I stuffed my hand back into my coat pocket and strolled across the street. I usually operated best with a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants strategy, anyway.
I wasn’t sure what Garth had shared with his family before the procedure that saved his life, but I felt pretty certain that “Mom, Dad, I’m going to be turned into a Nejeret,” hadn’t been a part of the conversation. And considering how sensitive his ears were at present, I doubted he’d called them to share the news yet.
As I climbed the driveway, I discovered that Garth’s family home was really more of a homestead. Tucked away in a shallow bowl in the forested hillside, the home itself was surrounded by several outbuildings, including a small barn, a large shed, a chicken coop, and what appeared to be a second, smaller home that was so very log cabin-y. There was even a fenced-in pasture area containing a couple cows, a donkey, and several llamas.
The wide roll-up door at the front of the shed was open, and I spotted a middle-aged man within. He was crouched near the back tire of an ancient-looking Harley, a small girl of about nine or ten—a string bean of a child—kneeling on the cement floor beside him. Both wore overalls—his khaki cargo, hers denim—and had their long, sleek black hair pulled back in a low ponytail. The girl wore purple rubber rain boots to the man’s work boots, and what I assumed was the man’s camo cargo jacket hung on her shoulders like a robe. The girl appeared to be listening intently to the man’s explanation of the inner workings of the bike’s exhaust system.
Was I looking at Garth’s father? The corner of my mouth tensed. And the girl—was she his sister? I knew next to nothing about his family, aside from the part where they were descended from Chief Sealth and that they were some of the few humans who knew about Nejerets. Well, there was only one way to find out more about them . . .
I angled away from the house and headed for the shed, gravel crunching under my feet. I was two-thirds of the way there when the sound of my approach reached their ears.
The man perked up, turning his face my way, and the second I got a good look at him, any question of whether or not he was Garth’s father fled from my mind. When he stood, I could see that he was just as broad-shouldered as Garth, though he was carrying a little more bulk around the middle than his son. It was strange, seeing what Garth might’ve become in a few more decades. Unsettling.
I’d thought we were saving him by transforming him into a Nejeret, but I hadn’t considered that we were also taking something away from him. The future he’d expected his whole life—his human future—was gone. For better or worse, his life was forever changed. I wondered if that had sunk in for him yet. Would he miss his lost future? Would he mourn it?
Garth’s dad wiped his hands off on an oil-smudged rag he’d pulled from his back pocket, then folded it and set it on the Harley’s leather seat before stepping around the girl. “Can I help you?” He didn’t raise his voice, but low and resonant, it more than carried . . . at least to my ears.
I raised my hand, waving a greeting and flashing a smile. “Hi there,” I called. “I’m really sorry to bother you, but I need your help. My name is—”
“I know well and good who you are,” the man said. No wonder he hadn’t raised his voice. He didn’t just know who I was; he knew what I was and that my Nejeret ears were more than good enough to hear him. “Where’s my son? Why haven’t I heard from him? It’s been days.” Garth’s father crossed his arms over his chest and leaned his shoulder against the frame of the shed door. His hard stare slid to the hilt of my sword sticking up over my shoulder, then returned to my face.
Behind him, the girl stood, following after her dad. She hung back a step or two, peeking around him, her dark eyes locked on me.
“Garth is . . .” I licked my lips, thoughts frantic as I struggled with how much to tell them.
I stopped a dozen or so paces shy of the shed, just under the heavily needled branches of a pine tree. “Garth’s recovering well,” I said, purposely vague. “The treatment knocked him out for a few days,” I continued, choosing my words carefully, “but he’s going to make a full recovery.”
“We want to visit him,” Garth’s dad said. “Where are you folks keeping him?” He pushed off the doorframe and stepped out onto the gravel drive, relaxing his arms so they hung at the sides. Just like Garth, he was a big man. It bothered me a bit that he felt the need to show me that right now. That, at least to some degree, Garth’s dad viewed me as a potential threat. I had to remind myself that it didn’t matter what Garth’s family thought of me; we weren’t an “us.” Our futures weren’t intertwined.
