“Daniel’s not evil,” Katherine said quietly. “I’m not saying he’s good, or even that he meant anything other than to take Chloe to Ajani. I’m just suggesting you be a little patient.”
“I know, but Chloe was out there alone because I fucked up. First the Verrot, then the . . . what we almost did when we were in the desert.” Jack didn’t want to meet his sister’s eyes, so he resumed walking. “And then after we were about to . . . finish what we started in the desert, I called her another woman’s name. What reason did she have to stay?”
“In the desert and here? I know you were upset over losing Mary, but . . .” Katherine’s words faded, and she shook her head at him.
They walked silently for a minute before Jack said, “I didn’t love Mary. I wanted to. Hell, she wanted me to, but I didn’t. Whatever Chloe is, she isn’t a replacement for Mary.”
“So tell her that when you see her even if she’s in his house,” Katherine suggested. “That’s not breaking the rules. Daniel does it; Ajani does it. They both tell me to join them all the damn time. You just have to be willing to swallow your pride and say your piece in front of whoever’s there.”
“They’d love that, wouldn’t they?” he said bitterly.
“It’s either that or accept that she’s in Ajani’s house now, and as long as she’s there, if she warms anyone’s bed, it can’t be yours.”
The thought of Chloe in Ajani’s or Daniel’s bed was enough to make Jack stop midstep. He didn’t turn back, but the thought of shooting Daniel was powerful enough that his hand dropped to where his gun typically would be—and he realized that he’d actually gone outside without a weapon. When he’d heard that Chloe was gone, he’d walked out unarmed.
Katherine, who fortunately was armed, stepped in front of him. “If she stays, she’s as dead as Mary to us right now.”
“Like Daniel?” Jack said, regretting the words the moment they were said.
“Exactly like Daniel.” Katherine looked pointedly at his empty hand. Even when he’d been falling-down drunk, he didn’t go outside without a gun. Worry over a woman had made him do so. “Either way, you can’t do anything about it tonight, and we don’t have time for you to be off your game. Not now. I’m going to get the Verrot and meet Garuda. Get your gear, or I’ll tell Edgar he’s going with me while you stay here and babysit Francis.”
Jack walked in silence the rest of the way to the tavern. She was right: they couldn’t violate every safety precaution they’d put in place over the years; there was no way he would endanger his sister like that—but no amount of logic quashed his furious urge to knock down Ajani’s door and carry Chloe out of that house. He’d lived half of his life focused on the mission, on the good of the team, on doing the right thing. Wanting something—wanting someone—for himself was new.
A little while later, when they were not quite halfway between Gallows and the camp, Jack and Katherine found Garuda standing calmly in the Gallows Desert. As was typical in meetings with the bloedzuiger, an escort was with him. In this case, only one of his pack stood waiting for the customary greeting. It was an odd tradition, but many years ago, Garuda had explained it as a ritual of respect. The conflict between one of his representatives and his guest established power dynamics, but Jack was well aware that Garuda adjusted the fights for his own reasons. The old bloedzuiger had been known to use the tradition to remove a troublesome newborn or to establish his authority over the guest, so Jack had expected to find a young newborn that could be quickly dispatched before they moved on to business.
When he realized that the accompanying bloedzuiger appeared to be one of Garuda’s older, more articulate ones, he looked around for another one to fight. There were no others in sight and no cover behind which they could hide.
“You want me to fight him?” Jack asked.
“No,” Garuda said.
Jack held his hands out to the sides in a questioning gesture. “I’m not in the mood for games today.”
“Traditions are not games, Jackson,” Garuda chastised softly, and then his gaze went to Katherine. “Katherine.”
She stepped past Jack. “I’m ready.”
Clarity hit him then: they’d been speaking when he couldn’t hear them, and his sister was apparently intending to fight one of the oldest bloedzuigers Jack had met.
“What in the hell are you two playing at?” Jack reached out to grab his sister’s arm, but she moved out of reach in a blurringly quick move.
