Garuda stared into the distance, pointedly not looking at Jack. “Have you spoken to the governor lately?”
“I have. I need to find the rest of the brethren and deal with the demon troubles.” Jack watched the bloedzuiger with the sort of attention that came from years of conversations between them. What was unsaid was often as useful as what was said.
“Yet you cannot travel while your new packmate recovers,” Garuda mused. “If someone were looking for you, now would be a good time. You’ve been in one place for a while already because of the brethren. If the governor were no longer to be trusted or if the brethren were to be employed by someone who means you ill, you would be quite vulnerable right now.”
Jack knew the bloedzuiger was suspicious of everyone, but he couldn’t see why the governor would tie himself to Ajani. The two were at odds over politics and territories too often for that to make sense. The brotherhood working with Ajani made a certain sense, but not the governor. “I can handle the brethren.”
“And the demon?”
“Hopefully we’ll find it soon. If not, we’ll come back.”
Garuda raised both brows. “So you would ask me to believe you can ‘handle’ the brethren, a demon, and any treachery?”
“We always do,” Jack said. He did what he could to maintain order in the Wasteland, but he wasn’t going to ignore any insights Garuda was willing to offer. That was the path that led to injury sooner or later. Maybe this time the bloedzuiger was wrong, but even if he was wrong now, he’d been right often enough that Jack had learned years ago to take his warnings seriously.
At a gesture from Garuda, one of the newborns toddled over and extended his wrist. “If you’d like refreshment, it would be our privilege as your host,” Garuda said.
Jack didn’t point out that Garuda had no obligation to offer a host gift since they were in the middle of the desert. “I don’t want to insult you, but—”
With the striking speed of a viper, Garuda took Jack’s knife from the hilt on his thigh and slashed open the newborn bloedzuiger’s wrist just below the pack brand on its forearm. “You would throw my gift away?”
There were few things in the Wasteland more disgusting or more appealing than Verrot. Jack swallowed and stepped away, trying to put the vile temptation out of reach.
“Don’t be infantile,” Garuda chided.
“I don’t need—”
Garuda drew Jack’s knife across his own wrist then and held it up, not to Jack but to the other bloedzuiger. The creature latched on to Garuda’s arm like a rabid animal. After a minute, Garuda stopped it. The whole time he watched Jack watch them.
“Come now, Jack. I’ve filtered it for you.” He cut the creature’s wrist again and lifted it to Jack. “Don’t court injury by refusing my hospitality.”
Drinking from a newborn wasn’t a new experience, but the side effects of Verrot were always unsettling. With painful slowness, Jack came forward and lowered his mouth. The scents of rot and disease made his eyes water as he swallowed.
He sealed his lips over the wound on the young bloedzuiger’s wrist as best he could. He could feel the blood smearing on the sides of his face; the cut was too wide. Wasteful. Then he sucked, and thinking became more difficult. He had no idea how much time had passed or how much of the foul stuff he swallowed, but when Garuda pulled the creature’s arm away from his mouth, Jack growled at him.
Garuda smiled, and Jack backed away, struggling for self-control. He knew he’d crave Verrot like he was starving without it for the next few weeks. He also knew that it would give him the extra strength, stamina, and a not insubstantial connection to Garuda for much longer. Once a person drank Verrot, the bloedzuiger whose blood it was and that creature’s master could locate the drinker.
As Jack fought not to snatch the bloody wrist back, Garuda motioned the other bloedzuiger over and drained its blood into a thick brown glass bottle. “My gift for your pack.”
“You don’t need to do this,” Jack finally managed to say. “Your gift was already far too generous without . . . this.”
Garuda grinned briefly, and then motioned over the bloedzuiger Jack had drunk from. Its remaining blood filled not quite a third of a second bottle.
The two young bloedzuigers looked completed desiccated. It was odd that so little blood animated them, but something in their physiology made their bodies consume any blood they produced or ingested. If they survived, they’d learn to function despite their ravenous hunger. These two wouldn’t survive.
