Winter Omens

by Trisha Leigh

  Of finding Pax. And of not finding Pax. About what I might have to do to get him out of a situation he foolishly let Griffin lead him into—for there is no doubt in my mind that Griffin was instrumental in taking my friend away from me.

  “Good boy, Wolf. Good boy. Do you know where Pax is? I know you do.”

  I stand back, keeping my eyes trained on my dog, who looks as though he’d rather not go back the way he came. There’s no telling what he’s witnessed today, but if it frightened him, then that’s all the more reason we need to hurry.

  “C’mon, Wolf. Find Pax.”

  His mismatched eyes regard me for several minutes, flicking from my gaze into the Wilds and back. Finally he makes that agreeable chuffing noise and turns. Every few steps he stops, checking behind him to make sure he hasn’t lost me or to sniff the underbrush. It’s not long before he slows, pressing closer to the ground. Then Wolf stops, emitting a long, soft whine. His gaze shines with what would be concern if he were a person, making me wish again that he could talk. His eyes slide from me to a spot up ahead, perhaps through the next clump of trees.

  This time, he lets me take the lead, pressing close to my side as I take hesitant steps forward until voices melt from the silence.

  “Please, just tell me what I want to know. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “You should have considered that before luring me out here.”

  The first voice, pinched and edged with trepidation and impatience, belongs to Pax. The second, honey-coated and pleasing, is the unmistakable voice of an Other.

  The clearing comes into view as I crouch down and peer through some evergreen branches. The scene steals the breath from my lungs and sinks a boulder into my hollow stomach.

  Pax has really done it. He’s found an Other.

  The alien leech sits at the base of a tree, arms tied behind him and a blindfold hiding his penetrating black eyes. His Warden uniform is torn and what is probably blood—it looks black from here—is dried on his mouth and forehead.

  Bile froths into my throat at the sight of the damaged captive. Unless it’s Griffin’s doing, then Pax injured him trying to get the answers he craves. And Griffin is nowhere to be seen.

  I reconsider that thought when a bright yellow snake catches my eye. It watches Pax and the Other with violet eyes, tongue flicking between its lips. If Griffin didn’t have his snake body wound tight around a tree branch, I would have pulled him down and crushed his head beneath my boot. He’s an observer now, nothing more, leaving Pax to deal with a situation he can’t hope to control on his own. Which also means Griffin’s actions—or lack thereof—are going to force me into that clearing.

  At least Pax covered the Other’s eyes. My mind is safe, at least for now. That is, if we’re right that they have to see or touch us to cause pain.

  Pax looks up, relief easing his defensive posture when I step out of the bushes, telling Wolf to stay. Wolf must have had enough violence for one day, because my dog remains on his belly.

  “What are you doing here?”

  In spite of my anger, or perhaps because of it, tears fill my eyes. Pax is okay. We’re still together. All we have to do is undo what he’s done. “You’ve been gone all day. I thought something had happened to you, so I came looking and then Wolf found me.”

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone to you-know-who for help.” I shoot a pointed glare at the golden snake, which stares back without a trace of guilt. Some misguided sense of loyalty stops me from saying his name, in case the Warden doesn’t know about Griffin’s role in his capture. I lower my voice to a whisper. “We can’t trust him.”

  The Warden smiles widely, the motion capturing my attention, and his smooth, water-spilling-over-rocks voice turns my head. “It’s curious you would think to protect Griffin, but it’s not necessary. I know he engineered my confinement, and he knows I won’t do anything to earn him any attention for it.”

  The puffiness of his mouth causes a lisp that’s almost funny. His statement flicks question after question through my mind, and even though I’m dying to know how he knows about Griffin helping us and why he won’t rat the arrogant boy out, I won’t give the Warden the satisfaction of engaging.

  Instead I drag Pax a little ways away, still whispering even though there’s no chance the Other won’t overhear. “Have you lost your mind? Did you Break when I wasn’t looking?”

