Starling

by Lesley Livingston

  “Are you in some kind of trouble, Fennrys?” Toby asked. “Running from something, maybe?”

  Fennrys uttered a shaky laugh. “When I figure that out for myself, Mr. Fortier, I’ll let you know. Listen. Why don’t you go back there and ride herd on your flock, okay? I’ll stay over here by the door. Out of the way. I won’t bother you. I won’t bother them. I think you’ll agree that going back out into that storm isn’t an option—even if the draugr are gone. We should wait until sunrise to be sure.”

  “Wait. What did you call them?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You gave those things out there a name.”

  “I …”

  Mason leaned forward, peering intently through the metal grating of the shelf. There’s that look again, she thought. The one that made this Fennrys guy seem as though the things that came out of his mouth were as much of a surprise to him as to whomever he was speaking to.

  “Draugr,” he said again, rolling the word over his tongue as if trying to identify its taste. “You’re right. I did.” His gaze flicked back up to Toby’s face, but his blue eyes were hard, cold. He put up a hand, forestalling Toby’s next question. “Don’t ask. I don’t know how I know. I don’t remember.”

  Toby was silent for a moment, and then he said, “But you know that they’ll be gone at sunup.”

  “I don’t know that.” Fennrys shook his head.

  “But you just said they would. You said—”

  “I said I thought it would be safer if we waited.” Fennrys ran a hand through the dark blond hair that stood up in tousled spikes from his head. He looked both very young and immeasurably old in that moment.

  “And?”

  “And it will.” Fennrys offered Toby a weary grin. “Things always appear different with the coming of the light, Mr. Fortier. Sometimes darkness is better, but I don’t think that’s the case here.”

  Mason was a little surprised that Toby didn’t just grab this guy by the front of his borrowed sweatshirt and shake him until some answers fell out. But he didn’t. He just stood there.

  And Fennrys stood facing him.

  It was like some kind of super-tense Mexican standoff, except neither of them had a weapon pointed at the other. Mason held her breath. Just then, something seemed to spark in Fennrys’s gaze—a thought, or maybe a memory—and his hand drifted slowly toward the iron medallion at his throat, as though pulled upward by an invisible puppet string.

  “I think we could all use some rest, Toby,” Fennrys said after a moment, and there was a quality to his voice that was … strange. Almost hollow, like an echo. “Don’t you?”

  Mason shook her head. There was a sudden, subtle pressure in her ears, like she was on an airplane taking off and needed to pop them. She looked back at Fennrys and realized with a start that his eyes were now fixed on her. She felt her breath stop in her throat.

  “We could all use some rest,” Fennrys said again. “Couldn’t we?”

  Mason felt a strange tingling near the base of her skull. Fennrys’s words echoed even more strangely. Mason heard Toby yawn. He mumbled an agreement, and she heard him start to head in her direction, his footsteps heavy and shuffling. Mason turned and stumbled back to where the others huddled in the darkness. Her eyes were so heavy by the time she got there that she was almost asleep on her feet. Heather and Rory were already out—Heather was snoring softly and Rory’s head was tipped back, his mouth wide-open. Mason sank to the floor beside Calum’s outstretched form, dimly aware of her relief at realizing he was breathing deeply, normally. He was sound asleep.

  And then … she was, too.

  V

  The boots were a size too big and, without socks, they chafed at his ankle bones, but it was going to be better than walking the city streets barefoot. Fennrys straightened up from tying the bootlaces tight, stretched, and rolled his shoulders. His sword shifted on his back, concealed in a canvas bag designed to hold fencing gear. Fennrys had found it on a shelf and decided to borrow it along with the boots he now wore. In the glow of the dying flashlight, he gazed down the row of sleeping bodies. The girl with the dark hair and startlingly blue eyes was curled on her side, still deeply asleep.