“If you wouldn’t mind?” Garuda prompted.
Silently, Jack beheaded them. He felt a twinge of guilt he did his best to subdue. If these two weren’t Garuda’s, they would’ve tried to kill him when he’d crossed their line of sight, and even though they were Garuda’s, they wouldn’t have paused if he died as a result of their greetings. They were barely conscious beasts.
But they’re still dead because of me.
Maybe it was because of the blood Jack had taken or maybe just because he knew Jack, but Garuda obviously knew what Jack was thinking.
“I brought two I no longer needed, Jackson,” he said. He stood, straightening his praying-mantis-thin limbs, and held out the two bottles. “They served me more by this act than they would’ve if they’d lived.”
Jack accepted the bottles without commenting.
“I have few friends.” Garuda paused and gave Jack a tentative smile. “That is the word you offered me, is it not?”
“It is,” Jack agreed.
“Ajani grows less reasonable as he gains power. I find the governor’s actions troubling, and the brethren’s strike illogical. Perhaps it is only my paranoia, but if not, your pack will need strength and my aid. I call you friend as well, Jackson. Garuda stepped over the corpses of the bloedzuigers. If anyone could find a way to make Ajani not rise again, I would offer every treasure I have amassed.”
“If I could make him stay dead, I would do it for my own peace of mind,” Jack admitted. “I don’t know how.”
“I look for that answer as well,” Garuda murmured. Then, in nothing more than a few blinks, he vanished into the black desert.
Jack resumed his patrol. His only other options were standing around staring into the dark or returning to the camp, where he’d feel like a caged animal. Neither of those sounded particularly appealing. He felt his heartbeat roaring in his ears, the sound so loud that he felt like his heart was in his mouth instead of his chest. Sometimes drinking Verrot was akin to dying. The one time he’d drunk from Garuda himself, only one mouthful, he’d actually died. His heart had stopped. He’d also woken to life within hours rather than the usual six days. That secret he guarded like few others.
Keeping the rest of the Arrivals safe meant convincing them to drink Verrot. The Arrivals carried very few of their superstitions from the lives they’d known before coming to the Wasteland, but the fear of bloedzuigers was a primal thing that seemed to linger. The bloedzuigers weren’t as dissimilar from the vampires of foolish legends as he’d like to argue, but Jack still trusted Garuda as he trusted no other Wastelander. The bloedzuiger wouldn’t send more than a bottle of Verrot to the camp unless he was more than a little certain that Ajani was getting close. That meant Ajani would come for Chloe sooner than Jack would like.
Chapter 10
When Kitty returned to her tent, she found Francis waiting. Much to her relief, he’d replaced Melody as nursemaid to the still-resting new Arrival. Chloe was safe enough with Melody; tending the injured was something she took to quite well. Conversations with her, on the other hand, were sometimes trying, and Kitty wasn’t up to dealing with her craziness tonight.
“She’s due to wake soon.” Francis stood and stretched, seeming oddly equine in his movements as he extended his spindly legs and arms. “The fever’s gone, though.”
“Vomiting?”
“None tonight. I think the worst of the transition is past.” He hugged Kitty. “I’m glad you’re not dead or hurt.”
>
With a small smile, Kitty shooed him toward the tent flap. “You knew I’d be fine.”
Francis followed her to the exit. “I also knew to tell Jack to go after you when I saw him.”
“You’re a good friend.” Kitty opened the flap of the tent. “Now, go make yourself scarce before Edgar gets off shift. I haven’t talked to him about my little adventure yet, but he’s bound to know by now.”
“You owe me.” Francis ducked out of the tent, but paused. “If he’s furious . . .”
“You know I’ll talk to him, and yes, I do owe you.” She gave him an affectionate smile. If she were able to have children, she’d want one a lot like Francis. He was curious, but he was kind and constant, trustworthy in a way few people were, and brought out a protective streak in her.
A noise from inside drew her attention. Kitty told Francis, “Go on. I need to look after Chloe.”
