Relapse (Breakers Book 7)

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Perhaps you're right."

  "You should go," Henna said. "There's nothing here that needs you in the next few days. We can look after ourselves."

  "I have no doubt about that." Raina closed her eyes to feel the night. "Yes. I will go. This is my land and I will find the answers in it."

  "There is only one flaw in this plan," Mauser said. "Traditionally, vision quests are conducted under the influence of strong-ass drugs."

  "I think Raina's whole life is like peyote," Mia said.

  The others laughed. Raina said, "Peyote?"

  "Another sad casualty of the plague." Mauser flapped his blanket. "Should we get some sleep? Long day of vision-questing ahead of you."

  "No." She stood and unbuckled her swords. "I'll go now. While the moon is up. Its colors are truer than the sun."

  "Truer than the sun? Guys, are we sure she didn't get into the peyote?"

  Raina dropped her swords into her blanket and unzipped her coat. The air was chilly but far from intolerable. She pulled off her shoes and socks.

  "Right," Mauser said. "Because it is an excellent idea to go running into the forest in the middle of the night without wearing any shoes."

  She met Mia's eye. "When the Native Americans entered the wild, did they do so wearing shoes and swords and coats?"

  Mia shrugged. "Beats me. It's just something I saw on TV. Like I said, you don't have to do it the way they do."

  "The point is to be free of distraction. To find oneself in the stillness. What would want to find you when you're armed with weapons? What could find you when you wear strange clothes that hide your shape from that which knows you?"

  She bent to grab a canteen. Carl clucked his tongue. "Ah ah. Do you want to do this the way they do it?"

  Raina cocked her head. "I would think it best to try the proven ways first. If what works for them does not work for me, I can try something else."

  "Then you don't get any food. No water. No sleep. You'll want to be gone at least a day. Three or four is best."

  "How do you know that?" Mia said.

  "Back in the '90s, I was just starting to get into martial arts. Kali. I was also smoking a lot of weed, reading Castaneda, and plunging full-bore into a spiritualism kick. I knew a guy who knew a tribe in Oregon who still did things like this. Talked our way into having them show us the ropes. Which consisted largely of them telling us that if we got sick or hurt or eaten by cougars, they would bear no legal responsibility for our yearning to appropriate their culture."

  "Well, did it work?" Mauser said. "Did you find your life's purpose?"

  Carl stared into the distance, then laughed. "When you starve yourself of food and sleep, and convince yourself the forest is going to tell you its secrets, you tend to come back with answers."

  "And I will, too." Raina peeled off her shirt and jeans. The others looked away. She let the clothes fall to the grass. "I'll be back within four days."

  She strode forward. Leaves shuffled beneath her feet. She was used to going without shoes, but it was too dark to see her footing. She would need to find a place to wait out the night. It was clear this quest was a test of hardship and spirit, but she didn't think the world intended for her to cut her foot or break a toe on the first night of her journey. If it did, then it probably wasn't a world worth listening to.

  Once she was a hundred feet from camp, the others began to murmur. She didn't try to eavesdrop. She was listening to the wind in the branches, the rustle of mice. The whisper of wings in the air.

  She moved slowly enough that she would know her footing was bad before she committed her weight. Goosebumps rose on her arms and thighs. The draw was sheltered, though, and her blood flowed warmly. She followed the crease in the land to the next set of hills, then stopped in a clearing to look up at the stars. These looked back on her, but held their counsel. When she grew cold, she walked on.

  This was how she spent the night: conserving her strength, limiting her chances to be injured, stopping often to let her eyes and ears and heart sense what they would. For the most part, the forest was quiet.

  She looked forward to dawn, but when it arrived, it reawakened her hunger. She was thirsty and tired, too. She climbed the eastern slope of a hill and sat on a shoulder of rock cushioned with a dense green moss that was as soft as a cat. The sun skewed down upon her, warming her.

  Sunning herself in this manner, she looked up sharply. She knew what she must do: find a lizard. They had guided her before, most notably helping her to save her family from Karslaw, and then again when she was hunting for the painting to convince Carl to teach her the way of knives. They would show her the right path once more.

  She allowed herself to rest until the morning overwhelmed the chill, then moved across the face of the hill, paying special attention to open rock exposed to the sun. Flies buzzed about her. Wasps came and went, investigating her in their pushy wasp way before flying off to find easier meat. Crows denigrated each other from their perches in the trees. Squirrels thrashed about, clawing down leaves. She saw all of these things in plenty, but no lizards.

  She found a creek and dipped her hand in the water before remembering she wasn't supposed to drink. Instead, she washed her hands and face. The water was stingingly cold and helped wake her up. She memorized the creek's location, then moved back uphill to the exposed rocks.

  Around noon, she spied a spindly, brown, finger-length lizard facing the sun. She had no sooner spotted it than it turned and flicked away into the nearest grass. There had not seemed to be anything special about it, so she moved on. A half hour later, she found a second of the small lizards. It scampered away just like the first. She stared after it, but it too had been a simple lizard, nothing more.

