Blood Binds the Pack

by Alex Wells

  “Found a few things. Not much. Don’t bother sendin’ anyone back there.” He reached into his pocket and offered her another flimsy. “Hit the message drops on the way back, out of habit. Found this in one of ’em. It’s got your name on it.”

  Mag frowned and took the flimsy. It felt the same, slick and fresh, as the one she’d just given away to Omar. Another threat from TransRift, from a new place because they’d somehow managed to find a drop box? She unfolded the message, found another folded page within, and scanned the first few lines, neatly handwritten rather than in print type: Ms Kushtrim, a matter of utmost urgency has come to my attention…

  No. This wasn’t the same at all. She folded the flimsy back up before prying eyes could get any further than she had. “Thank you, Diablo,” she said, her mouth suddenly dry.

  “You all right, Mag?” Omar asked. Diablo was looking hard at her too.

  “Nothin’ y’all need to worry about,” she said, and tried to school her expression. “Go on. I’ll be back at the wall shortly, just need to read this.”

  She retreated to her kitchen. It still felt strange to think of the house as hers, and she’d made room for the refugees from other towns just like everyone else, so it was still full of people. But not Clarence. His absence was like a missing stair. She still expected to walk in and find him drinking coffee at his scarred and pitted kitchen table, slumped in a dust-stained undershirt.

  The kitchen was empty now, so she took Clarence’s place, and made herself a cup of coffee that was so thin as to be barely brown, the grounds on their eighth or ninth reuse. She didn’t really notice the taste, as she unfolded the message from Hob’s government man and read it with slow care:

  Ms Kushtrim, I hope that this note finds you well, though I feel my subtle attempts at intervention on behalf of your cause have failed utterly, from what I have gleaned. For that I apologize, and offer a warning: Captain Longbridge has requested more troops for another assault on Ludlow, though the vice president has for now reined him in, preferring to convince you of the error of your ways with thirst. Longbridge has also requested an artificial limb replacement, so I fear it is personal on his count.

  However, a matter of greater urgency has come to my attention. I have come upon information concerning an associate of yours and Hob Ravani’s. While I do not know his name, his distinctive mode of dress – clothing decorated with bones – should be enough to identify him. It seems that he is in fact one Gabriel Chua, AKA Weatherman 001. He should be considered extremely dangerous and is not to be trusted. I have attached a copy of the personnel file I found containing this information. I regret being the bearer of such news. Respectfully yours, Shigehiko Rollins

  All the words were spelled correctly and well written, but none of them made a lick of sense when strung together like that. She knew Weathermen, in an intimate way that had nothing to do with bodies. Her skin still crawled with the memory of being shoved into a room with Mr Green repeatedly, and what he’d done to her. The Bone Collector, and she still felt him leaning on her like she was a rock instead of a scared girl, was nothing like that.

  She unfolded the second flimsy, and found herself looking into the Bone Collector’s face. Only it wasn’t him, not really. The expression was wrong. The hair was really wrong. The eyes were wrong – beyond their color, it was what she saw in them. And she read over the personnel record of this Gabriel, noticing that he was over two hundred years dead. Maybe a great-great grandfather, or something. It really couldn’t be what Mr Rollins said.

  She folded the flimsies back up and tucked them in her skirt pocket. The temptation to throw them away was fierce. But better, she decided, to let Hob take a look at it, and see what she thought. Better still to bring Coyote in and grill him about his damned brother and see if he knew what the play was. She didn’t know what game Mr Rollins was trying to set up, but she was long done with letting TransRift play her, and she wasn’t about to let the government man start. She, and Hob, were no one’s pawns.

  4 Days

  Hob and her small crew rolled back in surrounded by a cloud of dust, the sunrise at their backs. Dambala had a little trailer attached to his motorcycle, which Mag was used to seeing on the back of Lobo’s trike. The big, one-eared man was already in Ludlow, making miracles that tasted shockingly good out of their patchy stores. If anyone could stretch food, she supposed, it would be a mercenaries’ cook.

