Chapter 5
Five
“This isn’t the easiest way,” Jewels hisses for the third time since we departed the house, though I’m fairly certain the universe is steadily speeding our passage. Or maybe that’s just all my energy, all me and my eagerness to get home. “The border crossing here is … we’ll get stopped.”
I shrug. “It’s our way.”
The landscape has gotten greener as we’ve neared the border between the Federation and the Navajo Nation, but these lands are still sparsely populated.
Mostly huge foothills and ranches speckled with roaming herds of cattle and a few horses, but nothing near the edges of the narrow highway we’re traveling.
We’ve been driving that highway without stopping for about six hours.
Okay, it’s more of an overgrown and crumbling road masquerading as a highway as it twists through the hills.
Only the center lanes are viable for driving, and the intermittent signposts are so riddled with bullet holes as to render them mostly unreadable.
I can’t drive as fast as I’d like to, though the truck engine is more than capable of handling that speed.
Hopefully, the optimized highways through the Navajo Nation and California will help shave hours off the rest of the drive.
A small outpost finally appears ahead of us, smoke curling over it from an unknown source. Scanning the skyline, I spot similar curls of smoke far to the north and south. Jewels clearly notes the same, and her hands curl into fists on her thighs.
Nearing the clearly abandoned outpost, I roll down the window.
The heat has eased slightly, no longer quite as oppressive, most likely due to the elevation rising as we near the low mountain pass ahead.
Though only someone born and raised in Vancouver would consider this section of the Rocky Mountains remotely low.
I slow the truck as I eye the half-destroyed gate ahead of us and the mangled chain-link fencing stretching out in both directions. “A secondary border checkpoint? Doesn’t that void some treaty with the Navajo Nation? They patrol this side of their own border, don’t they?”
The truck behind us, driven by Angie, is following so closely that I have to be careful not to brake too suddenly.
Jewels shifts in her seat, clearly uncomfortable. “It’s set back enough that it doesn’t violate anything, just …”
“Polices anyone wanting to leave the Federation.”
“Navajo citizens just get waved through.”
I don’t ask her how she knows. It’s obvious enough that she’s done her own research. I nod toward the other two points of smoke in the distance. “Other checkpoints?”
She nods, eyes darting around warily, though whoever was standing guard at this post has clearly fled. “The rebels —”
Lou snorts belligerently from the back seat. “Rebels? Please. They’re just a wannabe MC militia cobbled together by rogues and prayers.”
Jewels falls silent.
“What?” Lou asks mockingly. “What have they ever done to help anyone? Protests that do nothing? Destruction of property? Hurting hardworking citizens more than any sort of so-called repressive government? If you thought they were reliable instead of just fucking fools with guns, ferals, and a few mages, you would have reached out to them, Jewels. Instead of fucking around with the Cataclysm’s little prized captive. ”
Huh. I don’t think I’ve ever been called a prize before. I don’t much like it.
“Leave it,” Jewels hisses. “Not all of us get to pop a few pills and drift out every time reality gets a little much to bear.”
Lou stiffens, then bristles.
I can feel her energy behind me more than see her, because I’m more interested in the essence shifting on the breeze filtering through my open window, bringing the scent, the taste of power … and that antithesis of essence that I’ve only felt from one other being.
“The Cataclysm,” I murmur to myself, forgetting that the shifters will have no issue hearing me even over their own argument.
“What?” Jewels cries sharply, causing Sara Ann to burst into tears in the back seat.
“Where?” Lou grabs for Cal as if she’s poised to drag him to safety. Never mind that we’re already in a vehicle that at top speed can outrun most shifters.
Most shifters.
Bellamy seemed to think that the berserkers in the barrens could have easily run an SUV off the road. I don’t doubt that the same would hold for the Cataclysm.
Cal doesn’t protest Lou’s grip on his arm, but he does meet my gaze in the rearview mirror. His glower seems less directed at me, though, than at the situation. He pats Sara Ann’s knee, and she quickly swallows her sobs.
“He was driven away,” I say calmly, though the sound of a child stifling her own fear nearly unravels the bits of me I thought were all woven together again. Apparently, I’m only barely patched up. Just enough to keep moving, perhaps.
“By who?” Jewels says in disbelief, looking around with a frantic edge.
