The Crimson Brand (2 page)

Then of course there was Penny herself, perhaps the biggest complication of all simply because of who she was.  It was a complication he’d have to reveal to her in detail someday, but not yet.  She wasn’t ready.

If she knew the whole truth, it would break her heart.

First things first
, Ronan reminded himself, and refocused on the job at hand.

The last thing any of them needed was for some unwitting person to find one of the doorway relics and open the way for new trouble, so when the man finally rose from his seat, slinging his rifle back over his shoulder as he climbed inside his camper, Ronan didn't waste a moment.

Lesser quadrupeds
—
the rats, cats, and dogs too clever to be picked off by the garbage man’s bullets
—
fled before him as he raced down the barren slope toward the junkyard’s bordering fence.  They couldn’t see him now.  Like most humans they were blind to him when he made himself dim, but they could smell and hear him.  He moved slower, stealthier as he approached the rusted barbed wire fence, and then crossed beneath the lowest strand and into the wasteland beyond.  He knew his way to the burnt-out husk of the trailer well enough that he could have run there in his sleep.  He’d been there many times already, and a minute later, he stood before it again.

He spent a long moment studying the leaning false front and the fire-blackened siding, then the open front door, mostly blocked by charred rubble and broken glass, looking for any sign of recent exploration other than his own.  Vermin and strays had made this place home, their scents and tracks everywhere, but he wasn’t worried about the animals.  The rubble piled inside the open door had not been moved or shifted since his last visit, and no human could have entered these ruins without disturbing them.  He chuffed with satisfaction and scanned the length of the trailer to where the exit for the House of Mirrors had been.  This portion of the structure had remained partially intact during the search following the fire but had collapsed when the authorities had brought the trailer here.

The collapsed walls and roof changed that end into a claustrophobic maze of broken glass and charred wood.  Many of the twisting paths were too dark and narrow even for Ronan.  These were the only places he had yet to search for the remaining Relics.

Tonight he would have to dig.

Might as well get it over with
, he thought, and with a very unfox-like sigh, leapt up onto the threshold of the open doorway.

The stink of old smoke and decay filled his sensitive snout, and he sneezed several times before crouching low to pass beneath a large shard of smoke-blackened mirror.

The structure was mostly gutted, only a few warped and half-burned struts remained where walls had once stood, and the sagging ceiling had split in many places.  Ronan navigated the dangerous debris by memory and moonlight until he reached what had been the back hall, the short corridor where the troublesome Birdman had kept his handy doorways.

The thing that troubled Ronan most about the girls’ story, a story he’d confirmed during his explorations of this ruined place, was how a lone avian had accumulated so many rare and dangerous items.  It simply wasn’t possible.  The Birdman’s operation was small, though effective, and no rogue flier just appears in an ordinary, sleepy little town with such a trove of rare and powerful magic. 

The Birdman’s dangerous tools, his specialized knowledge of this world, and the sheer number of children he’d taken
—
all of it pointed to something much bigger than a lone, wandering avian snatching children for the open slave market.  Much, much bigger.

That monster had been the tip of some unseen sword, but who or what was holding that sword’s hilt?

Trouble coming on this side, something big happening on the other. 

Ronan could feel the fragile peace of this once-safe place shivering, about to shatter, like The Birdman’s House of Mirrors. 

He worked well into the night, burrowing through the wreckage until something shiny revealed itself in the ash and rubble.  Despite his discomfort, Ronan managed a brief grin before pulling the dirty brass object from the debris with his teeth.  He backed carefully from the rubble and emerged into the clean night air a minute later. 

He peeked from around the cover of the false front to the camper on the hill.  The chair was still empty.

Again, Ronan took quick advantage of the garbage man’s absence and sprinted from the wreckage, through the maze of human junk, with the etched brass doorknob between his teeth, slinking low to the ground to pass beneath the barbed wire, and was halfway up the hill and the start of his long trek back to Aurora Hollow when he scented something that stopped him in his tracks.

Ronan’s sense of smell was superb, much stronger than his hearing or vision, and his memory for unique scents was eidetic.  If he smelled a fire from far away, he almost always knew what was burning: the sharp, poisonous preservatives in processed lumber; the heavy tang of pine sap; the rich, pleasant smell of wheat grass.

His favorite scent was clover in spring, a wild, sweet scent unlike any other.

He could identify each of his girls, his only companions in this place, by their individual scents, and could tell if they were happy, sad, angry, or scared. 

The scent that stopped him was a familiar one, and unexpected.  It raised his hackles and made him want to shrink into the grass.  He resisted the urge and stood alert, scanning the countryside for the source.  Hoping he was mistaken but fearing he wasn’t. 

The scent, and the thing it belonged to, didn’t belong here.

Cursing his luck, Ronan dug a shallow pit in the stony earth and dropped the relic into it.  He swept the loose dirt back over it, marked the spot in his memory, and moved back in the direction of the landfill.

Stalking, again.

He didn’t cross the fence, just skirted it, moving away from the trail back to Aurora Hollow and toward the low hills and the darkness beyond the landfill’s security lights.  The scent was strong, and as he passed the boundaries of the landfill and into air undiluted by the sour stench of human rubbish, it grew stronger still. 

He settled into the grass, nose in the air, and waited.  After a few minutes something moved toward him, soft footsteps padding in the dirt and rustling the dry grass. 

Footsteps
? 

That wasn’t right.

Nothing to do but wait.  He would see for himself soon enough.

And soon enough, he did.