The transition process was exhausting enough that Chloe wasn’t truly awake. Odds were that she’d remember very little of her first couple days, but the body still had needs even when the mind was too feverish to remember. Kitty gave a woozy Chloe a cup of water with some of Francis’ vitamin mix stirred into it. Then she helped her to the facilities, washed the sweat from her face, and tucked her back into the cot that had last belonged to Mary. It wasn’t as if the process was rote, but after a couple dozen people, it was predictable.
Kitty wasn’t a hypocrite, so she wouldn’t be holding Chloe’s murderous past against her. Every one of the Arrivals was a killer; it was the one thing they all shared. Whether or not they knew why or who Chloe had slain, they knew she had. She wouldn’t have arrived in the Wasteland if she hadn’t taken a life. Back in California, Kitty herself had needed to put down a customer who’d gotten a bit too rough and, in another instance, a man who’d drawn on her over a card dispute. Sometimes, a man simply needed killing.
Once the new girl was again sleeping soundly on the dead girl’s bed, Kitty had to make the unhappy choice between talking to Edgar and taking the coward’s way out a little longer. Neither option was particularly appealing. She didn’t think herself weak, but telling Edgar things he wouldn’t like was never fun. Hurting him was one of the few things that made her feel guilt.
She stalled on the inevitable, busying herself with sorting through the clothes she had on hand to find a few things for Chloe to choose from the next day. She examined the skirt she’d ruined earlier. She spent a bit of time with as much of a wash as she could manage with the basin and cloth inside her tent. Finally, she fastened one of her modified bone-lined corsets and pulled on a blouse and a pair of trousers. She couldn’t imagine wearing ones as revealing as Chloe’s had been, but she did admit that trousers weren’t completely abhorrent to her. She was a lot more comfortable in them than she’d been when she’d first arrived here, but they still made her feel half naked even after years wearing them. She didn’t have any short enough for Chloe, but she could hem a pair of Mary’s easier than if she’d had to lengthen them. Kitty closed her eyes against a sudden memory of doing just that for Mary when she’d arrived, of sitting at bedside after bedside preparing to help each new Arrival in the years before Mary.
With effort, Kitty stared at Chloe. Those women were all dead. Chloe wasn’t.
“Maudlin thoughts never help,” Kitty chastised herself. She went to one of her trunks and withdrew a sheet of thick native paper and a series of pencils. Then she distracted herself by drawing a portrait of Chloe. At some point early on, she’d taken to doing portraits of all of the Arrivals. She never knew how long they’d be around. A few didn’t wake up after their first death, and others were with the team for years. She hadn’t been able to find a pattern to it. More important, neither had Jack, and he’d always spent a lot of time studying every possible aspect of their situation.
When Kitty finished the portrait, she added it to the stack of images she’d kept in a polished wooden box. Sometimes she lingered over the images, but the loss of Mary was too raw still. She closed and locked the box, returned it to its hidden place, and returned her precious pencils to the trunk where she stored them. After that, she couldn’t devise any other activities that would enable her to stay in her tent without disturbing the sleeping woman on the cot, so she gave in to the inescapable: she slipped out of the tent, letting the flap drop closed behind her with a soft wump.
The desert was still warm, but the harsh heat of the day had dulled. The moons offered enough light that she could see almost bluish shadows. Briefly, she was tempted to go back inside and fuss with her hair, to paint her face, to find a proper skirt to wear. It was foolishness. Edgar had seen her when she’d been gutted by a rabid boar. He’d seen her when she was blood-soaked and barely upright after a fight with a bloedzuiger. He’d seen her die a few times. There was no reason to try to pretty herself up for him, but she still did so far too often.
After a scan of the area to assure herself that none of the others were around, she walked over to the guard station. Edgar undoubtedly expected her to come to see him, had expected her for some time, but he didn’t take his eyes off the vast expanse of shadowed desert. She studied him as she approached the guard station. It wasn’t a difficult thing to look at Edgar. Sometimes when they were at a camp, he wore simple black trousers, simple black shirts, and well-worn boots. In town or for negotiations, he often donned a jacket too. Rare flashes of color came in a necktie or a carefully folded pocket square. Despite his lingering adherence to the attire of the world he knew when he lived in Chicago, he claimed he had no desire to go back there. His big concession to life in the Wasteland was that he now openly draped himself in weapons, much as some women did with baubles.
