Rick said, “They just arrived in the middle of a giant magical swirl of color, Jonathon. Me, I’m not gonna worry about the cat.”
*Purr,* said Sklayne, as if he just couldn’t help himself—and then his mind voice shut down with a hint of embarrassment.
Garrie turned her attention to Drew for the briefest moment, sending him a skeptical and meaningful eye. “Drew?”
“Hey,” Drew said. “I’m good. They called, I came. Just because I messed up once doesn’t mean you can’t count on me for stuff like this.”
Garrie thought that in fact, maybe it did. “We still have air to clear. Until that’s done, I don’t want to feel even the faintest of interference from you. You gonna be good with that?”
Drew held his hands up in a posture of surrender, glancing at Trevarr in a way he couldn’t seem to help—just as he couldn’t seem to help taking that one step away. “Definitely good with that,” he said. “Just want to be part of the team while I’m here. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I just screwed up, all right?”
“Right,” Garrie muttered, not quite entirely to herself. She felt Trevarr’s awareness...his scrutiny. A conversation unfinished. But Sklayne reached out an abnormally long leg with an abnormally big paw and swatted her on the shin, not quite sheathing his claws, and she turned back to the real matter at hand. The kyrokha. The shelter. Exhaustion and tear stains and one softly crying baby who was probably out of diapers at this point.
Rick’s arm no longer looped around Lucia’s shoulders, but he stood behind her—with her—and they both pushed the edge of safety. Lucia looked as bad as any of them. Quinn merely looked grim, sitting on the edge of the picnic table with his feet on the bench, but the past hours had clearly eaten at Lucia’s reserves. Her eyes seemed huge; her face drawn. Garrie well understood why—that she was fending off both the emotional impact of the entity surrounding them and the fears of those trapped inside the shelter with her.
Rick said quietly, “Can you help us?”
“We made it back,” Garrie said, not quite answering that question. “It’s a first step.”
The protective woman had grown weary, but no less outspoken. “And who the hell is that with you? Conan the Barbarian?”
Garrie glanced at Quinn, hesitating on the words that would explain him. Trevarr answered first, without explaining at all.
“My name is Trevarr,” he said—speaking English again, his accent stronger than it had been before his months of incarceration and his words a little stiffer.
Garrie added simple truth. “He’s a bounty hunter,” she said. “Not from around here.”
The woman narrowed her eyes, wrinkled up her nose. “Oddly, I feel none the wiser. How about you just get us out of here?”
How about. Garrie eased closer to the entity’s boundaries, drawing on her breezes—feeling their warmth, the new touch of Trevarr. She glanced at Lucia and Quinn. “I’m going to lift an edge for you.”
Lucia grabbed Rick’s arm, probably in lieu of running headlong through the entity to grab Garrie’s. “Chiclet! You said it hates you!”
“Yeah, but I don’t exactly taste like me right now.” She stole a look at Trevarr, found his understanding. “I’m not actually sure I’ll taste exactly like me ever again.”
“Be ready to be wrong,” he warned her.
Then again, it wasn’t exactly as if they had a plan. And they had to free the captives before they could stop the entity. To try to stop the entity.
Garrie shielded herself, tight and strong but full of that unusual new warmth. She centered herself, emptying the emotions that might color her shield, and...
Touched it.
No reaction. No fury, no backlash of recognition.
She looked at Trevarr with her hope showing through.
“Do not hesitate,” he said. “Given time, it may yet recognize you.”
And remember that it hates me.
She had to free these people before then. So no, no hesitation at all. Smooth and quiet, swift and deft. She slipped breezes through the paper thin space remaining above the Secret Recipe and lifted, growing an escape tunnel only she could see.
But that tunnel was only three feet high when awareness shuddered through the kyrokha.
“Atreya.” Trevarr’s voice was low, careful not to startle.
“It couldn’t just be easy, could it?” Garrie eased back, letting the tunnel shrink slightly, and didn’t wait to see whether the entity relaxed. Not when this was the only, best chance to free these people from the shelter. To free her people from the shelter.
