Authors: Melissa Marr
They continued to watch, but after several more minutes, the people under their cloth shelters came out, and Edgar returned to the front of the shop to stand between Kitty and the door. Chloe hopped up on the front counter with her shovel at the ready.
The missing insect didn’t appear.
When Jack pounded on the door again, Kitty was the one to open it. Chloe didn’t miss the way her eyes tracked over him. Kitty might grumble about her brother, but she was inspecting him the way a worried mother examines her young after a separation. Bits of insects and what she suspected to be insect blood clung to him. Several fuzzy wings were stuck to his hair. Kitty didn’t seem to find anything alarming in his blue-tinged appearance.
“Francis brought along one of his experimental goops,” Jack said by way of explanation. “The explosion of it was enough to eliminate most of the swarm. Melody’s homemade scattershot took out a lot of them too.”
“So deadly bugs and feral dogs . . .” Chloe fingered a bolt of violet fabric that looked like blue silk but felt remarkably sturdy. Nothing about this world was what she expected, and the more she saw, the more she thought it was far deadlier than she wanted to handle. She met Jack’s gaze and said, “I’m not sure who I pissed off to end up here.”
“Sweetheart, we’ve all asked ourselves that very same question.” Jack nodded cordially to the Wastelanders.
The woman Chloe had assumed was the proprietress bustled over. She still looked around warily for the remaining member of the Stinging Blight, and one of her employees was prowling nearby with what looked to be a rubbish bin and lid. Hector was leaning by the door watching the store for movement, and Kitty was . . . Chloe frowned. Kitty was
shopping.
Jack followed her gaze and then winked at her. “Ma’am,” he said to the proprietress, “I believe my sister has selected a few items we would like to have delivered.”
“To the inn?”
“To our camp out past the Forked Tongue,” Jack clarified.
“No.” The woman shook her head. “I’ll hold your purchases here, and you can pick them up later when it’s more convenient.”
“Or we can just not purchase anything,” Kitty called out without lifting her attention from the black cloth she was now examining.
Hector’s knife went zinging by, pinning the remaining insect to a wooden changing screen. “Got it.”
With a casual gait, Jack sauntered over and plucked the knife and insect from the wood. He folded the tiny dead thing into his hand and then tossed the knife to Hector, who caught it with the sort of careless ease that made it appear that the blade was attracted to his hand. Then he tipped his head in a brief bow, opened the door, and left.
“The black and this blue stuff,” Jack said. “Katherine will tell you how much of each and sort out the delivery details. It seems only neighborly to buy a few things to compensate you for offering us shelter.”
The woman sighed with what sounded like reluctance, but one of her employees was already gathering the items while another was writing figures on a sheet of paper.
“I don’t suppose you can sew?” Jack said in a low voice.
Chloe’s expression must have been as doubtful as she felt because he smiled again, and offered, “I’ll teach you. Better to need to learn
that
skill and already be handy with a gun than the other way around.”
W
hen Ajani looked around the pathetic little settlement masquerading as a town, he wasn’t sure whether he was relieved to have arrived there. The jerkily moving conveyance had stopped, but it had done so in
Gallows
. In time, he hoped to eradicate these primitive outposts. Fortunately, time was one of the things he had in excess. He hadn’t aged a day in what he’d calculated as a touch over thirty years. Each importation tired him, and the toll of them seemed worse the last few years, but exhaustion was the only real burden his body had to absorb.
Daniel had gone ahead a few minutes ago to check the security of the house. Although there were servants aplenty inside, they could sometimes be persuaded to be disloyal. Until Daniel returned, Ajani waited with the rest of his people outside.
A young man stood waiting in the street outside his lodgings. “Sir?”
One of the servants opened the door with downcast eyes. Most of the local help weren’t worth knowing. They didn’t have the same loyalty that his imports did.
As Ajani exited his chair, the boy said, “They’re in town, sir.”
“Ashley?” Ajani looked behind him. “Reconnaissance, please. Take a couple of the others.”
As soon as Daniel stepped outside and gave the all-clear sign, Ashley motioned to two of the others, and they disappeared.
