Chapter 27

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

TRENCH

Arc’s bike throws up snow as it stops beside me.

“I don’t need your help.” I get to the hole next to the sensor without looking up at him.

“I know.” He hops down beside me anyway. “But now that I’m here, you could go back to your bondmate who deserves more time with you than she’s gotten.”

“Pretty quick turn around for someone who thought she wanted to murder people.”

“I saw something that triggered a memory and didn’t think before I spoke.” He stares at me. “You know where he kept me. You know what I saw.”

“She’s not him. Honestly, if you compare her to him… You will not walk away from that statement.” There are a dozen pieces of charred and torn metal at the bottom of a small crater that triggered the sensors.

“She’s not like him. Believe me, I know that.” He turns a piece of metal over, glaring down at it. “I hate that you pull them apart trying to understand them.”

“What would you have me do?”

“I think the Earth saying is ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’?”

He flips over another piece of the casing, and we both stand up straighter. It has a Lasap coated core.

This is not from the cavrinskh.

This isn’t even something from the inner caldera. “The impact is wrong.” I look toward the taller ridge behind us. “This came from outside, not in.”

“Okay, so what the hell is it?” Arc asks, his thoughts clearly in line with mine.

It’s an error. Or maybe it’s a distraction?

Arc’s head snaps up, staring in the direction of my outpost. I hear the snow crunching, the sound of footsteps…

My brother is on his bike before I am, taking off instantly. But as I follow the sound of cavrinskh making a break for the outer caldera’s rim, he veers off.

I don’t know where he’s going, but I can’t follow him.

JESSICA

The doorbell rings, and I expect to see Laurel or one of the other bondmates when I go to answer it, but my visitor isn’t in the garage.

A Sian man stands on the stoop in the courtyard. The neck of his crisply ironed uniform is marked with English letters that read CSS. But it’s not the same uniform Riann has worn during our brief conversations. Odd.

“Can I help you?”

He turns to me with a quick little bow that is strange as well.

“I am Shan, with the Continental Security Service. You’re needed in Ilidi City to answer some questions.” He gestures toward his car.

A car with no official insignias, nothing that makes it look like it’s used for government business.

“No.”

His smile cracks. “Excuse me?”

“No, I won’t be going with you today.”

“You have to.”

I’m not sure why that makes me laugh. “I don’t think I do.”

Maybe it’s because it feels like the answer a little kid would give—all that’s missing is the stomp. Maybe it’s because it’s so patently false.

“If you don’t come with me, I’ll have to arrest you.”

Sure. “You wait here, I’m going to call my CSS contact and if he says I should go with you, I will.”

I go to close the door, but he grabs me by the arm.

I snatch the bottle of serum off the table beside the door as he drags me out, wishing it was the knife instead.

He gets me down the first of three shallow steps before I manage to get the spray bottle’s lid off.

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you make me.”

Shan laughs at me.

I almost spray him just for that.

“What’s going on, Jess?”

Shan flinches to a stop and pulls a gun, looking around wildly, but I hear my visitor and know exactly where he is.

Arc stands on the roof of our garage. Before I can answer, he hops down to the cobbles.

Casually hooking his gun onto the structure on his thigh, he appraises Shan. “I can guarantee you don’t want the consequences that would come with shooting me.”

“Are you her bondmate?” Shan asks, but it feels more like “Are you her owner?”

“No,” Arc laughs, and looks down to where the man’s hand is wrapped around my arm. “If he was here and saw you touch her like that, you’d have already lost that hand.”

“If you’re not her bondmate, this isn’t really any of your concern.”

Arc hums, “I think it is. What do you think, Jess?”

I think I’d prefer if he wasn’t so casual about this.

Arc casts a sidelong glance at me and shrugs.

I try to pull my arm away from Shan, but he doesn’t let me. “He said he’s with the Continental Security Service.”

Arc chuckles lowly. “No you’re not.”

Shan straightens, his back a rigid line, and says something in Sianese.

