He had found her.
*
Jean strained to see, to listen. It was dark everywhere. She was more afraid of the sounds too distant to hear than the ones surrounding her. She feared hearing a friend’s scream, of the wetness of meat being cleaved. Alone in the rain, she’d tried to shake the earth again and again, but none of her pulses stuck. All she had were her muscles and her mace; enough to cave in a man’s skull, if the coward would only show himself.
He had given chase. As Jean ran and her friends split, she knew why she’d been chosen. This pasty faced creep wants a fight. He wants the toughest, mano-a-mano. He had cut at their heels, driving them off the path, into the woods. Using the terrain against them, he forced Mack to lose Jean’s hands, forced him to run as the road rose beneath her and sank beneath him. As he stood smiling in the rain, holding his two swords loosely, relishing what was to come, it took everything in Jean not to charge him, lest she get cut apart by his blades before she had a chance to get close.
“About fucking time,” Jean muttered as she unhooked her mace from her belt. It had bounced against her fiercely all the while. Her leg was bruised and she didn’t care. But then he turned away. His cloak fluttered and he was gone, lost in the rain. Rainfall beat down hard, deafening against the leaves. She lost the sound of him before the sight of him.
“He doesn’t wanna fight us,” Jean realized, desperately scanning the dark. “Fucker just wants to kill us.”
Had he gone after Mack? Or was he circling around to close in on her?
Jean couldn’t drop her guard, couldn’t trust her eyes or ears. She wished she could hear like Flynn heard, see like he saw. She’d never envied him before and hoped she never would again. But her best friend was alone and in danger and she didn’t know which way to run. She wanted to move, but couldn’t watch every side at once. The psychopath might as easily drop in again, waiting for her to lower her guard. Not Jean. She had lived her life on the run, and could handle another night. She held her weapon fast, and waited. Alone.
The rain beat ceaselessly against the red leather of her jacket.
*
The way she’d been hobbling, Chari knew she should have been caught. If there had been a second attacker, she’d be dead now. Her leg bled fast, something magick could not safely remedy.
Having already strayed from the ivory path, she found a small clearing and settled against a tree. She squeezed the wound hard; it had bled and stuck to fabrics not meant for harsh times. It hadn’t hurt at first, and it scared her. She felt the air lick inside of her. Though muscle had been cut, the wound was shallow. Not the worst it could have been. Now she had to find the will to do what was needed. Her body still ached. There was a searing pain in her shoulder; her face throbbed. A fading heat lingered in her belly, from when she had closed the wounds Aaron had plugged Flynn with.
Aaron.
Looking up, she knew now something had been familiar about him. She had seen the bodies all around, but had not the clarity to fear them. But they were there, dressed as Aaron had been. Men and women cut apart in a dozen vicious ways and left to rot.
Her leg wound was something lucky by comparison. These soldiers had been slaughtered, with never a chance. Flynn had called it: wiser to run from the white haired swordsman than stand their ground.
Clutching her cleaved flesh, Chari waited a spell, but none came, neither friend nor dreaded foe. Even without checking her rifle, she knew it was less than half loaded, having consumed what scrap she had left. She needed to be able to shoot, and she needed two hands to do that. It was time to make a decision: tie the wound or mend it. Letting the flesh settle could mean an injury that would stay with her for the rest of her days. Mending would come with such pain that she would almost certainly pass out.
It only took Chari a moment to decide. I’m going to live.
Using her teeth, she tugged at a strip of fabric on her shoulder, partly exposing herself in the process. Alone and wet and giving little damn for modesty, she leaned in and dropped it to her leg, closely that she could let the wound go long enough to wrap it. The momentary pain as she released the injury was intense, and she resisted the urge to scream. Unraveling a string of beads from her arm, she bound them as tightly as she could around the wound. With each motion, she felt the flesh squeeze and hold unevenly. If she’d still had it in her to pray, she’d have asked that this nightmare end quickly. Without wasting another second, she unholstered her rifle and held it at the ready. Then she waited, hoping no one would come.
