Tainted Trail

  Prime left a trail of emptied and smashed weapons. When Prime could no longer use a weapon, he made sure Hex couldn’t either—usually by using it to beat a ship’s control to pieces. All major ship systems were damaged in one manner or another.

  Unless Prime was a horrible shot compared to Hex, then Hex probably had been as wounded as Prime. Ukiah reconsidered his last memory of Prime, fleeing the scout ship with Hex in close pursuit. Prime had been so hurt that he couldn’t remember what he had done to the ship, or even which direction it lay.

  Had Hex also lost the memory of where the ship lay in this manner? Or had some later accident robbed him of the knowledge? Without the store of weapons, Hex would have found the world full of hostile elements and hosts that would usually die instead of converting into allied Gets.

  Good work, Dad.

  In the end, though, when Ukiah found Hex’s five other bodies cooked in their cryo-chambers—dry-roasted mummies—he was glad he didn’t have all Prime’s memories.

  Ukiah gathered what tools he could find that his father hadn’t destroyed and returned to the ovipositor room.

  Max stood watching Sam pick her way through the wires when Ukiah returned.

  “You could make a fortune selling haunted-house tickets to this place,” Max said in greeting. “I think it’s the creepiest place I’ve ever seen.”

  Sam dropped down beside Max and her eyes went wide.

  Max shined his light onto bright, hanging pieces of the analyzing station. “Do I want to know what that is for?”

  “It’s for vivisection.” Ukiah shuddered. His mother’s tales were innocent of that horror. Had she been spared the knowledge of what Hex had done to her family members he had taken, or had she merely edited it from her story? “The machine would sample secretions and such from still-living—bodies.”

  “Well, that would win my vote for first thing to blow up too,” Sam remarked on the fist-sized hole in the analyzing station’s control panel. “Hopefully, we didn’t need it.”

  “No. It’s used to identify the reproductive systems on native life-forms and what is needed to be done to produce a half-breed child.” Ukiah lead them to the resequencer. “This is what we need.”

  “And this machine does that?”

  “If the Ontongard just injected one of their cells into an egg, it would consume it, not fertilize it. If that egg was placed into the human mother, the mother would be a Get, and there would be no child.”

  Ukiah pulled out the impregnation tip out of one of the wrecked stations. “They would use this extractor to take out a genetic sample. It would be put into stasis until needed. At that point, the sample cells are unable to act to save themselves.”

  Sam shook her head. “What irony. They operate on the good of the many over the good of the few or the one. Usually that’s considered a positive trait for people.”

  “It’s what makes the Ontongard nearly unstoppable,” Max said.

  Ukiah showed Max how to undo the connecting bolts and set him to work dismantling the damaged stations in order to free the one they needed. Max swore under his breath as he worked. Finally Max eyed the thin, oddly curled dismantler. “I saw Hex. He was human enough to pass. How in God’s name did a race that humanoid create something like this? I don’t have fat fingers, but I can barely get my finger into the hole to hit the trigger, and I can only grip it with these two middle fingers. Don’t they have any clue to ergonomics?”

  Ukiah looked up from stripping out a computer. “Oh, that. The Gah’h created those. They had tentacles for hands.”

  “Why didn’t the Ontongard adapt the tools?” Sam asked.

  “The Ontongard think of themselves in scales too small to see with your eyes,” Ukiah answered. “And the next host race might have tentacles again. Why bother?”

  In the end the resequencer was too large to take up in one piece. Ukiah roamed the ship but found no other exit. The numerous cracks that led to fresh air all narrowed to openings too small for him to climb out, let alone be useful. Finally, they simply dismantled the resequencer down to three small pieces, wrapped them in bubble wrap that Max had brought down, and hauled them back up the granite chimney. Power connectors and portable hydrofusion power plants followed. On Max’s suggestion that their loved ones might prove “prickly” at the idea of being saved, Ukiah found two undamaged stasis field generators, and salvaged parts from three sabotaged ones.

  “Is that everything?” Max asked when Ukiah climbed up out of the hole on the last trip, having made a clean sweep for anything they missed.