  Fennrys had allowed himself to indulge in a few much-needed hours’ worth of sleep as well, but it was now time for him to go. Past time. Before he did, though, he knelt beside the handsome student who’d almost gotten himself killed during the fight with the draugr and carefully turned his head to the side. The kid—he’s not a kid any more than you are, pal, said a voice in his head; you’re probably the same damn age—was pale, his breathing fairly regular but shallow. Fennrys ran a fingertip lightly over the livid marks on the boy’s face. The bleeding had stopped, but the angry, purplish lines that had begun to fade were starting to reappear under the skin and his flesh was still warm to the touch. Too warm.

  “Damn … ,” Fennrys murmured to himself. The poison of the draugr’s claws was stubborn and strong. Fennrys hesitated for a moment, then reached up and worked loose the knot of the leather cord that held the iron medallion around his throat. It took awhile, as though the knot hadn’t been undone in a very long time—but when it finally came loose, he tied the medallion around the injured boy’s wrist. Pressing his fingers to the symbols inscribed on the metal surface of the disk, Fennrys felt it pulse gently, with a cool, cleansing energy. Satisfied that he’d done what he could, he stood and looked down.

  The kid stirred in his sleep, and then settled with a sigh. He would probably carry the scars for the rest of his life, but at least Fennrys had seen to it that his life didn’t end there on the floor of the storage cellar. He felt a twinge of regret as he stared down at the ruin of the young man’s handsome face.

  Big deal. What are a few scars?

  What indeed? When he’d dressed in the borrowed sweats that the girl had given him, Fennrys had noticed that he himself carried more than a few—a lot more than a few—on his limbs and torso. Where did he get that kind of collection? Why had he been naked? In the midst of his confusion, he half smiled to himself when he remembered the vibrant pink flush of the girl’s pretty face when she’d glanced at him in his altogether state. Not the other one—the gorgeous blonde was used to the contours of the male body. Or at least she made a really good show of pretending she was.

  But the dark-haired girl had been sweet. Kind of shy, but brave enough to approach him when the others had hung back. Strong and swift enough to handle herself in a fight. She reminded him of … of what? Who? No one he could remember.

  His mind was a total blank.

  Well, maybe not a total blank. He could remember darkness … the feeling of cold stone against his bare, shivering flesh. Damp. And a stench like wet earth and rot. A voice. And then light—so bright that he flinched and closed his eyes even at the mere memory of that brilliance. It hurt his mind to think of it.

  After a moment, the fragmented memory faded and Fennrys opened his eyes again. He looked down at the dark-haired girl where she lay on her side, one arm flung out. The sleeve of her fencing jacket was pushed up and the skin of her arm shone pale in the gloom. As pale as Fennrys’s own flesh—which bore an unhealthy pallor, as if he hadn’t seen the sun in a very long time—only hers glowed like an alabaster sculpture lit from within. Fenn traced the path of a blue vein on the inside of her wrist, like following the course of a river on a map. Then he ran his fingertips over the roughness of his own wrists. Toby was right. Fennrys had been chained. Recently and for a long time.

  What the hell was he?

  The question framed itself in his mind that way … not “who” but “what.” Maybe he didn’t want to know. Maybe he’d be better off if he never found out.... He could just disappear into the world and … what? Start a brand-new life for himself? He couldn’t even begin to imagine what the old one had been like.

  Swords. Monsters. Danger …

  The dark-haired girl stirred in her sleep and made a small sound, almost like a whimper. Her hands float
ed up in front of her face, as if she fought against something in her dream. Gently Fennrys took her hands and lowered them to rest at her sides. He lightly stroked her forehead until she settled back into stillness and the shadow of a frown on her brow smoothed.

  In the silence and the darkness, he turned and listened for a long moment. No rain. No thunder … even the wind seemed to have died to nothing. And there were no sounds of the draugr now, either. Had he killed them all in those few frantic moments, hours earlier? He wasn’t sure. Maybe there were others still out there, lying in wait. Waiting for him … or for these kids and their teacher? Fennrys considered that an unlikely possibility. They were nothing. Nobodies. A bunch of absolutely normal teenagers.

  While he seemed to be … something else. Something dangerous. He didn’t want the dark-haired girl in danger because of him. He stood and turned away from her. A small, single action that made him feel unutterably alone.

