He listened hard in the near silence, but all he could hear was the sound of his own breathing. The steel door was too thick; it muffled all sound from within. It would have been better if they had left it open a crack. Then he might have been able to hear something. But Ethan would never agree to take a chance like that. The door had been opened to let the man in and it would be opened to let him out again, and those were the only times it would be opened until sunset.
The guard shivered as he thought about what would happen to the boy and the girl when the sun dropped. He thought about how they would be taken to the highest walls of the compound and pushed off into the fading light. He thought about how they would scream helplessly as they fell. He thought about the sounds they would make when they struck the concrete at the base of the walls. He had seen and heard it all before, and he had hoped not to have to do so again.
He waited a moment longer, and then stepped back impatiently. Trying to listen was a waste of time. He walked a few yards down the corridor to where his folding chair waited and sat down.
WHEN LOGAN HAD finished his story, the boy said, “Are you telling me I’m not human?”
Logan hesitated. “I really don’t know what you are. You were born to a woman, so I guess that makes you human. But you were something else first, a creature of magic, and she was always gifted with magic of the same sort.” He shrugged. “What difference does it make? What matters is what you’re supposed to be now.”
The boy looked at him a moment, and then shook his head. “I don’t believe any of this. I guess you do or you wouldn’t have come this far. But those bones could be telling me anything.”
Logan nodded. “Maybe, but I don’t think so.”
Hawk was silent a moment. “Didn’t you say I was supposed to know what to do after the bones found me? If I’m this…whatever it is.”
“Gypsy morph.”
“Gypsy morph. But I don’t know anything more now than I did before. I don’t have any idea at all what it is I’m supposed to do. Or what everyone thinks I’m supposed to do.”
“You have visions. Candle said so. You have dreams about the boy and his children. Maybe that’s some of it.”
Hawk sat motionless, staring off into space, his thoughts unspoken. He was working it through, trying it on for size, but not finding anything that fit. Logan could see it in his face, in the shifting of his eyes. He was a boy sitting in a cell waiting to die, and this latest twist of fate was too much for him. Why he didn’t seem to know who he was or what he was supposed to do surprised Logan. He thought it would all be made clear once he found the morph. Logan wondered suddenly if there was something he had forgotten.
Then, abruptly, he remembered. He gathered up the bones and held them out. “Take these. If you are the morph, they belong to you. They are your mother’s bones. They might help you remember.”
Hawk looked at the bones, then at him, and shook his head. “I don’t want any part of them. I just want you to take them away.”
“If I do that, what will happen to you then? They’re going to kill you.” Logan kept his hand outstretched. “And Tessa. What about her?”
The boy said nothing for a long time, sitting back, looking at the floor. “She told the judges that she was carrying my child,” he said finally. He looked up again, meeting Logan’s gaze. “I don’t know if it’s true or not.” He shook his head slowly. “Doesn’t matter, I suppose. None of it matters. Even if I am who you say, even if the bones are my mother’s, it doesn’t change what’s going to happen to me or to Tessa.”
“Or to the Ghosts?” Logan asked. “They seem to believe in you. The boy and his children. They mentioned that right away when I told them I was looking for the gypsy morph and what the morph was expected to do. They say you are a family. What happens to them?”
“I don’t think I can do anything for them.” Hawk’s words were laced with bitterness. “I can’t save them or Tessa or anyone. I can’t even save myself from this.”
He looked at the floor again. “Or my child, if there is one.”
Logan gave him a minute, and then said, “Take the bones. Hold them. Let’s see if they give you any answers.”
“No,” Hawk repeated. Then his eyes lifted and met Logan’s. They stared at each other for a long time. “All right,” the boy said finally. “Give them to me.”
Logan leaned forward and dumped the bones gently into the boy’s palm. Hawk looked at them, a glimmer of whiteness against the dirt-streaked flesh of his hand. Then slowly he closed his fingers over them.
Logan waited expectantly.
“Nothing,” Hawk said finally. “It’s all a…”
Then his eyes snapped wide, his mouth fell open in shock, and his slender body went rigid, his muscles cording, straining against what was happening to him. Logan started to intervene, then checked himself. Better to let this play out. The boy was shaking now, his body jerking in whiplash fashion. He was trying to say something, but the words came out as small whimpers. He clasped the fist that held the finger bones to his breast, hunched over as if to find a way to absorb the bones into his body, and began to rock forward and back.
“Hawk?” Logan whispered to him.
A white light bloomed from the center of the boy’s body, a small blossom at first, and then a bright cloud that all but enveloped him. Logan backed away despite himself, edging toward the darkness, not understanding why, but feeling that his presence was invasive and perhaps even dangerous. He watched the light steady and then begin to pulse in a rhythm that matched the rocking of the boy. Hawk continued to make indecipherable sounds, lost to everything about him, gone completely into whatever catharsis the bones had generated.
The rocking and the pulsing continued for a long time, and then died away in an instant, leaving the boy hunched over like a fetus, pressed down against his hand and the bones and the floor with the wash of the electric torch casting his shadow in a tight, dark stain across the concrete.