*
Zaja let her whip unfold to the ground, her hand shaking. The ridge was behind her. If she caught the swordsman with the lash and buried the barbs deep, she might catch him off guard. By the arm, the neck—just fast enough to pull him off the edge. She would lose her weapon, but keep her life.
“Zaja.”
Her pulse raced. He’d learned her name, and he was coming through the dark for her. There was no chance to run. She had to act now. With a broad horizontal stroke, she swung at his upraised arm as he came into the starlight. The end wrapped perfectly, the barbs caught and buried in his flesh. He screamed. Braced at first for an angry reprisal, Zaja’s eyes widened and flustered when she realized why none came. Flynn staggered as the little barbs caught in his skin, lowering his arm as she gave her whip slack.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she exclaimed in a panic as she ran over, helping untangle the mess of blood and brambles. “I thought you were him.”
“It’s … unh … fine,” he grunted. “Forget about it.”
She wished she could, as she tried to untangle the whip, whose thorns kept snagging on tufts of hair on Flynn’s arm. Zaja looked up into his eyes, the slits tight and narrow and more inhuman than she’d seen before this night. He kept his arm steady for her, shaking as every barb was drawn from his skin, worse for each she botched.
“We need to get back in there,” he told her. “The others are hiding, and I … I need to keep them safe. I looked him in those vicious, violet eyes long enough to know.”
“To know what?”
“That he kills for the pleasure of it. We’d have died in moments had we stayed close.”
Zaja smiled in wry amusement. “I don’t think we needed to see his eyes to guess that.”
“Even so …” Flynn bowed his head. “I’m sorry. I warned you there would be danger. I didn’t expect danger like this.”
When the last of the barbs was out, Zaja wrapped her cold palms around Flynn’s arm to soothe the wounds. In turn, the warmth of his flesh eased her Nyrikon’s Syndrome, which had been aggravated and was on the verge of flaring up. She held close to him as they walked through the woods, taking in all the warmth that she could. She had never known a person she could do this with before. He placed a hand on her head, and she felt a little safer.
But Jean, Mack, and Chari were all in danger, and she was slowing Flynn down. The threat was worse than she had expected or imagined—but she knew what the four were doing and admired them for it. They were making themselves useful in a way she had not yet committed to.
“We have to run now,” she told him, hoping secretly that her body would hold out. “I said I won’t be a burden … and I won’t be.”
If there was one thing she was coming to like about Flynn, it was his ability to just know, and not burden her with “Are you sure?” and “Can you handle this?” She wasn’t sure and maybe she couldn’t but she was going to try anyway.
Zaja took the lead and Flynn kept close behind as they hurried back into the dark where a killer waited in the foliage.
*
Mack had hit a wall. Not a figurative, metaphorical wall, but one of very literal white stone. Their attacker’s boots had pounded close behind, too close for he or Jean to check their tail. The road had split and a tree had come between them; she ran high while he scurried low. More than anything, Mack wanted to double back and find her, but it was a chance he couldn’t take—not with that nightmare chasing af
ter them. He’d seen someone in a black coat pursuing so quickly that it seemed the night itself had picked up swords and decided to kill them.
Mack struck the wall, which seemed to go on as far as he could see in both directions (which—in the night and rain and with only one good eye—was admittedly not very far), then turned and pressed his back against it. He sank, breathing slowly, watching desperately while rubbing his hand over the mess of stitches that was formerly his left eye. He wished he could have done a better job fixing it. It itched at the most inopportune moments. He scratched nervously, trying not to make it bleed.
That creeper’s gonna come this way … isn’t he? Mack knew who the easiest target in the group was. So why not him? Yet there was nothing around but trees and water and grass and roots. He relaxed, lowered his guard. Mack understood then that he wasn’t worth bothering with or taking as bait. Tall, dark, and cloaked would kill him, sure. But he was leaving Mack for last, as an afterthought. You don’t kill the cheerleader when the team is still playing the field.
