Shadows (8 page)

By the shelter, one of the drifts stirred. She blinked. For a crazy second, she flashed to a Jack London novel she’d read in seventh grade English and thought,
Sled dogs.
Burrowing into snow was how Buck and the other sled dogs got through the night. Yet the mélange of warmed odors which pillowed out was full and round—and all wrong. Besides, dogs hated the Changed.

She watched as the lumps of snow broke apart. Two clenched fists punched through and then more fists and arms and now legs and heads—

People.

Three women and two men, all well along in years, struggled up from the snow. With no fire, rudimentary snow caves would be their best option. She’d have done the same thing.

Ten eyes set in five slack faces watched her watching them. They said nothing. Neither did she. They were—she sniffed— what? Not frightened. No one could stay scared to death all the time. Aside from their rancid flesh and that fruity fizz, these old people smelled like cold oatmeal, an odor that was almost no odor at all.
Apathetic:
that’s what their scent said. She even understood. Endure a couple rounds of chemo that didn’t kill the monster and only made you puke your guts out, and see just how interested in living
you
were. You really, truly didn’t give a shit.

She also thought, though, that pasty guy in the middle was legitimately sick. His illness hung like the fetor of a stagnant, scum-choked swamp. A diabetic? Or starvation? Maybe both, judging from the loose flesh and hard planes and edges of bone tenting skin on the faces of the others. And now her association to the hospice wing where the terminal waited to die made sense. A body smelled like that when it was eating itself to stay alive.

They’ve been here at least an hour and probably longer. So why didn’t they run?
Wolf tugged, and she staggered forward as Beretta waded into the knot of bodies and began fishing for something in the snow. The oldsters shrank back, jostling and bunching the way skittish zebras clustered as the lions gathered.
There’s no guard. It can’t be just that they’re scared . . .

Her thoughts stumbled as something icy brushed her left wrist. She looked down and saw that Beretta held a rope, hard and stiff with cold and as thick around as her thumb. She sucked in a startled gasp.
What the hell?
She followed its length and saw how it looped from one oldster to the next. Now that she was closer, she realized their wrists were bound. So were their ankles. More rope snaked from their legs and was tied off to the support beams of the old camp shelter.

Hobbled.
That’s why these old people hadn’t run. They couldn’t. The Changed were gathering them up like cattle to be kept until it was time to slaughter—

“No!” Horror blasted through her body on a harsh wind. If she let them tie her up, she wouldn’t be able to fight; it would be the end, like giving into the monster. Gasping, she bucked and wrenched away, shaking free of Wolf ’s grip, and then she was swinging with her good right arm, whipping around, screaming, screaming,
screaming
, “No, no,
no
, I won’t
let
you!”

Startled, the scent of his surprise spiking her nose, Beretta jerked up just as her fist jackhammered his jaw. With the tidal wave of adrenaline-fueled fear surging through her veins, she felt nothing and heard the impact only as a distant, airy
crack,
like a punch landed in a television show: a sound effect with no substance. Later, when she studied her bruised knuckles, she would think it was a miracle she hadn’t broken her hand. The blow dumped Beretta on his ass, and then she was staggering, off-balance both from her own momentum and the snowshoes still strapped to her feet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Slash making a grab, and she shrieked again, tried ducking out from under, but the rigid toe of her left snowshoe jammed into deep snow. Her knee twisted, and she cried out again, this time with pain. She would’ve gone down, maybe even broken her leg, but she felt a hand—Slash’s, she thought—clutch the nape of her neck and squeeze.

Oh no you don’t, bitch
. Another starburst of pain as the jammed shoe came loose, and then she’d planted her feet and was uncoiling, surging up, her fist driving—

At the last second, she realized that it wasn’t Slash who had her.

Quick as a snake, Wolf lashed out, his hand closing around her wrist, stopping her fist in midair.

Please, God.
Panting, she strained to complete the swing, but his grip was iron. Her body quivered, a coiled spring under too much pressure.
Let me finish this. Help me just one more time.

“You shouldn’t fight.” An old lady’s quaver. Alex had no idea which of the three women had spoken and wasn’t about to take her eyes off Wolf to check. “It’ll only make them mad,” the old lady said.

