Frustrated, Damia sheathed her sword with a sharp click. “Do the people of either kingdom believe that? How could anyone?”
“Some will,” Charlie replied. “Many in Yucatazca, of course, but far more in Atlantis. And the governments of Nubia and other lands are not going to get involved if they can at least pretend the war is just. The invasion force has been driven back in many places, but a single, massive battle front has formed thirty miles north of the Isthmus.”
Her infantry and cavalry had begun to gather around her. Damia forced herself to put on an air of confidence she did not feel.
“Then we have not a moment to lose. Hopefully more troops will come from the north and east. Until then, we must do all that we can.”
She studied Cernunnos. He shifted, muscles rippling under his pelt. There was grace and majesty in the lord of the forest, but grim disdain as well.
“What of you, milord? Will you and the wild of Oldwood help us to defend Euphrasia?”
Cernunnos scraped the ground with one hoof. “I have told you that we will not leave here. If the invaders pass through, we will stop them. But the Oldwood will not fight Hunyadi’s wars for him.”
“Even though your help could mean the difference between victory and defeat? If we fall, you will have no allies to defend your own land.”
Many of the wild things in Oldwood had emerged once more to hear her speak. Goblins and owls watched her closely. A hideous hag-woman with blue skin stood only a few feet from Cernunnos, shaking her head as though angry at the idea of any further alliance.
“We will survive,” Cernunnos said.
“Yes. Until they come and burn down the whole wood.” Damia sighed. “Whatever you wish, milord. I only hope we’re able to defeat the invasion without your help. Otherwise, by the time the war comes to you for the last time, you’ll be on your own.”
The lord of the forest studied her a moment from beneath the rank of antlers that sat heavy upon his head like a crown.
“You will want to bury your dead, I presume?”
Commander Beck nodded. “Yes. If it’s no trouble, and their remains won’t be disturbed.”
“They will be left at peace,” Cernunnos replied. “They died with courage and as our friends. But leave the corpses of the invaders to the animals. The forest has to eat.”
CHAPTER 11
D awn had broken over Ecuador. Light rain fell, and Collette Bascombe lay her head back and let it sprinkle her face. Hidden away in the thick of a banana plantation, clad in the stale clothes she had worn for months in the dungeon, she would have given almost anything for a shower and clean clothes. And perhaps she would get them, soon. For the moment, though, she was just grateful to be back in her own world.
Your world? Really?
The words came unbidden into her mind and the voice of her conscience had an edge. She and Oliver were children of two worlds, the living embodiment of everything the Veil was not. They were human and legend together. But this ordinary world was hers. And still felt like home.
The rain fell. The wind blew. People worked and played, lived and died, and it was all completely ordinary. Little people weren’t likely to come out of the jungle. Monkeys weren’t prone to transforming into men and speaking riddles or holding grudges.
The legend said that a child of human and Borderkind-someone like her, or Oliver-was destined to tear down the Veil between the ordinary and legendary worlds. At the moment, Collette thought this was a spectacularly bad idea. She liked her world just the way it was. Boring. Ordinary. Life had enough peril and ugliness without adding all of the problems of the legendary world to it.
She wished she could stay here. Not hiding among the banana trees-although even that would be preferable-but here in the mundane world. Even a few days’ reprieve would have filled her heart with joy. But there would be no rest. No break at all. Her brother and Julianna were still there, on the other side of the Veil. Julianna would be there forever, it seemed, trapped by the magic that had created the godforsaken barrier between worlds.
Oliver and Julianna were caught in a war zone, and Collette was going back, not just for them, but because-no matter how nice it felt to be in her own world-they all had a score to settle. In life, there were some fights you could never walk away from. Not and forgive yourself.
Yet for the moment, Collette tried to let the peace and quiet of the plantation soothe her. The rain fell warm and gentle. The breeze smelled delicious and earthy. She and Frost had learned they were in Ecuador as soon as they had reached the outskirts of the city. A garbage can by the side of the road had given up a dirty, torn newspaper. They were in Machado, and just a few miles away was Puerto Bolivar, its sister city.
In the night, they had stolen along the perimeter of the city and eventually found the banana plantation.
Collette didn’t want to spend a minute longer than she had to with Frost. The winter man said little. His blue-white eyes issued a kind of cold mist and his expression was grim; a crack in the ice made up his mouth. At the moment, she enjoyed his absence.
Then the light rain turned to brittle, frozen sleet, and she swore under her breath and sat up. The banana trees rustled and a gust of wind blew snow and ice across the sky. Impossibly fast, the small blizzard built itself into a man.
“Time to go,” Frost said.
He glanced around, as though afraid they might be discovered. His hair-like dreadlocks made of ice-clinked together when he moved.
Collette climbed to her feet, feeling tiny beside the winter man. She had never been tall. With the spray of freckles across her nose and her petite stature, she had often had to fight extra hard for people to see her as something more than just “the cute girl.” Now, all of that life was in her past. Her job, her friends in New York, all done with. She tried not to think about whether she would ever be able to go back.
“You found an American Express office?”
Frost narrowed his eyes, ice cracking. “No. We haven’t time for that.”
