by Joss Ware
What would happen if he didn’t come? If she didn’t get the stone away from her skin? Between stinging tears and gasping breaths, Remy realized she was on the ground, writhing and twisting away from agony that wouldn’t leave.
Her awareness sapped, she dimly heard a canine bark and whine, then a shadow loomed over her. It came closer and she smelled whiskey as cool, quick fingers brushed over her skin. She felt the pinch-tug-twists at her belly . . . and at last the pain stopped.
Remy collapsed flat onto her back, the balmy night air brushing over her bare skin, tears trickling down over her temples into her hair. Her eyes were closed; she didn’t have the strength—or maybe it was the courage—to look up at Wyatt. For she knew what she’d see: fury, irritation, loathing, greed . . . something like that.
She couldn’t even demand he give her the crystal back.
Because surely by now he realized it was something priceless. Surely by now he knew this was why the zombies and the bounty hunters and the Strangers had been searching for Remington Truth for fifty years.
Something thunked onto the ground next to her.
“Son of a bitch.”
Then she heard a soft, gritty crunch as he spun away, followed by the creak of the truck door. It didn’t slam shut, but it might as well have. Dantès whined once more, then quieted.
Remy bolted into a seated position and looked over. Her crystal, still faintly glowing inside its cocoon of silver, sat on the ground next to her.
Fifty miles away, Texas
Settlement of Glenway
Cat Callaghan slipped from bed and automatically grabbed the fireplace poker she kept leaning against the wall. Weapon in hand, just in case, she padded out of the bedroom to the front window. She hadn’t slept, and it was probably just as well. She’d only have nightmares if she did.
In the distance she could hear the mournful, spine-tingling moans: Ruuu-uuuthhhh ruuuthhhh.
It wasn’t an unusual sound; she’d lived her entire twenty-five years hearing it many nights. Not every night, no. And not always this nearby. But often.
Just like the howling of wolves or crying of wildcats, the sound portended danger. Everyone stayed in at night, blockaded in homes that were fenced in or raised off the ground.
Now she could see an occasional orange glow—the eyes of the zombies—flickering in the darkness. Until six months ago she’d never seen anything more than that glitter of orange starlight, close to the ground, jolting through the darkness with each labored step of the monsters.
Until six months ago she’d never even seen what they actually looked like—the horrible manifestation of decaying human. The memory flared in her mind before she could stop it: the empty, orange eyes, haunted behind the glow. The sagging, green-gray flesh, the shine of white bone beneath. The putrid smell of death. The sickening feel of skin and bone giving way beneath the thrust of her fireplace poker. A quiet sob caught her by surprise and she pressed her palms hard into her eyes, as if to erase the images. But they were indelible.
Oh, God, Rick.
Cat drew in a deep breath then let it out slowly. Squeezed her eyes closed to hold back the tears. Tightened her grip on the poker. Rick, I’m so sorry.
The soft scuff of a bare foot on wood turned her attention from the window.
“Are you all right, honey?”
She couldn’t manage a smile. But she kept her voice steady. “Not really, Dad, but I will be. Eventually.”
Surely he noticed the poker in her hand, but he said nothing. Instead, he came to stand next to her at the window, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, hugging her close. She closed her eyes and allowed her head to rest against him. Dad was a rock. Thank God she had him.
Thank God he’d taken her away from the memories. It was impossible to walk by every day and see the very place Rick had died, to have to put on a strong face in front of everyone else in their small village. To know that if she’d been a few moments earlier, if she’d been fast enough, brave enough, things might have been different.
Her new home, Glenway, was a nice enough little settlement, and her sister Yvonne and her husband Pete had been welcoming. And when Yvonne’s friend Ana and her father had decided to stay in Envy, they’d offered Dad the use of their home. It seemed fitting: a father and daughter had lived here, and now another father and daughter would take their place.
“No one should have to go through what you did,” her dad said now. “I’m sorry, Catie. I wish I had been there.”
