by Kat Falls
“Wait.” I stepped back, away from the rope bridge. “You told your men to bring Everson back to you.”
“Not that friend.”
It took me a second to get what he meant. Who he meant … Rafe.
“You said you came here looking for him,” Boone reminded me. “So I’m going to help you out. I’m going to take you right to his doors.”
“Doors?” I said dumbly.
“Caves. We’ve tracked him to a cliff pocked with caves, but we don’t go in, and he’s never come out on my watch. But maybe he’ll come out for you.”
I was shaking my head before he’d even finished speaking. I wanted no part of that plan.
“You go over the ravine or you go in it. Your choice.” He nudged me with his rifle, forcing me up onto the rope.
I slid along the bottom rope while holding the top rope with both hands. I shuffled past the edge of the ravine and over the rushing water it contained, heart wedged into my throat, hands gripping the top rope so tightly, each step forward scraped another layer of skin off my palms. Falling was not an option. I’d never be able to swim against the current or even climb out. A hundred years of erosion had polished the steep sides to a smooth finish.
“If the patrol needs Wraith’s blood so bad,” Boone called to me, “why’d they send only you and one guard?”
I tore my eyes from the swollen stream below to glance back at him.
He leaned against the tree that anchored the ropes. “I’m guessing it’s ’cause they knew that’s all it would take,” he mused. “A guard to shoot him and take his blood. And you to draw him out. You’re the bait — the honey to his bee.”
“Pollen,” I muttered, still edging along the rope. Bees went out looking for pollen, not honey. Either way, I got the gist.
“You’re here,” Boone went on, “because someone in the line patrol knows Rafe won’t be able to stay away from you. They’re betting the whole op on it. I’m not even going to ask you why. Doesn’t matter. If the patrol is willing to take that bet, then so am I.”
Why wasn’t he following me? Because it was safer to go one at a time, of course. His weight and movement would jostle the ropes, and I was having a hard enough time staying balanced as it was. Anyway, I was almost to the far bank. Only ten more shuffles and I’d —
“Lane.”
I glanced back.
“You holding on tight?”
“Yes,” I said while reflexively tightening my grip.
“Good.” Boone crouched by the clamp, which secured the bottom rope to the tree. “Three …” he warned, fingering the clamp.
“No!” I screamed.
“Two …”
“Please don’t,” I begged while swinging a foot over the upper rope.
“One and done,” he shouted, then flipped the clamp open. The rope fell away just as I swung my other leg up and over, hanging off the remaining rope like a panic-stricken sloth.
“Don’t look down,” he called above the water’s roar.
Ankles locked together and eyes closed, I hung, unable to move, unable to breathe … until I felt the rope shimmy in my hands. My eyes snapped open, and I twisted my head to see Boone plucking at it.
“Go on, girl. You don’t want to keep Wraith waiting.” He walked his fingers back to the upper clamp.
I didn’t need another warning or countdown. I propelled myself forward along the rope with my nonexistent upper-body strength, expecting it to fall away at any second and spill me into the water below. Just as I crossed over the bank, the rope slackened, dropping me onto the ground, inches from the edge. The other end of the rope hit the water and whipped downstream. I rolled to my side and pushed up to face the ravine — to face Boone. But he was gone.
I rolled onto my back, pants so wet from the spray they clung to my legs. Or maybe I’d peed myself without even noticing. My heart was still trying to punch its way out of my chest. But I couldn’t stay here. I shoved to my feet. Boone and Habib and Zeke could all get grupped. Stupid, uncivilized savages. What was Boone’s game anyway? What good would it do him if Rafe killed me?
It seemed darker on this side of the ravine. The trees were just beginning to bud, but the branches tangled overhead, letting in only shafts of light. Where was Everson? Were they using him as bait too? Or had they just killed him outright?
I didn’t know what to do or where to go. I knew the stream ended in a waterfall, so I might as well head the other way and see if there was another place to cross. If I headed back to the place where we’d spent the night, maybe the lionesses would show up. Or Everson. More likely another group of hunters would find me. I sucked in a breath through my teeth. I couldn’t panic. It would only make things worse. The only way to shut down my welling anxiety would be to do something.
