by Rhys Ford
“Well, no, Kai,” I muttered. “What you don’t need is for them to see you before you see them.”
Enough light seemed to come through the canopy to walk, but some areas were drenched in shadow. I avoided the pockets I couldn’t see through and followed the light sketch Ryder drew me on a clearcoat. Approaching the old bell tower from the west was the smartest way in. The Merge-battered structures were close to the city, the land near it stretched out over the highway, enclosing the 163 freeway in a nearly perfect tunnel.
I stopped moving when I hit a stone wall. My knee wasn’t very appreciative of the brickwork hidden under ivy and let me know it would be bruising in a few minutes. Rubbing at the injured area, I felt for the end of the wall, crossing over a dip in the stone and past a sheet of greenery blocking my way.
The ground beneath my feet changed from spongy loam to cobblestones, and I stood in a moonlight bath, dwarfed by Balboa’s stone towers.
Pressed in by the Merging sidhe territory, Balboa should have fallen, leaving nothing except a memory in old books, but the towers took their existence seriously, refusing to budge under the onslaught of forests and rocks. Most of the outer areas fell, replaced by tall trees and smoother landscape, but the central edifice remained, stretching from the archways to the bell tower and past smaller domes until ending at the round water fountain lying at the far end of a wide brick walkway.
Considering how much time had passed since the Merge, the towers should have been covered by creeping green, but the stonework was clear of obstruction. Many of the museums were gone, taking with them artwork and ancient automobiles. A Japanese garden was untouched, as was the open theater round, but the asphalt around the area was corrupted with weeds and flowers, their sturdy roots cracking the blacktop. I knew there was a pipe organ in there somewhere, but I couldn’t see it. People living around the area swore they heard it when the winds were high, and I’d known stranger things to survive the Merge.
A covered walkway provided enough concealment to skulk around the tower. Careful not to trip on the ropy vines crossing the walk, I crept forward. Keeping to the shadows, I passed the tallest tower. I couldn’t see the bell hanging there, but I did hear the wind whistle in the cutaway through the middle, the night air catching on the balcony frame and carrying the tower’s keening wail through the forest.
Footsteps echoed on the promenade, and Shannon emerged from the darkness. A thin cry leaked from the soft-sided basket she clutched by the handle, and her knuckles were white, paler than her face when she saw me. The unsidhe leading her stopped at the end of the archway, holding his arm out to prevent her from entering the courtyard. I couldn’t see much of his face from where I stood. Partially hidden in shadow, he lingered, unsure about walking forward.
“Are you Valin? Valin cuid Anbhás?” he asked. His unsidhe was odd in my ears, the accent choppy and uneven. “I have the children.”
Valin. They were looking for Valin cuid Anbhás. The name chilled my blood to ice. My brother. Our father’s favorite son. The son he treasured and educated. The son he let practice on me whenever the mood struck him.
I hadn’t consciously thought of Valin in years, but he dropped by regularly in my nightmares. The sound of his name made me want to curl up into a ball. I could still feel his fingers working to loosen the skin on my stomach and chest. He couldn’t be talking about the same Valin, but I wasn’t going to take the chance. I doubted my brother missed me as much as our father did, but I wasn’t going to bet on it.
“That’s not him! He’s Ryder’s!” I heard Shannon yell, and the unsidhe growled, pushing her to the side and swearing hotly under his breath.
I couldn’t think about Valin, not when I needed my focus. It was hard to pull back into the game, and by the time I’d shaken Valin out of my thoughts, Shannon had plunged into the bushes with the babies, letting the darkness swallow them whole.
I pulled both Glocks from my rig, then brought the guns down, taking aim as I launched into a run. The unsidhe shouted after her and turned toward me, raising a crossbow, its sleek lines glittering with a drawn bolt. The fletched slender spear could pierce my chest or head. I knew the model. It was one of Dempsey’s favorites. There’d be no healing up from that if it caught me.
I shot at the unsidhe as I dodged down into a clump of overgrown papyrus. The reedy plants were too thin to keep me hidden, but they were the closest cover I had, and I ate wet dirt, moist from the runoff from the overhang above the walkway. Scrambling on my knees, I kept the guns off the damp ground and fired again.
