“Guess there are these things all over the place if you know what to look for. Now Hare wants to run the same deal that I had with Garson. Hell, he even wants in on the oil deal. But the Brythern gordath is worse or something. They tried to control it the last time, and the guys told me that it took out like twenty men and horses. So I told them where we could find you. Well, a guardian anyway. You were a surprise.”
His voice turned aggrieved. “I told Hare I needed the money that I stashed for this deal. It’s seed money, dammit!”
So Hare hadn’t believed Mark when he said that’s what the money was for. Good for Hare. Joe wouldn’t believe him either.
“Sounds like it’s quite a deal,” Joe said noncommittally.
“Hell yeah. If we bring in the oil men, the same ones Garson contacted last year, and we can keep the gordath open, we can run pipelines from over here back to New York. Man, we pull this off, we’ll be fucking rich. Well, me, Garson, and Hare. You’ll be lucky you’re not dead.”
If there was oil; well, and there probably was. The geology over here looked about the same as back home.
“There’s just one little problem,” Joe said. “A gordath can’t stay open.”
He could hear the smirk in Mark’s voice. “That’s your problem, not mine. Not Hare’s. Believe me, if he wants it open, you’ll keep it open.”
How far will a gordath open before it destroys two worlds? Joe had the uneasy feeling that if he and Arrim weren’t careful, they were going to find out.
The hike continued. The ground kept rising, and small pebbles rolled under their feet, sending down a constant barrage to the people at the back of the line. Finally, Hare stopped. Mark released him, and Joe collapsed.
The trail ended at a marker, gray and eroded, the carvings barely legible. Joe could read a little of Aeritan writing after the months he had been here. Someone had carved a rose and the characters for Red Gold Bridge. So this was the border, where the countries of Aeritan ended. Beyond this was Brythern.
“Bring the other guardian here,” Hare said. Someone pushed Arrim to stand next to Joe. “This is why you are here,” he said. “You are to open a gordath for us. You will keep it open until we tell you otherwise. You will control it when it becomes greatly powerful, and you will tell us exactly how it is you do all of this and show us how it’s done. Fail to do this thing, and you are useless to us, and so you will die—not, by the way, easily or peacefully.”
“I’ll tell you,” Joe said hoarsely. He gestured feebly, and Hare made a face, as if he knew what Joe was up to, but he bent low anyway. Joe lifted his head. “Just click your heels three times and say, ‘There’s no place like ho—’ ”
Hare smacked Joe across the mouth, the leather and chain glove bringing blood to his lips, but, eh, Joe thought, it was almost worth it.
Colar half stood in the Jeep, taking in the scene at the small beach. The police lights continued to strobe, and he couldn’t look at them, though he could see it didn’t bother anyone else as much. It was much the same as watching TV or a movie sometimes, a barrage on his senses so that he had to turn away. They grew up with it, he thought, but I didn’t. Only sunlight in Aeritan could hurt your eyes, if you were foolish enough to stare at the sun.
Maddy was sobbing, and Kate was trying to comfort her.
“Maddy, it’s okay, okay. The police are here. What happened?”
Maddy kept crying, and Kate unbuckled her seat belt and got out. She put her arms around Maddy and held her, and the girl’s sobs slowed down and stopped. The other girl, Sarah Decker, was talking fast on her phone, her voice almost as hysterical as Maddy’s. She wore a red bikini and her blonde hair glowed in the sun. Colar stared, caught himself, and looked away. And speaking of things to get used to. The girls here were . . . different, to put it mildly.
Kate looked at him over Maddy’s head. What happened? her expression said.
He shrugged and hoisted himself over the door of the Jeep. Just as he landed, the detective they had been talking with not fifteen minutes earlier came over to them. Spencer looked furious.
“All right. What the hell are you two involved with?”
“What?” Kate said blankly.
“What I mean is, what kind of game are you playing? You tell us that there was some guy staring at you, and now this?”
“Officer, I don’t understand.”
Colar was beginning to. Maddy had said, “He was looking for you.”
“Maddy,” he said.
She looked up at him.
“What did he look like?”
“Oh God.” She gulped. “There were, like, a bunch of them. It was like the guys you see at the exits asking for change. Only the one in charge, he had, like, long black hair, and his eyes never blinked. He kept on asking for Kate. He said—he said he’d kill us all one by one if we didn’t tell him where she was. He grabbed Austin, and he, he, had a gun—”
Austin Emerson. Sophomore, honor student, French horn player. During the school year he and Colar played basketball together at lunch sometimes, pig—or horse, if they decided to skip fifth period. Colar went still and quiet. Austin in the hands of the most feared general in all of Aeritan, who was rumored by one and all to be quite mad . . .
“Is he dead?”
Now Spencer was looking at him. Colar couldn’t parse the meaning of his expression, but he filed it away. Shuddering, Maddy shook her head. “One of the other guys, he made him stop. Yelled at him, said he couldn’t ki—kill a kid.”
“That’s enough,” the cop said. He turned to Kate. “When you filed your report, Miss Mossland, why did you conveniently forget to tell us that the man we were keeping a look-out for knew who you were?”
Kate tried to protest her way out of their predicament. While she was talking, Colar said, “Did anyone tell him where she lived?”
As his words sank in, they turned to look at him one by one. First Maddy, then Kate, whose protests came to a halt, then Spencer. For a moment there was nothing but silence. Then Maddy said in a small voice, “Austin told him. He was really scared, Kate. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Kate said. She had regained her calm, though she had lost all color in her face. “Tell him I said so, okay, Maddy?”
Spencer turned and spoke into his radio. One of the cruisers backed up and pulled out.
“Miss Mossland,” he said, “where are your parents?”
“They’re at work,” she whispered. She made her voice louder. “Work.”
“All right. Call them. Tell them we’re sending a team to the house, but they are to go straight to the police station. You two, drive back to the station and wait there.” His voice hardened. “Tell your parents that you and I and young Mr. Mossland here need to have a talk. An honest one this time.”
Kate and Colar drove to the police station, followed by Spencer. They didn’t talk for most of the drive until she turned to Colar. She was very pale, but her expression was set and calm.
“He’s gone to the house,” she said. “He wants to set a trap.”
“He’s in the trap,” Colar said. “The police will get there before him.” He wished he could be as convinced as he tried to sound. Colar tried to think what the general would do. Even being new to this world, the general had to know by now that he was at a disadvantage. The police had cars and radios and guns. Even the lieutenant carried one. Colar could see it strapped under his suit jacket.
But Marthen had a gun, too, now. And he knew about radios. He used one in the final battle in Gordath Wood. Colar grimaced. Not so much of a disadvantage after all. Knowing the general, the man had another tactic up his sleeve.
He would have killed Austin, if the other man hadn’t stopped him. That much Colar was sure about. He remembered the general’s order: Kill all the smiths, and the brutal murder he himself was involved with. He clenched his fist on his thigh, willing the memory to go away. If it didn’t, if he couldn’t make the thoughts go away, he was in for another three or fo
ur sleepless nights.
Kate came to a complete stop at the intersection and then started up again at the same sedate pace.
“All right,” she said, and he looked at her. She had regained her color, and her voice was strong again. “We have less than two miles to come up with a story. They think it’s a cult, so we’ll have to give them that. Just follow my lead. Yes, we recognized him, but I didn’t want to worry my parents, so that’s why I lied.” She gave a sudden, twisted smile. “That will serve for Mom and Dad, too.”
He didn’t say anything. He felt his stomach tighten. Lies had a way of coming back and tripping you up. He didn’t think the police officer would be put off by easy lies. He would keep coming and coming until he got what he wanted. They were prey, both of the general and now Spencer.
“So he wants us to come back to the cult, and that’s why he’s coming after me.”
Colar frowned. “I think—I think we should say he’s coming for me.”
