by Rhys Ford
“Probably because I think of you as being human in those kinds of things.” Ryder leaned over and sniffed at the steaming packets. “I don’t even know when or where you were born—”
“I don’t know if I’d count myself as born,” I cut in. “I was shaken up in a bottle then shoved back into a sidhe for cooking.”
“Regardless of how you were conceived, you were still born,” Ryder continued. “You probably weren’t born here, do you think? Do you know?”
“I think on Underhill. Even with Tanic aging me, my mental capacities weren’t accelerated, so basically he had a floppy blubbering kid for a lot of it. Might have been there for fifty or sixty years? Maybe a bit more. Then add on the forty-something years after the Merge.” The packets were cooled off enough to eat, and I tore one open all the way, then passed it over to Ryder with a pair of metal chopsticks. “Dempsey said he figured when he got me I was about thirteen or fourteen, if he had to guess by human years. Hard for him to tell too. Not a lot of food and a hell of a lot of pain. Mostly that’s all I remember; being hungry and hurting all the time. So, add it all up, and I’d say I’m probably… what? A hundred? A little bit more?”
“With all of that, then yes, it would be hard to tell,” Ryder conceded. “Still, a good guess I think. I’m a few hundred years older than you are, but the Merge complicated things. It’s difficult now. Our calendars are different. We have to adjust how we tell time.”
“Yeah, things got all kinds of screwed up.” The ramen was a savory burst of salt and soybean paste in my mouth, and I chewed, thinking. “Hey, the whole is-this-Earth-or-is-it-Underhill question—the stars should tell us, right? I mean, are they human or elfin stars?”
“Neither and both,” Ryder answered, tilting his head back as he chewed a mouthful of ramen. “The stars are… we had the same stars. That’s the curious thing… as if we existed in the same place but… not. If anything, the skies now have more stars than before, as if space peeled back a layer of black. The moons are… the same. The planets have multiplied. Those have merged as well, adding sidhe to human and vice versa. It’s one of the conundrums puzzling all astronomers, regardless of race. Didn’t they discuss this in school?”
“Didn’t go, remember?” I fished a piece of kamaboku out from the broth. “Read a lot, but science wasn’t my thing. Wasn’t practical in a lot of cases.”
“Yet you can reason out thermodynamics and trajectories.” He chuckled. “While driving. And shooting at things that want to eat us.”
“That’s different. That’s… like origami. Folding the possibilities,” I explained. “I didn’t know about the stars thing. Kind of screws with the mind, doesn’t it?”
“More than one brilliant mind has said so,” Ryder replied. He sniffed at a piece of gobo, then nibbled tentatively at the root’s end. “This food is very interesting. I’ve had noodles before, but these are… earthier. More flavorful. We try to incorporate human foods into our meals, and Damas—our house manager—she gives sidhe cooking classes to humans at a school near the Court. Food is often the best enculturation practice.”
“Hard to hate someone when you both rave about the carne asada fries down by the pier.” I held a piece of fish cake out for Ryder to eat. He raised his chopsticks, but I shook my head. “Just eat it. Don’t pass things that way. It’s… bad luck. Like wearing red while on a run.”
He bit into the pink-and-white swirl, smiling at its taste. Swallowing, Ryder nodded and dug through his packet, coming up with a piece. We ate in the brisk silence for a few minutes, the sky turning around over us. The creamy curl of stars and dust spread up in a column over the mountains’ silhouette, brushing away the last bits of a pink-gold sunset to roil in a rich sea of blues and purples. There was no true black in the sky, not on the cold desert plains and salt flats. The brittle pale pools shone hematite, mirroring the universe on either side of the hard-pack road.
Malone made some murmuring comment, and Cari’s laugh rang out nearly as bright as the meteor flares arching across the sky’s back. I finished my noodles, then drained the broth, suppressing a burp. Ryder picked through his food, too engrossed in the sparkling blanket stretched over us.