Keeping my head down, I half crouched and half ran back around to the walkway. From somewhere in the forest, a Wild Hunt belled, the black dogs calling out to one another. My stomach clenched, twisting and folding with fear. I could handle the dogs. It was their Master that kept me moving.
“It could be anyone,” I growled at my stomach. “Valin isn’t the only one with a Hunt. Maybe that guy just thought he was meeting Valin.”
You’re right, he’s not, the wicked, evil part of my brain whispered. Your father also has a Hunt. Several, in fact.
The pack’s rage covered any sound I made coming through the bushes, their howls ripping away any silence left in the forest. Their cries echoed and bounced, surrounding me as they drew nearer. I couldn’t stay near the towers much longer, not with a Hunt closing in.
Creeping up on where I’d seen the unsidhe, I stood up carefully, keeping the guns’ muzzles trained down.
The unsidhe lay on his back, mouth open and filling with blood. His eyes were still sharp gold, and a tuft of electric blue hair escaped the hoodie he wore to hide among the humans. I paused long enough to make sure he was dead, checking the star pattern puncturing his face; then I sprinted down the long walkway. I didn’t remember hitting the trigger that many times, but it didn’t matter. He was dead, and Shannon was long gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“OKAY, SO she can’t ditch the kids. They’re all she’s got left.” I scrambled through the bushes, trying to see any trail she might have left behind. The babies were her only bargaining chip at this point, but then any woman willing to piss off an entire race probably didn’t have a lot of common sense to begin with.
Farther away from the old tower, I stopped, trying to listen for sounds of someone thrashing through the forest. My heartbeat and the rush of blood in my ears made it hard to hear. My link was useless; Gertie’s jammers took care of any signal. All I’d get would be an earful of noise.
“God, I’m going to shoot her for making me run through this damned forest,” I seethed, trying to keep my breathing steady. “Calm down, Kai. Focus. Listen. And stop talking to yourself.”
Turning slowly, I listened, hoping to hear any motion among the bushes. A shuffling sound came from my right, and then I heard a very thin wail.
Breaking into a hard run, I headed toward the sound and away from the towers. It would only be a matter of time before the Hunt caught my scent and headed after me. The thought of Valin finding me almost broke me from following Shannon.
“Don’t be his bitch before he finds you.” Cursing, I avoided the bramble of thorns in my path. “You’re not that kid anymore, Kai. Get your shit together.”
The sound of someone’s flailing grew louder, and for a moment I panicked, wondering if I wasn’t chasing down one of Crazy Gertie’s bears, but a splash of rainbow skirts slipped through the bushes, the colors bright even in the dimness of the closed-in forest. I was rewarded with another thin cry and then a woman’s startled scream.
Branches sliced my face, and the slap of leaves against my cheek stung welts on my neck and chin. I almost lost one of the Glocks against a tree, hitting it hard enough to rattle my teeth when I skidded on a patch of mud. The night-drenched forest was difficult to see through, casting shadowy illusions of trees that weren’t there and hiding ones that were. My arm hurt, throbbing where I’d struck the tree, and the tingle reached my fingers, deadening them as I tightly clenched the gun. I
couldn’t lose a gun, not with the ainmhí dubh around.
The forest went numb with the sound of rushing water. I tried to remember where the brackish river was on the map Ryder had shown me and got hit in the face by a sapling I’d not seen. It whipped across my face, blinding me for a moment. I blinked at the tears forming in my eyes, trying to wash out the pieces of bark and dust left behind.
I lost my footing again on a bed of ground moss, my heels digging in as I slid forward across the blanketed shore. I’d come out of the forest line, skidding across wet shale and dirt. A flock of something took off from across the river, dark shapes winging up from the canopy.
The water raged, cutting through heavy rock crags on either side. Ten feet across at the most, the river was small but made up for its width with a fierce whitewater that glowed under the night sky. It was a good drop, about my height from the stony shoreline, and the river gave way around large peaked boulders, their battered sides smoothed by the torrent.
Shannon stood a few yards upriver from me, her arms tight around the bassinet. The terror in her face bleached her skin to white, and her eyes stood out dark and wide as I found my footing and approached her.