It was hard going through the dense underbrush with only filtered sunlight to see by, but I marched along, determined not to get spooked. Not even when I passed a deer, which reared up with a hiss, revealing a scaled underbelly, and then bounded away.
Despite the steadily climbing sun, the air had a distinct bite to it. I’d been walking for some time when the hair started to go up on the back of my neck, and I had the creepy feeling that someone was watching me. Probably Boone. He must have crossed the ravine another way and was now following me. Of course he was. He’d planned on using me as bait. I continued on, cautiously, listening carefully. When I heard the faint snap of another twig behind me, I paused, overcome by a feeling of dread.
Yeah. Someone or something was there. If not Boone, then probably a lynx or a fox. A feral would’ve attacked by now … right?
Like I knew.
I sped up, veering away from the ravine and stream. I had no choice — the terrain had grown too rocky, the outcroppings too steep. I scuttled between the trees, breaking through spiderwebs face-first. I rubbed my forearms over my cheeks and head but couldn’t lose the feeling of spiders burrowing into my hair.
Branches cracked off to my left, and I froze, petrified by the image of something big stalking me, drawing closer with every step. I glanced around but saw only scraggly pines, still as death. And then a blur shot past me — the deer. I whipped around to see what was chasing it … Nothing. Worse, the forest had fallen silent. No birdcalls, no chittering squirrels, or even the snap of a twig, which I now missed because it meant, one, the animals weren’t making sounds for a reason and, two, that reason was nearby.
The air was stifling and smelled like death and decay. Then, from within the trees, I heard what sounded like the most pained moan imaginable. Not a human sound. I took off, desperate to scream for help, but terrified to draw whatever it was closer to me. The roar of my pulse made it nearly impossible to hear, and my lungs burned from exertion. I ducked into a thick stand of bushy pine trees, hoping I’d lost it. Whatever it was. And if I hadn’t, hopefully the trees would make me hard to spot. I worked to slow my breathing and listened for any hint of my pursuer. More branches cracked. The image of a drooling feral flashed through my mind and had me springing into motion once more.
I darted through the trees to the edge of a clearing filled with decomposing animal carcasses. A lot of the bones hadn’t been picked clean. I veered off in disgust. I didn’t dare go back the way I’d come, but I couldn’t go forward either. The clearing was at the foot of a cliff — a cliff that was pocked with man-sized holes … Caves.
My anxiety spiked so hard my chest felt like it was cracking apart. I stumbled toward an outcropping of rock, half-hidden by pine trees. Just as I started around it, a hand snagged me by the wrist and yanked me backward into a crevice between the rocks. I struggled to free myself, but the person had one arm around my ribs while he clamped a hand hard over my mouth, cutting off my screams and air supply. I threw back an elbow, catching him in the gut hard enough to make him grunt and send an achy tremor up my arm but not hard enough to get free.
A voice rasped in my ear. “Don’t fight me.” The man’s mouth was so close, I felt his words more than heard them. �
�When I take my hand away, do not make a sound. Get me?”
I wasn’t sure how he expected me to answer when I couldn’t even breathe. He growled as if trying to get my attention. Like he didn’t already have it, standing so close behind me. His warm breath on the curve of my neck made the hairs all over my body rise. My survival instincts were screaming at me to get free, so I was going for a backward head butt. I’d even stay silent — just like he’d ordered. But before I could execute my plan, his hand tightened across my mouth, and with the other, he gripped the hair at my nape. Probably looking for some indication that I did in fact “get him.”
I blinked as he angled my head back to make eye contact. Orbs of aqua blue returned my look. I blinked. Beautiful eyes, dark lashed and edged in black. Familiar eyes … except for the wide, gold starbursts around the pupils and what looked like eyeliner — but wasn’t. Those familiar eyes were — were Rafe’s!