  Should she be pursuing? Was their frantic scramble not an attempt to escape, but to lead her to the truth? She walked on. She had passed beyond the first stage of hunger; her hollow, drawn stomach had learned that complaining would do no good, and resigned itself to emptiness. Ahead, another lizard perched on a weathered gray rock. When it darted away, Raina jogged after it. It burst from the grass and disappeared into a layer of leaves. Raina swept them away, but the creature was gone.

  She trudged on. For two hours, she didn't see another lizard. Was she supposed to be searching? Or was one supposed to come to her? For that matter, was she supposed to find a lizard at all? Or was the point to walk around until an answer was handed to her? More radically, should she forget about signs and portents and think actively about the problem of her new purpose?

  Her head was starting to ache. Her feet were sore and her throat was dry. At once, the entire venture felt completely foolish. The idea had been tossed out as a lark, but Raina had grabbed at it like a lifeline in a churning sea. Was she so desperate?

  She stopped. Shafts of sunlight pierced the pines. Dust motes tumbled in the light. She gazed inward at her feelings and found they were not real, but rather the specters of hardship. The will to give up that feeds on hunger and lack of sleep. This was her first test.

  Heartened by this discovery, she moved uphill and found another stretch of rock. As she approached it, something wiggled away. Her brain told her it was a snake—it was long and skinny and it moved with a twisting, swimming motion—but she glimpsed legs. She waited for it to come to a stop further up the rocks. This lizard was as long as her hand. Its body and limbs were tan, banded with deep brown.

  It cocked its head to stare at her with one bulging eye. Its tongue protruded and swept its lip. It waddled toward the edge of the rocky shelf, stopping before it reached the grass.

  Raina lowered herself to the warm rock and sat cross-legged. She thought it might be a skink, but she didn't know many of the names that others gave to things. It didn't move for a long time. A cricket popped from the grass and landed beside it. The skink twitched forward and crushed the bug in its jaws.

  As the afternoon deepened, the lizard ambled from the rocks into the yellow grass. Raina followed at a respectable distance. T
he skink appeared to be on a mission, crawling steadily onward, slowing only to clamber over sticks and small rocks. In time, it came to the west slope of the hill. This was the highest in the area and she could see for miles to the west, the tireless sprawl of coast-hugging cities abandoned to the earth. The towers of Long Beach rose at the fringes of her sight.

  "Yes," Raina said. "But then what?"

  The lizard poked out its tongue and licked its eye.

  "I return to the Dunemarket? And that is when I see?"

  The skink turned away and dragged itself to a patch of dirt exposed to the sun, which was now closer to the sea than to its apex. The animal rested for some time, tiny flanks inflating and deflating with breath. Should she be still and wait as it did? Let the answers infiltrate her mind as it let the sunlight infiltrate its banded skin? She crouched, wrapping her arms around her knees. When that grew uncomfortable, she sat and leaned her bare back against the trunk of a tree.

  The day was beginning to cool. She no longer felt frustrated. She hadn't yet been gone for a full day, but she had already found the skink. It had three more days to show her where her life was meant to go. With no intention of sleeping, she could follow it wherever it went.

  From the hillside, the towns looked so small. She could barely see Long Beach and she couldn't see Catalina at all. What if everything she had been through so far was nothing more than a preparation for the next phase of her life? Like a lizard, she could shed the skin of her past and step forward into her new future. She closed her eyes to see it better.

  She jerked awake. It was dead dark and she was stiff and cold. On the rocks, the skink was nowhere to be seen.

  She got up and stomped around, slapping her feet on the rock, but this provoked no movement. She had lost it. She had allowed herself to grow complacent, and in doing so, had lost the guide that would lead her to the truth.

  Just as she had lost her people.

  She leaned against the tree trunk. Tears welled in her eyes. Perhaps that had been just—if she couldn't so much as follow a lizard, in what sense did she deserve to lead a nation? Yet in what sense did the council? With their petty politics and jostling for personal gain? They would be the death of Catalina. Her people would be put to the sword, or swallowed up by Anson, one more principality of the People of the Stars.

  She shuddered, inhaling, and blinked her eyes clear. She knew better than that. Nothing was given. The dogs had taught her there was no deserve. Deserve was no more than whatever you could take. In that sense, the council did deserve.

  And she didn't.

  There: that was her answer, as bracing as the night wind skinning the hillside. She had failed them. She no longer had a role with them. Accepting that was the first gate through which she must pass. Only then could she move on.

  And yet the thought was an abomination. A pup born without a head.

  She bared her teeth and drew to her full height. It was she who had saved the Dunemarket from Karslaw and his barbarian raiders, establishing a new land in the process. It was she who had fought the People of the Stars to a standstill while the citizens set sail for refuge on Catalina. It was she who would have cut Anson a thousand times until he died.

  It was she who should lead them.

  "Who?" an owl called from the darkness. "Who?"

  Raina's eyes widened. "Me."

  "Who! Who!"

  "ME!"

  Her scream echoed from hill to hill, so loud she thought it might wake the sun. An owl plummeted from the branches of a tree, spread its wings, and soared downhill.

  Had it recognized her power? Was it leading her where the lizard could not? She jogged after it, careful not to lose her footing on the slippery patches of pine needles. It vanished into the forest, as silent as the dark. Raina stopped and strained her eyes into the black trees.

