Until the Beginning (15 page)

“WELL, NOW. WHO’VE WE GOT HERE?” CALLS A
booming voice as I follow Whit into a cavernous front hallway. The light from an enormous deer-antler chandelier is reflected from a gleaming parquet floor.

A man walks toward me. He’s a good head taller than anyone in my clan, and wears a fawn-colored cowboy hat and matching boots. He claps his hands and rubs them together like he’s getting ready to eat me whole. He leans over to get a good look at my starburst and, satisfied, takes one of my hands in his big meaty fist and shakes the life out of it.

“You must be our little Juneau. My name’s Randall Bradford Avery the Third, but for obvious reasons”—and he spreads his arms out to indicate the mansion, the shooting range, everything around—“everyone calls me Hunt. Let me tell you, I have been
waiting to meet you for the longest time now. Haven’t I, Whit?”

There are so many things wrong with this little introduction that I decide not to respond, and settle for a scowl. Avery laughs, like I’ve made a joke. Grasping me by the shoulder, he ushers me toward a door. “Why don’t we all just grab a drink and get acquainted.”

I don’t even put up a fight. All I want to do is find Badger and get him out of here. If that means following this idiot around until I come up with a plan, well, so be it.

Whit follows us through a double set of doors, and then closes them behind us. I enter a room that could fit ten of my clan’s yurts inside. The floor is thickly carpeted, and the walls are lined with mostly empty bookshelves and topped with mounted animal heads. Every species you could possibly imagine has a representative hanging glaze-eyed on the wall.

Instinctively, I look back at Whit in horror, and see him squirm. He doesn’t like this violent display any more than I do.

“Welcome to my trophy room,” Mr. Avery says, affectionately scratching the chin of an enormous tusked boar before walking over to a copper-topped bar installed in one corner. He squeezes behind it and makes conversation while lining up glasses and bottles. “Made my money in oil. This wildlife hunting range is just one of my little hobbies.” Glancing up, he winks at me.

Although he is trying his best to display an easy manner, I can tell by the way he talks and moves that he is uncomfortable. He’s trying to size me up, but doesn’t know what to expect. And for a big-game hunter, not knowing your prey makes you vulnerable.

He drops some ice cubes into a glass, and pours in a caramel-colored liquid from a crystal decanter. “This is for you, Whit,” he says, handing him the glass.

And as he extends his hand, I see the ice cubes tremble—the drink sloshes slightly back and forth inside the glass. Avery’s hand is shaking. I glance to his face—his expression is neutral. He’s not nervous or upset. Why is he shaking? His other hand clutches the side of the bar, anchoring him.

He is looking at me, shaking his head in faux-dismay. “Where are my manners? I should have served the lady first. Though I doubt you’re a whiskey drinker, Juneau. You just don’t have the look.” He turns back to the bar and runs his hand over a stack of bottles. When he pauses over one, I see his fingers tremble again.

“I’ve got every alcohol known to man,” he says. “Or if you’re a teetotaler, I can offer you a nice cold tonic and lime.”

“Sure, I’ll have a nice cold tonic and lime,” I say, and he gets this relieved look on his face, “. . . as soon as you have one delivered to everyone in my clan.” I make my voice as blank as my face.

Avery takes his hat off, sets it on the bar, and rubs his hand over his thinning hair. “So we’ve got ourselves a vigilante,” he says, the smile on his lips as cold and dead as the snakeskin on his boots. “If you’re not feeling sociable, we can get straight to business. Wouldn’t want to waste any of your time.”

He pours himself a whiskey, and then leads us through his stuffed slaughterhouse toward a door at the far end of the room.

We walk in silence, with only the tinkling of the ice in the glasses accompanying our footsteps. Whit hasn’t said a thing since he picked me up from the adobe camp, and that’s been fine with me. If I get started with him, I know I won’t stop, which is kind of too bad, because I’ve got an overwhelming urge to hit him hard enough to break something.

We pass out of the trophy room and into a hallway, where Avery stops in front of another door. A rectangular box with numbered keys is fixed to the wall next to it. Switching his drink to his other hand, Avery presses a few keys, puts his hand flat on a screen, and turns to me, once again wearing his false joviality. “Those eggheads at NASA don’t have anything on my technology.”

I have no clue what he’s talking about, but keep my face unreadable, and when the door swings open, I follow him in.