  Once outside, Fennrys picked his way through the wreckage of oak tree roots and torn earth and headed across the otherwise manicured lawn of a courtyard toward the stone arch that led out onto the street. The pale, anemic gloom of predawn told him that sunrise was still a good hour or two away as he left the grounds of the Gosforth Academy—that was what the sign out front told him the place was called—but he hoped it was enough to give him a margin of safety. Fennrys headed south for several dark, silent blocks until, eventually, he looked up at the street signs to get his bearings. Broadway and West 110th, Cathedral Parkway.

  So … Upper West Side, then?

  Yeah. He knew what that was. Where it was. And he also knew that a large expanse of Broadway played host to a famous theater district, although that was much farther south than he was now. He was, it seemed, very familiar with New York City. He knew streets and neighborhoods, directions, destinations … the only blank on the map of his mind was himself. It was as if he was an empty space drifting around the city, untethered. Detached from his surroundings instead of defined by them, by what could have been a life’s worth of experience accumulated on these streets. The harder he tried to relate to the landmarks around him, the slipperier everything seemed. Anything that might have pertained directly to him just twisted away and was lost to a vacuum in his mind.

  “That’s great,” Fenn muttered to himself. “I know where to go to catch a musical, but I have no idea where I live. Not an ideal situation.” He twitched up the hood of his borrowed sweatshirt. “Especially considering that I have a sneaking suspicion I’m the kind of guy who hates musicals.”

  Even in his present state of what seemed like some kind of amnesia, Fennrys knew that the broad-bladed sword he’d been carrying when he’d found himself naked in a tree in a rainstorm wasn’t something a normal person would carry around on the streets of … New York.

  Why did he have a sword? Why was he in New York? Did he, in fact, live there?

  If so, where was his place? His clothes?

  Why did he bear those marks on his ankles and wrists?

  Who was he?

  Who am I …?

  The question pounded in his brain in time with his footsteps, and he turned east and broke into a loping jog, the sword slung on his back bouncing gently against his spine with each step. A fine mist now hung in the dim air, thickening at ground level to a rolling fog. The buildings on either side of him were dark, the streetlights were out, and no one—absolutely no one else—was around. That struck Fenn as … strange. A blackout in the middle of a city like New York, and nobody was taking advantage of it? No mayhem, no mischief … it was as if even the unsavory elements of society knew better than to venture out on a night like the one that had just passed.

  He headed farther east, skirting the southern edge of Harlem. As he ran, the lights in the buildings and on the streets began to slowly, one by one, blink and flicker back to life. Silhouettes in doorways, eyes in shadowed faces peeked out at Fennrys as he passed. On his right, a long stone wall ran alongside him for blocks. Behind it, through the curtain of rain that fell gently now, softly, he could see trees. A lot of trees … a park.

  Central Park.

  A violent shiver ran up Fenn’s spine. He knew, instinctively, exactly where he was now. And he knew that, unless his life depended on it, the park was the one place he wouldn’t—shouldn’t—go. What he didn’t know was why, but the feeling in his gut was enough to make him just keep running.

  Finally, far in the distance, he could hear the sound of wailing sirens. Fennrys kept running. It was the only thing that felt right at the moment—the pounding of his feet on the pavement in the fencing master’s stolen boots, the feel of the rain-wet air stinging his face, and the sound of his breath and heart, loud in his ears.

  But then he heard another sound, a different rhythmic pounding, and looking up, he saw two massive shapes in the middle of the road, moving swiftly toward him.

  Horse cops, Fennrys thought. NYPD. About bloody time …

  A pair of them, armored and helmeted men perched on the backs of huge, heavy beasts—Hanoverians or a similar breed, horses with hooves the size of dinner plates. Fennrys tucked his head farther down between his shoulders and tried to make like he was just another jogger, out in the middle of a citywide, blackout-making torrential downpour.