“You know what I don’t get—and don’t take this wrong,” I amended quickly. “But you guys go all crazy over the dragons like they’re some precious thing, and the bastards are all over the place. You’re always acting like you’ve never seen one before. Like today—”
“We almost died today, and yet that is something you simply shrug off. But yes, the dragon—that wyrm—was not a kind I’ve seen before. I could scarcely count the number of dragons I saw before the Merge, and now, as plentiful as they are in the skies above Pendle, I am still awestruck by them.” Ryder’s words caught me by surprise. “That is something else that’s changed besides the landscape. Dragons were scarcer in Underhill. Here? They are everywhere, and we, the elfin, struggle to maintain a respectful distance, whereas you—”
“Make them chase an old Mustang and pancake them on the road,” I finished for him. “For you, they’re a religion, and for me, they’re a menace.”
“Don’t get me wrong. Dragons are dangerous. I just am not prepared to see them up close. Not like in Pendle.” Ryder huffed a small laugh. “And definitely not landing on one while being chased by large, furry cows.”
“Bison, those were bison. Most of them.” I scratched my nose, then pulled my jacket closed. “Maybe it just seems like there’s more of them because the world’s smaller and there’s fewer places they feel okay in. Honest? This is the first time I’ve seen a wyrm on the flats. Most of the time, lizards stick to the Underhill parts. Everything else roams, you know? Like the nightmares and medusa salamanders, and don’t get me started on the damned ainmhi dubh. Those are like fricking roaches.”
“My first instinct is to protect them. The dragons—not the ainmhi dubh—but if they encroach on settlements, then… and it pains me to say this… they need to be controlled.” He shook his head, his gold-streaked hair turned nearly silver under the moonlight. “Today, I felt as if the wyrm was a shield. It could have killed us easily but instead let us pass by. The cows were food. The nightmares were a threat. But it did not attack us. I have to see some kind of intelligence in that.”
“We were in a metal box, Ryder. Probably not the most appetizing thing on the menu.”
“Is there no room in that mind of yours for reflection?” He cocked his head, studying my face. “Some trickle of awe in your mind over the arcane?”
“I don’t hold much with religion or philosophy,” I countered gently. “Not that I spit on gods or even that lizard thing you’ve got going on, but I can’t count on anything or anyone to help me. I’m not saying don’t pray or thank a god. Just don’t expect a hand to get out of trouble. If it happens, then great. Toss some incense into the fire and leave a bowl of rice, but you’ve got to help yourself up first.”
“Not you,” Ryder tsked at me. “You don’t help yourself first. You think of others—act for others—first. Work for others’ well-being before your own. Dempsey’s illness. Jonas’s family. Malone’s pride. All of that factors into what you do. You, Kai Gracen, are a sentimental fraud.”
“Whatever.” I rolled up the empty ramen packets, then stuffed them into the meal kit alongside the used chopsticks. “Thing is, I’m not going to ask you to kill a dragon, Ryder. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that doesn’t need to happen, but if ever you’re in a spot where you’ve got to choose between you and a dragon—you better not choose the damned dragon. And if that makes me a sentimental fraud, at least I’m a live sentimental fraud.”
“It’s nice, this. Talking to you. You’re learning about me. I’m learning about you.” He tilted his head back again, drinking in either the air or the stars. I couldn’t tell which. “It’s a good relationship we’re building. I am grateful for you giving me this chance, Kai. If nothing else, we can maybe be friends.”
“But you still wan
t to jump my bones,” I teased and got a look filled with suspicion and daggers.
“Well, yes, but that went without saying. Or at least I went without saying it.” Ryder shivered as a nippy wind caught us both in the face. “Now it is said, what do we do about it?”
“Right now, nothing. You’re going to catch some sleep, and I’m going to pretend to wake you up in four hours to take over watch when I’m probably going to let you snore for about six.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, we’ll see. Probably still no bones jumping.” Shaking my head, I reminded him, “I don’t have sex with people I know, Ryder. That’s been a hard, fast rule for… forever.”
“Nothing is forever, Kai. Not rules. Not people. What are you so afraid of?”