  “Everything except the Ontongard.” Ukiah moved the rocks back into place.

  Sam came to help. “So how are we going to find Alicia, Kraynak, and Zoey? The FBI and the police are turning the state upside down trying to find the Brodys and Quinn.”

  “The Ontongard like to keep to places known to the people they’ve taken over. They don’t like moving out into the unknown. They stand out more that way. If they keep to the habits of the host, then they can blend in.”

  Max swore softly. “Hell, we don’t even know who is all Ontongard. There could be dozens of them.”

  “If we can figure out who they successfully infected,” Ukiah said, “then we would be ahead of the game.”

  “Well,” Sam said slowly. “The fire victims and the drowning victims are most likely the people that failed, so the families of the drowning victims—Brody, Walsh, Landin—could all be Ontongard.”

  “Walsh and Landin.” Max cocked his head, thinking. “I saw those names listed together someplace.”

  “Carl Landin and Sonnie Walsh both drowned at the end of July.” Sam considered. “But I don’t remember giving you their names before. Between the hit and run, multiple shootings, and alien pod people, I haven’t had time.”

  “They’re distant cousins.” Max said slowly, frowning.

  Sam shook her head. “No, not that I know of.”

  Max snapped his fingers and leaned into the Blazer to root through their bags. “I know where I saw it. Here.” He pulled out the photocopy of The Death of Magic. Max flipped a few pages and then gave a hard laugh. “Alicia had put her foot into it. They’re all Kicking Deer cousins. The Ontongard are going down the family tree.”

  For whatever reason, the author had included a family tree, stemming down from Kicking Deer. Curiously, Magic Boy had been skipped in the first generation. Jay had been straight father-to-son line down from his eldest half brother. By Jesse’s day the tree had a massive root structure, and very few of them were named Kicking Deer.

  A sudden wealth of blood kin.

  Sam frowned. “But Brody isn’t here, nor Bridges, which is Vivian’s maiden name.”

  Max took a sudden deep breath, as realization hit him. “The car accident. They probably had a blood transfusion.”

  “Yes.” Sam said. “Matt and Vivian probably did, but Harry wasn’t in the accident.”

  “Poor kid. He lost either way.” Max sighed.

  Sam took the bound photocopies. “Since Max and I aren’t going to be much help setting this machine up, why don’t he and I cross reference this with my case files and see what we can turn up?”

  Closing his eyes, Ukiah took out his favorite memory of Indigo, that first moment he became aware of their mutual attraction.

  Her face transformed for a moment with surprise and something that could have been joy. She was suddenly beautiful, all hard lines softening to the point that looking at her took his breath away. She put out a hand to him and he took it. “Ukiah!” she breathed his name, gripping his hand warmly. “I’m so glad that you are alive!”

  He could recall the soft strength of her hand in his, as if he held it now. Other treasured moments flowed after it, all filled with the steel sereneness that was Indigo. In the raw ache of losing so many he loved, he found solace just in his memories of her.

  He had to call her, and warn her, and maybe, say good-bye forever. She answered with a smile in her voice.

 
“I just took Kittanning back to your moms’. They’re all suntanned and happy. I’m glad you spared them all the horror stories. Where are you? Portland? Houston?”

  “We’re not coming back.” It hurt to say it. “We think we might be able to get Kraynak, Alicia, and Zoey back.”

  There was a long silence from her end, and then, “Really?”

  “Yes, we found the scout—”

  “Ukiah!” Indigo drowned him out. “This line isn’t secure. I just need to know: Do you want me there?”

  “I want you here, but I need you there. If I don’t call you back by dawn, Degas will be coming for Kittanning. Take care of him, will you? And don’t try it alone. Get Hellena to help you.”

  Another long silence from her. “I’ll burn him to ash if he hurts you.”

  He smiled at her cold steel promise. “I know. I love you. I’ll try hard to come back to you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Simms Quarry, Pendleton, Oregon

  Monday, September 6, 2004

  In the end, they found the Ontongard too late. The Pack had already found the den sometime before dusk and wiped them out. Ukiah, Max, Sam, and Jared arrived just as full night settled over the quarry. The Demon Curs moved through, cleaning up in a jovial, frantic pace. A bonfire had been built up, the flames throwing wild, shifting shadows over the rugged bareness of the gravel pit. Laughing and joking, the Curs doused the Ontongard dead with gasoline and flung them onto the roaring fire.

