by eden Hudson
Then I could see it—all of it. There wasn’t a flash from blood to darkness, not like waking from a dream and suddenly being in the real world. They existed at the same time without contradicting one another. I could see both the darkness and the blood at the same time. Black, red, peace, comfort, safety, warmth.
“I’m not asleep,” I said. “Maybe I’m hallucinating.”
But I didn’t think I was. I could feel the blood. I could hear it, filling my ears and dampening every sound. I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue. I could taste it—salty, hot, thick. A little metallic.
What was this?
Did it matter? The blood and darkness were safety. I could rest and recuperate for however much time I had before the foot soldiers came back. I should just enjoy the peace while it lasted and stop ruining everything by questioning it.
I shut my eyes. The river of blood washed my pain away.
Tough
“How many warm bodies do we have?” Clarion asked. “Seventy-nine coyotes if the last two packs show.”
“However many crows,” Lonely said.
The coyote turned toward the crow so he could see him out of his good eye. “You don’t even know how many members are in your murder?”
Lonely gave a shuddering shrug. “Between seventeen and forty, depending.”
“And about sixty humans so far,” Scout said, heading off another argument. “Probably more by tonight. I know some people have been trying to reach their family from out of town.” She looked at me. “And you know Tawny and Beth Ann Hicks’s uncle started that Human Rights gang down in Cape Girardeau, so they’ve got some connections if they can get ahold of them.”
Clarion’s lips twisted down at that. “Hicks? The guy who got thrown in jail for lynching that coyote pup?”
“Bad time to get picky about allies,” Lonely said.
No shit, I thought. Jake Bones’s pack from over in North Fork had screwed us on an ammo deal back when Ryder was still alive and almost killed all three of us, but you didn’t hear me bitching about having to work with coyotes again.
“I’m not picky,” Clarion said. “I don’t have to like who I work with, I just want to be able to trust them not to shoot me in the back.”
“It might not matter, anyway,” Scout said. “They might not even be able to get into contact with him. Nobody might be able to get in contact with anybody outside town. NPs like the Matchmaker who can read minds? Who knows how much they’re monitoring and reporting to Big, Bad Warden Kathan? He might already have all the communications cut.”
“Doesn’t need to cut the communications,” Lonely said. “He’s got an elemental. Magnetic.”
Scout and I both snapped to attention at that.
But Clarion just nodded. “That explains a lot.”
Bullshit it does.
“What’s an elemental?” Scout asked.
“Not exactly an NP,” Clarion said. “More like a force, but with some amount of sentience. Kathan’ll have it monitoring the incoming and outgoing information. Being magnetic, it feeds off electromagnetic pulses. Certain messages will disappear, others might be altered. It’s probably explained away with some baloney about NP energies messing with wireless signals and radio waves.” He looked at Lonely. “How long has the thing been in Halo?”
Lonely cocked his head and considered the question for a while. “It’s always been in this ground, at least as long as crows have been in Halo. Probably longer.”
Clarion’s eye stared off at nothing.
“That explains a lot,” he said again, even though it still didn’t explain anything. After a second, he shook his head and looked up. “I’m sending messengers out. I think I can get us some reinforcements, but it might be a day or two before we hear back. It’s a long drive. In the meantime, we need to be working out the best way to acquire that sword.”
“Pretty simple, isn’t it?” Scout said. “We steal it. Just like Mikal did, just like Colt did. Send in a wave of troops to draw the foot soldiers out, then while they’re fighting, a small group slips in the back and recovers the sword.”
If I’d had a spare grenade and unbroken window, I probably would’ve pulled a repeat of earlier, but since I didn’t have either of those things handy, I slapped one of the bare rafters. The boom shook the attic.
Scout’s head snapped around to look at me.
“Easy on the lumber,” Lonely said, grinning not quite at me. “This old building’s got to last me another couple years at least.”
