Outside of the tent, Kitty could hear voices and knew that the others were getting ready to go into Gallows. She glanced at the closed tent flap. “I do trust you. I know I should’ve told you, but then I didn’t, and then I couldn’t.” She kept her gaze away from him as she admitted, “I still love you. Just because we’re not . . . what we were, that part hasn’t changed.”
“I know.” He waited until she looked at him before continuing. “But you’re still not going into Gallows unless you drink the Verrot.”
“We could let Jack think I had,” she suggested. “There’s no way he’d know.”
Edgar didn’t even acknowledge that idea with words. He simply frowned and waited.
Resigned, Kitty sighed. “I don’t want to tell Jack what it does to me.” It was embarrassing, but there it was: she still hated that she was aberrant. “Please?”
Edgar gave her an assessing look before saying, “I’ll keep your secret unless it endangers you or Jack.” He retrieved the second mug and carried it to her. “Does it make you stronger like it does us?”
She nodded.
“Then drink with me, Kit. Jack and I will fight better knowing you’re stronger.” He stood in front of her, lifted his mug to his lips, and waited.
Mutely, she matched his movement, and together they drank.
Chapter 18
Jack saw the calculated slowness in Edgar’s steps as he and Katherine approached, and he knew that Edgar had drunk the Verrot—which also meant he’d convinced Katherine to drink it. Jack was glad that he’d figured out that the first bottle was more potent before he gave it to them. Katherine hated the Verrot enough that her temper would’ve been even worse if she’d had the extra-strong dose that Jack and Chloe had consumed.
“All’s good?” Jack asked.
Edgar nodded.
Now that Edgar and Katherine had joined the rest of the group, everyone stepped outside the threshold of the camp, and Katherine said whatever words she needed to speak to lock their camp. Jack watched the impact of the spell hit her, and he hated that she had to do it. Eventually, they’d build a gate, as he’d had done with a couple of their sites. Until they had the funds to do that, Katherine worked her spells. Most creatures knew better than to try to cross that threshold, but there were scavengers aplenty in the Gallows Desert, so locking up was necessary.
The rest of the Arrivals waited while she spoke the spell. The tension in several of them made clear how difficult stillness was with Verrot in their systems.
Once Katherine was done, she simply began walking into the desert toward Gallows. The rest of the Arrivals fell into step. Edgar was at her side. Francis, Melody, and Hector walked behind them. That left Chloe beside Jack. They’d all accepted her into their ranks at his word, and much as they had done every other time the team added a replacement, they settled in to the new dynamic because they had to do so. When Mary was alive, she walked with Katherine or with Francis. Edgar and Jack would’ve still been either first or last, but sometimes Mary was the soothing presence that Katherine needed to keep her from feeling like she had to be frontmost. No one but his sister typically walked at Jack’s side. Strangely, though, he found that he liked having Chloe beside him.
“Guns at the ready,” Jack reminded them as they moved farther away from the camp. “Cyns jumped us earlier.”
“This close to camp?” Francis asked.
Despite Melody’s absurd attention to what she considered “ladylike” attire—knee-length skirt and a long-sleeved blouse—she made an unladylike sound and said, “Jack had Verrot before us, Starshine. He wasn’t too close to camp.”
“Told you ‘Francis’ is just fine,” Francis muttered. He’d been increasingly prickly over the use of the bizarre name he’d used when he’d arrived in the Wasteland—not that Jack blamed him. Starshine was an odd name. Sometimes he wondered how the world he’d once known evolved into both Francis’ “hippies” and Edgar’s Prohibition. Maybe once they weren’t in Ajani’s sights, he’d ask Chloe about the world as she knew it.
The Wasteland didn’t seem to change as rapidly as the world they’d all known as their home. Jack wasn’t entirely sure why change came so slowly here, but in conversation with Garuda, he had come to believe that it was tied to the average life span of a Wastelander. Most of the nonhumans lived far longer than humans, though, and they outnumbered the human populations.