Mack hopped up and left the wall, striking out across the one safe angle it covered. Remembering how their attacker had dropped in on them, he considered climbing a tree, before finding that he wasn’t very good at it. Dropping back down, he stood alone and pathetic in the rain. In a moment of decisiveness, he charged back into the wood—but something held him back. His aloha shirt had snagged on a branch. Shredded though it was, it was his last memento from Earth. Even so, rather than take the time to unfasten it from the branch, Mack slid out and left it behind. Another shirt, he could always find; another Jean, probably not. He ran back into the woods after her.
*
The Guardian’s markers were not subtle. Even without meeting Regalian Sahra, Flynn had begun to understand the unnatural pull that drew Purgatory’s people here, despite the Guardian’s reputation. How cruel, Flynn considered, to cut them low while drawn by a siren’s song. But then, he himself would have once chuckled at their hapless stupidity and seized on it too.
Evidence left throughout the woods told that this shadowy man was as suited to killing groups as individuals. Better the five had split then, rather than given him clustered targets. Flynn’s friends were brave, but they were not all hardened. Not yet. For Flynn, at least, something primal picked up the edge. He was counting on that now as he tried to find his friends, pull them all together, and get them out of the woods. He would count on it again if he went back in, tried to confront their attacker alone. Though he wanted to believe he’d be better on his own, he knew it was more likely he would get himself killed; no matter how silver the tongue, some men are inflexible.
Zaja kept close, clinging to his arm. The ethereal wisps came and went, but Flynn’s eyes served him well in this dark and hostile place, and he could see even when the most distant lights had faded. Once they found their way back to the path, and then to the fallen tree and the bloody patch, Flynn was able to retrace the group’s scattering.
“At least no one’s dead here,” Zaja observed, though she hardly seemed consoled.
Jean and Mack had gone up the hill—at least they had each other. Less fortunate, Chari had been wounded and hobbled away. The swordsman had taken enough time to pull his blade from the ground before giving chase. Flynn led Zaja downhill and to the other side of the path that they had emerged from, into the dark forest, searching for traces of Chari’s passage.
From Zaja’s perspective, it was just the two of them. But Flynn, tapping more deeply into his memories and impressions, conjured an imprint of Chariska Jerhas that only he could see or hear. She smiled, appearing healthy. He wounded her in his mind, with such violence that the illusion staggered and Flynn felt a pang of guilt. But now she would move as the real thing, feel and fear as the real Chari did. Flynn avoided talking to her out loud, though it felt stranger to converse in his mind; he didn’t want Zaja to think him crazy.
I’d have gone this way, the Chari doppelganger told him, hobbling ahead. I wouldn’t be able to clear that crest, so I’d have to take this low path.
“Why are we slowing down?” Zaja asked with concern.
“I’m deducing which way Chari went. We can’t chance making a mistake and losing her to the woods.”
She accepted his answer, and they went on. The doppelganger could have led Flynn indefinitely if given the chance—unable to suffer genuine exhaustion or wear. In reality, Chari hadn’t made it far, having stopped at the base of a tree and tied her injury. She was pale with sickly sweat and squinted up at them. The wisps had drifted far from the violence.
“Flynn?” she asked. “Have you come to me?”
“You look terrible,” he told her frankly.
“I cannot chance healing myself,” she spat, “until that fiend is dealt with.”
Flynn looked back in the direction Jean and Mack had gone. They were still unaccounted for. Zaja shivered.
“I need you to stay with Chari,” Flynn told her.
Zaja seemed hurt by the order. “You don’t think I can handle the danger.”
“I could use the company,” Chari replied through heavy breaths. “To keep me awake, aware.”
“That’s why,” Flynn confirmed to Zaja, though it was only enough truth to make her stay. Though not the windblasts of Oma, it was still cold and wet and he couldn’t chance her collapsing or weakening in a delicate moment. Maybe she knew.
“It’s fine,” she nodded. “Just hurry and make sure they’re all right … alright?”
