* * * * *
More rain picked up, and less fire spread. Everything was moving too slowly. The sun had come up, shining low beneath the clouds and lighting the dissolving smoke up like morning mist.
The hunters were dragging expired Hollows into a heap, marveling quietly at them, and packing the live ones away in those ominous cases. They scoured the bank and shallows for overlooked body parts, many of which were scooting around on their own, trying to reassemble themselves. A hunter passed close by, carrying a severed head at a careful arm's length. It gurgled and spat obscenely, sprouting drippy black noodles from its open throat.
Corin turned away from the sight, his jaw slack with spasms.
"I need to sit down," he said.
He sat. Jesse was already seated on the damp earth beside him, wordless, miserable, his face in his hands. They had been asked to wait while Stella "saw to the issue." And so they waited. There was nothing else they could do.
After spending what looked like ten very heated minutes on a satellite phone, frustratingly just out of earshot, Stella returned to them. She looked just as collected, just as unfriendly, as before. No more, no less.
"Very capable people are in pursuit of your friend," she said, and then added, hoping to block the inevitable questions, "As soon as something happens, I'll let you know about it."
The Vessel more or less accepted this passively, with the exception of Jackson, who did quite a bit of contentious huffing and head-shaking.
"We'll do everything we can, as fast as we can. You have my word," Stella said, sounding callous as ever despite her best effort at a reassuring tone. Her blinder was raised again. She had read in a magazine once that access to eye contact made people feel more at ease.
"What's most important is getting you five on your way before we have any more surprises. I don't trust the roads now. I've arranged for a helicopter to meet us at the closest suitable landing―"
"Now hold on just a minute, lady." Jackson could no longer contain his dissent. "You people seem to know a whole lot about what's going on, which is great and all, but we're perfectly capable of―"
"Of what?" Stella switched from serene to severe in an instant. "Driving off a bridge? Catching everything on fire? Almost getting my people killed, after we've chased you all over the country trying to help you? And I'm assuming you told Ms. Murphy all kinds of valuable details while you were at it."
Jackson bit his tongue and turned away. Jesse winced guiltily, an expression not missed by Stella. Not for a second.
"Exactly," she drilled on. "Do you have any idea what Hollows do when they want inside someone's head? Any guesses?"
Stella looked from face to face. In the increasing light of dawn, the Vessel could see that her eyes were the color of aluminum foil, or a mirror. Just reflections of everything else, not really a color of their own.
No guesses.
"That's what I thought," she said, backing away. "So I suggest that you let us do our job. And right now, my job is getting you to the Elysium without any further incident. Come with me."
She turned and stomped toward the closest ambulance without checking to see whether they'd followed. She knew that they would, and they did. Stella Rosin wasn't a high-ranking hunter for nothing.
"What's this Elysium?" Jackson asked, more as a form of protest than out of actual curiosity. But Stella showed no sign of having even heard the question. She was finished with questions. It was Corin who replied.
"The Elysium of Greek mythology," he recited blankly. "The resting place of gods and heroes."
Stella halted at the rear of the closest ambulance and opened the back doors.
"Get comfortable," she advised before stalking off to make another call. "I'll only be a minute."
The Vessel peered inside before complying. If the thing had ever been an actual ambulance, then it had been thoroughly gutted of all equipment as far as they could tell. There was nothing inside, nothing except for one of those steel boxes, the ones meant for containing Hollows. Up close, they could see that it had a handle on one end―and a slot for an identification tag.
It was a giant drawer. A person-sized drawer.
"That one's empty," said a passing hunter, noting their hesitation.
Ghi stood in a patient daze as the others climbed in, feeling a peculiar prickling on top of so many other unpleasant sensations. Pain, fatigue, apprehension, fear―all skirting the edges of this sudden and heightened paranoia. He hesitated before stepping into the ambulance, planting both feet on the ground. He wasn't sure what he was waiting for, or looking for, but his eyes landed on Stella.
She was standing among some of the last wisps of smoke, her phone against her ear and the blinder still lifted up from her solemn mask of a face. She pulled the thing down and turned away then, but not before Ghi had caught her staring at him again.
C H A P T E R 1 7
Vessel, Book I: The Advent Page 48
