Kinked

TWELVE

Quentin rubbed his face. It felt like his life was full of too many goddamn anomalies. So many of them centered on the sexy, frenzy-inducing female who stood beside him.

His modern mind kept snagging on the concept of her identity. Part of him kept insisting she was masculine, but then he would look at her, really look at her, and realize that she was feminine in a way he had never known before—strong, confident, and completely devoid of the mannerisms and characteristics that popular culture defined as femininity.

She wasn’t ruled by fear of defying conventions. As far as he could determine, she wasn’t ruled by fear in any form, and all her emotions were painted in primary colors. At times it seemed primitive, even exasperating, but it was always colorful and exhilarating.

When she loved someone, she would do so completely and passionately, no reservations or qualifications, or the kind of emotional blackmail that said “I will love you if you will only do this, or be that.”

What would it be like to be loved with that kind of … purity?

He looked at her and experienced a sense of freedom, a previously unnamed, unidentified emotion. Something inside of him had cut loose, the wild, dangerous part of him he usually kept under such strict control. It felt like it ran unfettered.

Usually the only time he felt this way was when he had turned into the panther and took to an uninhabited area so that he could roam without concern of running into humans or other creatures. Where that wild part of him was going and what it would do when it got there, he didn’t know.

He forced himself away from useless reverie and concentrated on the tasks at hand.

“All right,” he said. “I think we should keep moving. We don’t have any shelter here, and we do have a lot of shadowy places where any number of anomalies can hide.”

“Agreed,” she said. “We should keep going until we find shelter, break out of the forest, or until morning comes.”

Without any further discussion, he headed off the bridge and away from the path, into the forest. Rather to his surprise, she allowed him to take the lead without argument. They moved quietly through the underbrush. Even though they hadn’t been attacked, all of his senses remained on high alert. He didn’t like the number of unanswered questions they had accumulated.

He guessed that the coastal scene they had seen earlier was as much as twenty to twenty-five miles away from the cliff house. Moving carefully through the dark as they were, they wouldn’t reach that before morning. He was starting to get tired, which meant Aryal had to be getting tired too. Instinct drove him now, and he didn’t think it would be a good thing to go into the city without getting some rest first.

He said as much to Aryal telepathically.

Makes sense, she said simply.

He waited but she didn’t say anything more. It was another one of those anomalies that he had begun to accumulate. They weren’t arguing nearly as much as they should have been. Since she could pull an argument out of thin air, that probably meant she was plotting something, but his whack-job radar wasn’t going off, so he doubted his own conclusion.

It was interesting to experience her as an asset, as opposed to a drain or an outright danger. He could acknowledge that her skill set made her useful in her sentinel position in investigations, but that was an intellectual observation. Now he was actually experiencing what it was like to work with her as a partner, and she was every bit as good as he would have expected any of the other sentinels to be—fast, sharp, relevant and logical.

He liked what he saw of Aryal as a working partner. He respected it, respected her. That was another anomaly.

Of course so far they hadn’t really had to interact much with other people. And they did pretty much kick the shit out of each other already. He grinned.

Time became a formless thing that passed uncounted in the shadows. He sank into his animal awareness, feeling the muscles of his body work while he noted the details of his surroundings. It wouldn’t do to relax and slip into carelessness. He watched the more intense shadows, looking for anything that seemed especially dark and that moved differently than any of the leafy fronds or tree limbs that swayed in the breeze.

When he finally came up to another tree line, the change was so abrupt it surprised him. He stopped before breaking out of the underbrush, and Aryal brushed his back before she stopped too.

They had come upon a meadow with long, coarse grasses that looked tall enough to come up to their chests. That meadow could disguise a lot. He glanced at the sky that was beginning to lighten in one direction. Okay, he was calling that direction east. Dawn was not that far away. It was still too dark to see much beyond what was close in front of them, but he guessed that, as long as they had hiked, they had reached the other side of the forest and were now probably a few miles away from the coast.

“I don’t think we’re going to get any better place to stop before we reach the coast,” he said. “And I don’t want to get there without having had some rest first.”

“We should camp here,” she said. “And take watches. That way we’ll both get some sleep.”

“Works for me.”

Aryal lost a coin toss, which meant Quentin could rest first. He ate a protein bar quickly to stave off the worst of any hunger pains. It didn’t have enough calories to satisfy him, especially after the expenditure of energy over the last two days, but it would be enough to let him take a nap.

