by Mark Henwick
Are you there, lizard? I broadcast.
Yes. Why are you shouting, Amber Farrell? And Tullah is concerned by your companion.
Are you all right? came through in Tullah’s voice, overlapping with Kaothos like a garbled echo. I’m right here. I mean, I have you in sight.
I tried to turn the volume down. This is Rita, the Were-cougar that I told you about. Just being a guard to keep me safe, but…
“What are you trying?” Rita said, frowning. I realized my lips were moving as I subvocalized to talk to Tullah through Kaothos. It probably looked like I was trying to cast a spell. Or just being crazy, talking to myself.
Which meant Rita was distracted long enough for Tullah to come up behind her.
“Should I kill her now?” Tullah said brightly.
Rita spun around.
Tullah stood with her hand very obviously holding something in her coat pocket that pressed against the material and was pointed at Rita’s stomach.
I was glad Tullah hadn’t tried putting the gun in Rita’s back. I was still unsure how quick and dangerous Rita was. And I didn’t want either of them hurt.
As it was, we’d given Rita enough of a shock, and a little message to take back to Cameron and Zane.
Push us around and we might bite back.
I shook my head at Tullah and she stepped back. I snaked a friendly arm around Rita. She wasn’t someone to push around too much, but I couldn’t resist teasing a little.
“Rita, kitten,” I said, “I hope Zane brings you up to Denver when he comes to visit. I want to find out all about Were-cougars. But meanwhile, we have things to do in Taos.”
“I have to come with you,” Rita said. “Far as the city limits.”
“Only room for two, unfortunately.”
Tullah tossed me my helmet and we walked out of the mall to where she’d parked.
Rita followed, but only to watch us mount up.
If she’d been in her cougar form, I’d lay good odds that her tail would have been thrashing.
It was cute, from a distance.
Chapter 46
A little over an hour later, I turned off Highway 518 onto a dirt track and stopped out of sight of the road.
It was cold and dark. I killed the headlight and leaned the bike on its kickstand. Mixed pine covered the hills, painted silver and black in the moonlight. They whispered all around us.
Tullah shivered. “What’s up?”
I hadn’t been talkative while we’d been riding.
Tullah was too smart for me to lie, and part of the truth would have to be enough.
“You have to turn around here and leave me,” I said.
“No! I won’t. You need—”
I ignored her. “First, we break the lock on your powers.”
She went quiet. Kaothos stirred at the edges of my mind, eager. Tullah was eager too, but she was scared as well.
“You don’t know if you can,” she said.
“Well, here’s where we find out.”
She stared at me. “Why? I mean why now? Why here?”
“The here, because I wanted to get close to Taos, but not too close. Not so close that the Adepts in Taos come looking to find what’s happening. I’m worried they’re working with Amaral. And close enough so I can run there using a back route into the town.” I pointed with my chin down the dirt track. “That’s the old Spanish Trail. I’m betting that Amaral will be watching the roads in, but I’m also betting he hasn’t got anyone watching the trail.”
I guided her over to some flat ground. We sat cross-legged on crunchy beds of old pine needles.
“The now, because there’s a risk. And if I’m caught there are things I need you to do. Things only you and Kaothos might be able to do.”
“Don’t talk like that. Anyway, Kaothos and I aren’t that strong.”
“Maybe not yet. Maybe this is insurance for the future.” I sighed and unfastened the necklace. I held it in my hand. It was warm and heavy. “Olivia will need help very soon. I know we haven’t figured out the first thing about this ritual yet, but you and Mary have the best chance of doing it.” I leaned forward and put the necklace on her. “Promise me you’ll try.”
She rested her hand on it.
“I won’t need to. You’ll make it and you’ll know what to do when the time comes.” She looked away. “But I promise.”
“Thanks. And once we break the lock, never let them put it back on you. They’ll want to. I’ve heard all Mary’s tales about how terrible the dragon spirit can be.” I laughed. “As bad as being Athanate, the way she tells it.”
