A ragged moan shredded the gathering dusk.
Kai whirled. The girl on the rocks was awake and moving feebly in the fading light. She touched the bandaged wound behind her ear and fixed a confused gaze on her blood-smeared fingers.
Kai sprinted back up the path and crouched at the girl’s side, trying not to look at the nausea-inducing angle of her leg. “Don’t move. You’re hurt.”
The girl muttered something in a language that was definitely not English, sounding dazed. Her glass-like turquoise eyes drifted to Kai, who blinked at their saturated color.
She spoke, but not words Kai understood. “Um... Do you speak English?”
The girl groaned and clutched her broken leg, inhaling sharply through her teeth. When she spoke again, her voice was distracted. “English...yes. Who are you?” She had an accent, musical and difficult to place.
“I’m Kai.” Kai turned to dig in her pack for her water bottle. “Do you remember what happened to you?”
“Remember...” The girl’s eyes widened, depth and clarity returning. She pressed one hand to her mouth and whispered something in the unfamiliar language, then surged upright. Her leg collapsed under her, and she gasped, her face contorted in pain. She spoke through gritted teeth. “Kavar is here! I have to warn them. Where’s my bag?”
“Whoa.” Startled and unsure whether she should try to restrain the girl, Kai tried to keep her voice soothing. “You didn’t have a bag. Listen, my roommates will be back with rangers soon. Just relax.”
“Ow. Ancients, I can’t even see straight. I can’t fly like this.” The girl groaned and pressed a hand against her forehead.
“You can’t what?”
Abruptly, the girl seized Kai, fingers digging into Kai’s shoulders like claws. “Help me!” She leveraged herself up, nearly knocking Kai to the ground. “My brother is in trouble!”
Kai grabbed the girl’s elbow, nervous. Talking sense to crazy people had always been Juli’s thing. Kai had no idea what to do. “Help is coming! If your brother is close, they can help him, too.”
The girl’s eyes seemed to become luminescent, like tropical water lit from below. “Help me or let me go. I’m leaving now. Rhys—how did Kavar know?”
The girl tried to walk away, but Kai still had her elbow. They spun, and Kai squinted against the orange glare of the setting sun. “I can’t leave. My roommates are coming back for me.”
The girl made a sound remarkably like a growl. “Then let go.”
“You won’t make it five feet.”
With astonishing strength, the girl wrenched free. She hopped a few steps then turned her ankle on a stone and went down hard. She let out an anguished cry and started to crawl, dragging her broken leg behind her.
“Holy crap, are you serious?” Kai swung her pack onto her back.
The girl kept crawling uphill, involuntary sounds of pain escaping her tightly clenched jaw. Indecision wracked Kai. She watched for another minute, expecting the girl to stop or collapse. But she didn’t; she just kept crawling and sobbing. It was both horrifying and pitiful. Coming to a sudden decision, Kai kicked some stones into a rough arrow pointing up the path. She caught up to the girl and hoisted her to her feet. Uncertainty gnawed at her, but she couldn’t sit and watch that. If the camp was close, maybe she could take the girl there, then come back and meet Juli and the rangers and take them to the camp to help carry the girl off the mountain.
The girl, now standing, looked down at Kai in consternation, her face bone-white and drawn, her voice hoarse with pain. “I thought you had people to wait for.”
Kai shrugged, pretending a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “You need me more.”
Panting, the girl nodded. They set off, managing a hobbling gait.
“So,” Kai huffed after a few minutes of awkward silence, “what’s your name?”
There was a long moment of hesitation. Then, the word bitten off quickly, “Deryn.”
Too curious to be tactful, Kai asked, “Deryn? Isn’t that a guy’s name?”
Deryn glared. “Isn’t Kai?”
Didn’t think that one through, did you, Monahan? “No. Maybe. It’s Hawaiian for ‘ocean.’”
“Or Cornish for ‘dog.’ If you ever go to the south of England, don’t be surprised if they ask if you were a terribly ugly baby.”
Kai snorted. “As my roommate Charlotte would say: touché.”
Deryn fell silent, and Kai didn’t restart the conversation. She tended to say odd, awkward things when she found herself in odd, awkward situations, and she didn’t think Deryn was in the right mindset to appreciate her humor. Or any humor.
