by Anne Bishop
She nodded. “Joshua sensed it moments before I did. But I hadn’t sensed Joshua’s nature, which is why I think he’s not Intuit in the same way that I am.”
“Does it matter?” Virgil asked. “He sort of smells like you under the scent of Panther. Well, smells more like you than us.”
Jesse studied the Wolf. “Smells like me?”
Virgil thought for a moment. “Not quite like you. You smell like prey. He . . . doesn’t.” He looked at Saul.
Saul shrugged. “He didn’t smell the same as the humans at the trading post, but we just figured it was because he was ours.”
“The cassandra sangue don’t smell like prey,” Tolya said. “The terra indigene don’t drink their blood or eat their flesh because they are Namid’s creation, both wondrous and terrible. Their blood was used to create drugs a few months ago; drugs that could make someone so passive they were helpless or make someone so aggressive they would attack and kill without provocation.”
“I remember hearing about gone over wolf and feel-good,” Jesse said. “I hadn’t realized those drugs were made from the blood prophets’ blood.”
“They were—and they affect humans and terra indigene alike.” Tolya looked at the rest of the terra indigene gathered in the room. “I met Meg Corbyn, who lives in the Lakeside Courtyard. Her scent is unlike any other kind of human. She is not prey, despite the allure of her blood. Joshua doesn’t have the same allure, but . . .” He turned to Saul. “Did your aunt react to Joshua’s blood when she licked a cut or scrape?”
“Not that I remember.” Saul frowned. “I remember her being happy that she had a cub again, even if he wasn’t Panther.” He focused on Jesse. “Why does it matter?”
Jesse’s right hand tightened on her left wrist until it hurt, until she knew there would be a bruise, as she struggled to explain what she was feeling. She usually didn’t have feelings about people she hadn’t met. “If one boy was saved, maybe there were others who escaped, who were found, who were saved by terra indigene who could make room for a young human in their family. Maybe an Intuit family or a Simple Life family found a lost boy and raised him as their own. Maybe someone has found boys like that in the past few months.”
Tolya suddenly tensed, and she knew she’d finally said what she needed him to understand.
“Saul’s family accepted that Joshua sensed things about the world that they could not, and that acceptance may be true for any terra indigene who finds a child like him,” Jesse said. “But it might help them to know that these boys might be the children of cassandra sangue, might claim to see things that make no sense. And I think Intuit and Simple Life communities should be told as well. An Intuit boy adopted by someone in an Intuit village? His abilities won’t be unusual.”
“But an isolated Simple Life community might feel threatened by a child who senses things, who warns of danger before it happens,” Tolya finished. “The humans might think it’s a sign of illness or madness if they don’t know it’s normal.”
Or they might think the child is evil and kill him, she thought. “It could still be a sign of illness or madness, but it might not be. And it might give comfort to the people who found the dead children, who found the blood prophets who had been left to die, that not all of the unwanted children died. They just followed their instincts to a better place.” Jesse looked at Saul and smiled.
He studied her and nodded, finally satisfied that she posed no threat to his human kin.
“I will send word to the terra indigene,” Tolya said. “Can you contact the Intuit communities?”
Jesse nodded. She was part of a group of Intuits who received information about the cassandra sangue through Steve Ferryman, who lived on Great Island. She would send an e-mail to everyone on the list. The people in the Midwest would receive her message. So would the Intuits manning the communications cabin that could transfer messages to the cabin that was just across the Northeast border. They would send it on to Steve.
“Speaking of Simple Life, what do we do with the howler I put in jail yesterday?” Virgil asked.
“The other men insist they only know what he told them, that he asked to join them at the border station so he wouldn’t have to travel alone,” Garnet said.
“He had a ticket and clothes in a carryall,” Virgil said. “The clothes smelled like him and matched what he and the other Simple Life males were wearing. So he is what he says he is.”
“Being Simple Life doesn’t mean he’s a good man,” Jesse said.
“I’ll call the train station closest to the border and see if anything happened near there recently,” Nicolai said.
“Ask if there was a news report involving women of a certain age and look,” Jesse said. “The man might have needed to disappear quickly if he had behaved badly.” A lame way of talking about assault . . . or worse . . . but she didn’t know what the terra indigene thought about such things.
Virgil snarled. “Well, I’m not calling human law and asking about this human.”
“Then what should we do with him?” Yuri asked.
“We could just eat him,” Virgil replied. When Tolya said nothing, the Wolf growled, “Fine. We don’t eat him, but I’m still not calling any humans. When is that deputy going to show up?”
“She’ll be arriving on Sunsday,” Tolya said.
“I’m going to have to deal with that human until then?”
“Why don’t we put him on the northbound train?” Nicolai said. “The westbound train coming in this afternoon follows a route up to the border of the High North regions.”
“That’s just passing along the problem to someone else,” Jesse protested.
Nicolai smiled, showing a hint of fang. “Not really passing along a problem.”
It took her a moment to realize what he meant. Not passing along a problem; passing along a meal.
