Authors: Melissa Marr
Mutely, Jack increased his pace.
She did the same.
In a few minutes, they were both running, racing across the not-yet-light desert with the sort of abandon that Jack rarely let himself enjoy. He steered their course, turning at the edge of a saguaro forest so they were racing down paths that wound among towering cactus. As far as the Gallows Desert went, it was safe enough.
Nowhere out here was truly safe, but there were a few creatures who hated the cactus forest. The biggest threats in this forest were the bloedzuigers and the two-natured, but for at least the next month, anyone with the blood of Garuda’s pack in them could count themselves as packmates to the bloedzuigers. Jack had no doubt that Garuda had left some of his young ones in the area should Jack need their aid. When he was bound this way to Garuda, the old bloedzuiger could track him. That meant he’d leave resources behind for Jack’s use, as well as potentially making an appearance if the threat was severe.
When they reached their destination, Jack grabbed Chloe’s hand and forced her to stop. The momentum spun her and propelled her into him. He instinctively dropped the weapons bag and put his hands on her hips to steady her.
For a moment, he thought she would step away, but she stared up at him, lips parted as if she’d speak. Instead, she kissed him, and he couldn’t think of any reason to stop her. His hands brushed the slits on her skirt, and it only made sense to slide his hands under the fabric. When he discovered that there were no undergarments between her skin and his hands, he cupped her ass in his hands and pulled her tighter to him.
They’d gone from running to touching, and somewhere in his mind, he realized that this wasn’t the best idea he’d ever had. They were in the desert at night. She was a stranger to this world. They’d both had near-pure Verrot.
Then she twined her arms around him and hitched a leg around him, and suddenly he couldn’t think of anything else.
They hadn’t stopping kissing yet, and in the distant, still-functioning part of his mind, it occurred to him again that it was a very bad idea to kiss her like this. Threads of reason tried to weave into his thoughts, but he was racing on the blood he’d ingested.
Chloe pushed harder against him, leaning her body into his so forcefully that he pulled his hands away and put them behind him to keep himself from crashing to the ground. He used his hands to steady their descent to the ground, but even so, he was grateful that he was fit and strengthened by Verrot
.
As soon as they were on the ground, she was straddling him, and it seemed wrong to have so much clothing between them—especially when she ground down against him.
He tugged at the front panel of her skirt, and she lifted herself up, balancing on her knees and staring down at him with wide eyes as he pulled the material from between them. His thumb grazed her, and she stilled. In that moment clarity assailed him.
“No.” He jerked away from her.
In a bloedzuiger-quick move, she stood looking down at him. She was breathing as heavily as he was, and her lips were swollen from their harsh kisses.
“No,” she repeated in a whisper of a voice. She swallowed and tried again, slightly louder. “You’re right. No. That . . . I didn’t come out here for that. Maybe you did, but . . .”
“No. That wasn’t my plan either,” he agreed. “It’s a bad idea right now.”
Not trusting either one of them, Jack stayed prone on the ground. He watched her smooth down her skirt and then run her hands over her hair, as if straightening her appearance would change anything.
“Right. Bad idea.” Her words agreed, but they sounded like a question. “I’m not like that,” she added. “Maybe people around here are . . . like that, but I’m not.”
“People are the same here as at home.” Jack pushed himself up so he was on his knees, and he was suddenly very aware that he was eye level with Chloe’s thighs. He forced himself to look upward and meet her eyes. “Your lack of undergarments is mighty distracting, Chloe.”
She smoothed her skirt again. “I have a skirt on.”
He grinned. “One that’s cut up both sides high enough that if you were to walk over here, I could—”
“Bad idea,” she repeated shakily. “You said so yourself.”
“That I did.” He stood, but didn’t step any closer to her. “As a matter of accuracy, though, what I said was that it was a bad idea
now.
Once you get acclimated to the Wasteland, though, we maybe ought to discuss it again.”
Rather than reply, Chloe picked up the bag of weapons and opened it. “Guns. Guns are good. I haven’t practiced in a while. Gun laws in D.C. are crazy strict, but it’s like riding a—”
“Man?” he interjected, feeling more lighthearted than normal thanks to both the Verrot and Chloe’s kisses.