Daniel stepped closer to his employer. Now that he was the highest-ranking employee here, he was tasked with being Ajani’s right hand. All of the imports knew the rules. If one was given a duty but failed to carry it out, one wouldn’t get another opportunity anytime soon. If one failed severely enough, one would forfeit eternity.
“The brethren?” Ajani asked.
“En route as ordered,” the boy who’d been awaiting him answered.
Ajani allowed himself a smile of satisfaction. He’d arranged everything perfectly. Jackson’s motley band would eliminate the brethren who’d been beckoned to meet with him, and then they’d be appeased, feeling as if they’d won something, which always made them easier to handle. There were more than enough demon-summoning monks in the Wasteland, so the death of a few of them would serve a dual purpose: thinning their numbers and making the so-called Arrivals more malleable.
A
n hour after their encounter with the Stinging Blight, Kitty was with Jack, Edgar, and Chloe walking down yet another street. They hadn’t seen any other monks or Ajani, and she suspected the other half of their group hadn’t either. Uncharitably, she wished she felt like she could trust Chloe enough to support Jack, so they could split into three groups instead of two. Until she was sure of the new woman, though, they’d work this way. The combined stresses of everything were making her irritable enough that Jack and Chloe probably wished they
had
split into separate groups.
“Maybe Garuda lied,” Kitty suggested.
Jack spared her a look that spoke volumes. Common knowledge in the Wasteland was that the bloedzuigers didn’t lie; it would violate their ridiculously detailed codes of etiquette. She and her brother had argued the matter often enough. He believed that etiquette prevented bloedzuigers from lying, but
rules—
especially rules of behavior—weren’t reason enough for her to accept the notion that they couldn’t lie. Rules were broken all the time, and Kitty simply didn’t trust the monsters.
“Sometimes I swear you’d believe Garuda no matter what he said,” she stated—as much for Jack’s sake as for Garuda’s. “I swallowed the nasty Verrot, which I hate, because the bony bastard said Ajani was around.”
Inside her head, she heard the bloedzuiger laugh.
“I told Jackson that the brethren have a benefactor,”
Garuda said.
His voice always felt like cornhusks rubbing together in her mind.
“Cornhusks?”
he prompted
. “What is that?”
Clearly, she wasn’t concentrating on keeping her thoughts sorted into private and bloedzuiger-accessible. Over time, she’d gotten much better at erecting shields in her mind to keep Garuda from rummaging about in there, but despite her progress, she still felt her mental shields slip sometimes. If she hadn’t had to drink Verrot, she’d not have to deal with this.
“You should tell Jackson about your skills,”
Garuda said.
Kitty shook her head. Her gaze went to Jack and Chloe, who were speaking in low voices. Whatever she did or didn’t do was
her
own business, not Garuda’s. She took a deep breath, calming herself, focusing. Then she stopped walking and put a hand on Edgar’s biceps. “Hold on.”
“I have never told Jackson about our little tête-
à
-têtes,”
Garuda said.
“You might not think me honorable, Katherine, but I’ve obeyed your request.”
Edgar gave her a curious look, but he stilled beside her all the same. Jack and Chloe were several steps away.
Carefully, Kitty envisioned Garuda and then began visualizing building a wall in front of him, a fortress of sorts that looked like it was made of heavy stones stacked atop one the other. When she reached his chin, she looked at him. He smiled at her, and she realized that he’d let her see him. She ignored the urge to look at his surroundings, forcing herself to stay focused on her task instead.
She tried to lift another mental stone to block his now-grinning face and staring eyes.
“You get better and better at this, Katherine.”
“Kit?” Edgar had an arm around her waist. “Are you injured?”
“You won’t be able to lift that one,”
Garuda chided
. “Not unless you’re even more a rarity than I know.”
“Fuck you.”
“What?” Edgar slipped around in front of her, keeping his arm at her waist. He stared into her face, seeking some answer.
Kitty hissed, sounding even to her own ears too much like one of the monsters, and said, “I wasn’t talking to you.”
Garuda’s pleased laughter filled her head.
