Jack slid to the ground now that the lindwurm was out of range of the shops. Once he came to stand beside Kitty, she ripped the ruffle off her skirt and started to wrap it around the gash in his left bicep.
“You should’ve told me you were going out,” he chastised. He put his right hand on her shoulder as she bandaged his other arm. “Or told Edgar. You know better.”
She yanked on the two ends of the ruffle. “You’re welcome, Kit. Always glad to help, especially after I’ve been a jackass and pushed you away to let myself drown in guilt. Sorry I can’t let you be there for me. Really.” She knotted the bright red ruffle on his arm and lifted her gaze to meet his eyes. “Sorry your dress got trashed too, Kit. I’ll buy you a new one to replace it. I’m really glad you’re not hurt, and oh . . . thanks for finding the missing lizard.”
“Are you done?”
Kitty sighed. “You’ll feel better if you argue with me, Jack.”
“What’s to argue? You’re right, even if I’m not going to say any of that womanish stuff.” He plucked a dirt-and-wine-coated curl off her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “I know you’re a grown woman, but you’re still my little sister.”
She leaned her forehead against his shoulder, counting silently to herself before she said something else she shouldn’t.
After a few moments, she stepped away. The riffraff in the pub had started to wander outside, and she wasn’t going to fight with Jack or get all sappy with him in front of strangers.
“That beast’s not going to get home by itself,” Betsy said from behind her. “And you can’t leave it here.”
Kitty rolled her eyes and started counting again. Dealing with the absentee proprietress wasn’t going to help her mood. The woman hired half-incompetent staff, and then treated the tavern like her own personal prowling grounds. It didn’t do a lot to inspire respect in Kitty.
In a blink, Jack stepped past her and smiled at Betsy.
You can take a gambler out of the saloon, but you can’t take the charm out of a gambler, Kitty thought. Once upon a time, she’d had to rely on her charm too, but since they’d ended up here, she’d grown to prefer bullets to smiles. Still, old habits were more useful than new ones sometimes. Kitty affixed the falsely guileless smile she resented wearing and turned so she was by Jack’s side. Family stood together. That truth had been a guiding force in her life since she was a child.
“Surely we can leave it here while we go on out to Cozy’s Ranch to see if this is one of his.” Jack gestured at the resting lindwurm and smiled.
Betsy laughed. “And hope that Cozy’s going to be quick about it? You’re pretty, Jackson, but I’m not young enough to be swayed by pretty.” She gave him a hungry look and added, “At least not just pretty.”
Jack ignored her invitation and flashed his grin. “Worth a try.”
“Not really.” Betsy shook her head, but she winked at Jack before she called out, “Lindwurm special until the beast is gone. Half-price pints.” Then she went back into the pub, calling for brooms and a glassmaker as she went.
In moments, most of the patrons had gone back inside—all but a small group of miners who had been an eager part of the fracas earlier. Like all of the native miners here, they were stocky, squat people with no whites around their pupils and large, batlike ears. The popular theory was that they’d developed their diminutive stature, overlarge ears, and solid black eyes as a result of countless generations working in the earth—a theory that made just enough sense to lessen the sense of unease Kitty felt when she looked at them.
“I don’t suppose you have any lindwurm-strength chain nearby?” Jack asked.
Two of the men stepped past their brethren. The first glared up at Jack and said, “Maybe.”
The second got to the heart of the matter: “Are you accusing us of something?”
Kitty walked toward him, using the fact that he was eye level with her hips to her advantage. With the way that her skirt was hitched up in the front, the miners were seeing a lot of leg. When she was close enough that the miner had to look up at her or admit that he was distracted by her bare skin, she stopped.
When he lifted his eyes to hers, she said, “We’re simply asking for chain. Do I look like I have a lindwurm chain hidden on me?”