  Even better, Hob laughed as she hugged Mag. That alone let her forget for a moment how grim everything felt. Hob laughing was a rare sight to be treasured. “Guess it went good?” Mag asked.

  “Was a fuckin’ disaster,” Dambala growled, heading past them into town.

  “Any landing you can walk away from…” Coyote all but sang as Dambala walked off. Geri and Lykaios followed, then Freki, but he stopped to clap Mag on the shoulder, startling a smile out of her. She noted the Bone Collector’s absence, but maybe it was for the best.

  “Rough landin’,” Hob said. “And Bala was feelin’ a mite… pressed. But we got the osprey. Hati’s sure enough he can fix it. Gave us a list to see what spare parts y’all might have in the mine, if you’ll give us that as pay for what we done here so far.”

  “It’s yours,” Mag said. They’d already cannibalized everything useful, and there was a lot of machinery that didn’t do them any good as long as the mine wasn’t running. She’d much rather Hob be able to do whatever she could to get to their missing people. “Not just the spares. Anythin’ you want out of there.”

  “Good.” Hob waved a hand at Maheegan, who’d been standing by like a shadow, silent and waiting. “Get on the list. Take all the help you need.” She looked back at Mag. “If we’re gonna do this, I’m gonna need to pull all my people out. This site ain’t gonna be small.”

  This wasn’t just about Anabi, Mag reminded herself. It was a whole lot more. It was about stopping the Weatherman from burrowing into the planet like a tick, with him and TransRift never to be removed. “Then you do it, and don’t worry none about us. We’ll hold out. This is the only chance we got to get some hand in if the government men do show up.” She hesitated, then offered, “You want any of ours to go with you?”

  Hob looked startled, then shook her head. “I ain’t to the point where I’m lookin’ for bodies to throw.”

  “They’re a little messy to ride over,” Coyote added, wisely. “At any rate, we’d best get on with the search–”

  “Wait.” Mag felt that flimsy from Mr Rollins, crinkling in her pocket. “There’s somethin’ else. Come on. Both of you.”

  Hob’s eyebrows went up. “Where we goin’?”

  “Somewhere with fewer ears,” Mag said. She headed back toward her house. It would be good enough. “Bone Collector not with you?”

  “Stayed back with Hati to sleep.”

  “He got hilariously airsick,” Coyote added.

  That was neither here nor there with what she had in her pocket, but Mag had a hard time imagining the Bone Collector getting sick at all. He always gave the impression like he didn’t quite live in his own body, just sort of rode it around. “Hope he feels better,” she said, to fill the space while she let them into her kitchen.

  “Why you askin’?” Hob asked.

  In answer, Mag took the flimsies from her pocket, unfolded them, and spread them out on the table. She stepped back to let Coyote and Hob look them over, though Coyote finished reading long before Hob did. “The fuck is this shit?” Hob said.

  Mag had her attention fixed on Coyote. “How trustworthy is this?”

  “Trustworthy isn’t the right word to use around Shige. Mother trained him well. The question is what he wants.” Coyote tapped the flimsies with one finger. “If it is true, why does he want you to know this? Because he’s asking nothing in return. And if this is a fabrication, well, why does he want you to believe that falsehood?”

  “Pretty fuckin’ obvious,” Hob growled. “He gave us those coordinates. He knows we’re goin’ there. And he d
oesn’t want the Bone Collector with us.”

  “I’d agree.” Coyote snorted. “Not that he is going to get his way. We certainly can’t fly that distance without him keeping the osprey aloft.”

  “Right,” Hob said, though she didn’t sound happy.

  “D’ya think it is true?” Mag asked.

  “He ain’t like any Weatherman I ever seen,” Hob said. “Sure hates them.”

  “It’s frighteningly easy to hate what you are,” Coyote remarked.

  “Whose side are you on?” Hob glared at him.

  He gave her an even look. “The side of not dying, preferably. It’s your call, boss.” When she glared at him, he raised his hands in surrender and backed out of the kitchen to leave them alone.

  Hob gathered up the flimsies, refolding them without bothering to look at the old creases. Mag’s heart hurt for her. She didn’t know what was between Hob and the Bone Collector, but it was enough for there to be betrayal. “Don’t be hasty,” she said, carefully.