Pressing the accelerator lightly to pick up speed, I roll past the mangled gate, inhaling deeply and allowing the residual essence still clinging to the air itself to settle in my lungs.
I can feel an echo of all of them. Then I taste them. The bond hooked into my upper ribs tightens just enough to call my attention to it.
“My mates,” I say. Simply to say it out loud, to claim them, even if just a tiny bit. Even the one I’m almost certain I won’t be claiming at all. “The universe is playing with a full warp today.”
“What does that mean?” Cal asks.
“Your brothers have cleared the way for us.” I smile at him in the mirror. Then, knowing that the Cataclysm could still be nearby, I press my foot much more firmly to the accelerator.
Jewels twists to share a look with Lou, then says hesitantly, “Cal isn’t his, Zaya. He might look like —”
I cut her off, but mildly. “There is never any point in lying to me, Jewels.”
Cal huffs from the back seat. “It’s me they all think is stupid. Like I didn’t figure it out years ago.”
“What?” Lou asks softly. “When?”
“Does it matter?” he snaps. “I’m not an idiot. And … they aren’t my brothers. Actual brothers wouldn’t have … left me.”
Silence falls. Jewels and Lou are probably running responses in their heads, but I know this is something Cal has to work through for himself. Talking at him, cajoling him, won’t be helpful.
So I simply say, “The truth always comes to light, usually in the most inconvenient way. And some bonds transcend bloodlines.”
“Whatever,” Cal mutters, hunching down in his seat. “I need to piss.”
“On the other side,” I say, even as the road emerges from between high hills — and the massive wall built into the mountainside demarcating the eastern border of the Navajo Nation comes into view in the distance.
Jewels clears her throat, eyes fixed forward now. “We tried to get passports for the kids, but we couldn’t figure out who to trust in the short timeline.”
“We won’t need them,” I say. And I’m utterly certain of it.
“But … I thought you’d have a plan, like some other route to get us through to California?” She clears her throat. “Because Lou also has a record, and —”
“For what?” Cal asks sharply.
“For trumped-up garbage,” Lou retorts. “To keep me in my place.”
“So you say,” Cal grumbles, eyeing her.
“Yeah, I do.” She doesn’t offer up any more information. Not that I need it, but Cal could use some transparency. Otherwise, she’s going to lose him.
“This crossing will still do,” I say, trying to keep us on point.
The concrete wall spans the wide mountain pass, looming easily fifty or sixty feet over us as we approach.
Guards appear along the top ramparts, looking tiny to my eyes.
They’re clearly armed but not pointing guns at us.
They’ve obviously seen our approach from a long way off, and we’re the only vehicles on the road.
Following the directions on the no-longer-bullet-riddled road signs, I slow, noting a green light over the middle of three glass-fronted checkpoint booths ahead.
The other two booths are clearly not in use, given the concrete barriers arrayed in front of them, making the green light a little pointless.
A border patrol guard steps out of the booth with his hand raised, as if I hadn’t already been heading his way and prepared to stop.
He’s attired in a well-pressed brown uniform, visored hat, and black boots.
Not the full traditional Navajo regalia, but with hints of it seen in the dual crests on his shoulders, as well as the subtle etching on his leather belt and cross-body holster.
His silver belt buckle is inlaid with turquoise.
Another guard steps into the booth from a back entrance, clearly called to duty by our arrival. It’s an easy guess that it’s not actual glass fronting the booths. More likely, it’s an essence-infused polymer constructed to look like glass by a skilled fabricator mage.
I roll down my window and slow to a stop.
Hand casually resting on his holstered sidearm, the guard steps around the truck.
He’s mindful to not block line of sight for the second guard as he leans down to get an initial look at me.
He makes no reaction to my eyes or essence, though he’s clearly a mage himself.
Then he sweeps his gaze over everyone else in the car.
He frowns. Unlike him with his darkly tanned skin, brown eyes, and sharp cheekbones, none of us immediately appear to be Navajo citizens, notwithstanding that not everyone in the nation is descended from the First Nations.
“Passports,” he says gruffly. “And the reason for your visit.”
“Just crossing through to California,” I say. “Though we’ll need a gas station and a pee break, apparently.”
Cal audibly groans in the back seat, as if my frankness is too cringy for words.
“Passports,” he repeats, his frown deepening.
To my right, Jewels has literally not moved a muscle.
I very deliberately meet his gaze.