Soul of Fire

Chapter 5

Martin had more experience than AJ with humans, overall. And he knew this human particularly well. He knew, despite the fact that she’d accepted AJ’s decision, that this wasn’t over. After Jan turned with an almost military flair and left the room, he gave one last look at AJ, despairing of his friend’s stubbornness as a match to Jan’s own, and followed her out to the porch. There were a few supers already there, talking quietly, but they took one look at her and Martin, hard on her heels, and left.

“Jan. No.”

She turned and looked out across the yard—away from the shed, and Tyler, and into the trees that lined the far edge of the clearing.

“Jan, I can hear you thinking.” He moved around so that he could see her face, not letting her avoid him. “No.”

“Your ears aren’t that good, swishtail,” she said, using AJ’s nickname for the kelpie.

He ran his hands through his hair, pushing it away from his face and then shaking it loose again, echoing his horse-form enough that he knew she could practically see it ghosting over him. “You’re thinking that AJ is too blind or too stubborn to see straight and that you’re right—and to prove it, you’re going to try to infiltrate the court yourself.”

She made a face at him, not willing to admit that maybe his ears were that good, after all.

“AJ isn’t blind,” the kelpie went on. “He’s being practical. You’re an asset, same as the rest of us, and he doesn’t waste his assets on golden-goose hunts. And anyway, you’re assuming that you’d be able to find the court to begin with, and since nobody else has, that’s not exactly a reasonable assumption.”

“Wait, you’re lecturing me on logic? That’s funny.”

His answering snort was entirely equine. “I’m not entirely a creature of instinct,” Martin said. “Not only, anyway. So when I bring logic and rational thought into it, you should listen.”

Jan crossed her arms across her chest and stared at him. “Fine. I’m listening. This is my listening face.”

She was listening, but then suddenly Martin seemed incapable of talking.

“Hello?”

He sighed and stared over her shoulder, finding it easier to speak if he didn’t have to look her in the eye. “You’re not wrong in that staying here is a waste of both of us. I’ve already told everyone everything I know, over and again, and yeah, your team outclasses you in the technical side. Even I know that.”

He risked a glance back at her, in time to see satisfaction that Martin agreed with her flickering in her eyes, tempered only by the implication of “us” that he should be going with her. He was hurt at first that she’d be surprised by that. He’d saved her from the turncoats not once but twice. He’d had her back, literally, in the preter court. He had told her how to reclaim Tyler from the preter bitch who’d enslaved him. “What, you thought you were going to go out there alone?”

Jan stared at him, then blinked, emotions flickering across her face too quickly for him to identify any of them. “Actually, yes. I’m human. Whatever AJ thinks, he has no control over me. Are you ready to go against his express orders?”

Martin made a rude noise through his nose, deep, wide-set brown eyes widened in surprise and hurt. “You make me sound like a lupin, bound to the word of my alpha. I choose to follow AJ because I think he is the best leader, and the cause is...necessary. But I’m no herd creature, whatever you might think of my conduct.”

Jan tightened her arms across her chest as though they could deflect his obvious disappointment in her. Martin waited, and finally she exhaled through her own nose, as though echoing him, and let her arms drop to her sides.

“Right.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and resisted the urge to pace. “Sorry. But no, you’re not doing this alone. So, maybe neither of us is being practical, or reasonable, or even smart. At least we’ll have each other’s backs.”

“We blow off the boss, go against pretty much direct orders, and put the weirdly dynamic duo back on the road.” Jan laughed, and he didn’t hear any humor in it. “Okay. What’s the but?” she asked, since he was clearly not finished.

“But we’re out of time. We’ve got, what, three days left?”

She nodded.

“So, once they start coming back through the portals, the bastards won’t stop until they’ve reached saturation, or terminal velocity, or whatever it is that will allow them to keep the portals open indefinitely—or bring enough of them here that they aren’t worried about this realm being a threat anymore.” The sentence came out in a rush, and he stopped to gulp air. “So if we’re going to do this, we have to do it right, and fast. And that means not screwing around with one of the search teams but going right to where the queen is hiding.”

She frowned at him, the one serious flaw in their plan practically floating in the air in front of them, sparking with obvious-dust. “And how the hell do we do that, since as you pointed out, none of the search teams have actually reported anything useful?”

Martin stepped closer, and she leaned forward a bit, their voices lowering, even though nobody was around to overhear them or likely to think either of them worth eavesdropping on to begin with.

“If you’re right about what you said to AJ, and I think you are, then the queen came here for something that didn’t exist where she was. If so, if she’s not only breaking patterns, she’d be building something new, not just a repeat of what she knew. Or trying to, anyway. Something human, or at least heavily human influenced. And there may be a way to track that....”

Something was happening. He could feel it. They didn’t tell him anything, and he didn’t ask, he didn’t want to know, but he knew, anyway.