“That’s the only way out of here,” Collette said. “I need identification. I need money. And you said it’s too dangerous to try to cross back through the Veil so close to Palenque.”
“All true. So come with me.”
The winter man turned and started along a path between two rows of banana trees. The top of the main plantation building could be seen in the other direction. Collette stared at his back a moment, then hurried to catch up.
“Look, it’s going to take weeks-”
“We don’t have weeks!” Frost said, spinning on her. The air around Collette dropped thirty or forty degrees. Her breath fogged and her eyelashes stuck together when she blinked.
“Listen-”
“No. Collette, stop. You haven’t been thinking properly since we crossed the Veil. Perhaps it’s because you’re back in your world and you think, suddenly, that means that you need to follow the rules of humanity. But you can’t think that way. Authorities all across your world will be looking for you, now. You vanished, remember? After your father was murdered.”
“So, now I’m a suspect, the way Oliver was?”
The look on Frost’s face chilled her.
“Perhaps. That does not matter at all. Regardless, you will be questioned. They will want to know where you have been. All of that will take time, during which Oliver and Julianna-and many thousands of others, both of your kind and mine-may lose their lives.”
Collette shivered, then shook it off and faced him. She’d been tormented by the Sandman, kept as his captive, and escaped only to fall into the hands of Ty’Lis and end up in the dungeon at Palenque. In that time, she had learned a great deal about herself. She had found the magic of her mother’s heritage inside her and a strength that came from her own heart. Home had a powerful allure, but the time hadn’t come yet to indulge that.
Still, she studied Frost closely and did not care that he took offense at her scrutiny.
“You doubt me,” he said.
“Why shouldn�
�t I?”
“Our goals are the same, Collette. They always have been.”
“Including when you brought Oliver across the Veil and left me to be murdered by the Myth Hunters?”
Frost cocked his head. “They did not kill you.”
“True. The Sandman took me. There were times I would rather have died. Just because Oliver and I are both still alive doesn’t mean you did the right thing,” Collette snapped.
“This is foolishness,” Frost said. He started walking again, but something wavered in his tone and aspect that said he might not be as confident as she had always thought. Collette didn’t know whether to be heartened or frightened.
“Frost-”
“It might not have been the right choice, but it was the only choice. It kept you both alive. Oliver and I owed our lives to each other, several times over.”
Collette caught up to him again. “And through all of that, you never trusted him enough to tell him the truth?”
Frost kept walking. “He was safer not knowing.”
“But he deserved to know. We deserved to know.”
“And now he hates me,” Frost said.
Collette paused. Frost went on several steps under the banana trees, soft rain pattering against his slick, icy form. Then he stopped, but did not turn. Collette had heard the weary sadness in his voice. Maybe all he’d said was true. Perhaps he had thought of Oliver as his friend, and the rift between them pained him.
“No,” she said, softly. “I’m the one who hates you. I’m the one you left behind. Oliver only resents you. Maybe he’ll forgive you, one of these days.”
Slowly, the winter man turned. For the first time, his face-all sharp lines and edges-looked almost human.
“And you?” Frost asked.
Collette shook her head. “You and I were never friends.”
After a moment, the winter man nodded. “Fair enough.”
He turned and strode more quickly along the path. In silence, Collette followed. A little over a minute later and they had reached a fence that ran around the perimeter of the plantation. Frost reached out and froze a section of the fence, then, with a fist, he shattered it.
On the other side they came to a dirt road. Nothing moved along that road-neither person nor vehicle-but twenty yards to the left a small gray truck sat on the shoulder. Rust had eaten away part of the front end and the sides of the truck were spattered with dried mud.
Frost started toward it.
“What the hell is this?” Collette said, hurrying to get a better look at the truck. Anxious, she glanced up and down the road, but they were completely alone. Frost moved with purpose, and that worried her.
“What’ve you done?” she asked.
At the truck, the winter man paused and glanced back at her. Mist rose from his eyes, drifting on the breeze. The rain around him turned to sleet and pelted the truck with a metallic prickling.
“I’ve become a thief,” Frost said. Perhaps he smiled as he said it. “But not a murderer, if that is your concern.”
With a gesture, he indicated the roadside. Under the trees lay a brown shape, and it took her a moment to recognize it as some kind of canvas tarp. Beneath it, she realized, lay the driver of this truck.
“He’s not dead?”
“He’ll live,” Frost replied. “Get in the truck and drive, please.”
“Where are we going?”
The winter man opened the passenger door, climbed in, and closed it, just as if there were nothing strange at all about a creature made entirely of ice and snow riding in a rusty old truck.
Collette did as he asked. The keys were in the ignition and the truck started instantly. The windows were open. Several times Frost simply evaporated out of his seat, drifting up into the sky, a twisting storm cloud rushing ahead of the truck, only to pour himself back into the seat a minute or two later with directions. They stayed north of the city, though Collette got several glimpses of it through her window; she was surprised at how modern it seemed. The truck rattled along plantation roads and then what might have passed for a main road. For a mile or so it seemed they might actually drive into Machala, and then Frost directed her to take a narrow, rutted turn to the northwest.
