Night Quest

by Susan Krinard

  But no Freebloods, and no humans.

  As good as his word, Garret remained some distance behind. Yet he might as well have been clinging to her back; she could hear his rough breathing, the muffled tread of his boots, even the beat of his heart. And she could smell him, a pleasant scent that seemed to complement the aroma of freshly washed vegetation.

  She could also smell his blood. As full darkness fell and he moved closer to take advantage of her night vision, she realized that the situation would not become any easier. One taste of his blood had been enough to make her crave it again. If she didn’t find a way to ignore him, the journey would soon become intolerable.

  As intolerable as the memory of other cravings...and the way he had turned her own unwanted emotions against her by asking her about her former life. About children, and loss, and forgetting.

  And love.

  As she walked, she concentrated on rebuilding the crumbling barriers inside her mind. By dividing her consciousness between observing their surroundings and reconstructing her mental shields bit by bit, she could almost forget Garret for minutes at a time.

  After several hours of unceasing rain, stillness fell over the woods. Artemis slowed her pace. She knew this area well; after her expulsion from Oceanus she had lingered here, well outside the borders of the Citadel’s territory, hoping that she might locate other exiled Freebloods and persuade them to accept her philosophy. She’d soon discovered that the outcasts had no interest in anything beyond survival.

  She looked over her shoulder as she and Garret passed through a clearing where a cluster of ruined buildings stood, relics dating to sometime before the War. Garret was moving unsteadily, though his pace had never flagged. She came to a halt and waited for him to catch up.

  “It’s after midnight,” she said as he drew level with her. “We should stop so that you can rest and eat.”

  He met her gaze from underneath his hood. “I’m not tired,” he said.

  “Nevertheless, you must have food. Wait here. I will hunt.”

  Before he could protest, she slipped away into the darkness where he couldn’t follow. She brought down two rabbits in rapid succession and carried them back to the abandoned buildings.

  Garret looked up, his eyes shadowed with exhaustion. “The goddess of the hunt returns,” he said.

  There was a complex note to his statement, not mockery but something more lighthearted. Belatedly, she remembered what it was. Teasing. And there was real admiration behind his words.

  Admiration that deeply unsettled her.

  She laid the rabbits down on a broken chunk of concrete and crouched beside it. “If I were a goddess,” she said, “I could guarantee that a fire would be safe. As it is, I can only suggest that maintaining your strength is probably worth the risk.”

  “My future strength is worth nothing if we attract a pack of Freebloods or militiamen,” he said. “Did you see or hear anything?”

  “Freebloods have passed this way, but not in many nights.”

  “Then I’ll risk the fire.”

  He removed a lighter from his pack and began to gather kindling. She went to look for fallen branches, and by the time she returned he had a small fire going. With quick, efficient movements, he skinned and cleaned the rabbits and suspended them from a long sharpened branch over the fire.

  “You’re welcome to share this with me, if you have an appetite for meat,” he said, the firelight dancing in his eyes and carving his face out of the shadows.

  “There is little enough for you, and I am not hungry,” she said. “Eat, and I will patrol the area.”

  “Thank you, Artemis.”

  She ducked her head and pretended to examine her bow. While he finished cooking his meal, she paced out several wide circles around the ruins, listening as much as watching. By the time she returned, the fire was out, the remains of the rabbits had been buried and Garret was fast asleep.

  He trusts me, she reminded herself with more than a little wonder. It was likely that he hadn’t intended to sleep, but his body had insisted, and his instincts...

  His instincts told him that she would be there to wake him if any danger threatened them.

  Squatting beside him, she studied his face. Now that he was asleep, she was even more aware that his usually calm demeanor was only a kind of mask. He mumbled something that sounded like a name. She couldn’t quite make it out, but his muscles were tense, and she could feel distress radiating from him along with his body heat. Grief beat against her new and fragile mental barriers.

  “Garret,” she whispered. “It is only a dream.”

  His eyelids fluttered. He expelled a short, harsh breath and then relaxed into normal sleep. The pressure inside her head disappeared, and she realized that learning to block him was no longer a matter of mitigating the uncomfortable turmoil his emotions created in her thoughts. It had become a necessity.

  Still, a part of her longed to stroke the damp hair from his forehead, to tell him that all would be well and there was no need for bad dreams.

  If she surrendered to such impulses, anything that happened afterward would be entirely her own fault.

  An owl hooted somewhere above her and glided out of the trees. It dived into the tall brown grass, and something squealed. The strong taking the weak. The world fell into a deep hush, as if in mourning for the fallen. Another sound came faintly to Artemis’s ears. No animal had made it.

  She entered the woods on the other side of the ruins and listened for a repeat of the cry. It came again, softer than before, a moan of someone in pain.

  Unbearable pain, forcing its way into Artemis’s mind. She paused to brace herself and searched for the source.

  She found the Freeblood lying half tangled in a mass of blackberry bushes, one arm caught in the brambles and his body twisted awkwardly. There was a gaping wound in his neck, too severe to heal on its own. The bite of another Opir.

