Sometimes, you just had to trust in things. He believed that if they stayed together and looked out for one another, that would be enough.
It was deep twilight when he left the building for his meeting with Tessa. From the weapons locker, he took one of the prods and a pair of viper-pricks along with his hunting knife. He considered taking Cheney, as well, but he was worried that the big dog might not be fully recovered and did not wish to put him in harm’s way until he was. He had made this journey many times, and he knew how to go in order to stay safe. He would just have to be extra careful.
“Keep everyone inside,” he told Owl, bending close so that the others couldn’t hear. “If anything goes wrong, don’t separate—stick together. I’ll try to be quick.”
She gave a small nod, but her eyes reflected her misgivings. “What will you do if she won’t come back with you?”
He hadn’t talked to her about what he intended, but Owl could read his thoughts as easily as she could read her books. She knew what he was going to attempt and what he was up against.
He smiled reassuringly. “She’ll come.”
“Promise me that if she chooses not to—no, wait, let me finish—if she chooses not to, you will come back anyway. You won’t go into the compound and you won’t hang around waiting for her to change her mind.”
Her eyes searched his, waiting. When he hesitated, she said, “We need you, Hawk. We can’t do this without you. Promise me.”
He understood. He bit his lip, looked at his feet, then said, “I’ll come back, I promise.”
He said his good-byes to the others, went out through the heavy door that Fixit had rigged to protect their common room, and descended the stairs to the street. Standing just inside the door, he looked out at the shadowy shapes of the derelict vehicles and rubble mounds.
Then, taking a deep breath, he set off toward the compound, wanting to get this over with. He moved to the center of the street, giving a sweeping glance to his surroundings as he went, but not slowing as he did so. He had an uneasy feeling about being out here alone in the dark in violation of his own rule that no one should ever go out alone at night. He shivered as the wind blew in off the sound, chill and cutting. It felt wrong going without Cheney, despite what he had told himself. But there was no help for it. He would have to rely on his own instincts.
But his instincts weren’t like Cheney’s.
Besides which, he was tired and preoccupied.
Which was probably why he missed seeing the shadowy figure standing in the doorway across the street, watching him go.
THE WALK UP First Avenue toward the compound was still and hollow-feeling and filled with shadows and ghosts. Hawk held the prod ready to use in front of him and stayed in the center of the street, away from places where predators might lurk. He kept up a steady scan of his surroundings, searching out movement and strangeness and unexpected sounds that could signal danger, but found nothing. He knew he wasn’t alone in the night, but it felt to him as if he might be. He was content with that, and his thoughts drifted.
Mostly, they found their way to mulling over what had happened with Cheney the night before. He could not stop thinking about it. He kept remembering how he had begged for a miracle and how that miracle had happened. He kept remembering the way his body had changed when the healing had begun, turning hot from the inside out—how a kind of energy had flowed out of him and into the big dog. He kept remembering how Cheney had responded, almost instantaneously, and then begun to recover right before his eyes. Had he really been responsible? Accepting this changed everything he believed about himself and his place in the world. If in fact he had healed the big dog, then he was possessed of a power that transcended anything he had imagined possible. It meant that he really didn’t know himself at all, and that was disturbing. He had never been anything special, never anything but an ordinary boy trying to survive in a world where boys were eaten up and spit out regularly. Now he had to consider the possibility that he was something more than a boy with a special vision.
He thought about that for a moment, wondering if it were possible that the vision was in some way connected to what had happened to Cheney. Even accepting that Cheney had been healed because of something he had done or something inside him that had responded to his desperate need to help his dog, it was a stretch to believe that this had anything to do with his vision. But he couldn’t quite discount it, either. The two marked him as different when nothing else did, so it was possible that they had a similar source.
But what was the nature of that source? Had he been born with it? Had he acquired it? Everything about it—whatever it was—was a mystery.
He slowed, still aware of his surroundings, but caught up in his exploration of what might be the truth. It occurred to him that he had never experienced a clear and complete elucidation of his vision. It had only come to him in pieces and only occasionally since that first time. It had never revealed itself fully, not even enough so that he knew where it was supposed to take him and those he led. He had trusted in it, but in truth he had never really understood it.
Did that make him a fool? He had never thought so, had never believed he was being misled or deceiving himself about what he was meant to do. He had acted on faith, and that had always seemed enough. But a closer examination gave him pause. Following a vision that was incomplete and unsupported by anything concrete did not seem all that intelligent.
And yet he believed in it. Even now, despite everything—or maybe even because of it—he still believed.
Ahead, something moved in the shadows off to one side, something that walked on two legs. He slowed further, moved away from it, and then watched it fade back into the darkness and disappear. Another creature of the night, like himself. Hunting. Trying to find its way, perhaps. Seeking a place in the world, just as he was.
He shook his head. He was being foolish with that sort of poetic thinking. Everything was predator or prey. Everything hunted or was being hunted. The only unknown at any given moment was your own place in the food chain. It was as simple as that.
