by Laura Legend
Her mother’s sword. Her mother, and the look of hope on her ageless face as she’d explained her choice to leave Cass in order to save her—to save her by remaking the world, the Lost included. Her mother, the Heretic.
Cass’s stomach flipped, and she was pretty sure the bile rising in the back of her throat was not a symptom of the illness that had stripped her strength down to the bone and kept her tossing in the chalet’s bed.
Her katana still sat on the counter.
She couldn’t just leave without it.
Besides, Cass was pretty sure she’d need to work out the complex knot of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her every time she thought about her mother, or Miranda, or Zach. And chopping things to bits tended to be an effective form of working things out.
Enough, Jones, she said as she psyched herself up. Pull out the big guns and get this done.
Cass inched closer and looked over Gertrude’s shoulder. The woman was contemplating her next move. Cass pulled the syringe from her pocket.
“Use the queen, already,” Cass whispered into the boxer’s ear, exasperated, as she jammed the needle into her neck.
The woman turned with a surprised look on her face. She was about to throttle Cass when, instead, she just slumped over in her chair. Cass eased her body to the ground. She listened for a moment to make sure that she hadn’t woken Red.
Then Cass played the queen, tucked Atlantis into her backpack, snagged the sword from the counter, and stepped out into the snow-filled night.
The cold air still felt good in her lungs, but the sword felt even better in her hands.
She was pretty sure she could walk at least ten or twenty feet in this snow.
9
CASS WASN’T SURE how much of a head start she was going to get. Red didn’t seem like a late sleeper. She also wasn’t quite sure where she was going to go either. She inhaled deeply, sending a spike of the chilled air into her gut, then slowly exhaled. Run. Don’t trust them. They can’t heal you.
I know that! Cass told herself, frustrated. But where? Which way?
She felt a gentle nudge pushing her toward the east. Cass stilled, unsure if her injuries made her susceptible to physical hallucinations, but as she did so, she felt the nudge again, sharper this time, along her right shoulder. Her backpack began to vibrate as Atlantis purred, then butted her shoulder again, nudging her along.
All right then, Cass thought with a somewhat wry grin, I’m going to just follow my cat. Who is inside my backpack. But is apparently the driver in this escape. Some day, she was really going to have to have a heart to heart with Atlantis and figure a few things out. But today, she had snow to traverse.
From the house, Cass turned east and followed an exposed ridge of rock. The bare rock combined with the heavy snow and the whipping wind insured that she wouldn’t leave any obvious tracks for her health care providers to follow.
She followed the ridge for a good mile, gradually descending, until she reached a tree line and entered the forest. The rising sun in the east helped with her bearings and her powers as a seer helped keep her course “true.” Atlantis had calmed down once it was clear she’d set off in the appropriate direction, and was now apparently taking a nap.
Occasionally, Cass would feel time wobble and the haze of the falling snow would bleed into the white noise hovering at the edges of her vision. Sometimes, for the blink of an eye, she would see the mountainside flicker into view as it would have looked during the summer or the fall. The ground at her feet would suddenly appear green or the trees around her would suddenly be orange and red—then she would be back in the snow again. Sometimes shadows would pool and threaten to take on form. But, thankfully, these interlaced flashes of the past and future didn’t last and none of the shadows pursued her. At least for now, the signal broadcast by the present felt relatively clear.
Cass tried to stay focused on the work immediately in front of her. As the snow faded and the sky cleared, she tried to keep herself grounded in what she was doing—putting one weary foot in front of the other, through the snow, across the valley, toward the road—and she tried to keep her mind on a very short leash. The emptier she could keep her head, the better.
It wasn’t easy.
Regardless of where she put her attention, her thoughts kept circling back to Thomas. The image of him laid out on a stone slab in Judas’s lab was burned into her mind. Wherever she turned her thoughts, his words continued to echo and she continued to feel the burn of his grip on her wrist.
Run. Don’t trust them. They can’t heal you.
