“Hurry!” Jordin whispered.
She rolled away from the edge, came up in a crouch, grabbed her pack, and ran north along the cliff top, keeping away from the Immortals’ line of sight below. They had to execute the escape with precision—one misstep and they would be caught.
Jordin had sprinkled the blood leading directly east, away from the canyon and toward the city for a good two miles, knowing that pursuing Immortals would follow the heady scent. She just didn’t know if they’d turn back when the scent weakened or conclude that their prey’s wound had dried and continue the hunt.
Jordin led Kaya north, a hundred meters to the end of the passage, slinging her bow and the knapsack over her back. She dropped onto a small ledge, then she reached back to help Kaya down. For the moment they were safe, out of sight.
Hooves pounded in the distance. They were in pursuit, making their way out of the canyon to the top of the cliffs for a quick kill before returning to their fallen comrade. It’s what she would do.
It took them only two minutes to scale down the steep slope they had descended twice in rehearsal, dropping onto the sand at the bottom from a ledge seven feet high.
Jordin rolled to one knee and listened as Kaya dropped down beside her. A thin cry sounded ahead, from the direction of the rubble. It was possible one of the others had stayed to try to help. It no longer mattered; they were committed.
“You good?” she whispered to Kaya.
“Good.”
“Stay behind me. Here.” She shoved one of the knives into the girl’s hand. “Just in case.”
Kaya stared at the blade as if holding one for the first time. The girl could shoot a bow relatively well, but knives were not her forte by any means. For that matter, the bow wasn’t either.
Jordin unslung her bow and notched an arrow, ready in the event that they were not alone. The first order of business was to find the body, alive or dead. If alive, they would have to kill the rider and harvest the blood. If dead, their task would be much easier.
She ran forward in a low crouch. The sand softened their footfall.
The first sign of rock came at fifty meters—smaller boulders that had rolled the farthest from the pile, just visible to her in the darkness ahead. She pulled up at the sound of a call from an Immortal, apparently searching for the fallen warrior.
No reply. The first was dead or unconscious. Considering the rubble, she guessed the former. Not even an Immortal could survive such a pounding.
So they’d left one for the rescue, which could pose a problem. Now she had to make a choice—either try to kill the living one or wait, hoping he would leave to meet the others on the cliff top when they returned.
Each minute they waited was one less they could use to put distance between themselves and the canyon, and the Immortals would be back to retrieve their comrade soon enough. She had no intention of being anywhere near the canyon when they returned.
She held her space, crouched low, breathing steadily through her nostrils. Only a minute, and then she would go in to test fate.
She needed only thirty seconds. She heard the creak of horse tack and then the sound of a retreating gallop—the Immortal had gone to join the others in the hunt.
“Hurry!”
Jordin ran forward to the pile and quickly searched for any sign of the body. The boulders had fallen in greater number than even she had hoped for, burying both horse and man beneath a small hill of stone.
“Move the rock—look for a limb. We don’t have to get him out, we just need enough access to drain some blood.”
“He’s dead?” Kaya asked, her voice high.
“He won’t feel any more pain, if that’s what you’re worried about. Dig!”
They began to push and roll stones off the pile. The clatter would be heard easily from above, but with hope the Immortals were too far to the east to hear it. It was a chance she had to take.
Kaya grunted and jerked back, nearly falling off the boulder she’d mounted for better access to the boulders on top. She covered her mouth, staring into a gap between two boulders.
“I think I found something.”
Jordin scrambled to her position, doing her best not to twist or break an ankle—that was the last thing they needed—and saw the broken bone jutting from torn flesh down in the opening. An Immortal arm, torn through a black sleeve. Next to it, the leg and hoof of the rider’s mount, battered and lifeless. She felt more for the animal than the rider.
“That’ll do.”
She shrugged out of her pack and pulled out an empty collection jar and the large syringe she’d brought. They used the same device for the seroconversion of Corpses.
There was no need to puncture the skin with the thick needle; the wound was seeping plenty of blood already.
“Keep your eye on the cliffs,” she said.
