An hour would be enough time for him to see what, if anything, he could do for the
sick. It would also be more than enough time for him to think about every other option
they had, which was, let’s see …
nothing
.
Jay had never been good at intentionally shielding against
emotion and other empathic impressions. He had no idea how much he had instinctively
screened out, until he walked into the gym-turned-sick-ward and felt the weight of
emotion pressing on him. His stomach turned—or was that someone else’s sensation?
The air was thick and cloying, rank with chemicals, sweat, and despair. Percussive
coughs broke through the constant rattle of pneumonic breathing.
“Jay,” Jeremy asked, “where do you want to start? Does it make more sense to start
with the sickest, or to work with those who aren’t as far gone, so they don’t reach
that point, and then we can devote more medical resources to the critical cases? You
know your power’s limits better than I do.”
My limits … I’m going to be sick
.
Jay leaned back against the cold wall, closed his eyes, and drew his knife, seeking
the
thrum
of ancestral magic and the comfort and focus it always brought.
He dropped the knife with a yelp as, instead of providing a peaceful pulse of soothing
magic, it spiked him with a shock of raw power, as if he had put his hand in an electric
outlet. The blade narrowly missed his foot, but all he could do was stare as the weight
of a hundred sick and frightened minds crashed past his defenses.
—going to die here
.
Never told her that—
—wonder if he will ever—
Who will take care of them when—
What did I do to deserve this?
“Jay?”
What happened to him?
I need to get out of here
.
Jay wasn’t sure if that last thought was his or not, but it sounded good. Blindly,
he shouldered Jeremy and at least one other solicitous body out of the way as he raced
toward the front door. He stumbled out into drifting snow, dry-heaving as his stomach
tried to give up what little food he had eaten too long ago.
He lay in the snow, feeling it soak through his clothes as he tried to just be still
and—
“Go away!” he shouted at Jeremy when that anxious mind drew near. “I can’t help you.”
I can’t help anyone. I’d just screw up even more
.
I told you not to go in there
, Lynx chastised him from farther off in the woods.
Do you need me?
I don’t know what I need
.
He wasn’t the only one feeling hopeless. “It is not our responsibility to risk our
lives for a fool’s errand,” a voice was saying. “We have the resources to keep our
own people safe. We should be focused on that.”
Jay could hear the words but couldn’t feel the mind behind them. That should have
told him who was speaking even before Xeke’s voice responded.
“That has always been the big difference between you and me, Rikai,” he said, the
exasperation in his voice sufficient to make it clear that they had been arguing for
a while. “I’ve never been willing to give up on the entire planet just because they’re
not my people. You— Jay? Is that you?”
Well, at least I didn’t actually throw up in front of him
, Jay
thought. He was about to tell the vampire to go to hell anyway, because he didn’t
relish the idea of being miserable in front of him, when he processed what Xeke was
saying. He was trying to convince Rikai to help.
Maybe they did still have a snow angel’s chance in hell to fix this thing.
“I
T SEEMS
I overestimated Xeke’s instinct for survival,” Rikai explained as she reached a hand
down and unceremoniously yanked Jay to his feet. “So we’re back.”
You don’t sound bitter about that at all
, Jay thought, though he held his tongue. They needed Rikai’s help, grudging or not.
“You look good,” Jay remarked, looking between the two of them. Rikai’s visible scars
were gone, and the strength she had demonstrated helping him up was well beyond what
she could have managed earlier. Xeke was a little flushed but clear-eyed.
“Thanks,” Xeke answered. “You look like crap.”
The vampire reached around Jay to brush snow off his back, which put him close enough
to kiss—or bite, which was why
Jay tensed, recalling what Rikai had said about Xeke waking up starving.
“Has Brina won you from me already?” Xeke teased, noticing the withdrawal.
“What?” Jay knew perfectly well that Xeke was a flirt by nature. He shouldn’t take
it personally. So why did the vampire have this ability to tongue-tie him? “No, I
just—Rikai seemed to think you were in rough shape. Are you okay?”
