Erin M. Leaf (10 page)

“Where’s Gideon?”

“He went to investigate.” She
pointed back the way they’d come into the cave.

“Shit,” Theo said, hand on his
pistol. He looked down the passageway frowning, then crouched down and unzipped
the duffle he’d brought from the house. He reached in and pulled out what
looked like a mini-Uzi.

“Jesus,” she breathed, staring.

He ignored her, edging past his
sister and niece. “Wake them up, okay?”

“Okay,” Bea replied.

Theo didn’t hear her. He was
already gone.

“What’s going on?” Ella asked,
yawning. The rumble of the ground answered her. “Oh my God.” She sat up quickly,
staring at Bea.

“Yeah. I think we need to be ready.”
Bea rubbed her face and tried to ignore the exhaustion dragging at her body. “Theo
and Gideon went to see what’s going on.”

“Ivy, wake up,” Ella said, shaking
her daughter. “We need to go.”

“What?” Ivy mumbled, dragging her
blanket over her head. “Sleeping.”

A harsh mechanical sound echoed
down the cave tunnel. Ella and Bea looked at each other, then Ella shook her
daughter harder. “Ivy, get up. Now.”

Her daughter shoved down the
blanket. “What’s happening?”

Bea had already grabbed the other
duffel, worried they’d have to make a run for it.
Though I don’t know where
we’d run,
she thought, searching the dark for some other exit. There weren’t
any.

“We don’t know,” Ella said, shoving
the blanket into her daughter’s backpack. “Just get up. Be ready.”

“Oh my God,” Bea whispered, hands
going sweaty when she heard a weird clicking noise. The bag was heavy, but she’d
wasn’t about to let go. It held the rest of the guns. She had no idea how to
use them, but she’d figure it out if she had to. She listened harder, then
backed up until her shoulder blades hit the wall near the softly glowing runes.
“They’re coming.”

“Who’s coming?” Ella asked, herding
Ivy closer to Bea.

“I don’t know. Can’t you hear it?”
Another rumble punctuated her words.

“Mom?” Ivy asked, her voice going
thin and high.

Bea didn’t have an answer for her.
When she heard gunfire, she knew. Instinctively, she slid her hand onto the
first rune. The one that meant
transport,
though she had no idea how she
knew that. It tingled under her palm and a hint of warmth slid down her skin.
She licked her lips when more shots sounded.

“Get behind me,” Ella said, shoving
Ivy against the cave wall. Ivy squirmed next to Bea, then went still, her eyes
going wide in the dim lighting. She gripped her mom’s shirt so hard her fingers
went white.

Bea followed her gaze. Just at the
entrance to the cave, Theo dragged Gideon, hauling him back with one arm while
he lifted his weapon with the other. Gideon was barely walking.

Bea ran forward, grabbing him under
his other arm. The throat-clogging scent of blood tickled the back of her nose,
but she ignored it with the ease of long practice. Theo grunted and they moved
faster.

“What happened?” she asked,
breathing hard. Gideon was nearly a dead weight over her shoulder. She needed
to get him somewhere she could look him over.

“Aliens,” Theo said tersely,
looking down the tunnel.

“Lotta aliens,” Gideon managed.

Bea sucked in a breath, heart
hammering. “We need to get out of here.”

Theo laughed harshly. “Impossible.
Where would we go?”

“Get us to the wall,” Gideon said
thickly.

Suddenly, Ella was there, helping
carry Gideon. Bea stumbled, but Theo grabbed her before they fell. When they
got to the wall they propped him Gideon up. He groaned, face pale. A streak of
blood decorated his cheekbone. Bea grabbed his face, forcing him to look at
her. His eyes were okay, pupils even. She wished she had her penlight, but he
pulled away before she could examine him further, scrabbling along the wall.
His hand hit the first rune and it crackled. Light poured from between his
fingers.

Just beyond him, Ivy stared toward
the tunnel entrance. Bea looked too and saw the impossible: an insect larger
than a man, multi-faceted eyes gleaming, crouched just inside the entrance to
the cave. It was entirely black and sharp-edged.