I held Scout’s gaze and shook my head, hard. Throwing a bunch of humans at the Dark Mansion to draw the fallen angels out wouldn’t work. For one, we were talking about a bunch of kids—collective hours of combat training: zero. Maybe the crows and coyotes had been fighting and killing each other their whole lives, but most of the human Halo lifers had never even held a pellet gun. If we used them to draw out the fallen angels and the foot soldiers didn’t slaughter everybody outright, then they would take a few prisoners, find out where the rest of us were, and wipe us off the face of the Earth.
“Tough, it’s the only way. We sacrifice this battle to win the—”
People, I snapped, emphasizing it by moving my voiceless lips. You’re talking about sacrificing people.
“Colt would’ve agreed with me. You know he would have.”
She was right. If it was the only way to get the job done, Colt would’ve accepted that, then he would’ve gone to work getting it done, because he was an asshole who didn’t care who had to die as long as the sacrifice worked in the end. Ryder might’ve been a psycho who would punch you in the back of the head as soon as look at you, but there had been times when even he had looked at Colt like, “What the hell?”
Sissy was probably the only one of us kids who had agreed with Colt every time. But at least she had never acted like it wasn’t no thang to be talking about sending somebody to their death. That first time we attacked Kathan and his group after the war—the night she died—when Colt and her had come up with the plan, Ryder had pointed out every point in their plan where one or all of us might get killed. Sissy had listened to his list of potential deaths, nodding her head. Then she’d set her jaw and said, “You’re right. But if we don’t do it, who will?”
No one. No one else would’ve done it back then and no one else would do it now. If I stopped for a second and took a step back from wanting to nuclear blast the Dark Mansion and every single angel who had ever set foot there, I could see that there was a bigger picture than revenge. Maybe I wasn’t smart enough to know what that big picture was, but it had to do with keeping Willow’s daughter from growing up to be Scout and Scout from growing up to be me.
Go downstairs and pick them out, I told Scout. Pick out the ones you want dead, tell them what you’re volunteering them for, then get back to me.
“You think this is any different than what Pastor Danny did?” she snapped.
And how did that end? Oh yeah, with everybody over twenty-five decapitated.
“Freedom is worth whatever it—”
You want to know who buried your dad, Scout?
Her gray eyes narrowed. “I know what happened. You think I don’t know what happened?”
Foot soldiers. They got an excavator, dug a big hole next to the pile of headless bodies, bulldozed them into the hole, then they poured the foundation for the Dark Mansion.
“Is that supposed to scare me?”
It’s supposed to make you get your priorities straight. My dad knew it was going to happen—or, hell, at least he knew it was a possibility—and he acknowledged it. He was killing his friends and his congregation and maybe his kids, too, and he told them so. He didn’t dress the truth up with freedom and sacrifice and pretty shit.
“You’re one to talk,” Scout said. “Lonely had to drag you here! I had to drug you just to get you to listen to me! Who the hell are you to talk about priorities?”
She was pissed, but there was something else going on there, too. I recognized it because I’
d been the retarded little kid on the other end of the ass-chewing before.
During the war, Sissy decided us kids were on the buddy system. Colt and Ryder were supposed to stick together and I was supposed to stick with her. But there had been one battle where Sissy and I got separated. I tried to fight my way back to her, but I just kept getting pushed farther and farther away, until I couldn’t see her or anybody else. At that point, I was something way past panic, past wet yourself and cry like a baby. My heart was pounding so hard and fast that I thought I was going to pass out. It looked like everything was closing in on me. I dropped my sword, pulled the little .22 Dad had dug up for me, and started squeezing off crazy shots, wasting ammo, and crying. That’s when I heard Colt—“I got you, Tough, I got you!” He cut a path through the NPs with his nine and his sword, then he grabbed me and dragged me back to Sissy and the rest of our army while Ryder laid down cover fire. I don’t remember whether Dad called the retreat on that battle or Sissy did, but when we’d got far enough away, she ripped into me.
“What were you doing?” she yelled. “I told you to stay on me! We’ve pulled this drill before a hundred times. It’s not rocket science.”
