“Why did your boyfriend try to hurt you?” asked Brynn urgently.
“Because he’s an asshole,” said Amber. “And I was an idiot. I wish—”
“No,” interjected Brynn. “Why did he try to hurt you now?”
We all looked at Brynn. The tiny glyphs had spread over her entire right arm, down to her fingers, filling in the framing fillips that had appeared earlier. Her pale skin was barely visible under the dark markings.
Uncertainly, Amber said, “He woke up and reached for me. He discovered I was here?”
“Awfully big coincidence, him waking up right now, don’t you think?” Brynn asked.
“I—” Amber stopped. “What do you mean?”
“I think that somebody woke him up. Somebody who wanted you out of the way.”
“Alastor,” I said grimly.
Brynn grinned at me with far more cheer than our situation really warranted. “Exactly.”
“This isn’t exactly something to be happy about,” I told her.
“Sure it is,” she said, rubbing the marks on one arm. “I heard the chief Huntsman tell Alastor to deal with us. And where is he? Not here. He went straight to the surest way he had of getting rid of Amber.” She looked between us. “Don’t you get it? Maybe they’re out in the world, but we’re still a threat. It isn’t over unless we give up.”
I glanced at Yejun and Amber to see how they were taking this wild idea. Both of them nodded. “Sure, makes sense,” said Yejun. “It’s not a pass/fail class.”
“Exactly,” said Brynn.
“What about all the souls they’re destroying right now?” I demanded. “It’s pass/fail for each of them!”
“Don’t worry about them,” said Brynn, so calmly that I goggled at her. It seemed so uncharacteristic of her to not care about the devoured souls. Maybe she didn’t really understand—
“Um,” said Amber, as if she shared my surprise.
Brynn looked at her, then back at me. Then she put her glyph-darkened hand on my arm. My skin tingled where her fingers touched me. “If they’re really gone, they’re gone, AT. We can’t let caring about the lost get in the way of paying attention to what’s happening to those still here. Including ourselves.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” I said, troubled. “It’s always been win or lose for me.”
“So the game has just gone into overtime,” said Yejun lightly. “One way or another, we have to get this Horn to Cat and Jen. Even if we’ve screwed up on dealing with the Wild Hunt, maybe they can use it to get Amber off my back.”
I took a deep breath. It wasn’t how I’d been brought up, but when I thought of it that way, the strangeness became a selling point. “All right. Let’s get out of this city.” And I caught myself, painfully, before I mentally called my dogs to me. I was learning.
We hurried down the street and turned in the direction of the red and white forest. I could smell it, I could feel it, but all I saw were more buildings.
“Hello!” said the Fiddler, stepping out from behind a building. He beamed at us like a proud teacher.
I recoiled. “You! What are you doing here? No wonder I can’t get us out.” I made a shooing motion at him.
Amber clutched the Horn close to her chest. “You can’t have it. I need it more than ever now.”
“Dear dreamchild,” said the Fiddler, still smiling broadly. “I said I couldn’t claim what I needed yet. There’s an order to what must happen. That’s why I need you four, and the two in the other tower.”
“Jen and Cat,” Yejun said glumly. “How are we supposed to get there if you’re going to hang around gumming up the transit?”
He spread his hands, holding the bow in one and the violin in the other. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to go the long way.” He looked closely at Brynn, then told her, “You’re filling up.”
She raised her other hand, which was now covered with tiny characters. “I’m okay. They haven’t even started on my outer forearms or legs yet.” She peered at her arms. “I’m a bit curious about that, honestly.”
“What happens when she fills up? What is happening to her, period?” I asked.
“I’m fairly sure when she fills up, she explodes and undoes all of the Lady in Red’s efforts,” said the Fiddler blandly. “Do you want me to spend the time explaining what I think the marks mean?”
I stared at him, then said flatly, “I hate you.”