I held up my hands placatingly. “It’s not like he’s a prisoner,” I said. “But I can’t just bring you to him.” I raised my eyebrows. “Garth must’ve told you some of what’s going on right now . . . with my people, I mean. With our war?”
Garth’s dad nodded once.
“It’s dangerous times for a Nejeret to be inviting strangers into her home.”
His chest rose as he inhaled deeply, and for a few seconds, I thought he might threaten to kick me off his property. But his shoulders drooped as he exhaled, and he hung his head, reminding me so much of the way Garth had looked in my bedroom, forlorn and defeated. “He’s my son,” Garth’s dad said softly. “My boy . . .”
Slowly, I lowered my hands and made my way closer, this man’s obvious love for his son tugging at my heartstrings. I sucked in a breath, holding it in as I teetered on whether or not to say the next thing. The words spilled out almost of their own volition. “I’ll bring him back here as soon as he’s well enough to travel,” I said. “But it might be a little while . . . a couple days, at least.”
Garth’s dad seemed to be weighing the merit of my words. “What about the rest of us? My family’s been keeping your people’s secret for almost two centuries. We’ve protected you.” Defiance shown in his heavy-lidded eyes. “You should be protecting us, now.”
The girl moved forward but still remained a step or two behind her dad. “Can you make other sick people better, too?” she asked, her dark eyes shimmering with unshed tears.
I opened my mouth, but then realized I didn’t have an answer. With Nik’s help, yes, I could make other people “better”—but I would also be turning them into Nejerets. I didn’t have any qualms against doing it—obviously—but the girl was clearly asking out of personal interest; someone close to her was sick. Someone else in Garth’s family? His future was already inexorably altered. I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about me interfering with the futures of his family members as well.
“My wife is sick,” Garth’s dad said, his voice becoming gruff. “And she’s not the only one of our people to be infected by that damn virus, but none of the hospitals will take them. There’s no room, and Garth warned me about Ouroboros—none of us will go anywhere near those people, whatever they claim.” He cleared his throat. “But you helped Garth . . .”
Heavy emotion constricted around my throat, and I swallowed convulsively. I breathed in and out, in and out, my eyes searching first the man’s, then the girl’s. Garth’s mom was sick. Dying. Again, I licked my lips. My heart broke for him.
“Take me to your wife,” I said, unwilling to make any promises without knowing how far along she was in the progression of the disease.
Garth’s dad studied my face for several long seconds, then nodded once and turned away from me. “She’s back here,” he said, making his way up a stone path between the house and the shed. He led me straight to the gate of the little picket fence surrounding the log cabin out back. Chickens ran around in the yard, clucking and picking at the ground. They’d done a real number on the grass, digging holes and building little mounds of earth on either side of the pathway leading up to the porch.
Garth’s dad gave the girl a stern look. “Stay out here, Cas, I mean it.” He opened the gate and waved me through, then rushed ahead to the front door to let me in.
As soon as he opened the door, warm air wafted out of the cabin, carrying scents of b
roth and herbal tea, and underneath that, the acrid stench of sickness. I wrinkled my nose, then stepped inside.
Behind me, Garth’s dad followed and shut the door.
There was no entryway, so to speak, just a small “great” room formed by the combination of the kitchen, dining area, and living room. It was dim, the dying embers of a fire in the fireplace the only light besides what leaked out through the crack beneath a door set in the back wall. Not that I needed even that much light to see clearly.
I followed Garth’s dad around the couch and recliners set up in a cozy semicircle around the river stone fireplace. I could hear one weak heartbeat coming from the room beyond the door. It was far from confidence inspiring, but I wasn’t ready to dismiss Garth’s mom as a lost cause yet.
Once the door was open, the stench of sickness rammed me in the face, and my eyes teared up. I switched to breathing through my mouth as I entered the room, making a point to be subtle about it.
The bedroom was decorated much like the rest of the cabin, with rustic log-cabin-esque furniture. At the center of the room, a middle-aged woman with strong bones and long gray-streaked black hair lay in a bed, tucked under a patchwork quilt, the look of hearty-turned-frail about her. Her eyes were closed, her chest rising and falling evenly.