He stretched out underneath a tree to catch any shade it might give after the sun came up, and he used his pack as a pillow. Aryal stood nearby, leaning back against another tree with her arms crossed and one booted heel hiked up on the trunk. She didn’t face either the meadow or the forest, but positioned herself at an angle so that she could look easily in either direction.

She looked comfortable, capable, and alert enough to stand guard all day.

He watched her surreptitiously from under lowered eyelids as she tore open a protein bar and took a bite. She had tied her hair back with a piece of leather, but a few fine strands fell forward on the clean line of her forehead. The T-shirt she had worn underneath her sweater was a plain white cotton tank top. It hugged the long slim line of her torso, highlighting her high, slight breasts and the twin peaks of her nipples.

His body clenched with hunger. He thought of how her breasts felt in his hands, the softness giving way under his touch, how her nipple tasted in his mouth.

Unbidden, what she had said yesterday played through his mind again.

If you do anything to actively try to hurt any of the people I care about—that’s when I will come after you, and I won’t stop until I hurt you bad, or you end up dead, or maybe even both those things. That’s my bottom line.

It really was quite simple.

From everything he had heard, harpies rarely gave anybody a second chance at anything. If you got on their shit list, you usually stayed there forever. She really might not care about his smuggling past, but he also realized what a huge concession she had made when she let go of her investigation. There wouldn’t be any more chances after that.

If she ever found out what he had done to Dragos and Pia last year, he had no doubt what would happen. It would be open war again, and this time the hostilities between them wouldn’t stop until one of them was dead.

That was the thought that finally leashed the unfettered, wild part of him.

He turned his head away from her. Only then was he able to get some sleep.

She woke him after a couple of hours, and without a word they exchanged positions. Dawn had broken, bringing humid warmth. He felt sweaty and dirty, and he wished they were near running water again.

Aryal curled on her side and threw part of her jacket over her face. After that she didn’t move. Quentin rummaged in his pack for the last of his food. He had one more can of beef stew, which he would be heartily glad to see the last of, and three protein bars left. He ate all of it except a final protein bar. He wanted to eat that too, but instead he tucked it away. The promise of new, different food was close, but it wasn’t with them yet.

The sun rose higher and so did the heat. The area was quiet except for the occasional drone of insects and trill of birdsong. No unexplained shadows, no anomalies, at least not any within sight.

He hadn’t had the chance to think much about the four missing Elves—too much had been going on, and Aryal had consumed most of his attention—but now he did so with a sense of foreboding. He didn’t know two of the names that Ferion had given him: Cemalla and Aralorn, the one female, the other male.

He did know the other two Elves, Linwe and Caerreth. Linwe was a firecracker, a young Elf who had recently dyed the tips of her spiky brown hair blue. She had laughing brown eyes and a propensity to teasing—or at least she had before the tragedy at Lirithriel Wood.

Quentin was quite fond of her. They were not related, either by blood or by marriage, but he still considered her part of his larger family group. Caerreth was a shy young male, bookish and remarkably insensitive to his surroundings. Quentin had met him before on his visits to Lirithriel.

All four of them, Ferion had told him, were younger and less experienced. They were the ones who Ferion could spare. Quentin shook his head. The longer time passed without any explanation for their absence, the higher his concern spiked. He was antsy to get to the coast and start investigating, to see if they could find any sign of the Elves there.

He judged the time by the sun’s position in the sky. When he estimated a couple of hours had passed, he said to Aryal, “Time to wake up, sunshine.”

Her sleep-roughened voice sounded from underneath the jacket. “You need to stop calling me that. I don’t know anyone less filled with sunshine than me.”

“I like the irony,” he told her.

She rolled to a sitting position, her hair all over the place. She raked it back with both hands and groped for the leather tie that had come loose in her sleep.

“Why don’t you cut your hair short if it annoys you?” he asked curiously. He stifled the odd, foolish twinge of regret at his own words. Her hair was another thing about her that was simply beautiful, the long black strands thick, luxurious and gleaming, but more often than not she seemed impatient with it.

It had been wonderful to sink his hands into that soft black mass, to imprison her by clenching a fist into it, and pull her head back and kiss her. He pushed the thought away. Like an irritating gnat, it refused to be swatted and hovered at the back of his consciousness.

