Beyond the Darkness (14 page)

“You’re not ready.”

“I think you just like tackling me.”

He did, but that wasn’t the point. He got to his feet and reached out to help her, but she jumped up on her own again. Very unprincesslike. A good sign. But not good enough.

Chapter 11

W
hile Cheveyo drove back the way they’d come in, Petra worked on getting her knife out quickly. She could not cut her getting-ready time down, but she could work on her reaction time with the knife. When there were no cars to search, she saw him watching her from the corner of his eye.

He still had a speck of blood on his cheek. There was something intimate about
her
blood being on him, and maybe it was a little bit gross, but she wasn’t going to tell him just yet.

“That’s wrong,” he said, making her wonder if he’d read her thoughts.

“What?”

“That you should have to practice pulling a knife out of your sheath. You should be having margaritas with your girlfriends or shopping or something. I hold Pope responsible for you having to become . . .”

She sat down, swiveling the chair to face him. “Become what?”

“A warrior.”

“When I should just be a princess.”

He shrugged. “I’m just saying.”

She liked being a princess, loved shopping, and would like to have margaritas with girlfriends, if she had any besides the Offspring women who’d gone on with their lives. But as she flicked her hand down and came up with the knife, something thrummed through her body like the low beat of a distant tribal drum. Even the sting of the cut on her palm felt good, weird as that was.

Warrior.

Not a go-out-and-kill things warrior, but a protect-my-people warrior.

Cheveyo had sunk into his thoughts again, scanning the roadway.

She put the knife back in the holster. “When you’ve come to me, to summon me or whatever, have you ever seen images of my life?”

“Sometimes.” Which meant always; she suspected he was playing it down.

“I saw things when I contacted you, like pieces of your life, even when you were a boy. Some were pretty scary.” Just remembering it thickened her throat.

He didn’t respond, but she saw his mouth tighten.

“And I can feel your loneliness, sadness, when you’re sleeping and aren’t blocking it.” She leaned forward. “Do you have anyone to talk to? You can’t hold all that in. Talk to me.”

“I don’t have time to get all touchy feely with my feelings.”

“Actually, we do, until we find Yurek.” She dug her elbows into her thighs, bracing her chin on her hands. “So unload on me.”

“Let me think about it.”

She waited as patiently as she could. Finally she said, “Well?”

“I’m thinking.”

More silence. “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”

“Nope.” He turned at the next intersection and doubled back.

“I just want to help.”

“You’re a healer, Petra. I understand, that’s who you are. But you cannot heal me. Just like you couldn’t heal my scars, you can’t heal the scars inside me. I don’t want you in there trying. Right now we’re together because we have to be. But after I squash these sons of bitches, you are going back to your life and I am going back to mine.”

“Who are you trying to protect? Me or you?”

“Both of us.”

Well, at least he wasn’t going to try to sell it as something he was doing just to protect little ol’ her. Which meant, she realized, he didn’t want to hurt either.

She gave him a salute again, knowing he was right, the bastard. Look how much it hurt when he hadn’t contacted her, and that was after only one kiss. “I get that we’re not going to be together. And you know what? I don’t want to be part of the world you seem hell-bound to. I just thought I could help—”

“You can’t.”

“Fine.”

A few minutes later, when he stopped at another light, he blew out a breath of frustration. “This isn’t working.”

Trying to shut her out? “What isn’t?”

“Driving around like this. It’s too dark to see inside most of the vehicles on the desolate stretches of road. I could feel their Geo Wave, but that’s only if they’re close. I’m going back to the road leading to my place, stake out the entrance. I don’t want them that close to Pope, but I can alert him when they arrive and cut them off before they reach the house.”

He turned around. “I want you to stay in the Tank, out of the fray but close enough so you know what’s going on. Be ready to face them if it comes to that, but don’t put yourself out there in the battlefield.”

She remembered well the scene at her townhouse and by the river. Fear clutched at her throat and squeezed her chest. “What happens if you’re hurt?” She didn’t want to think about the unspoken
or worse.

Alarm sparked in his expression. “Take the bike. Best to run than engage. Have you ever driven a motorcycle before?”

“No.”

“I need to give you some lessons.”

Oh, boy.

He started giving her instructions, “In case we don’t have a chance to do it hands-on.”

Her phone rang. Amy’s cell number appeared on the screen. Fear trilled through her. Was the baby all right? Had Yurek somehow found out about them?

“What’s going on?” she answered, hearing the panic in her voice. She forced a smile that she hoped Amy could hear. “I mean, hey, how’s it going?”

“You sound uptight. Things not going well with Mr. Gooey and Dewy?”

Petra laughed. “Things are going positively juicily.”

“Snap a pic and send it to me. I want to see what this guy looks like.”

As surreptitiously as possible, she angled her phone and took a picture. He glanced over at the phony camera click, narrowing his eye at her, but switched his attention back to the road.

“Ooh, yummy,” Amy said a few seconds later. “I can totally understand why you get gooey and dewy. Of course, I’m a little prejudiced since he looks like Lucas. Are you in an RV?”

“Yeah, he’s showing me Arizona, where he lives.”

“Hell of a first date. Maybe this will cure you of the buy-everything-for-everyone thing you’ve been going through.”

“That’s not a thing, it’s just me.”

“That’s you buying stuff to fill a hole that things can’t fill. But I think he has a lot to do with that hole, and it sounds like things are going great.”

Great. Yeah, just great. And she was going to have to explain why they weren’t together when this was over.

“Anyway,” Amy said, “I sent you a picture, too.”

She checked her in-box and gasped. “The sonogram! Does this mean . . . ?”

“No, we don’t know the gender. The tech blocked it out at our request.”

“Damn you.” She stared, trying to spot telltale anatomy. Heck, she couldn’t figure out where the baby was, much less the blacked-out part.

