Chapter 15 Redder Than Blood
Redder Than Blood
It wasn’t the first time she’d greeted the dawn with a vicious headache, grainy eyes, and thick coppery terror lingering at the back of her palate.
Cass could have felt slightly comforted that her bogey radar was indeed still operational, except it didn’t answer the question of how a bunch of big, bumbling cops had sneaked up on the campground in broad daylight.
She was used to weird, violent experiences, but this was entirely too much.
So was the panic which had kept her clinging to an absolute stranger until he gently but firmly disentangled himself, putting her in the back of yet another stolen car.
This one was a rather nice blue sedan, though its upholstery was saturated with cigarette reek and she winced at the thought of whoever owned it starting their day with hassle and paperwork.
When running for her life, away from literal nightmare monsters, how much could she keep in the way of ethics?
Bern was a big believer in the ends justifying way more means than the average citizen could ever really comprehend, though Trille was happy to brood over certain moral arguments, almost as if he enjoyed tormenting his own conscience.
Cass stared out the window as the sedan glided east and vaguely south through another beautiful summer dawn in the Cascades, finally pulling into the closest fast-food drive-thru taking advantage of construction workers and truckers ready for early breakfasts.
About all she knew was that Bern and Apoc were still alive—or had been as of last night—and this new pair of ragged scarecrows were somehow capable of making bogeys explode. Though they said she did it.
“We’re amplifiers.” Ed handed a hot, grease-spotted bag into the backseat as they pulled away from the window; he’d ordered doubles of half the menu and paid in cash. Maybe these guys didn’t have problems with funding? “You’re the wave, we channel and surf it. Cameras blurred, sir.”
Cass wanted to be cautious, refuse whatever she could. Still, overboiled coffee in a huge waxed paper cup smelled far too good to resist.
“Good.” Nigel offered her the bag as well. “Careful you don’t burn yourself, ma’am.”
She was prepared for anger, for threats, for the menace any woman could expect from unknown, heavily armed men. The careful, quiet solicitude was almost more unnerving than the way they clearly considered it no big deal to stroll around open-carrying.
Not to mention the memory of clinging to the lean, dark-haired older guy, so scared she was surprised she hadn’t peed herself.
And he’d lugged her around for what felt like hours.
No sign of fatigue, no gasping for breath—just one iron-hard arm under her knees, the other around her shoulders, and she wasn’t sure she could even think about how both of them simply burst through walls like the Kool-Aid Man.
At least the musky, wavering shimmer-trick they did got rid of drywall dust as well as anything else. She still felt dirty, a deeper stain lingering on every inch of her.
And inside, as well. Her heart, her head, even her bones were caked with aching, invisible filth.
Cass sniffed the coffee cup’s plastic top, regarding Nigel mistrustfully. He held out the bag of fast-food breakfast, blue eyes level and direct, the blocky ring on his left hand giving a single shy sparkle. His expression was a little like Bernadotte’s on mornings when a heist or operation loomed.
Her heart twinged, wringing down on itself. She took a hurried sip of coffee, grimacing as it burned her tongue.
“Careful,” Nigel repeated. “You all right?”
No. “Fine,” she mumbled, and decided she’d need fuel in order to survive or attempt escape.
Which brought her up against the question of how, but also the even bigger question of…
well, should she even try? How much resistance would these men allow?
And if they were part of some shadowy organization to the east, the one longtime, plugged-in bogey-hunters whispered about, what did it all mean?
What on earth were they dragging her towards? Her head spun. Twenty-four hours ago she’d been sleeping off reconnaissance, and her crew had still been…
Alive. Call things what they are, Cass. Now she was hoping she hadn’t gotten through to Bern and Apoc, that they hadn’t traveled through the darkness to arrive at a motel crawling with bogeys.
Although if first responders had been called in, the crowd and bright lights would warn bogey-hunters away—but what if more monsters had shown up too?
She couldn’t tell what to worry about most, and that was wildly unnerving as well.
“You should eat something,” Nigel persisted.
Between the faint accent, old-fashioned manners, and the sharp angles of his features, he was particularly forbidding even when trying to cajole; the rips and holes in his jacket and T-shirt looked precisely applied for maximum effect.
“I apologize it’s not of higher quality.
We’ll acquire supplies and better transport by noon. ”
Did he actually sound anxious? Cass’s tongue smarted, her eyes watering in response. At least, she could tell herself it was because of the burn of boiled coffee. She stared at the bag, wondering if she was agreeing to more than just breakfast if she made any move to accept even a single calorie.
These men had protected her, gotten her away from both the gunfire and the monsters. But still. “You brought them.” Her throat was full of dry gravel, turning the words into sandpaper, and she couldn’t remember if she’d spent last night’s fun and games screaming or not. “The cops, yesterday.”