A melancholy crept into me. One I’d beaten back on more than one occasion. There were a lot of regrets piling up at my feet, and most were bittersweet. Ryder was tempting, so damned tempting, but there were strings attached to him I didn’t know if I wanted to pull. Same went for his cousin, Alexa, and I’d loved Dalia since the moment I’d met her but knew she deserved better than me, a better life with kids and a husband who’d grow old with her. It all left me alone and sitting in the ruins of my life. The people who shaped me were dying, and I was staring into a vast unknown with a damned golden-haired, emerald-eyed sidhe lord staring back at me.
“We’ve known each other for what? A couple of months now? Not that long by human or elfin standards. And sometimes you push. I’m not good with push.” Sighing, I rubbed at my face, suddenly exhausted and talked out. “You’re asking me to change something I’ve got to keep me from getting involved too deeply, and I don’t know if you’re worth it. I don’t know if I’m worth it.”
“I am. You are. I keep saying this, and still you don’t believe me. I know. Everything in me says so.” Ryder stood as carefully as he sat down, groaning softly when he straightened his knees. “Wake me in four hours, please. If there’s to be no bones jumping, you can at least get enough rest. The humans’ dead god knows I’d rather face a dragon down than deal with you without any sleep.”
WE REACHED Groom Lake midafternoon on the third day in. Or rather, according to a dumbstruck Ryder, we reached the Underhill mountains the elfin called Oighear Bhais and the earthen salt flats they now dominated. The maps we were following were dead wrong about the place. Either the mapmaker was drunk or had no depth perception, because the small range and massive expanses indicated on the map were nowhere to be found. Instead, the salt plains were about as flat as a three-breasted hooker peddling her wares under C street, and referring to the crenulated obsidian spires cutting into the flat chrome sky as something as small as mountains was laughable. Cupping an ellipse of a fog-shrouded valley, the crags dominated the landscape, throwing long, jagged shadows across the gray, dusty packed earth with its tufts of Underhill forest woven in between its folds.
We’d come through a thick misty bank with next to no visibility, and I’d just made the decision to find a place to pull over when the road swooped around a gulch and dropped us into the mist-shrouded valley. The pea soup made it hard to see down into the former flats, but there were faint sketches of crumbling buildings outlined against the bright gray fog. Stopping the transport, I left it in idle and climbed down to get a better look at where we were heading, with the others tumbling out to stretch their legs and, in Malone’s case, blurt out a river of questions I had no answer to.
“Shush.” We needed quiet. Or at least to maintain the quiet sitting on the valley floor. “Hear that?”
“Nothing,” Ryder murmured softly. “That’s… troubling.”
“Marshall’s courier didn’t say anything about the forest patches, did she?”
Malone shook his head, and I listened again, hunting for any sign of wildlife.
“So either there’s something wrong here or—”
“Someone or something’s already down there,” Cari finished.
There should have been birds or something making noise. The air was wet enough to moisten the valley, the mists spritzing a damp kiss on my skin, and a few thin waterfalls slid down the mountains’ sharp, black rock face, disappearing into a thick haze below. Most of the old forest was a combination of thick pines and oaks, but a few stands of cotton floss shone among the dark greens. The elfin birch stands were fantastical, pink and powder blue swirls topping black-dappled white trunks, swaying slightly when the wind picked up.
Then the afternoon was broken by an enraged howling roar and the sky filled with dozens of flapping black wings.
“Bats?” Malone asked, his eyes following the swarm as it migrated to the opposite side of the valley.
“No, worse. Snakes.” Flyers weren’t a bad thing. They showed a fairly healthy ecosystem, but even if I hadn’t already heard the rumble, I’d know there was something larger living on the valley floor. The winged snakes were scavengers, preferring to snack on the remains of a kill instead of hunt on their own. “Bats usually keep to themselves. Flyers are curious. We’ll be picking snake shit out of our gear for weeks if we’re not careful.”
“Do you want to take the transport down or walk it?” Cari came up behind me, slinging her rifle strap over her neck to let her weapon hang at her hip.
“No, Malone won’t make it.” I cut the boy off with a shake of my head before he could protest. “You’re dog bit and tumble dried. Don’t be an asshole and try to tough it out.”