“It’s a healthy baby, that’s the important thing,” Amy added, obviously taking pity on her curiosity.

“A healthy baby.” Petra’s voice had gotten all gooey and dewy on that. “Baby Vanderwyck. I’m so happy for you both.”

And jealous, but mostly happy. She felt something else, though, building inside her, closing up her throat. “This tiny baby . . . so helpless. We have to keep her safe.”

Amy clearly thought that was a strange thing to say at the moment. “Uh . . . well, sure. Feed him, change diapers, and keep him safe, that’s what our jobs will be.”

She imagined that tiny little fetus growing inside Amy’s body, so fragile, and then Yurek hiding in some dark corner, waiting to kill them.

“She’s just an innocent,” she whispered at that terrifying picture. Cheveyo looked over at the use of that word in his golden rule.

“Yeah, for as long as we can manage it,” Amy said, an unsure tone in her voice. “I knew you’d be excited, but you sound a little weird, actually.”

“I am excited. Blown away. Seeing the baby . . . it’s real. She’s real.” She touched the screen. “She’s really real.” And she would do everything in her power to protect her.

“Yeah, he is. We’re calling it
he
for now, instead of
it.
I’m kinda hoping it’s a boy. Less complicated. I’m freaking, but I’ve got a few more months to get used to the idea. Me, a mom. Lucas, a dad. It’s mad bizarre.”

She wasn’t sure why she kept calling the baby
she.
“I hope it’s a girl. Then I can buy her lots of clothes, oh, all the cute, frilly little—”

“Promise me you’re not going to run out and buy a bunch of girl clothes till after the baby comes.”

“Sure, take away all my joy.”

“Promise me, Petra.”

“Okay, okay, I promise.” But she was already imagining matching hats and booties.

Cheveyo’s head jerked to the right as they crossed paths with a car. “That was them.”

“I’ve got to go,” Petra said. “We’re meeting some friends of Cheveyo’s for drinks. He just saw them. Tell the baby hi for me.”

She disconnected while he turned the Tank in a tight turn, considering its length. “I’m in.”

“What?”

She got to her feet. “I’m in, one hundred percent. I won’t let Yurek take Pope back and SCANE him. I won’t let the Collaborate find out about the people in my life. I’m not about to let anyone hurt this precious baby.” She held up her phone and pointed to the picture on the screen.

“Uh . . . that’s me.”

It had switched to the last photo she’d taken. She quickly flipped it back to Amy’s e-mail. “This baby. Maybe Yurek finds out about us before Amy has the baby, and she never even gets born. Or maybe he finds out afterward, and the baby grows up without her mom.” Her voice became soft. “She always wonders if her mom loved her, and what she was like. The baby girl grows up with an ache inside her that she can’t even fathom, with a need that will never be filled.”

“Is that what you felt?” he asked softly.

She shook her head. “I’m talking about the baby. And the golden rule, protect the innocent.” She whipped the knife from her holster, spun it in her fingers, and readied it for a plunge. “Now I understand why you do this.”

“I liked it better when you thought I was nuts. Get that gleam out of your eyes, like you want to do what I do.”

“Well, not, like, for a living or anything. Just Yurek. And the Glouk. Then I go back to my life and date normal guys and forget all about you.”
As if.

She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he sure didn’t look pleased. His mouth tightened in a line and he looked ahead. She knelt beside him, her fingers lightly resting on his arm. “I’ve been afraid my whole life. My mom burned to death. Our house burned down when I was a teenager. Then there was my stepmother, who died in the fire. And thinking I’m going to die when I’m twenty-four, and
then
having people trying to kill me. So now people are trying to kill me again, and yes, I’m afraid. But I’m not too afraid to do something about it. If you’re stuck with me anyway, I might as well make myself an asset instead of a liability. Could you say something?”

He kept his gaze straight ahead. “God help us all.”

She wrinkled her nose at him.

He pulled up to a place blazing with lights and busy with cars and people, and yet it was in the middle of nowhere.

“What’s this?” she asked as he pulled to the outer edge of the dirt parking area. Just beyond that were makeshift tent buildings, a whole city of them. She could hear two different kinds of music blasting from somewhere, and everywhere people wandered and danced and laughed.

A big banner rippled in the breeze:
THE SECOND BURNING
.

“Have you heard of the Burning Man festival? It’s been going on annually for years now, out in the Nevada desert. From what I’ve heard, it’s turned into a Mardi Gras for the earthy crowd.” He was studying the lot. “There they are. The question is, what are they doing here?”

She watched the car that had run them off the road earlier as it idled in a parking spot, feeling some of her bravado trickle away. She breathed in the scents coming in through the vent. “Dinner? Smells delicious.”

The aroma of charcoal, meat, and spices filled the air.

“Or they’ve tracked us to the area and think we’re in there. So many people, keeping track of Yurek could be a nightmare.”

As a group walked out to their cars, she realized what seemed odd about the people she could see in the distance. “But we could even up the score a bit. A lot of people are in costume.”

His gaze found the group, dressed like desert nomads except for the vivid colors and makeup. One man wore a multicolored clown wig. A woman in the group wore tinsel hair. Many people, though, had given their costumes a lot of thought, obviously hand-making them.

The two men stepped out of the sports car. Baal was in human form, and looked homeless with his bedraggled clothing and sallow skin. She noticed that he walked without moving his body. It made her think of cartoon creatures when they tiptoed, their toes the only thing that moved.

Yurek looked like the man she’d seen in the parking garage back in Annapolis. Both scanned the area, but they weren’t looking for an RV. Yurek’s gaze scanned the dark interior of their vehicle. She held her breath, watching his body for any sign that he sensed them in there. She released it when his gaze kept moving.