Xeke kissed Jay’s cheek before stepping back. “Rikai did some kind of magical rewiring,”
he answered. “I don’t understand it, but I feel pretty good.”
“Whenever vampires feed, they give power to Leona,” Rikai explained. “Their current
madness is the result of her needing strength for battle. Thankfully, one of Xeke’s
progenitors has a bond to an earth elemental called Leshan.” Rikai shrugged, as if
this were perfectly normal, and common knowledge. “I was able to partially block Xeke’s
connection to Leona and tighten his bond to Leshan, which should protect him from
the worst of the fallout.”
“What’s with the
L
names, anyway?” Xeke asked, apparently uninterested in the magical mechanics of his
salvation. “Leona, Leshan, LeCoire; most of the elementals I know have
L
names.”
“An elemental’s true name is closely guarded,” Rikai answered. “
Wise
sorcerers,” she said, with a sharp glance at Jay, “may spend decades, perhaps even
generations, trying to divine the true name of an elemental before ever speaking to
or summoning it, since that name will give a mortal power over the
immortal. The names we use are as real as an Internet messaging handle. The prefix
le
means ‘a power or impetus,’ in the ancient language,” Rikai answered, “which is the
language used among the elementals.” Still focused on Jay, she added, “Idiot would-be
sorcerers, on the other hand, meddle without any preparation or understanding of the
powers with which they are playing, and cause things like
this
.”
Jay was still flinching from the heat in her gaze when Xeke broke in.
“Yes, yes, I’ve heard the ‘idiot would-be sorcerers’ speech a hundred times today
alone. Someone who becomes a vampire hunter either has an irresistible urge to murder
people or an irresistible urge to get killed protecting strangers. Blaming them for
poorly planned, suicidal stunts in the line of duty is like blaming a cat for jumping
after that stupid red dot.”
“Thank you, Xeke, for that very flattering defense,” Jay said. “So the short story
is, you two are safe for now?”
“Yes,” Rikai answered. “As are you. Currently, the Shantel elemental has tied itself
to you, and severed your bond to Leona. If Shantel wins, you keep that bond. If Leona
wins, she will surely take you back like a prize of war. You will be fine. So
please
convince this fool friend of mine that we do not need to risk our lives trying to
fight the immortals.”
Jay glanced at Xeke, who raised a brow, thinking to Jay,
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, hunters gotta hunt. You won’t walk away from this
.
“Someone told us that, if we had a sorcerer to help and
could get to Shantel territory, we might be able to do something there,” Jay said.
“Brina is inside, and she knows where Shantel land was.”
Reluctantly, Rikai nodded. “That would be the best place to make a stand, yes. It
would put us inside the strongest of the elemental’s defenses.”
They had a plan. It was crazy, but it was a plan. Step one was going to Shantel land,
which was apparently a good distance away. Rikai seemed to think that once they were
inside Shantel territory, they would have some leverage over the elemental. Step two
would be summoning the elemental and then, as far as Jay could tell, completely winging
the next phase and hoping they could find a way to control a creature with godlike
power and a whole lot of wrath. That part relied on Rikai, so it was okay that Jay
didn’t understand it all.
“We should fly,” Brina said with a trill of excitement, as she pointed to their destination
on a map. Planes had not existed when she was mortal, and as a vampire, she had never
needed one.
“We’ll need equipment to travel in the snow,” Jay added, in response to Brina’s mental
images of the area.
“I’ll talk to my people and get the jet ready,” Xeke said. He pulled out his wallet
and opened it to retrieve an outrageously shiny silver card, which he held out to
Jay. “Do you think you can put together everything we’ll need?”
Jay took the credit card with a kind of reverence. He received
a small allowance from his family, but he wasn’t the type to maintain credit.
“I might not be able to get to all the stores we need before they close,” he answered,
compiling a list in his head, and realizing it was already nearly dark again. “But
I’ll manage.”
Rikai let out a long, exasperated sigh before saying, “If we are going to fly across
the country to fight elementals, I will need additional supplies.”