“I find it pleasing that you have made so much progress, Katherine. Almost no one in the Wasteland can do this.”
“Just bloedzuigers and me,”
she half asked, half said.
The old bloedzuiger didn’t reply.
“Garuda? Did I block you?”
“No.”
Kitty realized that Jack and Chloe were staring at her, and Edgar looked at her with a dawning awareness. She couldn’t let her conversation with Garuda end just then. Hurriedly, she repeated her reply, this time clearly as a question,
“So just me and the bloedzuigers?”
“That is what you said.”
This time Garuda’s voice was guarded, which was telling. Kitty frowned. His evasiveness revealed a new truth: there was at least one other person or creature like her, and Garuda wasn’t interested in telling her who or what.
“Katherine?” Jack turned and looked at her. “Did you want to split up?”
In the street beside her, Edgar spoke in a voice too low for Jack to hear. “Unless you say otherwise, I think we ought to stay with Jack.”
“Your mate is right.”
Although Edgar was not her mate or spouse or any such thing, bloedzuigers didn’t understand partnership. At least, that was the answer Kitty clung to for not correcting Garuda. The alternative was admitting that she couldn’t lie to the bloedzuiger inside her head.
“No.” Kitty paused. There were too many individual conversations happening. “No, Jack. Yes, Edgar.” In her head, she added,
“You need to stop talking to me. I have to focus.”
She stepped away from Edgar, and in a moment she’d caught up to Chloe and Jack. Edgar kept pace with her, and a hasty glance at his expression made it abundantly clear to her that they would need to deal with the problem of her keeping this secret from Jack sooner than she’d like. It seemed increasingly impossible that her secret could stay hidden.
“Sorry, Jack. I thought I saw—”
Garuda interrupted,
“One of the newborns says two monks are out creeping up on the rest of your pack. He can see them from his shelter. Fell Road. Near the bakery.”
“Monks,” she said.
“I have told the newborn to assist them.”
“Where?” Jack looked around.
“Fell Road.” Kitty took off running.
Edgar didn’t hesitate to follow her. However, when Kitty looked back, her brother shot her a look that said there would be questions later, but he and Chloe followed as well.
When they reached the others, Hector was trying to get past a monk who appeared to be as competent with knives as he was. Both he and the monk were bleeding from several wounds. Melody was being held by two other monks. Her shotgun was on the ground beside her, but with two captors, she wasn’t having much success at getting to it. Her tidy twist hung lopsidedly from the back of her head, and her face was snarled in rage as she shouted orders.
Francis was trying to respond to the garbled commands Melody called out, but he was struggling. Both sides of his face were red with his blood, and he had a ripped piece of his shirt tied over the left side of his head, covering his eye. He turned, and Kitty could see that his uncovered eye was bleeding too.
“Chloe, help Francis,” Jack called. “One of you, check for others.”
“I’ll take Hector,” Kitty told Edgar.
The division took mere moments, as if the words and actions were simultaneous, but even those few moments felt too slow. Their entanglement with the brethren had already led to one permanent death. Kitty couldn’t bear the thought of the monks killing another of the Arrivals.
“The brethren aren’t what caused her death.”
Garuda’s words startled Kitty. For a brief moment she’d almost forgotten that he was in her head, and she’d definitely forgotten to keep her shields in place. This time, however, she didn’t regret it. There were hidden meanings in the old bloedzuiger’s words, implications in the things unsaid that she wanted to ponder—just not when they were in the midst of an attack.
“Later, you need to explain that. I don’t want to get shot because you’re talking,”
she told him as she continued toward Hector while searching the windows and doorways of the buildings that surrounded their location for other enemies.
This time Garuda remained silent, a fact for which she was grateful.
Like they did in most altercations in Gallows, the locals stayed away. The Arrivals were useful for solving a quarrel, caging a demon, or taking out monks, but they weren’t accepted by the Wastelanders—and they certainly weren’t
helped.
A familiar bitterness bubbled up in Kitty, but she did her best to squelch it.
The monk facing Hector retreated when he saw Kitty coming, and she had an unpleasant moment of having to decide between helping Hector and pursuing the monk.