Bennett’s town council didn’t want to start a panic among the new arrivals by killing a man when they didn’t have a better reason than that they didn’t like him. But they also knew it wasn’t likely that he would survive long enough to reach another human settlement where he might pose a threat to the females living there.
The meeting ended with the agreement to send the Simple Life man north, and the terra indigene headed off to their various businesses and tasks. Only Tolya remained, watching her.
“Your distress is a scent in the air,” he said quietly. “Predators are attracted by scents like that because they signal prey that is, perhaps, easier to bring down.”
Jesse opened her right hand and stared at the bruise on her left wrist. “Are you going to have a token human on the town council?”
“No. The terra indigene reclaimed Bennett. We run this town. The Elders won’t tolerate this place continuing to exist if we don’t.” Tolya leaned toward her. “And if you, who should know you are safe when dealing with us here, feel distressed by our ways, then how would a human who hasn’t earned our trust going to survive being in a room with us?”
“I wasn’t distressed about being in the room with all of you. I was distressed by the subjects we were discussing.”
“The reason doesn’t change the scent or our reaction to it,” he said gently. “But I will keep your question in mind, and if we find one or two humans who can earn our trust as you have, we will consider having them speak to us about human concerns in an official capacity.”
That was more of a concession than she’d expected—until Tolya added, “And you could attend such meetings as Prairie Gold’s representative. As you’ve pointed out many times, your town and your people have a stake in Bennett’s survival.”
Now, that was more like what she’d expected.
CHAPTER 13
Earthday, Messis 12
Jana repacked her toiletry kit and left the public showers in the train station. She handed the attendant the washcloth and towel, along
with the ticket that confirmed how many items she had received, so that she could get back the deposit she’d had to put on the darn things—as if someone would want to take a threadbare washcloth and scratchy towel.
Then again, those things might be a luxury for some people at this point. At least she’d thought to bring some of her own soap in a waterproof container and didn’t have to use the bar soap that was supplied for everyone’s use.
She was grateful that she didn’t have to spend money on a hotel room in order to take a shower, which some of her more fastidious fellow passengers had done, but this hadn’t been something she had considered about the reality of traveling a long distance. Their car had toilets and small sinks to wash your hands and splash water on your face, but that didn’t alter the fact that after two days of travel, everyone was starting to smell a bit ripe.
Part of the adventure. But it made her wonder about the personal side of her new life. She’d thought plenty about the professional side, imagining different scenarios of meeting her boss, the Wolf, for the first time. What about the woman who would be her housemate? What kind of house would they be living in? There had to be indoor plumbing, right? Right?
Which was a harder way to travel—four straight days with the nightly stopovers or breaking up the journey and being stuck in a small town for a full day because trains didn’t run on Earthday anymore? More experienced travelers probably used the day to take in a movie or eat a decent meal or rent a room at the hotel. Some of the people going to Bennett had done enough traveling in the Northeast to feel confident that they could navigate through an unfamiliar town and believe the train wouldn’t pull out of the station when they were still a couple of blocks away. For the rest of them, the thought of being stranded in a border town, without luggage, without the papers that proved you had the terra indigene’s permission to cross the border, without anything to go back to even if you had enough money on you to pay for a ticket . . . Those were the reasons most of the passengers who had traveled from Lakeside were staying close to the station, making use of a sandwich shop or the diner that was open. And even those businesses would close an hour before dark, leaving passengers to spend another night on the train or in the train station.
Part of the adventure, Jana reminded herself as she wandered over to the station’s shop. The small space held everything from bottles of aspirin and toiletries to coloring books and decks of cards. There were a few postcards, but nothing that appealed to her.
Turning away from the postcards, Jana focused on the paperbacks in a spin rack. She’d found out the hard way that she couldn’t read when the train was in motion. She hadn’t embarrassed herself or caused her fellow passengers any discomfort, but she didn’t want to gamble with nausea again. Still, she’d have plenty of time to read this evening, just like the other evenings when the train pulled into a station for the night.
She looked at each book that was available. Some of the books held no interest for her and others she’d already read. But it was something to do, a reason to linger away from the train a little while longer.
No authors with last names ending in “gard.” Was that because the station didn’t want to stock anything written by a terra indigene or was it because the person who ordered the books didn’t know such books existed? Would the bookstore in Bennett carry books written by the Others as well as books written by Intuits? She’d have to ask John Wolfgard, since he’d told her he was going to manage the bookstore.
She selected a thriller, then put it back when she realized the gun for hire was a human and the villains in the story were terra indigene. That was when she noticed the woman sitting in a dark corner, half hidden by the spin rack. The body language made her think runaway, but the woman was an adult. Short brown hair. The corner was too dark to tell the color of the woman’s eyes. Jana guessed her age to be late twenties or early thirties. Definitely adult. And yet . . . runaway.
“Excuse me.” The woman had a husky voice.
Jana offered a smile but kept her distance. “You need some help?”