Tullah joined me, her laughter uncertain.
“I don’t trust Weaver,” I said. “I’m getting so I don’t trust Adepts, apart from Mary and Liu. And Chatima. So, if things go wrong, I don’t want you to go to the Adepts; I want you to meet with Naryn and Felix. Give them all the support you and Kaothos can, because if Amaral wins, Basilikos wins. And everything down that path is bad.”
“You’re right about some Adepts,” Tullah said. “Weaver has still got them all dazzled in Denver. And news from home is they’ve heard that the Taos Adepts community are in with Amaral. Weaver has links with them.”
“All the better for us to break the lock out here.”
“And after?”
“After, you go return the bike and pick up the Hill Bitch. Load everything back in and pick these up.” I handed over a sizeable cut of my poker winnings and a list of even more things we needed.
“Steel barrels, denatured alcohol, petroleum jelly, electronic circuits, welding kit? What the hell?” She frowned.
“Put together with good ammonium nitrate fertilizer, courtesy of Larimer Agricultural Fertilizers, which we have waiting back at Drake’s Salvage?”
Tullah’s eyes widened. “You’re going to make bombs.”
“Yeah. No doubt Naryn will bring firepower when he gets here, but maybe we’ll need it earlier.”
I wasn’t exactly lying. But my real reason was I needed Tullah to be far away for a while. Let the Taos Adepts feel Kaothos near Santa Fe, concentrate on that, while I snuck in the back way.
Kaothos? Speak privately.
Yes, Amber Farrell? I could hear puzzlement in her voice.
I will free you if you promise me one thing.
What is this thing?
If Amaral wins, kill me and Diana and keep Tullah safe.
That’s three things, Amber Farrell, and Tullah will not agree to the first.
Don’t tell her.
There was a long silence. I covered by getting up and fussing with attaching the motorcycle helmet I no longer needed to the handgrip on the back of the Kawasaki.
But this is lying, Kaothos said. You warned me—
I know. I’m an Athanate, I’m evil. I grimaced. This wasn’t how I wanted to say it. I know, I said again, and I’m sorry, but it’s important.
Kaothos sank into unhappy murmurings.
Tullah and I sat again, closer so our knees were almost touching.
This wasn’t a spirit place like Bitter Hooks or Coykuti Mountain, but the hush of the pines seemed to make it easier for me to fall into the trance-like feeling where I visualized the energy flowing through me as sand. In the forest of night, the energy came alive.
But it didn’t feel right. I tried to ignore it and study the shape of the flickering darkness that wove in and out of Tullah.
The lock was like a Celtic knot, a pattern of threads turning and folding in on itself.
If there was just a loose end, I felt I could tug it and the knot would slip apart.
No such luck.
Leaning closer, I attracted some of the darkness itself, like the reverse of a candle flame swaying toward me.
The sensation of sand became uncomfortable, as if the grains were scratching underneath my skin.
It was wrong. The image of sand had been too easy. It was a wrong turn.
Your whole life has been a path leading to this one point.
I had no more than an hour or so training with Tullah. What else on my path had led me here?
Chatima.
She wouldn’t have any trouble with this lock.
The silvered pines faded from view and instead I was back in the truck behind the fairground, sitting just like this, gathered around the single candle Chatima had lit. The touch of her hands, the way she’d cupped them, the sensation of the necklace gathering, all of it filled my mind.
Sunstone. Sky-fallen. You she’d said—not meaning me alone, meaning both of you, meaning me and Tara.
Life’s patterns dance in the candle. Be part of it.
The candle. Flame, not sand.
The scratching stopped.
Flame passes through me. Not burning. More like yellow smoke.
I was dizzy. Kaothos was speaking. I couldn’t hear. I was sweating.
I reached for Tullah. The sensation was like putting my hand into a bees’ nest. Heat rippled down my arm.
