Chapter 24
Wyatt
It’s cold comfort, but even with the fancy guns Sector’s packing, they don’t stand a chance against the hellhound on the hood of my truck.
Problem is, neither do we—the pistol’s not gonna be much help, and there’s no way I can get to the rifles fast enough to do much good if Sector opens fire.
I can’t remember the last time I was caught so unaware.
I can, but I don’t want to. This is what happens. This is why they leave.
I asked Alice to go for the ammo to give her something to do while I assess our situation, but I’m coming up blank.
The place in my brain where I’d usually have strategy on strategy and already be moving onto action is full up on fear.
Fear that we’ve gotten ourselves tangled in something bigger than I want Alice—or myself—involved in.
Sector doesn’t hunt the Hunt. Sector doesn’t fuck with Them, or us.
They just watch, useless and impotent. They monitor the situation.
Their definition of monitoring is a touch more active than mine.
I assume they’re still running experiments on Them in their black sites.
They did before Reformation, and just because they were supposed to stop doesn’t mean they did.
We’ve always assumed they just got quieter about it.
But something’s different now. My mind goes straight to Alice. Of course it does—because she’s so godsdamn special to me, of course I assume she’s that special to them, too. And after Mr. Rabbit, I’ve gotta wonder.
The little plushie was clean, but he hadn’t been just before Alice left the city. My heart rate increases as all the possibilities of what’s going on here run through my head.
The hellhound crouches down, slavering as it lets out a puff of sulfurous smoke. Alice has fished ammo out of the glove compartment, but the otherworldly sound of a pack of hellhounds baying makes her jump so hard that the bullets spill from her hands.
Everything happens at once. The agents take aim—at us or the hellhound, I have no fucking clue.
The pack shows up on the heels of the thickest mist I’ve seen crawl out of the forest in all the time we’ve lived in these parts.
I push Alice down as Sector opens fire. Not a single bullet hits the truck.
But the sound of growling grows louder, the smell of sulfur so thick in the air now that every breath triggers the worst of my gag reflex.
“Stay down for me,” I mutter as I turn the ignition. The truck roars to life.
Alice grabs my hand. “Don’t leave.”
I glance over at her from our mutually crouched positions. “Darlin’, we’ve gotta go.”
She shakes her head, her honeyed waves swaying. “We need to see what happens here.”
Alice really is missing a few integral marbles for her jar, but from a strategic standpoint, she’s not wrong. We came to Three Ravens for information on the Hunt, and we’re being offered up a prime morsel of it, complete with firsthand evidence.
I sigh at the sounds of those absurdly large guns. “Fine. Just a peek.”
We both raise ourselves up just enough to peep over the dashboard. One agent’s reloading, and the other appears to take aim again, but they’re not gunning for any of the sixteen hellhounds that stand between us and the agents. They’re aiming straight into the woods.
And then I clock it. The truck’s position, facing toward Old Main, backed straight up to the forest. Like always, I parked as far back as I could, under the canopy of trees. The place where I feel the safest—the most at home.
Is it possible the hellhounds aren’t protecting us?
Are they protecting something in the forest?
I spin in my seat, searching the dark wood for something, any scrap of evidence that this isn’t about Alice—but there’s nothing behind me.
Nothing I can see now, anyway—and apparently neither can the agents.
“They’re packing it in,” Alice hisses, hitting my shoulder with an insistent little fist.
The touch brings back the memory of her skin under my fingers, and I flush hot at the thought. Apparently, now that the danger’s passed, my body’s going to take the opportunity to remind me that I nearly got to third base with Alice just ten minutes ago.
One long, deep breath centers me somewhat. Enough that I turn back, and sure enough, the agent who’d been reloading has started the car. Before I can gather my thoughts enough to say something, they’re peeling out of the parking lot with a dramatic squeal.
The mist rises, thick as split pea soup, and the hounds fade into it, their scent of rotten eggs receding as they do.
In moments, it’s like nothing happened at all.
Even after a lifetime of dealing with this shit, I find it surreal that I can be in the thick of it one moment, and the next… everything’s normal.