I started chasing down the scent of the forest again, moving as fast as the others could manage. We jogged past unfamiliar buildings and up long, spiraling hilltop roads. After searching for longer than I would have on my own, we paused at the top of a great hill to let Brynn and Yejun catch their breath. I took in the view from the hill, trying to decide if the city ever ended. There was a grey waste out in one direction, like a bay but composed entirely of drifting mist. I stared at it long and hard, then said, “That looks like Puget Sound from Queen Anne Hill.”
“Sorry, forgive me for being city illiterate,” said Amber acidly, “But does that mean something?”
“Not... exactly.” I stared at the vista some more. “Are you two ready to move again?”
“Yes,” said Brynn, inspecting her legs. “I don’t seem to feel tired at all anymore, so we don’t need to stop for me.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not good,” noted Yejun. “Her nodes are swollen like you wouldn’t believe.”
I clapped my hands over my ears, then shook my head. “I think I have an idea how to get out of here now. Let’s go.”
Now that I knew what to look for, I could see other elements of the Far City that reminded me of Seattle. Had they always been there, or was the city reconfiguring itself in an attempt to get us out? I hoped it was the latter.
“That’s a red tree,” said Amber, pointing out a white-barked, red-leafed tree growing from the sidewalk.
“Great,” I said, walking fast.
“They’re all around us,” said the Fiddler. He lifted his violin and played a light little air, and the ghostly shapes of the red forest appeared over the buildings near us.
“Don’t take us there,” I begged him. “I know where we are right now, but I’ll have to start all over again in the forest.”
“This is the best I can do, little wolfchild,” he assured me. “I do wish I could do more without disrupting the path out, though.”
Something about the way he said that made me turn to look at him directly. “Why?”
As if in answer, there was a distant roar.
“What’s that?” Yejun asked uneasily.
“Crap,” said Amber. “They noticed the Wild Hunt was gone.”
“Who noticed?” I demanded.
Amber looked around, at everything but me. “You remember that bear you found for them? That wasn’t the only thing they’d stocked the preserve with. There are things that have learned to hide in the forest and the city. I guess, uh, they’re not hiding anymore?”
“We’re talking about deer and stuff, right?” Brynn asked hopefully.
Amber shook her head. “Bigger. Meaner.”
“Moose?” Brynn persevered, and now her hope was more like pleading.
“They like dangerous prey,” said the Fiddler lightly.
“Yeah, but why should the stock care about us? And can we keep moving?” Yejun said.
“Anybody seen Alastor lately?” I asked, cocking an ear. I could hear the hunting cries of other creatures, mostly from behind us. Mostly. For the first time since I’d started this quest, I felt calm. Here and now, I knew exactly what to do.
-twenty four-
Dozens of creatures that qualified as “dangerous prey” roared and screamed behind us, driven into a frenzy by freedom from their hunters. Maybe an insane demon was prodding them, too. I tilted my head, listening, then said, “Three blocks ahead, we turn left. Another five blocks after that and we reach the parallel to the McAllister building, where we came through before. There should be a scar on the Curtain there. I
’ll open it if I can, but if I’m busy, one of you will have to do it.”
“Why would you be busy?” asked Brynn, bless her heart.
“Because those guys are faster than you guys.” I pointed over my shoulder at the giant lion running down the pavement, and the flurry of dust with three oversized weasel heads just behind it. A bear’s roar—I remembered it well—came from around the corner.
“Any tanks?” Brynn panted.
I remembered the cannons in the trophy room. “I think they got that one.”
“Can we just get to this exit fast?”
And you know, I tried. I tried to get them there. Maybe I should have picked up Brynn. Maybe I could have done something else. But all I really wanted to do was stop running. I’d been waiting my whole life to stop running. So when the snarl of the cave lion carried the carrion stink of its breath to my nose, I stopped dead, spinning in place and ducking the beast’s pan-sized paw.