“How much do you need?”
“As much as will fill two small jars—it’s all I have. Hopefully he hasn’t bled out completely.”
Jordin quickly inserted the needle into the bloody mess that had
once been an elbow, filling the syringe three times before switching jars and repeating the operation. The Immortals would never be able to tell that blood had been drawn from the wound.
She secured the lid on the second jar, shoved it back in her pack, and waved Kaya forward, over the pile and down the far side.
“Run, Kaya. Run.”
They ran, side by side, out of the narrow passage and through the canyon. They slowed to a jog as they headed southeast along the same trail where they’d left the traces of Sovereign blood earlier. It would now mask their retreat.
They had the blood. All that was left was to put it into their veins.
And pray they lived to tell.
“YOU’RE SURE about this?” Kaya asked. “What will happen if our blood rejects it?”
They’d jogged and walked off and on for nearly an hour eastward, deeper into the wasteland beyond the point where they’d first sprinkled the ground with Sovereign blood. She knew that the Immortals would eventually circle around, searching for any scent of the Sovereign who’d killed their own.
“Then we’ll know it didn’t work.”
“Assuming we live.”
“There is that.”
“You’ve never heard of it being done?”
“No.”
Jordin stood on the rise and studied the horizon for movement against the night. It was as still and lifeless as it had been half an hour earlier. Satisfied, she dropped to one knee beside the girl.
“I’m not sure this is wise,” Kaya said.
“Neither am I. But I know that if we’re still Sovereign in a few hours, they’ll eventually pick up our scent and track us down. Trust me, they won’t give up.”
“So if we don’t try the blood, they’ll find us and kill us.”
“Yes.”
“And what if we take the blood and live, but find ourselves dead, like we once were?”
“We’ve already been over this.”
But Kaya was brimming with questions.
“Immortals hate Sovereigns. Will we hate Sovereigns too? Will we hate Rom?”
Jordin didn’t want to entertain that question.
No! Impossible
, she wanted to say. But was it?
She had less than a week. She couldn’t let herself become crippled by questions like those. She dare not.
“I don’t want to discourage your questions, Kaya, but none of them will change the fact that becoming Immortal is our only hope for survival right now. And if I fail….”
She stopped short of completing the thought. But she’d already said too much.
“Fail to do what? Find Jonathan?”
This time Jordin didn’t try to shut her down. They were about to leap off a cliff—a few moments of transparency were understandable. Perhaps even called for.
She let her shoulders relax, elbow on one knee as she squatted on the rise, peering into the night. “You’re right about one thing, Kaya: Jonathan is in us, if only in his blood. I’ve always known that. But I don’t feel it anymore, and at times I wonder if I ever did.”
She took a deep breath and studied the girl who knelt back on her heels, watching her.
“Something’s broken in me. I can’t find the love I once had. My mind’s full of darkness. You said it yourself. Misery follows me like a cloud. I’m Sovereign, but I feel completely lost. It’s not Jonathan I need to find but
myself
.”
A calm seemed to settle over the girl. She finally nodded, her expression placid.
“Then we’ll help each other find ourselves. Sometimes my mind’s as dark as yours.”
“I hope not.”
“I don’t have all the terrible memories you have, but I wonder all the time why we seem to be getting weaker. I think it’s getting worse by the month.”
Astute words for such a young woman.
“I think the only way we can find ourselves is to find Jonathan,” Kaya said.
“Then let’s hope he comes out of hiding.”
To this, Kaya said nothing.
“Promise me one thing,” Jordin said. “If the blood changes us, remind me often that we want to be Sovereign.”
“And if I forget?”
“Then I’ll remind you.”
Kaya might have pointed out the obvious challenges they faced if they both forgot their purpose. Instead, she stood up, pulled off her amulet, and stuffed it inside the waistline of her pants. “I don’t want to lose it,” she said.
Jordin gave a slight smile. Being caught with the Sovereign amulet around their necks could be hard to explain. And yet keeping them near would prove a constant reminder.