“Stand aside, Jack,” Garuda all but hissed. “Katherine summoned me here, so she will attend to the pleasantries.”
“If you think I’m letting my sister—”
“Shut it, Jack,” Katherine interrupted. Slowly, looking like she was warming to the idea, she smiled at Garuda and then said, “And, you, don’t talk while I’m fighting.”
Garuda lifted his shoulder in a shrug, and then gestured to the bloedzuiger, which promptly launched itself at Katherine.
She dodged almost as quickly as it had sprung, and Jack gasped at the sight of his sister moving at such a speed. He’d thought that he was long done with being surprised by the things she could do, but as she kicked and punched the creature in front of her, he found himself amending his beliefs.
“She didn’t fight that way in Gallows,” he murmured to Garuda.
The bloedzuiger only nodded. His attention was fixed on the fight in front of them. Abruptly, he tossed a blade toward the fighters, and Katherine snatched it out of the air without even looking.
She frowned as she glanced at the knife and then snapped, “Are you trying to kill me?”
“No. It was a test,” Garuda said bluntly. “You can read him, Katherine. Through me, you can anticipate his movements.” He stepped closer to the fight and ordered the bloedzuiger, “Faster.”
“I’m not here for tests,” Katherine growled. At the same time, she’d stabbed the knife through one of its wrists, grabbed the other arm, pulled it over, and stabbed it too, pinning the bloedzuiger’s arms together.
It tried to strike her with its pinned hands, but Katherine caught them and forced them upward and then back, bending the bloedzuiger’s body into an arc. She continued propelling its arms until it was forced to fall onto its back, and then she slammed her boot-clad foot into the bloedzuiger’s jaw, forcing its head to the side and holding it to the ground.
“Call it,” she ordered.
“The needs of etiquette are met,” Garuda said softly.
Katherine took a step toward him, and for a moment Jack wondered if he’d need to intervene. His sister looked like she might turn her attention from the creature she’d just incapacitated to the bloedzuiger who controlled it.
“I’ve never known another creature capable of doing what you do.” Garuda’s tongue snaked out to lick his lips in what Jack hoped was an absentminded motion. If not, the bloedzuiger was trying to provoke Katherine.
“I’m human,” she objected.
“You’re more and more like one of my own,” Garuda added, seemingly goading her in word even as his tone stayed even.
Katherine narrowed her gaze at him. “Just because I react peculiarly to your blood doesn’t mean I’m a monster.”
Garuda sighed. “I am not a monster, Katherine.”
“In my world—”
“You aren’t in another world,” Garuda chided. “You’re in this world, and your body acts more and more like one of us. Your proximity to me when you’ve had Verrot, and your acceptance of our connection, make it even more so. You are one of only two in this world who can do such things.”
“Two?” Jack interjected. “Who is the other?”
Garuda met Jack’s gaze. “Ajani.”
Katherine’s eyes flashed. “Ajani?” She raised her hand and pointed at Garuda. “He reacts to Verrot like this, and you didn’t think to tell me before now? Or at least to tell Jack?”
As she reached out to shove her finger at Garuda’s chest, he caught her hand. “Being like my kind does mak
e you kin to my pack, but it doesn’t mean I accept insults, Katherine.” Keeping her hand in his with no apparent effort, even as she struggled, Garuda added, “There is a protocol that must be observed. I could not tell you until such time as it was necessary.”
He glanced at Jack then. “You are both temperamental beings, and had you known, I’m not sure what the consequences would have been.”
“Ajani is why you forbade your pack and your associates to provide Verrot, isn’t he?” Jack asked. When Garuda nodded, Jack continued, “No other being in the Wasteland responds to Verrot like Katherine and Ajani do. Has anyone done so before now?”
“No.” Garuda stared at Jack, although he did not volunteer any more information. The bloedzuiger followed the rules of his kind even now. That didn’t mean, however, that he wasn’t staring at Jack as if he would will the very thoughts into his mind if he could.