She shook her head against him, closing her eyes against the tears that welled there. “I’m glad you weren’t. It was awful, Dad.” She swallowed hard, forcing the bile back down to her stomach. “Poor Rick.”
Her voice caught and Dad hugged her tight. “He seemed like a good man,” he said. “Too young. What a terrible way to have his life cut short.”
Cat sniffled, the tears coming faster now. Rick had been a good man. She’d only known him for a month, but they’d had a connection. Sometimes you just know, he said to her when she made an offhand joke about it. His eyes had been serious, and her insides fluttered at the expression there. Maybe he’d been right . . . but where did that leave her now?
Dad handed her a handkerchief and she wiped her nose and eyes, drawing away so she didn’t dribble on him. “Thanks,” she said, wadding up the cloth in her hand.
Ruuuuuuuuthhhhhh . . .
Her father shifted, his attention focusing on the dark world outside. “Do their moans sound different to you? Maybe I’m getting hard of hearing in my old age, but . . .”
Cat’s breath caught. She’d been thinking the same thing. “Yes. They do sound different. I noticed it, too, and Yvonne said the same thing. In the last week it’s . . . changed. More urgent, it seems. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t sleep.” She forced herself to chuckle, but it came out sounding more like a strangled sob.
“Aw, honey,” Dad said, and hugged her. Pressing a kiss on the top of her head, he stroked her hair. “If I could take the memory, the experience, away from you, I would.”
Cat pulled away and looked up at him. “You’ve got your own horrors and memories.”
He smiled, but it was sad. “That’s why it wouldn’t be so difficult to take on yours too. You were fresh and innocent. And now . . .”
“It’s part of the world, Dad. I’m not a fragile flower. I’ll get over it.” In light of everything Dad had been through, watching her boyfriend being attacked by a zombie was only the tip of the iceberg.
“Did you love him?” he asked after a long minute.
Cat drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes. She wondered if he’d been waiting six months to ask her that. “I don’t know. I might have. Maybe. Probably.”
They stood there for a moment, father and daughter, staring into darkness, listening as the eerie, moaning sounds filled the night.
“I think I’ll try and sleep now,” Cat said, squeezing her dad around the waist, then pulling away. “Good night.”
He turned to follow her out of the room, then she heard him stop. “That’s strange.”
Cat turned and saw that he was looking toward the doorway that led to George’s workroom. A faint orange glow filtered through the crack at the bottom.
He started toward it, and she instinctively grabbed his arm. “Dad,” she said.
“It’s all right.” He gently but firmly pulled away.
Cat followed him, poker in hand. She hadn’t been into George’s workroom except briefly, on the first day they’d arrived in Glenway. She knew he was a sort of chemist or scientist, and that he’d been growing penicillin for medical purposes, supplying it to a man who was a real doctor, over in Envy. But since she hadn’t been in there since, and as far as she knew Dad hadn’t either, neither of them could have left a light on.
He reached for the door and she realized she was bracing herself, holding her breath.
But when the door opened at his push, wafting gently into the workroom, all was silent and still. Whatever
she’d been expecting didn’t come to pass.
Dad, spry and quick for his age, held her back so he could lead the way into the workroom. Cat was right on his heels, poker ready to lash out at the first sign of any movement or danger.
The orange glow was hardly more than that, even now that they were in the room. Dad headed for it and Cat looked over his shoulder to see a small pile of dirt and stones, apparently forgotten on the floor. But some of them were no ordinary rocks.
They seemed to be alive with an orange glow, flaming from deep inside.
Chapter 5
Wyatt sat in the dark rig, waiting.
Dantès had recovered from frenzied canine panic over his mistress and her damned burning crystal. He lay next to Wyatt, snoring and then twitching as he chased some imaginary rodent. The dog was bleeding again from the deepest of his wounds, likely from trying to leap from the truck window to get to his distressed mistress.
