Apex: A Hunter Novel Page 13

  “It’s time,” I said, when the radar showed the storm was a good half mile downrange of us. “I’ll find a way to get back here, but the weather probably won’t cooperate, and it probably won’t be for as long—”

  He interrupted me with a kiss and a hug that practically took my breath away, and it was absolutely the best kiss I had ever had.

  “You’ve already done so much,” he said, when we both needed air. “And I can never repay it. You’re amazing, I don’t deserve you, but promise me that somehow we’re going to manage to stay together long enough to find out if…if we can stay together? I mean, regardless of what’s going on outside of us?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t predict the future. But I promise if we don’t, it will be because what’s outside of us made that impossible.”

  “That’ll do,” he said, and kissed me again. That kiss just made me tingle all over, put flutters in my stomach, and made me hyperaware of every inch of my skin—and every inch of my skin wanted him to touch me.

  It was really, really hard to break off, gather up the Hounds, call in my mage-lights, and go out that door. Hearing the heavy blast doors closing felt like I was closing my own heart into a little dark box. And on top of that, I knew that he was being closed into a dark box…even if it wasn’t a little one. He was going to be all alone out here, and although he was used to being alone, he wasn’t used to being this isolated. It was awful. I wanted to run back in there and tell him I was going to find a way to send him to my home. Or tell him we’d find a way to hide him in our HQ.

  I picked my way through the half-destroyed building, using all my skills to keep from leaving a trail, and got out, not looking back. Because if there was a cam up that I couldn’t see, I didn’t want anyone to think that I’d done anything differently than I’d reported. I’d just used one of the shelters, whiled away the hours, and now I was back on patrol.

  Right there on the steps of the building I opened the Way for Hold, Strike, and Gwalchmai to come through and rejoin the rest of the pack.

  Is there an Eye? I asked Bya, who was supersensitive to the presence of cams.

  He shook his head. There is no Eye. Why?

  Because I want some bloody answers, I replied, settled my One White Stone in my head, and turned on the Psi-shield on my Perscom. Nervous and marveling at my own hubris, I called out loud: “Torcion! Torcion! Torcion!”

  I felt the rough caress of a lot of power on my skin, and I clamped down hard on my fear. As the Hounds closed in around me, a Portal opened in the middle of the ruined, cracked, and potholed street in front of us, and the lavender-robed Folk Lord I now knew as Torcion stepped through.

  He looked just the same, so far as I could tell, except he was walking on his two feet rather than floating high in the air. “I was wondering when you would find an opportunity to call upon me,” he said, his eyes alight with both interest and what I thought was amusement. “It was longer than I anticipated.”

  “Well, it’s not as if you aren’t one of mankind’s deadliest enemies, after all,” I retorted. “And it’s not as if—” I was going to say Not as if I have a reason to trust you, except that was wrong. He’d helped me, or people near me, several times already. He’d offered reasons to trust him. And I had already lost control of this conversation. “—as if I haven’t a reason to think you might be setting me up for a trap,” I said instead. “You could have given me the way to summon you just so you could get me alone and kill me.”

  “So I might. But you are wrong about the first, shepherd. I am not, and have not been, your enemy, or the enemy of any of your kind.” He cocked his head to one side. “In fact, I am the benefactor of many. And my kind saved your world when your kind very nearly destroyed it and made it unlivable.”

  I frowned. “I find that completely unbelievable. You’ve been massacring us since you arrived.”

  “Ah!” he replied, holding up one finger. “That is true. But we have not killed anything else but you. The creatures that are not you flourish and prosper as they have not since your kind began to take over the world. And while we were unable to reverse what you did to your world, we have been…mitigating the damage. You should have been thanking us; indeed, the Grand Alliance believes you should be willingly offering yourselves to us in return for what we have done for your world. Without us, your kind, along with most other life on this world, would be extinct.”

  I had no way to counter that. Was he telling the truth? Or had all the various disasters of the Diseray had some mitigating effect on the runaway climate and he was only claiming to have “fixed” something that would have tempered itself regardless? I had no way of knowing, so I just shrugged. “I didn’t invite you here to debate you,” I said instead. “I want to know why you’ve been helping me. And why me?”

  He walked toward me slowly. Beside me, the Hounds vibrated with nervous energy, but they didn’t make any moves to hinder him. He stopped when he was within touching distance—much closer than I liked, but I didn’t feel as if I could move back without offending him or showing my weakness. “Because you interest me, shepherd. Of all your kind, you are the first I have encountered that was willing to speak rather than kill; negotiate rather than attack.”

  “Be fair,” I retorted. “You’re the first of your kind that ever tried that with me.”

  “Perhaps because we are more alike than you know,” he countered. “I, too, am a shepherd of sorts. There are others like me who do not emulate the more…aggressive of our kindred. Your sheep often come to us willingly enough, and we offer them safe pasture. In the wilder places of this world, our domains are spoken of as havens of peace, and sought for. Thus, you shepherds have not often encountered us.”

  Well, I felt in that moment as if someone had just stunned me with a rock. He couldn’t possibly be saying what I thought he was saying—that there were some of these Folk who protected humans and gave them—what? Places to live? Safe places?

