by Laken Cane
“I don’t want to leave Crowbridge,” I said, pacing. Fear made my stomach ache. “You can’t make me.” I was aware, very aware, that I sounded like a petulant child.
“I don’t mean to make you do anything,” he said, patiently. “I’m telling you what I see you becoming.”
“I’m not chasing the gods.”
He shrugged. “We’ll see. And thank you.”
I stared at his slender back. His messy dark brown hair snaked over his collar, stringy and dull. “For what?”
“For helping me decide what to do. We’ll start by planning an attack on the mutants who’re in town before they decide to come looking for humans. We’ll kill as many of them as we can. When that’s done, if we’re still living, we’ll begin creating a place where we—humans—can start over.” He stirred the simmering vegetables and when he spoke again, his voice was so distant I knew he was not really talking to me. “I’ll need you and the other two to spread the word as you hunt. Post signs along highways, send people here. I’ll—”
“There’s one thing we have to do first,” I interrupted. “Before we do anything else. We have to rescue Sage. We’ll sneak into their camp, find her, and bring her home.”
He rested the spoon on the countertop, then turned toward me, slowly and deliberately. He crossed his arms. “No. We’ll attack, and we’ll keep an eye out for her while we’re there.”
“First of all,” I said, immediately angry, “there’s no way you can attack that many mutants without getting killed. Did you see them? There were at least fifty of them that I saw before I ran. Gods, orphans, scouts. They have other human captives, too. Not just Sage. And we’re going to get them out of there. After they’re safe, feel free to go back and get your ass kicked.” I strode to him and poked him in the chest. “But until we get Sage back, you’re not attacking anyone.”
He said nothing, just watched me. Watched me like I was an unreasonable two year old throwing a tantrum.
“You stay here if you want,” I told him. “But Caleb and Lila are going with me. We’re going to save that little girl.”
“We have to kill as many of them as we can,” he said, calmly. “You’re responsible for the girl. You go in after her. The rest of us will attack the mutants.”
“There are three of you,” I said. “Why would you think you could take them on? What makes you believe you have a chance?”
He smiled. “Because I’ve done it a hundred times before. I know what I’m doing. And the mutants will help us.”
I stared, completely confused. “How?”
“The mutants are like vampires.”
The word slithered through my mind like a snake looking for something to bite. Vampires…
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“Their sleep is like a coma. Nothing can wake them. When they sleep, they’re vulnerable. And that’s when we get them. That’s when we go in and douse them with our special holy water.”
I hadn’t known.
I hadn’t known anything. “They…sleep?”
“Yes, they do. And that, Teagan, is when the gods die.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked Caleb, after he and Lila came back. “Why didn’t you tell me the mutants go into a forced sleep? That they’re like vampires that way?”
“Not just that way,” Lila said, but she grabbed her bowl of stew and left the room before I could question her. Which was fine with me.
“Talk to Richard,” Caleb said.
“I did. That’s why I know about the sleep.”
“They use it to recharge. If we were to capture one of them and somehow force him to stay awake, we think he’d implode.”
“But I’ve seen them in the daytime as well as night.”
“Here’s the thing. Each cluster is made up of two different groups of mutants. One group sleeps during a one hour window at night, and one group sleeps for one hour during the day. That way there are always mutants guarding the cluster. But.” He lifted a finger before I could interrupt him. “We’ve found that the nighttime awake cluster always has fewer guards than the daytime awake cluster. Maybe ten awake to fifty asleep. And their sleep coincides with our two o’clock. Day and night.”
“That’s our chance,” Richard said, walking into the kitchen, “Our window.”
My mind was spinning. “This is good. This is great.”
They smiled at my excitement. Maybe they were secretly laughing at me, but that didn’t bother me. The possibilities.
“So we can just wait for the nighttime cluster to sleep, then go take them out,” I said. “I’ll search for Sage while you guys are hosing the bastards down.” I clapped my hands, which startled the dog.
He lifted his head, gave a snort, then went back to sleep.
“Teagan,” Caleb said. “You know it won’t be that easy, right?”
“It doesn’t have to be easy. It just has to happen.”
Richard leaned against the sink. “Okay,” he said, finally. We both ignored Caleb’s look of surprise. “We’ll go in to kill, you’ll go in to rescue the girl. You understand you could be captured?” He paused. “You’ll have to stay calm.”
“Right,” Caleb said. “You can’t go into the cluster and freak out.”
I lifted my chin. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about killing the mutants. They’ll be too busy to care about me.”
Richard’s smile was slow in coming, but when it did, it lit up his eyes. “I told you you’re a hunter. Might as well get your feet wet now.”
“Hunter,” Lila called from the other room, incredulous. “Are you fucking kidding me? She’s a princess—not a badass.”
“She’s a hunter,” Richard said. He didn’t raise his voice, but the living room was just beyond the kitchen doorway. She heard him. “You and Caleb will teach her everything she needs to know.”
Lila came into the kitchen and slung her bowl into the sink. “I’m no one’s teacher, and I’m for damn sure not a babysitter. She’ll end up getting us all killed. She’s no hunter. She’s prey. Fucking vanilla scented prey.”