  "Who?" it said. "Who?"

  "Me."

  Raina stalked further into the woods. The owl sat on a low branch. When it looked at her, its eyes were as bright as two scoops of moon.

  She understood, then—it couldn't be the lizard. The skink was a creature of the gold. It fed on sunlight and hid from the absence. But for Raina, the days of gold were over.

  The owl, however, was a bird of silver.

  Fifteen feet from it, she drew to a halt. It stared back at her, eyes angry, head tufted into horns. Again, it fell from the branch and flapped silently away. Raina padded after it. It landed and hooted some, then took off again.

  It came to rest on a tree leaning over a slope so steep it was nearly a cliff. A large hole opened into the wall of rock. Raina stood thirty feet away. The owl was quiet now, watching the ground before the cave. Without warning, it launched downward, wings arced, talons extended. Something released a tiny but potent shriek. The owl flapped back to its perch, pinned the rodent in its claws against the branch, and began to eat.

  Raina wandered closer. The owl noticed her but went on crunching down its meal. The cave was large enough to walk inside without stooping. As she neared, she caught a whiff of fetid meat.

  A predator, then. She had left her swords in camp. This couldn't be coincidence, though. The owl had led her straight here. To ignore it would be to turn her back on herself. She bent to pick up a rock, then walked to the cave.

  The stench grew with each step. She waited at the entrance, but the inside was silent. She walked in and paused again to let her eyes adjust to the deeper darkness. Once she was ready, she reached out with her left foot, exploring, then planted her foot and brought her right foot forward. It scraped over something long and thin. It might have been a branch, but she knew the texture, the rattle. It was a bone.

  She moved another five feet into the cave. As she took her next step, her toes bounced against something hairy, yielding, and massive.

  She darted back her foot. She heard nothing besides the furtive scratching of a mouse. The only breathing was her own. She clenched her teeth and willed her foot to move. Her toes brushed against fur. It was coarse and harsh. She held her toes there, trying to feel its movements, but the fur held no warmth. She pressed her foot into the body. The skin slid loosely on the meat. The stink was overwhelming, as if Hell had burst from the earth and belched in her face.

  Raina's head went light. A tingle shot through her hands, so sharp it was painful, like needles or an electric shock. She understood all things.

  The bear was dead. Its den could be had by anyone—so long as they had the courage to step inside.

  * * *

  As she walked from the cave, the owl winged away, a shadow in the woods. It flew too fast for her to follow, but she knew she wasn't supposed to try.

  She waited until dawn to walk back to the camp. The blue-gray light made the forest look like it had extruded from a tear in the universe to a more pristine existence. Raina could no longer feel her hunger, but she went to the creek to drink. When she was done gulping the sweet cold water, she sat up with a gasp. Everything was as bright and clear as if it had been chipped from glass. She felt as though she could reach through the skein of things and pull forth an object from a more real reality. Truth was breathable, a part of the air.

  Physically, the feeling faded within five minutes. It endured in her memory, however, that glimpse of something greater, a place she might return to, if ever she got sick of this world.

  As she crossed the last valley before the camp, the grass was trampled down, the turf torn up. In one spot, the dirt was clotted and dark, flies buzzing about the metallic stink. But the trees were still and the birds were singing. Raina moved on.

  The others were right where she had left them. Raina thought it might be fun to sneak up on them and insert herself into the camp like she had never been gone, but as she came around from the rear, Mia stood.

  "Raina?" she called. "Is that you?"

  Raina walked in from the trees. She was aware that she wore nothing but underwear, and that after the last two days of wilderness, it was not particularly fresh. Her feet were
filthy, her hair askew. She didn't care. This was nothing but flesh: and flesh was only there to carry the spirit.

  "I know what we must do," she said. "We will go to the Kingdom of Better San Diego. We will claim its people. And we will use them to drive Anson from the land."

  15

  The wind from the sea ruffled Tristan's hair. "Am I missing something?"

  Ness shuffled closer to the cliff's edge, scanning the sea for the boat. "Sebastian must have patched it up. Taken it underwater for a test."

  "Are you sure about that?"

  "Where else would they be? On a run to the nearest offshore Burger King? Sebastian will be back any minute."

  "I hope you're right." She set down her pack. "Back in a few."

  "Where are you going?"

  "To cover our bases in case you're wrong." She jogged from the cliff to the trail that ran alongside it, then broke into a run, heading north toward the inlet.

  "What's going on, you think?" Lionel said.

  "I don't know," Ness said. "But I think maybe someone should head south and take a look around the bend."

  Sam shrugged off her pack. "I'll go. Stay put."

  Without another word, she ran south along the cliffs. Ness stared out at the water, willing the bump of the sub to break the surface. In fact, if he could stare at the sunny sea for twenty seconds without blinking, then the sub would show up. He began to count down. At ten seconds, his eyes were watering. He made himself keep watching until twenty, twenty-one. With no sign of the sub, he blinked.

  The trees tossed in the breeze. Across the inlet, Tristan appeared on the opposite cliffs, waving her hands above her head.