“You’re a Company man,” Arc replies, thankfully in English. “Where were you going to take her?”

Another string of Sianese that I can only understand the curses in.

“No, but I think I have some friends who are going to make a visit to that facility in Calisan you don’t want me to know about.”

The man turns fully to Arc now and plants his feet, gun raised, ready for a confrontation. “ What are you?”

“I am the second most likely way you’ll die if you don’t leave this courtyard right now.” He glances at me. “Go back inside Jess. It’s about to get messy.”

I take a step back, but Shan’s grip tightens further on my arm. “She’s coming with me.”

“Oh, buddy, I’m not the one who gets to decide whether or not you leave this courtyard alive, but I will kill you before it does if you don’t let go of her right now.”

“It?” He looks around the high snowy walls. As soon as his grip loosens, I wrench my arm from his grip.

But I don’t get inside before I hear it.

Hand on the closed door, I turn and watch with wide eyes as the cavrinskh pounces on Shan.

Focused, like the one from before, it doesn’t seem to care that Arc is there pointing his gun at it.

It doesn’t seem to care that Shan shoots it twice.

The other man struggles until a sharp snap echoes around us, and he goes limp.

The cavrinskh growls, almost as if it’s pleased with itself. Then it looks up at me with Shan’s blood still dripping from all three pieces of its beak. The dark place on its forehead pulses.

“What does that thing do, Arc?”

“You should be inside already,” he scolds, slowly stepping toward me.

“What does it do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You seem to know everything else.”

“All this thing is thinking is ‘Kill’ okay? It doesn’t have any secrets for you. Now get in the house so I can deal with it, and you can go back to work.”

I step back, searching for the door handle. The thing growls.

“I don’t think it’s going to let me.”

With my other hand, I raise the bottle, but the wind won’t let me spray it.

He’s right. I need to get inside.

When I twist the handle, it lunges, and I dive out of the way.

I hit the ground, the bottle flying from my hand.

Arc pounces, jumping onto its back and holding on like a bull rider, even though I can see the places where the creature’s spines have torn apart his suit and slashed at his flesh.

Shit shit shit!

I sweep my hands through the snow that’s piled against the side of the outpost, and when I finally find the bottle, I scrabble to my feet just as Arc is thrown from the creature’s back.

He is a bloody mess, and the creature only looks at him for another moment before it turns on me again.

I get the bottle up, but before I can shoot, Arc lunges again.

“Go inside so I can shoot it!” He stabs the thing in the side of the neck with a knife. It doesn’t flinch.

“Get out of the way!” I yell. “I had a shot at it.”

“Go inside!”

“It’s not going to let me!”

The thing throws its head violently to the left, flinging Arc away.

Now it’s just me and the creature.

A creature that stalks toward me with that glowing purple spot on its head.

It doesn’t even seem to notice the spray bottle in my hand.

I almost feel bad.

But I spray anyway.

It hits the cavrinskh straight across the face a moment before a dark blur cuts in front of me.

Arc gets in the way before I release the spray nozzle and the last of the spray strikes across his back as well.

The cavrinskh’s shriek and his are almost identical, but the cavrinskh lashes out still, even as its beak and face starts to melt away. Its claws slash at Arc and its tail almost catches me.

I hear the crunch of snow a moment later as Trench jumps down into the courtyard, spear humming to life as he hits the cobbles between me and it.

He slices the thing’s leg, dropping it to the ground and then stabbing it through with the glowing blade, holding it in the center of the courtyard so it can’t get to the snow, even if it wants to. And Arc…

“ Saints— ” The rest of whatever he says devolves into Sianese and only half of the words are curses I understand.

“Sorry! I told you to move.”

He rips the top of his suit off and slams himself backward into the snow bank.

Eyes closed, teeth grit, “Yeah, I heard you.”

He doesn’t open them again until the cavrinskh stops moving and Trench pulls his spear free.

“Who,” he asks, “Is that?”