I edged around the tree, away from him. This was too weird, even for me.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"Ah, yes, yes, I wanted to see."
"See what?"
"To see if you were the one."
"The one what?" I was able to take a few more steps back.
The man didn't move, but there wasn't any more distance between us.
"I needed to see the one that is you," the man said, "and I was the first!"
I crossed my arms. "I'm me, and you're you. Glad that's settled."
"Yes, yes, that is settled." The man was gone. He didn't hide behind a tree, or walk away, or anything. He simply disappeared.
I took a few more steps back, trying to look everywhere at once. All around, shadowed shapes loomed. I was hesitant to reopen the Path. The first time in days I had used it, I had been kicked out. It didn't bode well for my confidence, but my need to know outgrew my anxiety about using the power.
There was nothing. No trace of anything. I ran through the shimmer raging forward to see the past and the Path the man had left behind, but there was no trace.
An intense fear took hold. It was too dark to move quickly, but I tried my best to put as much distance between that man and me as possible.
"Rider! Logan!" I tried to keep the fear out of my voice, but I failed miserably.
When Rider ran into view, he was breathing heavy, even though he was used to running long distances. He came over to me and I hugged him without thinking, relieved not to be alone.
"Is everything okay?" Rider accepted the hug until I drew away. "You were supposed to be back before dark."
"I got wrapped up. Quick, can you take me to where I fell back there?"
Rider looked unsure but walked in that direction.
Logan bounded into view and followed us. "What were you thinking, girl? We were worried sick."
I flapped my arm at him, intent on Rider.
Rider circled an area. "You fell here."
"Can you tell what else was here with me?" I asked.
"Nothing." Rider walked in increasingly larger circles. "I smell nothing else in the area. Were they here, did you see them?"
Sighing, I turned to go and promptly lost my footing in a hole. Logan managed to keep me standing.
Gran told me to ignore the old coot in the woods. Maybe this is what she meant. I regained my balance and took a last look around. "If I can manage to stay on my feet, I'll explain on the way back."
I told them the story of the leprechauns and giving back the soul of their friend. I didn't tell them I had been marked since I wasn’t sure what it meant. It also seemed personal in a way.
Then I explained about the old man.
When we walked into the campsite, there was a fire going. Vincent jumped up and met us at the edge of the firelight.
"You took your time." His face didn't hold its usual blankness. Swallowing hard, he looked me over, assessing any damage. I'm not sure how he expected to find anything among the mass of old bruises.
Somehow, he managed to look closer than I did. He grabbed a first aid kit and doctored cuts on my hands.
"I am going back for Cassie's bag." Rider melded into the woods and was gone.
"Wait up," Logan said, "there's someone else out there. We shouldn't travel alone."
Chapter 30
"We're not alone out here?" Vincent inspected my hands, cleaning scrapes as he found them.
My hands heated up every time he touched them. "Uh, yeah. He appeared, talked like a madman, and then disappeared without leaving a scent or Path behind." I relayed the rest of my adventures in the woods.
Vincent inspected my hands far longer than necessary.
"So," I said after describing the Walker who stole the leprechaun’s soul, "is it someone you know?"
Vincent dropped my hand and repacked the first aid kit. He gathered the trash from the Band-Aids and cleaning wipes before he finally spoke. "Yes, I know who it is."
"And?" I said after it was clear he didn't want to move on.
"And, it's a friend of mine. I guess he used to be anyway."
"A friend of yours is doing this?" I asked.
"Yes." Vincent, finished with the trash, checked the rest of the campsite and he kept moving, refusing to look at me as we spoke.
"Any ideas why he would do this?" I tried to choose my words carefully. Since I share a soul with him, I knew Vincent better than most, but only who he was on the inside. Now I was discovering that I didn't know anything about his life.
"I talked to him last fall. I wanted to know if he'd ever seen anything like what I had done." Vincent’s voice dropped and he stopped moving. "He asked me details, wanting to know exactly what happened. He dragged out every last thing about what I did to you. He hypothesized with me. About what could be done to reverse it, what we could do in the meantime, and what could be done if any of those little pieces escaped?"
"Escaped?" I made the leap without him having to say the words. "You two discussed storing parts of a soul into objects for safe keeping?"
Vincent jabbed sticks into the fire. "He knew it could be done with whole souls, but until last fall, no one even knew it was possible to fracture a soul, at least not to that extent. Now I see he wanted to try splintering a soul."
I sat on the ground nearby and watched him stoke the fire. Now I understood what he meant at the club and why he felt responsible. A part of me, a large part, wanted to comfort him, but yelling was also an option roaming through my mind. Both were wrong at the time, so I sat.
"I couldn't be sure it was him. That's why I was working with Jin," Vincent said.
"Now that we know, we can all move on this." Logan stepped into the firelight with Rider close behind, holding my bag.
"You didn't try to find the leprechauns, did you?" I hoped for a distraction.
Rider glared at Vincent. "You could have saved us time and trouble by letting us know before this. What happened with Jin did not need to happen."
"We couldn't have let him keep that soul," I said. "It didn't belong to him, and it was our job to bring it back."
"It didn't have to happen the way it did." Vincent's voice was low, and he didn't meet anyone's eye. "I agree with the wolf on that. I should have left Jin out of it."
"What's done is done." Logan's voice was firm. "We need to move forward on this now, not dwell on which way the centaur twitched his tail."
"You're one-hundred percent sure that your friend is at fault?" I asked.
Vincent winced. "Ex-friend."
"This moves you off the case," Logan said.
Vincent looked at Logan, surprised. "There's no way you'd find him."
"Who is he? You will tell us where he is," Rider demanded.
"His name is Cole. I don't know where he lives, and we don't have the kind of time needed to track him down," Vincent said.
"What are you suggesting?" Logan asked.
"There are... channels that I can go through." Vincent shifted uncomfortably. "They're not pleasant ones, but I'll be able to set up a meeting."
"Then what?" Logan asked.
Vincent didn't look away from the fire. "Then I kill him."
"No!" The detached way he said this threw me off guard. "You can't kill your friend. Besides, we need to take him in."
"Walkers don't wait around for portals," Vincent said. "We can step between the worlds and disappear for life."
"That doesn't mean you have to kill him." There was no way I could let Vincent kill someone close to him.
"We can try to find a way to stop him. Vincent can arrange the meeting, and we can be there as backup." Logan's eyes flickered to me and then back to Vincent. "Is there any way possible you could talk him into coming in?"
Vincent's voice was cold. "Walkers don't get brought in. The knowledge of what we do isn't shared. If a Walker goes down, he goes down and out."
"We know what you can do." I worked to keep my voice soft, not wanting to upset Vincent fur
ther.
"You know a part, and you three know more than most." Vincent stood and looked at Rider and Logan. "But AIR knows what's useful for them and nothing more."
Logan and Rider nodded as though that fact was the most obvious thing in the world.
I felt uncomfortable. How much of myself had I put into the files? I was willing to bet it was more than these three combined.
"So what do we do?" I asked. "We can't kill him."
Vincent and Logan looked at each other, grim expressions on their face.
"We don't go around killing people." There were many things I wasn’t sure about, but this wasn't one of them. "It's not what we do."
"It's not what you do." Vincent made it sound like I was naive, childish even.
I stood up and glared at him. "It's not what any of us should do! Not if there's an alternative."
"You don't get it." Lines of fury broke through Vincent's features. "This is a Walker. There is no nice way of making him come with us or go away. It ends in death."
Trying to keep in mind that Vincent had to be upset about the thought of killing Cole, I tried to rein myself in. "It doesn't have to end that way."
"She's right." Logan wasn't looking at either of us. "We have to find a way to try to take him in."
"Any ideas on where to start?" I asked in a rush, before anyone could interrupt.
"That's not a smart decision." Vincent's voice was beginning to escalate. "You know the wrong person could end up injured or worse if we try to take him alive."
Rider let out a low growl. Turning, I expected it to be aimed at one of us. Instead, he stared into the woods. We went still and Rider silently moved to stand beside me.
My ears felt strained in trying to hear what had agitated Rider, but there was nothing. The dark night stood still. Not a twig broke or leaf rustled. The forest sounded dead.
A cackle sounded out around us. To me, it sounded like it came from everywhere at once, and it was the same voice that the man in the woods had used earlier.
Logan abandoned the firelight, moving faster than I would have thought possible. I took a step closer to the fire and watched in the direction Logan disappeared. Rider glanced at Vincent and something unspoken ran between them before Rider also disappeared into the night.
"Gran said to ignore the old coot," I yelled at his retreating.
Vincent strode around the campsite. With a jolt of fear, I thought he too was going to run off.
Instead, Vincent dowsed the fire. "Start packing."
My heart beat fast; there was no way I was going to argue. I threw things in bags, but Vincent was more methodical in his breakdown of the camp. Vincent caused the fire to run low but still give us enough light to see by. Every few minutes, I would stop and peer into the night.
Staring at a tree, just outside the firelight, it almost looked as though someone was standing out of sight, only a small portion showing.
A hand landed on my shoulder and I jumped and spun around.
"It's okay." Vincent's voice was soft, a vast contrast from our fight. He reached around and took the bag I was stuffing.
"I know it is," I lied.
He shifted a few things around in the bag and somehow it looked more organized. "The important things should always be easy to reach."
"I thought we were in a hurry," I said.
"They need to be in easy reach, especially if we're in a hurry."
Looking around, I saw that the camp was almost packed away.
"We're going to leave Rider and Logan's bag here, and we're moving towards the truck." Vincent poured water and then tossed dirt over the remainder of the fire.
"Shouldn't we take their stuff with us?" I asked.
"Rider will find their stuff. I'm not sure we could carry it anyway."
I stared unseeingly into the night. "I don't feel right leaving Logan and Rider behind."
"They'll look out for each other and catch up soon."
It still didn't feel right, but this had to be the old man Gran had warned me about, and she didn't seem too concerned. I hefted the bag onto my shoulders and buckled the straps while my eyes adjusted to the dark.
Vincent had his gun out, and he was trying to look everywhere at once. He was also getting ready to trip over a fallen tree.
"Let me lead. I need to be of some use." I could have taken out my gun; that is if I had brought it. We were returning a leprechaun soul, not chasing someone down, so I had stupidly left it behind.
We didn't get far, when I heard a twig snap to the left. It was Rider's way of letting me know he was there, Vincent, however, must have missed that memo. He heard the twig snap and aimed in that direction.
"It's Rider, you idiot," I said.
Rider walked into my range of vision, but Vincent could see next to nothing in the woods. He kept his gun level in Rider's direction.
Seeing a gun pointed at someone made me nervous. "If you shoot Rider, I'm going to be really mad."
Rider snickered softly and moved closer. "We did not find anything."
Vincent lowered his gun.
Rider continued, "Nothing. Not even a whiff in the air. Logan agrees with Vincent, it is time to leave."
"Great, get Logan and let's go," I said.
"He is picking up a bag, and I will go back and do the same. We will be circling wide around you as we travel.”
My nerves ratcheted up. "What happened to sticking together?"
"We will be in sight of you most of the time, but in the dark, you might not see us. We also have our signals. Logan wants us to keep our perimeter wide since we believe there is only one person out here with us."
After Rider was gone, Vincent and I didn't move for a while. I was listening intently for some sign of our other partners, but unless they wanted us to hear them, there would be no noise.
Vincent shifted the bag on his shoulders. "Let's go."
I looked around and one tree looked exactly like another. "I have no idea where we are."
He positioned me in what he said was the right direction.
I moved again and kept my voice low. "You can't see, but you know which direction to go?"
"I have an excellent sense of direction," Vincent said, "at least in this world."
"But not between worlds?"
"Sense of direction doesn't exist between worlds, at least, not in the way you mean. Most of the time, though, I can move in and out quickly."
"Quickly, yeah," I muttered.
Vincent was silent for a while. "I should have called."
Understatement. "You really should have. But," I tried to lighten my tone, "you've apologized, and the past is past."
Through some sort of silent agreement, we stopped talking. Neither of us was able to walk through the woods silently, but we strained to hear over our own noisy steps.
It was impossible for me to tell how long we walked, but when I felt worn to the bone, I stopped. It had been quiet for so long, I had almost forgotten why we were still moving.
"Why are we stopping?" Vincent asked, but I could tell from his voice that he was as tired as I felt.
In response, I dropped my bag and leaned against a tree.
"We should keep moving," Vincent said, but his heart wasn't in it.
Rider and Logan joined us.
"Any sign?" I asked, yawning wide.
"Nothing," Logan said.
"It was toying with us," Vincent said.
"Yeah, but I'm not sure we should stop for long," Logan said. "Get some rest while you can. I'll keep watch."
"Aren't you going to need sleep?" I asked.
"I can go longer without sleep. Don't mess with the hammocks," Logan said, "and stick close together. I'll be out of sight."
The only thing that convinced me to move away from the tree was that my sleeping bag was nearby. I felt cold and damp from the spring night air, and my sleeping bag felt light as air. I was skeptical it would keep me warm, but too tired to care much.
"I guess this mean
s we're sleeping on the ground?" I had my 'bed' for the evening under one arm, and in the dark, I was trying to find a place to sleep. None of these things made sense.
"Over here. There is space enough for all of us, and the ground is not too uneven," Rider said.
After stumbling over to Rider, he took my sleeping bag and rolled it out on the ground before putting his own down next to it.
I sat down and scooted into the bag. "How do you avoid snakes sleeping on the ground? And spiders?"
Vincent let out a harassed sigh and tossed his bag down next to me. "You don't."
I stopped moving and looked at him in the dark. "No, really, what do you do?"
Rider chuckled on the other side of me.
Vincent settled in next to me. "You weren't worried about this last night."
I yawned. "We were in hammocks. That’s different. You're up in the air."
Rider laughed again.
"That's not funny," I said. "How do you keep them out?"
"Don't worry, Cass." Vincent's voice was already growing lighter as he slipped into sleep. "Rider and I will keep them away."
"Right." I zipped the bag up as much as possible while still being able to breathe. "I believe that."
***
"Did your grandmother really call me an old coot?"
I jerked awake and looked around. The sun hadn't risen, but the dark was peeling back to make way for it. Sitting on a fallen tree, the old man was smoking a pipe and watching me.
"What?" I sat up and looked around. Rider and Vincent were sound asleep beside me. "Did you scare us off tonight because I said you were an old coot?"
"Ah, ah, ah. You said it. That is different."
"No, she said it, I repeated it." The only way my partners weren't waking up had to be that I was dreaming. I yawned and relaxed. "Right now, the names I'd call you would be much stronger."
He laughed and kept laughing until he wheezed.
"Do you have something to do with the Lost being killed?" I asked.
The laughter died down and the man sighed. "Always with the killing." He looked around and bobbed his head as though consulting an audience. "In a way, yes, and in a way, no."
"So, you are involved?"
"For this one, no, for all of them, yes." He sounded sad but no less odd.
Broken Paths (AIR Book 2) Page 25