Fear threaded through my rage, but my anger won out. Close by, the Hunt howled as one. If Valin was as good a Master as our father, he might be able to glean an image from his lead bitch’s mind if she hit on my scent. All Tanic’s dogs knew what I smelled like. Hell, most of them knew what I tasted like. It wouldn’t be difficult for them to know who they were chasing. I’d been fed to them often enough.
I was reasonably sure Valin wouldn’t kill me. Tanic would want me back, and he’d have ample opportunity to make me suffer for any ainmhí dubh I might kill. Shannon was expendable, especially after fleeing with his newest toys. I knew it, and so did she. The black dogs’ belling sent her into a wild panic, and she took a few steps toward the river.
“Get away from the edge, Shannon,” I said, tucking the Glocks into my back holsters, hoping she’d feel safer if she didn’t see weapons in my hands. Creaking, the leather rig adjusted around my shoulder blades, fitting into the curves of my back and chest. I slipped my jacket off and dropped it to the ground. If Shannon did something stupid like run, I wanted to be able to draw out my guns without the jacket hanging me up. “You don’t want to fall in.”
“Stay back!” she shouted over the river’s roar, her voice rough and hoarse. Her chest heaved with the effort of running through the tight woods, and small cuts bled on her face. I’m sure I bore similar wounds. Ryder’s forest seemed filled with razor-sharp leaves thirsty for blood.
“Think this through, Shannon.” I spoke calmly, as if talking to one of Jonas’s Chihuahuas when it reached its frenzy point.
Hoping it worked better than it did on the tiny dogs with their needle-sharp teeth, I took a step closer, stopping when she leaned over the river and dangled the basket above the water. The bassinet’s pale weave darkened quickly, its fibers soaking in the river’s thick spray. She held on tight to the basket’s creaking handles. One of the twins cried, a pitiful, kittenish wail.
“I’ll throw them in!” Her nostrils flared, and the whites of her eyes swallowed up more space around her irises. The woman’s shortened breath neared panic, and I stopped, holding perfectly still as she stared at me. “I mean it, Kai. I’ll throw them in!”
“Why would you do that?” I tried smiling, hoping I was hiding the tips of my ainmhí dubh-sharp canines behind my lips. “You gave birth to them. They’re a part of you, right?”
“Don’t give me that tree-hugging, otter-scrubbing crap,” Shannon snapped. “I carried them because I was paid to. It was supposed to be an easy fricking job. I’d carry them until I showed, and then a healer was supposed to make sure I lost the babies someplace public. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I wasn’t supposed to give birth to these damned things in the front seat of some damned piece of shit.”
Bathed in light from the half moon and the city, Shannon should have looked ethereal and motherly, a full-breasted human woman in the glow of mothering, but to me she only looked bat-shit crazy. I wondered if my mother had felt that way, right before she cut herself open and sprayed her guts over Tanic’s floor.
I didn’t hear the dog. It was too quiet and cunning. It stole upon us with a stealth I would have admired had we not been its target. The only clue I had of its presence was the crash of its body coming through the brush. It shattered a thicket, sending sharp splinters flying across the rocky shelf. I fired, but it moved too quickly, an immature yearling eager to bring something back to its master.
Shannon screamed, a short and piercing sound, and that was enough to draw the dog to her.
Leaping up to grab her throat, the ainmhí dubh took her down. Closing its jaws around the slender column, it crunched down, crushing the scream she’d gathered in her chest. Toppling back, Shannon was dead before the black dog’s back feet left the stony riverside, her tongue lolling under the gurgle of blood pouring past her open lips. I only had time to take a breath before the dog and woman fell over the rocky edge, and the bassinet tumbled in midair, heading straight for the water.
I launched myself up, my fingers barely brushing the bottom of the basket as it fell, a tiny pale hand rising above the soft pink blankets lining the carrier. The basket hit the water with a soft splash, barely audible over the rapids’ churning cries.
Plunging into the cold brackish rush of water after it, I remembered I couldn’t swim well when the water covered my head.
Foamy water filled my mouth and nostrils, drowning me. Coughing, I tried pushing up to the surface, but the river fought me, shoving me back down. Slamming into a rock took my breath, and I felt my ribs crack. My chest threatened to burst if I didn’t get air soon when the river flung me up above the surface long enough to gasp in a breath, and then I was under again.