He shrugged against the chill of the wind as he passed out of the shelter of the buildings and into the openness that surrounded the compound. He was too far away to be seen, but he would have to be more careful as he got closer, would have to make certain he blended in completely with his surroundings. The compound was still a dark featureless bulk ahead with only a scattering of lights visible against its black surface, tiny eyes looking out. He could hear voices, faint and distant. It always felt vaguely surreal, looking in from the outside, as if he were newly arrived from a faraway place. It always reminded him that he could never fit in.
He dropped into a crouch and began working his way toward the transportation shelter where Tessa would be waiting. He crossed the open ground in short spurts, pausing often to look at and listen to his surroundings—watchful, ready. But there was no sign of movement on the compound walls, no indication of anything out of the ordinary. He passed through a frozen landscape, empty and lifeless. Or seemingly so, like so much of the rest of the world. He wondered again how it had felt when the city was alive and bright with lights and filled with the sound of voices and laughter. He could not imagine it.
Off to one side, deep in the shadows, a scraping broke the veil of stillness, causing him to freeze in place. He waited, listening. But the sound was not repeated, and he saw nothing move. He waited some more, watching the lights on the walls of the compound, searching for any change in his surroundings.
Finally, satisfied that it was safe, he began to move forward once more.
The concrete apron surrounding the old bus station was clogged with piles of rubble, and he was able to move easily from one pile to the next with only brief moments in the open. It was dark enough that he couldn’t be seen from the walls, so mostly he worried about what might be hiding close at hand. It was unlikely that predators would lie in wait here, a place so empty of life and so close to the compound walls. It wa
s simply too dangerous and unproductive to do so. In all the times he had met Tessa, he had never once encountered a Freak, let alone a human being. He did not expect that to change tonight.
He reached the bus shelter and slipped noiselessly inside, hunkering down as he took a quick look around. Nothing. He turned to the steps leading to the underground tunnel door, easing forward until he was below the lip of the stairwell and hidden from view. He paused again, staring at the door and gathering his thoughts, trying to think through what he was going to say to Tessa. He had to persuade her, had to convince her that coming back with him was the only sensible thing to do. But with her father having disappeared, would she be willing to leave her mother alone? His thoughts spun like windblown leaves. Perhaps her father had returned. Perhaps her mother had already told her she should do what she thought best. Perhaps Tessa had come around to his way of thinking already.
Perhaps he was dreaming.
He brushed aside his misgivings and moved all the way down to the bottom of the stairs, where he stood before the doorway. Something made him hesitate, something about the way the closed door made him feel. He couldn’t identify its origin, but it was strong enough to make him pause.
Then he rapped sharply on the door, two hard and one soft.
Instantly the locks on the door released and the door opened into blackness. Hands appeared out of the dark—two pairs, three, more—seizing his arms and fastening on the prod’s insulated handle so that he could not bring it to bear. Bodies surged through the opening and slammed into him, knocking him to the floor. He fought like a wild beast, knowing what was happening, desperate to break free. But the hands had a firm grip on him, and he could not escape.
He had time to shout once in dismay, then something crashed into his head and he tumbled into blackness.
L OGAN TOM STOOD motionless in the deep shadows across the street as the boy emerged from the doorway, looked around carefully, and then started walking. He could tell, even in the bad light, that it was only a boy he was looking at and not a man. The boy seemed to know where he was going; he did not hesitate in choosing his path and picking his way through the rubble-strewn landscape. This was familiar territory to him. A street kid, Logan thought. How many others were hiding inside the building this one had come out of? Which one was the gypsy morph?
Because he was certain by now that one of them was.
He could feel the finger bones shifting restlessly in his pocket. They had begun doing so earlier in the day, when he had first reached the edge of the city. He had thrown them again to make certain he was on track, watched them gather and point right at the heart of the downtown, then pocketed them once more. Almost immediately he had felt them begin to shift and stir, making a faint clicking sound as they knocked together. It had startled him so he had been forced to fight down a strong sense of revulsion.
By now, hours later, he was used to it. Evidently, they were responding to the closeness of the morph. It was a strange sensation, having them move around like that, but it meant that his journey was almost over, his search nearly ended. His last cast of the bones had brought him directly to this square and the empty buildings surrounding it, but he had known immediately where the morph was to be found.
He thought momentarily about going after the kid on the street, and then decided against it. Any attempt to confront him here might cause him to cry out and alert the others. He didn’t want the whole bunch of them scattering to the four winds. Better to let this one go and concentrate on the others.
He watched the boy disappear into the gloom, remained where he was for several minutes more, then stepped out of the shadows and started across the street.
His instincts and the force of his magic told him that the building he was about to enter was occupied. He could hear movement within. The finger bones seemed to know it, too. Their rustling inside his clothing grew almost frantic.