He didn’t need to, though; Jack saw the answer. “You don’t think Ajani is from this world.”
“That would be my belief,” Garuda said evenly. “I’ve thought as much for some time, but until Katherine revealed her secret to you, there was no proper way to provoke that thought in your mind. There are rules. He might not understand them, but you do, Jackson.”
Katherine’s gaze darted between them. “I might have some of your traits, but I better not be going to develop that one. Speak plainly. How go’damned hard is that?”
Garuda stiffened visibly. “For my kind, I speak as plainly as I can without violating etiquette.”
“Kather—”
“You’re right,” she interrupted Jack. “I’m sorry.”
The bloedzuiger Katherine had fought walked over at that point and held out a bottle of Verrot to Katherine. “We brought this to you. For your packmate.”
Garuda beamed at them, his unpleasantly red lips curved in one of the most joyous smiles Jack had seen on the bloedzuiger. Garuda looked from his fellow bloedzuiger to Katherine with an expression of almost paternal pride before saying, “The medicine and the Verrot will heal your Francis. There was doubt as to your worthiness, but you’ve proven yourself.” He glanced at the other bloedzuiger. “And you’ve earned the right to the desert territory, Styrr.”
The creature, Styrr, bowed. “I will protect her and the territory with my life.” As it straightened, its gaze was fastened on Katherine. “I hope you do not die in the coming fight.”
Jack waited for his sister to say something inflammatory, but she merely bowed in return and murmured, “Me too.”
Chapter 30
Kitty looked to Garuda’s newly promoted bloedzuiger and then to Garuda himself. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the idea that there were consequences to her resistance to admitting that she reacted peculiarly to Verrot. It made her wonder what else she didn’t know because she didn’t understand the rules of different Wastelander cultures. The miners made sense to her because they reminded her of people she’d known in California, but she’d not made much effort to understand the bloedzuigers. In truth, she wasn’t entirely sure she even understood the human Wastelanders.
“Do you believe Ajani sent the brethren after us?” she asked.
Instead of replying, Garuda caught her gaze and in a voice that was both in her mind and audible to others, he asked, “Are you kin to my pack, Katherine?”
It felt like his words echoed, stretched out in tendrils to reach bloedzuigers throughout the Wasteland, and Kitty felt her mind tangling with those threads, connecting to them in an instant that could vanish or last forever. “I am.”
The threads of connection snapped into place, and she realized that Garuda was allowing her access to several hundred bloedzuigers. As long as she had Verrot in her system, she could reach out to all of those minds. In the complete clarity that Garuda allowed her, she understood too that this was a level of access that was granted only to the eldest of his kind.
“I cannot say for certain,” Garuda said in answer to her question about the brethren, but then he added to his answer privately in her mind: “I would speak to Governor Soanes. Listen to the pack; see what they have witnessed.”
And she did. No one could show her proof of Ajani consulting with the brethren, but there were snippets, brief flashes of images that flooded her mind quicker than she thought she could process them. Vaguely, she noticed that she’d dropped to her knees as the images began to resemble a linear narrative.
Ajani visited the governor. They stood speaking in the street, and then Ajani turned his gaze to the bloedzuiger who watched them. In the vision, she was and was not that bloedzuiger. Ajani’s gaze was fastened on her. On us, on the pack.
“Katherine?” Jack shook her.
The brethren came to the governor; four of them went into his office in a procession of gray robes.
“What did you do?” Jack had an arm around her, but it felt like she could and couldn’t feel it all at the same time. He wasn’t speaking to her—except he was: she was connected to the entire pack. She wasn’t hearing him beside her, but through Garuda.
“That’s why his arm feels weird,” she told Garuda.
“Focus on the knowledge” was all Garuda said.
Kitty pulled her gaze away from what she saw through his eyes and returned to the pack’s memories.
“Stay away from Miss Reed,” Ajani snarled, looking far more monstrous than she’d ever seen. A man knelt in front of him, held in place by two guards. She couldn’t see his face, only his back, but she had a sinking feeling that she knew him.