“Oh God,” she murmured.

“Put your hand on the rune,” Gideon
said, grabbing her arm.

She did as he said, feeling the
light crawl up her arm like an electric thread. It didn’t exactly hurt, but it
wasn’t comfortable, either. This rune meant
Terrene,
but she had no idea
what that was. She almost moved away, but Gideon pressed against her, keeping
her in place.

“Don’t,” he said harshly.

Light shot out from between her
fingers. The insect across the cave hissed and raised its arms—
arms? Those
aren’t arms, they’re claws, Jesus,
Bea thought, her mind fumbling over
itself—and then the creature lunged for them. Theo raised his little Uzi and a
burst of gunfire spat from the tip, so loud Bea winced, ears ringing. The
insect stumbled and Theo shot it again, but the alien looked completely
undamaged, its carapace unbroken. Bea shook her head, trying to clear the
exhaustion from her mind. Her adrenaline stores were all tapped out and she was
too tired to understand what was happening. Nothing made sense until Gideon
reached out and grabbed Theo, yanking him back.

“Touch the damn rune!” he yelled.
The blood on his face looked like war paint.

Theo glanced at him, then slapped
his free hand on the wall. He hit the last rune—it meant
Cearvall,
Bea
somehow knew—and it lit up. The light swirled around them like a sunspot gone
rogue on the ground, all energy and no control. Bea couldn’t move her hand anymore;
it was stuck to the wall as fire poured over her.

The alien screamed and rushed at
them, drops of black ichor flashing wetly on its chest. Bea sucked in a breath,
fighting to stay upright, hand on the wall, and then the view abruptly
shimmered and the creature passed right through them. She tried to speak, but
her hand was burning and the floor shifted under her feet like sand. She couldn’t
make a sound.

“Oh dear God,” Ella said, from far
away.

Bea closed her eyes and prayed.

Chapter Seven

Gideon knew he was hurt, but he
didn’t know how
bad
. His thigh felt like it had been
simultaneously frozen and burned. He had blood on his hands, too, but not as
much as he feared when he let go of the rune, dust swirling around his feet.
The air felt strange and he stumbled.

“Whoa, easy there,” Theo said,
catching him.

Gideon shuddered as his thigh
cramped. “God,” he muttered, looking down. “Bea, shit.” He dragged Theo down to
the cave floor, ignoring the sharp pain in his leg. Bea wasn’t moving. He put
his hands on her face, unutterably relieved to feel her breath puff against his
fingers. “Thank God.”

Theo let out a breath, leaning
against the wall. “She’s okay. Just exhausted, I think.”

“Mom?” Ivy’s voice sounded thready.
“Where are we?”

Gideon glanced up. The cave wasn’t
dark anymore. It wasn’t damp. The light streaming in from the entrance was
curiously red-tinged, as if the sun had shifted from yellow to a different part
of the spectrum. Abruptly, he realized that it had. Or rather,
they’d
shifted. To another planet.

“Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore,”
Theo murmured quietly.

“It worked,” Gideon said,
swallowing hard.

Ella touched the wall, frowning
down at her fingers. The dust in the cave glittered faintly. “What the hell
just happened?”

Bea stirred, moaning quietly.

Gideon cupped her cheek, worried. “Bea?”

“God,” she said thickly. “My head
is killing me.” She struggled to sit up.

He got a hand under her shoulder
and helped her lean against him. “You’re okay. Just exhausted.”

She sighed against his arm, warm
breath tickling his skin. Her weight pressed on his injured leg and he
controlled a wince. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing what the alien had done
to him. He pushed the thought away, reveling in the warmth flowing in from the
mouth of the cave. He’d left his jacket back at the other cave, not that he
needed it here. He glanced out again, staring at the red light streaming onto
the walls. Everything felt different. Weightier. The cave floor and sides were
striped with layers of rock, from pale sand to deep red ocher. They were the
color of his childhood dreams.

“What happened?” she asked.

