Edge Walkers (10 page)

Coming up on her right, he matched his stride to hers. He sent the other man—Shoup—to take a small lead. The man grinned at her as he passed, as if they were on an afternoon stroll. And her mind slipped to how she’d talked Gideon into taking her back to where he’d found her.

Her fault—again. She’d seen him go down. She’d seen the blood. She had no hope he’d gotten out alive. No hope for Chand, either. Now she wanted to curl into a dark corner and never come out. That wasn’t possible, so she let the fatigue take hold, let it blank everything she couldn’t afford to feel. She hadn’t gotten over the last set of bruises—not the ones on her body or her soul. New ones stiffened her lower back, twanging her right hip, settled on her chest in a growing weight. Wetting her lips, she kept walking. They’d find water at the church—but not holy enough to wash away her sins. Her fault again, which meant she had to get these guys to someplace safe. She could do that. But, for guiding landmarks, all she had were half-fallen buildings and wreckage and a world that kept wanting to tilt.

And the need for Gideon to still be here.

Oh, god—Gideon…

Her throat closed and the burning at the back of her eyes wasn’t due to dust. Whatever Jakes had given her to drink almost came back up. She choked on it and on the swell of something she didn’t want to name. It couldn’t be loss—she wouldn’t call it that. She’d known Gideon what—a day? But something sharp and ragged wrapped around her chest and spread out to numb her fingertips, and it felt too much like that winter afternoon when she’d put her mother into a grave. Cancer was a slow, pitiful way to die. Was a shot to the back worse? Maybe. But weren’t most deaths awful? She thought of Chand with his eyes glowing. She hoped it had been quick for Gideon, that she had not left him behind to bleed out in a slow puddle of red.

Or that they’d left him to the Edge Walkers.

Putting the back of her hand to her mouth, she pulled in a breath and remade the sob that tried to get out into a cough. She’d be damned if she’d show anything in front of these hard-nosed flyboys and Shoup was glancing back at her, impatience tugging on his expression. He had the same short hair and hard body as Jakes, but Shoup stood the taller by a shade. Dark hair and not-so-dark muscle reminded her of Temple. Where had he gone? Had they shot him, too? No, not thinking about that, either. She had to get these idiots out of open ground before they got themselves killed, too.

She was doing well just staying on her feet. The idea of exerting any more control than that wasn’t happening. Which left memories dancing along at her heels like her shadow over the rough ground.

They stumbled down empty streets. The thud of military boots followed the sluggish beat of the pulse in her throat. Weariness settled into automatic sway—
an object in motion tends to remain in motion.

So move.

Putting one foot in front of the other, she scanned for clues about where they were wandering. Rubble, gray and bleak, with that dank sky overhead and a haze of mountains glittering in the distance like a mirage, had to guide her. Jakes kept slipping her sideways looks as if he knew she wouldn’t make it to whatever she was trying to find. She’d prove him wrong.

Stubborn inertia kept her going. But something nagged at her, a rumble in the back of her mind. It tugged a lot like her mother’s voice had, calling her name in the dusk of a summer night to drag her home from the war games she’d played with her brothers and neighborhood kids.

She hadn’t seen her brothers in years—God knew where Ted had gone this time, Indonesia, she thought, to teach farming. Randy didn’t stay in touch even that much—he had his own family, his own worries over a growing practice in Seattle. The bonds between them had passed on along with the old man. But she wondered if she’d see them again—or if they wanted to see her. Maybe if she got home and...

Turning a corner, there it stood, fractured against the sky. The church. Or whatever that tall, half-shattered building with the arched windows and holy ground was. Mountains loomed in the distance behind it, dusky in the cloud-blurred light of this world’s day. Had Temple made it back?

Closing her eyes—just for a second— she could almost hear a sound in her head. Temple? It wasn’t Gideon’s voice, but an image of him formed. Here and hurting. She wanted that to be real so much that the wanting of it cut like glass shards pressed into her heart.

Shutting down the idea, she opened her eyes, and pointed with Gideon’s blood-stained knife. “Here. We’ll be safe here.”

Jakes nodded and he still had heat in his eyes. He also sent Shoup in first and followed with his gun lifted.

The two airmen went in crouched low, looking for trouble. Carrie waited to a count of five and eased in behind them. In the cool darkness, she leaned against a wall and closed her eyes. Maybe she could fall down for a few hours now. But soft steps on stone echoed, safety switches clicked on automatic weapons and she opened her eyes, panic flaring, hot and bright. She would find the energy to beat these two military idiots to death with their own guns before she’d let them take Temple out.

But it wasn’t Temple who stood by the altar. Well, it was. His dark, bulky figure blended with shadows. More shadows darkened his expression into something wary and fierce. She could see why Jakes and Shoup had switched off their safeties. But Temple only stood there, very still in the gloom. He’d shucked off the tatters of his dusty robe. A sleeveless tunic and loose pants hung on his muscles, but her stare moved to the other man Temple held upright. She couldn’t blink, or find words, or even fill her lungs.

Next to Temple, stood Gideon.

He had lost his robes and his black t-shirt, but he still wore his even-sided cross, dangling from a thin black cord. The skin on his shoulders and chest gleamed pale and smooth in the dim light. He still had his jeans on and colorless cloth wrapped his ribs and he leaned on Temple like he needed the support. But he had his eyes open and his chest lifted and fell again with labored but regular breaths.

