Her nose screwed up. “The fridge smelled and I threw out some stuff. There mightn’t be much to eat.”
“Ah. I’ll find something.”
That night she began packing. There was only one place she could think of to go – a friend in Bundaberg. Ally found her doing it and stood in the doorway scowling, with her arms folded, for at least five minutes.
“Shoo. It’s only temporary.”
“Don’t believe you.” She walked away.
“Me neither.” But she blew her nose and kept packing.
Chapter 13
In the morning, on that horrible, excruciating morning, after waking and trudging through to the kitchen while yawning and scratching at her intensely itchy arm, she felt the absence, a strange lack of personality. The house was too quiet. She walked then ran from room to room and found Ally was gone.
The yard too was empty.
She went and dressed in practical jeans and T-shirt then grabbed the gun and her phone just in case Ally had hers. She wasn’t sure where the girl kept her mobile phone or if it was charged, but she might have it even if she hadn’t answered it yet.
That was all she could think of. She might have to call the cops if she couldn’t find her. Where the girl would go, she had zero idea. She hadn’t been outside their house and yard by herself for years, apart from the rare doctors’ visits and they were carefully arranged.
There was one place actually. The reservoir.
She went outside.
Heart thumping, she walked to the steel ladder going up to the side of the cylindrical reservoir. Funny but she’d had a text confirming she could take her in for reassessment tomorrow. If she found her, the girl was attending that one for sure. She’d run away for chrissakes. How was she going to cope with car travel all the way to Bundaberg?
Again, she’d have to delay leaving. It’d be worth it. But first, find her.
“This is going to be a nightmare.” She swept her hair back into a tiny ponytail, arranged the little shoulder bag that held the gun, and started up the ladder. The rungs clanged under her gym shoes. “When I find you Ally, I am giving you a piece of my mind.”
She paused a few feet up and swallowed down a bad taste. The piece of mind might have to wait until after she breathed into a paper bag for a while, metaphorically. Her stomach was hurting like she’d eaten acid and broken glass. She kept going, climbed up the last few steps and looked across the flat concrete roof of the reservoir. The wind gusted hard up here and the sun seemed hotter and closer. She squinted, hoping stupidly. Nothing to see, and she’d known that in point five of a second really. Ally wasn’t here. Grit crackled under the soles of her shoes.
There was a steel trapdoor that must lead down into the water itself. For inspections or water testing, they’d guessed. It had never opened. Locked, every time they’d ever tried it. But something made her stomach give an extra roll as she looked down on it. Dread crawled in. She stooped and pulled on the handle.
It didn’t budge.
“Fuck.” She put her head in her hands for a moment. In the back of her mind had been the idea that Ally might do something really stupid. Really, really stupid, like suicide. She put her palms together in the prayer position and looked up at the blue sky. “Thank you.”
Walking around the circumference of the roof, Willow scanned the local neighborhood, though already despairing. No splattered body below. Again, thank god. The girl could be anywhere.
But, considering who she was, she’d likely not go too far. The roofs of the houses below were separated by roads with cars, by footpaths strewn with people, by yards of houses with more people…lots of people. The forest between here and the park looked like a green people-free zone by contrast. Ally territory. The wind shook the thick foliage like a giant had swept his palm over the tops of the trees. She’d try there first, then maybe some of the quieter streets. After that, fucked if she knew. Cops?
She should’ve sat down with her last night and at least tried to prepare her. Damn being love sick. She sniffed. Then for a minute she allowed herself to cry, just let the tears pour out. She’d never been a crier before him – had just gotten on with life, forged through, shouldered things. He’d made her expect someone to help her through the bad times, because she knew he would’ve done that, if he could’ve. If he hadn’t decided she was not worth keeping.
“Dumbass,” she told herself.
She wiped her face with her arm and started down the ladder. The twinges in her stomach reminded her she’d not had breakfast. Maybe do a straight through the middle search to the park then do the edges? Then kinda criss-cross the whole forest again?