I turned the duck into a roll that took me under the big cat’s body. I was so small it barely noticed. It noticed my shadow, though. My claws raked down its body and I caught its tail as it tried to leap after my friends. It was heavy, but I was able to change its direction enough that it yowled and turned back to try to shred me. But I wasn’t there; I’d jumped over to the tangle of oversized mustelids, bared my teeth at them, and let myself sink into a pleasurable crimson haze. Yelping and blood and fur in my teeth and this isn’t really the stuff one talks about in polite, human-shaped company, no matter what they do for a living. I retained just enough sense to see my friends clustered around the scar in the Curtain, and just enough foolishness to wonder if I should get away, and then the sabertoothed birds appeared, whistling like steamers, and I had to slow them down, too.
It was all going very well until I came up against the black eagle, perched on one of the phantasmal tree branches just at my eye level. Before I could charge him, his form flickered and Alastor sat there instead, one leg crossed over another. “Look at you,” he said in distaste. “I suppose your father would be proud.”
That stopped me cold, mid-rush. Before I could get my feet physically and mentally underneath me, a lizard the size of a bear pounced on me. It had six-inch teeth, and as I tried to roll away, I was able to count the double layer of them.
A single string vibrated and Amber’s voice merged with it to produce a note so sharp that it made my ears ache. But it made the lizard about to eat me stiffen and then collapse on top of me, ears and eyes filled with blood.
“AT, you brat,” screamed Amber. She sounded further away than I thought she could be, and I wondered if she’d arrive to get the dead weight of the lizard off of me.
When she didn’t, and I didn’t die from the crush despite my aches, I blew out my breath and exerted myself, lifting just enough of the lizard that I could slide out.
Alastor was gone, no big surprise there, and most of the other creatures were either unmoving or looking after their own wounds. I looked muzzily at the number of them—at least a dozen different varieties. I didn’t take down that many, did I? No, they must have turned on each other as soon as I disrupted whatever was uniting them.
I wondered where Amber was, and turned around.
The road to the spike of an edifice that stood in for the McAllister building had been rent apart. A chasm at least twenty feet wide lay between me and the other side, where the Fiddler stood, playing a slow, gentle tune. Amber stood on a shimmering bridge that crossed one-third of the chasm, holding the Horn in one hand and her other hand outstretched toward me. “AT, you brat,” she shouted again. “I can’t get to you. When I try, the other side just gets farther away. The city doesn’t want us back again. You have to jump over to me. I’ll catch you.”
I looked beyond her. Yejun and Brynn were nowhere to be seen, but I could see the tear in the Curtain they must have passed through. It shimmered like oil on water, like a return to everything I’d gained and everything I’d left behind. I had to get through.
But I hurt. I ached all over and I had scrapes and bites and any minute that cave lion, who was a really persistent kitty, was going to shake off the kick in the head I’d given him and come for another bout.
“Come on,” called Amber. “Jump. I know you can do it.”
I went to the edge of the chasm to gauge the distance. It was huge. Unpassable. I’d jump, and I’d fall, and wow, was the chasm deep. I couldn’t even see how far down it went. “Um,” I said, and looked over my shoulder. The cave lion was climbing to his feet.
My breath sped up. I watched the lion. I was no longer calm. I was scared. Not of the lion, but of something nameless. I didn’t know what was going on. But I had to do something. I had to be with the others. Over here, I was all alone, except with a bunch of creatures that wanted to tear me apart.
I ran toward the lion, ignoring Amber’s enraged cry. Then, just as the lion braced for my attack, I spun on one foot and raced toward the edge of the chasm. As I reached the edge, I pushed off, throwing myself into the void, my hands out for whatever I could catch.
My right hand slapped Amber’s, and she hauled me backwards, dragging me across the shimmering bridgelet until we were both on cracked pavement. “Kill the music,” she snapped, and the Fiddler cut off his tune in mid-phrase. I looked back in time to see the bridgelet vanish, just as the cave lion reached the apex of its own leap.
It was better at jumping than I was, but it wasn’t a third again as good. Its paws scrabbled at the sides of the chasm and then it slid down, into the darkness. I hoped, briefly, that it landed on its feet. Then Amber wrapped me in a hug. “You tiny little idiot,” she scolded. “You scared me to death.”