The Arrivals completed the major portion of the walk into Gallows without incident or real conversation. Chloe remarked on the cyns she saw, the homesteader shacks, the cacti that were like those at home as well as those that weren’t. Seeing the Wasteland through her eyes reminded Jack of how beautiful and alien he’d found all of it in his first years. The rest of the group was caught up in the intensity of the Verrot in their systems—or their fear of Katherine’s temper—so no actual conversation followed Chloe’s stray remarks. Instead, the Arrivals were silent and quick as they passed across the stark landscape.
Once they were close enough to town that the buildings of Gallows had come into focus, Chloe muttered softly, “We are definitely not in Kansas.”
In a sort of daze, she walked toward the front of the group. At a gesture from Jack, the rest of the group let her do so. This time, he smiled at her awe—and at her words. That particular phrase had been spoken by Hector and Melody at various points not long after their arrival here. It was a small thing, but it reaffirmed his belief that the Arrivals did all come from the same place. Photographs were a relatively new phenomenon in the world Jack had known. They’d replaced daguerreotypes, and he’d heard that there were people back east who had seen realistic-looking color photos. Since he’d been in the Wasteland, he’d learned from various Arrivals that photographs had evolved into moving photographs that, eventually, had sound. Movies didn’t exist here, but it was interesting to think that the world back home had created such miracles.
They’d all had a few moments of awe when they’d discovered different parts of the Wasteland. Chloe wasn’t going to have as much time to pause and adjust as the others had. She’d already had Verrot, been attacked by cynanthropes, met a bloedzuiger, and would soon know about Ajani. They could let her have a moment to wonder at the first town she’d seen in her new world.
Gallows was a little rough, but Jack and Katherine tended to like it because it felt like the world they’d left behind. The buildings were mostly a beige adobe and a sort of pink clay brick that was unique to the Wasteland. There were some wooden structures or wooden flourishes—signs of wealth out here—but the number of lindwurm farms made wood less than practical for everyday folks.
“There are places here that aren’t so different from where you come from,” Jack assured Chloe.
Melody snorted. “Doubt it.”
“That is a dragon,” Chloe murmured before glancing at Jack and asking, “Are there monsters you don’t have here?”
“It’s a lindwurm. There are a lot of farms out here.” Jack paused. “But, yes, there are monsters that aren’t here, and yes, it does resemble the fairy-tale dragons from home.”
Someone inhaled sharply behind him.
Jack looked over his shoulder. “What?”
“Fairy tales?” Katherine repeated with a barely concealed laugh.
Jack scowled to hide his flare of embarrassment. “I read them to you often enough when you were a girl, so yes, Katherine, fairy tales.”
His sister held her hands up in a placating gesture, and he noticed with relief that she was fighting a smile. He forced himself to keep scowling, though. Her softening toward him when she was in a temper wasn’t the same as her being all right with him noticing it. He turned his attention back to Chloe. “We lack princes and princesses, if that helps.”
Chloe smiled and said, “That’s not what I think of when I think monsters.”
He shrugged, but he didn’t know what to say. He wanted to say something clever; he wanted to hear what she said next, what she thought, but he didn’t want to
say so with the rest of the Arrivals watching them. It was an unusual feeling to want to simply listen to a woman talk, and it left him feeling foolish.
Before the silence grew too uncomfortable, Katherine launched into a recounting of the other day’s lindwurm wrestling. Her words were a tumble of sounds that Jack might’ve struggled to follow if not for the Verrot in his system. He wondered idly if he had sounded so breathless when he first drank it; he knew he certainly felt that harried. Still, she seemed almost like she was rushing unnaturally. He forced himself to concentrate on his sister’s words as he watched for threats from the surrounding desert.
He didn’t think he was nearly as reckless or obnoxious as his sister made him sound, but he’d grown used to her less than flattering assessments of him. Still, even in the midst of her recounting, he noticed that her voice was filled with pride. He glanced at Chloe, and she smiled at him.