Whatever the fuck was wrong with the woman? Hadn’t she learned her lesson the last time the damned stone tried to fry her? She’d probably have a scar from the burn. Hell, she could already have one from the last time this happened, come to think of it. It wasn’t as if he was looking at her damned belly.
Hell no.
Guilt stabbed at him.
His head pounded and he let it clunk audibly back against the wall, closing his eyes. Sleek and pale in the moonlight, that soft, warm skin. Delicate and tender. Probably fried to a crisp now.
Wyatt squeezed his eyes tighter. Not something he wanted to think about. Nope.
They didn’t have any burn ointment to put on it. Bummer for her.
It was a long time before he heard the creak of her coming in. The rig jolted as she pulled herself up, and then he heard another creak as the door closed.
Dantès lifted his head, immediately awake, and his tail thumped against the floor, but he didn’t get up. Wyatt thought he heard Remy mutter something that sounded suspiciously like “traitor.”
He watched her as she made her way carefully in the darkness, obviously assuming he was asleep. Which he wished he were. Or anywhere else but here. Or dead.
Preferably dead.
Desolation washed over him, dull and gray. Goddammit. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He always expected he’d check out early. He knew he’d die young, in his prime. He’d be the one to go. Not his goddamn family.
Not when he put his ass on the line, day after day in Iraq, and then on the fire squad.
Not them. Him.
Oh, God, why? Why not me? Why the hell did You do this to me?
“Wyatt?”
He must have made a noise or something, dammit. Now she knew he was awake. Now she was going to want to talk.
“Find somewhere else to put that damned stone,” he snapped, then dropped his head back against the wall again.
She didn’t respond, but he could hear her picking her way around in the truck. The air stirred as she came closer. He felt Dantès shift and move when she knelt to pet him, then heard the soft sounds of her scratching behind his triangular ears. Wyatt’s eyes remained stubbornly closed, and he realized he could smell her too. She was that close. Not the scent of singed or burned flesh—God knew he’d smelled that enough in his life. But the soft, woman essence that clung to a female: unique and yet familiar.
“You gave it back.” Her voice was low and husky. And closer than he realized.
He made a sound of disgust, eyes still shut, head still tipped back. “I’m not a damned thief.”
“Thank you.”
If he hoped that was the end of it, he was wrong. He heard her settle on the floor, Dantès between them, and just as he was about to slip back into his bleak, dark thoughts, she said, “My grandfather gave me the crystal. When he was on his deathbed.”
Wyatt’s eyes snapped open, but otherwise he didn’t move.
“He told me to protect it with my life. That it was the key, and that someday I’d know what to do with it. Unfortunately, he didn’t see fit to give me any further information than that. And so I’ve spent the last almost twenty years doing what he asked. Not knowing why. Not knowing when or how I’d use it. Not knowing who wanted it, or when they’d come after me, and what they’d do to me when they found it.”
He could see the vague outline of her head, the long swath of ink-black hair obscuring the curve of her neck and shoulder. Somehow, a shaft of moonlight filtered through the grimy truck window, shining on her hair and bouncing down over her arm. He could make out just a hint of jaw and mouth, and the dark shadows hiding her amazing blue eyes.
Raw guilt had him forcing his attention away. “Was your grandfather involved in causing the Change?” he asked.
“He never told me he was, but it seems obvious, doesn’t it?” There was no sarcasm in her voice. Just sadness. “He wasn’t a happy man. Never a hint of warmth or affection. He was like a shriveled bud of a person, a shell. And when he died . . .”
Dantès groaned between them, clearly bored by all the talk, and Wyatt patted him on the scruff. His hand brushed another hand, smaller and cooler, doing the same thing and he practically jerked his own away.
His mouth was dry and he curled his fingers deep into the warm ruff of fur.
Remy didn’t seem to notice; she continued to pet Dantès, and Wyatt felt the rhythm of her movements jolting the dog against his leg. “Grandfather fought it. He clearly didn’t want to die. It was an awful time. He didn’t want to die, but he didn’t want to live either. He said a lot of things, and I got the impression he’d done something awful. Something unforgivable. Something he couldn’t live with, and something he was terrified of being judged on. It makes sense that he was involved with causing the Change.”
“And so he gave you the crystal. Was it a way to make amends?”
The petting stopped. “I’d like to think so.”
“Why the hell did he give it to you and not your parents? You must have been young.”
“I was fifteen when Grandfather died. Not so young. And my father—I don’t know anything about him. He and my mother weren’t together for long, and he was gone before I was born. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I’ve come to realize that Grandfather kept my mother and me close and all of us hidden for years. The same thing I’ve been doing—moving around a lot, staying out of sight, even living in the wilderness at times. He could have been the reason my father wasn’t in the picture—maybe he made us move before my mother knew she was pregnant with me. Or maybe he forced us to leave because he didn’t want her to get close to him. Or to anyone, and betray his secrets. Anyway, she died when I was eight. And then it was just the two of us.”
“So he burdened you with his mistake and left you alone and unprotected—and with no guidance at all.” Wyatt knew he sounded bitter, but his instinctive dislike of the senior Remington Truth had evolved into something more like disgust. “Nice man. Ruining your life.”
Remy gave a short laugh. “Well, the sentiment has crossed my mind.”
“You could have thrown the damn thing in the ocean or buried it or gotten rid of it some other way. You didn’t have to carry that burden. Especially blindly. That makes you a helluva better person than your grandfather.”
This time her laugh carried a note of surprise. “I do believe that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” Her voice had gone low and husky again.
He flattened his lips. Nice going, Earp. Time to change the subject. “How many times has it glowed like that?”
“Tonight was only the second time.” Her hackles were back up, her tone crisp. “So something seems to have changed just recently.”
Wyatt’s mind was working quickly now. Back in Envy, his friend Fence had met up with a woman named Ana and she knew a lot about the crystals belonging to the Strangers. She had also confirmed what they suspected: that the Strangers were former mortal humans who’d conspired with the Atlanteans—yes, the legendary people living in a sunken city actually did exist; he sti
ll couldn’t quite wrap his mind around that—to cause the Change.
“I mean, my crystal glowed once or twice before, over the years, but very softly and for a short amount of time. Nothing like this. And not often. So something’s changed recently,” she said. “That’s why I’m going to Envy. I heard Theo talking about Ana. I thought she might be able to help.”
He nodded in the darkness. “Something happened about a week ago. When Ana came in contact with the Jarrid stone—it’s a large crystal the Strangers use, and was stolen from them by our friend Quent—the stone started to glow and burn. And so did the crystals Ana had. She seemed to think they recognized each other and activated themselves. Maybe it activated yours at the same time.”
He sensed her interest sharpening, and his thought was confirmed when she began to scratch Dantès with new vigor. “I wonder if that’s why the zombies have gotten so . . .”
“Frenzied?” he finished for her. “Yes. In the last week they seem to have become more desperate. It’s possible they sense the presence of your crystal.”
“Yeah. So I feared.”
Silence settled between them until Remy spoke again. “So now you know why I want to go to Envy.”
“Except that you were going in the wrong direction before I got here,” he informed her.
“Duh. I was doing that on purpose. To try and lose you. Obviously, it didn’t work. Much to my dismay.”
“You were going in circles on purpose?”
“Not in circles,” she said waspishly. “But not in the direction of Envy. I didn’t want my destination to be obvious.”
He couldn’t say anything more to that; she was right. And it had been a clumsy attempt to trick her into admitting she was lost. Which, apparently, she wasn’t.
However, she had finally given him some answers. Chalk one up for the good guys. But Wyatt didn’t waste any time feeling complacent about that small success. His mind was still working. “Ana told Fence that something called the Mother crystal disappeared from the possession of the Atlanteans around the time of the Change. I don’t suppose your grandfather ever referred to the crystal he gave you that way?”