Scavenger of Souls (10 page)

I stumbled on the stone. It cut my feet like glass.

We had no sooner started up the staircase than a strange sound filled the air, a buzz, a pulse. I felt a momentary shudder like a shock of static. At first I thought the noise and sensation had come from contact with the black stone, but then the warriors holding me fell back, their hands flying to their heads, their bodies hitting the ground. Without support, I pitched forward onto the stairs, narrowly missing a sharp protrusion of stone. When I looked back to see what had happened to my captors, I saw the strangest thing: a cocoon
of pale yellow light surrounded their bodies, a force field of some kind that held them in place even as it tortured them. They rolled under its light, blood flying where the black stone cut them. Angry red welts appeared on their bodies, and in seconds they stopped their anguished thrashing. The smell of cooked flesh filled the air.

The other warriors had broken and run when the beam hit their companions. Some made it only a few steps before the glow surrounded them, and their mouths opened in a silent scream before their charred bodies fell and lay still. Most of them, though, vanished into the encroaching dark, carrying prisoners with them. I watched helplessly as warriors scooped up Bea and Keely, Nekane and most of the other children. Only Zataias held his ground, fighting like a madman with someone twice his size. Adem came charging to his aid, a spear held in his bound hands like a club. Archangel was headed in their direction when Asunder shouted something I couldn't make out and ran off, his red cloak flapping violently behind him. The giant dropped Aleka's limp body and stooped to lift Nessa instead. I pushed myself to my feet in an effort to make my way to her, but the cords tripped me and I landed on the bodies of the men who'd burned by the stairs.

Archangel slung Nessa over his shoulder. She was tied too tightly to move and gagged too securely to scream, but I saw the terror in her eyes. Her captor seemed about to run too when something caught his attention.

I followed his gaze and made out an unmistakable object: the barrel of a rifle, protruding from behind the base of the altar and trained on the ground at Archangel's feet. The buzzing sounded in my ears, and a short burst of yellow light like a glowing thread emerged from the muzzle, striking the stone with a sizzling noise. The gunman stepped from behind the altar, and I saw that he belonged to a survival colony, with the customary boots, olive-drab fatigues, and short-brimmed hats we'd worn before Asunder's warriors had stripped us down for the sacrifice. He stood no taller than me, but he carried himself with authority, his shoulders squared and his stride nearly a strut.

He and Archangel faced each other for a long moment, the giant's expression clouding with the first hint of surprise or doubt I'd seen him show. The gunman took a step toward him. For a second I thought they were going to speak.

But then the giant turned and sprinted toward the canyon with Nessa hanging over his shoulder, his long strides carrying him away like a rocket. The gunman didn't shoot, but took off after him and soon disappeared into the dark.

I disentangled myself from the dead warriors and found a point of stone to slice the bonds around my wrists. With my hands freed, I was able to attack the knots around my ankles and pull the clinging strands loose. I ran to where Aleka lay, and my stomach lurched when I saw the shards of bone sticking from her arm like teeth.

Tyris knelt by her side. “Don't touch her,” she said to me.
She tore a strip of cloth from her threadbare jacket, tried to tie a tourniquet around Aleka's arm. There was barely enough arm for the knot to hold. “The stretcher! Bring it here!”

Adem and Zataias appeared out of the dusk, carrying the bloody stretcher. Tyris gestured urgently and they set it down beside Aleka.

“Hold her head,” Tyris said to me. “Carefully. Adem, you take her shoulders. Zataias, the feet. We all lift together. On my count. One, two,
three
.”

We lifted her the few inches onto the stretcher. I couldn't help feeling I was lifting a corpse.

“It's going to take all of us,” Tyris said. “Me and Querry in front, Adem and Zataias in the rear. Try not to jostle her.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

Tyris looked grim. “Anywhere but here. She'll die if I can't get the bleeding to stop. Plus I don't think she'll last long in this heat.”

“What about the kids? And Nessa and Wali?”

“Wali must be dead by now,” Tyris said. “And we'll never catch the others. We have to try to save who we can.”

We hurriedly gathered the few things that had been left on the field of battle: the dead warriors' spears, the scarf that had fallen or been torn from Nessa's hair, which Tyris had slightly better success using as a tourniquet. We had just hoisted the stretcher and taken our first step toward the south when a new voice froze us in our spot.

“Hold it right there.”

I turned and saw that the gunman had returned. Carelessly kicking one of the dead bodies out of the way, he advanced, his strange weapon pointed straight at us.

“Step away,” he said. “Hands on your head.”

Listening to his words, I realized that he wasn't a he. The voice was female, and the small, cocky man was revealed as a teenage girl, dark-skinned and with black curls cropped short, her black eyes aimed at me with the same deadly intent as her weapon.

I took a step toward her, my hands held out. The rifle jerked up, locking on my chest.

“She's dying!” I said. “We have to get her out of here.”

“The only thing you have to do,” the girl said, “is put your goddamn hands where I told you.”

“Please,” Tyris said. “She needs medical attention. Right away.”

The girl took her eyes off me for a second to glance at Aleka, and following an impulse I couldn't remember forming, I chose that moment to leap at her and grab for the rifle. I got my hands on it, tried to wrestle it away from her, but she swung the stock sharply, catching me across the forehead. I fell, too dazed to protect myself against the black rock rushing up to meet my face.

“Goddamn it!” the girl shouted. Through blurred vision I watched her spin violently, her weapon leveled at the others. “I just knew this was one of his traps!”