“Getting a haircut takes time,” she said. She dragged her pack open and wolfed down breakfast. He noted, with a little amusement, that she didn’t tuck any of the protein bars aside for later but kept eating until the last of her food was gone. Then she looked around with a disgruntled expression. “First item of business is we’ve got to secure more food one way or another.”

“The coast should be just four or five miles away now,” he said. “We’re bound to start seeing some dwellings soon. At the very least, we should be able to find some wayfarer bread.”

Outside of Elven communities, their wayfarer bread was a rare, prized commodity, but within Elven communities, it was a staple of almost every home. Vegetarian, delicate and flavored with honey, the bread was famous for its delicious flavor, healing properties and long shelf life.

However, Aryal didn’t seem impressed. She made a face. “I suppose it’s calories and will do in a pinch,” she said.

“I don’t know why I keep finding this hard to believe, but you actually are contrary in just about every conceivable way,” Quentin told her. When she rose to her feet, indicating she was done with her meal, he scooped up his backpack and shouldered it. “Everybody loves those wafers. Everybody except you.”

She flipped him off, the action casual, even companionable, as she strapped on her pack and grumbled, “I have a sweet tooth. They’re not bad. But I need a lot of calories, and I’m getting really hungry for fresh protein.”

He ran his gaze down her lean, racy frame. She flew with power and speed, and that took a lot of energy. He was feeling the need for fresh protein too. “We’ll get some today, one way or another.” He turned his attention to trekking through the meadow. “I’m not inclined to fight my way through that long grass. I think we should give up the stealthy approach and take the path. We’re leaving a scent trail anyway, and if your anomaly from last night was sentient, something has already become aware of our presence.”

“The direct approach.” She shrugged. “That works for me.” They moved along the tree line until they found the path. It was wider as it cut through the meadow grass, as if this portion had seen more traffic. Aryal said, “Let’s get somewhere, already.”

She sounded impatient, as if her self-imposed grounding was starting to wear on her, and she took off down the path at a jog. Quentin grinned as he followed her down the corridor created by the long grass. The sun beat down on their heads, and the wind caused the grass to ripple in long silvery green waves much like the surface of an ocean.

They could see farther ahead of them now that it was daylight, to a distant patch of white-capped water. He caught glimpses of that blue land or island, and he wondered what was over there.

After jogging for a couple of miles, they reached a slight incline. As they ran upward, they left the grassy meadow-land behind, and when they reached the top, the coast lay spread out in front of them, closer than ever.

The path cut a zigzag down a long steep hill. A few houses with terraced gardens populated the hillside. A cluster of more buildings dotted the area at the bottom, where a dirt road angled toward the city by the sea. Every line of the city in silhouette, every building, was gracious and elegant. The sight pulled at something inside of him.

For the first time since clearing the forest, he turned to look behind them. The cliffs that held the passageway rose higher to a mountain range that covered the horizon.

“What happened to their horses?” he said suddenly. “Gaeleval enthralled the Numenlaurians. They crossed to the other passageway in the Bohemian Forest. Then they made their way across that Other land to the entrance to Lirithriel Wood, and they were all on foot. There wasn’t a single horse anywhere in that army, and Elves love their horses. So where were they? Where are they?”

Aryal gave him a quick look, and her face shadowed. She said nothing.

Abruptly he turned away, rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the ground, while a hard, hurting knot ached in his chest. She didn’t have to say anything. He knew the answer as well as she did.

The enthralled Elves had been zombielike, devoid of will and intention. They had been in wretched condition, poorly dressed and often without shoes. They hadn’t had the capacity to look after themselves, let alone look after any other living creature. If any of their horses had been put to pasture when the Elves had been enthralled, the horses could have had a good chance of survival. If they had been stabled, they would have starved to death.

The city they looked down upon was more beautiful than many of the great cities on Earth, and it was worse than lifeless in the aftermath of a holocaust.

He shut down his feelings and turned professional. “Pia told me that she talked to Gaeleval in a dream the night before Dragos killed him.”

“Did she?” Aryal sounded thoughtful. “Did she say what they said to each other?”

He looked over the idyllic coastal scene without really seeing it. “Did you know he wielded something called a God Machine? That was how he enthralled so many Elves and did the kind of damage that he did. It amplified his Power.”

“I know.” She sounded cautious, as if the God Machine might be some kind of taboo subject, but Quentin had heard some of the old Elven stories and had already known of the Deus Machinae.