“Are you boarding the train in the morning?”
“Actually, I’m returning to the car in a few minutes.”
“The regular car?”
“No, the earth native car. I’m heading for Bennett.”
“Oh.”
“Are you in some kind of trouble?” Was she officially an officer of the law yet?
The woman stood and came closer to the spin rack, closer to the light. Jana noted the way she favored her left side, particularly her left shoulder. The top she wore was oversize—the kind that could be worn off one shoulder. The woman pushed it off her left shoulder, revealing a dark, fist-sized bruise.
“Have you ever dated someone you thought was really great until you learned his being really great was an act and you saw the real man? I was fast enough that he missed hitting my face.” She hesitated. “I need to disappear. He went off to meet up with some friends or cousins or something. I need to be far away before he returns and starts looking for me.”
“I don’t have much . . .” Jana reached for the back pocket of her jeans and the few bills she’d tucked there.
“I don’t need money. I have money. A couple of nights ago, he wanted a ‘loan’ to play a few hands of poker, and when I wouldn’t give it to him, he hit me. So I closed out my savings account, packed my clothes and personal papers, and I caught the first bus out of town. Got off here. I was hoping to cross the border, find some work. But border crossings aren’t easy, or safe, without the right papers.”
From a few comments she’d heard from passengers in the regular car, you could cross the border if you put enough money in the right hand—unless one of the Others observed the exchange. If that happened, you’d end up in someone’s belly and your skin would be nailed to the station wall as a warning.
She wasn’t sure if that was only a story told to scare people into behaving, or if it had started because someone had seen a skin nailed to the outer wall of a train station. She just hoped she didn’t see any evidence that the story was more than a story.
“What’s your name?” Jana asked.
“Candice Caravelli.”
“You in any trouble with the law, Candice Caravelli?”
“No, but Charlie might be. Charlie Webb. He’s the man I was dating.”
The spin rack suddenly started spinning. Coloring book pages riffled. Then . . . nothing.
“What . . . ?” Candice’s brown eyes widened with fright.
Before Jana could think of a reply—or even a way to voice her suspicion of what had just happened—John Wolfgard walked into the station.
“Air says this female is running away from a bad mate,” John said.
Oh gods, oh gods. She hadn’t considered that an Elemental might be listening to her conversation.
Air was not the only Elemental, but Jana was not, was not, so was not going to think about what that might mean when she took a shower.
“Yes, she is,” Jana said. “She needs to get far away from here, and she’s willing to work. Right?” She looked at Candice.
“Absolutely. I’ll do anything.” Candice thought for a moment. “Almost anything. I’ll do any kind of work that’s legal.”
John cocked his head. “You have money for a ticket to Bennett? If I allow you to cross the border with us, you have to come all the way with us. No getting off at one of the stops and leaving.”
“Okay. Why?”
“Because the terra indigene don’t know you.”
There was no mercy in the wild country, no safety in the dark. She had heard that over and over again from Karl Kowalski and Michael Debany while they had tested her skills. They hadn’t been trying to scare her off; they’d wanted her to use caution and common sense because there would be no boundaries between the humans living in her new town and the most dangerous forms of terra indigene.
Candice took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. Are there jobs in Bennett?”
“There is a lot of work,” John replied. “Tolya Sanguinati is the town leader. He will decide if you can stay and what work you should do.”
“Sanguin . . . Okay.”
“Would you rather stay here?” Jana asked.
Candice shook her head.
Jana helped by hauling the big suitcase. She was stronger than she looked, but she was glad the suitcase had wheels. Even with wheels, she couldn’t imagine Candice pulling it down the street while carrying a soft weekend bag and a purse over the uninjured shoulder. The woman probably had the essentials in the weekend bag so that she could abandon the large suitcase and run if she had to.
John stood beside Candice while she bought the ticket to Bennett. The man in the ticket booth seemed a little too keen for Candice to give him her name, which wasn’t necessary since she was buying a ticket at the station, but John gave the man a toothy smile and said he would take care of the personal information at his end.
They left in a hurry, getting Candice’s large suitcase stowed in the baggage car before climbing the steps into the earth native car.
Jana said nothing when Candice sat beside her. The woman was understandably spooked. Besides, once the train started moving again, people changed seats to chat and get to know the people who would be their neighbors. Hopefully by then, Candice would feel comfortable enough to take a pair of empty seats and they could both stretch out and get some sleep.
“When I first met him, Charlie was so sweet,” Candice said. “Then sweet morphed into sly. He used to take me out to dinner or pay for the tickets when we went to a movie. Then he’d show up and say he was short of cash and would I mind picking up the tab. And then he started showing up, expecting me to give him sex before he ‘borrowed’ some money and went out to play cards or do something with somebody else. By then, he’d said some things that made me realize he was part of some kind of gang and the work that was the reason he had to travel probably was borderline legal at best. But you get hooked, you know? First you get hooked because he acts sweet and then you stay hooked because you’re scared of what he’ll do if you start saying no.”