The miners stared at her intently with their unsettling eyes, and after a few moments, they conceded that she was in need of some chain. Neither Kitty nor Jack commented on the chain they’d retrieved, which matched the links still fastened around the lindwurm’s neck. Kitty and Jack had agreed a few years ago that those who had been so adversely affected by Ajani’s enterprises merited a bit of selective blindness. The miners topped that list.
“I don’t suppose you could handle taking it out of here?” Kitty asked, directing her offer to all of them rather than any one specific miner. “If it took a day or so to reach Cozy, I’m sure he’d overlook the delay in exchange for not having to fetch it home.”
The answering rumble of assents was all she needed. Cozy was a surly bastard, and he was all too willing to ignore centuries of traditions to line his pockets with Ajani’s money. Like a lot of the lindwurm farmers, he’d raised his prices so high that miners couldn’t afford to rent, much less buy, lindwurms. Ajani levied steep taxes on the farmers if they did business with anyone other than those he authorized—and that didn’t include miners. Years ago, the miners had refused to sell their family mines to Ajani, but he’d retaliated by systematically denying them the tools to ply their trade. The resulting conditions meant that the people who’d made their living in the mines for generations, who’d been the only ones to do so and had physically evolved for that work, were now starving. It also meant that they occasionally liberated a few lindwurms that they couldn’t legally rent.
Kitty smiled at the miners, happy to have found a solution that benefited them. Wrestling with the beast hadn’t been fun, but she couldn’t blame them for not stepping in. What mattered now was that no one was hurt, Ajani would lose a little profit, and the miners would remember that she had lent them the lindwurm—even though it was one they’d already stolen.
Situation resolved, Kitty linked her arm through Jack’s as they strolled toward camp. The dirt and dust that were inevitable in the Wasteland seemed thicker than usual—or maybe it was just that they clung to her more because of the wine.
They were a little over a mile away before Jack spoke. “I’m sorry about Mary . . . and about keeping you out while she . . . while I waited.”
“Her death wasn’t your fault, but next time, tell me that you’re kicking me out instead of making Edgar do your dirty work.” Kitty knew that Mary had been important to her brother too, but he wasn’t weeping. He’d taught her years ago that tears were for the weak. Maybe that was why he didn’t want her in the tent. She knew Mary had been in love with him, but she had been pretty sure he hadn’t reciprocated those feelings. If he had, he hadn’t told Mary—and he still wasn’t telling Kitty.
Jack didn’t reply to her, so Kitty tried to lighten her tone and added, “Now, if you’re looking to apologize, we can talk about you ruining my evening. That was your fault.”
“After wine bathing and lindwurm dancing, I can see how you’d be disappointed to leave,” Jack drawled. “Out of curiosity, what number did you make it to before you decided not to hit me?”
She didn’t bother telling him that she was glad that he’d shown up to help. She didn’t even admit that if she could’ve invited him to go out rabble-rousing, she would’ve because she knew he needed to let off steam more than any of the rest of them. Instead, she rolled her eyes and answered, “I’ll let you know when I get to it.”
Jack laughed, and they headed back toward camp in a more comfortable silence.
When they were almost at the gate, Jack suggested, “I could be there when the woman wakes.”
Kitty smiled. “Because you’re so good at dealing with weeping women?”
“Don’t know that this one’s a crier,” Ja
ck mused.
“Chloe. Not ‘this one,’ Jackson. Her name is Chloe.” Kitty didn’t admit that she’d done the same thing in her mind, tried to not-name the new arrival. Names made people real. Sometimes, that was the part Kitty wanted to avoid: them being real. If they weren’t real, maybe their eventual deaths would hurt less.
“Right.” Jack nodded. “I don’t think Chloe will be a crier.”
“Let’s just hope she’s not the sort to side with Ajani.”
Jack grimaced, but he didn’t comment. They both knew that the possibility of Ajani wooing Chloe away was a very real one. Sooner or later, he’d come around. Until he did, they’d just do what they could to help Chloe get settled. It was all they could do—well, that, and worry.