“Bicycle,” she said firmly, but her lips curved in a brief smile before she continued: “Or a horse, in your case, I’d suppose. You don’t forget how to shoot; it’s like riding a
bicycle
.”
The foul mood he’d been fighting earlier had vanished somewhere between running across the desert and thinking about burying his face between Chloe’s thighs. Jack grinned at her before saying, “Right. Well, there aren’t any gun laws in the Wasteland. Let’s see what you can do with a revolver.”
E
ven though he was crossing the desert in the least unpleasant mode of transportation available, Ajani wished someone else could handle the task. It seemed a bit of a perversity that the Wasteland had such an overabundance of dismal locales: barren deserts, hovel-filled frontier towns, thick forests crawling with wretched beasts, and oceans that were populated by still more monstrosities. Still, it was the desert he liked the least. For weeks after he’d visited it, sand seemed to appear everywhere. He could taste it now, an unpleasant, silty brine on his lips and tongue.
“Water,” he ordered.
The sedan chair didn’t alter its forward trudge through the desert as one of the locals he employed handed him a canteen of warm water through the window. The water wasn’t at all refreshing, but given his lingering exhaustion and the desert heat, Ajani knew that drinking wine or brandy would be unwise. The perspiration on his skin had already caused a fine layer of sand to stick to him. He grimaced and blotted his face with a cloth.
Outside the sedan chair, Ashley, one of his most trusted fighters, gave him a look of disdain that would’ve resulted in a reprimand if she’d been anyone else. She was valuable enough that she got away with things no one else did. At first glance, she seemed like a delicate doll, a human replica of the sort of porcelain creation that his sisters would once have cherished. She was a petite woman with honey-blond hair, pale blue eyes fringed with exceptionally long eyelashes, and a smile that made her look angelic. In the world they’d both once called home, she’d had something she had called cystic fibrosis that had affected her lungs, but here—like the rest of his militia—she was functionally immortal. Having known limitations in that world had turned Ashley into the sort of warrior who seemed impervious to pain or discomfort. Even if he invited her to ride in the chair with him, he knew she’d refuse.
In his time, Ashley would’ve been just old enough to marry, but in her era, she had apparently been a student. He still found the idea of educating women a bit abhorrent, but after almost thirty years in the Wasteland, he was no longer shocked by anything.
“Would you like some?” He offered her the canteen.
“No.” She stared straight ahead, steadfast in her duties even as she struggled to keep the distaste from her voice. “Perhaps the others would.”
Ajani didn’t look at Daniel, her counterpart in rank, or any of the other servants or guards. They wouldn’t accept a drink after he’d said they didn’t need one. Even if they were suffering from dehydration, it wouldn’t kill most of his guards. Those he’d imported were unkillable. Those who weren’t from home were natives: their sort had long since adapted to the harsh environment.
“They’ll be fine,” Ajani said.
“So will I.” Ashley’s lips pursed in irritation, but she didn’t allow him to draw her into an argument.
“True,” Ajani admitted. He wasn’t sure if it was a result of the Coffin Text he used to open the portal to their world or some sort of transformation that resulted from crossing through to the Wasteland, but whatever ailments or diseases they’d had at home were gone here. They lived without physically aging. It made for the sort of incentive that created loyalty that couldn’t be bought.
As the crude little frontier town came into better focus, Ajani felt a thrill of excitement. It wasn’t the town itself that lifted his mood, but the possibilities of what he’d find there. One of the people who’d traveled to the Wasteland had expired, and with that, a new Arrival—a person full of potential—had come to this world.
And Katherine will be there waiting.
“Pick up the pace,” he ordered. In a few short hours, he’d reach his lodgings in Gallows, wash away the travel grime, and greet the latest resident of the Wasteland. Each time, he hoped that the new Arrival would be like him—like Katherine. Even if this woman wasn’t their equal, he’d welcome another good fighter. An emperor needed only one worthy wife, but many dutiful soldiers.
C
hloe wasn’t sure what she thought about the Wasteland or Jack or much of anything, but she knew what she thought of guns. There was something energizing about the weight of a pistol in her hand, and it didn’t hurt that the power they allowed her was actually a good thing here. She wasn’t going to blindly trust the people she was with, but she was happy to accept the use of the guns they had lying around their camp the way most campsites had firewood.