We step into a blinding white room. Everything is white: the floors, the walls, and all of the equipment inside. There are machines from wall to wall, and a low humming noise comes from a large electrical box in one corner.

“Welcome to the North Pole!” Avery bellows and waves his free hand around. “Now I reckon you haven’t seen anything like this before, taking into account the way you’ve been living.” He stops and winks at Whit, who is ignoring him and walking around inspecting the machines like he’s never seen them before, which I greatly doubt.

“This is my cryonics lab. I, like your parents and Mr. Graves
here, have a great interest in preserving endangered species. However, the species I’m most concerned about is me!” He gives another laugh, and I realize that it’s not feigned: He actually thinks he’s funny.

He sees my blank stare, and harrumphs unhappily. “Please, do have a look around,” he says.

I stay where I am, and fold my arms across my chest.

Avery takes a mouthful of whiskey, and sets his sweating glass on a sterile white counter. He turns to me, and though there’s still a smile on his lips, his eyes have grown cold. “Miss Newhaven, there is a little boy somewhere under this roof, who has been crying because he misses his momma. It would be in his best interest, as well as your own and that of your clan, if you can find it in yourself to be amenable to any propositions that I make you.”

“If you so much as touch a hair on Badger’s head—” I growl, but Avery cuts me off.

“The boy has everything a child his age could want: warm clothes, food, toys, and a whole mountain of DVDs. And he’ll have his mommy, too, as soon as I get what I need from you. So . . . are you ready to cooperate?”

I ignore him and turn to Whit. “How could you do this to Badger?” I ask, controlling my fury.

My old mentor lifts his chin and says, “I did nothing to Badger.”

“Nah, that was my idea, little lady,” offers Avery, “as was the
plan for bringing your clan here to our lovely ranch. Whit didn’t seem quite ready to do business with me, so I figured I needed to sweeten the deal. The only thing we were missing was you, and I didn’t yet know how important you were. But now that we’re all here, let’s get down to business.

“As I was saying, please have a look around.” Placing a hand on my shoulder, he steers me deeper into the room. A giant transparent tube containing a single white-leather bed lies propped on a plinth in the middle of the room. “This here compartment is for full-body cryonic preservation. I like to call it my ‘life insurance.’ Top of the line, just waiting for me to kick the bucket so they can put me into deep freeze.”

His grip tightening on my shoulder, he guides me to another bed: this one metal framed and cloth covered like the one I saw Whit lying in when he was in the hospital. A handful of complicated-looking devices are arranged around it. “And over here are all the fancy do-dads doctors will need to keep my organs functioning once I die in order to freeze me.” He turns to me with a broad smile. “But it doesn’t look like I’ll need that now, thanks to you and Mr. Graves.”

Wait, what?
I turn to Whit, my eyes wide, but he pretends like he doesn’t see me. So
that’s
what this is all about. Avery wasn’t joking before: His interest in the elixir is personal. I should have guessed.

Before I have time to let this sink in, Avery steers me to a far corner of the room, where a silver metal box the size of my pup
tent sits atop a table. “Being close to nature and all, you’re going to love this part,” he says.

Whit speaks up for the first time. “I’m sorry for interrupting, but I don’t think this display will help you plead your case with Juneau.” He looks worriedly at the box.

Avery narrows his eyes at me, his frostiness returning, but a mocking smile is planted on his lips. “Miss Newhaven doesn’t need me to plead with her. I think we’re playing for the same team at this point. We’re on little Badger’s team, aren’t we now, Juneau?”

I remain silent, and taking that as agreement, Avery pries open a door on the front of the metal box. There’s a hissing noise, and smoke rises in a cloud from inside. “Of course, before full-body cryonics were perfected, the best method was neuro-preservation,” he says.

Within the box, positioned side by side, are three bucket-sized clear canisters filled with ice. As the warm air hits them, they immediately cloud over. Avery takes a cloth from the top of the box and wipes the frost off the side of one of the canisters, and I can see something large and dark suspended inside the ice. “Meet Daisy, best friend a man could ever have,” he says fondly.

And then I notice the fur and the long snout, and the clean line where the neck was severed from the rest of the body.

Avery shakes his head sadly. “Never was a hunting dog like this ol’ girl. Hope to bring her back someday. Her and her kin,” he nods at the two other canisters. “Now ain’t that a noble cause to undertake?”