“ . . . fool thought he was back home on a horse instead of a lindwurm,” Katherine finished.
“I could’ve let you handle it yourself,” he interjected.
Katherine ignored him, and the others started throwing in their own lindwurm stories. Their words didn’t sound to Jack’s ears quite as harried as Katherine’s did, or maybe he didn’t know their cadences as well. Chloe listened to them with rapt attention, although he did catch her glancing at him a few times.
As they entered the town proper, Jack took a moment to adjust. Sometimes the transition between the natural rhythms of the desert and the discordant energy of Gallows set his nerves on edge. The others had stopped talking as they walked farther into town. Jack couldn’t rightly call the Gallows Desert safer, but the wide-open spaces often made it easier to locate threats—at least the sort of threats on the group members’ minds of late. Gray-robed monks and the always ostentatious Ajani would stand out from the desert landscape, but in town, they could blend a bit more easily with the locals. More important, they had more cover in town. The maze of buildings and carefully cultivated landscape of plants that really shouldn’t thrive in the desert—and wouldn’t if not for the stubborn efforts of the locals—provided ample places for monk or man to hide.
They’d only gotten as far as the less expensive stores on the periphery of the town proper when a bloedzuiger pushed away from a shadowed doorway of a milliner’s shop. It didn’t completely step into the light, but it moved close enough that it began burning. The smell of cooking meat was disturbingly appealing. Bloedzuigers might look nearly dead, but they were healthy, living creatures—merely ones with a different sort of biology.
Jack looked to the brand on its forearm, and after ascertaining that it was, in fact, one of Garuda’s local pack, he stepped onto the planked porch. Chloe stayed with Katherine and Edgar, but Hector, Melody, and Francis accompanied Jack.
“Ajani was in town,” Garuda said through the bloedzuiger. “I entered this one to speak to you, but would rather not feel the sizzle of such young flesh. Others of mine are waiting in the shadows to keep watch for you.”
Jack nodded. “And the monks?”
“At least three of them were here. Not with Ajani, but I doubt that it is coincidence that the monks are here when he is. I would go with you, but”—the bloedzuiger eased closer to the shadows of the building—“I doubt you want to wait until sunfall.”
“You’ve already done more than enough.” Jack tipped his head in a bow of sorts and then rejoined the others, who were watching the street.
“Well?” Katherine asked.
“Keep alert. Monks and Ajani.”
“Monks?” Chloe asked.
“Yes. They’re demon summoners, not always the best shots, but great with spells.” Katherine’s words were dispassionate, but Jack was sure that everyone there, aside from Chloe, knew that she was looking for a few kills. She was surly on the best of days when magic users were involved, but she was worse when one of their own had died because of them.
“Demons, monks, and . . . what’s an Ajani?” Chloe looked from Jack to Katherine and back.
Jack knew he’d have to explain, but he wasn’t ready to do so. He had the brief urge to send Chloe and Katherine back to camp. If he thought his sister would go—or would’ve stayed—he would’ve done just that. “Ajani’s just a man. A person just like us.”
“We’re nothing like that cocksucker,” Katherine snarled. “None of us are.”
“Right. A bad man. Got it.” The expression on Chloe’s face was as resolute as Katherine’s was. Both women had guns at the ready, and Jack realized that there was no way either one of them would’ve listened to his order that they stay hidden away somewhere safe. He struggled sometimes with the notion that many women weren’t as willing to be tucked away safely as he’d like. Apparently, they weren’t even cooperative about staying out of trouble in the world he’d known back home so many years ago.
Hector tossed one of his knives in the air like a juggler as he walked. Francis looked more relaxed, but Jack had long suspected that he’d had more exposure to mind-altering substances than the rest of the team combined. Jack was confident of their combined abilities. Hector was skilled enough to fight in his sleep; Edgar was steadfast with or without Verrot; and Melody took an unnerving amount of glee in a kill.
