by Bec McMaster
He shook his head.
"I'm sorry, Joe. This is the only way."
Joe's nostrils flared, his breath coming in harsh pants and a scream building in his lungs.
"I've got you," Mia told him, grabbing hold of his other hand. "Hold my hand, Joe. Look in my eyes. I've got you."
The trust there... it almost flayed her. For she didn't know if she had the answers. A revenant's bite was often fatal, with almost 90 percent of the bitten beginning the transformation. You had to burn the bodies then, make sure there was no chance of them coming back. It was a fate worse than death, and nearly every Badlander had lost someone to the damned plague.
The meteor that caused the Darkening brought with it the revenant pathogen, or so her mom told her when she was a little girl. When a group of miners went searching for precious minerals at the meteor site, they didn't come out again. By the time the rescuers dug the miners out, every single one of them had been dead, though strangely unmarked. Half an hour after they hauled the first body out, it got up and tore out a doctor's throat. Unprepared, almost all of the medical staff were slaughtered before they could escape and fetch help. Too late, though. Three of the revenants escaped, carrying with them the hunger for flesh, which had spread through the heart of the country.
The scientists who were left managed to locate a virulent pathogen in the tissues of three of the bodies that could bring the dead back to life. There'd been a concentrated effort to wipe out the revenant scourge, but then the riots started breaking out again as resources began to grow scarce, a couple of leaking nuclear plants poisoned the earth, and there'd been no time to finish the job.
The machete flashed up in the corner of her vision. Mia didn't dare take her eyes off Joe's. Blood splashed against her sleeve and Joe's eyes widened in shock and pain. The scream pouring from his ravaged throat was the worst thing she'd ever heard. He kept screaming, even as McClain worked swiftly to staunch the blood flow, and then slowly, slowly, his eyes rolled back in his head and he was out of it.
Mia almost threw up. "Jesus," she whispered. The fingers clamped around hers slackened, and she pried them loose.
Jenny appeared with the med kit, panting swiftly. "Shit," she whispered, taking in the scene.
"Heat the knife," McClain instructed, using gauze to staunch the blood.
"Did we get it?" Mia demanded. Joe's severed arm lay at her feet, the veins in his elbow a roadmap of black beneath his pale skin, but the decay didn't seem to have travelled further. "Did we get it in time?"
"Won't know." McClain wouldn't look at her. "Just heat the knife, Mia."
Six
LIGHT GLINTED off metal, somewhere on the valley floor below them.
"There she is, boys," Ethan Thwaites murmured the next day, idling the jeep on the top of the cliff. "Vegas."
Mia slid to the edge of her seat, peering down. Afternoon sunshine gleamed back off metal and glass. "Is that where the reivers are?"
"They'll likely make camp there," Jenny muttered. "Used to be flat plains here, but the Darkening tore the earth apart pretty good down here. Some kind of dam broke and cleared out half the population, but a lot of the buildings still remain. It's the only city from pre-D days that survived out here, beyond the Wall."
The Wall cut the Confederacy of the Eastern States off from the West. Nobody from this side of the Wall had ever crossed it, as the Confederacy soldiers manned it and were ruthless in employing their weapons. Rumor abounded that there were still cities out East full of people and technology the likes of which the Badlanders had never seen.
The cough of a motorbike ripped through the air, and then McClain pulled up beside them, dust pouring through the windows. "They're down there," he said, leaning forward to peer in.
"You sure?"
McClain pointed toward the far side of the city ruins. "Smoke. It's nearly two hours until sunset, but they look like they've made camp."
"What's wrong?" Mia asked.
McClain frowned. "It's unusual, that's all. Even the reivers usually avoid the ruins. I haven't been down this way for nearly ten years, but the local mole people tribes all say that you don't stay the night in Vegas."
He'd stayed with the mole men that haunted this valley? The mole men were notoriously private thanks to their conspiracy theories on how the Darkening began, and strangers were rarely admitted into their underground silos and bunkers. They'd been underground since before the Darkening began, and now had entire tribes down there, somewhere. Mia was almost impressed. "Deadheads?"