“Quinn,” she said, barely raising her voice, “take point. Hands and knees, straight to me. Straight. Show them how it’s done.”
Quinn stood straighter, looking at her—looking back with an obvious hesitation at the baby, at Lucia.
“Now, Quinn,” Garrie said, watching a thin line of dark red grow around the edges of her tunnel. Ethereal itching, and sooner or later the entity was going to scratch. “The rest of you get in line to follow—one at a time, except the baby and her parents.”
Already they were shuffling into place, the young man wanting to be first and getting glared back to the middle of the pack, the baby and her mothers taking the invitation to follow Quinn. Quinn went down to his hands and knees without any further hesitation, unthinkingly shifting aside as he hit a big clump of sharp stick-tight burrs.
“Stop!” Garrie told him. “Look at me. Stay straight. We’ll pull out the sharp stuff later.”
Quinn cursed under his breath and crawled on, his gaze locked on Garrie’s. She backed up to keep him moving and when he’d fully cleared the tunnel, she offered her hand and invited him up. “Welcome back.”
“I should say the same to you,” he told her, sparing a quick glance at Trevarr. “What next?”
“Keep ’em by that big rock,” she told him, nodding to a car-sized tumble of rock by the trail edge. “They won’t like it. But this thing is shifting—we’ll need to escort them out of here.” She turned back to the shelter, letting her grip on Quinn’s hand linger. A silent really glad to have you out of there. He briefly squeezed her fingers and then released her, moving to the rock. She said, “Okay—Mom One, without the baby—you go first. You’re gonna watch me. Mom Two, leave that baby gear behind. You’ll need all your attention to keep the baby from bumping into things from that chest sling thing—keep your eyes on One’s feet and keep your ears tuned to me.”
They moved carefully and quickly, and aside from a huge collective gasp when Mom One lurched sharply to the side at the burrs, they moved smoothly enough, heeding Garrie as she murmured, “Stay down, stay down, stay down...okay, Mom One...welcome to the other side.” And then she and Mom One helped Mom Two up, and Quinn gathered them to the rock, and Garrie turned back to see that the red limning her tunnel had spread and darkened.
“The rest of you,” she said, not quite able to hide her urgency. “Two at a time now—you’ve seen how it’s done.”
She couldn’t fool Lucia, no matter how many shields lay between them. “Chic?”
“It’s holding,” Garrie told her. Which was the same as telling her nothing at all and Lucia knew it.
The hiker couple went next, and then the young man...by the time Lucia ducked to start her journey, the etherea around tunnel pulsed with an angry beat, blackened red streaking centerward.
“Hurry, Lu,” Garrie muttered, fully aware of strife behind her—of the young man trying to leave, and Quinn speaking sharply, and sudden silence falling as Trevarr moved into the conversation with a mere shift of his weight. And probably a sharp look, but Garrie couldn’t spare her attention to check the situation as the tunnel throbbed, sinking down toward Lucia’s back. “C’mon, c’mon—”
She stepped away, beckoning for haste, and Lucia finally scrambled free and up into Garrie’s arms, staggering them both just a little. Just that quickly she twisted around. “Rick?”
“Be careful!” Garrie said sharply, putting he
rself back at the end of the angry, shrinking tunnel—not daring to push it outward again. “Stay tight—elbow crawl!” An upper curve of her shield caught on Rick’s wriggling butt as he dropped and she just barely slicked it free—but the entity jerked at her touch, quivering with irritation.
She didn’t know what Rick had felt—only that he knew. Panic flashed over his features and then determination, and she crouched to meet him—when his hands emerged, she grabbed them to pull, telling him, “Down! Be flat! We’ll get you!” Lucia dove in beside her so they were one per hand, and then suddenly Trevarr was there, clasping both of Rick’s wrists and tugging back in one hard, smooth yank.
“Yes!” Garrie said, releasing the tunnel; the entity slammed down to the ground with an angry slap, rebounding just enough to avoid the Secret Recipe. “You’re good!”
Trevarr pulled Rick to his feet just as smoothly, and the ranger gazed askance at him, feeling that strength. Voices rose behind them, the young man snapping, “Get off me, man!” and the rest of them chiming in with irritated impatience.