“How long has she been out?” I asked.
“She woke for about fifteen minutes around midnight and took some broth.”
So she hadn’t slipped into the coma that preceded the final, rabid stage, yet. Or if she had, she’d only been comatose for ten or eleven hours. Which, based on reports, should leave her another six or seven hours before she became uncontrollably violent. Relief flooded me. There was still time. Garth didn’t have to lose his mom today.
“I’ll do it,” I said, the three words tumbling from my lips. “I’ll help her.” There was no turning back now. I was committed. “But before I do, I need your help.”
Chapter Seven
Garth’s little sister’s name was Cassandra, but I could call her Cassie—if I wanted to—and she was eleven years old. A small eleven, not yet having reached the too-cool-for-school tween phase yet, and she was about as much of a tomboy as an eleven-year-old girl could be. When she grew up, she was going to be a mechanic, or firefighter, or police officer like her big brother. Or maybe even a ninja, because there was apparently a gang of awesome girl ninjas on some TV show I’d never heard of, so she knew it was a possibility, but she wasn’t quite sure where to get ninja training these days.
I learned all this—and more—while Cassie was leading me along an overgrown, winding trail that reached deeper and deeper into the hillside. With the way the trail kept disappearing in the underbrush, I’d never have found my way without a guide, and I was immensely grateful to have Cassie there to lead the way.
Her dad, Samuel, had volunteered her for the job of guide, saying he needed to stay behind with his wife. There’d been honesty in his eyes as he spoke, but there had also been a hint of something else. Something related to the fear that etched the lines in his face deeper every time he looked at Cassie. He was trying to get her away from her mom, likely to minimize her exposure to the virus.
I hadn’t been willing to tell him that if his wife, Charlene, was sick, they likely both already were as well; they just weren’t showing any symptoms yet. This thing was infectious as all hell. I hated it, but not as much as I hated the people responsible for it getting out.
We’d been on the trail for close to an hour, and barely a minute of silence had passed between us the whole time. Cassie may have been quiet back in the shed, overshadowed by her father, but it turned out she was quite the gabber.
“How many members of your family know about us . . . about Nejerets?” I asked Cassie. In other words—how many people might I need to transform?
Cassie shrugged. “Everyone in my family.”
I looked away, frowning. “And ‘everyone’ includes . . . ?”
“Oh, um . . .” Squinting her eyes, Cassie screwed her mouth to the side. “So there’s”—she held up a hand and started counting off on her fingers—“me, Mama, Daddy, Garth, Nana, Papa, Auntie Ruth and her family . . .” She continued counting on her fingers, though she’d fallen silent. A few seconds later, she lowered her hands and looked at me. “Twelve or Thirteen? I don’t know, maybe more.”
Even just twelve or thirteen was enough to be dangerous. My kind didn’t look fondly upon humans knowing of our existence, but there was one way to make sure Garth’s family would be safe, whatever the outcome of the Nejeret war. At least safe from the death sentence their knowledge of our kind would bring if the wrong Nejerets found out. It wouldn’t matter what they knew about us if they became us.
In my mind’s eye, I pictured the At orb Nik had shown me on the beach this morning, the one containing a writhing, smoky fragment of Heru’s ba. Based on the size of the ba fragment that had been used during the procedures to transform both Garth and Constance into Nejerets, I thought there would definitely be enough to carry out the procedure on at least thirteen people, maybe more. Then Nik and I could use whatever was left of the ba fragment to grow more . . . if “grow” was even the right word when one was cultivating an immortal soul.
Fulfilling my promise to Samuel and Cassie by transforming Charlene to save her life was the priority, but it didn’t mean I had to stop there. I could make the rest of the family immortal, too. Make them Nejerets, with or without Garth’s permission.
