own feet. Out of habit, he brushed his hand over his waistcoat, a gesture that always felt like it belonged to someone else. The exhaustion pulled at him, urging him to become tireless stone. Now was not the time. All things in this moment were too critical; he was lost in possible futures, unable to calculate their course with everything in such flux. Which meant he really did need to do something.

  Hob or Coyote – the easy answer was Coyote, because he’d run off and th
e Bone Collector had little doubt what had caused it. He turned to walk in that direction.

  Someone – Hob – grabbed his sleeve. “The fuck you goin’?” she demanded harshly.

  “I am going to fetch Coyote,” he said, wondering how that wasn’t self-evident.

  She bared her teeth at him. “I ain’t done with you.”

  The Bone Collector smiled. Because of course, he wasn’t done with her either; there was too much happening around them both. If anything, that seemed to make Hob angrier, though he wasn’t entirely certain why. “Of course not. I will meet you back at your base, with Coyote.”

  “I’m goin’ with him, lemme just get my damn bike…” Another man, the one who smelled a bit like Coyote.

  Hob growled a curse and let go of his sleeve. “You ain’t doin’ shit, Bala…” she began, turning away.

  And the Bone Collector let the gravity he always felt take him, pulling him beneath the sand. That alone cured a little of his fatigue, leaving him cradled and encompassed. But it was still not time to rest. He listened to where he could hear, much more clearly now, the sound of Coyote, and followed.

  The man got a respectable distance before he stopped, his knees and hands pressing into the dune face hard enough that the Bone Collector felt like it might bruise his own skin. He pushed himself back toward the surface, rising out into the cool night.

  Coyote jerked at the soft whisper of all that sand and looked at him with eyes that glinted amber-brown. Then he curled in on himself, hugging his arms around his belly, tearless sobs jerking from his throat.

  The need was obvious, necessary. The Bone Collector saw those threads of the world like torn-up roots, reaching and shriveling through Coyote’s skin. He pushed up one sleeve and drew a knife made of black glass. The blade sliced through his thin, frail skin, making a line of red next to the vein of blue in his forearm.

  Coyote jerked as the smell reached him. He curled away, then one arm reached out. The Bone Collector dropped to one knee and wordlessly offered. He stayed still as, growling, Coyote sucked the blood from that wound.