The young man had not, Garrie gathered, made any friends during her absence. “Oh, stop it,” she snapped at him. “And the rest of you, too. This is almost over.” She brushed herself off, glancing at Quinn. “Cell phones?”
“Yup,” he said, knowing exactly what she asked—whether anyone had taken video that included them. The connection here wasn’t good enough for uploading, but as soon as they made it into the city...
“Wouldn’t take any chances,” he said, with a particular eye on the hiking couple.
Easy enough. She rarely carried her own cell phone—and never wore a digital watch—for good reason. She imbued her breezes with an intensity of sparkle and sent them out in a gentle push—and then discovered Sklayne had gotten there before her.
*Meow,* he said, and then remembered to do it out loud, a pealing sound of hello. He wound a greeting around everyone’s shins, spiking a sharp energy in her ethereal awareness that the others would never so much as suspect.
A new cell phone was a small price to pay for surviving this day.
“That’s that,” she said. “Let’s get them out—”
Sklayne’s back arched. His tail poofed out, his ears went flat.
Trevarr whirled around to face downhill, his intensity so marked that Drew, who had been ambling back up the hill to them, stopped short and looked wildly around, pointing at himself to ask me? in pantomime.
All of Garrie’s attention shifted from the thing behind them to the expanse of unguarded area downhill of them. “Oh my God,” she said, turning to the cluster of escapees. “Get down,” she snapped. “Get down and be quiet!”
Because “run away” was no longer an option.
She ran downhill a few steps, cupping her hands at her mouth. “Drew! Incoming! Incoming!” She gestured wildly for him to join them and he dropped his casual guy amble and sprinted uphill, nothing of grace but lanky legs covering the distance—and still Garrie ran down to meet him, ducking in to put herself at his back and shield him from the hard incoming breezes. Seeking breezes, quickly growing to blunt, invasive force. They tasted of cold burning glyphs and anger, and they sent the mountain entity into an angry rumble.
Ghehera was coming.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 39
Tell Me You Didn’t
From the outside, the rainbow aurora of the oskhila dripped gems of pinpoint color and darkness. It was beautiful and mesmerizing and should have indeed disgorged a unicorn or even a flock of fairies, all glittery wings and giggles.
Instead it disgorged Anjhela.
It also disgorged the two surviving bounty hunters from those who had come for Trevarr in Sedona—mixed bloods with hard-scaled heads and distorted noses, piercings scattered freely over their heads and faces and interspersed with tattooed glyphs. One bore stained axes; the other bore two swords.
Neither, it seemed, were taking any chances.
Behind them, a fourth figure stepped out of the darkness. He was tall and lean and quite beautiful, his silvered hair slicked back and rising from his crown in a twist of knots, his eyes smeared with kohl, and a complicated tattoo running down the side of his neck. Clothed in soft boots, loose pants, and a tunic that rippled with burnt orange and raw brown and hints of yellow, he looked nothing like a man prepared to fight.
At least, not with blade or fist.
Leather swirled behind her; Garrie knew without looking that Trevarr had joined her—and that he had taken Lukhas to hand.
Anjhela greeted him with a haughty lift of her chin. She wore a new outfit of fitted leather—this one with a corset that not only enhanced the perfect curve of her waist, but tightly bound her abdominal injury. Even from a distance her erect stance seemed stiff, her movement shuttered...her mouth tight.
Then again, she was lucky. It had been a more than fatal wound. Or should have been.
It didn’t stop her from speaking with a smoky purr. “You should have known they would use me to find you,” she told Trevarr, displaying her metal-sheathed hand with a graceful, commanding curl of the fingers.
But the glove did not gleam. And the hand trembled.
“I knew.” He sounded perfectly calm. “I should have taken your head.”
Where the glove failed to gleam, her eyes didn’t. “You should have,” she agreed. “Now we have you both. And we have...” She frowned, her gaze lifting as she absorbed the enormity of the mountain entity. “What have you done?”