“Gideon?” she said, taking one startled step, the word spilling out with a flood of giddy relief. She took two steps more. Fists clenching on air, she stopped. She glanced at Jakes and Shoup, crouched low to her left, guns aimed. Something cracked in her, fractured clean like stressed metal.
No more
. And she let out the fury and the misery of the day in fast, tight words. “Dammit, Jakes, wasn’t shooting him once already enough?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

No, I didn’t rise from the dead. Shoup got it wrong, but I—well, yes, I was hurt. I don’t know how badly—it there such a thing as a good gunshot? But my recovery wasn’t miraculous. It’s…Temple knows…they’ve evolved a different approach to healing, what I think we’d call a holistic approach and it’s probably closer to Chinese ideas about chi. It’s their main advantage… interesting how the universe seems to need to even the balance. Like with extravagant flowers in a desert. — Excerpt Interview with Gideon Chant

Gideon saw Carrie and two men with guns and everything else—even the pain—stopped mattering. He pushed away from Temple and something sharp pulled in his back, but it wasn’t enough to slow him. The burn in his veins told him he’d soon stop feeling even that slight tug on healing muscles and internal organs. He couldn’t, however, ignore these soldiers and their weapons. He heard Carrie say something—her voice sharp—and he glanced at her, caught fear pale on her face. With her hair sticking up and blood drying on her clothes, she looked like she needed to be off her feet as badly as he did. Fatigue hollowed and smudged her eyes. But a smile tugged at him, warmed him with the sight of her, alive and without glowing eyes and cracked dead skin that sparked with unnatural light.

One more step and her words made it though the haze in his brain, formed from random sounds into recognizable thought.

“They shot me?” He turned too fast to face the men with guns, had to press a hand to his side to stop the flaring ache. The words came out more half-stupid complaint than accusation. “What the hell were you using for brains? Or do you shoot everything on sight out of habit? God, you—from now on, don’t even point those things at anyone unless I say. We have few enough survivors as it is.”

The older man rose, his knees popping, and while his expression didn’t change, the gun muzzle lowered. The faintest smile edged a thin-lipped mouth, but Gideon couldn’t say if that was patronizing sarcasm or something else. However, long fingers stayed curled around what had to be the trigger. Gideon knew what that meant—still on edge, still not trusting. Wary now himself, he locked stares with the guy—and maybe it wasn’t a good idea to antagonize someone who could act that quickly to shoot another human being.

“By the way, I’m Gideon,” he said, offering his name since it was harder to kill someone you knew. At least he’d found that to be true. “That’s Temple.” Turning, he pointed behind him, but Temple had already moved closer, so Gideon’s hand smacked into Temple’s arm. He swapped a look with Temple, got back the image of jumping these two guys. He shook his head and turned back to the men with guns. “You can stay, but—”

“Jakes,” the man said, interrupting. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “That’s Shoup. Kevlar?” Jakes gestured with the gun to Gideon’s chest as he spoke that last word.

Gideon had no idea what the man was talking about. “What?” he asked, blinking.

“Kevlar, as in vest?” Jakes frowned, shook his head. “Never mind. Somehow I’ve got the feeling I’d rather skip that answer.”

Gideon lifted a hand, started to rub the healing wounds, broke off the gesture and looked from one man to the other. “Look—my head hurts. My insides hurt. I need to sleep this off, not carry on a conversation.” He glanced at Carrie again and the tension bled out of him in a slow breath. She might look bad—strain tight around her mouth, skin so pale he could count her freckles—but she wasn’t dead or dying. He didn’t want to be grateful to these two gun-jocks, but they had looked after her and that counted for a lot on any world.

“Good to see you,” he told her, the words inadequate but true. What else could he say?

She nodded and folded her arms, hugged herself tight. The urge to do that for her stirred, so he stretched out a hand. She took the invitation, started walking to him and crossed the empty stones between them.

As she strode past Jakes, she shot him a sideways glance, but Gideon wasn’t sure what that meant—a warning of some kind maybe—and she stopped just out of Gideon’s reach. He let his arm fall and waited. With her gaze traveling over him, wide-eyed, only a slim rim of gray-blue around black pupils, she stepped closer. She pressed her palm to his chest as if she had to check his heartbeat. Her fingers trembled, but her palm lay warm on him.

“You were dead,” she said, voice so tight it might snap.

He shook his head. “No. Temple can do a lot of things, but not that.”

“But you…Gideon, the blood.” Her stare stayed on him and it seemed as if he could see everything in her eyes—all she’d gone through in that instant. She still had his knife in one hand. It was more than she should have had to endure.

“I’m sorry. I—” Breaking off the words and keeping his movements slow—both to calm her and not kick up any more pain in himself—he reached up and smoothed a thumb over her cheek to brush away blood that had dried to a crumbling smear. Taking his knife back, he flipped it one-handed, gave it to Temple and he told Carrie, “You don’t really need a hospital for a transfusion. Not here.”

Her stare dropped to the bandages wrapped around him and she reached out, pulled the top edge down to show the puckering scar from one of the exit wounds. “You do if you’re not going to risk infection. But…this is…what? Increased metabolism to regenerate tissue? