If her mission failed, a whole lot more people were going to die.
IN THE end, the damage to the cycle wasn’t as severe as Xander had feared. The front bumper had taken a beating, but the vehicle was still functional. After about fifteen minutes, Xander finally got the cycle’s systems to reboot, and he heaved a sigh of relief.
He left Morgan sitting by himself in the open field for a few minutes and tested out the bike, taking it for a quick spin. Everything was in working order.
He still hoped to reach the rendezvous point by the river before the day ended. The angry red sun was setting, so he scooped Morgan up and they started off again. This time, he decided to ride more slowly and closer to the ground, wary of a repeat performance, at least until the sun set. Once it started to get dark, however, he figured they’d be safe until morning.
They climbed back to their previous cruising altitude, about four meters, and made better progress toward the waters of the Theseus.
The twin moons rose above the horizon, one chasing the other up into the sky.
Xander found himself wondering about the last few moments of the people in that doomed shuttle as it fell to the ground, the terror they must have felt in their guts. He had known true fear in his life, but never like that. Never with the knowledge that there was absolutely no way out. Even having a bomb in his head hadn’t been quite like that.
He wondered about Morgan. What had happened to the boy to make him so dead to the tragedy? Did he simply not understand what he’d seen? Or was he broken inside, somehow?
Xander hoped it was the former. Ignorance could be overcome, but a fundamental flaw in one’s soul? He didn’t know how to fix that.
As he approached the rendezvous point, he saw a small flickering light. A campfire? If they were lucky, it would be Quince and Jameson.
He set the bike down out of range of the firelight and motioned for Morgan to stay still and be quiet. The boy nodded.
Xander crept up toward the flickering light, and at last saw Jameson sitting there, looking miserable.
He stood and walked into the firelight.
Jameson looked up and broke into a smile.
Quince appeared on the other side of the circle with an armful of dry branches. When she saw him, she dropped her load, sticks clattering to the ground, and ran forward to throw her arms around him. “Damn, I’m glad to see you here!”
“Likewise.” He stiffened under her embrace. It was strange to see Quince lose her composure.
She stepped back to look at him. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” She looked him over, searching for some sign of injury.
“Nope, all in one piece.”
Jameson gave him a hug too, surprising him. “Glad you’re back,” he said, holding on a couple seconds too long.
At that moment, Morgan stepped out of the shadows next to him and smiled up at Quince.
Quince stumbled back as if she had been struck. “Xander, Jameson, get back.” She pushed Xander out of her way and pulled out her hunting knife.
“What the hell are you doing?” Xander asked, stepping back between her and Morgan.
“Move away, Xander,” she warned. “We have to kill it before it causes any harm.”
“He’s a little boy, not an it,” Xander said, puzzled.
She shook her head, keeping her gaze fixed on the waif. “That’s not a child. It’s a sneach. They’re wood demons—they take the forms of children to fool you, then they stab you in the back in the middle of the night. Or worse.”
Wood demon? What the hell had gotten into her? He exchanged a troubled look with Jameson.
Jameson put a hand on Quince’s shoulder. “Quince, he’s right. It’s just a child.”
She ignored him, staring at Morgan. “Look at its eyes. They glow.”
Jameson and Xander turned to look at Morgan. The boy looked up at the three of them innocently, but his eyes didn’t glimmer at all. Xander swept the boy up in his arms, glaring at Quince. “See?” he said. “He’s just a normal kid. He’s been with me all day. I found him alone at one of the abandoned homesteads. He hasn’t tried to kill me. Look, I’m not dead. So put the knife away, Quince. Nobody’s killing anyone today.”
Quince still looked troubled, but she put the knife back in her belt reluctantly and turned away.
“Are we good?” Xander asked.
“I don’t trust him,” she said, glancing back at the boy. “But I won’t hurt him. For now.”
Xander stared at Quince’s back, trying to read what was going on in that head of hers. He’d never seen her behave so irrationally. Morgan was a little boy. A strange one, to be sure, but who wouldn’t be, after what he had gone through? Abandoned out in the middle of nowhere, left to fend for himself, and half-starved…. “Fair enough.”
Xander brought his bike in, taking Morgan with him just in case. He parked it next to Quince’s in the darkness under the trees, where it would likely go unnoticed by any casual inspection. Then they joined Jameson and Quince by the fire.
“Hey, what happened to you?” he asked Jameson. He’d just noticed the multiple bandages wrapped around the psych’s extremities.
Jameson grimaced. “I didn’t listen to Quince when she said I needed to watch out for wereveren. And this happened.” He turned his back toward Xander.
“Holy hell!” Xander saw Jameson’s wings for the first time in the flickering light.
Jameson chuckled ruefully. “Yeah. It’s been quite a few days.”
“So you’re…?”
“Seems so. Our mutual friend Quince here has been keeping quite a few secrets.”
“Sometimes secrets need to be kept,” Quince said, still glaring at Morgan. “Let’s eat something. Then we have a lot to talk about.”
“We found some food on the way. The kid’s been ravenous.” He glanced at Quince nervously, afraid she’d try to go after Morgan again, but she seemed content to keep a stern eye on the boy, for now.
It was so strange. She’d never struck him as a superstitious or paranoid person before. At least, not when it wasn’t warranted. He’d seen her more than hold her own in a fight, but against a child? He shook his head. “Here’s what’s left of our food supplies. We were hit by a river cat and lost most of what we had. I did find these….” He held up a yellow fruit he’d found on the way down to the river.
Quince nodded. “Citrones,” she said approvingly. “Those are quite good, and nutritious to boot.” She pulled out the food she and Jameson had brought, and they all settled cross-legged on the ground around the fire. She poured them some juice she’d made from obieberries.
They parceled out the remaining food among themselves and soon they were all munching contentedly on the rations. “I hope you have a plan to get us more to eat, Quince.” Xander looked worriedly at the small pile of MREs, fruit, and vegetables.
“We can go a few days without, if needed,” she said. “But I don’t think we’ll have to.”
Xander sipped the juice. It was sweet and cool. “How did you outrun the hoversport?”
“Turns out Jameson here is a hell of a shot.”
Xander grinned. “Who’d have guessed our little psych was a gunslinger?” He flashed Jameson a smile.
Jameson blushed. “Just lucky, I guess.”
“It was his first kill.” Quince took one of the tubers and brushed the dirt off it before taking a bite.
“Did you two see the shuttle that went down this afternoon?”
Quince nodded. “Tumbled past right overhead.”
“Whatever caused it brought down my bike too.” He glanced over at Morgan, who was finishing off one of Quince’s MREs with relish. “Damn near cost us our lives.” Quince didn’t look surprised. “You’ve known about this all along, haven’t you?”
Quince looked at him appraisingly and nodded. “I have,” she said softly.
Xander wasn’t surprised. “Do you want to tell us about it?”
Quince took her time answering, finishing the tu
ber she held in her hands. When she finally answered, she didn’t tackle his question directly. “Before OberCorp, there was an earlier, first wave of human colonization on Oberon. You both know that, right?”
“The skythane.” Jameson stared at Quince intently.
She nodded.
Xander glanced at Morgan, wondering what the boy made of all this. He was staring blankly into the fire, seemingly oblivious. The kid worried him sometimes.
“The first wavers were adept at genetic manipulation. Once they discovered Oberon’s inherent limitations—the zones where no electronics worked—they adapted themselves to fly. It allowed them to move across the planet more easily,” she continued. “All three of us are descendants of those first-wave colonists.”
“I’m still not sure I believe it—this tale about coming from some magical other place. I know where I’m from. I’m not one of your… your first wavers….” Jameson trailed off. His wings were twitching with irritation. He glared at them and fell silent.
Xander found the whole thing adorable. Which was odd. The man was a psych, he was an off-worlder, and he was obviously in denial. There was no reason Xander should be attracted to him, and yet….
“Titania’s not magical. Not in the sense you mean, anyhow.” Quince stared at Jameson silently for a minute. She sipped her own juice, as if considering what tact to take.
“Titania?” Xander asked. He’d never heard of such a place. Not on Oberon.
“We’ll come back to that later.” Quince set down her cup and sat back, her hands on her knees. “You have a birthmark in the shape of a small cross on the inside of your left thigh,” she said to Jameson.
“What, were you checking me out while I slept?” Jameson asked indignantly, but he sounded less certain than before.
“When you were eighteen standard, you decided to search for your real parents, because you were convinced you had been adopted.”
“How could you know that?”
Quince smiled, looking for all the world like a wolf that had cornered her prey. “You told your psych advisor that sometimes at night, while you sleep, you dream of flying in a pink sky under a red sun.”
Jameson sputtered, and then fell silent.
“She’s got you there.” Xander grinned. “But that still doesn’t answer the question.”
“Be patient. I’m getting to it.” Quince stood, stretching, and turned away from the fire, her hands behind her back. “Something lived here before either wave, before humankind ever set foot on Oberon. No one knows who or what they were, but they weren’t human.”
“What, like aliens?” Xander asked, smirking.
Quince laughed. “Kind of, yes. Though technically, we’re the aliens here.”
Touché. Xander smiled.
“So the flare that brought down that shuttle wasn’t an isolated incident?” Jameson asked.
“The one that crashed my cycle?” Xander was still indignant and worried about that.
She nodded. “Oberon’s sun goes through a dangerous cycle. Every seven hundred and fifty years, give or take, it flares up and shoots a furnace-blast of radiation throughout the system. It’s going to happen again soon.”
The blood ran from his face. “How soon?”
Jameson looked stunned as well. Morgan was still in his own little world, eating a handful of obieberries.
Quince shook her head. “I don’t know. Based on the signs… maybe a week?”
They were all silent. The murmur of the river was the only sound.
“How bad will it be?” Jameson asked at last, looking up at the starry sky as if he could see the sun there.
“For the planet? Bad enough, but the forests will recover in a couple hundred years. For mankind here? It would be an extinction-level event.”
Xander thought of all the people in Oberon and the other cities along the coast. Of the corporate types and the Syndicate bosses and hustlers and whores, the worker bees and wing men. None of them aware of what was about to rain down on them from the hostile sky. “How do you know all of this?” he asked, staring at Quince intently.