  Here and there, the dead were reawakening and trying to flee in bodies too damaged to move. The Curs would leap upon the struggling body and club it back to death, and add it quickly to the bonfire. A shout went up when one body simply shattered into mice, which fled quickly in all directions, abandoning the form. The Curs chased the tiny bodies through the dark, snatching them up, crushing the life from them, and flinging the limp bodies in a high long arc into the bonfire.

  Sick with fear that he was already too late, Ukiah raced to find Alicia, Kraynak, and Zoey.

  He found Zoey, shot through the heart. Her mice cowered in her matted hair. The soft tissue was repairing the damage at amazing speed.

  “I’ve found Zoey,” he radioed to Max. “She’s dead. She probably won’t cause you any problems.”

  “I’ve got the position,” Max radioed back.

  Jared’s four-door pickup swung cautiously up the drive. The Demon Curs nearest to the truck cut it off, recognized Jared as Pack, and waved him through. Jared pulled the pickup beside Ukiah, and Sam rolled the first steel barrel off the back. It landed with a deep musical thump.

  Max got out, pulling on steel-mesh-lined gloves. “Let’s make this quick, people.”

  Sam caught the gloves Max threw her. “Are you sure we shouldn’t put air holes into this?”

  “Can’t.” Ukiah pried off the drum’s lid. “The Ontongard don’t have the same sense of self as the Pack do. They’ll splinter down to gnats if they have to in order to escape.”

  “But won’t they suffocate?” Sam asked.

  “Ukiah,” Max asked. “How long can you hold your breath?”

  “Depends.” Ukiah caught Max’s look. “A real long time.”

  “See?” Max said with the tone of a problem settled.

  Sam helped Max snatch up Zoey’s mice, dropping them into tall canning jars, while Ukiah and Jared quickly searched her for weapons.

  Jared growled softly the whole time. He lifted Zoey up, small and limp in his arms. Ukiah could feel him fighting the urge to break the small body, destroy the dormant being. “There’s so much of him that I can barely sense her—and I hate her for it.”

  “Not her.” Ukiah took Zoey’s body from him and slid it carefully into the steel drum. “Him.” Ukiah slapped the steel lid back on the drum and tightened down the locks. “That’s one.”

  “Damn, missed a mouse!” Max hissed as a mouse scurried toward the protective bulk of the pickup.

  Jared stomped down on the mouse, reducing it to a dead bundle of fur and broken bones.

  Sam startled at the brutality with a slight “Jeez!” of dismay.

  “It will be fine,” Max said, dropping a metal top and lid on the canning jar and giving it a spin to twist the lid tight. “Just grab it and can it. Go on, Ukiah, find the others.”

  Ukiah loped into the darkness, casting about for familiar scents while Jared and Max lifted the barrel onto the pickup truck. Ukiah located Kraynak, extremely battered and very much dead, just as Rennie found him.

  “What are you doing here?” Rennie said.

  “Looking for our dead.” Ukiah tried to ignore him, wishing he was better at lying and that Rennie couldn’t read his mind. “Max, I found Kraynak.”

  Rennie grabbed him and hauled him around to face him. “I told you to leave!”

  “I can’t! I can’t just run away and leave them!”

  Rennie snarled into his face as the pickup pulled up. “Damn you, why can’t you, just this once, use your head instead of your heart?”

  “If you wanted him to use his head”—Jared climbed out of the pickup—“you shouldn’t have left me with him.”

  Rennie pushed Ukiah toward Jared. “I left him with you—so you could keep him safe. It was the only way I could be both places at once.”

  “There was the small matter of puking my guts out for a day and a half,” Jared said. “By the time I was seeing things from your perspective, things were too far gone.”

  “Totally.” Sam rolled a drum off the back of the truck. “So can we stick with the plan? We secure the ones we came for and then talk, okay?”