“I—”
“You weren’t paying attention. You’re never paying attention!” Then she’d stopped yelling and squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Ryder’s right. You are terrible at this and it’s going to get you killed. You want to know why Coach Greene never played you?”
“I played sometimes!”
“Don’t be a baby. Kicker doesn’t count, no matter what Mom said. It wasn’t because you’re too small—”
“I’m not small!”
“—it’s because you can’t just do anything. You always have to think and feel and think about what you feel. You know what Ryder’s thinking about in the middle of a battle?”
My face was burning. I wanted to cry again, but I didn’t want to prove her right about being a baby.
“Staying alive,” she said. “Chopping, stabbing, shooting, not dying. You know what Colt’s thinking about?”
“Staying alive?” I sneered. “Chopping, stab—”
“Nothing. Colt doesn’t think. He just does. And it works because he paid attention when we were doing the drills. He worked at them until he got them right. Better than right—perfect. And you didn’t. You were off in your head thinking about your dumb songs or something, weren’t you?”
I glared down at the ground. A couple hot tears streaked down my face, but I didn’t wipe them off in case Ryder was looking this way.
“This isn’t peewee football, Tough. Greene’s not going to sit you on the bench. An NP’s going to take your head off, and there won’t be anything I can do about it. Colt can’t save you every time. Ryder and I can’t babysit you. You’re going to die if you can’t shut off your brain—and you’ll probably get one of us killed, too.”
Sissy had never yelled at me like that before. It was a weird feeling—like I didn’t have anybody on my side anymore. The rest of the night I avoided her.
But she’d been right. That was why I’d started crying. Because deep down, I knew that I’d messed up and that everybody else knew it, too.
That was what Scout was doing. She was pissed and she was calling me on my bullshit because she knew she’d messed up.
Scout wouldn’t look at me.
Stop pretending like you’re some bigshot general, I told her. You’re a high schooler and those are the kids you went to class with that you’re planning to send to their deaths. Get that through your head. Then maybe I’ll listen to your pregame speeches.
Clarion and Lonely had been watching our argument the whole time. When Scout didn’t yell at me immediately after I said that, the old coyote seemed to snap out of his daze.
“It’s a moot point anyway,” Clarion said. “The fallen angels have been fighting since time began. They’re war machines. Sending in a force to draw them out while someone else sneaks in the back is the oldest trick in the book. They’ll see it coming a mile away.”
“What do you suggest we do, then?” Scout snapped, putting one hand on her hip and cocking her body at him.
Doing that made her look so much like Harper that I felt sick. While all this talking and arguing and stupid fucking negotiating had been going on, I’d stopped thinking about everything with Harper. Her falling down on the porch next to me. Saying she hated me. Crying while she watched me smash Mom’s guitar.
“Give my messengers forty-eight hours,” Clarion said. “In the meantime, we study maps of the area around the Dark Mansion and come up with a better plan of attack. Two plans—one utilizing the potential reinforcements and a contingency in case we don’t get the backup I’m hoping for.”
Now that sounded like fun. Two more days stuck in the attic talking. I nodded and gave the coyote a double thumbs-up.
“How many chances do you think you’ll get at this, kid?” Clarion growled, getting up in my face. “You think you can just run in, grab the sword, and run out? What do you think’s going to happen if you run in there without a plan? You want me to tell you?”
No, I want you to question-talk at me some more.
Lonely snorted, but didn’t relay the message.
Clarion’s hands curled into fists at his side and he crowded me until his nose bumped against mine. “You’ll end up running around like a chicken with its head cut off and then every single person you drag into that fight with you will die.”
I held my ground. If he thought he could boss me around by pulling that dominance crap, he was wrong. Ryder had tried it with me plenty of times. You can whup somebody’s ass until they can’t stand up, you can scream at them until your lungs give out, but you can’t push around somebody who doesn’t give a shit.