They followed the path upward along the base of the cliff. It was slow going. Kai was strong, but Deryn’s weight made her shoulders ache. “How much farther?”
“Not far,” Deryn grunted. Her face, if possible, was paler than before, her breath coming in painful, ragged gasps. Though Kai’s brain burned with unasked questions, she decided Deryn needed whatever strength she had to keep moving forward.
Kai tried to burn their path into her memory. The heart-shaped boulder here, the tiny, freezing stream they splashed through a little farther along—all of them would help her come back and find Juli later.
Eventually, however, their slow, rhythmic plod and the pain in Kai’s shoulders combined, lulling her into an uncomfortable trance. It started to feel as if she were walking against wind. Fog clouded her mind. Abruptly, she knew she was going the wrong way.
She stopped.
“Oi!” Deryn snapped her fingers in front of Kai’s face.
Kai turned dreamily toward her. “I have to go back, now. Also, you’re real heavy for such a skinny person.”
Deryn made a noise of disgust. “I forgot. The barrier. Oi! Human girl, I need you to keep walking! This is more important than you can possibly comprehend and we are almost there!” Deryn put her weight on her good leg and pushed.
Kai took an unwilling step and then stopped, dazed. “No, this is the wrong way.”
“It isn’t. Keep going.”
Kai’s brain drifted. “Look at that tree. That’s weird. This is a weird place. Everything is weird...”
Deryn hopped and pushed again, making Kai stumble. “Walk, don’t speak.”
“No.” Kai resisted.
Deryn pinched her hard.
“Ow!”
“Keep. Walking.”
“Fine!” Kai squinted at Deryn. It was the wrong way, but she didn’t want to be pinched again. It felt like trying to wade through waist-deep mud. Then, after a few minutes, thigh-deep. Then knee-deep. Slowly, the feeling faded altogether. Kai blinked, shaking the last of the fog from her mind. It was as if she’d passed through a force field determined to keep her out. Now that she was through, she felt fine, and that gave her the creeps. She looked around, trying to remember the landmarks from a few minutes ago. But she couldn’t. Only the fog.
Kai shivered.
Behind them, there was nothing to see except stars rising over the sharp, black silhouettes of the mountains. Weird.
“Here, stop.” Deryn halted, panting and paler than ever. They’d come to a crack in the cliff barely wide enough for one person. “Our camp is through here.”
“Through that?” Kai shifted sore shoulders. The crag itself wouldn’t be a problem. At least, not for her. In fact, if it were daylight, Kai would love to scramble around inside. But Deryn had a broken leg. Plus, there had been that weird resistance, that feeling in her gut that she was headed in the wrong direction. And though the crevasse was climbable, it would have been near-impossible to get a bunch of camping gear up there.
Her skin prickled with goose bumps and she considered turning around. Strange crap is going down.
“Please.” Instead of demanding, Deryn’s eyes were plea
ding. “Please, it could already be too late. Help me.”
Stifling her uneasiness, Kai nodded. She climbed into the crack and helped Deryn up. The ravine was twisted, narrow, and filled with stones and debris. When they came across a pile of waist-high boulders, Kai thought they’d have to turn back. But Deryn gritted her teeth and hoisted herself over the rocks.
After twenty minutes, Kai tumbled out of the rocky crevasse with Deryn close behind. It was dark, now. The moon now hung full and fat in the sky, edging everything in silver. A hilly meadow in a mini valley stretched in front of them. Tall grass and wildflowers rolled in shimmering waves beneath the chill breeze, the whole thing cupped in a bowl of stone.
As soon as Deryn caught her breath, she shouted, “Rhys! Ashem!”
A muffled shout answered from beyond the hill. Seconds later, a guy jogged over the top of a small rise a little to their right.
“Deryn?” He shouted over his shoulder in the same language Deryn had used when she first woke up, then jogged toward them. Like Deryn, he wore dark, practical clothes. Pants, long-sleeved shirt, military-style boots. But as he approached, Kai noticed that the scale details on his shirt were on the right sleeve, not the left.