Kicking hard, I straightened out and swirled up, caught in the current. The salty taint in the water sucked the moisture from my mouth. It tasted of seaweed and fish with an underlying sweet of fresh water, enough to fool my tongue.
“Where the hell are you?” I took in mouthfuls of air, dragging with the pain stitching up my side. Panic took over; then I spotted it.
The basket dipped and swirled in front of me. An end caught on a tree, holding it steady for a moment before the river took it again. I was close enough to hear the babies screaming and then a heart-stopping silence when the bassinet hit a rock sticking up out of the water. The soft sound sickened me, more than the water I was swallowing. Scissoring against the current, I fought to get closer to the basket.
I caught on the same branch, tearing the back of my shirt. The rig constricted my arm movements a bit, but it was too late to do anything about it. The leather chafed and rubbed, squeaking as it soaked in more and more water. Another rock sprouted in front of me, and I hit it hard, striking first with my shoulder and then my face. Pushing against it with my hands, I launched back into the river flow, straightening out my body.
The basket’s edge was bloody, a crimson foam tipping what I could see of the pink blanket. I reached for the handle and lost it when the river dipped, carrying me farther away. Captured in a swirl, the bassinet spun in place, making a few revolutions before its weight threw it out of synch with the circular flow.
“Okay, get to it.” I heaved in another breath and stretched.
With the basket slightly behind me, I reached out to grab at anything I could to stop me from traveling farther away. My fingers stung when I tried to grab the edge of a rock, scraping off some skin on my palm. The salt in the water stung the exposed flesh, and my fingers started to spasm. The water’s chill finally hit my bones, and I started shuddering. Trying to control my shivering body, I spat out another mouthful of water. Spotting a boulder on the near side of the river’s edge, I relaxed my limbs and let the current take me.
I struck hard, tasting blood, and my right lung spurred with pain. Stars filled my eyes, burning and bl
inding me. I blinked, scared I’d blacked out and missed the baby carrier. My stomach churned, twisting like the river as I searched the foam for any sign of the twins’ basket.
Finally, I spotted the damned thing.
The handles bobbed above the water line, and then the rest of the basket ripped free of the river, spiraling toward me on an eddy. Quickening with the river’s flow, the basket’s course dipped and wove around, stalling when it hit a dead spot. Then it turned, shifted by the twins’ uneven weight.
I made a grab for it, losing my hold on the rock. The handles were slippery, and I lost my grip on them almost immediately. The edge of the basket scraped my battered hand, and I winced when the weave sliced into the torn skin. I snatched at the end, then held on tight, grunting when I lost another couple of ribs to a rock hidden under the water and spat out yet another mouthful of diluted blood.
Sucking in air, my chest whistled and ached. Trying to slow down my breathing, I turned midstream, letting the river carry us for a few feet. I needed to rest long enough to make it to shore. Holding the basket, I fell down a small drop, but the water slowed slightly, letting me take a breath. The current was too rushed for me to fully check on the twins, but I felt inside the basket, glad to find them still warm and cradled in tight wraps. One of the girls gurgled at me, spitting out water, but the other lay quiet, her eyes closed. A thin stream of blood spotted her forehead. She moved, straining against the blankets, but then stilled as the water caught us up again.
“Just a bit longer, okay?” I patted the blankets, wondering if the babies could hear me. “Let me find someplace where we can get out.”
The river sank down deeper between two rocky cliffs, and as we passed a curve, the waters slowed their pounding. I fought the current, trying to hold the basket up above my shoulders. I ached. Bruises stung as I moved, and the rig tightened further, cutting into my arms.
Rock spires littered the river. I took a few hits on my shoulders and thighs, then saw stars again when my forehead made contact with a jut I didn’t see in a crest. With my ears ringing from the impact, I almost missed the drop in the rock walls ahead. They were still high, but it looked promising. I couldn’t tell how far I’d come downriver. It could have been a few hundred yards or a few feet, but I knew I had to get out soon. My fingertips were turning blue, and I couldn’t feel my feet. The girls would be frozen through in a few minutes.
