Chapter 15
We left behind the bike with the empty tank, put the second bike into the back of the bigger truck, and threw the jeep into neutral so it could be towed.
“Harrison, you drive. Dave. In the back.” Veyyr pointed and Dave shook his head.
“I’m…I’m going to stay. I’ll keep the bleeders busy. Give you more time.”
“No sacrifices,” Veyyr said. “Not for us.”
Dave shrugged. “You can throw me in the back of the truck, but all I gotta do is cut myself and the bleeders will keep coming. I loved him, Veyyr. I…can’t do this world without Egan—I did that already, took too long to find him and I won’t do it again. I won’t.”
No matter that Egan had been complicit in trying to poison me, I found myself understanding not wanting to go on after losing a piece of your heart—even if I didn’t remember my past…
I knew grief. The ring on my left hand seemed to sting me suddenly, reminding me that out there, somewhere, was a husband, a mate…
someone who might very well be looking for me while I was fucking around with Veyyr.
Shame burned at the back of my neck, down my spine, quickly followed by a kind of horror. How could I forget the ring on my hand? The one tie to my past. I spun it on my finger, trying to center myself on it.
I had to do better. For me, and for whoever was out there that I was tied to, that maybe still loved and looked for me. Maybe to Veyyr I was no one, but someone had given me this ring.
Someone out there loved me.
Veyyr shook his head. “I can’t make you stay, Dave, you’re right.
” He handed Dave a small crossbow and a pack.
“Here. Enough food and water for a week. Take to the roof, block the entry points and…come find us when you snap out of this.” He clapped a hand on Dave’s shoulder and turned away as if Dave wasn’t on his way to his death.
Dave turned and glanced at me, his lower lip trembling. “He didn’t know about the drink, he wasn’t a bad man, Mallory.”
I wasn’t so sure, but there was no need to rub salt in the wound of a man who’d lost his love and was about to face a potentially gruesome death. “I know. He was kind to me, Dave, when she wasn’t around. Isla shouldn’t have killed him. Neither of you deserved that.”
His jaw shook as he gave me a tiny smile, and then he turned and was jogging back toward the shopping mall.
The rest of us climbed into the back of the truck, Lucky holding Rana wrapped in a blanket which only made her look smaller despite the bulk of the fabric. Sorrow sat on Lucky’s shoulder, watching over the child as I’d asked.
So much had happened in such a short span—minutes and the world had turned on its head again.
It had started with what I’d seen in Sorrow’s eyes.
I looked to the bird, wondering just what the hell the images had meant.
A place he’d been, or something else? What were the hoofbeats that I’d heard?
Horse? Veilrunner? They tugged at me in a different way, not unlike when I’d seen the veilrunner herd the same day I met Veyyr.
Veyyr jogged up to the front of the truck and sat with his brother which was good.
Space between us was needed, more than anything else at this point.
The complication of how he made me feel, a promise of my death, and then my ring stinging me like it woke up as Veyyr drew close the last time… left me unsettled.
“You know that Egan knew exactly what he was doing when he mixed that drink, right?” Lucky dipped his head toward the mall and Dave as he disappeared through the door we’d exited from. The truck rolled forward, hit a bump, bounced us all in the back.
“Yeah, I knew.”
“Then why lie to Dave?”
I stared back toward the mall and in the distance beyond it, the horde of bleeders came into view far beyond the other side of the building…a black mass of bodies undulating as a herd toward the blood they smelled. What were the chances that Dave would survive? Very small.
But maybe…maybe if he stayed quiet on the roof he might make it.
“Because we want him to survive, no matter what Egan did or the choice he made—that wasn’t Dave’s fault. I gave him the belief that he’s fighting for the memory of a good man not a traitor. Maybe it will be enough to help him keep going when he might otherwise give up.”
It felt like at some point, someone had given me a lie like that—to keep me going.
Dave wasn’t a bad guy, and if not for Isla, Egan wouldn’t have been either.
Lucky held Rana gently. “She saved the girl, at least. One final good deed to take some of the marks off her black fucking soul.”
Rana slept soundly, and while I wouldn’t give Isla props for fixing what she’d done, I was glad the little girl had a chance at life. Even here, even as hard as it was, fighting to live was better than living to die.
Harrison drove through the night, heading north. I dozed off and on, a ripple of unease still there under my skin that I’d wake and not remember anything, reset to a blank slate, and have to start again.