“You want out of the group, Lila?” Richard’s voice was calm, but it was deep, dark, and very angry. Lila seemed to have that effect on people.
She stiffened. “No.”
“Then you’ll help the new girl out, won’t you?”
Caleb said nothing, just stood against the wall and watched us all like a lab tech observing a cage of rats.
Lila slammed past me and stomped back into the living room, but she didn’t say a word.
“They may leave soon,” I said, when the silence became too heavy. “When will we go to town?”
“Probably two or three days,” Richard said. “They weren’t preparing for the trip when I watched them this morning.” He pointed his chin at the binoculars on the bar. “We have some time.”
“But how will I find her?” I put my fingers to my stomach as it began to burn. “They could have stashed her anywhere. In one of the shops or tied to a tree. Maybe she’s with the pregnant women…”
“There are two wagons—one with supplies and one with people.” He looked at me. “If they have your girl, she’ll likely be in the slave wagon.”
I lowered my hand and blew out a long breath. “Where are they traveling to, Richard? Do you think they have a place in mind or are they just wandering the world aimlessly, looking for…food and women?”
“I’ve been following them for two years and I haven’t figured that out. Now that I’m setting up a central hub here, I probably never will. But you three will.”
Caleb straightened. “Central hub? Now? Here?”
Lila crept back into the kitchen, a hand to her stomach, her eyes too wide in her pale face.
Richard nodded. “There are more supplies and untouched homes here than in any town we’ve seen in months. It’s time. You three will hunt mutants and lead people here. Put up signs.” He looked at Caleb, then Lila. “It’s time
.”
They looked like the world was coming to an end—again.
“What’s the big deal?” I asked. “Crowbridge is a great place to settle. It’s a good place to farm.” I waited, but they said nothing. “It’s a good place.”
“We’ve been together almost since the beginning,” Caleb said. “And…”
“And now the band is breaking up,” Lila finished. Her flippant tone couldn’t hide her sorrow.
“I’ll be right here,” Richard told her. “And you’ll be back.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sure.”
The silence was harsh. I expected them to hug, to shed a few tears, to say some sort of goodbye even though the parting had yet to happen.
They did none of those things.
Caleb sniffed, then walked to the table to pick up his water gun. When he began pouring alcohol into the chamber, then his two tanks, Lila joined him.
Quietly, they began to prepare their weapons.
“Fill your tanks, Teagan,” Richard said. He sounded weary.
“They’re still full. I haven’t used them.”
“You’ll always need extra—if you come across a large group, you can run out of alcohol fast. Fill some tanks, holster a machete, and…” He shrugged. “Get ready to fight.”
“Get ready to die,” Lila growled.
I walked to the table. “I’m not dying.”
“Without these you might.” Richard handed me a tiny plastic bag. “Put these in before we enter their camp.”
I poured the items out, and could feel myself paling. “I’d forgotten,” I whispered.
Earplugs.
Lila laughed. “An infant. You won’t last five minutes out there.”
The mutants’ death cry disabled me. Maybe this time wouldn’t be so bad, but I couldn’t take a chance that it would.
Richard walked toward the living room. “They won’t shut out the screams completely, but they’ll muffle them. You’ll do fine.”
“Thanks,” I told Richard.
“I’m going to sleep,” he said. “Wake me in two hours. Tonight Caleb and Lila can take you to get in some hunting practice.”
Caleb nodded.
“Going to pop your cherry,” Lila told me. “Fun, fun. God, I hate newbies!”
In just a couple of nights, I’d be in the midst of the gods, fighting for my life and searching for Sage.
I stared down at my earplugs and water guns, unmoving.
Earplugs and alcohol against dozens of mutants. Of course, it helped that most of them would be asleep.
“Change your mind?”
I snapped my head up at Lila’s voice. “No.”
“Scared?” She smiled, but it wasn’t a nice smile.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I’m scared.”
“You’d be stupid not to be scared,” Caleb said. “I’m afraid. Every damn time we go to face them, I’m afraid. If you become a hunter, you will always be afraid.” He looked up from his work and met my stare. “Can you handle that?”
An image of the pregnant woman I’d killed came out of nowhere and slammed into my brain. I cried out and staggered backward, forgetting, for one second, where I was.
Caleb was suddenly in front of me, gripping my upper arms. “Are you okay?”
“She’s fucking brain damaged,” Lila said, steadily filling her tanks. “Told you.”
I pulled away from him. “I…” I swallowed hard, then took a deep breath. “Just bad memories.”
He nodded. “Will you be all right?”
“Yeah. Yes. I’m fine.”
I looked down when something pressed against my legs. The dog stared up at me, his brow furrowed.
“Awww.” I knelt and wrapped my arms around him. “It’s okay, boy. I freaked you out, didn’t I?”
“Give him a name.”
I glanced up at Lila, surprised. “What?”
“Give him a damn name.”
I stared at her a moment longer. I settled down on the floor, my legs crossed, and pulled him to me. “What should we call you, little guy?”