By the time she was ten yards under the trees, she was thinking more of antacid medicine than food. Crap. She paused and held her hand over her stomach. Way to go. Having food poisoning or a stomach ulcer was not what she needed, today of all days.
The crunch of dead leaves over to the left had her twitching her gaze there. A lizard? Shadows flitted across. Tall shadows. No six-foot lizards here, that she knew of. Fuck. Not again. Last time she’d shot Stom. Maybe this was some homeless guy? More noises, definite footsteps, to the right made her jump. Two homeless guys then. And another behind her, back in the direction of safety, and her house. Whoever it was, they meant her to hear. When they moved in, she walked faster toward the park, ready to run, her hand in the shoulder bag.
Someone chuckled. Leftie. From the right came the rattle of metal on metal.
Her stomach picked that moment to spear pains through her abdomen, enough to make her gasp. Her body exploded with red hurt.
Her vision blurred, speckled. Her ears rang. Her hands prickled with clammy heat. Giving up on shooting anyone, she released her grip on the gun and she ran, staggered, and blundered through the trees. Shrubs whipped at her ankles then swiped across her face. Something thudded on her knees. She had a mouth of dirt. Head muzzy with nausea and pain and all, she thought through the mud, and figured out she’d fallen. Everything whipped around in crazy incessant circles. Bile stung her throat.
They were coming for her and she couldn’t even see. Or stand.
Chapter 14
Brask tapped his finger on the control circle on the screen and rolled the drone forward on the branch so it could have a better field of view. He wasn’t here, officially, but he’d promised to keep an eye on Willow. Stom was one of those guys he found it hard to say no to. Better than he was morally. More able to connect with people than he was. Face it, helping the man would make him feel better than his normal, repugnant nastiness, for at least a half a day.
Willow’s arm marking was curious. He’d snapped a pic of that and uploaded it in a message to Stom. In a way, he both prayed it was what he thought it was, and prayed it wasn’t.
This stupid girl was not doing what Stom had told her to. She was searching for the other girl who had vanished overnight.
Most of his squad was over in the US wiping out the stray Bak-lals. He had zip to do except crawl around in this forest. Willow was a hundred yards away. Farther than he’d like but he was alone. He’d had to be careful about getting too close around the big reservoir since it was cleared land.
He leaned in. Kak. Three unidentified males were approaching her. He could either sprint and look damn obvious, or slink and maybe be useless if things went wrong.
Weapons, yeah, the screen metal-detecting overlay showed pistols, a few knives, a hacksaw, and a corkscrew. What? Who carried hacksaws and corkscrews? What were they planning to do to her?
His manpower resources were in the negative and he had a brawl going down. Sniping from back here was possible with a few homing rounds that could weave between the trees, but it wasn’t allowed and he wasn’t equipped anyway. He could take them all at close quarters, but he also wasn’t allowed to help her exactly.
Rules were made to be upheld, not broken. He wasn’t a rule breaker.
The screen showed her falling and tumbling into the leaf litter. The men moved in
.
He snapped shut the drone control, threw it in his pocket, and sprinted. Getting to her before they did was a zero probability outcome. He needed the impossible. Stom was going to be shattered, even if he had discarded her. That marking on her arm looked most convincing.
Chapter 15
On the way up in the shuttle, he’d turned over what Willow had said about the house. The answer to why the house protected her, it was so obvious after what he’d heard from Brask about Dassenze and his suspicions about Earth women. Willow might not be a succubus, but she was doing something to the house, or to where it was. Same as Bambi cross Brittany could heal, she could protect. That had to be worth something to the Ascend? There, if he wanted to take the chance, was his way to get Ally cared for.
If.
All he had to do was to somehow get his rights to Willow reaffirmed. Convince Dassenze, the god assigned to Earth. Then take that last step. But would Nasskia forgive him if she knew? Could he throw aside that vow when it meant so much? Willow meant so much to him. That dilemma had occupied him all the way. Now that he was here, though…
This was ridiculous. Stom clutched at the bulkhead frame, then at his stomach as he lurched into sick bay. He never got ill. Not in a hundred warp ship flights.