And my new normal means that I think about Alice every second, even during an encounter like the one we just had. My head’s spinning with myriad adjustments. I’ve always been adaptable, and now that my heart’s all the way in with Alice, my mind’s rapidly shifting to make room for her.
Her and her big brain that needs both time and space to process.
I stay quiet for a few stray moments, scanning the parking lot for more trouble and finding none. I watch as the last of the mist curls back into the forest, birdsong slowly returning as the air clears. Next to me, Alice is still, her eyes narrowing like she’s thinking hard.
“What’re you putting together, Blythe?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing. That’s the trouble. That was strange, wasn’t it?”
I nod. “It was.”
There’s something she’s not saying, and I wonder what she’s made of all this that I don’t see yet.
Caden does the same thing occasionally when he’s chewing on a theory.
It never does to rush him, and I don’t want to pressure Alice if she needs the space in her head clear to work things out her own way.
The voice in my head that reminds me not to be chickenshit at love also reminds me that trusting someone means giving them room when they need it, so I don’t pester Alice into telling me what she’s pondering.
I lean back in my seat a little, stretching my shoulders. “You like fruit?”
Alice raises an eyebrow. “Is that code for something?”
I chuckle as I take the truck out of park. “No. Just wondering if you like citrus. Barnes Whitney drives down to the Groves periodically, and we haven’t picked up our crate yet.”
Alice’s face lights up. “There’s citrus in Blackbird Hollow right now?”
I nod. “Yeah, Fallon asked me to pick up our crate on the way home. Marion’s got ours at the Stardust, if you want to stop by. I’d also like to ask her about what we just saw.”
Alice nods. “That’s a good idea.” She grins. “You said citrus…does that mean there might be limes?”
I grin. “Key limes, if we’re lucky. You might not guess it, but Fallon makes a killer key lime pie.”
Alice smiles a smug little smile at me, tweaking my nose with her index finger before pressing the sweetest kiss to my lips. When she pulls away, she’s still smiling. “That’s where you’re wrong, Wyatt. I believe the Hayes kids can do just about anything.”
But she’s wrong there. If I was as powerful as all that, her smile wouldn’t stop at her lips. Something’s eating at Alice, and as I pull the truck out of its parking spot, I realize that much as I want the fabled trust we’re building, I don’t have the guts to ask her what it is.
Chickenshit, that little voice warns from deep within. And it’s not wrong. I am chickenshit, because I don’t want to ask her what’s on her mind, only to find out she’s already having second thoughts about me. If Alice is gonna disappear, I don’t want to see it coming.
I want to be happy ’til the happiness runs out. And if it does—hell, if the past serves as a pattern—when it does, I’ll face the music. Until then, we have citrus to procure, and a town to protect from the Hunt.
Barnes Whitney leans against his ancient pickup in the parking lot of the Stardust. He’s a tall Black man, lean, with an elegant, poetic temperament.
As I park, he waves, pushing off his truck and adjusting the canvas jacket he’s worn since we were teenagers.
It’s a comforting sight after the past hour’s events.
Alice claps, gasping as she slides out of the truck.
The back of Barnes’s old Ford is full of crates of various citrus.
Barnes grins as Alice is drawn into the orbit of the sunshiny fruit.
His cousins run one of the groves down south, and we’re lucky to have a direct line this far north.
Not everyone has access to citrus these days.
“I’m headed up to Mill Creek,” Barnes says as Alice rests her chin on the sidewall of the bed of his truck. “So I’m all loaded up.”
Alice nods. “I’ve never seen this much all together. What’s it like in the Groves?”
Barnes winks at me as I point to the main office, stepping aside just enough for me to see that there’s a rifle resting on the bench seat of his truck.
I nod to him. Barnes is good people. We’ve worked together on a bunch of jobs.
Some of his people grow citrus, and others hunt monsters.
Barnes is a bit of everything, and manages to also be a bit of everywhere, too, bringing bits and bobs of things and news alike back with him every time he comes home.
