Families. The Bloods I knew tried to differentiate themselves from humans by suppressing their baser emotions: lust, greed, hate, envy. The human sense of vengeance was seen as most distasteful of all, because it drew on desire rather than logic.
I was tickled to see a daughter of the royal lines so hell-bent on revenge for the death of her sister. As much as I wanted to believe she was trying to help us, we were simply a foil. A means to an end, and that end was finding Kelsa, the goblin responsible for Istral’s death. And mine.
“On the bright side,” I said, “we know she’ll show with her people.”
“We just can’t be sure she won’t stab us when our backs are turned, just to save guessing on whether or not we can beat Tovin.”
“Then we don’t turn our backs.” I spun us so I could see the razed and ruined tenement that held the bodies of our allies. It was a terrible way to die, and I prayed they’d died quickly. An entire Triad—three Hunters and their Handler—wiped out. The Triads would recover their losses; they always did. Bastian was excellent at recruiting Hunters. I just didn’t know how they’d replace Rufus.
If a Tainted was loosed, how long before the rest of the city learned of its Dreg neighbors and our mission of secrecy became obsolete?
We stood together, our faces caressed by the heat of the fire. The odor of smoke and wet pavement made me want to sneeze. I held tight to Wyatt’s hands—the only calm we would get before the oncoming storm.
Activity on the street increased. Paramedics emerged from their ambulance with a stretcher and medical bag. They pushed it closer to the front entrance of the building and waited. I strained to hear the shouts of frenzied voices. Moments later, two firemen burst from the front doors in a cloud of gray smoke, carrying a grown man between them. The man was badly burned on his hands and chest, and his face was streaked with soot and sweat, but I still recognized that hair.
My mouth fell open. “Holy hell.”
Wyatt grunted.
I watched the paramedics strap Rufus St. James to their stretcher and wheel him toward the ambulance. He was tucked inside, and it sped away with its precious cargo.
“I don’t believe it,” Wyatt said.
“How did he survive that?”
“I don’t know, but Rufus used up the last of his nine lives on this.”
We waited a few more minutes, hoping for one more miracle to be carried out of the burning building. After a while, it became obvious she wouldn’t. Nadia was gone.
“We should go,” I said.
Wyatt nodded. “You know, I just realized something.”
“What’s that?”
“We still don’t have a car.”
Cars ripe for stealing were in easy supply on the streets of Mercy’s Lot. Hot-wiring skills, however, were lacking. After I broke into a late-model Chevy POS, Wyatt tried unsuccessfully to start the damned thing. Finding the correct wires was harder in real life than on television, so we moved on to Plan B.
“We are so going to Hell for this,” I said as I struggled to hold on to our victim’s legs while Wyatt carried him by the torso. A few more steps and we had the unconscious man in the alley, nestled comfortably among a pile of plastic trash bags and empty crates.
“You doubted that anyway?” Wyatt asked.
He palmed the man’s car keys and led the way back to the street. I kept expecting someone to shout at us, or police sirens to break the quiet of the night. Music still drifted in from far away, but this block seemed mostly asleep. Good news for us; not so much for our randomly selected victim.
Wyatt unlocked the small, blue car and I slid into the passenger seat. The vinyl was cracked and foam puffed out. The floor was sticky, the carpeting worn completely through. I glanced at the dash. At least it had a full tank of gas.
“I feel like I should leave an IOU or something,” I said.
“I feel like we’re doing him a favor by stealing this piece of shit.” Wyatt turned the engine. It sputtered, strained, sputtered again, and finally roared to life. The “check engine” light flashed. Thunderous rap music blasted from the speakers; I turned the radio off.
Towering tenements and crumbling businesses were replaced by trees and gently sloping hills. Soon we would pass the city limits, enter the scattered homes of the valley’s end, and wind our way up into the mountains north of the city—a majestic sight I often admired from a distance and rarely ventured into. Nature was nice, but I was a city girl.
The clips of ammo in my pockets made sitting still uncomfortable. I squirmed, aware of warmth against my backside. A hand on the seat found nothing amiss there, but did locate the source in one of my pockets.
Curious, I fished out the crystal Horzt had given me. It was warmer than it should have been. I turned it over in my fingers, careful of the sharp tip. The size and shape reminded me of high-caliber rifle ammunition, but I had no gun with which to fire it.
“What are you thinking?” Wyatt asked.
I lifted one shoulder in a noncommittal shrug and held the crystal lengthwise between two fingers. Bits of light refracted onto the dash in colorful patterns. “I hope this comes in handy at some point, because as far as weapons go, it’s kind of tiny.”
“Horzt said you’d know.”
“Yeah, well, until then, it makes a pretty prism, don’t you think?”
“It could make a nice paperweight.”
“Yeah.” I pocketed the crystal. Front pocket this time, point angled up so I didn’t stab myself in the thigh.
We passed the gas station a few minutes later. Carved into a rocky spot on the side of the road, it had limited parking and two badly lit pumps, anchored by a dingy convenience store. The store was closed, and we hadn’t passed another car in ten minutes. It was a good place to meet.
Another mile up, the road widened a bit and provided a gravelly shoulder. Wyatt pulled off and maneuvered the car into a ditch. Not ideal, but the best we could do by way of hiding our transportation. Someone would have to be searching for a parked car to notice.
The chilly mountain air bit into my exposed skin. I slammed the car door shut and stood for a moment in the weeds, breathing the fresh air. Inhale, hold, exhale. It energized me as we began our mile-long hike up the road. A peeling sign advertising the preserve and its entrance a quarter mile ahead was our marker. We veered off the road and into the woods.
I’d never been in the forest at night. Darkness blanketed us, broken only by thin shafts of moonlight between the towering treetops. Fallen branches and logs marred our path, hidden by layers of last year’s fallen leaves. The breeze whispered past us. Crickets chirped; insects I didn’t know called to one another. Our footsteps were lost to the symphony of the night.
We followed the descent of the mountain. The preserve was in a valley, half a mile from the shore of the Anjean. One of the park’s two hiking trails ran past the river itself. They’d be grown over by now, but good guideposts if we found one.
“You smell that?” Wyatt whispered. He stopped next to a towering elm and inhaled deeply.
I did the same. Hidden on the edges of rotting leaves and dirt was the faintest odor of tar. “We’re close,” I said.
Not as close as I thought, it turned out. We walked another couple dozen yards before the trees thinned out and the night sky opened up. The odor of tar was traced to fresh blacktop—a sea of it, in fact. It extended far beyond the borders of the old parking lot, on which we stood, to cover every inch of what had once been bare soil. It butted up to the tree line on our side, and into the dim distance. Three buildings stood in the middle of the pavement, the largest and closest being the Visitors’ Center. Just beyond it was an open-air pavilion for picnickers and planned parties. To the right side of the pavilion stood the two-story, bricked Olsmill Natural History Museum.
More blacktop massed out behind the museum, where the petting zoo had once stood. It appeared to be