“Take a seat there, sir.” A medic pointed then hurried into the adjoining room.
He sat and, despite how he felt, he felt even sicker at having left Willow back there on Earth – by herself with Kasper after her. He was a coward after all. An honorable coward maybe, but still a coward.
An honorable stupid coward who had forsaken the one person alive who meant everything to him. He massaged his brow and decided. He was going back down to Earth.
The medic returned with a scanner. He sat next to Stom and smiled kindly. “Having a bit of trouble, are we?”
The room was swimming with blotches, his breakfast wanted to see the world again via his mouth, and this medic didn’t deserve to be smacked, but he still growled.
“I have a headache that is sawing my head apart from the inside out. Stop talking to me.”
“Mm-hm.” The scanner whined as he passed it over Stom’s head and chest. “Sir, I regret to inform you that you’re too ill to go through a warp flight. Your blood chems are far from normal. It’s odd. These enzymes are showing major organ damage building. Plus there’s auto destruction of your blood cells occurring.”
“Go away.” He groaned and swallowed back some vomit. “I’m not that ill. And I’m not getting on the warp ship anyway.”
“You are ill.” That was a different voice.
Stom peered upward through his splayed fingers. A humanoid figure stood a few yards away, covered with an infinity of gleaming bronze scales. An Ascend, a god. Must be Dassenze. He should stand then bow, but he was going to fall off this chair if it kept moving. He merely nodded and grimaced. Then he lost track of where the god was as nausea built again.
“There is a message for you, Stom. One, I intercepted. They weren’t going to give it to you straight away. You need to see it. Then I am returning you to Earth.”
A holographic image appeared a few inches away. It was Willow climbing down a ladder on the side of the reservoir near her house. Gods, why was she there? The image zoomed in on her arm, showing a faint red spiral. He stared, unable to believe for several seconds. Elation arrived, followed by more disbelief.
“What? But…how can this be? I cannot have more than one bond mate.”
“I believe you can. She is yours. As you are hers. These Earth females are extraordinary. Jadd’s changed without the final dose, as has this one. She is not becoming a pet; she is becoming your bond mate. Your extreme sickness is also, I believe, the result of being parted from her.”
“What? That’s not normal. Nasskia and I…it never bothered me.” He suppressed the urge to vomit again and swallowed. It wasn’t smart to vomit on one’s god, surely?
“I forgive your many whats, Stom. I can see you are dying. If I keep answering, I will end up talking to a corpse. Come. We return.”
A fact popped up. “The shuttle has gone.”
“Never fear. I will keep you safe as we re-enter the atmosphere.”
“A spacesuit?” He hoped that was it. He’d need minutes to find one and be fitted but it was better than the alternative. The gods on occasion went out there in SpaceHardened mode. No suit. No nothing.
“No spacesuit. Try not to vomit on me.” He took Stom’s hand and smiled a godly smile that said bad things.
Oh kak. Stories said they had to use some weird god tubing on you that went down your throat and up you everywhere else as well as cocooning you.
He was a warrior. He would stay strong.
They went out through the airlock as one – him enclosed in an amber cocoon. He hoped his look of terror wasn’t caught on surveillance camera. He screamed silently most of the way down. The world below was in darkness and their flight path took them in a shallow, high-velocity arc toward the brightness lining the horizon where the sun bathed the other half of the Earth.
As the atmosphere began to buffet them and the glow of heat flickered upon the forward parts of the amber cocoon, he saw that Dassenze had received a message. His speech vibrated through the glasslike cocoon to Stom.
“Willow is being attacked. Even I cannot reach her fast enough to stop this. Brask will get there before us yet is also too distant.”
He couldn’t speak but he blinked to show he’d heard what Dassenze had said. As long as they didn’t mean to kill her instantly, there was hope.