She threw him a quick look.
“I’m supposed to be from there,” Colar said quietly. “Raised in it, remember? So it would make more sense—he wants me back.”
She was quiet for a minute, and the only sound was the engine and the roar of the wind. The police station came into sight, and she slowed and pulled in, rolling to the farthest corner of the lot. Kate turned off the engine and looked at him. Her expression was bleaker than before.
“The thing is—Colar, they might make you go.”
He stared at her. “They?”
“My—mom and dad. If they thought the general were your father or something, they might say, well, it’s time for you to go home.”
Spencer was waving them over, but they didn’t move. Colar bit his lip. My foster sister, he thought. She is my foster sister. He had fancied her last winter, when they were the only two young people in the camp. He still did, but the rules of fostering were strict, and so he had tried to keep his feelings tucked away. He made a decision, slightly numb. He knew he would regret it later, and that he would miss this life terribly. School, friends, girls, sports, cars, and later, college. He didn’t belong here, and he was nothing but an imposter. Even the reason he was here—the only reason anyone could give—was one he couldn’t understand and never would, not if he lived here forever. But he wouldn’t live in this world forever, and it was all a terrible mistake that he was here in the first place. Marthen’s coming was a sign from the high god. He would give it all up, return to Aeritan, and become lord of Terrick in his turn.
“That’s just it, Kate. If Marthen’s here, the gordath’s open. I can go home.”
It took Kate’s parents about forty-five minutes to arrive from work and then be filled in on the situation, including the attack on the kids at the lake. When they found out that she and Colar had gone to the police not an hour before the attack, they were livid.
“Kate,” her father had said, low-voiced in his anger. Kate stared back at him defiantly. No matter how much you want this to be about me being crazy, it’s not. She didn’t say that, though, not in front of Spencer. Instead, her father turned toward the officer, his face working with an effort to placate and dismiss. “Officer, I blame my wife and myself. You know, we thought if we just gave her time to get her life back, just let us all get our lives back after what happened last year, but it’s clear that maybe we should have given her some extra attention.”
Kate gasped at her father’s betrayal. She turned to her mother. Mom, she mouthed in outrage. Her mother just shook her head slightly, her lips compressed into a thin line. She was pissed; that was clear.
“Maybe,” Spencer said, jotting things down in his notebook. “But if you don’t mind, Mr. Mossland, I don’t think this has to do with your daughter’s mental state. She identified someone she recognized from this cult that kidnapped her—and by the way, we never found anything to support that contention—and now he’s not only come after her, he’s putting other people in danger. So while I can appreciate that you just want to cover this up, I can’t do that.”
“This isn’t a cover-up, and you know it, Louis,” Mrs. Mossland broke in, her words clipped. “We’ll help any way that we can, but since we don’t know what’s going on, we don’t know what we can do.”
“The truth would help,” Spencer said mildly. They all stared at him; the response had guilt written all over it. Kate had to keep back a laugh that she knew would sound hysterical and inappropriate. Talk about confirming that she was crazy.
“Officer,” she said, steadfastly ignoring her parents and their alarm at what she might say. “I was kidnapped last year by a cult of crazy people. They dragged me all over the place, and I never quite knew where I was. Colar was shot by one of them, and we managed to escape, and I drove home, and that’s it. Except now, the leader came after us. I didn’t think he would, but he did.”
“The kids at the lake said that he had a bunch of other people with him. You know anything about that?”
Kate frowned, trying to look as if she were thinking. Instead, she remembered what Maddy had said. Like the guys you see at the exits asking for change. What would Marthen be doing with a bunch of homeless people?
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “I don’t know anything about that. He was definitely by himself when I saw him.”
Spencer consulted his notes. “This man, as you described him, was wearing ‘old-fashioned’ clothes. I remember when you and young Cole turned up last year, Miss Mossland. That would be what you were wearing, too, except his clothes were more like combat gear. Can you tell me about that?” His look included the two of them.