Who, she wondered, was she supposed to trust? And what exactly had she witnessed in that lab?
From what Thomas had revealed to them last time, Cass concluded that she must have caught a glimpse of the moment when Judas had first succeeded in creating a Turned vampire. She’d seen Thomas at the moment of the Turning itself.
On Thomas’s telling, a Turned vampire was created by interrupting the process that changed a human into a vampire. The result was that the subject of the transformation was positioned halfway between being human and being Lost. On Thomas’s telling, though, it was also true that the Lost were themselves supposed to be halfway between being human and being redeemed. That pill was much harder to swallow. Cass had seen what the Lost were. She’d seen what they’d done to the people she loved. Thomas’s explanation of the first transformation made a kind of sense; it fit with what she knew of Richard and Maya. But his theory about the road to redemption seemed like an awful stretch.
Regardless, Thomas’s words in her vision had convinced her to run from the only friends she still had and risk her life on the side of this mountain. And the reports she’d found in Richard’s study were clear: they didn’t know how to help her. Plus, she was sure that she wasn’t going to somehow magically heal herself.
Thomas might be the only person in the world who was both willing and able to cure her condition.
The fact that Atlantis also seemed in favor of the plan sealed the deal. That was two votes in favor of Thomas. For better or worse, Cass decided, she was headed to New York. Once she could figure out how to get there.
Cass left the forest and entered an open hollow. The snow was painfully white. The air, despite the blinding sun, was still frigid. Every breath Cass exhaled was visible. The effort of tromping through the snow was keeping her relatively warm, but she was starting to worry a little about Atlantis. Cass jiggled her backpack to make sure that the cat was okay back there. He answered with a stoic, half-frozen “meow.”
Cass guessed that, within the next two or three miles, their path would intersect with a road. They were, hopefully, in the home stretch of their alpine hike.
Cass left the hollow and entered the last stand of trees. These trees were taller and the underbrush was thicker. She heard the crack of an avalanche rumble in the distance and, in conjunction, she felt her grip on the present moment loosen. She reached for a nearby tree trunk and leaned against it. The shadows cast by the trees in the late morning sun danced and wobbled. The ache in her weak eye grew sharper and hotter.
Cass stumbled on, fighting against the ground cover hidden in the drifts of snow.
She just needed to push ahead and keep going.
Ahead, a troop of shadows gathered themselves, stood, and untethered themselves from the trees that cast them. With great effort, the shadows pulled themselves upright and merged into the something resembling a human form. The form, though, was much too broad and much too tall to be human.
Cass swallowed hard. She angled her course to the right and kept walking.
When the form finally lifted its head, she saw a pair of shadowy horns planted there.
She’d seen this shadow before. She’d seen it in her room when she’d accidentally attacked Richard. This shadow echoed the monster that Zach had become.
Cass put her head back down and kept walking, bearing farther to the right.
The shadow lumbered after her, fitfully glid
ing across the ground—gliding and then stopping, gliding and then stopping—as if it was struggling to make up its own mind about following her.
Its movements struck Cass as more pitiful than threatening.
She turned back toward it and took a long look. She waited for it to come closer. It wavered in the wind but didn’t approach. She held out her hand, inviting the monster to step toward her. The shadow stood very still for a long time. Eventually, Cass broke the stalemate and took a step closer, her hand still outstretched. When she did, the shadow trembled, flickered, and dissolved into the thin mountain air.
This didn’t strike Cass as a promising sign. She couldn’t even connect with Zach’s shadow.
She continued on her way. After another half mile, she was out of the woods and, without ceremony, found herself dumped onto the side of a four lane highway.
The snow had stopped. There were signs that half a dozen vehicles had passed this way since the snow had started a few hours ago. None of the tracks, though, looked especially fresh.