Hope. His heart clenched and he said a prayer in his mind.
They screamed lower, flames burning off them, diving headfirst toward the surface of the planet.
Chapter 16
The lecture on the amplification of DNA from white blood cells had been as boring as picking paint colors, but not just because of the subject matter, which had very little new in it. The pull was there again, only this time he was close and it wasn’t a vague tug, he was here, nearby. The man with the incisive green eyes. Talia could almost taste him.
At the end of the lecture, she strode out of the lecture theatre and headed for the car park, already texting Allan to say she wasn’t going to make the lab work session. Her car was her Suzuki Swift that she’d had shipped in by train. As she spun the wheel to take her onto the motorway, she was grateful for her forethought. The sword in the trunk was a cheap modern version of a katana, but it felt right in her hand, even if the grip needed redoing.
The pull grew stronger as she neared Inala and she weaved down side streets until she reached a dead end. Bad neighborhood. Most of the houses looked tatty, their yards overgrown with grass and discarded car parts. Windows were busted, graffiti had taken over most flat surfaces, and half the shops she’d passed looked ready to fall down or be burgled.
She slammed the car door behind her; to the right was a towering gray concrete reservoir. Strange, it was the only structure that was clean – no graffiti.
She looked around. Nothing but kids playing. That mind-twisting pull teased her. He was here somewhere.
If she was crazy, this was when the men in white coats should come get her. Carrying a sword in public was enough to earn a criminal charge if she scared anyone, but she’d put a blanket in her trunk just for this sort of occasion. With the sword wrapped and tucked under her arm, she sauntered in the direction the pull took her – past a neat, white-fenced house and to the side of the reservoir. Here was a small forest – gray-trunked eucalypts and tallow wood trees.
She drew the sword and let the blanket flow to the ground. She breathed with her eyes half shut. Yes. Close. Like a wind beckoning. A purpose flowed into her and she became, not just a forensic biologist on sabbatical in a strange city who’d eaten too much sushi for dinner last night and had put on a few pounds, no, with that purpose, she became a warrior taken by a cause.
Her body moved toward what called her – dedicated in every muscle to arriving there
without being heard or seen. Ridiculous and improbable given her upbringing, but this was her, her true being, with a sword in hand. Somewhere ahead was both her mystery and her destiny.
What she’d do when she reached him, she didn’t know, but with something sharp in her hand, she was queen. Rock, paper, scissors, sword.
Every flicker of grass blade impinged on her consciousness, as did every warble and flutter of wing, every sway of branch, every shadow that darkened her surrounds. She’d never trained at anything but kendo but here, now, something had happened. She was ninja, astro boy, bat girl, and Uma Thurman from Kill Bill, on crack, with sprinkles on top.
Energy squeezed from her every cell, told her she was deadly, and she believed it. Fuck yeah.
Which was how she came across the three of them circling the woman on the ground like vultures who’d forgotten the last down payment on their wings. She stood at the edge of light and shadow, twirling her katana’s point on the leather of her boot, watching them, and they had no clue.
It was possible she would have floated on by, sneaked flatfooted through the trees, because he was there, just on the other side of this small clearing. Possible – the pull was that bad.
Maybe this girl, who seemed unconscious, knew the men? Hey, who knew? Only when she stirred and mumbled, the tattooed one laughed and flipped her over onto her back. Another one, a tall guy with a red beard, dressed in biker leather, denim, and chains, pulled out a corkscrew.
What the hey?
Then the third, bald man drew a hacksaw from under his coat.
Etiquette said you introduced yourself, even if she had an urge to separate their heads from their torsos. Besides, it was a little illegal to behead people and so far all they’d done was gather around a flaked-out girl and show off their kitchen and man tools collection.
She took a deep breath and slowly walked over. Go, ninja girl.
“Hey guys, I’m all for kinky sex, but don’t you think the hacksaw is taking it a little far?”
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