He reached the doorway from which the boy had emerged and paused. Nothing seemed amiss. He could still hear the scurrying sounds of the occupants inside, somewhere upstairs from where he stood. He turned and looked around carefully, making certain he had missed nothing in his approach. But the night was empty and still, the square a graveyard of old vehicles, fallen walls, and windblown trash. There was a parched and bitter quality to everything that matched what he had found in the countryside he had passed through to get here. The feelings it engendered were the same—of a time and place, of a world and its inhabitants, passing into dust.
He thought back momentarily to three nights earlier, when he had encountered the ghosts of the dead in the mountains. The deadening he had experienced coming out of that strange and terrible encounter had lessened by now, and he had come back to himself from the dream world of the mist. Ghosts, he knew, must be relegated to the past; the future was for the living. Knights of the Word lived with one foot in the past, the legacy of their dreams, but their purpose in waking was to serve the future. He struggled with this. He knew he always would. There was a joining of sleep and waking, of past and present, that could not be completely sorted out. Yet his mission in coming here, in finding the gypsy morph, transcended the confusion and misgivings and fears to which such a joining gave birth. What he would do here might change the destiny of the human race. His belief in that possibility demanded that he put aside everything else, everything personal, until he had done what he had been sent to do.
Inside his head, the ghosts chattered and laughed like small animals, and the steel of his determination shivered.
He proceeded through the doorway into the near blackness of a small entry, found the stairway beyond, and began to climb. He went slowly and silently, not wanting to alert the street kids to his presence, not wanting them to have a reason to bolt and scatter. It wasn’t that he was afraid of losing the morph. But tracking down the morph, if it fled, would consume time he was not sure he had. Other forces were at work, and sooner or later he would come up against them. He did not want that to happen before his quest was complete.
He found the street kids on the night-shrouded fourth floor, barricaded behind a heavy iron-sheeted door. By then, they had gone quiet, alerted to his presence. Perhaps they had heard him approach. Perhaps they had simply sensed him. One or more possessed preternatural instincts or they would not still be alive. He looked up and down the hallway through the gloom for clues and found none. He looked again at the door. He could hear them breathing, right on the other side of the barrier. Interestingly, they had not fled. That meant they were prepared for intruders and not afraid. He would have to be careful.
“My name is Logan Tom,” he said to the door. “Can one of you talk to me?”
No answer. He waited awhile longer, and then said, “I am not here to harm you. I am looking for someone. I have come a long way to find this person. I think you can help me do that.”
Still no answer. But there was a faint stirring, a whispering that was almost inaudible, and the sound of a very big animal’s low growl.
“Are you from one of the compounds?” a voice asked.
It was an older girl or a young woman, her voice steady and confident. He took a chance. “No, I’m not from the compounds. I serve a higher order. I am a Knight of the Word.”
More whispering, including someone’s inadvertently sharp query, “What’s that?”
“Do you have any weapons?” the first speaker asked.
He had left everything in the Lightning, which was parked and secured on the main north–south highway, perhaps a mile east. “I am unarmed,” he said.
“What about your staff?”
So they could see him. Even in the near blackness. He showed no reaction, deliberately not looking for the peephole through which they were viewing him. “It is a symbol of my order. It is not a weapon.”
A white lie, because it could be a weapon, of course, even though he would never use it against them. He waited, but no one spoke. He started to ask them if he could come inside, but stopped himself. It
would be better to let them make that decision without any pressure from him.
“Tell us who you are looking for,” the speaker said.
“I’m not sure. I have never met this person. I have something that will tell me who it is. A talisman. That is what led me here to you. It tells me that the person I am looking for is inside.”
“Can you describe who it is?”
He shook his head, and then said, “No. The talisman will point the person out to me. If you will give me a chance to use it.”
Further muttering, longer and more intense this time. An argument was taking place, but it was difficult to tell its nature. He tried to think what else he could tell them that would make them open the door.
“We don’t know whether to believe you or not, but it doesn’t matter. We don’t let anyone inside but members of our own tribe.” The older girl’s voice was firm. “One of us might agree to come out, but you will have to convince us that it’s a good idea.”
Logan nodded, mostly to himself. “What can I tell you that will help?”
“Tell us everything. Tell us how you came by your talisman. Tell us how you knew what it would do. Tell us why any of this matters.” A pause. “We will know if you are telling us the truth, so don’t lie. We will also know if you mean us any harm.”
He thought about it a moment. Was there anything he couldn’t tell them? He scanned it through in his mind, then decided there wasn’t. What difference did it make what they knew about his purpose in coming here? What mattered was that they let him inside so that he could throw the finger bones and discover whether the gypsy morph was there or not.
“All right,” he agreed.
He told it all to them. Of his mission as a Knight of the Word, of his meeting with Two Bears, of the origins of the gypsy morph, of his search to find it, of his journey west and his arrival here, in the city. It took him awhile, but he didn’t rush it. There were no interruptions from the other side of the door. There was only silence.