"Not deadheads." He shook his head. "Not sure what it is. There's a ton of predators around Vegas, so it could be anything. The mole men say that ac'tun ahili haunts the city, though hell if I know what that is. Every settlement they've tried to start in the ruins has disappeared, so now they don't bother. It's a long valley and the mole men really don't like reivers, so maybe they decided to stay somewhere the mole men won't enter."
Thwaites stroked his moustache as he peered at the ruins. "In two hours, we might be able to find the reivers."
"Maybe, but we'd be walking into an ambush if we did," McClain countered. "If they're smart, they'll have set up defenses, and last night's ambush at the tor suggests there's at least one reiver in control with above-average intelligence. For a reiver. I suggest sending in a scouting party of two or three people, some of your best, and work out what we're dealing with before we make any rash decisions. The others can stay at the edge of the ruins, fuel up, and prepare a quick camp where the reivers won't notice."
Thwaites looked toward Mia. "What do you think?"
"Sounds good. I'll put my hand up for the scouting party." If only so she could get closer to see if her sister was still alive. She also needed to move her body, get out of her head. All morning, all she’d been able to think about was Joe. The boy survived the night, but this morning a raging infection had bloomed and his cousin decided to take him back to Salvation Creek. She just hoped he was okay.
"Anyone else?" McClain asked.
"Jake," she said, without a moment's hesitation. Jake had skills she could only dream of, despite her resentment. "Maybe Jenny?"
McClain nodded, and kicked the bike out of gear. "Alright then. Hopefully we don't find out what this ac'tun ahili is."
"What is this place?" Mia whispered, turning in slow circles, examining the debris. She'd known the city would be in ruins, but she'd never expected the buildings to look the way they did.
McClain remained focused. Intent. Hunting. He barely gave the empty fountains a glance. They were getting closer to where the smoke came from. "Vegas used to be a city for pleasure-seekers."
Pleasure-seekers? Was that something like the slave towns down south? Mia stared up at the iron scraps of some sort of tower. It looked kind of like something she'd seen once, in a picture. "Paris," she whispered. This place was like nothing she’d ever seen. She was fairly certain she'd seen some sort of ship earlier, after all, and none of the maps about the pre-Darkening world indicated any sort of body of water nearby, beyond the huge dam that flooded the nearby river system and towns. "What kind of people lived here?"
"Don't know. Before my time."
"Before anyone's time, smart-ass." Mia snorted. A good sixty years at least.
McClain held out a hand to quiet her. He cocked his head on an angle and listened, and Mia froze. Could be Jake and Jenny he was listening to. McClain had partnered them up to cover more ground. But she wasn't sure.
Jenny learned to hunt squirrel and deer as a young girl, and despite her limp she moved like a ghost. And Jake had experience, like McClain. He wouldn't be making a lot of noise.
No, he was listening to something else. Her heart ticked a little faster.
Water bubbled up out of a crack in the ground, despite the desert surrounding the place. It seemed to spring from where a huge building had crashed down into the sodden mire. Maybe a quake during the Darkening unearthed the water table? Not that it looked drinkable. Green slime covered the pon
d, and lush vegetation surrounded it.
A critter chirped in the slowly descending night. Frog, maybe?
"What is it?" Mia whispered.
"I thought...."
She was going to have a heart attack from the suspense.
"Thought I heard something following us, but it's either really quiet or we scared it off." McClain knelt down, pressing his fingers into a faint impression in the dirt. "There's some kind of animal living here. "
"Shadow-cats?" A chill ran through her and she spun, her gun quivering as her hands shook. A pack of mutated shadow-cats had taken her parents when she was younger. She could still remember finding their abandoned jeep covered in claw marks where the shadow-cats peeled it open like a tin of rotten beans. Jenny had tried to shield her from it, but that bloody image was burned straight into her brain.
