The Gypsy Morph (44 page)

“What if we don’t have time? Look at what’s happened to us in just a few weeks.” Her gaze was steady, her face calm. She looked so grownup. “If something happens that I should have known about, it will be my fault.”

“Nothing that happens will be your fault,” he said, squeezing her hand to emphasize the point.

“What happened to Chalk was my fault.”

He felt his reply catch in his throat. “No, it wasn’t. Not any more than it was with Squirrel or Mouse. Even if you could have sensed things the way you used to, you couldn’t have done anything. None of us could. We all look out for each other the best way we can. But sometimes even that isn’t enough. You know that.”

She nodded, but didn’t look as if she believed it.

“Like I said,” he followed up quickly, “your ability to sense danger might be on vacation for a time. Maybe it will come back. You need to give it a chance.”

She nodded again, still looking doubtful. He gave her a moment, and then he said, “Maybe you’re trying too hard. Maybe you can still sense danger just like you used to. Maybe you’ve just forgotten how to let it happen.” He paused. “When that boy who killed Squirrel took you away from us, you had a pretty bad time of it. Maybe that was part of it.”

She still didn’t say anything, her forehead furrowed in thought, her mouth pursed. “Maybe.”

The wind gusted sharply and particles of dust flew through the air like tiny needles, stinging the flesh. Hawk ducked his head and covered his mouth and nose with his collar. Candle’s lowered face was completely hidden by the mop of her hair. Hawk wanted to talk to her some more, but it had become impossible to do anything but slog on through the screen of grit and debris whirling around them. Moments later, Helen Rice, riding one of the AVs, caught up to them and announced that the caravan was becoming too strung out and they were going to have to close the gaps before they got separated altogether. What had started as a normal wind stirring up the loose earth of the flats was turning into a full-blown dust storm, and she was stopping the caravan until it passed.

Reluctantly, Hawk agreed. “You better get back with Owl,” he told Candle. “She might need your help. We’ll talk some more later. I promise.”

The little girl turned away, heading back toward the Lightning, her head still lowered, her face hidden. He wasn’t happy with leaving things this way, but there wasn’t any choice.

“Take Cheney with you!” he called after her. “Go on, Cheney,” he urged the big dog, gesturing.

With a rueful glance over his shoulder, Cheney slouched over to join Candle. As the pair headed back toward the Lightning, Hawk stood where he was for a while, waiting for the rest of the caravan to catch up. In bits and pieces, it did so. The children were shepherded into the center of the camp by their caregivers while the drivers and guards worked quickly to construct makeshift facilities. The intensity of the storm continued to increase. By now the flats east were roiling with clouds of dust so high, the distant mountains were blocked from view. Hawk walked back through the camp, helping where he could, speaking to everyone, making it a point to let those he led know he was still there and still actively involved in what was happening. He did what he could to reassure them. It took almost an hour for the last of the stragglers to wander in, and by then everyone was in the process of covering up as best they could. There was little protection to be had for those outside the vehicles and the wagons; most simply hunkered down behind whatever shelter they could find. The wind howled, and the dust spattered against metal and canvas with a strange hissing sound. The storm was all around now, closing the members of the caravan away in a whispery, whirling shroud, and the world beyond disappeared as if blown away.

Hawk finished walking the camp from end to end, taking time to check that there were guards posted everywhere, and that no gaps in the defenses would allow an unnoticed breach. On his way back to the point, he stopped to speak with the caregivers who had gathered the bulk of the children inside a trio of broad, squat tents where they could be kept close together and carefully watched. He had not forgotten what was out there in the invisible nothing, what was waiting to steal away more victims if it could. Their predator was still hunting them. He did not pretend to understand its reasoning. But he had looked into its strange eyes and he understood well enough what sort of monster it was.

Once outside, he started toward the Lightning AV where Owl and the other Ghosts would have gathered. He had almost reached it when he caught sight of Tessa moving at the perimeter of the camp. She was between an old truck and a wagon, weaving her way through a series of small tents toward the waiting storm. At first he could not believe that he was seeing correctly, but then he saw her lift her head momentarily as if searching for something.