We’re not the flame. We’re the wick. Tara/Sky-fallen. Bless her.
“Wait—” Tullah. Scared.
I plunged my hand into the dark knot of workings around her.
The shock passed through me in slow motion. I could feel it hit my heart, squeeze my lungs.
I got half-way up onto my feet. My heart had stopped. I was blind to the rest of the world. My whole vision was taken up with the intricate working that surrounded Tullah. So complex.
Kaothos roaring.
Then: That strand. Weaker.
The knot pulsed. I could feel the strand. But it was pulling energy from Tullah to replace what I was draining away. It would kill her if I kept trying to suck the energy away from her.
There was a thump, like the side of a house falling down. Kaothos.
Tullah’s energy stopped feeding the lock.
The strand I was focusing on thinned. Broke.
I chased the end of the strand, sinking into it, hunting it down, down into the knot.
Another broke. Another.
Suddenly it wasn’t a knot. It had no complexity, no chilling beauty. It was a scatter of hot neon worms, wriggling away in the night, fading into nothing.
And I was looking straight into the dragon’s eye.
Time lurched.
My heart stuttered and fired again. I fell back onto the ground with a grunt, my body twitching and twisting as if the worms were crawling all over me.
“Amber! Amber!”
Tullah knelt over me, shaking me.
I pushed her back.
“Crap, that was fun,” I groaned.
I spat and drank from the water bottle in my backpack to clean out my mouth.
I didn’t need to ask if it had worked. Kaothos was all around, invisible but humming like overhead power cables. The pines shivered around us, their branches bent and tips thrashing with the passage of a wind we could not feel. Little dust devils kicked and spun in the starlight.
Tullah’s face and hands flickered as if she were shedding static electricity. She was jumping and shouting with happiness, then coming back to me and asking if I was all right, thanking me and then going back to jumping and shouting again.
Kaothos? You’re stronger than before.
I am.
We have a deal.
For a minute, there was nothing but the ebbing rush of wind through the trees.
If you survive, you will bite Tullah? You will provide her the prions that allow the channeling of more energy?
My turn to pause, but Tullah had told me that was what she wanted too.
“Amber?” Tullah was peering at me. “You okay? You’re looking spacey.”
“Yeah. Just thinking through what I need to do.”
When I know what I’m doing with my bite, I said to Kaothos. Not before. Do we have a deal?
We have a deal, Amber Farrell.
It all hurt.
It hurt because, after all that had been almost within touching distance for me—the Athanate, the Were, the Adepts—it felt as if I was deliberately pushing it all away or sabotaging it. I was in trouble with everyone. Tullah was one of those who still believed in me and supported me unconditionally. And I was lying to her in almost exactly the way I’d warned Kaothos about. I was risking her friendship and providing the worst possible example for Kaothos. And while I was sure Kaothos could come in and kill me and Diana to prevent us from being used by Amaral, I wasn’t sure that Kaothos and Tullah would survive the reaction when the Adepts realized there was a dragon spirit guide among them.
It hurt because I felt alone and committed to rescuing or killing Diana, whether or not I survived, because I had no faith that Naryn would be there in time.
I couldn’t see a way out of where I was at the moment.
So I got Tullah to stop jumping, hugged her and sent her on her way.
I had my HK and a change of clothes in my backpack. Binoculars and a tourist map of Taos. Water and high energy bars.
I was about eight miles away from the town center as the crow flies. There was enough light for my wolf eyes, and I had a flashlight if it got darker.
Getting into the town was the easy part. Figuring out where Amaral had Diana, in the time left—not so easy.
Just something I would have to do when I got there.
I pinned Mary’s marque-hiding bouquet onto my backpack and hoped it was still working.
Then I trotted down the old Spanish Trail, my body falling quickly into the rhythm.
Despite everything, it felt good.
I missed the running. I’d been able to run most days when I was still just a PI.