Kitty knew that she could stand in the dark and watch him all night and he’d never glance her way. He wouldn’t shirk his duties to look for her. He’d simply wait, and if she didn’t come to him during his shift, he’d come to her tent tomorrow. There was no way to avoid the conversation.
Whoever was on guard duty was all that stood between the Arrivals and the creatures that roamed in the dark. All of their campsites were surrounded by blessed, mixed-metal fences, as well as spells. That meant there was only one way in or out, and that access point was guarded at all times. In a few towns, they’d take rooms in one of the inns, but when what they hunted was more troublesome than usual, Jack insisted they stay outside town. Many a monster needed putting down, but that didn’t mean that the monsters were animals. They were as wise as men—more so, too often—and smart enough to use the townsfolk as pawns or spies.
Aside from the monsters and the man in front of her, being in the desert reminded her of the boomtown where she’d lived in the 1870s, not that it was home, but it was a simpler life than the one she had been living since coming to the Wasteland. There, she’d danced and relieved fools of their money in exchange for a few minutes of sloppy groping or a little bit of creative card playing. Here, the illusory peace of the desert was broken too often by the growls, shrieks, and inhuman cries of the things that lived out there.
“Edgar,” she started.
“You exhaust me sometimes, Kit.” He didn’t mince words; he never had. “What were you thinking going into town alone so late in the day? You know what sort of things are out there at night.”
“I was hoping to stay till morning,” she said quietly.
That earned her a look that made her want to flinch. Instead, she lifted her chin. Edgar wasn’t her husband; he had no right to look at her like she’d stepped out on him. She didn’t say that, though, not to Edgar or to anyone else.
He looked back out at the desert. “With someone in particular? Daniel?”
She sighed. “No. I just wanted to . . . get away from here, from all of this. Don’t you ever want to just escape?”
Edgar shrugged. “I get to kill things, and sometimes I get you. Why would I want anything different? The dying always hurts, and the waking back up does too, but it’s not so bad.”
“So wha
t does it matter if I’m out there alone?” She wanted to step in front of him, make him look at her, but neither of them would allow their conflicts to endanger the camp. “I’d heal. Whatever they do to me, I heal.”
“Tell that to Mary or Patrick or Des—”
“They weren’t first,” she interrupted. Her temper stirred. “Me and Jack? Nothing kills us. Everyone else comes and then one day you all die on me. Me? I’m left alive in this hell.”
“I haven’t died, Kit. You may be just as mortal as I am, or maybe I’m just as immortal as you. Until either of us dies for real, there’s no way to know.” Edgar reached out and caught her hand. “You should tell Jack next time you want to go out on your own, if you’re not going to tell me.”
“I know.” She paused, wanting to pull her hand from his almost as much as she hoped he’d pull her closer. “Please don’t be mad at Francis. He told Jack as soon as he returned from patrol.”
“He could’ve told me,” Edgar said.
She shook her head. “You intimidate him.”
“Good.” Edgar released her hand and held out a holster. “If you’re standing guard with me, might as well gear up.”
“About Daniel—”
“No.” Edgar glanced her way for only a heartbeat. “If he comes back here, I won’t stay. I won’t work for Ajani like he did, but I won’t stay here and watch you be with him.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“I’m patient, Kit, more than I want to be, but you and I both know where you belong.”
“I can’t.”
He laughed without any actual humor. “Yes, you can. You didn’t stop loving me because we’re sleeping apart.”
Kitty couldn’t lie to him, so she said nothing.
“Stay away from Daniel, Kit,” Edgar said. “I’ll forgive a lot, but there are limits.”
Shakily, she admitted, “That’s why I said no.” She hesitated and then added, “I don’t want you to leave.”