Cass put down her pack and checked on Atlantis. They could at least take a minute to warm each other up. However, when she pulled him out of the pack, Atlantis was rigid as a board. For a second, she thought he might be dead. Then he cracked an eyelid stiff with cold and looked right at her. All of his normal cat flexibility was gone. Instead of stretching like an accordion when she picked up him, nothing but loosely connected feline guts and bones, he now held his cat shape, arms and legs stiffly extended.
Cass held him close, trying to rub some warmth back into him, and made some pitiful cooing noises.
Atlantis rolled his eye, incredulous.
What had she done to him?
Cass unzipped her coat and stuffed him inside. Only his head poked out. Cass walked along the side of the road visibly shivering, hoping for a ride.
Over the next ninety minutes, two trucks passed without even slowing. When Cass finally heard a third truck coming an hour later, she decided to not take any chances.
She unsheathed her sword and stepped out into the road. She raised the sword in one hand and held up her rigid, half-frozen cat in the other.
The gesture was simultaneously threatening and pathetic.
The truck slammed on its brakes and slid to a stop just inches from where Cass was standing. Cass waved hello with her sword and the driver popped open the passenger door.
10
GARY WAS STANDING outside BO-B’s bar in the London Underside. His sources claimed that he would find Dogen inside. Gary wasn’t so sure. The Dogen he remembered wasn’t much of a drinker.
Gary stared up at the blinking sign with its burned out “O.” He pursed his lips skeptically. What was the world coming to? The whole planet seemed on the verge of collapse. Can’t people be bothered to fix a broken bulb? Does everything have to be turned into some kind of ironic meta-commentary?
He pulled the handle of the door and stepped into the bar. On the inside, the place looked largely as he remembered it with a dance floor, a bar, tables, and booths. The space was mostly empty. Local time in the hub was something like mid-morning. The space was dimly lit. Sad, slow country music played on the jukebox.
Gary adjusted his hat, rubbed the last few days’ worth of gray stubble on his chin, and took a closer look at the patrons. Dogen, though, wasn’t hard to spot. Hiding him in a room this size was like trying to hide a small mountain inside your local pub. He was squeezed into a corner booth, deep in the shadows. His bulk was jammed in tight. His head was low and his place at the table was littered with empty mugs, shot glasses, and beer pitchers.
Gary took a deep breath and crossed the sticky floor to Dogen’s booth. When he sat down, Dogen didn’t look up. Gary leaned in and listened more closely. With his chin propped up on his chest, eyes closed, Dogen was gently snoring.
Though in comparison to Gary Dogen had already lived many lifetimes, his age was only beginning to show. The creases in his forehead had deepened and the laugh lines that creased his acne-scarred cheeks were more pronounced.
Gary took Dogen by the arm and gently shook him, whispering his name.
Nothing.
He stood, took hold of Dogen’s shoulder with both hands and gave him enough of a shake to rock his head back and forth.
Nothing.
He considered splashing something in Dogen’s face, but all the glasses on the table were empty. So he closed his eyes, slapped Dogen hard across the face, and immediately jumped back, his arms raised defensively.
Nothing.
From across the room, Gary heard the bartender laugh.
Gary sat down in the booth, his elbows propped up on the table and head resting in his hands. Would he have to sit here and wait it out, hoping that Dogen would return to consciousness on his own sometime before Cass needed him?
Gary took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t have any time to waste. He felt, in his gut, like he was already falling behind. He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his moist eyes but found, instead, an ancient candy bar. He couldn’t remember buying it or putting it into his pocket. He looked at the wrapper’s expiration date: September 1997. It was more than twenty years old.
Still, the candy bar had given him an idea. He unwrapped the bar—it still mostly looked like chocolate—and waved it beneath Dogen’s nose.
Immediately, Dogen jerked awake, his eyes wild. A string of saliva trailed from his bottom lip to the spot on his shirt where his chin had rested. When he finally registered Gary’s presence in the booth across from him, Dogen rubbed his eyes in disbelief, apparently convinced that he must still be dreaming.