The tension drained out of Deryn. “Rhys. Thank the Ancients. He’s alive.”
So this was the brother. Kai buckled a little as Deryn sagged. “Seriously. How much do you weigh?”
As Rhys approached, an electric heaviness settled over Kai, like the world drawing breath before a storm.
“Where have you been?” He shared Deryn’s accent, his voice a smooth, rich tenor. Tall, with pale skin and hair that glinted red in the moonlight, he moved with the easy grace of a leopard. He looked at Kai, and for an instant she swore his eyes sparked like blue fire.
Deryn shot off a rapid succession of words in the mystery language. Rhys went tense then, before Kai knew what was happening, scooped Deryn into his arms.
Kai staggered under the sudden lightness, but then arched her back and stretched, glad to be free. Rhys only spared her a brief glance before turning to jog back the way he’d come.
Bemused and slightly offended at being left behind, Kai followed. The camp came into view on the other side of the hill. A handful of domed tents sat in a circle, the worn paths between them giving the area a lived-in feel, as did the sturdily built stone fire pit, where a large fire blazed like a beacon in the twilight. Kai’s steps faltered as she counted the tents. Seven. Apparently, there were more people here than Deryn and her brother.
“Ashem!” Rhys called.
A man threw back one of the tent flaps. He caught sight of Rhys and Deryn and strode toward them. Nearly as tall as Rhys and broadly built, he looked older, maybe in his midtwenties. Instead of Rhys and Deryn’s European pallor, his strong, handsome features and thick, dark hair put Kai in mind of a young desert sheikh. He was dressed like Rhys, with the scale details of his shirt down his right arm.
If Charlotte were here, she would faint.
Ashem asked a question in the mystery language, though his accent was a shade different from the others. His voice was a velvety baritone.
“Nothing good.” Rhys responded in English. He carried Deryn to the campfire at the center of the tents. A stocky blond guy rose from his seat on a nearby log, as if he would offer to help. Ashem gave an annoyed grunt and made a shooing motion, and the blond guy sat.
Kai took a seat on the next log over, close enough to watch and eavesdrop. Bewilderingly, the people around the fire didn’t seem to notice or care that she was there.
Ashem said something commanding to Blond Guy, and Kai was pretty sure she caught the name “Evan.” Blond Guy/Evan stood and hurried toward the tents, calling out.
Deryn grimaced. She, at least, still spoke English. “I was hunting to the southeast. I thought I saw someone veiling, so I went to check it out. Demba came out of nowhere. I lost my bag, my communicator—”
“Demba?” Ashem, perhaps transitioning to English unconsciously, let loose an impressive string of obscenities. He still hadn’t even looked at Kai. “Where was he? Did you see Kavar?”
Deryn shook her head, clenching trembling hands. “I didn’t see Kavar, but he has to be close. I managed to lure Demba into a cloud bank and got away. He’d gotten my wing pretty good, though, and I couldn’t fly. I crashed and blacked out.”
Wing. Fly. Kai picked at the bark of the log, nervous, jangling energy pulsing through her. Deryn was either crazy or a pilot, and Kai hadn’t seen any planes. She thought of leaving, but didn’t want to draw attention to herself.
Rhys stood and shot Kai a glance, his expression uncomfortable. “I’ll take Deryn and go. We can regroup at the rendezvous on the coast.”
A muscle jumped in Ashem’s jaw. “I warned you this would happen.”
Rhys’s face froze in a neutral mask. “It shouldn’t have. No one knew where we were going. There must be a spy—”
“Make ready to leave,” Ashem snapped. “This trip is cancelled.”
Baring his teeth, Rhys turned on his heel and headed for a tent.
Deryn didn’t watch her brother go. “They know we’re here.”
“That’s obvious.” Ashem stood. “Put out the fire. If they’re still in the area, they could see it. The barrier doesn’t make us invisible.”
Deryn rubbed her face, obviously exhausted. “There isn’t enough water in the air. I can’t—”
A lean man, taller even than Rhys, dropped a bundle next to the fire pit. It fell with the clang and clatter of metal, cutting Deryn off. Ashem growled something at the lean man and crouched to examine Deryn’s broken leg.