Of course, it was more complicated than that. While I would probably be able to hide Charlene’s transformation until it was no longer a major issue to His Mightiness, a whole family so closely connected to me through Garth . . . not so much. Heru would figure out just how much I’d meddled with this family’s future, and there was no saying how he’d react. The last thing I wanted was to redirect even an inkling of his wrath at Garth’s family. They didn’t deserve that. But then, they didn’t deserve death by Cascade Virus or Senate execution, either. And the cards had told me to proceed with the plan to transform humans into Nejerets, so . . .
“Are you a ninja?” Cassie asked, and the abrupt intrusion into my spiraling thoughts knocked me off guard.
“A ninja? What makes you say that?”
“Well, you’re dressed in all black.”
A quick glance down at myself proved that she was right, though my dismally monochromatic wardrobe hadn’t been a conscious decision.
“And,” Cassie continued, “you have a sword, and it looks like a ninja sword, and . . .” She squinted thoughtfully, her gaze scrutinizing my face. “And there’s just something about you . . . something in your eyes . . .” She fell quiet for a moment. “It’s like you see everything even if you’re not looking.”
I glanced at the girl sidelong. “Seems like you see quite a bit yourself.” Way more than I ever had when I was her age.
Cassie shrugged. “So, is that a yes? You’re a Nejeret ninja?”
“Something like that,” I said, glancing away. I scanned the forest around us. We had maybe a couple hours of daylight left. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be out here, talking to Nik. Hell, I wasn’t even sure he’d be out here right now, let alone in any kind of a state to talk. He had extreme tastes when it came to distractions and coping mechanisms. For all I knew, he could be in a regenerative sleep up there, healing off whatever damage he’d paid someone else to dole out.
“D’you think I could learn?” Cassie asked.
I’d been so caught up in my thoughts of Nik—the hypotheticals and possibilities and worst-case scenarios—that I’d lost track of the conversation.
“To be a ninja . . .” Cassie prompted. Hope filled her eyes, driving away some of the shadow caused by her worry over her mom.
I frowned, mind still half occupied by thoughts of Nik.
“Sure, kid,” I said offhandedly. “Why not?”
Cassie was quiet for a long stretch of time—longer than she’d been this whole hike. Finally, she inhaled deeply, held the
breath in for a few seconds, then blurted, “Do you think you could teach me?”
Well, shit . . . can’t say I shouldn’t have seen that one coming. I sure as hell didn’t have time to train a kid the way that Dom had trained me. But Cassie was sweet—and kind of tough, actually—and dashing her dreams wasn’t high on my priority list. Besides, if the procedures worked and Garth’s entire family was transformed into Nejerets, someone would need to familiarize them with our ways. She and the rest of her family would need to learn what it meant to be Nejeret, after all. I supposed I could stop by from time to time.
Once the war was over. Once humanity was no longer facing mass extinction. You know, the usual save-the-world bullshit.
“I don’t know . . .” I eyed Cassie, weighing the actual level of her interest. Looked pretty damn high. “I’ve got some stuff I have to take care of first, but after that, we can talk.”
The color was bright in Cassie’s cheeks, a mixture of exertion and excitement. She gave a little hop-skip and said, “Cool,” slashing the air in front of her in a quick one-two punch, her mittens moonlighting as boxing gloves. She flashed me a cheeky grin, and I didn’t have the heart to emphasize that I hadn’t actually agreed to anything. “Wait till I tell my dad!”
Oh dear Gods, the last thing I needed was her father up my ass about the mere possibility of training her how to fight. “Yeah,” I said, drawing out the word, “maybe hold off on telling anybody for now.” My first, bigger battle would be convincing him to let me turn him and his whole family into immortal beings using a procedure that had only existed for a few days and had only been used on three people, one of which was dead.
After all the ninja talk, Cassie and I fell into a companionable silence. I figured she was losing herself to daydreams of ninja training, her imagination carrying her away even as her feet led me closer to Nik.
Maybe a half hour passed, and then Cassie came to an abrupt halt. There was a bend in the trail, thick ferns surrounding the tree trunks of pines and deciduous trees alike, merging with blackberry vines rife with shriveled-up bunches of berries from the past season to block our view of the trail beyond the bend.
The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2) Page 41