“Feel her?” Reaper asked, not following my change of subject.
“Alex…feel Alex. Maybe I just need to focus,” I said.
“Is focusing better than thinking?” he asked.
“You sound like Daniel,” I said.
“Must be spending too much time with him lately…” Reaper said. “He does have a way about him.”
“Yeah, he does. Shut up a minute,” I said.
“Shutting up,” Reaper said amicably.
I stretched my arm up high, to cast the light of the lantern out further. It didn’t cast the light very far; it was enough to see that our choices were unlimited. All of the tunnels were the same – there was nothing to separate one from the other. There were no claw marks, no clothing. Alex’s trail had gone cold. It was easy to feel intimidated. But intimidation was nothing more than an enemy in my head. It would not do to listen to it.
I shut my eyes. They were just distracting me from the task in front of me. With my eyes shut, a memory came to me. It was a memory of finding a different person under different circumstances. It was the time when I had gone searching for a missing Forest Ranger named Susan. I had found her by searching with my mind and nothing else. I had searched for her, until I felt her heartbeat ringing through the forest above all other sounds. I could do the same thing now. All I had to do was stretch my mind out and let the feeling of Alex guide me.
It was easier in theory.
My eyes still closed, I imagined a tentacle of thought reaching out around me. For one agonizing moment there was nothing, only the resounding sound of my skeptical thoughts then I felt movement. My thoughts moved beyond my head to search out the caves. The first thing I felt was Reaper. His heartbeat was strong, though slow. His mind was closed off, but it was easy to feel the power of his thoughts. He was a strong presence, a light in the dark. His light was strange though, tainted with silver. It was energy unlike any I had felt when searching for Susan. Perhaps, the light was the difference between a Watcher and a human.
I moved beyond him and searched the tunnels for a spark. I felt insects and smaller creatures, but nothing as bright as Alex’s energy. The feeling of my thought got further away from my body. I was about to give up hope when a brush of energy crossed my path. It was a moving wave of energy, fierce and fast in the dark, but there was no mistaking it. There was a light mixed in with the heartbeat. It was the sturdy, dependable light of a person cursed with darkness, when they spent their whole life bringing light to others. I opened my eyes and pointed at the tunnel directly in front of us.
“That way,” I said.
Reaper didn’t question my choice. He started forward, expecting I would follow. He had done his own thinking as he had waited for me to pick a path.
“This thing with Alex obviously has something to do with you,” he said as we walked. “It has to be…you keep acting all guilty.”
“Are you still trying to figure it out?” I asked. “I thought we were off that…had moved on to greener pastures.”
“Do you not trust me with the secret?” he asked. “I already know that Marcus is after you, because of your blood. That’s a pretty massive secret. One I could sell to anybody and get rich off very easily. You trusted me with that.”
“Daniel trusted you with that,” I replied. “If it was my choice, you wouldn’t know about it.”
“Ouch,” Reaper said.
I sighed. “It’s not just because you’re a liar – which I totally get. You have to lie in your position. It keeps your group strong and your people alive. I can’t tell you the truth because it’s not just my secret. Do you understand?”
“You want Alex to tell me?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“How can she do that when she won’t speak to me?” he asked.
I shrugged. “You and her are just going to have to figure that out for yourselves.”
Reaper was thinking hard, lost in the kernels of truth I was throwing his way. His superior mind couldn’t drop the mystery. He figured Alex would never tell him, not with the way they were currently not speaking and with the way she kept everything close to the vest. He decided logic was his best ally in getting me to tell him the truth.
“Whatever is going on with her has to do with the reason she ran off…and the reason she’s so far ahead of us. It’s obviously tied in to her emotional state…she looked pretty upset to me when she ran away…I think I even noticed white in her eyes, like I noticed with you when you tried to kill me that time.”
His logic was not far from the truth.
“So?” I asked.
“So, what makes you think I won’t find out what’s going on when we find her?” he asked.
“Finding out on accident isn’t the same thing as me breaking Alex’s trust by telling you,” I said. “If you happen to find out, well, there’s nothing I can do about that.”
“For someone who doesn’t lie, you’ve given a lot of thought to that one,” Reaper muttered.
I glanced over at him. He looked irritated and more than a little worried. He knew I wouldn’t keep a secret if it were small. The unknown worried him – he couldn’t control it. The unknown scared the hell out of me. What if his reaction was similar to Eli’s? What if his prejudice was just as strong? Could Alex handle that sort of rejection twice?
“You have to promise me something,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“If you find out what she…what’s going on…you will take a minute to remember who Alex is and what she means to me. If you try to hurt her, there will be blood…it will be yours,” I promised.
“I know you can fight, Clare, but so can I,” Reaper reminded me.
He had taken my warning the wrong way.
“Who said I would be the one doing the bloodletting?” I asked.
“You mean to say…Alex?” he asked.
I made a face of agreement, but didn’t say anything in reply. If I kept talking, I would give away her secret. I kept my focus forward, where the pull of light and the feel of her heartbeat were drawing me deeper in to the mountain at a rapid pace.