  “It’s fuckin’ typical. Really fuckin’ typical.”

  “It ain’t the same,” Mag said. She knew they were thinking in parallel, about the preacher’s boy and the transmitters.

  “Close enough.”

  Hob flinched away when Mag laid her hand on her arm. “I know him, in my own way. I know the Weatherman we had before, and the one we got now. They ain’t nothin’ alike. And I don’t know what the government man’s game is, but ain’t neither of us here to be played, Hob.”

  Hob covered her face with one hand. “He’s been strange, lately. Passin’ strange.”

  “He’s always been strange from what you said.”

  “Different kind of strange.” Hob rubbed her eyes. “We’re this fuckin’ close, Mag. Like maybe if I wasn’t a chickenshit, I would’ve fucked him already. Or if he had the gumption to ask, I don’t think I could say no. And he weren’t like that before.”

  But he hadn’t almost died before, Mag thought. And he might have known Hob for years, but it was only lately that they’d been practically in each other’s pockets. People changed, maybe even people made out of stone. But she couldn’t blind herself to other explanations, even if they were hard to believe.

  And yet. She’d helped him fight off the new Weatherman. She’d felt him, felt a lot from him, all that hate and fear, and also that warmth for Hob that he didn’t seem to know how to deal with. Idiots, the both of them. “If this is even true,” she said, trying to order her thoughts, “if this is even true, then he still ain’t like the other Weathermen. We both know that. And you need him. We need him. He’s the best weapon we got in this fight.”

  “He ain’t a weapon. He’s a person. A damn stupid one, betimes.”

  Mag laughed. That sounded like Hob getting her feet under herself. “You do what you got to, Hob. You know I’m at your back no matter what. But this ain’t the same as it was, and you gotta get untwisted. Don’t get yourself tricked into doin’ someone’s dirty work.”

  Hob let her hand fall away, and revealed a crooked, painful little smile. “Maybe if I’d listened to you before, it wouldn’t have happened that time.”

  “Can’t know about then. Guess we’ll see about now,” Mag said. She squeezed Hob’s arm again. Who would have thought, the same words were coming out of her for everyone these days. “Remember who the real enemy is.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  3 Days

  They made a long train back to base, piled high with every spare part they could dig out of the mine and the warehouses nearby. Hob could admit that maybe they’d gone a little overboard on that, but what didn’t get used now, they might have use for later. Seemed fair enough payment for what they’d already done and what they would be doing.

  Damn, but she didn’t know how she kept falling in to being double paid for jobs, but she hoped she could keep it up if they survived the next few days.

  She made sure Hati had everything he needed, made sure all the Wolves were ready to go and knew the shape of the plan they had, which was damn vague indeed since they had no idea what they were heading toward if and when Hati got the osprey fixed. All the while, she felt Coyote’s gaze weighing on her, waiting. She hated it.

  “Still asleep,” Geri informed her, as she walked by. “Don’t look like he’s so much as moved since we left.”

  Well, she’d told him not to go anywhere, in case they needed him on the quick. She couldn’t fault him on that even if she wished him back in the depths of whatever hell he came from. She climbed the back stairs of the barracks, up to the empty room they’d given him. She knew each creak and pop of these stairs, just as well as she’d known them the night she was sneaking up and down with a boy stashed in her room, when Old Nick had ambushed her.

  It’s not the same, she told herself. Not hardly. But she expected to smell the blood and ash scent of Old Nick around every corner. The only fucking mercy of the whole thing was that they weren’t so full up they had to stash the Bone Collector in her old attic room. He was one floor down, stretched out on the narrow cot with his coat and shoes still on, hands folded over his stomach.

  No, Hob thought, he wasn’t like the Weatherman she’d seen. But that didn’t make him less dangerous. Just a different kind of dangerous. Maybe not the kind of dangerous that needed to hear Mr Rollins’s truths or lies. Maybe–

  He blinked his eyes open and turned his head to look at her. “What’s the matter?”