I fought her off for a moment, then gave her a little squeeze. “We have to get to the others.”
“Right,” she said. “It’s only been a few minutes. What could have gone wrong? Oh wait, it’s us.” And she ran through the portal.
I looked back at the Fiddler. “Do you need to go first?”
“Thank you,” he said. “Perhaps we ought to go through together, in case I change things again. I tried to plan well, but I couldn’t account for everything.” He held out a hand to me, and without even thinking about it, I put my hand in his and we stepped through the shimmering tear.
Just as when we arrived, this was not a simple movement from one world to another. I fell through darkness, past the memory of my mother crying for murdered friends, past a vision of Cerberus slain outside the gates of Hell, past an older woman who looked like Amber looking out a window—
I reached out and found Amber’s shoulder, and then we thudded into hard ground and stumbled forward onto the sunlit streets of Seattle.
“Never again—” I began. Then Amber squealed in agony and pulled away from me, pressing herself against the wall of the McAllister building and into the thin line of shade.
“I thought it was supposed to be night here!” she moaned, huddling away from the sunshine.
“Guess not. I’m not a world-time expert or anything.” I peered at her to make sure she wasn’t about to burst into flame. She looked haggard, and her eyes had gone into hungry-wild mode, and her skin seemed more pink than alabaster, but it didn’t seem to be getting any worse.
“It’s before noon,” she muttered. “I’m really bad before noon.”
She was right. It looked to be mid-morning, on a beautiful day. On Halloween day, specifically; I spotted a dozen adults in costumes and handfuls of costumed tiny children wandering up and down the sidewalk. Yejun and Brynn were waiting for us. The Fiddler stood a little further off, looking up and down the street like he’d never seen a living city before.
Yejun straightened up from where he’d been slouching against the wall. “What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t fix the stupid weakness he thought it was so cute to give me,” Amber flared up at him.
Frowning, Yejun said, “Of course I didn’t. I wasn’t going to screw around with what made you you. I was only trying to save y
our life, you ungrateful hellion.”
“I can’t go out in this, I’ll die,” she sobbed.
Unsympathetically, Yejun said, “Then give AT the Horn and we’ll leave you here.”
“No way,” Amber hissed, holding the Horn close. “This is my chance for freedom and you’re not taking it away from me.”
Brynn said, “Yejun—”
But once again, Yejun looked at me. I bit my lip. “Is there anything you can do? I mean... you stole the moon once.”
Yejun gave me a startled look. “Oh. Right. Brynn, give me that lens I gave you before.” After Brynn handed it to him, he pulled his sunglasses out of his pocket and stared down at them for a long moment. Then he gave a long-suffering sigh, shook his head, and said, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” He popped one lens out of his sunglasses and inserted the lens Brynn had given him into the frame. Then he looked through them. “Perfect. Here, Blondie.”
She stared at him incredulously. “How are sunglasses supposed to help me? Especially tacky ones like those?”
He shrugged and turned away, but she lunged out of the shadow and grabbed the sunglasses from him, whimpering in the morning light. Once back in the sliver of shadow, she slipped them on and recoiled so abruptly she almost dropped the Horn. “It’s... a trick?”
“Come here and let’s see,” Yejun coaxed. He stepped away from the wall.
After a hesitant moment, Amber followed him. She didn’t scream, or whimper, or even squeak.
“What did you do?” I asked, completely bewildered. “You said they were just sunglasses before.”
“It’s night,” said Amber wonderingly. “Really night. I can feel it on my skin.”
Yejun grinned. “Knew that so-called moon had to be good for something.” He looked around. “We should get going, though, before—hey!” He ran after the Fiddler, who had walked into the middle of traffic and was inspecting one of the cars that honked at him. “Look, man, I don’t know where you’re from, but you can’t just wander into the middle of the street.”
Wolf Interval (Senyaza Series Book 3) Page 24