“Not. A. Sound,” Rafe hissed when I would have gasped.
He could talk! And the eyeliner, the black smudges extending from his eyebrows — he hadn’t painted them on. His skin was changing color. As were his eyes. The golden starbursts — those were new.
Seeing Rafe behind me was a relief — for exactly one second. Then he spoke again. “There are things out here a lot worse than me.” He took his hand from my mouth and added, “At least I’m warm-blooded.”
Before I could reply, heavy footsteps approached. Probably Boone. I wanted to warn Rafe but sensed his mounting tension and decided to keep my mouth shut. Good thing too, because the man who came crashing through the trees was not Boone. Not even close. He was a massive reptilian creature, more monster than human at seven feet tall — taller, even, though his legs were bowed. The bones beneath his scaly skin were swollen and distorted. He wore a filthy tattered garage jumpsuit, a name stitched above the pocket. Dry skin hung in strips off his face, chest, and arms. This thing had once been human, but now … now …
He started hacking like a cat with a hairball. He paused near our hiding place, flicking his tongue in and out. His forked yellow tongue! Was he part snake? Was he smelling us? He twisted his upper body and arced like he was warming up for workout. Please let it have nothing to do with us. Please. He started hacking again — no, hocking. He was hocking up something big and dripping. The football-shaped mass slid out of his gaping mouth and hit the ground at his feet — a gray bundle of hair and bone. When he was done, bloody drool unspooled from his lips like scarlet twine.
I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep from gagging or shrieking or whatever sane people did when a monster vomited up the indigestible parts of his breakfast. I clamped on a second hand as insurance when the smell hit me — an odor so foul, so rancid, my vision blurred. Finally, the horrifying man crashed away.
“What was that — that?” I rasped, unable to come up with a word big enough or horrifying enough to describe it.
“That’s what’s been killing people around here,” Rafe whispered.
“But what is he? What’s he infected with?”
“Best guess …” Rafe’s grip tightened around my ribs. “Komodo dragon.”
The branches of the pine tree weren’t bushy enough to block out the steaming pile of hair and bone on the ground near our hiding spot. Bile burned the back of my throat while thoughts and questions circled my mind: Rafe wasn’t the Wraith. He hadn’t killed the people from the compound. Hadn’t eaten them! Wasn’t feral!
And yet … Rafe had looked right at me last night and said nothing. Why? And why had he tried to drag Aaron away?
I twisted in the cramped space between the rocks to face him. He was still half a head taller than me, and his teeth were still white and even. He had changed his shirt since last night — this one was worn but clean — and combed his sun-streaked hair. Last night, I could have sworn he’d had claws, but in the light of day I could see that his fingertips ended in fingernails just like mine — only dirtier. He could almost have passed as uninfected … Almost. His arms and shoulders and thighs bulged with new muscles. His eyes and the edges of his ears were rimmed in black, and faint slashes adorned his cheekbones, forehead, and collarbone like faded war paint — the start of stripes. Tiger stripes. Like Chorda’s.
Pain shot through my wrists, and my hands began to tingle, and I looked away from his face, only to find myself staring at the mess that the feral — the Komodo-dragon-on-steroids thing — had vomited up.
I closed my eyes.
“Hey,” Rafe said. “Are you about to — whoa.” He shuffled me out of the crevice and, with a hand to my back, bent me over one second before the chicory coffee geysered up my throat, tasting twice as bitter this time.
Rafe handed me a flask from his back pocket. I pushed it away. “It’s water,” he explained, and then chuckled when I snatched it from his hand. “When did you become such a delicate flower?”
I didn’t bother to reply until I’d rinsed out my mouth and wiped off my entire face on the inside of my shirt hem. Then I said, “You’re not feral.”
“Glad you noticed.”
I smiled faintly at his flippant tone, but he didn’t return it, just devoured me with his eyes. The intensity of his stare set my nerves buzzing, but I couldn’t look away. The last time we were together, he’d basically told me he loved me, but now as we stood there staring at each other, neither one of us said or did anything to address what we’d been through together. I’d thought about him nearly constantly for the past six months; I’d been torn apart worrying about what might have happened to him. But now that we were together again, there was a barrier between us, and I didn’t understand what it was.