Kai edged forward to get a better look at the bundle then sat back in shock. It was full of weapons. Old ones: swords and knives with ornate hilts, their blades polished and glittering sharp. Her breath caught in her throat. Were they thieves? Had they robbed a museum?
And that’s it for me. Before Kai could stand, the lean man noticed her.
“Noswaith dda. What’s your name?” He had unruly black hair and a voice like melted chocolate. In the unsteady flicker of the fire, humor danced in his clear, light eyes.
Despite the knots in her stomach, his grin was so open and contagious that she almost smiled back. She licked her lips. “Kai.”
“Cadoc!” Ashem barked. “Get moving.”
Cadoc gave Ashem an exaggerated salute, winked at Kai, and jogged back into a tent. Ashem’s gaze jumped to Kai. “Blood of the Ancients, what the hell is a human doing here?”
Kai bristled, choosing anger instead of fear, now that all their eyes were on her. “Sitting. And you’re welcome for bringing her back.” She jerked her head at Deryn. “It’s not like she weighed a freaking ton or had to be dragged up a mountain or anything.”
Two more women and a man came out of the tents and gathered by the fire, tossing huge duffel bags in a haphazard pile. Kai twisted her carabiners and edged away from the group. With the addition of these three, there were now eight strangers. Kai swallowed. She should have stayed by the cliff. Was Juli back already? If she was, and Kai wasn’t there, Juli would kill her.
“We need to start loading,” Ashem said, still glaring at Kai. “Griffith can shift and—” He broke off, his brow furrowing. His eyes lost focus. He rose, his jaw set in a hard line as he searched the sky. “Kavar. He’s close. Less than a mile—” He turned, his voice sharp. “Deryn! Why isn’t that fire out? They’ll see it!”
Deryn had both hands stretched toward the fire. Kai blinked. A fine mist seemed to gather in the space between Deryn’s palms, gleaming and changing shape like a golf-ball-size glob of water. Except it couldn’t be.
“I’m trying!” Deryn snapped. “There isn’t enough moisture in the air here!”
Ashem sat back on his heels and barked a few incomprehensible words at a tiny, curvy woman
with a mane of bronze hair barely tamed by a handful of sparkling clips and combs.
Seeing her, Kai realized in surprise that all of these people wore an oddly large amount of jewelry, even the men. In addition to the usual rings, necklaces and bracelets, metal and precious stones glittered around biceps and forearms, sparkling in the women’s hair and all around their ears. Some was the cut, polished jewelry Kai was used to, but much of it looked to be raw crystal and uncut stone.
The woman gestured urgently to Kai. “Thank you for bringing Deryn back to us. If you’ll come with me, I can show you the way out.”
Kai stood, a weight lifting from her shoulders. Apparently, she wasn’t going to be abducted tonight. “I can find the ravine myself.”
The woman smiled tightly and said, “Nevertheless, I’ll walk with you.”
“Rhys,” Ashem snapped. “The fire.”
The fire, which had been crackling merrily, winked out. Suddenly blind, Kai stumbled, fell onto one of the logs and swore.
Everyone around the smoking remains of the fire seemed to relax except Kai. She squinted toward where the fire had been. It was there, and then it was just...gone. No sizzle or hiss. Nothing but a few glowing embers and the scent of smoke.
Nervous fear twisted in Kai’s stomach.
“Are we safe?” someone asked.
“No.” Ashem growled. “If I can sense Kavar, he can sense me. But not precisely. We may still be able to sneak away.”
“It’s too late.” Rhys growled. He stood opposite Kai, his gaze fixed on the sky over her head, his eyes glowing an eerie, electrifying blue. “They’re here.”
Slowly, Kai turned. For a long moment, her heart stopped. Everything was utterly still.
A weird shimmering in the air, like a heat mirage, resolved itself into a dozen huge, impossible shapes silhouetted against the moon. The earth seemed to tilt. Kai blinked, but the shapes only grew larger. She pressed her fingers into her eyes hard enough to see spots then looked again.
The vast serpentine shapes were still there. Some bat-winged, some feathered, and some wingless, undulating through the sky like enormous flying snakes.
Shadow of Flame Page 36