“Yeah, not like Kai,” Cari interjected, and Ryder snorted, catching a laugh before it escaped.
“Shut up and get back into the truck, Caridad.” Jerking my thumb toward the cab, I took one last look at the valley.
The road we’d followed to get here petered out a few hundred yards down the slope, but I’d expected that. Salt flats tended to eat up any asphalt laid down on top of them, and the old highway to Groom Lake probably hadn’t survived the Merge. Not much survived the Merge in the inner corridor. Old Vegas was a wasteland of burned out geezers, snarling reptilian monsters, and con artists, which, according to Dempsey, was pretty much what the city had going for it before. A few birds circled the trees, darting shapes too round and small to be anything other than avian, but the uneasiness lingered, murmuring through the leaves.
“Think that guy Oscar beat us here?” Cari asked. “If he was heading here?”
“He was. The loser he’d left in Dutch’s henhouse was pretty adamant. Marshall told someone something, and now they’re looking for God knows what. Can’t be Ryder’s screw-a-sidhe-fecund spell. No one in their right mind would be wanting that.” It was a small poke, and he bared his teeth, mocking me with my own gestures. “There’s too much noise in this. Ciarla, a Hunt Master with young, powerful dogs, and a pack of humans with a connection to Malone’s dead mentor. None of it connects, or at least nothing I can see.”
“Because we are missing a piece of the puzzle. We know Oscar’s name but not what he wants or why he wants it,” Ryder pointed out. “That is our biggest problem?”
“Right after whether or not the ground’s going to hold the transport’s weight.” I was willing to leave Malone in the truck if the flats were fragile, but I’d have to leave someone with him, and I couldn’t not take Ryder. He was the only one who’d know what the hell we were looking at. Cari watched me, her eyes pinned to mine as I divided out the risks versus the rewards. “We’ll need to fire up the sonar and see what’s under our feet. If we’re lucky, it’s solid pack. If not, then….”
“Don’t go borrowing trouble just yet, Kai,” she countered. “Come on, Malone. Let me show you how this works so you can be running the scans while I’m on turret duty.”
I stayed quiet while they climbed back into the transport, wincing when the sonar flared on and caught the edge of my hearing. Something about the hum made my eardrums itch, and I’d have put it down as an elfin problem, but it didn’t look like Ryder was bothered one bit.
Or at least not by the sound. Something else chewed at h
im, something darker and thinner than a bounce-back of echoes into a giant salt lick.
“What’s up?” I turned, standing shoulder to shoulder with him, staring out at the chopped-salad landscape and the stygian, glassy mountains looming over us. “’Cause you’ve got that face… that pinched-up thing going on with your mouth and eyes I usually only see when Alexa’s flirting with everything that breathes.”
“Alexa always flirts. It’s her nature. These mountains, Kai. Remember when I told you this area was contested?”
“Yeah.” My blood was unsettled in my veins at the sight of the black stone. The place bothered me on some level I couldn’t pin a donkey tail to, and Ryder seemed to be right there with me. “Do you remember it from before? Where this was?”
“These mountains—this stretch of them—were unsidhe. Old settlements, old bloodlines began here, forming Houses and then Clan, but they would have migrated to the Courts, just like the sidhe did, leaving their old crèches behind.”
“Anyone know what’s here?” I contemplated the range. “Any of the sidhe done any surveying? Someone maybe we can link to if we’ve got a signal? If we ever get a damned signal.”
“Not that I know of. No one has come out here, at least no sidhe that I know of. It hasn’t been important to map out places. Just like the humans, we’ve concerned ourselves with the people we have with us, not those who are long dead.”
“There’s not been a lot of time to go digging up the past. We’ve been too busy rebuilding and counting our dead.” That was something I understood well. Every race—sidhe, unsidhe, and human—were torn apart by the Merge. There were probably entire human cities left to ruin because there simply weren’t enough resources to go around. “Marshall did say the university has only just begun exploring the Central Valley. Don’t think anyone’s got out here yet. Would the unsidhe come looking for something here?”