“In her dream, Pia asked Gaeleval how he had gotten the Machine,” he said. “Camthalion, the Numenlaurian lord, had held his Machine for a very long time, ever since Numenlaur closed itself off from the rest of the world. Apparently it drove him mad. He summoned Gaeleval to the palace, where Gaeleval claimed he found everyone dead. Palace attendants, Camthalion’s children and their mother. They had been kneeling in the throne room, and their throats had been slit. Camthalion had poured oil over his head and set himself on fire.”

“That’s pretty fucking crazy,” she said softly.

He gave her a sharp look. “Maybe it happened the way Gaeleval said it did, and maybe it didn’t. Maybe Gaeleval was the one who killed them. Whatever the real story is, I think there’s going to be some ugly shit down there.”

She took a deep breath. “I understand.” They both fell silent. After a moment, she tapped his shoulder. “Hey,” she said. “Come on. My mouth is burning up, it’s so dry. We need to find water. Let’s get down to those houses and see if there’s anything to eat and drink.”

He nodded and turned back around.

The path was steep enough that it made jogging a bad idea, so they descended at a slower pace. The first house they came to was a surprise. It was set into the hill, and they didn’t see it until the path turned and took them right by it. The front of the house faced the sea and was painted white, and flower beds were planted in front of it.

The door stood open.

Quentin had his sword in his hand before he was fully conscious of drawing it. Aryal drew hers more slowly. She whispered, “It might have been open all this time.”

“It also might not have,” he said.

They were going to harvest what they needed from the homes they found, but they were also going to take only what they needed and treat the property with respect. The thought that someone else might have come and looted through the belongings of a Numenlaurian victim caused anger to torch along the corners of his mind.

He strode for the door and pushed it open with one flattened hand, while his sharp gaze noted every detail and he expanded his magic sense. There had been no recent Power expenditure.

The interior of the house was shadowed and cool. He walked inside while Aryal threw open shutters, letting in more light. The furniture looked minimalist and comfortable, and a fireplace with a simple hearth had half-burned logs. He wanted to check to see if the logs were cool, but first he needed to make sure the rooms were clear.

He found a body lying in the doorway of a bedroom. It was an Elven male, lying face down, long hair spilled about his head and shoulders. He had been dead for some time.

Quentin did not know that because of any state of decay, as he would with any human or mortal body. Some alchemy of their race caused Elves to look as natural in death as they had in life for years. When they finally began to decay, or so he had heard, they smelled sweet, like crushed flowers.

He could tell the male had been dead for some time because the body had been partially eaten. Wildlife had gotten into the house. The lower half of one leg was missing entirely.

He carefully eased the body over, and several insects scuttled away. The male wore soft, loose clothing, such as what one might wear to bed, if one wore pajamas. He had been stabbed several times, and there were defense wounds on his arms.

Quentin looked beyond the body into the bedroom. The bedcovers had been thrown back on the bed. The Elf had been disturbed while he was resting.

Aryal had moved to join him. She stood staring down at the body for a long moment. Then she stepped over it and walked into the deeply shadowed bedroom. “There’s evidence of a partner,” she said. “Feminine clothes, jewelry, et cetera. I’ve looked through the other rooms. There aren’t any other bodies.”

He took a blanket off of the bed and covered the body carefully, then stood, slamming the door on his emotions again. “In Lirithriel when Gaeleval enthralled the Elves, he did it at night, when most of them were asleep. Not everyone was asleep though, and the ones who had been enthralled attacked the others. It looks like the same thing could have happened here.”

In the middle of the bedroom, she turned to consider him. “This is going to be a grim homecoming for any Numenlaurian Elves who recover enough to make it back.”

“I know.” He wiped his forehead with the back of one arm. “We should check to see if there’s any food that might still be useable.”

“Right.”

Aryal moved past him and he followed her. The dwelling was a simple one, and the kitchen was recessed back into the hill. He heard the sound of trickling water as he stepped into the room, which was in almost total darkness until Aryal struck a match. The tiny yellow flame threw enough illumination for her to locate a lamp set on a table. She lit it and stepped back. A cooking hearth was inset into one wall. The chimney would have to go through the soil of the hill itself to provide some kind of outlet for the smoke. Against another wall, an underground spring provided ample running water, which trickled out of a fountain.

Even though Numenlaur had been cut off from the outside world for so long, the house seemed thoroughly modern in concept as it used natural elements as assets. It would be warm and easy to heat in the winter, and stay cool in the summer.