Quinn’s voice intruded from behind Garrie—somewhere between the spot Trevarr had taken at her back and the group of people who were, she hoped, trying very hard to be invisible. “Who are they?” he asked. “What’s she saying?”
Of course. Not in English. She turned her head without taking her eyes from the Keharians. “Ex-girlfriend with a grudge. Bad guys. Maybe an Evil Overlord on the side.”
“So much clearer now,” Quinn muttered.
Anjhela took a step back. “This...this is one of ours?”
“Lost here,” Trevarr said. “Wounded by the portal that once nearly destroyed both these worlds.”
Anjhela took yet another step back, the gauntlet raised to a defensive position—as if even that powerful tool could absorb what the damaged kyrokha might fling at her. Trevarr sent the Gheherian master a derisive look. “You should have known to clean up after yourselves. And now you should keep your distance. I am yours no longer.”
The master gazed beyond Garrie and Trevarr to the hikers and then at the manifested entity. He said to the muscle grunts, “Ignore the broken one. Bring the bounty hunter and the woman. Kill the others.”
Lucia didn’t need a translator for that one. “Garrie...”
“Working on it,” Garrie said; her shielding was woven and tight and thick. But an ethereal shield was useless against a mass of muscle, and definitely against two masses of muscle with sharp blades. *Sklayne?*
He’d been so silent she wasn’t even certain he remained, and she thought she well knew why. Because what wouldn’t Ghehera do to confirm Sklayne’s existence—to capture him along with Trevarr? And Sklayne, freed from Trevarr’s bond as he was, still bore the glyph-geas—the one that prevented him from directly harming any sentient entity.
Before Ghehera, he was no more effective than the cat he so often seemed to be.
Still, he whispered back to her. *Herrre.*
She sent him a swift image of the satchel...of the plastic egg container and its unstable occupants.
*Must not have!* His voice raised to a mental hiss of desperation. *Not for them!*
Yeah, yeah. She got it, all right. Bad enough that the echveria existed in the first place. But to put them in the hands of a Gheherian master...
It was the last thing anyone needed.
Although Garrie pretty much felt the same about falling into the hands of Ghehera herself.
Anjhela never took her eyes from the entity, though her voice dropped to supplication. “But—
Master Shahh, the broken kyrokha...”
Anjhela understood. Of course she would. She had lived closer to Trevarr than any of them. She had tried to break him and fail.
She had seen the truth of him, there in that miserable cell.
And now her hand went to her throat and her deep brown complexion flushed pale, the baby-fine scales standing out in relief as faint glyphs crawled up from her collarbone to circle her neck and squeeze.
Garrie snorted. “What a bully you are,” she told the master. “Master Shahh. I bet you’re not even master of your own domain.”
“I am master of all domains I deign to enter,” the man said, gently unperturbed. Anjhela made a choking sound and drew a deep, sobbing breath, her hand pressed to her side. “Anjhela, you may acquire the woman. Damage her as necessary.”
The young man’s voice rang out over the clearing. “You people are crazy! You’re all freaks!”
Garrie knew what was coming next, and knew she couldn’t stop it. The young man broke away from the group, evading Quinn’s grasp, and Rick’s grasp, and Drew’s awkward tackle. He sprinted across the shelter area in a diagonal path that would have cleared both the entity and the invaders had not bright metal flashed through the air and thudded into place between his shoulders.
He fell to gasps and cries of protest from the group, jerked a few reflexive times, and didn’t move again.
Garrie turned a look of fury on the muscle grunts, but Trevarr’s low voice punctured her intent. “He made his choice. His fate will be an example to the others.”
Right. The moms who crouched over the baby, quietly crying, or the couple clinging to one another, or to Lucia who held Rick’s hand so tightly, or to Quinn who stood alone.
“Not a good example,” she said, and discovered herself trembling with the fury—and the impotence. And the understanding that no matter how these next moments went, if she and Trevarr survived, free, then Ghehera would come after them again, and again. Understanding, too, that this master intended to sacrifice her friends, this mountain, and this world to the angry, broken kyrokha that she hadn’t yet begun to face.
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