Then it occurred to me: Rafe didn’t seem feral in this moment, but months ago, he had told me that sometimes the road to feral wasn’t a straight line. Sometimes it included roundabouts and backtracking and that during the manimal’s sane moments, he might not remember what he’d done during those periods of insanity. What if Rafe had killed Aaron last night but didn’t know it?
Without meaning to, I eased back a step away from him, and his expression closed off.
“What happened to Aaron?” I asked abruptly. “What were you doing with him?”
“He’s fine,” Rafe said in a flat voice.
“He’s not fine. He’s dead. They found —”
“They?”
“The hunters. They were burning his —”
“Did you see it?” Rafe demanded. “The kid’s body. Did you see it with your own eyes?”
“No,” I admitted. “But —”
“But nothing.” He moved abruptly past me and swept aside the pine boughs, heading for the heap of gray-brown slime beyond the tree.
“Wait! Don’t …” I gripped the back of his shirt. “What if that thing comes back?”
“I’ll know.” Rafe lifted his face and inhaled. “New and improved,” he said, tapping his nose. “Right now, he’s headed away from us. There’s no missing his smell. Or yours.”
“I don’t smell,” I huffed. Though I probably did after a dunk in the river and a night on the ground. I thought longingly of the hand sanitizer I used to carry everywhere. I could have used a vat of it just then. Industrial strength.
“Yeah, you do, silky,” Rafe said, turning back toward me. “But your scent is sweet. And one of a kind.” He stepped closer. “I knew it was you long before I saw you. I followed your scent from the riverbank.”
My whole body grew warm. And that explained why he hadn’t seemed surprised to see me.
“I could have — I could have killed you,” I stuttered.
He shrugged and looked away, through the trees toward the clearing. “Everybody’s got to go sometime.”
So he did have a death wish.
“Why’d you chase the lionesses away?” I asked him. “They thought you were feral.”
“I don’t want them coming around here.”
“Why?”
“Because wherever they go, things get ugly.” He scooped up my bac
kpack and thrust it into my hands. “What are you doing, traveling with them? They hate humans.”
“So everyone keeps telling me,” I muttered.
“Then maybe you better start listening. Manimals get reps like that for a reason. Usually a very bloody reason. That’s how those cats like their humans — bloody.”
I’d thought the lionesses were starting to warm up to me, and even to Everson. But maybe they had been putting on an act as well, one they’d drop the second they got their doses of the cure. “Humans haven’t exactly been kind to them,” I said in their defense.
“If that’s an excuse, then every manimal in the zone would join them,” he scoffed. “They’ve been traveling up and down the Mississippi, stirring up the outcasts. Getting them to arm themselves and attack the human compounds.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Sometimes for food and supplies. But mostly, they see every fence as an insult. Which is why wherever they go turns into a battleground.”
That news didn’t surprise me. “I heard a group of manimals attacked Moline last month. Bashed in the gate and wrecked the compound. Were the lionesses in on that?”
“No idea. I haven’t been back to Moline since I turned tiger,” he said like it was no big deal. “But I’d bet yes. Maybe you noticed — one of them is thirty seconds from feral.”
“Not anymore,” I said softly.
“She turned, huh?”
I nodded, thinking of how Charmaine’s eyes had cleared in those moments before she had thrown herself into the river. “She could have infected me, but she didn’t,” I said.
Thinking of Charmaine reminded me why I was there. Rafe wasn’t feral, and I needed to get his blood and give him the cure.
“Rafe …” I ripped open the Velcro pocket in my cargo pants and found the cure and the collection cylinder.
He ignored me and instead approached the horrifying puddle of Komodo vomit, picking up a stick along the way. “Let’s see what he had for supper last night.”
“I don’t want to know,” I said queasily. “I have to tell you something.”