“I will go with Jay,” Brina announced. She glanced down at her long gown, thinking,
This is not at all ideal for a winter wonderland adventure
.
Without intending to, Jay found himself humming a bar of the song “Winter Wonderland,”
which made Brina laugh, which in turn made Xeke and Rikai stare at them both as if
they were lunatics.
“We’ll meet at the airport,” Xeke said. “Remember, we’re all on borrowed time.”
Brina handled being waited on by staff excited to help them better than Jay did. While
Jay grabbed the basics—topping a thousand dollars before he had even finished choosing
a tent and backpacks—Brina gathered suggestions on food and clothing. At least a dozen
times, he heard her bell-like laugh before she assured worried store employees, “He
knows what he’s doing.”
“Don’t worry. We’ve got a friend who’s an expert,” Jay kept assuring the friendly
staff who buzzed around them, concerned
that Jay and Brina were embarking on a deep-woods winter backpacking trip with next
to no experience, as evidenced by their total lack of gear.
Jay had backpacked before, even in the deepest winter, but between his magic and his
connection to Lynx, he had always been able to go minimalist. In a pinch, Jay could
sleep in a snowdrift and be fine. None of his backpacking equipment was relevant to
what they were embarking on now.
Disgusting stuff
, Brina thought as she gamely chose polyester undergarments and jackets designed to
keep a human body warmer than natural fibers would.
Vile texture. No wonder humans get so cranky
.
The adventure continued at the next store, which had been closed for an hour. Jay
broke in through a back door, hoping there wasn’t an automatic alarm and that—if any
of them lived through this—SingleEarth could deal with any legal repercussions relating
to the blinking security cameras.
Brina followed with a quiver of excitement. She helped grab additional fuel, food,
and the last odds and ends the first store hadn’t had in stock. They didn’t dare stay
long, in case police
were
coming.
Satisfied that they had done the best they could with limited time, an apparently
unlimited budget, and a desire not to go to jail, they squeezed into the over-full
car and sped away to the rendezvous point. Lynx curled up on Brina’s lap, oblivious
to the passengers’ rapid conversation, as Brina asked question after question about
how humans traveled and survived in such conditions.
Jay spent most of the three-hour ride in Xeke’s private jet opening packages and compulsively
packing and repacking backpacks. No matter what other equipment they brought, he felt
naked without his Marinitch blade. His magic might still feel the same to
him
, but whatever the Shantel elemental had done to him, it had made his own knife violently
reject him. No amount of butane fuel, freeze-dried food, warm clothes, or high-tech
gadgets would make him feel good about the lack of his blade.
As they transferred from the jet to a rented Jeep, Jay continued working on the problem
of how to lug all their gear with them. Jay could carry a heavy backpack over a long
distance, but Brina probably couldn’t. Xeke lifted his for the first time and immediately
said, “I can take more,” while Rikai attempted to lift hers and then shook her head.
She wasn’t as crippled as before, but her strength was even more limited than a human’s.
Jay was still fiddling with the packs as they reached the edge of the proverbial deep
dark forest. They had been able to drive as far as a campground, with trails leading
into one of the largest national forests. After those paths ended, they would have
to blaze their own trail through the evergreen trees.
“At least it’s not a stormy night,” Jay remarked as he stepped down from the Jeep,
earning a glare from Rikai, a quirked brow from Xeke, and a chuckle from Brina. Lynx
leapt out of Brina’s lap, his senses on full alert.
In fact, it was an overcast and chill dawn. The ground held a few inches of snow,
crusted with ice in many places. They had
brought snowshoes, but Jay hoped they wouldn’t be needed, since he was the only one
with any experience using them.
Check it out?
Jay asked Lynx as he arranged their supplies on a modified sled known as a pulk.
The cat ran off to scout, and Jay kept packing. Given that they had no firm idea of
how long they would need to travel, he had brought as much food and fuel as they could
possibly transport. He hoped the snow would stay thick enough for the sled to slide
smoothly.
“Do you need help?” Xeke asked, startling Jay from his contemplation of weight and
balance.