“Sorry, friend,” Gary said. “This is no dream. It really is me.”
But Dogen’s head was already bobbing and his eyes were drifting closed. He would be sound asleep again in just a moment. Gary had to act fast. He reached across the table and, again, slapped him across the face as hard as he could.
This time the slap worked.
Dogen shook his head like he’d just surfaced from deep under water.
“Gary!” Dogen exclaimed.
Dogen reached across the table for an awkward hug that squeezed the air right out of Gary. Mugs and plastic pitchers scattered everywhere.
As awkward and oxygen-deprived as the hug was, Gary was still grateful for it. For the first time in weeks, he didn’t feel alone. Even if he hadn’t found Cass yet, now he at least had Dogen.
The drunken giant squeezed back into his side of the booth and their table settled back into a horizontal position. Dogen’s eyes, though, were filled with silent tears.
“It is good to see you, my old friend,” he said between sobs, “but you have come at a very dark time. The whole monastery has been lost, burned to the ground, its connection to the Underside severed. The Lost—and the whole world with them—are teetering on the brink of wild anarchy. Zachary is trapped inside the body of a monster and I cannot find him anywhere. And Cassandra—”
Dogen trailed off. He finally looked up and met Gary’s eyes, then quickly looked away.
“It’s all gone to shit, my friend,” he concluded, waving to the bartender for another pitcher of beer.
Gary shot the bartender a hard look and held up his hand, refusing the drinks.
“That’s why I’m here,” Gary said through clenched teeth. “I’ve got to find Cass. She needs me. And I need your help to find her.”
Dogen looked down at the table, staring into an empty mug as if, by looking hard enough, he might find an answer at the bottom of it.
Gary reached across the table and took Dogen’s hand.
“I need you. Please. For Cass.”
Dogen’s brow furrowed with a look of determination.
“For Cass,” he said, striking the table with his fist.
He moved to stand but his legs immediately gave out beneath him. Gary stepped in to prop him up and, if Dogen hadn’t steadied himself with a hand on the wall, Gary would have been flatte
ned beneath him.
Together, they staggered toward the door.
When the bartender saw them headed for the door, he hopped over the bar and cut them off. He was a scrawny guy with a thin goatee.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, there,” he said. “Nobody’s going anywhere until we settle the big guy’s tab.
Dogen looked at the man sympathetically, showed his empty pockets, and shrugged. Gary kept them moving toward the door.
“I’ll make sure he comes back to settle up,” Gary offered.
The bartender wasn’t having it. But it was obvious to all three of them that if Dogen and Gary just kept walking, there was no way this little man was going to stop them.
The bartender wasn’t done, though. He put his fingers into his mouth and whistled, summoning the bouncer from the far corner.
A towering woman with an uneven haircut stepped into view and stationed herself at the door. She brandished a baseball bat. The woman had a black leather vest, heavy eye shadow, tight jeans, and a wicked scar on one cheek.
Dogen hesitated as if he were rummaging around inside his own heart for what strength he might have to fight this woman.
Gary took the opportunity to snag a pink feather boa left on a nearby table.
Then they just kept walking toward the door. Dogen looked down at Gary like he was crazy.
Gary braced himself. He hadn’t used magic in years. Could he still do it? Could he break the vow he had made to leave it behind?
If Cass needed him to do it, he decided, then he should consider that vow already broken.
They were getting closer to the door.
The bouncer was readying her bat.
“If that’s how you gentlemen want it,” the bouncer said. She lined up her bat and stepped into her swing. She’d taken aim for Dogen’s head, obviously considering him the greater threat but, as she swung, Gary’s eye twinkled green and the feather boa in his hand switched places with the bat in hers.
Her swing was right on target. She hit Dogen smack in the face with the feather boa. Dogen smiled. It must have tickled. Gary’s swing, though, was also right on target and he clocked the woman in the side of her head. When the bat made contact, her head rang with a dull, hollow sound.