  For reasons he couldn’t quite fathom, Fennrys really wished he still had the iron medallion with him that he’d left with the injured kid at the school. He also knew he’d left it there for a good reason. Instinct was the only thing he had to go on at the moment, but it was everything. Instinct … and the reassuring weight of the sword in the canvas bag slung across his back.

  The echoing clop-clop of the horse cops’ passage rang in his ears, weirdly amplified by the wet, shimmering air.

  The sound chilled him to the bone. Jog casual, Fenn thought, trying not to glance back again in their direction. There was nothing about him to attract their attention. Almost nothing. Maybe it was the combat boots that gave him away. Maybe it was the undisguised fighter’s physique that the school-logo workout gear did nothing to disguise. He didn’t know. But something did …

  He heard a murmured, guttural exchange and the sound of those enormous hooves clattering on the asphalt as they accelerated from walk, to trot, to gallop. Fennrys glanced up and felt his heart leap into his throat. Those are no cops! he thought as two magnificent figures thundered toward him through the rolling banks of fog. Now he saw high-crested helmets with noseguards and cheek plates covering the planes of their faces. Longbows and arrow quivers carried crisscrossed over the bare-chested torsos of men. Torsos that flowed seamlessly down, melding with equine musculature. The mirage image of New York City cops astride their mounts shimmered and dissolved, revealing the strange, mythic, impossible creatures beneath: centaurs.

  Okay. Now I know I’m crazy, Fenn thought.

  And then he thought, Run!

  VI

  “Damn his eyes!”

  Toby’s roaring jolted Mason from sleep and a strange, tangled dream where she was falling through darkness and then light and then darkness again, through a storm-ridden sky and then a vast underground cavern riddled with masses of tree roots and then the sky again—and she’d been on fire. At least she’d woken before she’d hit the ground. Her brother Rory, taunting her about a falling nightmare when she’d been just a kid, had told her that if you hit the ground in one of those falling/flying dreams, then you die in real life. That your heart would stop from shock. Mason didn’t believe him, but she still wasn’t anxious to test the theory.

  Toby was waving around the now-sputtering flashlight and swearing a blue streak—something he usually tried to keep a lid on, with varying degrees of success, in front of the students—and Mason pushed herself to her feet and went to see what had gotten him foaming at the mouth.

  “He stole my damned boots!” Toby growled before she even had a chance to ask him. Toby was something of a freak of nature in that he could fence in combat boots—thick, heavy-soled things that he’d l
ovingly broken in over a couple of decades—but now he stood there, sock footed and outraged on the cold concrete floor, looking slightly comical.

  And the young man they knew only as the Fennrys Wolf was gone.

  Over near the wall, Rory snuffled in sleep and shifted as if swimming back toward consciousness. Mason noticed that one of his running shoes was untied and lying on the floor beside his foot. She knew what must have happened. Rory had little girly feet and Fennrys had obviously not been able to fit into his footwear.

  She turned back to Toby and had to stifle a laugh at his expression. “How deeply asleep do you have to be for a guy to be able to steal your boots?” she asked.

  “I can’t even believe I fell asleep in the first place,” Toby muttered. “It’s like someone slipped me a mickey or something. One second I’m standing there talking to the guy, next thing I know is I can feel a cold breeze up my ankles. Something very weird just happened here.”

  “You think?” Heather said, a little blearily, as she walked up to stand beside Mason. Heather was calm and her eyes looked a little vacant, as if she’d been given a sedative. Mason felt a little like that herself. She searched inward for the panic she would have normally experienced full bore under the circumstances and found it—but it was a distant, muted thing. Still … better not to push her luck.

  “Toby.” Mason checked her watch by the flashlight’s pale glow. “It’s morning. Can we please get out of here? He said we could.”

  “Yeah, I …” Toby stopped, eyeing her sharply, and Mason realized that she’d basically just told him that she’d eavesdropped on his conversation with Fennrys. To her relief, he decided against calling her on it. Instead he just said, “Yeah. I think we’re probably okay now.”

  “Why hasn’t anyone come to find us?” Heather asked quietly. “Where is everyone?”