He paced, pulling his arms around himself as though he were cold. The room they had given him to sleep in was too warm, even though he couldn’t find a thermostat or radiator where the heat was coming from. So he had gotten in the habit of opening the window and pulling a chair over to sleep in, rather than using the bed. He’d muss up the covers and throw the pillow back each morning. He didn’t know if they were fooled, but they never said anything.

Then again, why would they? Zan kept telling him that this was his space, that he controlled it.

So he could just tell them to turn the heat down. But he didn’t.

Maybe when he did, they’d tell him he was all better now.

He wasn’t better yet. He’d gotten upset this morning, when Jan came to visit. He could remember her name now, when she wasn’t in front of him. Jan. She liked her coffee with too much milk and sugar, and she snored when she had a cold, and her birthday fell when there was snow on the ground. He knew all those things and more, like the sound of her laugh, even though she had never laughed around him.

She was part of Before, too. Before, and Then, and Now.

Before had been...better. Everyone wanted him to go back to Before. If he did that, he would hear her laugh again.

So, why was it so hard? Why couldn’t he get better?

He paced, unable to let go of his thoughts, unable to speak them, unwilling to leave the security of his bedchamber, even as it felt like a cage. If it was a cage, it was one that kept him safe, not them.

And then he heard it, recognized it, even as his body turned, his elbows leaning on the open windowsill.

Not her old laugh. This one was low, quiet, not joyful the way he remembered, but it was still amused and still filled with a sense of Jan-ness that he would recognize anywhere, anytime, no matter what else he forgot.

He found her easily. She was across the wide lawn, standing on the porch of the larger house, the building all the others went and came from all day. Her back was to him, but he recognized her, the way her hair looked, the set of her shoulders. Someone was with her: a man, square shouldered and horse faced, and he was shaking his head, raising his hands like someone giving in, but with amusement, not anger.

He recognized the man, too. He was the other one who had been with them There. Who had brought him to Now. A not-human. There were a lot of not-humans here, but they were all different. And none of them were like...

His mind shied away from remembering, but Zan said it was all right, that memory couldn’t hurt him here. Like Stjerne. Stjerne had hurt him.

That was Then. Before was gone, and Then was gone. Zan said so. He was supposed to focus on Now.

Stjerne was gone, locked on the other side. She couldn’t go through the portal without him. He was safe so long as he stayed here. No one here would hurt him.

His breathing calmed. This was Now. Now was Jan laughing. Having seen them, heard them, he wanted to know what she was laughing about. So, he leaned in a little more and listened. It wasn’t easy, but he tuned out everything else and picked out the voices, both familiar, carried in the crisp air.

“I’m sorry, what was that you just said, again?”

“There is a spell.” The non-human sounded as if he was trying not to laugh again.

“A spell. Excuse me, mister ‘we don’t use magic like that,’ what the hell? A spell that would find a preter would have made everything a hell of a lot easier—you guys were keeping shit from me again. What the hell is with that?”

She sounded mad but not-mad. Teasing-mad. He knew that sound, too.

“We aren’t. We don’t. That’s something humans do. Some humans. Maybe.”

“Maybe? Yes or no, there’s a spell? Spill it, Martin, before I braid your mane and tail with pink ribbons and start calling you My Pretty Pony.”

“We don’t do magic like that. But some humans can. Or they could, once.”

“So, what you’re saying is, we need a wizard?”

“A witch, not a wizard. Wizards are fantasy. Witches are real.”

There was another choke of laughter. “Oh, yeah, I’m glad you drew that line. And you never thought to tell me about these witches, why?”

“Because I didn’t think of it until now.”

“And nobody else would think about asking a human for help, theoretical witch or not, right? Yeah. You guys, I swear... So, a witch should be able to find where a preter is hiding?”

“Should. Maybe. If she’s willing to. But...”

“But?”

“But part of why nobody thought of it is because witches, historically, don’t like us. They don’t trust us.”

“They’ve met you, in other words.”

“There’s history. And...we’d still have to find one, anyway. I don’t even know where to begin.”

Tyler watched, hidden, while Jan ran her fingers through her hair, digging into her scalp, and his own fingers flexed, remembering the feel of those soft curls under his own skin.

“Yeah. Huh. Okay, I might...I might be able to find a lead on that, if witches are actually real.” Her voice dropped, and he had to focus harder, just to hear.

“Of course you might. That’s what you do—you shake us up, give us new leads.” There was a tone to the other’s voice that he didn’t like, that made his fingers curl in a different manner, digging into his palms.

“Uh-huh. It’s a maybe, and a what-if, and what the hell, it’s the only thing even remotely resembling a plan of action we’ve got. So, you think AJ will give his approval of that?”

“What, for us to go on a road trip to find a human who will just as soon hex a supernatural as talk to one, on the off chance she will cast a spell to find a preternatural queen who may or may not be collecting humans, assuming this witch even believes us?”