While he admired the design of the house, Aryal moved around the kitchen. She walked into a deep recess that must be some kind of pantry. Then she walked out again.

“The cupboard shelves are bare,” she said. “Somebody’s been here before us.”

The blunt words sent a jolt of adrenaline through him. “You’re sure it isn’t wildlife.”

He hadn’t quite phrased it as a question, but she answered as if he had. “There’s been some wildlife in there. It’s messy and stuff has been knocked to the floor and spilled. But there’s no wayfarer bread, or anything preserved in jars that might be portable.”

Wayfarer bread was stored wrapped in leaves that were a natural repellant. The leaves masked the smell of the bread, and they tasted bad to animals and insects. “All right,” he said. “We had an instinct to be wary. Now we know for sure.”

She shrugged and walked over to the fountain to drink deeply and wash off. When she was through, he moved in to do the same. The clear, pure water was delicious and immensely refreshing.

Aryal said, “It could have been the missing Elves.”

“Could have,” he said. He ducked his head to wet his hair. The cold on the back of his neck was a shock to the system and sharply bracing. “But I don’t believe it. I don’t know two of the Elves, and I’ve only met the third so I can’t speak for them, but I find it hard to imagine that Linwe could have walked by the body and just left it alone. I think she would have covered him, like I did. She certainly would have shut the door to keep out any more scavengers.”

“So it was somebody else.” She leaned back against the table, one foot kicked over the other. “Maybe the reason why the Elves are missing? Maybe they came in after whoever crossed over.” She shook her head. “Wait a minute, does that make sense? If the Elves had found evidence of someone who came into Numenlaur, why didn’t we?”

“This all could have happened weeks ago,” he reminded her. “The evidence could have been washed away by the elements by now.”

She pushed away from the table. “Whatever the answers are, we’re not going to learn any more here. Let’s go.”

He blew out the lamp, and as they left the silent house, he shut the door firmly behind them. At least if the dead Elf had any surviving friends or family, they would have something to bury when they returned home.

They continued down the hill and stopped at a few more houses on the way. The next home didn’t have any dead bodies. It also didn’t have any food. The third home was also empty of bodies, but this time they found a few loaves of wayfarer bread. They broke open the wafers and ate them immediately.

It wasn’t enough food, but Quentin felt a pickup in his energy immediately. As he wiped his mouth with the back of one hand, he said, “Whoever was scavenging got their needs met after looking into only a few pantries, and they hit the same houses we did, on the route from the passageway, so we’re looking for a small party. One, maybe two people.”

Aryal thought about it and nodded. “That’s how I would call it. Let’s hit one or two more houses and see if we can get some supplies, then move into the city.”

The next house they came upon was large, clearly the home of someone prosperous, and it had a stable and a large pasture. Quentin paused on the path to the door, staring out over the land. He couldn’t see the whole pasture.

Aryal paused too and looked in the direction of his gaze. She scowled but said, “Check out the pasture if you want. I can search for food.”

“Okay.” He handed her his backpack and walked over to the pasture. Putting one hand on the top wooden rail, he vaulted over the fence. He jogged into the field until he could see around a copse of trees to the other end. If there had been any horses in the pasture, they had leaped the fence a while ago, and he wouldn’t bother checking in the stable. He spun around and jogged back.

As he approached the section of fence nearest to the house, Aryal exploded out the front door. Already primed for possible trouble, his heart kicked. He stared as she ran several yards, stopped, and turned in a circle with one hand pressed to her flat stomach, the other over her eyes. The part of her face that was visible was clearly distressed. Was she injured?

His sword was in his hand before he realized it. He raced to the fence and leaped over without touching it. She bent at the waist, and he put on a burst of speed. As he reached her, she was making a soft noise, as if she sobbed for breath.

As if she—Aryal—sobbed.

His world bled with wrongness. He put a hand on her back, and she flinched. She hadn’t realized he had approached? He glared at the open door of the house. She had set their backpacks together just outside.

He asked harshly, “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head and straightened. Her expression was clenched, her eyes filled with horror.

What the fuck?

“What happened?” he asked more quietly. Even though she had indicated she wasn’t hurt, his gaze ran down her body anyway, instinctively checking for harm. The way she had clutched at her stomach, it was as though she had been stabbed.

She swallowed, and her mouth twisted. “Horses weren’t the only creatures that the enthralled Elves failed to look after, Quentin.”