  “I wanted answers, that’s all—”

  “Really? It seems like what you want is to get us both killed.” My assessment is harsh. Pax is grieving and full of guilt, but that doesn’t mean he’s not being selfish. This entire winter, I’ve done what he’s asked, I’ve followed him thinking that once he found out the truth he would accept it and then we could move on. I didn’t realize Pax never had any intention of moving past this moment.

  Perhaps I’ve been stupid to trust that he ever planned to help me find Lucas or help us devise a way to rescue the people of Earth from their overlords. But then memories struggle forward—ones of Pax’s heat-filled eyes locked onto mine, that slow smile, the way he pushed me to believe in my own ability to survive. I sigh, unsure of which person he is or if it’s okay if he turns out to be a little bit of both. “Did he tell you anything?”

  He shakes his head. “No. Nothing.”

  “So you hurt him.”

  To my relief, embarrassment floods his cheeks. At least some part of him knows this isn’t right. To torture someone—even an Other—who is defenseless makes us no better than them.

  And we are. No matter if half of our genes came from them, we are better. We have to believe that, or at least I do, otherwise the question of whose side we belong on rears its ugly head and I have no good answer.

  “I had to, and I’m not sorry. They hurt you. They took away Tommy…” Pax trails off. Maybe he knows the excuses remedy nothing.

  “We have to let him go, and we have to get out of here before he alerts the Others.”

  “He hasn’t yet,” Pax rushes to assure me. “If he had, they’d be here by now.”

  “Maybe not, but all they have to do is realize he’s missing and they can locate him in minutes, Pax. Minutes.” I narrow my eyes. “How far are we from the black building?”

  He tries to hide his surprise that I figured it out.

  “You mean the Observatory Pod,” the Warden interrupts, still lisping.

  When we look back toward him, he grins. Black hate wells up inside me like a fountain of ink, even though this particular Other has never done anything to me. I swallow hard, ignoring him, and wait for Pax to give me an answer.

  “Not far,” Pax admits.

  “Which means when he does decide to ask for help, they’ll be here in what? Ten minutes? We need to get out of here.”

  “She’s right, you know. It’s not that I do not desire to answer your questions—although I admit I have no reason to do so—but the Prime’s controls in my mind would make it difficult at best. We are the perfect open books to our commanders, and the perfect vaults to those who would try to learn our secrets.” The Warden’s voice softens, laced with sorrow or something very like it.

  He appears to be a teenager, perhaps a few years older, and every bit as handsome as they always are, even with black blood crusted against his chin. I wonder, not for the first time, what they actually look like inside these humanlike shells. The Others who tried to refresh me in Danbury referenced not being able to enhance hearing in human bodies, and Chief proved their ability to shape-shift, if only for a limited amount of time.

  I cross the clearing to the Other, watching his breath catch when he hears my footsteps. Like he’s afraid.

  “Althea, who smells of jasmine. Pax here gave me quite a beating, but I had to allow it. Chief wants you in particular.” A sorrowful smile ghosts his lips again, then he draws a deep breath of chilly air and leans his head back against the rough bark.

  What he’s saying dawns on me in that instant. He’
s been stalling all day, taking Pax’s abuse and refusing to answer questions, biding his time.

  Waiting for me.

  CHAPTER 27.

  The second I realize he’s told them where we are, I step forward and wrap my warm hands around his forearm. The Other jerks backward, trying desperately to twist out of my grasp. He must have heard the tale of what my hands did to his friends back in Danbury, and the beat of his heart pounds wildly against my palms.

  It’s not my intention to burn him, or melt his arm the way I did those Wardens before. Instead, I close my eyes and open my mind, waiting for the instant connection that happened when I touched the Other in the Cell last autumn.

  This experience feels different, mostly because there’s nothing to see. Before there were images, I could see everything that happened in the hive, but now only words filter through the blackness. They’re soft, hard to make out at first but grow louder by the moment. It takes a second to realize it’s because I walled off my alcove. It’s blocking my ability to see what’s going on, but not to hear.