"I don't think so. This is smaller."
"Maybe kits?" She looked around nervously. The problem with shadow-cats was that you never saw them coming. They'd been cloned back before the Darkening, with intense camouflage patterns that made them almost invisible in the dark, which just happened to be their favorite time to hunt.
"Not sure." McClain straightened. "But the reivers are definitely here. I can see bootprints."
And they were the focus. Mia let out a slow breath. Sage. Sage could be here with the reivers. If they could find them. This place was enormous with its hulking buildings, ruins, and strange oddments peeking through the vines....
"And whatever left these tracks is long gone. These are hours old."
Hours. "Ha. Yeah. Long gone. That's really comforting."
"You wanted to come."
She gripped her shotgun tighter. "And I still do. I just hate knowing there's something out there that probably wants to eat us."
"Good thing I brought you then," he said. "I can probably run faster than you."
She stared at his muscled back. Was that a joke? "I'm leaner than you are, and shorter. I probably look stringy. You, however, are Grade-A rump. If I were looking for plenty of meat, I know who I'd pick."
McClain glanced over his shoulder at her. He paused. "Did you just...."
Mia smiled, and looked him up and down. "Jade used to say that you could bounce a pre-D penny off that ass."
Jade wasn't the only one who'd commented on it. Mia scrambled past him, climbing up what looked like a fallen pile of bricks.
McClain moved a little slower, as though he were chewing over what she'd just said. "I thought you'd prefer to sink your teeth in my ass? Wasn't that what you told her?"
Mia jerked to a halt. She'd definitely said that. "How did you...?"
"You're not as quiet as you think you are." He held out his hand, as though to help her step over a fallen beam.
Mia's eyes narrowed. She remembered that night. She'd had one too many sips of her own homebrew. But she knew McClain had been across the room from her.
There was no physical way he could have heard her.
"Do you read lips now?"
His smile was hot and slow. It burned her all the way through. "Maybe. Or maybe I was just focusing real hard on yours. I couldn't stop thinking about them that whole month."
"You were dreaming if you thought I was going to kiss you," she said, with a snort. Anything to defuse the sudden situation she'd found herself in.
"If I were dreaming," he countered, "then I wouldn't have been imagining your mouth on mine. Those lips would have been elsewhere."
She had a sudden intense flash of what his naked body might look like. All tanned skin, like the darkened gold of his arms, and cut with muscle.
Shit. Every nerve in her body lit on fire. She was pretty sure her nipples just flagged his attention. McClain had spent the entire month in her bar uttering sweet nothings at her. It hadn't ever gone further than that, and he'd remained politely distant, as though testing out her intentions but not quite pushing hard for them.
Probably a good thing. For if those words were a hint of the heat smoldering beneath his still surfaces, then she wouldn't have stood a chance if he decided to pursue her.
The drought in Salvation Creek hadn't just affected the local farms.
"Fine," she said, trying to ignore the heat in her cheeks. She accepted his hand and eased her way over the iron beam. Keep things cool.... "It's a fine ass. And pickings are slim in Salvation Creek. Once upon a time I might have made you an offer."
"Pretty sure you knocked mine back." His hand squeezed hers. Their eyes locked for one tempting second.
Mia swallowed, then hopped down the other side and away from him.
"I thought about it," she admitted. Thought hard. And often. Alone in bed, with her hand down her panties.
She brushed sweaty strands of hair off her face. Between the buildings, where there was no wind, it was hot as hell. Sweat slicked between her breasts and down the center of her back. She fanned herself. "Take a break?"
McClain smiled at her as if he could see straight through her, and suddenly the sweat on her skin wasn't the only thing that was wet. "Sure."
Mia leaned back against a wall. Neither of them had been alone since they rode out. She was suddenly shockingly aware that there was not a single soul within a one-mile radius.
Think of all the things you could do to him in that time....