“How far do you think this cave system goes on?” I asked.
Reaper frowned thoughtfully at the question. “I’ve been caving before, and I’ve seen well-developed networks like these…I wouldn’t be surprised if these come out somewhere on the surface…they could go on for miles.”
“Great,” I said.
There was a long pause as we both focused on the path ahead and the sound of our feet against the hard rock. We were on edge, but I also sensed a more personal battle raging in Reaper’s head. It was the desire to know more about Alex.
“Have you lost her before?” he asked quietly.
It took me a second to answer. The memory was sharp and painful.
“Once…in New Orleans,” I admitted. “I thought it was for forever. I thought I would never get her back.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“She got mad at me, because I went and tried to rescue somebody,” I admitted.
“She got mad at you for that?” he asked, looking surprised.
He didn’t figure Alex for the type of person to get mad at a rescue mission.
“It was in Marcus’ nest,” I admitted. “I went in without telling her, without even talking about it. She felt like I was trying to be a hero and leaving her out, because I liked helping people more than I respect our friendship. I also think she was a bit stressed out from not bathing. She doesn’t like that very much.”
“How did you two make up?” he asked.
“I got kidnapped and tortured,” I said. “That makes other stuff sort of trivial.”
Reaper nodded. “Yeah, it does.”
He said in a way that made me think he was no stranger to torture and kidnap. It was also a story he didn’t feel like sharing – not when he had bigger issues on his mind.
“Eli…he’s the same one I’ve heard you mention? He’s the guy who was care
taker of the kids in New Orleans, before abandoning them to join Serenity?”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Why does he hate Alex so much?” he asked.
“We’re back to secrets it’s not my place to tell,” I said.
Reaper wasn’t done trying to figure out the truth. Perhaps it was because he could feel the energy that had radiated between Eli and Alex – the sense of history that was impossible to deny.
“He called her a ‘monster,’” Reaper said. “That’s a pretty harsh description.”
“You really don’t give up, do you?” I asked.
“It’s my nature to ask questions. I have a responsibility to the people around me. Being ignorant doesn’t protect them,” he said. “Knowing everything about a situation saves lives.”
“Sometimes,” I said.
There was a long pause, in which I felt him fighting against a question. The question won out against whatever qualms he held about asking it. His eyes focused on the dark walls in front of us, he asked the question burning on his mind.
“Eli and Alex…where they – did they…I mean, have a relationship?” he asked.
I sighed. “Define ‘relationship.’”
“Romantically intimate,” he said in a low voice.
“Are you asking as a leader of men, who must know everything about anything, or as a man?” I asked.
He took a moment to answer.
“A man,” he replied.
I smiled at his words. It was proof I had been waiting for – proof that he liked Alex. I had clues and hints, but nothing as solid as an admission. My smile fell when I realized I had to explain Eli to him.
“They do have a connection,” I admitted. “They’ve barely talked. They’ve never kissed, not even held hands the way a couple does, but they have touched. Once.”
“Touched?” Reaper asked, not understanding my meaning.
The truth wasn’t mine. But it wasn’t strictly Alex’s either. Reaper had a right to know. I couldn’t keep it from him, not when he had just admitted to liking her.
“You breathe a word of this knowledge to Alex and I will kill you,” I said.
“You like threatening me, don’t you?” Reaper asked.
I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t tell. The warning had only served to show how serious I was.
“Eli and Alex touched just long enough to join,” I said.
Reaper stopped walking. It was as if he had crashed in to a brick wall. Whatever tension he had thought the two held, he had not expected a joining. He had not expected such a strong tie that bound them together. He had expected something that was easier to overcome. Alex joining with another was as much as admitting that Eli was her soulmate. There was no future with her – not in the way he had been hoping.
“Alex is joined with somebody?” he asked.
“Yes,” I admitted. “It was an accident, a twist of fate. Eli hates her for…for the secret I can’t tell you about. And Alex doesn’t want to know someone who could hate her so easily. She feels trapped by the images of him, though. They’re there in her head. She doesn’t want them, but she’s bound by them.”
“But a joining…that means she’s his. There’s no denying that fact,” he said.
My eyebrow arched in to an expression of skepticism.
“Alex isn’t ‘his.’ She’s ‘hers,’” I pointed out. “She’s her own person. What happened between them is intense, yes, but she makes her own life and her own choices. She’s not bound by some ridiculous, superstitious belief that the joining only happens once.”
“You don’t really believe that,” he said. “Look at you and Daniel. Jackson and Margaret. You’re perfect pairs, matched by the joining.”
“And do you know of anyone else that makes a perfect match, without the joining?” I asked. “My mom and Sam, for instance. They didn’t have a joining, yet they’re perfect for each other. There’s no denying that.”
Reaper’s eyes were lost in a mixture of emotions – hope and doubt played prominently.
“It’s a lot to take in,” he said.
“Imagine how Alex feels, knowing how many women you’ve been with,” I said pointedly.