Ajani turned to a third guard. “Make him suffer, but I want him healed before we go to Gallows.”
As she watched, she tried to remind herself that it was a memory, that it wasn’t happening at that very moment, but she wished she could close her eyes as the guards beat the man. She heard the sizzle of burning flesh, the screams, the blows, and she watched him pass out from the pain. When they released him, he tumbled back, and she saw his face. Even through the blood and swelling, she knew him.
“Daniel,” she whispered aloud.
“He disobeyed his master,” Garuda said.
Kitty forced herself to search the other threads, to look for connections between Ajani and the brethren, but she found none. She saw the monks with the governor on one other occasion, but she didn’t see them with Ajani. There were brief flashes of Ajani, but they were rare. Finally, the connection with the whole of Garuda’s pack receded, and she understood that Ajani knew that the bloedzuigers watched him, that he only showed them what he wanted Garuda to know.
“I don’t understand why he . . . why me?”
“Because Ajani knows that you are as he is, Katherine.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Garuda said aloud. The connection was severed, not only to the pack but also to him, and she felt a wash of pain that was not hers.
Kitty realized that what had just happened was unprecedented—and had left him exhausted. Garuda was remaining upright only by sheer will.
From the ground where she knelt, she stared up at him, trying to find her voice. The transition to speech was oddly discomfitting. “I saw,” she said, “and I have a question for the governor.”
Jack glanced from her to Garuda. “Care to fill me in?”
“What Katherine shares with you is her choice. There are rules that allow me to speak to my kin, but not to you.” Garuda glanced at the wrist of the bloedzuiger beside him, and the creature held it up to his master’s lips without hesitation.
As Garuda drank, he watched Kitty, and for the first time she saw something beautiful in the way the other bloedzuiger was replenishing Garuda’s energy. It seemed natural—and caring. As always, the magic had left her feeling shattered, but this time she also felt vaguely intoxicated. Her mind replayed the final moments of her connection with the pack, and she realized that Garuda had pushed some energy her way before he’d severed that connection. She smiled at him, realizing how wrong she’d been about him. He’d given her enough streng
th to return to Gallows.
Jack was unaware of what Garuda had done and offered his hand to help her up. She stood and leaned against her brother as she told him, “The monks worked for the governor, and Ajani visits the governor.” She paused, weighing the words yet unspoken. “He . . . Ajani knew that the bloedzuigers watched him, and he let them see that much.”
Telling Jack about Daniel’s torture was necessary, but she couldn’t unman him by sharing more details than were absolutely essential. She settled on saying, “Ajani tortured Danny because of me.”
“He what?” Jack asked.
“Tortured him. Burned, broken . . .” She tried to push the images away. “Danny was right to warn me, Jack. We don’t stay dead, but if Ajani had me, I’d find a way. I’d have to. I couldn’t . . . survive the kind of things he did to Danny. Things he did because of me.”
Garuda pulled his mouth away from the other bloedzuiger’s wrist. “No. Not because of you.” He dabbed his mouth with a cloth. “Ajani did that because he wants them to fear him. Your Daniel knew the cost of speaking to you.”
She glanced at Garuda and murmured, “Thank you . . . for everything.”
He dipped his head in a brief bow.
“I’m going to kill him,” Jack snarled.
“Ajani or the governor?”
“Both of them, all of them, I don’t know.” Jack made a sound of frustration. “If the monks are working for the governor and Soanes is meeting with Ajani . . . And as much as I don’t like Daniel, I’m not going to stand by while he gets tortured. Daniel was one of us. He might not be now, but no one should be tortured—especially for looking out for you.”
“Oh, I’m fine with killing Ajani,” Kitty said. “If we knew how, I’d have done it years ago, but we owe Governor Soanes a chance to explain before we go jumping to conclusions.”
The shocked expression on Jack’s face was almost amusing. “You’re recommending caution?” He looked at Garuda. “Is this your doing?”