A man’s silhouette appeared on the top of the hill: head and shoulders, torso and arms, then legs carrying him forward in an easy stroll through the deserted darkness.  The scent was all around him, but he was not the source of it.  His weaker human scent, sweat, old onions, and some acerbic cologne that burned Ronan’s sensitive snout diluted the alien scent.  He stopped at the top of the hill, hands on hips, and paused for a long moment before continuing toward the landfill. 

Ronan stayed put, moving only his head as he tracked the stranger.

The man moved at his steady but unhurried pace until he stood at the fence, then shielded his eyes as a security light turned on, spotlighting him against the backdrop of last year’s dead grass and tumbleweeds.  Soon the new green would appear, as it had everywhere else, but here it wouldn’t last long.

The man was tall, stout, bald, with black trousers and a dark overcoat covering a crisp white shirt.  He held one hand in front of his face, shielding his squinting eyes, and the other in the pocket of his jacket.  He waited almost a full minute before speaking.

“Joseph, hurry up, boy.  I don’t have all night.”  The ease of his posture and the calm in his voice belied his words.  A moment later the long-haired killer of rats, cats, and dogs hurried into view on the other side of the fence, unarmed, Ronan was relieved to see. 

“Pa.”  The garbage man stopped on his side of the fence and nodded toward the dark man.  His accent was unfamiliar, thick and slow.  He wasn’t from around here.  “I waited up, but you didn’t come.” 

Without his gun, Joseph didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.  They twisted around each other for a few moments, then he shoved them deep into the pockets of his jeans. 

“I’m here now,” the man said, betraying for the first time a hint of impatience and a trace of his own accent.  It was lighter than his son’s, but there.  “I’ve got a full plate right now, son.  Multiple irons in the fire and only two hands to juggle ‘em, so you’ll just have to excuse my tardiness.”

“I know, Pa, I know that.”

The silence that followed made Joseph fidget again.

“Don’t ask,” Joseph’s pa said.  “You know how this is.”

“Yeah, I know how it is,” Joseph said, his own irritation finally breaking through the brittle civility between them.  “I just don’t trust how it is … and I don’t trust
them
.”

“Do you trust me?”

“’Course I do, daddy … you know I do ….”

“Then just relax and do your job.  I’m taking care of everything else.”

The two faced off, glared at each other through the old rusting fence for a moment, then Joseph sighed and nodded.

“It would be nice to get out of here every once in a while though.  Been stuck here for months.”  Joseph cast a look over his shoulder and frowned at the landfill.  “This place stinks.”

His father smiled, clearly pleased his son had brought that subject up.  “Then I have some good news for you.”

“We finally done here?”

“Not even close to done here, but you’ve got some help on the way.  You can start keeping normal hours soon.”

“Who?”  Again, there was worry in his voice.

“No one you know,” his father said.  “No one you need to know either.  You won’t see them and they won’t mess with you.  Just think of them as a silent night shift.”

“Whatever,” Joseph said, casting another look over his shoulder, this time toward his camper on the hill. 

“Trust me, son, you don’t want to meet these guys.”

“Anything else?” Joseph said.  “I’d like to get a few hours of sleep before I have to stand guard again.”

His father shook his head.  “Nothing else, unless you have something to report.”

“Come on, Pa, this place is too far out of town for kids to come playing around, and no one else gives a fart about that stupid carnie trailer.”

“And you’re sure no one can get to it without you seeing them?”

“No way,” Joseph said.  “I moved it right into the middle and spent two weeks building a junk maze around it.  I have security lights at the front gate and at the entrance to the maze.  No one is getting through without me knowing.”

No humans at least
, Ronan thought from his low place in the tall grass.  This was all news to him, and all very troubling. 

The labyrinthine arrangement of old furniture and appliances made more sense to Ronan now, as did the wrecked trailer’s placement at its center.  Fortunately for Ronan, he was small enough to slip through gaps that no human could have. 

 “What’s so special about that wreck anyway?” Joseph asked.

“Even I don’t know that,” his father said, then laughed.  “And I don’t care.  All I care about is no one getting into it.”

“No worries then,” Joseph said and sighed again, casting another longing look at his camper. 

“Alright, go get some rest,” the man in the black suit said, and Joseph turned to face him again, content, if not happy. 

“Thanks.  How about next time you’re going to be this late we just wait until morning?”

His father backed a few steps away from the fence, then stopped and frowned.  “Joe, you know I love ya, but don’t tell me how to run my business.”  Then he was off without another word, setting the same unhurried pace away from the fence and back up the hill.

Joseph watched him for a moment, then went his own way, back into the maze he’d built around the burned-out trailer and out of sight.

Ronan sat still for a few minutes, watching the stranger in black climb the low hill and drop down the other side.  As stealthily as he could manage, he followed the man.

*   *   *

Once on the other side of the hill, the man produced a flashlight and followed the gently bobbing beam over the barren terrain.  Ronan followed, staying only close enough not to lose the man’s scent, and perhaps a mile later stepped onto a narrow and rutted dirt road.  The man’s scent veered off to the right, and Ronan followed.  A few minutes later another camper came into view, much larger and cleaner than The Garbage Man’s.  As he approached it, the man’s light illuminated a large black truck, a small shed, and a bulky propane tank.

Ronan waited until the man was inside, then investigated.

A generator hummed inside a small shed, feeding power to the strange man’s mobile home.  The alerting scent was no stronger now; the thing that made it had been here but was gone now.  Slowly, keeping outside the large circle of light cast from the camper’s windows, Ronan circled the spot.  He didn’t know what he was looking for, but was sure he’d know when he found it.