  Dark eyes rolled toward Artemis as she approached cautiously. He made a sound in his ruined throat. Most Opiri maintained the appearance of the age they’d been when they were converted, and this one appeared to have been turned in his late teens. Perhaps, she thought, after the end of the War.

  “I will not hurt you,” she said, though she knew such an assurance would probably mean nothing to an exile. He jerked as she drew nearer, his hands clenching and unclenching.

  She didn’t try to ask him what had happened. She could guess well enough. He might have been dying for hours, and his body’s attempts to heal would have driven him to starvation.

  “Brother,” she said, dropping to her knees beside him. “Can you hear me?”

  If he did, she thought, she had a feeling that things were going to get a lot more complicated.

  Chapter 5

  The boy’s mouth opened, but all that emerged was another groan.

  “I know you suffer,” she said. “But I can ease your discomfort.” She laid her hand on his cool forehead and bent over him. She placed her mouth on his neck, releasing a little of the healing chemicals she had used on Garret. He tried to resist her, but he didn’t have the strength to fight for long. After a few moments he relaxed and closed his eyes.

  Artemis withdrew and sliced her wrist with her smaller knife. While the blood of a pure Opir could not nourish another full Opir, it would temporarily ease his raging hunger. She offered her wrist and let him take what he could.

  When he was finished, she pressed her palm to her wound until it began to close, and then touched his forehead again. It was slightly warmer, but she knew he had little time left.

  “Listen,” she said, stroking the boy’s pale hair out of his face. “I am seeking a pack of Freebloods who might be carrying a human child with them. Have you seen such a pack?”

  Confusion crossed the young Freeblood’s face. �
��Human?” he mumbled.

  “A child, who never did any Opir harm.”

  “Why...you care?” he whispered.

  “Because I believe that it is not our true nature to kill each other over humans, or take life, even human life, simply because we can.”

  With unexpected strength, the Freeblood grasped her wrist. “I...saw...the child,” he said. “I was...with...”

  She covered his hand with hers. “Where?”

  Both she and the Freeblood heard the approaching footsteps before he could answer. The young Opir flinched. His fear nearly paralyzed Artemis, and only her rational assessment of Garret’s essential character permitted her to keep her objectivity.

  “Stay back,” she called to Garret without looking away from the Freeblood’s panic-stricken eyes. “He won’t hurt you,” she said to the boy.

  Disregarding her warning, Garret circled around the bushes to stand just on the other side. “He was with them?” he asked. There was no pity in his voice.

  The young Opir pushed against her, the urge to flee warring with his body’s need for blood. Artemis held him down.

  “What is your name?” she asked him.

  “P-Pericles,” he croaked.

  “Pericles,” she said, “this human is called Garret Fox. He saved my life from other humans who would have killed me.”

  “Where is my son?” Garret demanded.

  “Garret,” Artemis said sharply. She cupped the dying Freeblood’s head in her hands. “Pericles, where did you see the child?”

  Pericles closed his eyes again. “Make the human go.”

  Ruthless in his suspicion, Garret moved to stand behind her and gazed down at the boy with his hand on his knife. “Where is he?” he repeated.

  Shifting her body, Artemis placed herself between human and Opir. Garret felt like a looming thundercloud at her back.

  “Don’t come any closer,” she warned.

  “Answer me,” Garret said, stepping around her.

  Artemis stood and turned, her face only inches from his. “It would be very foolish if you and I were to fight now, when we may learn something of use to us,” she said.

  They stared at each other until the Freeblood gurgled in a way that sounded very much like death. Darkness swirled up in Artemis’s mind.

  The boy’s time had run out.

  Pushing all thoughts of dying aside, Artemis knelt beside him again. “It’s all right,” she said gently, cradling his head in her arms. “Garret, if you provide him with a little blood, he may be able to speak.”

  She expected refusal. Instead, he crouched beside her and gazed at the boy, his jaw working. He began to draw his knife from its sheath. Artemis caught his arm.

  Garret jerked away and cut his wrist. “Tell me where I can find my son,” he said to Pericles.

  “Take it,” Artemis urged. “His blood cannot cure you, but if you help us, at least one of your people will remember you with honor.”

  Licking his dry lips, the boy stared at the dripping blood in fascination. “North,” he said. “Beyond...Oceanus’s territory, across the...Columbia River.” He choked. “Wa-Washington.”

  “Why?” Garret asked. “Why are they taking my son so far away?”

  “I...” Pericles closed his eyes, beginning to lose consciousness. With a quick glance at Artemis, Garret offered his wrist to Pericles. The young Freeblood’s mouth clamped on his flesh. Garret winced but held steady, and Artemis found herself battling both her own unexpected hunger and Garret’s heightened emotions.

  After a minute the boy’s head fell back onto Artemis’s arms, and he went still. The echo of his pain faded from Artemis’s mind. Then there was only an emptiness where he had been for such a short while.

  Somewhere in the darkness, an owl hooted. Perhaps, Artemis thought, the same owl as before. She laid the boy’s head on the ground and closed his eyes with a sweep of her palm.