As one, Kate and Colar shook their heads. “No, sorry, it was just what they made us wear,” Kate said apologetically.
“But the other men he brought with them, they wore modern clothes,” Spencer said. “The kids and the adults at the beach were sure of that. Could be he’s recruiting.”
“If he’s recruiting from among the local homeless people, surely you’ve gone to question them,” Mrs. Mossland said, her voice raised in alarm.
“We have, Janet. And it’s a funny thing. All the underpasses from here to Brewster, even, are all empty, except for trash left behind. Like they’ve disappeared, just like Miss Mossland did last year.”
Police lights strobed in the early evening outside the Mossland house in their quiet neighborhood. Kate and her parents and Colar waited outside while the police checked the house one last time for intruders. Their neighbors watched from their porches and driveways or from behind the curtains in their great rooms, and Kate knew that her parents were embarrassed over the unwanted attention. No one spoke. Kate kept on swallowing against the lump in her throat, trying to keep back the tears. Her father would rather believe she was crazy instead of the truth.
At last the cops finished their sweep of the house, and one came up to the little family huddle, his modern armor with the SWAT logo on it making him look big and bulky. He carried a rifle pointed at the ground, his finger well off the trigger.
“All right,” he reported to Mr. Mossland. “It’s all clear now, but someone has been inside; the alarm has been compromised, but someone knew enough to call the alarm company and call them off. We checked with them, and that’s what they logged. But we checked everything, and there’s no one inside. House is clear.”
That couldn’t have been Marthen, Kate thought. He had someone with him who knew about alarm systems.
“So what we can do is keep a detail here—” the officer began.
“That won’t be necessary,” her dad broke in. Kate looked at him. Was he crazy? Marthen had pulled a gun on a kid and broken into the house looking for her. Beside her Colar moved restlessly, as if he wanted to say something.
“Dad,” she said. “I think—”
“That’s enough, Kate!” The look he gave her was one of fury, as if he didn’t know her or even like her. Despite herself, Kate cringed. “Officer, we’ll be fine. It was just a break-in. They won’t come back.”<
br />
Kate thought the man gave a look that Captain Artor might have given: impatient, disgusted, and derisive. But he just nodded and called his men away. Without looking back, Kate, her mom, and Colar followed her dad into the house and closed the door.
The house was fully lit, every light blazing. Kate’s mom reflexively went to turn off the lights but then hesitated. Kate understood. It feels dangerous, she thought. It doesn’t feel like home. As one they began to move from room to room. The police had been thorough; there were traces of their passage everywhere. A chair was out of place, and the pantry door had been left open, but they hadn’t violated the house. That had come earlier, and an aura of unsettledness remained. Kate found herself jumping at the least sound.
“I’m calling the alarm company,” her dad said. “Incompe tents. They’re supposed to ask for the password.”
Her mom sighed. “David. The password is taped to the underside of the alarm box because we kept on forgetting it.”
Her father began to bluster, and Kate had enough. They were in danger, grave danger, and her father had just compounded it with his willful pride. “I’m going upstairs,” she called out. Colar went to follow.
“Kate,” her father snapped, and Colar halted. Kate looked back. “Don’t. You. Ever. Interrupt like that again.”
Kate felt the color drain from her face. Her father had never spoken to her like that before. Her mother looked as if she were about to say something but turned away. She tried once more.
“Dad, you have to—”
“Not another word.”
Fear, anger, and hurt kept her silent. She waited until she could get her voice under control, and when she did, she managed through her teeth, “Yes, sir.”
She saw by the look on his face that it had been a direct hit. Kate turned and headed up the stairs. She hadn’t slammed her door in years, but she was tempted. Instead, she closed the door and threw herself onto the bed, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes into her ears. Her parents thought she was crazy and that she needed a shrink. They’d never believe that Marthen was truly dangerous. How was she supposed to keep them safe if they refused to listen to her?
Red Gold Bridge Page 10