A second later, she was through the gap between the vehicles and outside the camp.

He stared in disbelief.
Tessa!

He paused only a second to wonder what she was doing, and then he was running after her, hurrying to catch up.

In the wild rush of the wind and dust, with everyone trying to get under cover, only one member of the caravan saw him go.

F
ARTHER WEST
, still many miles away, Logan Tom and Simralin Belloruus rode the Ventra 5000 toward the roiling gray wall of the dust storm. They had watched it grow in intensity during the past hour, and now they knew with certainty how severe it was going to be. They also knew that there was no time to get out of its path.

“We have to take shelter,” Logan said, giving voice to what they were both thinking.

He drove on for a short distance, then turned the big AV down into a ravine and parked it in the lee of a rocky outcropping that formed a barrier between themselves and the approaching storm. Glancing doubtfully at their meager protection, he shut down the engine and turned off the power. Outside, the wind howled across the barren landscape with such force that the entire vehicle shuddered.

“Guess this will have to do,” he said.

Simralin made no reply. They sat in silence, listening to the wind. The storm rolled over them, thick with dirt particles, and the sky and the earth disappeared within its roiling shroud. The light died and left them shadows cloaked in a gray-brown haze. The sound of the sand striking the hard surfaces of the outcropping and the AV was like the buzzing of angry bees. Outside the shell of the vehicle, the world slowly disappeared behind the wall of the storm.

“Tell me the rest of what happened to you,” she urged him.

He had begun relating the details of his own experience in escaping from the Cintra shortly after they had set out yesterday, then lost the thread somewhere along the way and hadn’t gotten back to it. He had gotten as far as Kirisin’s ordeal as a prisoner of the skrails, assuring her first that her brother was safe and well, but he hadn’t gone on from there. She knew of Praxia’s role in retrieving the Loden after Kirisin had dropped it, but not anything of the aftermath.

So he finished up now with Praxia’s death and the deaths of her companions, Que’rue and Ruslan, as they defended the Elfstone against the rogue militia that had stumbled on them while they tried to reach the Columbia River and safety. Simralin listened without comment, her eyes on his face, her gaze so intense that it almost hurt to bear its weight.

“I wish I could have gotten back to them,” he confessed. “But saving Kirisin was more important. I almost didn’t manage that.”

“You managed just fine,” she said. “If Kirisin had been lost, everything would have been lost. An entire people, Logan. Anyway, you did the best you could with the others. You have nothing to apologize for.”

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

She was silent a moment. “I’m surprised about Praxia. She never demonstrated that level of selflessness before. She was always so self-involved. But not this time.”

He shrugged. “Sometimes we rise above ourselves.”

“Sometimes.” She shook her head. “I just can’t believe it. They’re all gone, the whole squad I worked with all these years. Just like that. I’ve known some of them all my life, Logan.”

“Almost everything is hard to believe. I’ve stopped being surprised.” He gave her a half smile. “Except by you.”

“I’m not so surprising.”

“You don’t think so? I don’t know anyone who could have made it back here alone the way you did. Not in the face of what was chasing you. Not through land as dangerous as this. You talk about what I can manage, but I don’t think I am anywhere near as capable as you are.”

“Then maybe it’s a good thing we found each other. What do you think? An Elf and a human? Do you think there’s any kind of chance?”

“I think there’s always a chance.”

He kissed her, and she laid her head against his shoulder. They stayed like that as the storm raged, and he found himself thinking of something he hadn’t told her. When the once-men had stormed the bridge and it had seemed as if they were using Simralin and the other Elves as shields, he’d had to make a choice, one based almost solely on instinct. He had believed that what he was seeing was an illusion, that Simralin and the others weren’t real. But he hadn’t known for certain. Even so, he had ordered them fired upon, a death sentence if he was wrong.

And if he had been wrong, he would have been forced to live with the knowledge that he had killed the woman he loved.