“Let’s hunt, then,” Melody said.
And Jack didn’t have the heart to try to correct her. He’d like to say it was anything other than a hunt, that they weren’t out for blood, but he tried not to lie any more than was necessary. They wanted the monks dead both because of the threat they represented and because of Mary’s death. As for Ajani . . . Jack had wanted his head on a pike for years. Attempts at goodwill had only forestalled the inevitable, and if Ajani really was behind Mary’s death, the time for patience was past. There had to be a way to kill him, and they were going to find it.
Chapter 19
Gallows wasn’t like anything Chloe could’ve imagined. After walking through a desert where the cacti were somewhere between familiar and slightly off, she expected the town to be the same. The town, however, was a shade beyond unexpected. Squat buildings that looked like they were made of mud and stick stood next to taller, narrow buildings that were made of brick. There was little wood, and even less metal.
At the outskirts of town, the roads weren’t much more than pathways where the sand and dirt were tamped down by too many feet, but as they walked farther into the town, the paths were covered by a red grass of some sort. It looked a bit like the grasses that grew at the edge of a marsh at home, long thin strips with pointed tips, but in a shade of red that was reminiscent of cardinals. The splash of color would look odd in the desert, but with the pinkish brick of the buildings, the effect was almost garish. The layers upon layers of plants seemed to keep the fine dust of sand from being quite as pervasive, but decreasing the grit in one area was nowhere near enough to make a difference. Chloe’s whole body was coated by a layer of sand, and when she swallowed, she could taste a slight salty flavor from the minerals in the sand that drifted through the breeze.
Her companions looked like they could blend in here. Jack and Kitty were both in battered trousers, nondescript shirts, and worn jackets. Hector and Francis looked much the same. It was only Edgar, with his stiff black shirt and black trousers, and Melody, who stood out a bit. Melody was the most unusual of the group. She had on what would look more fitting on a PTA mother or cubicle worker: a knee-length, sand-colored skirt and a powder-blue blouse with a white stone necklace that was reminiscent of pearls. Her hair was combed into some sort of almost formal-looking twist, and she appeared to have located some sort of pale blue eye shadow. In all, she looked almost sweet, if not for the holster on her hips and the fact that she was walking down the street with a shotgun in her hands humming a happy little song. Back at home, Melody could’ve been the office manager from hell; here, she appeared to be a woman clinging to whatever era she’d once known while still adapting to the weird world that was the Wasteland.
“Monk. Left. Got hi
m.” Melody fired almost simultaneously with her words. The blast of the shotgun seemed uncommonly loud in the quiet of the streets.
Chloe stared at the shotgun-toting woman for a moment and then at the dead monk in the street. She’d seen dead cyns earlier, but this was a person. The memory of the last dead man she’d seen threatened to surface, but she shoved it away and concentrated on the now.
“A little more warning, Melly.” Hector shook his head.
“He saw us.” Melody shrugged as she spoke, but she had a slightly mad look in her eyes. Chloe wasn’t sure if it was from the Verrot or if it was Melody’s natural response to guns, but she wasn’t too inclined to ask. No one other than Hector openly criticized Melody, although Francis gave her a wary look.
If the monk had accomplices, they weren’t anywhere in sight. Hector walked over and squatted beside the remains. He looked back at Jack, shook his head once to convey that the monk was dead, and then began searching the corpse.
That, more than the shooting, made Chloe look away. Shooting a known enemy before he could attack you made sense to her, but corpse robbing was on her list of unacceptable acts.
Francis noticed her reaction and stepped up beside her. He said quietly, “Hector’s checking for clues. Jack doesn’t stand for theft.”
Chloe smiled at Francis in gratitude. He, meanwhile, seemed to be on babysit-Chloe detail. She couldn’t really blame him. She wasn’t sure what to do to help, and the rest of them seemed to have slipped into the kind of group behavior that spoke of habit.