Names meant something, and no matter how much of a hurry Lila was in for the dog to be called something other than boy, I wasn’t going to rush it.
“Teagan,” Caleb said.
“Yes?”
“How old are you?”
I ran my fingers over the dog’s thin body. I’d cleaned him up and washed his wounds, but there wasn’t much else I could do. His leg didn’t appear broken, despite his limp. “Sixteen. How old are you guys?”
“I’m eighteen,” he said. “Lila hasn’t ever said. I figure she’s around thirty or forty.”
Lila snorted. “It’s none of your business how old I am.”
“She’s twenty,” I told him. “Twenty one, maybe.”
Lila lifted an eyebrow. “Who the fuck cares? Really. Who cares?”
“Just curious,” Caleb said.
“Nosy, you mean,” she told him.
He grinned, then sobered. His eyes were solemn when he looked at me. “You did good. Fourteen and alone when shit went nuts, and here you are with a setup like this, house full of supplies. You did a good job.”
I smiled down at the dog, ridiculously pleased. “Thanks.”
“Let’s get back to work.” He grinned at me. “I’m taking you out tonight.”
“Yeah,” Lila said. “Our Caleb is a real good time. Taking you to see A Gathering of Mutants. I hear there’ll be lots of alcohol.” She cackled at her own wit.
I got to my feet, ignoring them both. I wasn’t afraid of tonight, really.
But the thought of walking alone into the gods’ camp loomed over me and left me dark and filled with doom.
I was sure that fear would become terror when we entered the camp, and I could not let it incapacitate me.
I was going to get Sage.
And I was going to face the gods.
But first, I was going to go with Caleb and Lila and find out what it was like to deliberately seek out a mutant.
I was going to hunt.
Chapter Fourteen
The evening sun was drooping tiredly in the sky when we left the house. Caleb and Lila were both subdued and I was glad of their solemnity. I didn’t want to be the only one with fear lying like a cold fist in the pit of my stomach.
“You will always be afraid. Can you handle that?”
I really wasn’t sure I could.
Once upon a time I’d enjoyed the little thrills of fear and adventure as I’d bicycled from my house to town each morning.
But that’d been when I was living in relative ignorance. Blissful ignorance.
Seemed like a million years ago.
Stay with me, Robin. I need a friend.
I’m here, sister.
Her body had never been found, so my mother hadn’t given up the idea that Robin was somewhere alive. Waiting for us.
I knew she was dead.
I felt it.
I felt her with me. She couldn’t be with me if she were still alive, could she?
Could she?
But what if…
No.
Robin was dead. No matter what I wanted to believe or hope for.
She was with me.
The bulky water guns and alcohol tanks were heavy and uncomfortable as I jogged down the streets, Caleb on one side of me and Lila on the other.
“Do we lure them to us?” I asked. “Or just hope we get lucky?”
“It depends,” Caleb said. “Today, we’ll see who we can lure out.” He flashed me a smile. “We’ll use Lila for bait.”
“Or we won’t,” Lila said.
“Come on, Lila. Be a good sport,” he told her. “I’ll take my turn next time.”
“Whatever.”
It seemed crazy to be putting ourselves in danger, deliberately hoping for a mutant to pay us a visit, but pretty much everything about being a hunter was crazy.
I squeezed the gun I carried. There was another one in a holster at my side. It d
idn’t seem like enough.
“Try here,” Lila said. She walked across the street and leaned against a streetlight, then winked at me. “You’re looking a little pale, precious.”
“Why are you always such an asshole?” I asked.
“She’s like a seven-year-old boy,” Caleb said. “The more she likes you, the more she’ll torment you.”
“Awesome,” I muttered.
Lila looked away. “Get out of here. Let’s see what we can entice in.”
Caleb tapped my arm. “Come with me.”
We jogged across the street and then slipped to the side of the house directly across from Lila. “You’re on,” Caleb called to her. “Hit it, fresh meat.”
“Why don’t we just shoot a gun?” I asked. “That will always bring the mutants.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “but we don’t want to bring every mutant within two miles. We only do that if we have a lot more hunters and a few badass traps waiting.”
“Oh.”
In the next second, Lila screamed, and even though I was ready for her to make some noise, I jumped and shrieked—not nearly as loudly as Lila, but still.
Caleb sighed.
I didn’t look at him. I was too embarrassed.
We waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Finally, Caleb pushed away from the wall. “We’ll try somewhere else.”
Lila met us in the middle of the street, and we walked on.
As we walked, I found myself waiting for Sage to run toward us. She’d have some story about how she’d been taken, and how she’d escaped, and how she found me once again.
It’d happened once. It could happen again.
“What’s wrong?” Caleb asked me.
“Just thinking about Sage.”
“How’d you find her?” Lila asked.
“She found me, really.” I told them about Sage’s pregnant mother—but not what I’d done to her. I also told them about killing the mutant, and then losing the child. “I heard a knock on my door and there she was.”
“Strange kid,” Lila said.
“Yeah. Super smart. God knows what she went through before they escaped.”
“Seems strange, though, doesn’t it?” Caleb asked.
I frowned. “What does?”