“Ah.” Nigel kept the bag on offer, as if attempting to coax a stray close enough to be collared. “Our common enemy uses human hands sometimes. He used us as… look, to explain I’d have to go back a bit, and it will be a lot easier if you have something to eat.”
Had she been yelling the entire time he schlepped her around?
The question was a torment, one she was likely to fixate on.
Cass remembered the tentacle-dog bursting through the motel window, and the sudden, almost-familiar blinding multicolored glare accompanied by strange expanding warmth.
While he’d been lugging her, running at a speed nothing human could match, she had the same odd inner vision showing different angles, as if slightly outside herself—fragmentary, disorienting flashes, accompanied by the full-body sense of cascading energy, the stuff Trille called prana or qi.
Trille, lying on his side in the dust, clutching his bleeding stomach and staring at her with those wide, wondering hazel eyes.
“You’re taking me east,” she said, flatly. “People like me disappear there.”
“Disappear?” Nigel shook his head, a controlled, catlike twitch. He really did remind her of Bernadotte when he did that. “That’s imprecise. But to understand, I’d have to start long ago. Will you at least listen, and eat something? You’re about to collapse from sheer fatigue.”
Why do you care? “You first.” It was ridiculous; there was no way they could have drugged a bag of fast food, but still. Her chin set stubbornly; Frank would have snorted, recognizing it was her turn to play bad cop.
She wished, pointlessly but with great intensity, that he was here. That any of them were. This would be so much easier if she had someone else to protect.
As it was, Cass was feeling very small, and deeply, exquisitely aware of her own vulnerability.
“We don’t need it so much.” Nigel hunched slightly, almost like he was trying to make himself look smaller.
Which didn’t work very well. Both he and the driver had ferocious morning stubble as well as enough weaponry to start a small war, and were clad almost entirely in rags; it would be difficult for them to look more dangerous, or more bizarre. “While you eat, I can explain.”
Oh, what the hell. She pointed at the seat between them. “Put it there. We’ll share, with your… your friend doing the driving.”
“That’s Edward.” He nodded and complied, settling the crinkling, grease-spotted paper bag carefully.
“He is an Elder, and I am a Father, of the Sons of Ymre. You are a lirai, a Dreamer. We are your protectors; if need be, any Son will die for you without hesitation. We fight a mad god we once served, and though you may not believe it, you are safer now than you have ever been.” The gaunt man leaned forward slightly, pinning her with a stare so intense she was vaguely surprised the air between them didn’t scorch. “I will not let anything harm you.”
The engine hummed as the sedan rolled to a temporary stop. They were about to take a left onto the highway, the turn signal clicking in metronome time, patiently waiting.
“You’ve had nightmares,” Nigel continued. “Of a door.”
Cass shook her head, wondering if she could wriggle free of the seatbelt and get the car door unlocked before he reacted. But what then? That was the question. “Everyone has nightmares.”
“A yellow wooden door with stone steps before it.” There were no strange bright bluish speckles in his pupils as there had been last night, but that could have been because of daylight. “It’s not human-sized, and it bears a symbol. Crimson, redder than blood.”
He pushed the ragged left sleeve of his jacket up a bit. Both he and Ed were tattered, though clean—and that was something else, the way this man held his palm over her head and somehow sluiced away all dirt, dust, and the sticky feeling of sleeping in clothes.
I don’t want to think about that. She stared at the underside of his forearm, swallowing hard. Was this what Bern and the others felt when she did her parlor tricks?
Ropy muscle stood out under Nigel’s skin. Pressed into flesh a few inches above the wrist was a mark—red. Too red.
Redder than blood.
The worst part wasn’t that it looked painful, as if branded instead of tattooed; nor was it the color, impossibly vivid. No dye could ever grant that shade.
No, the horrifying thing was that she recognized it.
“No,” she heard herself mumble. “I never… never told anyone about that.”
“Dreamers usually don’t.” Nigel leaned closer.
The swordhilt jutting over his right shoulder was dull blackened metal, wrapped with leather cording in a herringbone pattern; she couldn’t decide if the detail was a sign she was in another nightmare, or awake but trapped in increasingly insane circumstances.
“You sense it isn’t to be spoken of lightly. ”
“Cover that up.” A thin hot thread of bile whipped the back of her throat. “Please.”
He nodded, his mouth turning down bitterly, and tugged the ruins of the sleeve back into place. “The mark grants us speed, strength, and some other abilities. It’s been treated by a Dreamer so the corruption cannot spread.”
Her throat was so dry, and it was a torment to have coffee so nearby yet too hot to drink.
“Okay,” Cass mumbled. How on earth was she supposed to respond?
Her life had, despite all odds, gotten even crazier.
“You’re Nigel. He’s Ed. I’m Cass.” She reached for the bag; it had been forever since she’d had anything close to a McMuffin.
Both Trille and Bern, in a rare show of solidarity, considered them culinary abominations. “Start talking.”