  Careful, I reminded myself. There’s no reason to think he’s telling the truth….

  “As for those creatures we shared our worlds with,” he continued with a shrug, “they are what they are. They cannot be reasoned with. They can be controlled, which is why the Grand Alliance uses them, but that control has its limits, and once they sense food, there is no stopping them.”

  He suddenly reached out, took my chin in his hand, and tilted my head up while he bent down. “Let me offer another small piece of information. You interest me because although I can pierce that flimsy mechanical protection you wear about your mind, I cannot pass the White Stone. I have not encountered this before, although I have heard of it.”

  His grip was firm but nothing I couldn’t pull free from if I tried. His hand was just a little warmer than my face, and his skin was silken. And for some reason, his touch made me shiver. Mostly fear, but something else, an echo of what he had said back at the train, came out of my memory like a ghost: We do not find your kind uncomely. Was he trying some sort of glamouring magic on me? Something to get me to drop my mental protections?

  Before I could object, he let me go again and stepped back a pace. “Now, I am curious as to how you knew I would be able to come when you summoned, even though we are within one of your great magic walls.”

  “You use Portals,” I told him. “When I open the Way for my Hounds, I can make a Portal anywhere.”

  His eyes lit up. “Well deduced. But here is some information for you. We must know where we are going in order to pass your Walls,” he said. “I told you my name in order for you to summon me, for your summons gives a place to put the Portal. Even so, though you may summon, we need not answer.”

  That might explain how Ace had gotten a Vamp down in the sewers, if he’d summoned one of the Folk down there. So why hadn’t he gotten away from the army that way? Probably because the Folk he was working with weren’t prepared to jump straight into the heart of enemy territory.

  It was just too bad I couldn’t share any of this inf
ormation, because people would want to know where it had come from. The last thing I wanted to do was let anyone know I was chatting with a Folk Lord.

  Yeah, that would go over well.

  “That boy you have hiding under those ruins is one I know something about,” Torcion said casually as all this was flitting through my head. “There are those in the city who wish to do him a cruelty that you have helped him escape from. I could offer him sanctuary. I think he would not be unhappy in my domain. Could you persuade him to accept, I would consider such an addition to my flock a favor of great price.”

  That just knocked me mentally sideways for a moment, because it was an answer to the question of what to do about Josh. It probably wasn’t the best answer; it certainly wasn’t the best from my point of view—either Torcion was lying or he wasn’t, but regardless I’d never see Josh again. Still, at least it was an answer.

  “I understand you would wish to know I am not offering false sanctuary,” Torcion continued. “And I shall need to think upon a way to assure you that I am not. But if you will not come as a shepherd to my flock, I would gladly take him. In some ways he would be superior, for he could tell me which of my sheep is uneasy or unhappy, and why. And,” he added, with a narrowing of his eyes, and a slight smile, “you are fond of him. If he is contented in my domain, in the end, that might persuade you to take service of me too.”

  I meant to give him an outright refusal, but my mouth betrayed my indecision by uttering the words “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Of course.” He stepped back to the center of the street again and evoked a Portal as casually as I would have created a mage-light. “But do not think upon it too long. He is ill-suited to this place and may come to grief by simple accident. There is danger here, both from those you term ‘monsters’ and the monsters of your own kind, and while his weapons of the mind are formidable, he can wield them against only one at a time. His masters may come looking for him, supposing he has escaped here. There are storms, and there is illness. There are small and deadly creatures that might slip into his shelter without his knowledge. And it may be summer now, but it will not always be summer.” And with that, he stepped through the Portal, and it vanished.

  You should sit down, Bya said, concerned. We will watch for trouble.

  He was right; after that encounter I felt light-headed. I kept thinking about all the questions I should have asked. I sat down on a handy piece of rubble and put my head down. “Was I a complete idiot for doing that?” I asked the Hounds.

  No, Myrrdhin said immediately but didn’t elaborate.

  We learned a great deal, and I do not think he was being deceptive, Bya agreed. He shook his head like a dog. Sending your friend to him is not the worst idea in the world. Doing so would get him far away, and there would be nothing to connect you.

  It was true enough that if the Psimons got their hands on Josh, they’d ruthlessly strip everything from his mind, and Uncle and I would both be in trouble over it, even if technically no one was doing anything wrong.

  And it was true enough that if there was any place on the face of the earth where PsiCorps couldn’t get their hands on him, it would be with the Othersiders. If Ace had just had the sense to stay with the Othersiders who had offered him escape, he’d still be free. It was frankly only due to Ace’s hubris in coming after us himself at the second Battle of the Barriers that we recaptured him. There was no surer way to go somewhere no human would find you than to go off to the Othersiders.

  But I’d have to be sure that Josh would be safe with Torcion before I would even suggest it. And how in hell was Torcion going to prove that?

  Well, there was only one thing I knew absolutely for sure. I was going to have to call HQ and report myself back on patrol before someone got suspicious. The storm had passed, and we should be working.