  Max helped her right the drum, unlock and pry off the lid, and ready it for Kraynak’s body. “She has a point.”

  Jared reached for Kraynak. Rennie looked at him hard with a fleeting desire for him to be still. Jared froze, hand outstretched. Anger flared in his eyes a moment, and then it too was gone, washed away by Rennie’s will. In that moment, two Rennies turned to look at Ukiah with disapproval.

  “Stop it!” Ukiah shoved Rennie. “Don’t do that to him!”

  Rennie considered striking Ukiah a crippling blow and sending him away, making Ukiah flinch, and then discarded the action as too dangerous with Degas so close by. Jared’s own anger flickered back into his eyes as Rennie released him.

  “You’re starting to sound like a spoiled brat,” Rennie snarled.

  “You knew Jared was part of my family before the Curs took him. Even if I had left before Degas turned him, I would have found out sooner or later. You know me. You knew how I was going to react. Why did you let them take him?”

  “You know the edge I walk with Degas. You know there was no ‘letting’ or ‘allowing,’ just surviving.”

  Ukiah looked away, feeling like a thunderstorm filled him; dark rage, guilt, and hurt howled over a landscape pelted with sorrow and lashed with brilliant lightning strikes of fear. He trembled with the furious chaos of emotions, all of it wanting to escape into mindless violence.

  “Just go. There is danger for us all here.” Rennie pushed then, trying to shove aside Ukiah’s own will with his own.

  Oddly, Ukiah knew that yesterday he would have gone. He had been weaker then, just a wild Wolf Boy with a thin veneer of civilization. Deepened by Magic Boy and Little Slow Magic, he looked levelly at Rennie and shook his head. “No.”

  Rennie frowned, puzzled at the sudden show of strength. “What have you done to yourself?”

  “I’ve found part of myself I had lost.”

  Rennie glanced about the flame-licked dark, trying to find Degas. “Take those you already found and go, before Degas sees you.”

  “One more,” Ukiah said. “Alicia.”

  “No.”

  “Come, come, Rennie,” Degas’s baritone came out of the darkness. “Let the brat dig his grave a little deeper.”

  They turned. The dog-gleam of Degas’s eyes reflected the bonfire’s light. He came out of the night, holding a struggling Alicia. She fought to break down, flee. Degas??
?s will held her in check, something Ukiah would have thought was impossible.

  A low growl woke in Ukiah’s chest as fear and anger twined together there in a tight, hot knot.

  Alicia radiated hate at all of them. “Growl, you idiotic dogs! Tear each other apart! I keep hoping you’ll embrace your nature and kill each other!”

  “Not while we have you to hunt,” Rennie growled.

  “If I’d known what a thorn you would become, I would have found the damn ship, dug it free with my bare hands, and laid waste to the entire continent! You rabid, moronic beasts!”

  Degas grinned. “I love having Hex helpless and ranting.”

  “She’s not Hex,” Ukiah said. “She’s an innocent girl that Hex’s tainted.”

  “Have you taught him nothing, Rennie? Or is he just as stupid as he is dangerous?” Degas shoved Alicia in Ukiah’s direction. “Smell her! Listen to her! Only her hair and fingernails are human anymore! She’s Hex’s Get!”

  “She’s my friend,” Ukiah said. “She loved me, and I care for her. Give her to me.”

  “Never.” Degas clamped hold of Alicia’s throat, choking her.

  Alicia thrashed in his hold. Mentally she raged on. “You imbecilic beasts! You’ll never win this war! I’ll kill you all like I killed Prime.”

  “Cub!” Rennie pulled at his shoulder.

  Dimly, Ukiah was aware that Max, Sam, and Jared had canned Kraynak and moved on to someone else, apparently hoping to save more than their three. The Curs continued to add Gets to the fire, almost absently knocking small burning bodies back into the flames. The smell of pine and burning tar mixed with singed hair, burnt fur, smoldering feathers, fresh-spilled blood, and roasting meat. The heat blasted nearly unbearable where they stood, some sixty feet from the flames, and the fire roared an unending deep growl, punctuated with cracks and pops as loud as gunshots.