by ST Branton
He paused for a second, then remembered something. “There was another theory. My partner, Steph, she thinks it’s some kind of sickness. We picked up something weird in the water supply. Been trying to pin it down for days but no luck.”
“Hence the Hazmat suits?”
“Hence the Hazmat suits. If it’s not human, and it’s not animal, then it must be something ecological. Protocol is we don’t want to take any risks. They’re a pain in the ass, but they’re better than risking a total wipeout.” He shook his head. “Whatever it is, we don’t get it. I’m starting to think we might be operating a little out of our depth here, but I don’t understand how that could be.” Deacon looked genuinely perplexed. “I mean, what else are we supposed to do?”
“Well, maybe it’s complicated.” I moved away from the bed to the single chair in the room, which had given me a killer neck cramp from napping in it. “Nobody is going to understand something they’ve never seen before, right?”
He eyed me somewhat suspiciously. “You seem to be taking this in stride, Vic. I know what that scene looks like, down in the village. I might have expected you to be a little more freaked out.”
“I’m not some damsel,” I warned him. “You may have noticed that by now.”
“Look, I can’t pretend to understand what you are. I just know that wherever you go, chaos is sure to follow. Or maybe it’s vice versa, I don’t know. But lives are at stake Vic. If you did know anything, you’d tell me, right? We’re at that level now?”
I wanted to say yes; I really did. My heart wished I could be totally honest with Deacon, but my brain knew it was out of the question. He was no different than all the other officers on the other side of that fence—just doing his job. And that meant he would try to stop me.
He didn’t know I could not be stopped. He didn’t know I was the only one on Earth who could do the job that needed to be done. He didn’t even really know what that job was. If I thought he’d believe me, I might have taken the chance to explain it.
Unfortunately, I already knew him way too well for that.
“I’ve already told you everything I can, Deacon.” I sat back on the edge of the mattress to try and generate some much-needed space. Every time I talked to this guy, I felt him inching closer to that small, warm place where pearls of trust began to form. Neither of us was ready for that. We were getting too close.
“Why is it,” he asked thoughtfully, “that every time I see you, I feel like I’m two inches from an interrogation? I don’t like that, Vic. I’m tired of running up against a brick wall.” He smirked. “Though I gotta say, tying me to the bed was an interesting innovation.”
“You think so?” I reached across him and grabbed an extra wad of ace bandages. “Then you’re going to love what comes next.”
He opened his mouth to reply, and I stuffed those bandages between his teeth in one quick thrust. Not far enough to choke him, but deep enough that he couldn’t just spit them out. Deacon gasped through his nose. His chiseled face registered a whole range of emotions, from pure shock to betrayal and disbelief. Muffled sounds came from behind the ball of cotton.
“You didn’t think I was about to let you go, did you? Come on, Deacon. I’m still a criminal, after all.” I stood up and backed away from the bed, watching him strain to free himself and spit out the makeshift gag. The sounds were getting louder as he realized that yes, I really was going to leave him in his current state. “You can scream all you want, my friend. I already warned the front desk about all the wild sex we’d be having in here.”
Of course, I hadn’t done that, but he couldn’t know for sure. He rolled his eyes and pulled harder at the ropes.
“Be careful with those,” I cautioned him. “I don’t know how long it’ll take for housekeeping to find you tomorrow, and rope chafing is a real bitch.” If looks could kill, I would’ve been smote directly into my grave. “Anyway, I’m not naïve enough to think you won’t catch up with me sooner or later. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to castigate me then.” Gathering up my stuff, I turned for the door. “Oh, and don’t worry. The room’s all paid up.”
I shut the door on the bed frame’s furious rattling, Deacon shouting muted curses through his gag. Man, was he going to let me have it the next time I saw him.
I was kind of looking forward to it.