Reaper started walking again. He looked embarrassed at my words. It was as if he thought we were unable to surmise he was ever romantic with anybody.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“You forget how much Alex sees,” I said. “She knows relationships in a glance. You and River, for instance. You and quite a few of the other Saints. Heck, you and Serenity, I’ll wager. That wasn’t a hard one to catch on to.”
“She knows all that?” he asked.
“I think it is part of the reason she’s so angry. I think she thinks you and River still have a thing,” I said. “I think she thinks you don’t take relationships seriously.”
“River and me are friends,” Reaper said. “That part of our relationship never lasted long. We were both just lonely…”
“Time stays with us,” I said. “Things don’t just ‘go away,’ because we want them to. Not easily, and not without a fight.”
Reaper realized what I was saying as suddenly as walking in to daylight.
“She likes me, then? She does, doesn’t she?” he asked in a voice that was so very un-Watcher-ish that I had to laugh.
“Jesus, Reaper, of course she does,” I said. “I don’t have to have a gift of reading people to see that. She’s just caught in an emotional rollercoaster right now…one that isn’t helped by you flirting your way through the ranks.”
“Huh…” he said noncommittally.
It felt like acceptance of something that he had not dared to believe.
I shook my head at the dumbfounded expression on his face and focused on the dark again. The stale air suddenly shifted with a cold draft from somewhere along the tunnel. With it came another wave of the unbearably foul stench we had been following since we had descended in to the dark.
“Is it just my imagination, or are we getting closer to the stink?” I asked.
It was then I heard a deep roar in the dark. It filled the space and echoed around my ears with alarming intensity. We both stopped walking at the sound. Reaper held up the gun in his hand. His knees were bent, ready for action, and his eyes scoured the dark.
“It’s not your imagination. There are Nightstalkers in here,” he whispered.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
There was another roar.
“Two…and they’re fighting,” Reaper said.
“You can tell that from a roar?” I asked.
“I’ve dealt with Nightstalkers for over a hundred years,” Reaper pointed out. “You learn a thing or two when you pay attention.”
“You’re sure they’re fighting?” I asked.
The sound of crushing bone and tearing flesh filled the space.
“I’m sure now,” he said.
“We should hurry,” I said. “Alex…Alex could be in that fight.”
“She wouldn’t last very long,” Reaper pointed out, though I sensed his worry.
“You’d be surprised,” I replied.
“Stay behind me,” Reaper warned.
I nodded, and we followed the tunnel down as quickly as we dared. The incline became steeper and the rocks larger as we all but ran toward the noise. Reaper stayed in front of me the whole way, guiding me with his dark form. There were times when he ran outside of the light, but it didn’t appear as if he needed it. His feet didn’t falter, and he didn’t slow. I struggled much more with the terrain. I did not maintain the same grace as we hurried though the dark.
The tunnel finally opened up to a larger area. The change was sudden and unexpected. The larger area was an underground cathedral of momentous proportions. Sharp rocks hung from the tall ceiling, which was dark and obscured from view, and more tunnels came out at various points in the huge cavern. It looked like a very large ant farm, minus the ants. The bottom of the cavern was a half mile below us. More tunnels branch
ed off at that level. A small, incredibly narrow, trail circled around the cavern from where we were to the floor.
Reaper put a hand out as I reached the entrance to the cavern. He forced me to squat down and signaled for me to cut the light. I fumbled with the light. I finally found the switch. The darkness was not as complete as I would have thought. Rocks glowed with a subtle green hue. It gave enough light to see what had gotten Reaper’s attention.
Two Nightstalkers were at the base of the cavern. Between them was a small figure. The figure was dead, killed by one of the Nightstalkers. Blood circled the body. It drained out on to the hard floor relentlessly; it was a fresh kill. My heart caught in my throat at the sight.
Reaper looked just as scared. I knew he thought the person on the ground was Alex. He was certain the Nightstalkers had taken her. I was more worried she had been responsible for the person’s death.
The Nightstalkers were tearing in to each other – fighting over the person one of them had killed. They were being territorial and unwilling to share the kill.
As we watched, another smaller figure, one of a person, appeared out of a tunnel. This person was large, with muscles to spare. Despite the cold, he was wearing a tank top. He had on military pants and combat boots to match. He had short hair and his features were difficult to see in the dim light. He had a large stick in one hand.
“Enough,” the man said.
He held up the stick to the Nightstalker closest to him and touched it to the flesh. A spark of electricity penetrated the Nightstalker’s flesh. It yelped in pain and the two Nightstalkers broke apart.
“There’s more sport to be had,” the man said. “Go.”
The Nightstalkers growled lightly at the man but did not try to attack him. They ran off in opposite directions. The man looked at the person on the ground, smiled in satisfaction, and turned and went back the way he had come.
Reaper pulled me away from the cavern entrance and back down the tunnel, so that we wouldn’t be heard above the sounds of the Nightstalkers.
“They have scouts in here,” he said. “They must be hunting prisoners. It’s a way Marcus keeps his Nightstalkers in check…they take prisoners they no longer have need and make sport of them. It is easy prey for the Nightstalkers, and it keeps too many of his soldiers from turning before their time.”
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