It was a stark reality, even in a world where reality was never anything but hard-edged and brutal. He had chosen the lives of the many over the lives of the few. But the truth he was forced to confront in retrospect was darker still. If he had it to do over again, even knowing that what he was seeing wasn’t an illusion, he would make the same choice.

He thought suddenly that he should tell her this, that she deserved to know. But he couldn’t make himself. Besides, didn’t she already know how it was with him? Didn’t she understand him well enough by now to realize how it was always likely to be? He considered several explanations and rejected them all. He didn’t want to talk about such things with her. The world was a dark enough place; he didn’t need to speak of the particulars of that darkness.

He stayed silent instead, holding her, taking advantage of moments that might not come again.

C
ANDLE HAD GONE BACK
with Cheney to join the others, hunkering down in the AV as the fury of the wind increased, thinking through what Hawk had told her. Maybe he was right. Maybe her instincts were just taking a rest, and she needed to give them time to recover. She knew she hadn’t been the same since that boy with the ruined face had kidnapped her. Though she hadn’t told anyone, she was still haunted by nightmares of being taken, of being forcibly separated from her family. She still dreamed of what it had been like. She still dreamed, as well, of his screams as whatever it was that had been stalking them had caught up to him.

She didn’t want to hear screaming like that ever again.

Glancing out the window, she saw Hawk walk by, head down, shoulders hunched, heading for the rear of the column as the caravan closed ranks and prepared to wait out the storm. Something about him bothered her, but she couldn’t decide what it was. A little while later, Angel Perez stopped to look in on them. Candle huddled against Owl, a silent presence, as the Knight of the Word spoke a few words of encouragement and departed. The little girl was still thinking about Hawk when she saw him coming back again, appearing unexpectedly out of the haze. She hesitated, and then for reasons she didn’t fully understand, she bolted from the vehicle and went after him. She wasn’t sure what she intended to do, only that she needed to reach him. It was an impulsive and mysterious act, tied to what she was feeling, though not in any way she could have explained.

Owl’s protestations trailed after her, but she didn’t slow. The wind gusted in stinging swipes, blowing clouds of dirt into her face. She squinted, lowered her head, and ran as best she could. But Hawk was striding ahead determinedly, and her calls to him were swallowed up in the wind’s booming howl.

She had almost lost him when he stopped and stared between the encircling vehicles and wagons at something moving in the haze. She caught sight of a familiar figure slipping through a gap between the wagons, there one moment and gone the next, moving out into the empty landscape. Was that really Tessa? She watched Hawk hesitate and then rush after the other girl. She called to him once more, but he didn’t hear. A second later, he had disappeared.

Almost instantly, she knew that something was wrong. She could feel it the way she used to. Just like that, she could tell. Her heart began to pound, her nerves caught fire, and in the blink of an eye her instincts kicked back into life, returned from wherever they had been hiding. She didn’t need to be told what was happening. She didn’t need to second-guess what she was feeling. She recognized it for what it was.

She knew, too, with a certainty that was frightening, that Hawk was in trouble.

Come back, Hawk! Don’t go!

She thought to follow him, to go after him and help. But she was only a little girl. What could she do? Instead, she turned and raced back toward the AV and her family. She was almost there when she ran right into Panther, who had been sent by Owl to bring her back.

“Whoa, wild thing, what do you think you’re doing?” he shouted at her through the wail of the wind, grasping her shoulders and holding her fast. He knelt in front of her, his dark face bent close, his eyes blinking against the swirl of dust. “You want to get blown away?”

“Hawk’s in trouble!” she gasped, clutching him back. “He went outside the camp! He’s following Tessa, but something’s wrong, Panther! I know it! I can tell!”

She was sobbing now, overcome with the intensity of her feelings, of the dark whispers in her head. He didn’t question her, didn’t even pause to ask for details. He straightened at once, picked her up, and trotted back to the Lightning, saying, “Okay, okay, you did good, did the right thing, don’t worry, we’ll get the Bird-Man back.”