For now, though, he was little more than a sexy, stubborn obstacle that I needed out of my way. I tossed my stuff into the back of the Audi, got into the driver’s seat, and pulled away from the lot without looking back. I’d tied those knots nice and tight, but Deacon was a formidable adversary, and the cleaning crew probably made its rounds in the morning.
My clever little play would only buy me so much time.
Sometimes, I think you are crueler than you know, Victoria.
“You would say that. I think he liked it, deep down.” I put my foot on the gas and braced myself for whatever old-school chauvinism Marcus was about to lay on me. The dude was a hell of a soldier, but he could’ve benefited from a little time in Sparta.
No man enjoys humiliation at the hands of an enemy.
“Well, Deacon’s a big boy. I’m sure his ego will absorb the blow. Besides, tying him up beats shooting him. For both of us.” Even the thought of taking Deacon down made me squirm inside. Maybe that was a sign I knew him too well already. He’d become a person to me now, with a face and a heart and a soul.
I hoped that wasn’t going to be a problem.
CHAPTER SIX
I ditched the car on the other dead-end path this time, closer to the site of the fenced-off town. This time, I used my sword to cut an opening in the fence instead of climbing a tree like an animal. The fencing was cheap and flimsy, in stark contrast to the forest of razor wire on top. But when I slipped through, the broken pieces bounced more or less back into place, effectively hiding the gap.
“Real secure perimeter, you brainiacs,” I muttered.
Mortal defenses rarely fare well against a weapon of the gods.
There seemed to be fewer agents patrolling the streets now that it was daylight, or at least, I saw fewer flashlight beams dancing through the impenetrable fog. I did hear snippets of panicked conversation as I stole along the deepest parts of the empty houses’ shadows.
“St. Clare’s missing, man.”
“What the hell do you mean, he’s missing? What happened to him?”
“Lieutenant says he might have been carried off by something big. There’s blood, and the ground’s all torn up.”
“What’s big enough to carry off a full-grown man around here? They said there wouldn’t be grizzlies.”
“There aren’t. That’s the problem. No drag marks, either.”
Maybe it was misplaced pride, but I was pretty proud of that. I knew I could give any of these guys a run for their money in the strength department now that I had the nectar flowing through me. A bear too, come to think of it.
If only the problem was as simple as an asshole bear.
I sneaked my way around to the place where Deacon and I had been attacked, hoping it wasn’t too thoroughly picked over and that any tracks were still intact. The first thing I saw was that the spot was essentially becoming a mud bog, what with all the clinging fog.
My boots sank into the ground, making obnoxious sucking noises as I yanked them back up. I held in a groan of frustration and told myself to take it as a learning experience. Practice adaptation. Use your disadvantages to become more flexible.
Marcus was starting to rub off on my own internal monologue.
“I’m going to need your help with this,” I whispered to him, staying low to the ground. The wet mud was cold and slimy on my legs. “I have no problem admitting I don’t know shit about tracking. I think we went camping once when I was like, seven.”
I am honored to share this inaugural experience with you, he said, the glee evident in his voice. There was this time, when I was a young lad living in the middle—
“I�
��m sure it’s a great story, but we really need to get to it.”
Once again, my vast knowledge is useless, he muttered to himself.
A string of pitiful yellow tape drooped off of the side of the tree closest to the spot where Deacon’s colleague had died. The body was gone, but an eerie, blood-streaked impression remained, littered with tattered scraps of a Hazmat suit. I crept closer, ignoring the cold apprehension coiled in the pit of my stomach. Nothing but silence touched my ears. The fog pulled in close around me.
Look for prints, Marcus instructed. If there are none, look for obvious disturbances in the earth.
I glanced around at the ruptured soil. “You mean, literally everywhere?” There wasn’t a centimeter that wasn’t disturbed as far as I could see. Some of the deeper gouges were filling with condensation, creating miniature pools in the dirt. “Shit. This is all going to wash away, isn’t it? We’d better move quick.”
Then you ought to listen harder. Look for obvious disturbances in the earth and see if you can form a trail.