  “Natej has found them. The girl, too. Close. Send everyone—everyone.” The voice belongs to the Prime, and it trickles dread down the back of my neck, leaving chills in its wake.

  Cool hands cover my upper arms, shaking me, knocking me loose from inside the tunnels. My eyes feel ready to pop as they refocus on this world and find Pax’s worried gaze.

  “What happened?”

  “Never mind. They know where we are and they’re coming right now.”

  “The Broken are not dead. Not all of them.” The Warden—Natej—utters the two sentences in a quick whisper, and at first I think I haven’t heard him correctly.

  Pax whirls, striding back and hauling the unruffled Other to his feet. “What did you say?”

  Natej grimaces in pain, gritting his teeth. “I thought since your trip to Portland is going to end in your deaths, you might as well have one of the answers you’ve been searching for.”

  The words stop Pax and me in our tracks, and before they can rearrange into something resembling coherence in my brain, the rest of the Others are here.

  They fill the Wilds, denser than the trees. They circle the clearing, muscles taut as they wait for instruction on how to bring us in. I’m not sure there’s even any point in fighting, but Pax raises his hands and starts an impressive windstorm before I can move.

  Leaves and branches whirl through the air, a big limb knocking at least four Others backward in a heap. They’re on their feet again before I can blink, racing at Pax, ready to tear him limb from limb with their bare hands.

  I raise my own palms without thinking, push the heat rising into them with all my might. Fire lands on three of the four Others heading for Pax, igniting their clothes and hair. They drop to the ground screaming, but the rest of the Others don’t pause, even when some are taken out by flying debris.

  Dirt rains on the burning trio out of nowhere, putting out the flames and allowing them to heal. At the edge of the clearing, Pamant stands with a grim smile on his perfect, evil face.

  They’ve brought an Element to the fight; the only answer is to run. We can’t stand against him, not with only the two of us. It doesn’t even matter, because two against more than two hundred isn’t a fight, anyway. Our only chance might be to travel. The bracelets would keep us together, but there’s no way I can get to Pax in time, not the way they’re rushing toward us.

  Three Others land on Pax, and the storm sweeping around the clearing like a twister stills in an instant. My will to fight dissipates, and when I reach into my center to find the heat, there’s nothing there but defeat. Wolf leaps on the pile of men struggling to keep Pax down and his hands out of commission, but one of the Others flings him away into the trees.

  A sob catches in my throat as four or five pairs of hands pin my arms behind my back. In the distance, behind the circle of hard, beautiful, exquisitely painful Other faces, a shaggy yellow wolf jumps on my Wolf, and they tumble into the foliage. When they don’t come back, I am thankful to Griffin for doing this one nice thing, luring my dog away to safety.

  The Others slam me down onto my butt in the dirt. They secure some slippery, clear mittens over my hands, then do the same to Pax. Our backs press against each other’s, and the solid reality of him makes me feel better, but also worse. Whatever they’ve slid over my hands feels thick and cool, like mud or glue, and a familiar energy thrums against my palms. It’s Spritan, and the realization further batters my hope. The Others must have figured out how I escaped their clutches before and had Cadi construct bonds that trap our powers.

  To test the theory I look for the heat, and with the last of my energy, try to push it into the gloves to melt them away. A strange sensation meets my attempt; it feels like the slick restraints grow colder, open jaws made of ice and swallow the fire whole.

  The Prime emerges from the cluster of Wardens, unharmed but looking slightly ruffled. Dirt smudges his cheeks and pieces of torn leaves stick in his thick blond hair. Anger flashes in his black eyes, and I look away, determined not to give him easy access to my mind, but that quick glance tells me he’s run out of patience.

  “I’ve decided that, even though you are two mere half-breed children, it is unwise to continue to underestimate you. That is why I’ve brought every available asset to ensure you will not escape.” The Prime’s voice caresses me, soft and intimate despite the anger boiling inside it. The effect makes me want to scream. “We have plans for the two of you. This has been an interesting exercise, but the time has come to learn what you can do, and then put an end to this annoyance.”

  He walks over and pats me on the head, smiling when I jerk to the side to avoid his touch.

  “We’ll be with the two of you shortly. Sit tight.” He turns away and strides toward a group of Wardens, ordering them around the clearing.

  Some Wardens come over to double check the security of our bonds then leave us alone while they tend to their wounded. The worst affected have fallen unconscious while they heal—the ones I burned and at least a couple Pax hit with a tree branch.

  The scene in front of us, the fact that I’m tied and bound inside some kind of gloves that prevent me from using my power, all appears a little like a dream. It can’t be happening, not after all we’ve been through; we can’t have been subdued with such ease. The Others wander about, dragging injured comrades onto those floating cots and sending them flying back through the Wilds, probably to the black building—the Observatory Pod, as the Warden called it. They murmur quietly among themselves, with the largest cluster of bodies surrounding Natej, the Other Griffin and Pax kidnapped.

  “Are you okay, Summer?”

  Okay? The Others caught us. They’re going to poke around in our minds until they learn what we can do with human veils. Then they’re going to kill us.

  It’s over. I am definitely not okay.

  “I’m not hurt, if that’s what you mean.” None of this is what Pax wanted, I know, but at this moment it’s hard not to blame him for our predicament.

  “If you’re waiting for me to apologize, I’m not going to do it. I did what I had to do.”

  “Fine. Could you just shut up, then?”

  “I didn’t want you to get hurt, though. I never wanted that,” Pax whispers, defeated. “But at least we found out about the Broken. That’s something.”

  With the heat trapped in my core, steam builds up, ready to pour out of my ears. Fighting with Pax isn’t going to help anything, but I’m as pissed as I’ve ever been, apology or no, knowledge or no. What good does knowing about the Broken do if we’re dead?

  I breathe in and out, concentrating on calming down. A small worry that I’m going to overheat and melt from the inside out without a way to release the boiling anger pushes against my attempt to quell the panic swirling like a whirlpool in my gut.

  An unnatural, purple-eyed rat scurries from the underbrush and over to us. Griffin. The sight of him brews a dual reaction of hope and irrita
tion. He’s part of the reason we’re in this mess, and after everything he made clear when he led us to Portland and his actions since, I don’t trust his motives. His little rodent feet scurry over my wrists, sending the immediate response to my brain to jerk away. I grit my teeth and stay still, willing to accept his help, if that’s what he’s offering.

  Nothing happens at first, but then Pax’s arms relax and his hands pull away from mine.

  And the Others notice what’s happening.

  Pax yanks away from me and stumbles to his feet as Griffin the rat scurries out of the clearing. A sudden resurgence of will to escape, to run, to be free jolts me out of my stupor. Lucas is out there waiting, and Deshi has endured Other captivity for months. Our secrets are their secrets, too, and we can’t give up. I want out of here. We have to get away.

  Except my hands are still bound. My powers remain trapped under the slippery mittens, slick with my sweat on the inside but perfectly undamaged.

  The Others run in a pack toward us, and Pax bends at my back. A sob catches in my throat. There’s not enough time; we’re not going to make it. “Hurry and let me loose. Get these gloves off!” Alarms ring in my ears, warning that the small opening provided by Griffin’s unexpected help grows smaller by the second.

  I feel a tug at my wrist and hear the snap of threads. My bracelet.

  “I’m sorry, Summer.”

  Pax springs after Griffin, who’s now a golden bird with unhurried purple eyes gazing down at the fracas as though he’s viewing a family Outing to the park on a special weekend. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  Pax left me. And he took my bracelet.

  At least fifty Others stay, surrounding me in a circle, while the rest crash through the underbrush in search of Pax. I don’t know if they’re aware of Griffin’s involvement. Natej certainly knows but claimed he wouldn’t tell.

  Anguish tightens my chest, making it hard to breathe. The return of crushing loneliness, the utter despair at being abandoned, washes through me, stabbing grief into every pore until my eyes don’t work. My muscles ache.