  “Thank you,” she said to Garret. She took his arm and sealed the wound. Garret hardly seemed to notice.

  “He was with the ones who took my son,” he said, his voice hoarse with anger.

  “And they left him here to die,” she said.

  “They are rogues, and so was he.”

  “Yet you showed him mercy.”

  “To find out what we needed to know. It’s unlikely he’d have done the same for me.”

  Garret had not felt the boy’s very real fear of him, Artemis thought. She wished she had not. She lifted the boy in her arms and carried him to a place under the trees. She laid him out there, his hands folded across his chest, and stood over him for a few moments. Garret waited silently behind her.

  “I know you don’t believe it,” she said, “but this boy was also a victim. I do not think he has been Opir for more than a few years.”

  “That makes it worse,” Garret said. “He doesn’t have the excuse of having had decades or even centuries to forget what it was like to be human. He chose to join a pack of rogues and kidnap a human child.”

  “Did it occur to you that he might have needed to join a pack in order to survive?”

  “Like you did?”

  His sarcasm bit hard. “It is because I am older that I could do what he could not,” she said.

  “You can’t make excuses for every rogue who commits crimes against humanity.”

  “Many of your kind would say that I have committed such crimes merely by existing.”

  Garret gripped her arm and turned her to face him. “Those humans would be wrong,” he said.

  “How many would have saved my life?” she asked, trembling at his touch.

  “I would not be the only one.”

  “And I believe that only the worst of my kind would harm a human child.” She pulled her arm from his light hold and strode back to the ruins.

  “Artemis,” he called after her.

  She stopped without turning. “I do not wish to quarrel,” she said.

  “Neither do I,” he said. His moon-cast shadow fell over her, and she felt his breath stir her hair. “We obviously don’t understand each other very well yet.”

  “Perhaps it would be better if we did not.”

  “Our survival might depend on it.”

  She swung around to face him. “What is it that you do not understand?”

  “I heard you tell Pericles that you believe it isn’t in your people’s true nature to kill each other over humans, or take human lives just because you can.”

  “Why is that a surprise to you?” she asked.

  “Are you really concerned about saving humans, or only about Freebloods killing each other?”

  Without answering, she broke into a fast walk back to camp, where she began to gather up her things. Garret did the same, though he moved more slowly. Artemis thought she sensed regret in his mind. He checked again to make certain the fire was out, and that the rabbit carcasses and entrails were well buried, not that an Opir hunter couldn’t have smelled them if he’d been searching.

  But there was still no sign of intruders, so Garret withdrew a folded sheet of paper from his pack, and carefully smoothed it across the cracked and overgrown floor of the building, right where a shaft of moonlight illuminated the ground. Artemis recognized a precise drawing of the western half of the former state of Oregon.

  “If I judge correctly,” he said, pressing his fingertip to a spot on old Highway 99E, “we’re right about here, roughly twenty miles south of Albany.” He glanced up at her for confirmation.

  “Yes,” she said, grateful for the need to focus on practicalities. “That is also my estimate.”

  “And ten miles north of Albany is the southern border of Oceanus,” he said, indicating a large black square on the eastern slope of the Coast Range. “We have only limited informati
on about this area. Do you know how far inland their territory reaches?”

  “Why do you think I can tell you?” she asked.

  “You were exiled from Oceanus, weren’t you?”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we’ve learned that most exiles stick pretty close to their home territory. There are only a few small Opiri outposts between Oceanus and the northern California Citadel, Erebus. And I know you didn’t come from Erebus.”

  “What of the rogues who stole your son? Were they not from Erebus, nearer to your colony?”

  “As near as I can tell, they were from a Citadel some distance away. They were acting out of character. It’s all a mystery.” He withdrew his hand and clenched his fist on his thigh. “From what the Freeblood—Pericles—told us, the rogues are taking Timon across the river into old Washington. God knows why. But if he was right, they’ll probably have to cross the Columbia River near Portland, where one bridge is still supposed to be intact. They’ll follow the path of least resistance, the I-5 corridor.”

  “But that will also be a more exposed route,” Artemis said. “Oceanus itself may be situated in the foothills of the Coast Range, but its territory reaches across the valley to the western slope of the Cascades. The rogues will be summarily executed if they are caught.” She tapped the map with her fingertip. “They might have gone farther into the Cascade foothills to avoid any chance of meeting a patrol.”

  “And that’s much rougher terrain,” Garret said. “If we can find a more direct route across the territory, we may catch up with them, or even get to the Columbia before them.”

  “Or we may be captured,” she said. “I am of no use to them, so they will kill me quickly. But they will either take you as a serf or, if they think you are dangerous enough, execute you as an example to other humans.”

  “No surprises there,” Garret said, carefully folding the map. “But I don’t expect you to take unnecessary risks on my behalf.”

  “You always knew I would be taking such risks.”

  “Yes,” he said, meeting her gaze. “But I’m prepared to release you from our pact.”