The Athanate needed my body to exercise more than I had been. Even my wolf was quiet, enjoying the feel of running. The echoes of discharging Tullah’s lock were still eddying pleasurably through my mind—the pain was gone and a glow of achievement remained.
For once, all parts of me were living together and liking it. It lulled me, diminished the problems, let me just be.
That struck me with such a force that I stopped.
I clutched at my necklace, but of course it wasn’t there.
I could still feel it, though. The subtle bumps and grain of the stones underneath my fingers. The paths that weaved through them. The patterns. That damned message, always just out of reach. Always…
Like the trail beneath my feet. Going a place I needed to be, full of twists and turns I could not see, and yet the way I needed to follow.
And suddenly I sank to my knees in the middle of the trail.
I knew the first pattern that Chatima had laid in the necklace. Knew it, like it was something carved into my bones.
I will choose my path.
Not someone else. Not the curse that coiled in my belly, not the Athanate rogue that bit me in the jungles of South America, not the damage that Obs had done in my head. Not the madness that everyone told me was inevitable from being hybrid.
You will have no guides but yourself.
Speaks-to-Wolves had told me that in my spirit-dream.
And I cried, tears vanishing into the dust, because I knew I had taken another step on a path, and because Chatima had warned me that all my paths held death and pain and sorrow and loss, and I cried for all those who would know the effects of my choices, who were bound by me on a wheel that turned without regard for them.
“But I’ve chosen my path,” I whispered into the depthless night.
And I began to run again.
Chapter 47
SUNDAY
The first place I visited was the site where the new Warders’ laboratory had been scheduled to be built. It was deserted, and the chain-link fence that surrounded it was padlocked. In the chilly pre-dawn I could see that only the foundations had been laid. No work had gone on there for at least a couple of weeks. It certainly wasn’t Amaral’s hideout, and neither were any of the houses in the immediate vicinity.
From there it was straight down into the town of Taos.
The town itself was built around t
he old plaza. The shops made me think I’d stumbled onto a movie set for a western—adobe two-stories with exposed beam ends and Spanish gables. Looking at the businesses themselves, the mix felt touristy—restaurants and upscale art galleries and expensive shops catering to outdoor activities.
The town was gathering itself for the ski season. Hardy holdouts were still intent on cycling and hiking. For everyone, it was just another early winter morning, with people going about their business—eating breakfast, drinking coffee, opening their shops.
But the entire town was also the center of a paranormal hum those people weren’t feeling. I was. Without being able to pinpoint where it came from, I got Athanate scents, fragments of Were Call and a continual tickle of Adept working.
I was still in my dark running clothes, and I jogged the length and breadth of the town without anyone turning a hair. Great cover.
What was I looking for?
I might stumble across an Athanate with the Amaral-Romero marque, or a Confederation Were. Or maybe someone with a big ‘follow me’ sign on their back.
More likely David and Matt would find something on the internet that would lead me straight to Amaral’s door, and all I was doing was displacement activity while I waited.
Then again, there might be more mundane clues. If Amaral had just gotten here last night, and had Confederation Weres joining him, how was he accommodating them? Unless he had a huge barracks and a stockpile of consumables, he had to have people down in town buying in bulk—food, bedding, camp beds, tents. Either I’d catch their scent, literally, or I’d see someone suspicious.
Grasping at straws, murmured Tara, without offering a better idea.
I set up a jogging circuit that took me past all the main stores every half hour.
A group of twelve Japanese were loading up a little fleet of three SUVs with bikes that cost more than I made in a quarter working as a PI. Some hikers had come in from the hills; they’d decided their ultra-light tents were ultra-cold and were upgrading. A pair of nuns in full black and white habits and sensible shoes were loading a rusty pickup truck with a heap of basic groceries, including dozens of trays of canned beans and five sacks of rice. Yum. Behind them, a large family struggled back to their people carrier with three grocery carts full of supermarket food and far too many sugary snacks for the kids.