Alice is safe with him, but I press a hand to the small of her back to let her know where I’ll be. “I’m gonna go chat with Marion real quick.”
She nods, but her stream of questions about the Groves falls from her tongue like the jewels from old tales. Barnes is as drawn into her questions as she is to the load of citrus, and I leave the two of them to chat about fruit.
Inside the motel’s lobby, Marion is painting a tiny wooden dog. She glances up at me as the bell on the door rings. “Your crate’s by the old Harkness House.”
I glance at the miniature street she’s moved to the front of the lobby. She’s reconstructed all of the houses from our childhood that had to be torn down for one reason or another. Sure enough, there’s a crate labeled “HAYES” in Fallon’s big, bold lettering. But I don’t move to pick it up.
“You hearing anything weird about redcaps?” I ask, leaning against the counter. The tribe’s bound to have better information than even Caden’s got access to.
Marion shakes her head. “Not much more than you, probably. Something weird’s going on.”
I nod. “You think this is all the Hunt?”
She shrugs. “That’s more your area.”
I watch her dip her tiny paintbrush into the red paint and give the dog a tongue. When she sets it down, I ask, “What about the hikers that went missing? Hear about them?”
Marion shakes her head slowly. “Strangest thing. There’s not a damn thing to find out—about any of them.”
My forehead creases, the muscles in my shoulders drawing together, tight and tense. “Well, that’s not right.”
Slowly, Marion nods, setting the paintbrush down. “The only thing that’s unique about them is the fact that there’s not a single special thing about any of them. They were all as average as can be for visitors to the area. Bland. Rich but not too rich. White. A variety of ages.”
We know all this already, but the tribe’s got different access to government resources than we do, and I’ve always known that Marion’s got her hand in more than she lets on with their affairs. “Too clean?”
Marion nods, pursing her lips. “Not even a parking citation.”
I shake my head. “Impossible. They were all from the cities.”
“I know,” Marion says, and her tone’s ominous. “Someone made very, very sure there was nothing to find, about any of them.”
That sure sounds like Sector, but Marion and I both know that there’s forces worse than Sector out there.
Ones that would know how to make it look like Sector pulling one of their more “advanced” routines.
This is the kind of 3D chess that I despise, fucking with real people’s lives for what always turns out to be heinous means.
Humans at their worst really aren’t much different than the High with Their eyeball ice cubes.
The bone-deep ache that says it doesn’t matter how much we reform, that we’ll always circle back to this nonsense, swells within me. The only thing to do in a moment like this is care more about the people right in front of me.
I glance out at Barnes, who’s watching Alice’s hands flutter around as she talks about something. She’s speaking rather passionately, and I wonder what she’s telling him.
“What about her?” I ask, knowing Marion. “You find anything odd about Alice?”
The corner of Marion’s mouth quirks up into a smile. “She’s on Sector’s radar. Little bit of a thorn in their side, always just a bit too close to truths they don’t want average folks knowing. That blog of hers was a problem.”
I nod slowly. “So nothing suspicious?”
Marion shakes her head. “Not about Alice.”
There’s a tone Marion’s got—it’s her tell, and years of game nights have me tuned into it. “What is it?”
Marion sighs. “The person she’s been messaging most with for the past few years, love_cookies210, they don’t exist. No other internet activity whatsoever. Kind of odd.”
“Indeed it is,” I breathe out. It lines up too close to the missing hikers and their nothingness. Lots of pieces falling together, but none of them fit yet. “You thinking Sector?”
Marion shrugs. “Nothing we could dig up, Wyatt. Your girl’s good, but someone’s got an eye on her. Sector, or one of the other agencies.”
The feeling that whatever’s coming our way is closing in on something that’s too intimately tied together for my liking descends upon me like a summer storm, fast and violent. I stare out the big front window at Alice.
Barnes is holding his side, he’s laughing so hard, and she’s got tears streaming down her cheeks as she cackles. But I know how fast a storm can change directions, and Alice is a force of nature.
I wonder how long I’ve got ’til she decides to bolt on me.