“Hawk?” Logan tried again.
The boy’s head lifted slowly and his face came into view, his features stricken and his skin damp with his own tears. The green eyes were filled with a mix of wonder and recognition, of understanding that only moments earlier had been lacking. He stared at nothing, and then at Logan without seeing him. He was looking somewhere else, somewhere only he could see.
His throat worked. “Mother,” he whispered.
OWL WAS SUPERVISING preparations for moving, organizing and dispatching the others on tasks designed to gather together their stores and belongings. She had decided that morning, when Hawk failed to return and Logan Tom set out to find him, that whatever else happened the Ghosts were leaving. She no longer trusted Pioneer Square, no longer felt safe, no longer believed they belonged in this part of the city. She had half decided this before, after their terrible battle with the centipede, but now she was determined. They would move to higher ground, farther back from the waterfront, up in the hills behind the city where they were out of the underground tunnels and sewers and away from the tall buildings. There might be less concrete and steel to protect them inside the residences and low-rises, but there might be fewer monsters, as well.
Besides, she thought, they were at the start of the journey Hawk’s vision had foreseen. The boy and his children were about to set out, just as she had told them in her stories. There was no reason to think about staying any longer.
She glanced around their temporary living quarters, trying to determine if she had forgotten anything. She regretted having to leave some of what they had built and scavenged, the heavier appliances and equipment, the things that had made their lives marginally easier. But they would find and build others and make new accommodations. She looked at Cheney, lying in one corner, head lowered between his paws, one eye partially open and staring at her. Nothing wrong with Cheney; he was back to his old self. He looked asleep, but he wasn’t. Sometimes she thought the big dog never really slept, that he only half slept and was always jus
t this side of dreaming.
Panther trudged through the door, dropping a pile of blankets and clothing in front of her. “Got us two wagons, carts, whatever, to haul this stuff. Can’t take too much, though. We got to pull it uphill, and even the Bear can’t do that for long.” He looked around expectantly. “Any news? He back yet?”
She knew who he was talking about. “No. Can we take some of the drinking water containers off the roof? We might have trouble finding new ones. Or even drinkable water.”
Panther shrugged. “We can take what we want. We just have to make choices.” He paused. “What if he don’t come back? What if something’s happened to the Bird-Man?”
She started to answer him, already knowing that she didn’t have the answer he needed, when she saw Cheney’s big head lift from the floor, his dark muzzle pointing toward the open door. Then he was on his feet, his look expectant and eager.
Hawk, she thought at once.
Panther, seeing the shift in her eyes, turned to look. “What?” he said.
Logan Tom appeared in the doorway, holding the black staff of his order in both hands, his visage dark with knowledge and foreboding.
“Hawk is the gypsy morph,” he announced before the question could be asked. “But he’s also a prisoner in the compound. Tessa, too.”
“You couldn’t get them out?” Owl asked, wheeling her chair forward until she was right in front of him.
Logan Tom shook his head. “Not without a fight. They caught Hawk trying to meet her, but they already knew about them. They found out about the medical supplies she was stealing for him. They held some kind of trial. They’ve sentenced both of them to be thrown from the walls at sunset.”
“Today?” Owl exclaimed. “That’s only four hours from now!”
Panther stalked forward. “You said you was supposed to protect the morph! What happened to that?”
Logan shrugged. “They were expecting me to try to break him out. Maybe they were even hoping I’d try.”
“So you gonna do nothing, Mr. Knight of the Word?” Panther was furious.
Logan met his gaze and held it. “No, Panther, I’m going to do what I came here to do. I’m going back and get Hawk out. Tessa, too, if I can manage it. Because now they won’t be expecting it.”
He reached out and tapped the boy on his shoulder. “And you’re going to help.”
A NGEL PEREZ AND Ailie were three hundred miles up the road on their first day after starting north to find the Elves when the tatterdemalion said, “Something is following us.”
Not anything Angel wanted to hear. She was hunched forward over the handlebars of the Mercury 5, the throb of the engine rippling through her body, wind tearing at her face. Even at the slower speeds they were forced to travel on the dangerously debris-strewn highway, her eyes were tearing.
She glanced over her shoulder at her passenger. The tatterdemalion clung to her like a second skin, bluish hair flying out behind her. She was so insubstantial that Angel could barely feel her presence. “Are you sure? How do you know?”
The dark eyes blinked. “I sense when the demonkind are near. One of them is near now, following.”
It was that female demon from the compound. Angel knew it instinctively. She should have found the reserves of strength she needed and killed her when she had the chance. Johnny always told her not to leave enemies alive; they would always come after you later. They would always think you were weak. Johnny knew.
“How far back?” The wind tore the words away and the roar of the ATV engine buried them.
The dark eyes met her own. “I can hear the sound of another ATV engine.”
Angel gritted her teeth, then throttled back the Mercury 5 and pulled over to the side of the road. She cut the engine and waited as the ringing in her ears faded and the throbbing in her body eased. She climbed down and stood in the middle of the roadway, listening. All around her, a steadily darkening sky was pressing down to meet the twilight shadows, the world empty and gray.
Within seconds she heard the other engine’s roar, big and powerful and instantly recognizable. A Harley Crawler.
Stupid, stupid girl! She chastised herself in fury. First for not killing the demon and second for not destroying that other machine. She had thought that taking its cells and hiding them would be enough, but the creature that hunted her was no ordinary demon. It had tracked her down and found her once, back in the ruins of Los Angeles, and it clearly intended to do so again.
She glanced over at the Mercury and the dark length of her staff, tucked down in the buckled grips of the storage slot. She did not think she was ready to do battle with this creature again so soon. It wasn’t that she was afraid; it was that she recognized a hard truth about herself that she didn’t much care for. She had been lucky to escape from her pursuer the first time. She might not be so lucky again.
It gave her pause that the demon was so intent on catching up to her. It had worked hard at finding her back in LA. It had discovered what she was doing to save the children in the other compounds, then ferreted out her secret entry into the one in Anaheim and set its trap for her. It hadn’t bothered with bringing help to destroy her; it had sufficient confidence—and likely pride—in its own abilities to want to do it alone. As it almost had. Luck had saved her. Luck, and a determination that matched that of the demon’s.
Still, to have it tracking her like this…
She glanced around quickly at the highway ahead and saw where it branched off into what must have once been an old logging road. Little more than a dirt track, the road dipped down off the embanked highway and disappeared into the trees. So, she thought. Easy enough to drive a hulk like the Harley Crawler down the middle of a paved road. Maybe it wouldn’t be so easy down a narrow, rutted trail.
She returned to the Mercury, where Ailie sat watching her, climbed back onto the seat, and restarted the engine. She felt Ailie’s slender arms come around her waist. “Hold tight, pequeñita,” she said to her.
She ratcheted the throttle forward and the ATV shot ahead to the dirt road. She turned down it without slowing, anxious now with twilight settling in and night coming on, knowing how hard it would be to get much of anywhere after dark. The Mercury coughed and labored as it hit the weed-grown interior of the trees, but she kept it on track, the dirt road a navigable ribbon that wound ahead into the woods.
In seconds the highway had disappeared behind her and the dusk had thickened to massed shadows and inky gloom. She throttled the Mercury’s engine back again, picking her way carefully, searching out the track where it sometimes faded into waist-high walls of brush and heavy grasses. These woods here were not as sickened as some, the foliage still plentiful and mostly green amid signs of wilt and some heavy stretches of decay. Hardwoods mingled with conifers, and in the deepening gloom it became possible to believe that the forest had never experienced the damaging effects of the chemical poisonings of the earth and atmosphere. Maybe some places were still healthy enough that they would recover in time, Angel thought, steering the ATV down the twisting path, eyes searching out the way. Maybe some places, like this one, would survive.
But uncertainty clouded her hopes, and she put the matter aside where it belonged.
They rode on for the better part of an hour without speaking, their progress slowed by the conditions of the road and the onset of night, but steady nevertheless. The logging road wound on mile after mile, sometimes splitting off into side trails, sometimes disappearing into open stretches in which the trees had been leveled to stumps and a star-strewn sky filled the horizon end to end. When she could, she took roads that narrowed down to almost nothing and angled through trees and stumps grown so close together that the big Harley couldn’t pass between them. Once, she took the Mercury into a stream and ran it down the waterway for more than a mile before coming out again onto a bedding of crushed rock and flat stone. Whatever she could do to hide their passing, she did it.
Finally, she slowed and stopped and turned off the
engine. “Now what do you hear?” she asked Ailie when the silence had deepened anew.
The tatterdemalion shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Do your senses warn of demons close by?”
Again, Ailie shook her head.
Angel smiled. “Bueno. Even so, we will ride on for another hour or two before we sleep. Just to make certain.”
She climbed back into place on the Mercury, turned on the engine, and set out into the dark.
DELLOREEN KNEW SHE was getting close. The smells she was using as her marker to track the female Knight of the Word were getting stronger, fresher in her nostrils. She could not yet hear the other ATV over the deep, powerful roar of her own, but she knew it wouldn’t be long. She had been tracking it all day, choosing not to rush her pursuit, having waited all night before setting out so that she wouldn’t miss anything that the light might reveal. The female had no reason to know she was being tracked and would not take much time or effort to hide her trail. She had taken almost none so far, even in her efforts to hide the Harley’s solar cells. Her decision to leave the children she had rescued indicated clearly that she had something of more importance with which to deal, and it was preoccupying her thoughts. Her passage through the trees and onto the highway had been straightforward and direct. She had a destination in mind and incentive to reach it, and she was not going to deviate in her efforts to get there.
All of which had made her very easy to track.
Because the Knight of the Word was not trying for extra speed or taking chances with the road and because Delloreen was, she was slowly catching up. If things continued as they were, she would have her by tonight and the chase would be ended.