“There’s an old legend….”
“Are you serious?” Jameson looked incredulous. “We’re on some kind of wild-goose chase because of an old legend?”
“It’s a lot more than that. But yes, there’s a legend. And I have reasons to believe it.”
Xander could see she was still holding something back. Because she didn’t want them to know it yet? Or because she knew they wouldn’t accept it? Jameson had a point, though. They seemed to be ending up on the same side of things more and more often.
“So why bring us out here? Nicer place to die?” He couldn’t help letting the sarcasm slip into his voice. This whole thing was fucked-up.
“No,” she said. “To try to prevent it.”
It was Jameson’s turn to laugh, a brittle, anguished sound. “What are we supposed to do? Stop the sun from shining? I’m a good psych, but even I can’t talk heavenly bodies out of mass destruction.”
“Basically, yes.” Quince smiled grimly. “I brought you out here to save the world.”
QUINCE SAT back to watch the firestorm her statement would set off.
Xander was the first to blow. “What the hell are you talking about?” His wings twitched with agitation. “I mean, that’s batshit crazy, right? What can we do about a solar disaster?”
Jameson chimed in too. “I don’t even know what the hell I’m doing here. I came here on a mission for the Guild.” He shrugged. “Now I have these… these wings, have been nearly pecked to death by a bunch of red vampire birds, and I’m supposed to be responsible for saving the world too?”
Quince saw the way Xander looked at Jameson, nodding, and smiled. She put a hand on Jameson’s knee. “This has been hard for you to accept, I know. The way I see it, we have a simple choice. We can stand and fight, or we can turn tail and run.”
Jameson still looked unconvinced.
“Why did you become a psych?”
He stared at Quince, his eyes narrowing. “To help people. It’s all I wanted to do since I was a boy.”
Xander snorted, but Quince shushed him. “You have a chance to help more people here, right now, than you would have helped in a lifetime as a psych.”
He stared up at the darkening sky. “Maybe….”
She smiled at his continued intransigence. She was so proud of the man he had become, even if he couldn’t see it.
“Sleep on it. Day after tomorrow, we’ll reach the House of the Sky, or what’s left of it. Then I’ll be able to show you the answers.” She gestured to Jameson. “Time to change the dressings on your wounds.”
THEY SETTLED in for the night.
Xander unpacked his sleep sack from his saddlebags and laid it by the fire. He tucked Morgan into it to get some sleep. He had a connection to the boy, a protectiveness, as if he were the child’s father, especially in the face of Quince’s unexplained hostility toward him.
Xander had watched Quince and Jameson together as she unwrapped the bandages from Jameson’s arms and leg. He imagined touching Jameson’s skin with such care, perhaps eliciting a little sigh of gratitude from the man.
He shook his head, dismissing the thought. They had enough to worry about without romantic flights of fancy.
Quince took the first watch. He debated staying up with her to talk, but he was dead tired.
Xander found a semicomfortable place to wedge himself next to Morgan’s sleeping form. It felt good to take care of him. He silently wished the boy a good night, and then closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
Xander huddled in his bed, his covers drawn partially over his head, staring at the door, his eyes wide with fear.
His new stepfather, Rogan, had come into his room the night before and had put his smelly, hairy body over Xander’s. The man had done… things to him. Things he didn’t want to remember. Things he couldn’t make himself forget.
He’d cried out and screamed and p
leaded with the man to stop, but Rogan didn’t listen. He just cupped a hand over Xander’s mouth and kept doing those things.
Xander was a slight boy at eleven years of age, and he had no way to fight back. His parents were gone—shot by one of the Syndicate men. Rogan had taken him in, promising to take care of him, to feed him, to be his new daddy. He had seemed so nice, and Xander had been all alone on the streets, with nowhere else to go.
Now he wished he’d just died. At least he’d be with his parents again.
He shivered, thinking again of what Rogan had done to him, and watched the door in fear that it was about to happen again.
Someone touched his shoulder.
Xander’s eyes opened. He was covered in a cold sweat. He hadn’t had those kinds of dreams in years, and he thought he’d put it all out of his mind.
And yet, here they were again. It was because of Morgan, he was sure of that. He felt a strange sense of responsibility to the boy, a need to make sure he didn’t fall prey to the same misfortunes Xander had at his age.
He looked up at Quince. “My turn?” he whispered.
She nodded. Poor thing looked exhausted. She lay down on the ground on her side near the fire, and he took up the watch.
Somewhere around midnight, he closed his eyes… and woke with a start. He shouldn’t have let himself nod off like that. He looked around the campsite, his gaze settling on Morgan’s sleep sack.
The boy was gone.
He jumped to his feet in alarm, looking back and forth across the moonlit riverfront. The river glistened in Lysander’s gold glow. Hermia had already set for the night.
A small form stood silhouetted there, looking out across the water.
Quince and Jameson were still fast asleep.
Xander jumped up and ran down the hill to Morgan’s side to make sure the boy was okay.
Morgan turned to face him, and Xander could see tears on his cheeks in the moonlight.
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