Daisy’s frozen eye stares out at me, and something inside me snaps. I twist out of Avery’s grip and make it halfway to the door before I’m on my knees, heaving up the scarce contents of my stomach onto the sterile white floor.

I BRACE MYSELF TO BE KNOCKED DOWN AND TORN
to shreds. Instead, a loud squawking noise rips through the darkness and I am blinded by a face full of flapping wings. Finally able to move, I dive through the underbrush and run full speed through the woods until I reach the steep hillside, then slide down it on my butt.

I run for safety to the middle of the road, like it’s a no-man’s-land where nothing can hurt me. As if a huge man-eating tiger would stop for pavement. But nothing moves up on the hill, and I stand there for what seems like forever before I see a dark shape hurtle downward toward me. This time I recognize it and, crumpling over in relief, drag myself to the ditch at the side of the road.

“Poe!” I say, as the raven lands next to my hand.

He spreads his feathers and caws a hello.

“Man, you just saved my life up there!” I want to pet him, but he waddles backward out of my reach. “And now I’m talking to you,” I say, “but that’s okay, because no one’s around to hear.” I grin like a crazy person.

“How the hell did you find me here?” I ask. I know he has some kind of draw toward Juneau, but why would he come to me?

Poe eyes me as if weighing me up, and then takes a step toward me. I reach out, and he lets me pick him up. I set him on my lap and open the little leather pouch that’s on his harness. There’s a paper inside. I unfold it, to read in big, curly writing,

Your bird-child is driving me insane. Doesn’t want to stay with me. Send him back with instructions when you have something for me to do.

P.S. I’ve been trying to Read the fire, but can’t get a thing out of it. Either I’m not close enough to nature (as if), or your Yara is a bit more selective about who can use it than you thought.

I fold up the note and stick it in my pocket, rehashing what Tallie wrote. She’s figuring out what I’ve already discovered. Amrit is the key to connecting to the Yara.

That still doesn’t answer the question of why Poe came to me instead of Juneau. Maybe I can Read his memory like Juneau did.

Carefully, I cradle the bird in both hands, and feel its heartbeat patter against my fingers as I raise it to my chest. I close my eyes, and—here comes the Yara buzz—suddenly find myself flying up into the air, and over a city in a desert. I catch a glimpse of a woman with fiery red hair in a curly cloud around her head as the bird looks down at her. I recognize Tallie, and the town must be Roswell. Poe and I fly high over the desert until we slow and begin circling over a valley with a river running through it. In the distance we spot another river. It must be the one right down the hill from where I’m sitting.

There are several campfires burning in the valley, and as we swoop down we smell the smoke through our beak, and feel the air separating our feathers for landing. We alight in the middle of an encampment of adobe huts, just as a huge vehicle with a blinding row of headlights pulls up to one of the huts. Juneau is in the doorway, and our heartbeat speeds up as we see her. She’s the goal. She’s what we flew here for.

But then she gets into the truck and drives away, and we are once more in the air, following her trail. When we arrive at the big white mansion, we spot Juneau following Whit into the house. We cannot follow. We get ready to peck on one of the windows, but then something else catches our attention. It’s like a glow—like a warmth inside our breast, and it’s coming from atop a nearby hill. We fly toward it, and once in the trees, we see Miles . . . me . . . standing mere yards away from a tiger. The tiger pounces, and we dive, flapping our wings in its face, distracting it while Miles runs away.

The tiger swipes at us, but we are too fast, and fly up to perch in a tree above. The tiger sniffs the air and growls in frustration before turning around and pacing back to the tree where its two cubs wait. We fly after Miles until we find him here, sitting in the road, and here I come, back up to the surface of the vision. The buzzing in my arms gets lighter, and here I am holding a bird and feeling this amazing feeling because . . .
I was flying
! I, Miles Blackwell, was up in the air, soaring over the earth.

I jump up and whoop. Poe flaps away, and then turns and peers at me like I’m the most fascinating thing he’s seen in a long time. “I know. I’ve changed. I’m like Juneau and her people now. All Yarafied and immortal and shit,” I explain.

I pull my bag up over my shoulders, and make the clicking noise that I heard Juneau use with Poe so that he’ll follow me. He flaps up and lands on my shoulder, digging his talons into my shirt to keep his balance.

I talk to him as we start toward the mansion. “So, you only came to me because I’m your sloppy seconds, huh? No offense taken. Let’s go find your first choice.”