“I used to be just like you,” Clarion said. “Running into the thick of it, fighting without thinking. I was young and stupid and hurt and all I wanted was to fight until I’d paid Hell back for the pack it took away from me. You know what happened?”
You asked bunch of rhetorical questions?
“This.” He flipped up his eye patch so I was staring into an empty socket. Except it looked like somebody had gone at it with an impact driver, then it’d healed up all wrong.
I spit in it.
Clarion barked. He jumped on me. I didn’t even see him change, but he was a full-on coyote when he hit me.
The katana I’d been messing with earlier was leaning up against the wall next to me. I grabbed it. Even with the vamp speed, I wasn’t fast enough. Clarion back off, dodged the blade, then sprang at me again. He hit me chest-high and slammed me to the floor. I swung the katana again. He dodged, then ripped into my sword-wrist.
In the background, I could hear Scout yelling something. Lonely was laughing.
Clarion snarled and whipped his head back and forth, shaking my sword arm. He must’ve cut through something important in my wrist because my fingers went numb. The katana dropped. I went for it with my slightly less mauled arm, but Clarion slammed both paws on my chest again and growled.
“Just stop, Tough!” Scout yelled. “Stop it!”
I did.
Clarion shifted back to human form and used the hem of his shirt to wipe the spit and vamp venom off his face. He hocked a couple times to get the taste out of his mouth. Twice in one day. That had to suck.
Scout knelt down next to me. She was looking at me like she couldn’t understand what had happened.
“Can’t you just stop for one second?” she asked, her voice low.
I snorted. That turned into a full-on laughing fit because the answer was no, I couldn’t stop. Not even if I wanted to.
Across the room, Clare spat again and took one more swipe at his face with his hand. It was a weirdly cat-like move for a coyote to make.
“It’s going to take at least a day, maybe two for my messengers to get back,” he said. “Give them forty-eight hours before you make any moves.”
“That’ll give us time to get m
y people familiar with their weapons,” Scout said.
“And to come up with a better plan of attack,” Lonely said.
From flat on the floor I snorted again, but this time I was able to keep the laughing under control. One big happy negotiations party. No one objected to waiting because apparently they had all the time in the world. No rush there.
I stared out the broken attic window while they all agreed with each other, and concentrated on keeping my yap—the one on my face that didn’t work anymore and the one in my head that everybody seemed to be able to hear—shut.
Outside, the sun was going down. Pretty soon this little jailbird was going to be free to go wherever he wanted.
Colt
My eyes opened. My heart was pounding in my chest. I didn’t recognize where I was. The cells on either side of me were empty. Maybe I’d kept moving while I was lost in my head that time. Or maybe I’d been so focused on the pain before the memory that I had stopped paying attention to my surroundings. I hoped to God I hadn’t passed Tiffani while I was out of it.
The Pit’s passage way stretched out in front of me, fathomless, infinite darkness. The screaming seemed to be coming from both directions—behind me and ahead. I listened for a few seconds, but didn’t hear Tiffani. I made myself start walking again, checking each cell for an occupant as I passed. I couldn’t afford to get lost in my head again. I had a plan. Stick to the plan.
Empty cell. Next. Empty. Next. Empty. Next. Empty.
A familiar laugh from over my shoulder sent ants running through my veins and electricity pop between my gritted teeth. I turned around.
Mikal lay on the floor of the cell, eyes open, her body writhing against the pain, and the wet stumps where her wings had been painting the floor in thick, bloody swipes. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in smile that was more than half snarl.
There was something sexual about the movements, the way she lifted her hips, bit her lip, arched her back. Shame flooded my brain, the feeling of having betrayed everyone I loved because I was weak, and I realized that I had never hated Mikal as much as I’d hated myself. She’d been the perfect scapegoat to pin all the anger and fear and blame on. Even worse, part of me had been so desperate for someone—anyone—to want me that I’d clung to the things she did and twisted them into an idea of love. All she had done was provide the lie. I had tricked myself into believing it.