She stood and did the same.
“What about our clothes?” Kaya wanted to know. “This isn’t what they wear.”
“You’re right. I’ll handle it.”
Kaya nodded. “Well then, I guess that’s that.”
“Yes.”
Jordin rolled up her sleeve to expose the crook of her elbow and quickly applied a rubber tourniquet to her upper arm. A large vein swelled below it. She took a small pouch from her pack. It contained one sanitized needle attached to a short tube with a rubber inline
pump. She unscrewed the lid on one of the blood-filled jars and lowered the end of the tube into it, primed the pump, then she set the jar carefully on the sand.
“I’ll inject you if it succeeds with me. If things go badly, find a place to hide for the night and head back to the city at first light.”
“We both know I wouldn’t survive the night.”
“Then this had better work.”
With a last glance at Kaya, Jordin pressed the tip of the needle against her vein. It pierced the skin then slipped in. Releasing the needle, she took the pump in her right hand and squeezed. Holding her breath, she watched the blood fill the translucent tube and flow, sluggishly at first, into her vein.
The jar emptied in less than thirty seconds. She pulled the needle out and handed it to Kaya. Then released her tourniquet.
“What’s happening?” Kaya asked.
“Give it time.”
She tried to observe any change in herself, but a full minute passed with no sign of transformation. What if it didn’t work, as the old Keeper had once suggested? She had seven arrows left—she could kill one or two perhaps, but Kaya was right. They would never….
All at once, heat bloomed in Jordin’s head. It spread down her spine as if it were filled with gasoline and lit with a match.
She gasped.
“What is it? Is it working?”
The night exploded with color. A flash of white light turned the night to day, blinding her to all but the silver horizon.
Panicked, she leaped to her feet, arms spread wide for balance.
And then the night returned, and with it her focus. The heat had spread to her extremities, leaving her fingers and toes prickling to the point of pain. The top of her skull felt as if it were crawling with a thousand ants.
She closed her eyes. Opened them. This time, when she peered into the night, she knew she had been changed.
She’d been seroconverted three times: from Corpse to Mortal with Jonathan’s blood before his death, from Mortal to Sovereign with Jonathan’s blood after his death, and now from Sovereign to Immortal. Her two previous conversions had left her in a cloud of overwhelming peace and love.
Not this one.
She felt the terrible urge to run, so great was her fear. She didn’t know what frightened her, only that she was terrified.
A green phosphorescence laid the night landscape bare before her. Nearby, a snake slithered across the sand to her right, she could hear it. The breeze had suddenly shifted farther to the west, she could feel it. The air tickled the fine hair at her nape, hot as breath.
For the first time, she could smell the Sovereign scent, strong as spice, like jasmine but more pungent. So acidic it stung her nostrils.
Her pulse raced and for a moment she thought her heart might rupture.
“What’s happening?” Kaya cried.
The girl was on her feet, hands on her head, eyes wide.
Jordin pulled deeply at the night air, first through her nostrils, then through her mouth when Kaya’s scent proved too much. The air tasted of death and life at once; water and earth, blood and sweat.
It also tasted of hope. With each breath, ease began to settle in her mind.
And then it was over. She was an Immortal—or a Mortal, as they had once called themselves—and filled with awe at the tactile expression of the physical world, her senses fired.
Could she still slow time with her eyes?
“Move,” she said to Kaya.
“Move? Are you all right?”
“Pretend you’re swinging your fist to hit me.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
Kaya did, in a far too unskilled manner. It came in slow motion.
The vibrancy of living with heightened senses flooded her memory, drowning out the fear that had engulfed her earlier.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Kaya asked. “Did it work?”
“Yes.”
“You’re Immortal?”
She lifted her hand, moved her fingers, the skin paling before her eyes. Living underground, she’d lost the color of those who ranged beneath the sun, but now she could practically see the veins beneath her skin. This was different, more like the skin of the Brahmin royals than the Mortal she had once been. So then, the Immortals
had
evolved these past six years. And she was changing into what they were now, rather than what they had been.