  I called in. “Elite Joy to HQ. Back on patrol.”

  “Roger, Elite Joy. You are clear to continue. Anything to report?”

  “Acute boredom,” I lied. “Finally found an antenna to the surface or I’d probably be gibbering and sucking my toes by now.”

  The radio operator laughed. “Roger that. HQ out.”

  After that storm, things were suddenly quieter. Not quiet, but quieter. I wondered if maybe we’d taken more of a toll on the Othersiders than they had on us—maybe their strategy had backfired on them.

  The morning after the storm, Cielle and I got a callout in the middle of breakfast. We grabbed what was portable and headed to Spillover again. We went in through a pylon access as usual and summoned our Hounds on the other side. More half-ruined buildings. This looked as if it might have been some sort of institution, like a college. There was no sign of life, other than wild birds and small animals. Since the call had come from one of the Apex PD who was running his usual patrol on the “safe” side of the Barrier, the Othersiders didn’t know they’d been spotted.

  “Has HQ told you anything?” Cielle asked as we marked the coordinates that the APD had given us, and I overrode the pod’s Cit instructions so it would go at maximum speed to get us there.

  “Goblins. Not a Goblin Fair, though,” I told her. “So, if I were a flock of Goblins, where would I be?”

  “I’ll bet they went to bed down over there.” She pointed at a roofless building that had probably been a single-story warehouse. Goblins preferred to make nests of whatever weeds and things they could find, and that building looked prime for collecting leaves and growing weeds. We hijacked the cam that was with us and sent it over to peek over the wall. Sure enough, they were there. It was the biggest swarm of Goblins I had ever seen.

  If I’d been alone, this would have been more than I could handle. But I wasn’t alone. I was with Cielle, and she was fresh from a nice storm day of rest.

  We grinned at each other and fist-bumped.

  We picked out another roofless building; this one had solid walls of brick three stories tall, but the wooden floors had all rotted away and dropped to the ground level, and the interior had filled with tall brush, even a couple of small trees. At a guess, I would say it had been some sort of factory or assembly plant, because of all the windows. This was ideal; the window glass was gone, but the framing pieces for the glass—which were steel—were still intact. The panes had only been about two inches wide and four tall. There was no way a Goblin would be able to squirm out one of those, and the four walls themselves were good and strong. To the Goblins, it would look like a perfect hiding place. Dusana helped me get onto a fire escape on the side opposite of where the Goblins would be coming from; I got myself into position at the top floor, right at one of those windows. I covered myself with a camouflage cloth. Then my pack set themselves up inside the walls in hiding, making sure the doors were covered. My Alebrijes actually camouflaged themselves like chameleons amid the debris; the others found hiding places under a couple of pieces of fallen roof. Cielle set off with her Hounds to chase the Goblins off their bedding ground and herd them to this building, where they would think they were safe.

  It worked so well it might have been scripted.

  The Goblins were in their natural form as they buzzed over the wall and flung themselves into corners, trying to get out of sight of their pursuers. Long spindly limbs, wings like a fly, snarls of hair, faces a cross between a human and a fox, with rows and rows of sharp teeth. Cielle’s Hounds had them terrified; it was obvious from their frantic flying that they weren’t thinking, just acting on the instinct to get away and hide.

  This is the last, Bya said, as Cielle’s Hound pretended to “lose” a Goblin in its natural form that went streaking into the building to huddle up with the rest.

  That was when I carefully dropped the net down over the top of the whole building and securely anchored it there, because I really did not want them to come surging up out of the brush to hit the net. I was pretty sure I couldn’t hold it against all of them.

  They were so busy trying to get themselves even deeper into the brush, th
ey weren’t looking up at all.

  “Come and get ’em!” I said into the Perscom. My Hounds heard the thought, of course, and they came up out of their hiding places and began wreaking havoc on the trapped Goblins.

  Cielle strolled up to one of the doors that was guarded by Dusana, freeing him from door duty, and lined up a Goblin in her sights in a leisurely manner. She potted them with a rifle until her Hounds could feed her magic. Her four bat-winged Hounds waited politely at the level of the vanished roof for me to loosen a corner of the net so they could slip in with my Hounds. The Goblins that managed to get into the air and got too high for my Hounds to reach found the winged ones waiting for them.

  I never even had to hold the net all that tightly; no more than a couple Goblins ever bounced off. And once Cielle’s Hounds went to work, she was able to mow Goblins down with deadly arcs of her powerful blasts.

  I found myself elated by how much easier things like this were with a pack of eleven. I even had a moment to call HQ.

  “Elite Joyeaux to HQ,” I said, using the non-emergency channel.

  It took a few minutes before they replied, but I was patiently picking off flying Goblins, wounding them so that they fell right in front of Hold or Strike. I kept imagining them wearing Abigail Drift’s face.

  Finally HQ answered. “Go ahead, Elite Joyeaux.”

  “Commendation for that APD who called in the Goblin flock here. Nice to see someone’s paying attention to both sides of the Barrier,” I said. “If we got more calls alerting us to problems before they got out of hand, we wouldn’t have nearly as many emergencies.”