Theo shifted, easing her back
against his shoulder and off Gideon’s leg. The three of them were crammed
against each other, but Gideon had no intention of moving.

He took a deep breath. “The runes
transported us here.”

She blinked at him. Gideon closed
his eyes and tipped his head back, leaving it to Theo to explain. He knew his
partner had already grasped the significance of what had happened.

“Where is here?” Ella asked,
hugging Ivy. They were the only ones still standing.

“Terrene,” Theo said simply. “Gideon’s
home planet.”

Silence. Then Ella sucked in a
sharp breath. “What? Are you crazy?”

Gideon opened his eyes. Ella was
looking at her brother as if he’d lost his mind. He chuckled, suddenly amused.

“No, he’s not crazy,” Bea murmured,
lifting her head.

Gideon could feel her gathering
herself. She sat up, careful not to jostle him.

“That’s impossible,” Ella retorted.
She hugged her daughter tighter. Gideon felt bad for Ivy, but not that bad.
They’d survived the invasion. That was better than the alternative.

“Let me see your leg,” Bea said,
shoving at him gently.

Gideon shifted and let her see. His
jeans were torn, but now that the light was better, he could tell the wound
wasn’t as bad as he’d suspected. The alien had gotten in a lucky strike,
slicing across the top of his right leg.

“Hmm, it’s already clotting. I
should probably sew it up, but for now we can wrap it,” Bea said, leaning
closer. She sniffed. “It needs a good cleaning though. I think there’s some
kind of mild poison on the edges. I need to debride the edges.”

“That would explain the burning,”
Gideon said, grimacing as she poked him harder than was comfortable.

“Do we have anything we can wrap it
with?” she asked.

Theo handed her a roll of gauze. “This
should do.”

Gideon laughed. “We’ve both got bum
right legs now.”

“I think we’ll live,” Theo said
dryly as Bea wrapped Gideon’s injury.

“What do we do now?” Ivy asked,
pulling free of her mother. She moved closer. “That looks nasty,” she said,
staring at Gideon’s leg. Bea covered it with the gauze.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she
said, tucking the end of the gauze under the edge. When she looked up, a flash
of silver in her eyes caught Gideon by surprise. She looked away.

I’m seeing things,
he thought, but cupped
her cheek anyway. “Look at me,” he murmured.

She glanced at him, eyebrows lifting.
The silver at the back of her beautiful grey eyes flashed again. A frisson of
shock worried through Gideon. “Theo,” he said, voice coming out strangled.

“What’s wrong?” his best friend
asked, moving closer.

When Gideon put out a hand and
tilted Theo’s face to his, he couldn’t believe it. Silver light moved behind
Theo’s warm brown irises, like sunlight dancing on water.

“Dear God,” he murmured. “What do
you see?” he demanded, forcing them to look at him. “My eyes. Look!”

Bea wrinkled her forehead, but it
was Theo who cursed, hands going to Gideon’s neck. “What the hell?” He tipped
Gideon’s face up.

“Ella, can you see it?” Theo asked,
not looking away.

His sister came closer. “What are
you talking—” She broke off, staring.

It’s true,
Gideon thought, heart
twisting in his chest. He remembered his mother, her eyes flashing in the
light.
He could barely believe the images rushing up,
overwhelming his sense of self. Half-forgotten memories of his parents, of his
mother, rushed through his head like ghosts. He remembered his father, his
fathers,
both of them, putting on their armor, the ritual weaponing that kept them all
safe.

He wasn’t human. He’d never
been
human.

He sucked in the warm air, two deep
breaths, but it didn’t help. He struggled away from Theo’s hands, trying to put
into words what he only knew instinctively. “We’ve bonded,” he finally said
aloud.

Ella stared at him. He didn’t care.
He looked at Bea, the one person who truly didn’t deserve this, but she didn’t
seem upset. Rather, her face had softened and she glanced from him to Theo and
back again as if she were trying to make sure they were real. He opened his
mouth to explain, not that he knew where to begin, but a strange voice
interrupted before he could speak.