McClain paused and tugged his water canteen out of his pack. Every movement was careful and precise, as though he'd always been big and had learned to control every inch of his body, for fear of breaking things as a boy. She could imagine him as a raw-boned young man. He had that look. Heavy muscle now, as though he'd finally caught up to the sheer height of himself. He had the kind of hands that looked like they could soothe a startled colt, or leave a woman in exquisite pleasure.
He unscrewed the flask, offering her a mouthful. Always polite, damn him. "Why'd you say no?"
"You're not the first stranger to wander through town." She lifted the flask and took a mouthful. "Maybe we could have made sweet memories, but there's also the risk that I could have ended up alone and pregnant."
He scowled. "I wouldn't do that to you."
"I know that now. I don't think you're the type of man to just leave a child behind." No, he was all about protecting those he considered his. She eyed him out of the corner of her eye. Made her wonder just who made that list. He'd mentioned a sister. An old flame. Even a little girl he'd considered a niece. "But that only works if you knew I was pregnant," she pointed out. "You were moving on eventually and sometimes these things don't show up until it's too late."
His eyelids hooded, leaving his eyes impenetrable. "I think that if something had happened between us, I would have made a point of returning. You're not the sort of woman one forgets."
There went her heart again, making another one of those mad leaps in her chest. "I bet you say that to all the ladies," she replied, keeping it light.
A part of her didn't know what she was doing.
"No." McClain didn't take a single step toward her, but suddenly he filled the space between them. All of that focused intensity locked on her with absolute absorption. "Ever since the day I met you, it's only been you. Standing there in that bar, asking me if I wanted a damned drink, or whether I intended to stand there staring all day." His smile was slow as he lifted a hand and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "You smelled like whiskey and sage, and your skin glowed like polished bronze. It looked so smooth, I wanted to lick it. All over."
Not only was he the hottest man she'd ever laid eyes upon, but there was something about him that made her want to throw all of her rules out the window.
Mia put the flask to her lips, but she couldn't take her eyes off him. He was destroying her, inch by inch. And she wasn't sure she could handle that. Not right now.
"If you keep looking at me like that, Mia, then whatever's out there might not be the only thing looking to eat you all up."
She swallowed a mouthful of water down the wrong pipe, and sprayed it all over him. A we
t hack tore through her throat and she coughed desperately while McClain thumped her on the back.
Jesus. "Are you trying to kill me?" she croaked.
His shirt clung to his chest. She'd spat water all over him. McClain raked a hand through his sweaty hair.
Real suave, Mia. No wonder she was single.
Apart from the whole fingers-burned situation. Which took her thoughts to Jake, and from there, right back to Sage.
Who was somewhere in these forsaken ruins while she was flirting with McClain.
She felt sick all of a sudden. What was she doing? Tears blurred her vision, taking her by surprise. A whole wave of anger and grief suddenly erupted within her, like it had been lurking within, waiting for a moment to take her down.
"Hey," McClain murmured, his warm fingers closing over her arm. "Are you okay?"
She was not going to fall apart right now. Sage needed her.
Mia’s throat felt dry and achy, as though there were a silent scream threatening to tear itself free. "No. No, I'm not," she admitted. "I want her back and here I am flirting with you, and... what type of person does that make me?"
Those green eyes looked almost silver now, in the night. "A human one," he said gently. "You're not made of stone, Mia. And you've been pushing yourself hard."
And he'd been playing along, taking his cues off her. She'd flirted first, before he got involved, almost as if he hadn't wanted to push her too far.
"I'm an emotional mess," she whispered. "I don't even know what I'm doing right now."
"I know." There was that inexplicable gentleness again. McClain stroked her arm. "I'm not going to take advantage of that."
"It might be nice if you did," she blurted, thinking about what it would feel like to be in his arms while he held her. She couldn't fall apart when his arms sheltered her from all the darkness around her.
Which was probably the stupidest thing she'd ever thought. Especially when McClain froze. Right. That just confirmed it. He'd definitely been playing along. And now he was being nice because he didn't want her to break down on him and cry.