“Quiet, Ruby.” A man’s rumble. “She wants it to end sooner than later, that’s her business.”

Yes, but at least she’d go down fighting, not
cowed
and broken like these old people. If Wolf let up, just for a second, she would finish what she started. He probably knew that, too, although his dark eyes were as fathomless as deep wells and unreadable. His breath, scented with a coppery tang of half-digested meat, slanted over her cheeks. That was her blood in his mouth, on his tongue—

His body shifted then. The change was subtle: the set of his feet, the way he held his shoulders. The hand at the back of her neck tightened, and then she realized: he was pulling her closer.

The better to bite out your throat
. She saw his lips peel back and the slow slink of his tongue. The Changed’s thick funk of dead animal and stewed guts flooded her nose and mouth.
The better to drink nice, warm—

Her thoughts stuttered as another, more familiar scent of cool shadows intensified, wreathing her like smoke . . . and now, there came the faint but unmistakable effervescence of crisp, sweet apples.

Chris. It was Chris’s smell but much more pointed, insistent, and it touched her, found its way into her chest as it—and Chris— had before. In a different time and place, this would be that dizzying moment of anticipation right before he crushed her mouth to his and then—

Something deep in her mind turned over . . . and . . . flexed.

No. My God, what
is
that?
The sensation was nearly indescribable, a kind of deep mental shift, as if some part of her brain had suddenly decided to stretch and twist around to search for a better view. Her head was simultaneously both muzzy—and
crowded
. She remembered the instant Wolf ’s consciousness had slithered into hers and settled there; how she’d felt her body under his hands and his mouth dragging over—

No, don’t.
What was happening to her? She was losing her mind. That had to be it. She was finally cracking up, going insane—and who wouldn’t?
Help me, please, somebody help me.
But there would be no rescue. She was on her own. Whatever happened next was up to her.

Do something.
The choke of Wolf ’s excitement was gagging. Her mind was clouding. She was going to lose it; God, she was losing it . . .
Break it, do something, do
anything,
but do it now.

She spat into his face.

Gasping, Wolf started back. A fleeting expression of shock sparrowed through his eyes. Later, she would remember and wonder about that.

But inside her skull, deep in her brain, something let go. There was a sudden hitch, like the clunk of a lock, and then the release of a catch as whatever gripped her consciousness let go. She expelled a long, shaky breath of relief. She might die in the next second, but at least she wasn’t drowning in whatever passed for Wolf ’s mind.

For one long moment, the wolf-boy only stared. She willed herself not to look away. Her eyes fixed on the foamy slick of her saliva slithering down his upper lip like thick snot.

Then the air suddenly snapped with that sharp, expectant tang. A second later, she felt Beretta and Slash moving in to flank her and hook an arm.

She’d been right. Wolf had just given a command, and that was interesting. However the Changed
spoke
, that particular tangy scent was a signal. Were there more odors, gradations of some kind that added up to meaning but that, for the moment, her nose just couldn’t detect? Maybe. If she lived long enough, she might even figure out their vocabulary, but that still might not do her much good. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to understand them.

She watched Wolf raise a hand and smear away her spit. His eyes never left hers. They were inches apart, so close she saw his scar eel and squirm over his Adam’s apple when he swallowed. So close that all Wolf had to do was lean in a little and use his teeth.

But he did not.

Instead, the monster with Chris’s face smiled.

Chris knew something was up when the entire Council trooped in, trailed by guards. Nathan slouched as if held up by a string. Weller was haunted and hollow-eyed. The others were only grim. When his grandfather, Yeager, ordered Jet, Chris’s black shepherd, into the kitchen with the other animals, Chris knew this something was likely to be very bad. His grandfather also wanted Kincaid to wait with the girls and their new housemother, a grisly woman named Hammerbach, who would be there for the foreseeable future until—unless—Jess came out of her coma. But Chris nixed that. The more witnesses, the better protected he felt, and this wasn’t a trial. Not yet, anyway. Besides, he wanted to make sure Lena heard what he said in case they questioned her. No use both of them going down.