She marched up to Tyris and Adem and Zataias, making
them lie down on the rock with their hands behind their heads. When she'd patted them down and made sure they had nothing on them, she removed the couple spears we'd laid on the stretcher and snapped the shafts across her knee, throwing the pieces to the ground. Then she came back and knelt beside me, jerking my face up to hers by the hair.

“I've been itching all day for an excuse to kill people,” she hissed in my face. “Looks like you just gave me what I was looking for.”

The girl marched us back
to her camp at gunpoint.

She let the others walk ahead with the stretcher, Zataias staggering under its weight. Tyris had begged her to help Aleka, and the girl had chewed her lip in thought, finally jerking her head toward the east. She'd even allowed us a moment to wrap our feet in strips torn from the remains of our uniforms, which did practically nothing to cushion our soles from the punishment of the black rock. But she forced me to walk directly in front of her, hands behind my head.

Which I thought was a bit excessive. I was unarmed, exhausted, bruised, and battered. My head swam from Asunder's staff and the butt of the girl's rifle. Not exactly what you'd think of as a threat.

But she ignored my discomfort. Or that wasn't entirely true. She seemed to revel in it. Any time I lagged or tried to look at her, she jammed the rifle into the small of my back,
which was so chafed and sunburned it hurt as much as the rest of me. From the few glimpses I caught of her night-black eyes, I got the feeling she wouldn't appreciate me asking her to be more careful, much less batting the rifle away. She hadn't repeated her threat to kill me, and I figured if she was bothering to take us to her camp she must have reconsidered. But that didn't change the fact that for the second time in less than a week, I was a complete stranger's prisoner. And this time, every step I took toward her destination was a step I took away from Nessa and the children.

“You can't do this,” I said. “Take the others to your base, but let me go so I can find the rest of my colony.”

“You'd like that, wouldn't you?” she growled, sticking the rifle in my back. “I'm sure you'd love to bring your
colony
swarming after me.”

“That's not what I meant—”

“Save it,” she snapped. “I'm getting the hell out of here before his whole army shows up. And you should consider yourself lucky I don't fry your skinny butt right now.”

And that was it for that conversation.

We marched for hours in silence. Tyris tried to engage the girl more than once, but she was no more successful than me. I lost track of time, lost the ability to do anything but put one foot in front of the other. The moon had long since come and gone, and my aching body felt on the verge of collapse when we finally reached her camp.

Such as it was. I'd wondered if there might be others
with her, but the campsite was nothing but a camo tent propped up in the middle of the darkness. No stove, no fire, no supplies except small plastic bottles of water. Nothing for Aleka that I could tell. I'd hoped there might be something to transport her, but there was no vehicle, either. I tried to see that as a good sign. Unless the girl lived out here, which I couldn't believe, we must be close to whatever place she counted as home base.

Tyris busied herself with Aleka's shattered arm. She'd had some luck stanching the blood on our way here, but I could tell from her face that the damage was too severe for her to repair. After she'd done as much as she could, she turned to cleaning and rewrapping Zataias's chewed-up feet. He winced and tried not to cry as she removed slivers of glassy stone from his soles. I tried to inch over to check on her patients, but the girl's rifle jerked to my chest the moment I made a move. She sat on a stone formation and handed a water bottle to Tyris, keeping the rifle trained on me. It seemed like a week since I'd tasted water, but my parched throat found nothing to swallow but burning air. At last, when the others had taken a drink, the girl tossed a bottle in my direction. My hands were so stiff and sore I could barely unscrew the cap, which I suspected she'd fastened extra tight. I finally got it off, resisted the impulse to pour water over my hair and face and instead let a trickle drip down my throat, too grateful for the relief it offered to care that the girl was sizing me up the way you'd look at a snake coiled to strike.

“Thank you,” I said when my throat felt supple enough to produce words.

The silence that radiated from her was as poisonous as her stare.

“Is your base nearby?” I tried.

Still nothing. Her hand went to her left arm and rubbed rhythmically as if it was itching her, but she kept the rifle leveled at me, as steady as her laser-sharp eyes.

“Look,” I said. “I'm asking you one more time. Take them to your base, but let me go.”

“Piss off,” she said. “You're not going anywhere. And we're only staying here long enough to give the little boy a break.”

I thought that was going to be the end of it, but then, with an edge in her flat voice that might have been curiosity or might have been simple disdain, she added: “So that's the plan now, huh? Fake a sacrifice then jump us when our guard's down?”

“Does her arm look fake?” I said, pointing to Aleka. “They were about to kill us. I assumed that's why you stopped them. I assume that's why you're helping us now.”

A string of curses met my ears. I'd lived with soldiers as long as I could remember, but none swore as constantly or as creatively as she did. “I stopped them because every one of them I take down today is one less I have to take down tomorrow,” she said when she'd exhausted the possibilities. “And if you think I'm planning to
help
you, just wait until you see what Udain has in store for you.”

With that, she went back to staring me down. And though I tried to get her to explain what she meant, she wouldn't say anything more.

The others settled down beside the stretcher, Zataias giving in to sleep so quickly he let Tyris wrap her arms around him and lay his head on her chest. I tried to fight off the urge to close my eyes, but with nighttime hastening to a close and my hopes of getting away pretty much vanished, I realized how utterly exhausted I was. “You going to sleep?” I asked the girl through a yawn.

She sniffed. “Fat chance.”

“Well, I am.” My words sounded hollow and far away. “Am I going to wake up?”

Her shoulders lifted in a slow, careless shrug.

“Fine,” I said. “But you're making a terrible mistake.”

That was all I had left before my eyes closed. My final image before I fell asleep was of the girl's hands still gripping the stock of her rifle.