Moments later, they came in sight of the water. To the south, she could see the port and was stunned to find not only fishing boats but elegant pleasure craft and huge shipping vessels. They bounced through a pothole and she had to focus on the road, but she could still glimpse the port in the rearview mirror. On the left, they rolled past a massive seaside operation that a sign identified as a shrimp farm.
“You really think this is going to work?” she asked.
“What?” the winter man said.
“We’re just going to take a boat? Obviously that’s your plan, because there’s no way anyone is going to let me on a plane with no identification, even if I had the money. Which means we’re stealing a boat.”
Frost glanced at her, his hair clinking together again. “I have already stolen it. The men I stole it from had guns. The hold was full of bags of white powder I assume is cocaine.”
Trying to process this news, her mind snatched one question out of a dozen. “You know what cocaine is?”
The winter man scowled. “I have been crossing the Veil since its magic was first woven. I have seen the best and worst of humanity. One of the men is dead, shot by another and fallen into the sea. The others are incapacitated.”
“You did all of this in a couple of hours?”
Frost looked back out through the windshield. “Time is short. They were evil men.”
As though it was that simple. And, Collette realized, perhaps it was. Four or five miles up the coast, the winter man directed her into a narrow drive that led into a wooded, rocky piece of property. Whoever owned the place was wealthy by any standard. Her father had been very well off, but the house that perched on the edge of the ocean here was twice the size of the Bascombe home.
They drove up and parked right in front. Collette felt wary as they got out of the truck. The front door hung from its frame. Several windows were broken. Nothing moved except the door, which swayed loosely with the breeze. Part of her wanted to go inside and see the chaos that Frost had wrought. Instead, she hurried around the side of the house, following a path that led to a dock. Two men lay bruised and bleeding and unconscious on the beach, several feet from the dock. One of them had an arm twisted at the wrong angle, clearly broken.
Collette paused to stare at him, thinking that no matter what this man had done, they ought to call someone. If his injuries were bad enough, he could die.
“We are at war,” Frost said. His voice felt like a chilly whisper against her ear. “If our war took place here, these men would be our foes.”
She took a breath. Much as she still hated Frost for leaving her to the Sandman’s mercies-and much as she had lived her entire life by the laws and morals of her own people-she could not disagree with him.
They walked out onto the dock and boarded the boat. As a child, she had watched reruns of Miami Vice voraciously. Drug lords and cigarette boats. They called them something else, now, but she couldn’t think of the word. Didn’t matter. If those little, slick, swift craft were cigarette boats, this one was a cigar.
Less than an hour ago, she’d been lying beneath the banana trees and thinking how nice it was to be back in her world, where things felt more real. But now, nothing about this felt real. Or maybe it was just that Frost was right-they were at war-and in war, the old rules no longer applied.
“You never asked me if I could drive this thing,” she said as she investigated the instrument panel on the boat. She ought to go below and look at the food and water stores, but there wasn’t time even for that. If she needed something, Frost would provide. She might hate him, but she knew that he needed her, now.
He needs me, because Oliver stayed behind, and if Oliver dies…
She shuddered. Of course. Frost had done it to them again. Oliver had insi
sted he stay behind to protect Julianna, because she couldn’t pass through the Veil. So Collette couldn’t blame Frost for that. But the truth could not be denied. Once again, he had left one Bascombe behind to live or die, content with the knowledge that he had the other in his safekeeping.
Yet as perverse as it seemed, Collette found some comfort in this. She was Legend-Born. Frost couldn’t afford to let her die. Too much relied upon the Bascombes. The Lost Ones would follow them into war, or fight on their behalf. The Borderkind who feared Atlantis’s efforts to seal off the Veil forever would fight all the harder, knowing the Legend-Born lived.
“You can drive it, can’t you?” the winter man asked.
The salt wind off of the water scoured him, but he seemed to enjoy it, somehow.
“Yes. How did you know?”
Frost cocked his head, as was his habit. “Perhaps Oliver told me. Or perhaps I assumed it, given your background. Your father’s money provided many luxuries.”
Collette sighed and started up the boat. The engine purred. “Right, then. Cast off.”
Frost went to see to the moorings. Collette looked at the water, wondering what had become of the man who’d been shot and fallen in. His corpse would be floating down there, somewhere.
As the winter man breezed up beside her, she glanced at him.
“You know someone will come after us, right? If not the police, then the military. Or other scumbags like the ones back there on the beach. Even if they don’t catch up, we’ll run out of gas long before we reach the California coast-if I haven’t starved to death by then.”
“We should go,” Frost replied.
Collette stared at him. “You’re making this up as you go, aren’t you?”
The winter man said nothing, just retreated into the cabin to get out of the sunlight.
Collette checked her instruments and pushed up on the throttle, pulling away from the dock. Oliver waited for her an entire world away, and she would do whatever had to be done to get back to him.
Ixchel brought them a hose that must have been used when the horse stalls had to be cleaned out, and Oliver and Julianna transformed an empty stall into a makeshift shower, taking turns cleaning off the grime and stink of the dungeons. Their new friend-whose entire knowledge of the English language was Oliver’s last name-made several trips out into the city for them. He brought back soap, clean clothes, and food.
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