Flynn left the two together and retreated into the woods. There had been too little noise in the last hour.
*
A single-minded determination drove Flynn. I need this … to find this man and what closure he can bring. The ivory road looped beneath his feet, a seemingly unchanging path. He had left Earth on an abstract idea of doing something good to make up for all the bad. Content to devote his life to that ideal, he’d then met Airia Rousow, who offered something new. The task felt noble, and had worked its way deep into his heart. It was not supposed to turn dark, to become a thing of horrors.
After ten minutes in the vacant woods, he saw lights dancing ahead, like a lamppost in the rain. Jean was crouched underneath with one hand pressed flat to the ground. Trying to concentrate, she’d failed to notice him. As he neared, he could see her pressing harder, gritting her teeth as she tried to make something uncertain happen.
Flynn smiled to see her so focused, and asked, “What are you up to?”
“Jumpin’ fuckin’ shit!” Jean leapt to her feet, brandishing her mace right at him, startled. Her heart was racing, and Flynn could almost hear it through the pattering rain. He moved into the light and they looked at each other, sized each other up. Finally, Jean put an arm around Flynn, holding him close as she admitted, “Glad yer safe.”
“Zaja and Chari are alive,” he told her after she let go. “I was hoping Mack was with you.”
“No. He ain’t.” Jean looked sick to say it, and averted her gaze.
Flynn peered intently into the darkness that surrounded them, but as far as even he could see, there was nothing but woodland. “What were you doing?”
“Tryin’ to read the ground,” she said. “Feel the kickbacks from the pulses I send out. Maybe find a way to kick a little root into that fucker’s face when he shows back up.”
“How’s that going?”
“Shitty.”
Flynn noticed then how close they were to the road’s end: not far from them was a golden gate with an ornate lock at its heart. In a place festering with death, this marker and the white walls sprouting from it stood untouched, as if the butcher hunting them had taken care not to tarnish it.
“Guys?! Hey, guys!” Jean and Flynn both turned at the sound of Mack’s voice, coming from the right. He was there in the shadows, running toward them, waving vigorously. It felt too perfect, and was a sure sign that something was wrong.
Jean moved on instinct, which made her easy to bring down. She dropped her mace the m
oment she saw Mack, and Flynn kicked it between her legs as she moved for him. She toppled, rolling onto her back and demanding, “What the hell, Flynn?!”
A vicious exchange followed; Mack’s choked gurgle was the prelude. Jean and Flynn looked—the silver blade had been thrust from his back through his breast; the pale figure grinned behind him in the dark. That would have been Mack’s end, had he not clapped his palms around the flat of the blade and held fast. He dared not use his fingers, just applying every bit of strength he had, and Flynn understood the pain he took in this change. His one eye squinted and wept and his teeth clenched in dedication as he held fast to his life.
“I’d have had you both in one stroke,” the swordsman told Jean, “if you’d only come a little closer.”
Jean hadn’t noticed Flynn helping her rise, nor that he’d put her weapon in her hand; he’d acted so fast she could not have known the difference. They both rushed the swordsman—Flynn crossing behind Jean to his opponent’s right side—before he could move his underhand blade to cut down Mack and Jean both. Their opponent, for his part, had not expected to be flanked, and struggled to pull his lesser weapon free of Mack’s flesh as Jean mercilessly battered the arm that held it.
Flynn struggled to hold down the swordsman’s practiced right arm, his own arms shaking with the effort of keeping the blade at bay. It was black, the blade’s edges unevenly serrated while the flat was seemingly alive and oily. Even the enlarged and twisted cross guard was intimidating. Staring into his opponent’s eyes, Flynn asked the question that ate more fiercely at him as the terrible night wore on.
“You’re Poe, aren’t you?”
Whether from surprise at the inquiry or the unrelenting beating Jean had been giving his arm, Poe let his lesser sword go, causing him and Flynn to stumble back as Mack fell forward to his knees. Jean faltered, conflicted about whether to tend Mack or avenge him.
Outcasts of the Worlds Page 32