  The folded, now very crumpled flimsy felt like a brand in her breast pocket. If she never showed it to him, she’d never know. And she’d never stop thinking about it, or waiting for him to grow into a different, less familiar kind of monster. She’d done her fair share of lying, but not to someone she might be idiot enough to care about. Hob took the flimsy out of her pocket, unfolded it, and offered it to him. She should say something, she thought, but the words just hooked sharp in her throat and wouldn’t come. Because what the fuck did you say, at a time like this? Tell me this ain’t true? Tell me you ain’t one of them?

  The Bone Collector frowned, puzzled, and took the flimsies. She saw his eyes move as he looked them over, first uncomprehending, then… something else. His expression went from stone to wide-eyed horror when he flipped to the second flimsy and found his own face looking back at him. “What is this?” he whispered.

  “Don’t know,” Hob said, her voice somehow even. It should have been impossible when she’d eaten her own goddamn heart years ago, but she felt something in her chest break a little. She’d seen dying men who looked less hopeless than that. “Hopin’ you can tell me.”

  “It’s a lie, obviously,” he said. But one hand crept up to clutch at his own hair – no, to feel it, his fingertips probing. “It’s ridiculous.”

  “Then why you lookin’ like that?” She wanted to believe him, so badly. “Like I gone and shot you in the gut.”

  His lips curled back in a snarl. “If this is what you think of me…” He stood. “I don’t think we need continue.” The Bone Collector moved forward, toward the door.

  Hob leaned in the doorway, blocking him. Something was obviously cutting him deep, but she needed to know now, how much of him had been a lie. She was tired of falling for lies. “We ain’t done yet.”

  With a shout, the Bone Collector shoved her out of the way. He was stronger than he looked, she remembered that. She hit the doorframe hard enough to knock the breath out of her. Wheezing, she dragged herself to her feet, though not fast enough to catch him as he ran for the stairs.

  She knew running away like this. She knew it meant you kept running until you evaporated into nothing. She still had no idea what the hell was going on in his head, but she wasn’t going to let him disappear. He had a bad record of doing that at the worst moment, and her own feelings aside, they needed him right now if they wanted a chance in hell of getting to the goddamn Well. “Oh, hell fuckin’ no,” Hob muttered, and forced her legs into action.

  She clattered down the stairs at record speed, seeing t
he pale hem of his coat flitting around every corner. She didn’t bother yelling at him, because he never fucking listened anyway if her fist wasn’t involved, and she needed all her breath and concentration to not break her neck. She slammed out of the door a bare three meters behind him.

  The Bone Collector looked up at the sky, his pace slowing. The ground at his feet began to flow away in a movement Hob knew all too well. He took his first step down–

  –and Hob hit him in the back, hard as a ton of rolling stone. She popped him right out of the ground like a shallow signpost and sent them both tumbling across the yard. And she’d been ready for this. She’d learned this kind of fighting from Makaya the Knife and Coyote. She rolled them until she came up on top, straddled over his chest. Then she drew back her fist and punched him for good measure, a solid right across the face.

  The Bone Collector went limp, stunned. Hob shook her stinging hand out. “I said,” she snarled, “we ain’t done yet.”

  She realized it might have been the wrong tactic when he grabbed her around the throat. Stunned or not, his grip was strong. Air barely squeaked through her windpipe, and she knew that he was holding back. He could crush her neck one-handed if he wanted. “Let me go,” he hissed.

  Her eye watered. It was the almost being choked, she told herself. Not that sick, horrible feeling in her gut. Now was not the time for tears. “No. Not till you tell me if it’s true. If you been lyin’ to me.” She drew a strangled breath. “I’m goddamn tired of everyone I care about but Mag lyin’ to me.”

  Something shifted in his face, the anger unraveling like his heart had turned inside out. Somehow, that hurt worse to see. His grip loosened slightly, and she sucked in a long breath. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement, and heard a door open.

  “Boss…” Coyote began.

  She didn’t dare look away from the Bone Collector. Just held up one hand, the one she’d used to punch him, a few threads of red bright on her knuckles. “Get the fuck back inside,” she bellowed over the new scratch in her voice. “All of you. An’ stay there.”