They’d been in this exact same situation well over a dozen times since they’d arrived in the Wasteland. If Kitty were truly honest with herself, she’d admit that this was what she needed—not losing herself in drink or in the company of a Wastelander. What she needed was this togetherness with the only person who could possibly feel the same worries, think of the same deaths, remember the same long-gone faces. She needed her only remaining family.
Chapter 9
After leaving Katherine at camp, Jack fled. He felt foolish for offering to be there for Chloe, especially when there was work to do. The monks and the demon they’d summoned still needed finding. Morning would be soon enough for following up on Edgar’s temper and Francis’ gullibility. Jack had brought Katherine home safely, but he knew—and he suspected that Edgar did too—that she’d simply needed a break. Chloe’s arrival was hard; Mary’s death was still fresh. His baby sister tried to hold her emotions in, but she’d reached her limit. She’d confronted the governor, shot Daniel, patrolled with Jack, and then she’d nursed Chloe through that first horrible day of transition sickness. Unless someone forced her to rest, she’d spend the next few days helping Chloe, who would feel like she had some combination of poisoning and madness. For all the things Katherine did that made him crazy, he couldn’t ever fault her for the way she cared for the new Arrivals.
We all cope in our own ways.
Katherine had gone looking for trouble, and Jack was walking alone in the dark. For him, peace was best found in open spaces. The desert breathed around him as he walked away from camp. Sometimes he felt like he could get lost here, like he could let the sand and sky swallow him whole. It was like being back in the world where they’d all been born, back where things made sense. Despite what some of the others thought, he was certain that they weren’t going to be swept back en masse to the world they’d once known. Aside from the obvious problem of not knowing what year they’d be dropped into—our own year? the current year?—there hadn’t been more than one person to arrive in the Wasteland at a time, except for Katherine and him. Whatever brought them through did it slowly and did it solo.
The shadows shifted around him as he walked, and he was struck by the strange futility of the way they made their living here. Governor Soanes had recruited them when it was just him and Katherine, and they’d grown into a motley unit of sorts when the others arrived. After all these years, he felt like killing the things that went bump in the night was no different from his brief stint as a U.S. Marshal in the West: a lot of fuss for very little progress.
Ajani actively recruited the new Arrivals when possible, offering them positions in his private militia. Instead of using their ability to awaken after dying for some measure of good in their new world, Ajani harnessed it for personal gain. Jack did his best to keep his people out of Ajani’s sight, but they all had to deal with him eventually. The man had been steadily causing problems in the Wasteland, ignoring more and more of the traditions, pack rules, and bloedzuiger etiquette. What he couldn’t buy, he stole. Those he couldn’t convince, he killed. Frustratingly—for reasons Jack couldn’t figure out—Ajani’s people didn’t ever stay dead. Once they joined Ajani, they lived forever. So far. It gave him an almost godlike status with some of the Wastelanders—and made him seem impossible to kill.
But Ajani wasn’t likely to be leaving trails in the desert. Hell, he wasn’t likely to dirty his custom-made shoes by walking in the desert, and following the trail before him was what Jack needed to deal with tonight. When he had returned to camp with Katherine earlier, he’d found more of the tracks he’d sighted yesterday when they found Chloe. These were even closer to camp. If they’d been genuine tracks, the wind would’ve swept them away. The drifting sand wasn’t like mud; it didn’t hold prints. The fact that these were repeatedly near camp and anchored in the sand meant that someone was inviting his attention.
Jack squatted down to look at the prints. They’d been made by boots with a sturdy heel and deep tread. If not for the slightly deeper indentation on the inward curve and the smaller size, he could think they were his own prints. Aside from troublesome humans, the only desert-dwelling monsters likely to wear shoes were bloedzuigers. Any two-natured thing would be traveling on paws in this landscape, and neither demons nor spirits left prints.
Warily, Jack followed the trail until he found the creature who’d laid out the invitation in the sand. Gaunt, sallow-skinned, with lips too red and eyes too pronounced, Garuda was the first bloedzuiger who had sought Jack without malice years ago when he was new to the Wasteland.