“I have a guy who makes a few things for us,” Jack explained as he handed her what, upon inspection, appeared to be a nine-shot revolver with a long barrel. It wasn’t completely dissimilar to the guns she’d shot years ago at home, but it was different enough that she turned it over in her hands and examined it. She flipped open the barrel and saw that the nine chambers were extra long. No bullet that she knew would require the length of these chambers. She held out her hand for bullets.
Silently, Jack dropped three narrow, pointed projectiles into her hand. He’d gone from ready to screw on the desert floor to adopting the demeanor of a distant gun-range instructor. If she were honest with herself, she wasn’t sure what she thought of it . . . beyond the obvious: her taste in men wasn’t particularly good. At home, she’d gone from loser to ex-con to the seemingly good guy she’d last seen screwing her boss. Here, she’d met all of three guys and was already rolling around with the one who’d given her the Wasteland equivalent of drugs.
Some things never change.
Chloe slid the odd bullets into the chambers and closed the barrel. “Target?”
He pointed at a distant rock outcropping that he probably assumed she couldn’t hit, especially as the sky was still dim. It wasn’t quite morning, but her vision was crisp enough since she’d had the Verrot that she could see more than well enough.
She aimed, inhaled, and pulled the trigger. The bullet made a whistling noise as it was propelled through the air and hit the outcropping almost square center. From this distance, it looked like the bullet shattered into tiny fragments on impact.
“Modified wood,” Jack explained. “Francis usually has them all blessed too. I haven’t seen any difference in the bullets after he treats them, but our Francis is a few steps past superstitious.”
“He’s the one at the gate?” She walked toward the rock she’d shot so she could see the damage.
Jack walked alongside her. “He is.”
They practiced with various other handguns, rifles, and a shotgun until Jack was all smiles. “You’ve spent more than a little time with guns. What was it you did at home?”
Chloe shook her head. “Nothing important.”
“Edgar was a hired gun; I was a gambler and a few other things. Francis sold drugs; Hector . . . no one’s quite sure what he did. He just calls it ‘carny work,’ but he seems to have spent some time in prison for it.” Jack held out a pair of throwing knives. “These are what he likes to use. Any knife skills?”
For a moment Chloe stared out at the desert behind Jack. She’d ended up in the midst of a group of criminals and cutthroats.
Mom always swore I’d end up in bad straits.
Chloe watched some sort of doglike animal running across the sand and tried not to think about Jason cutting her.
Jason’s dead now,
she reminded herself
. I made sure of it.
She looked back at Jack and said, “I’m not a knife fan.”
“Fair enough.” Jack picked up the bag and pulled out two other knives. “These are dummy knives. I’ll show you the basics for close quarters.”
“Jack? That animal is coming awfully close . . .” She pointed. If she were at home, she’d say it was definitely a canine of some sort. She wasn’t sure what sort, though: it had the larger, pointed ears of a coyote, but the downward slope toward the back haunches was reminiscent of a hyena.
When Jack turned and saw it, he immediately shoved her toward the weapons bag and grabbed the knife he’d left on the rock. “Gun. Now.”
Chloe withdrew a revolver, checked the chambers, and searched the bag for more rounds. “What is it?”
“Cynanthrope.” He came to stand at her side.
She lifted the gun and sighted down on the thing. “I can take it out.”
“Not it.
Them
.” He was scanning the area. “They’re pack hunters. If there’s one, there are others nearby. If you shoot one cyn and they weren’t intending to attack, they will.”
Chloe followed Jack’s lead, searching the landscape for the rest of the cynanthrope pack. She hoped he was wrong or that the solitary canine was just passing by, but her hopes were quickly dashed as she saw several more of the creatures come into view. “Jack?”
“I see them.” He sheathed the knife and withdrew his gun. “Hold steady.”
There were at least seven of the creatures, and now that they were closer, Chloe could see that they were decidedly larger than coyotes. They were even bigger than the German Rottweilers that one of her exes had owned. Like those dogs, though, these creatures were all muscle and intimidating teeth. Her ex’s dogs had been big sweeties, despite appearances, but she was pretty sure that the cynanthropes weren’t cuddly. They prowled closer in a sort of hive-mind behavior, and Chloe wasn’t so sure she agreed with Jack’s order to wait. With that many of them, the odds of avoiding injury weren’t looking good if they attacked.