I frowned. “You didn’t say that second part before.” Stepping gingerly, I kept my eyes peeled for any marks that appeared different from the others, more foot-like maybe. A few feet in, I hit the jackpot. “There!”
The print was huge, bigger than my whole hand. It was clearly a paw but not any kind I had ever seen before. The claws that ripped through Deacon’s suit and flesh stood out in high relief, and I wondered again how he’d been lucky enough to survive. “What the hell do you think this bastard is?”
Definitely one of the Forgotten. The gods loved to turn their minions into wild things. It seems at times that animals are closer to the gods than humans—at last as far as appearance goes. In my experience, animals tend to be far less cruel than humans.
“I’m with you on that. That thing that attacked Deacon, it sure looked like a giant dog or something. But I can’t be sure. It was dark and that damned fog made it hard to see.”
Well when we find it, you’ll have plenty of time to inspect its dead body up close.
I smiled. “Quite a pep-talk coach.”
As always, I wished I shared his battle-hardened confidence. The size and depth of the pawprint was what concerned me the most. Were we headed into a battle with some kind of landlocked Godzilla? Reflexively, I felt for the hilt that I had secured at my hip before venturing back over the fence. “The Gladius Solis can handle whatever this is, right?”
Kronin’s sword can handle anything.
I wanted to ask if that was truth or just Carcerum propaganda he was spouting, but it didn’t seem like the right time to pick a petty fight. Instead, I focused on finding the next print amid the muddy morass. A human footprint stood out to me for a moment before I realized it was probably mine, left in the process of fighting off the beast I was trying to follow.
“This is harder than it looks.”
Most things are. You are learning much today.
I huffed and redoubled my efforts, determined not to be bested by Marcus’s interminable sass-talk. At first, I thought it might be a lost cause. The battleground was too chaotic for my untrained eye. Then I spotted a partial shape dug into the mud. “There!”
Good. Onto the next.
I felt like a little kid going on a scavenger hunt, except instead of searching for candy or Easter eggs at church in my Sunday best, I was following the trail of an angry, murderous monster that had killed at least one person and gravely injured a second. Under any other circumstances, I would’ve counted myself lucky that it ran away and washed my hands of the problem. None of my business, right?
Wrong. It was all my business now, every single morbid piece of it.
The farther we got from the site of the attack, the easier my task became. The heavy prints were much more distinct when surrounded by otherwise intact surfaces, and I had little trouble tracing the creature’s progress west, away from the village. The hush of the woods fell in over me like a blanket, layering in with the fog. The all-encompassing quiet was by turns comforting and oppressive. I had to fight the reflexive assumption that my senses were somehow being suppressed, that I was being smothered by malignant forces of nature.
I paused to breathe in deeply, chasing the extraneous thoughts from my mind. “Talk to me about something, Marcus. I think these stupid trees are starting to get inside my head.”
May I make a suggestion?
“Go for it.” I stretched, listening to my spine crackle.
It will be dark soon. You should prepare to camp. Traveling in unfamiliar territory overnight would be quite unwise, especially given that stray Forgotten may be wandering.
“Oh.” I looked up as far as I could and saw a sliver of grey sky through the thick canopy, virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the washed-out landscape. “Right. Good idea.”
As I foraged around for something with which to construct a shelter, I tried not to reflect on how utterly unprepared I was. Living on the streets or squatting in a building was nothing to me, but roughing it in the wilderness for a couple nights? Yeah, right. Even my slum of a loft had a working toilet.
“I hope it doesn’t rain.” I glanced up again as if I’d be able to tell through the haze of fog and my own ignorance of the outdoors. With a bunch of sticks in hand, I picked the softest-looking spot I could find and built an awkward rectangle around it, laying more sticks and grass across the top for a roof.
A castle fit for a king, Marcus said.