My ring seemed to warm and tingle off and on, and I found myself waking up in a cold sweat, staring up into the night sky the eastern edge of it just starting to lighten, streaks of red kissing the horizon.
For the first three seconds, my mind was empty as it was many mornings, which sent me straight up onto my feet, panic grabbing hold of me.
I stared out at the landscape behind us: the broken road, the strange lizards shooting across the marshy ground to either side of the road.
The screech of something dying.
But I knew that I was in a truck, that my name was Mallory, that Harrison was driving, Sorrow was my bird, and Lucky was an ogre who’d become a friend. A good friend.
Memory intact, I let the wind blow over my face breathing it in. Smells rolled back to me, the animals, those that had passed…was that part of being a Tracker? A high ability to pick up scents? To see further than most, to hear better than most?
Somehow, I didn’t think so.
A howl of a wolf had me closing my eyes. Why did that wolf howl tug at me? Not a riftwolf, this was a true wolf, its howl clean and clear and pulling me toward it.
A call to run, to hunt with the pack. I took a deep breath and let the cool night air clear a new fear that coated my body.
Maybe I wasn’t a Tracker after all. What if I was something else?
“You okay?” Lucky looked up at me with one eye, his arms still tight around Rana.
“Yeah. Fine.”
He grinned. “Little flower here is a sound sleeper.”
Rana hadn’t moved since Isla had slid her magic concoction in her, to counteract the poison. I crouched by them, reached over and gently pulled her hand from under the blanket, holding it between both of mine.
Her thoughts were scrambled.
Am I sleeping? Mom? Where am I? I feel like I’m moving…there’s so much light. It’s pretty. Where’s Mallory?
I shook my head. “I don’t know if Isla helped her or not. Rana…if you can hear me, you were poisoned. The antidote, Ilsa said you would be out for a few days. Just rest.”
The drink…it tasted funny. Hot chocolate, but sour. I thought it was just old…am I dying? I feel light…fluffy.
I looked up at Lucky and shook my head. “She’s aware, but are we sure that what Isla gave her will fully heal her?”
The ogre frowned, eye piercings drawing closer together. “Goose shit, I don’t know. She might have just…”
“Done enough to look like it would help her, seeing as she didn’t like Rana much more than she liked me?”
Sorrow ducked his head and arched his wings, so he looked hunched. “Sick. Girl sick.”
I let go of Rana and stood, bracing against the bouncing of the truck as it rolled over the dips and dives of the road, looking forward.
Ahead of us was not more open road, but a wide mouthed tunnel that looked unfortunately like the maw of a giant worm.
Big enough for four trucks to go through side by side, and two high…
the darkness within it was far too solid for my liking.
“We have to get her help. Real help.”
“Witches aren’t easy to come by,” Lucky said. “Shamans either. Let me do the talking. I might be able to convince Veyyr…to help. He had connections.”
I didn’t have to bang a fist on the top of the cab, because the truck was already slowing as we approached the oversized tunnel.
Harrison and Veyyr were out in a flash, Veyyr facing the massive tunnel.
“Did you hear the howls?” Harrison looked up at me, eyes lit up. “Real wolves! Not the riftwolves. I wish I could have seen them.”
Lucky grunted and stood and stepped down out of the truck, easy for him to do with his long legs. “Veyyr, the kid…she’s not okay. Whatever Isla did wasn’t a cure, more of a stop gap.”
Veyyr turned and peeled the blanket away from her face, pulling the fabric back until he could see down to her collarbone. “Black lines crawling up her neck. You’re right, it was temporary healing.” He shook his head. “I can’t heal, Lucky, you know that.”
Lucky looked straight at Veyyr. “You know someone who could, though, don’t you?
This girl, she’s…she’s special, Veyyr. You knew it, it’s why you brought her along even though we all know bringing a kid is as stupid as eating prunes before you go dancing.
And you, you never bring anyone who doesn’t have something in them worth saving. ”
Well, that little nugget was interesting. And how would he know anything about the girl? Maybe Isla had spoken to him about her at some point?
Or was it only because he learned after, like he had with me that the girl had some abilities?
Veyyr didn’t look to Lucky, but turned instead to me. “What are you willing to give up, to save her?”
I shrugged. “I don’t have much, what do you want?”
Maybe he’d take the falcata, or my daggers, the shadowsteel made them formidable and hard to replace. Or the siphoning weapon that drew out Isla’s magic.
Harrison and Lucky shared a look that I couldn’t decipher. “Veyyr—”