Garuda looked him over the way discerning diners examined their meals. “I see that you are staying healthy.”
Jack made a noncommittal noise and studied the area around them. The bloedzuigers had to observe traditions, Wasteland etiquette, as it were, and until those traditions were respected, he and Garuda couldn’t get to whatever business prompted the invitation. Jack didn’t see anything, but he watched the darkness and waited.
Garuda folded himself into an improbable position on a rock, legs and arms bent at inhuman angles, looking rather like a praying mantis. He tilted his head and stared into the shadows at Jack’s left. Jack followed his gaze as a second bloedzuiger launched itself at him. Reflexively, Jack drew and fired on the slavering creature before it reached him.
Jack turned to Garuda. “Really? A newborn?”
Garuda shrugged.
A third bloedzuiger came at Jack from behind him, moving quickly enough that he didn’t notice until its teeth had already closed on the heavy leather of his jacket. Venom slid over the material.
Jack stabbed his knife into the soft flesh under the creature’s chin.
It let out a shriek and clawed at the hilt of the knife with one hand while swinging at Jack with the other. In time, it would become a proper predator—if it survived that long. For now, though, it was nothing more than a mass of spindly limbs and dripping fangs bound to obey its master.
It looked at Garuda for instructions.
Garuda motioned it forward with a careless wave of stick-thin fingers. The gesture was elegant for their sort, but it still resembled the waving of insect legs.
The bloedzuiger went to its master and stood motionless as Garuda withdrew the knife and tossed it toward Jack.
He moved so it fell to the ground at his feet. “Thank you.”
The bloedzuiger grinned and pointed out, “You missed.”
“True.” After Jack rolled the knife in the sand with the toe of his boot, he lifted it with his left hand, being careful not to get the blood on him. Blood wasn’t as dangerous as venom, but blood from mouth wounds was liable to have venom in it. That was a problem. It wouldn’t do permanent damage unless it got into his veins, but it still blistered the skin something awful.
Just to be safe, Jack stabbed the knife into the sand so any toxins could be wiped clean. “Are we done here, then? Just those two?”
Garuda looked at the two hapless bloedzuigers he’d brought, smiled, and said, “I didn’t want to waste valuable time with our pleasantries.”
There was no point arguing that defending himself against bloedzuigers wasn’t pleasant. Traditions were what they were, and expecting them to change was like thinking the seco
nd moon would disappear. Of course, Garuda wasn’t above adding a surprise attack after he’d suggested they were done, so Jack looked around before he approached the rock where the bloedzuiger perched.
“You wanted to talk?”
“I hear things, Jackson.” Garuda’s emaciated fingers tapped against the rock with a clicking, rasping sound. “The brethren has a benefactor who’s interested in your little pack.”
Jack didn’t correct Garuda’s terminology. The old bloedzuiger made sense of the Arrivals by imposing his own species’ dynamics on them. It had made him decide that Jack was his equal, and that particular decision was useful more often than not. The label of a thing mattered less than the results—not that Jack could convince his baby sister of that. She had issues with Garuda that Jack didn’t understand.
“Ajani?” Jack asked. “He was over in the Divide last I’d heard. Are you sure?”
Garuda lifted his shoulder slightly in a small shrug. He wouldn’t accuse any Wastelander without evidence, but he obviously thought that Ajani was involved. If he believed that it was someone insignificant, he wouldn’t trouble himself to seek Jack. Such squabbles were, in bloedzuiger society, unavoidable and unimportant. There were rules, etiquette that had to be observed. Everything with bloedzuigers involved etiquette.
“I’ll look into it,” Jack said. He’d learned years ago to take Garuda’s warnings seriously. Among the creatures that roamed the Wasteland, none had held power and influence as long as Garuda. Ajani and the governor were powerful now, but Garuda had walked the Wasteland before either of those men drew their first breaths. Of course, that also meant that the bloedzuiger had more reasons than most to mistrust both Ajani and the governor.