“I appreciate the effort, but your lie hurts me, dude.” The notion of spending a night in there was somewhat less than appealing, but I was too exposed without some kind of structure. Not that anything short of a damned bunker would be enough to keep one of those heinous beasts at bay. “I think I’ll sleep with the sword in my hand tonight.”
That would be prudent.
I found his agreement less than encouraging.
As it turned out, I shouldn’t have worried about sleeping at all because it just wouldn’t happen. I lay curled up for warmth on the damp undergrowth, staring at the gaps in my “wall.” The sword hilt lay within easy reach, just in case. Endless what-ifs paraded through my mind. What if that thing found me before I found it? What if it got the drop on me? What if I ended up dead before the sun came up, and all of this was for nothing?
The forest seemed to amplify all the fears I’d kept so carefully under wraps before. In New York and San Francisco, I had at least still been surrounded by millions of other people. Out in the middle of Washington’s nowhere, I was all alone. It had been a long time since I felt so small.
“Marcus?” My voice seemed to stop within inches of my face and drop to the ground, the word dead.
Hail, Victoria. What troubles you?
“Are you still up to talking? I can’t get to sleep, and I was hoping you might bore me to dreamland.” I was putting on a brave face, and I think he knew it. To his credit, he didn’t call me out.
What do you want to talk about?
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging on my side. “Anything. Tell me what life was like in the beginning.” I wanted to hear that he’d had a hard time, too, that it wasn’t just me who kept secretly struggling, even after I thought I’d gotten the hang of things.
It was… confusing. I have told you about my first encounter with a Forgotten—the minotaur. Many of my fellow soldiers did not, or could not, recover from witnessing the existence of such a creature. I know at least one was driven mad by it in the end.
“Uh huh.” Hardly the most encouraging thing he could have said, but I made myself stay quiet. This particular story time was for listening and calming my hyperactive brain, not for witty repartee. It didn’t really matter what Marcus told me so long as I had something other than gnawing anxiety to focus on.
However, I have not had any regrets, even after the eventuality of my death. Though it jarred me to discover the truth of the universe, to stumble by complete accident upon the realm of the gods, I found a most noble purpose in the job
I was called to do. That purpose has shaped me through many millennia, and I believe that it ultimately led me to you.
“It’s a nice sentiment, anyway,” I murmured. My fingers traced the ornate carving on the hilt. I closed my eyes. “You don’t miss your old life?”
Perhaps I did on occasion. But I have always been a soldier. It was far from easy during my time serving the empire. Long, bloody days. And Rome was far from perfect. Serving Kronin however, I knew at least I was on the right side. And there is nothing like the righteous cause of justice to add fire to your bones.
“Fiery bones sound way less pleasant than you think.”
A life like this is not for the faint of heart. He spoke with more than a tinge of pride. It requires a constitution that many humans simply do not have. You may consider yourself unique among the denizens of the Earth, Victoria. Blessed may be the wrong choice of word, but some may call you by it.
“It’s definitely the wrong word. Think of what we’ve seen in just the last eight hours.” The bloody imprint left by the corpse of the dead FBI officer floated around the darkness behind my eyelids, for all intents and purposes a shallow grave. “I’ve been doing crazy shit for a really long time, but sometimes all of this just, it’s heavy, you know?”
That is undeniable. It is also why this burden is only passed to the strong. I cannot say I knowingly chose you, Vic, although I wish I could. But there are times when the path seeks out the one to walk it.
“I certainly did a lot of walking today.” Cold and pervasive moisture notwithstanding, I was grateful for the rest. The bottoms of my feet had begun to ache. “Do you think we’ll be able to make up enough ground to catch this son of a bitch? Seems like he really booked it.”
Its territory is likely not very far. I assume we will encounter it again fairly soon.
I didn’t much care for fighting the beast on its own turf, but it couldn’t be helped. This was a problem in need of solving, and I was the problem-solver in residence. “So, it’s some kind of animal, then?” Calling it an animal made things seem manageable. I understood how to deal with animals.