He was in deep, deep trouble. But why, exactly? He had no idea. Alex had been gone for eight days. Those same days of
his
life had vanished with her,
poof.
He’d been at Jess’s for more than a week, and barely remembered any of it. What also nagged him was that his memories of the couple days
before
—when he’d still been on the road, away from Rule—were a jumble. The only thing he recalled with any clarity was that one last, precious moment when Alex’s horse had reared and she’d looked back, and their eyes locked. But that was it. The rest was only a big, white blank.

“I don’t understand why you broke off the search. You don’t know that Peter’s dead,” Chris said. He’d elected to stand. Sitting was too pathetic. But his head was swirling, and he felt gutted as a shriveled pumpkin with nothing left but the shell. “There’s no body. He’s still out there somewhere.”

“Chris, it’s Saturday, for God’s sake.” Weller’s voice was a weary croak. “Eight days since the ambush, and there’s nothing, no trace, not a sign of either Peter or Tyler, and no trail either. I couldn’t tell you if those bastards went east or west, north or south, but I do know this: that boy, Tyler—there was no way he was gonna live another five minutes. As for Peter . . . I did the best I could. He’s young, strong. He might have made it, but it’s more than likely that he didn’t. I don’t like it, but I accept that he’s gone.”

“Well, I don’t,” Chris said. “It makes no sense. If I were a raider, I would just strip the bodies. I wouldn’t
take
them.”

“Maybe they weren’t raiders,” Weller said, simply. “How do you mean?” Then Chris gasped. “The Changed? No, that’s impossible. They’re not that organized.”

“As far as we know,” Weller said.

That had never occurred to Chris, and the idea shook him.
But there were a lot of bodies. The rescue party didn’t make it out 
there until noon. Plenty of time for the Changed to grab as much fresh meat as they wanted. But why take only Peter and—

“Wait a minute.” He looked back at Weller. “Peter and Tyler were the only Spared.”

“Yes, we noticed that.” Blind in one eye, Stiemke rarely spoke, only listened like a drowsing lizard. Now Stiemke tilted his head to one side, his left eyelid twitching to reveal a thumbnail of milky iris. “What do
you
think that means?”

“Me?” Chris frowned. “I don’t know.”

“Weller said there were rumors,” his grandfather, Yeager, prompted. His eyes, black as freshly mined coal, narrowed. “Something about bounty hunters?”

“That’s right. We heard the military was recruiting locals to hand over Spared and round up Changed. You think bounty hunters set up an ambush just to capture Peter and Tyler?”

“And
you
, if you’d been there.” An imposing man in his black robes, Ernst always looked and sounded a little like Darth Vader, minus the heavy breathing. “The question is, how did the shooters know where to stage the ambush? How did they know where to intercept the runner, Lang?” Lang’s horse was found ten miles from Rule, a frozen worm of blood in its left ear and a big piece missing from the right side of its face where the bullet had blasted through. Lang, though, was simply gone.

“I don’t know. We don’t follow the same roads all the time for this very reason.” Chris looked at Weller. “Tell them.”

“I already did.” Weller’s eyes slipped to the floor. “Peter said you guys talked about taking Dead Man four, maybe five days back, right before you split off to go north.”

Had they? “I honestly don’t remember.”

Behind him, he heard Kincaid speak up for the first time. “That’s normal with a concussion, Rev. Boy’s going to be spotty.”

“The point is Chris knew ahead of time,” Yeager said.

“I guess I knew it was a possibility,” Chris said. Then it finally clicked. “Wait, you think
I
had something to do with this? That’s crazy. I would never—”

“Then why leave your men?”

“I didn’t
leave
anybody. I already
told
you. We caught a rumor of Spared near Oren.”

“Ah yes.” From his seat on the far right, Born let out a raspy cackle. “You and your famous rumors. Why is it that Weller has no recollection of such a story?”

Shuffling uneasily, Weller threw Chris a pained, apologetic look. “Chris, I—”

“Don’t worry about it.” The fire was high and the room stuffy and overheated, but he didn’t think that had much to do with the sudden sweat starting on his upper lip. Peter had asked no questions, so Chris had fed him no lies. But now these old men wanted answers he could not risk giving.