“Yeah.” Jan’s tone brightened, and now he could hear her clearly. “So, we should bypass AJ and just get in the car?”

The non-human started to laugh again, as if that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. “Probably, yeah.”

Jan said something, too low for him to hear, and then she went back inside the big house. The not-human hopped over the porch railing with a peculiar grace and then headed toward the old barn.

He watched the not-human go, his thoughts whirling. The barn was where the cars were kept; he’d seen them come in and out, occasionally. Jan was looking for a preter queen and her court. Courts were not-safe. Leaving the Farm was not-safe. Everyone had told him, over and over, that the Farm was safe.

Jan was leaving the Farm.

Leaving the Farm was trouble.

Jan was going to get into trouble.

He forced his fingers to uncurl, looking at the half-moon marks left in his palms, and then he was shifting his body, pushing the window open all the way, and swinging over the sill, dropping easily onto the ground.

The air was colder here, and the lack of walls around him, keeping him safe, almost made him scramble back inside.

He set his jaw, ignored the feeling of being exposed, watched, and made his own way toward the barn.

Ian Patek normally growled like a bear himself when someone tried to horn in on his territory. In this case, though, he’d been just as glad when the Feds finally arrived, set up camp, and spread out all over the county, their “please give us everything you know and stay in touch but stay out of our way” phrased in slightly more diplomatic words. Little Creek P.D. had handed over everything they had, which wasn’t much, and gone back to the daily job with a sigh of relief.

It wasn’t all speed traps and pot busts, though. Part of that job—more often than any of them liked to admit—was following up on calls claiming that there was a bigfoot—or wendigo, or naked crazy man, depending on the age, gender, and sobriety of the caller—up in the woods. Patek and Hansen had been following up on one of those calls when they found the first pile of bones.

“Shit.” Patek squatted back on his heels and stared at the evidence. There was no mistaking human bones once you’d seen them. Not coyote, not deer, not anything but human ribs and legs. “You think that’s...?”

“Well, in the immortal words of Richard Dreyfuss, this wasn’t no boat accident.” Joe turned away from the pile and scanned the area. “Don’t jump to conclusions. Could be a hiker who took a bad fall, never crawled out, and never got reported missing.”

“Yeah.” That made more sense than a mysterious killer dragging a body from a house in town all the way the hell up here. And there was only one body as far as he could tell. A hiker who got the wrong end of a bear paw, that was bad news but ordinary enough.

“There’s the outcropping Missus Mac mentioned,” Joe said, pointing to the rock face to their left, up the hill a few yards. “Might as well check it out. Ready?”

Patek shook his head, then stood up, his hand resting on his holster. “No. But there’s only a couple more hours of daylight left and I’m sure as hell not doing it in the dark, so, yeah, let’s do this.”

The outcropping was an actual cave, low roofed but dry and filled with what could only be described as a makeshift nest of branches, leaves, and filthy shreds of cloth.

“Jesus Christ.” The stink was bad enough that he felt his eyes start to water, and he pulled his sleeve over his wrist, using the material as a filter to breathe through. It didn’t help: there was a particular stench to rotted meat that you couldn’t block out. “Is that another body?”

Joe used the toe of his boot to poke at the pile of debris within reach, not wanting to go too deep into the cave, for all that it seemed empty, and shrugged. His hand was on his pistol butt, too. “Could be. Maybe the rest of our missing persons. Part of the rest, anyway. Cannibal killer vagrants, loose in the Adirondacks. That’ll make a good headline, don’t you think?”

“Jesus Christ,” Patek said again. “Call the goddamned Feds. This is their headache, not ours.”

“Yeah.”

They both backed out of the cave’s mouth, retreating to the clearing, where nothing could suddenly scramble out of the shadows or drop on them from above. Keeping his right hand on his holster, Joe reached awkwardly with his left for his cell phone. Reception was crap up here, but they had one-touch direct to the station.

“Molly, it’s Hansen. Tell our visitors to get the hell up here. We got something for them.”

Their dispatcher responded immediately. “Animal, vegetable, or headache?”

Joe glanced back at the cave. “All of the above, sweetheart, all of the above. And you might want to send the coroner, too, although there’s not much left for him to look at.”

“Got it. You holding position or coming back in?”

“We’re going to mark the spot and move on. I don’t—” Joe saw Patek shift, his gun now in his hand, turning slowly, the way they didn’t teach in the Academy. “Hold on.”

He let go of the talk button and let his eyes skim the surroundings, trying to see what had set his partner on edge. Nothing moved, nothing smelled odd, but Patek had grown up here, was more of a country boy than he could ever hope to manage, so Joe was going to trust the other man’s instincts.

And then something—an alley-born instinct—prickled, and he dropped the phone, going into a crouch and pulling his own sidearm even as something charged at him, growling nothing at all like a bear or a vagrant.

There was a high-pitched scream, and the sound of rapid-fire gunshots echoed off the cliff, and then there was silence.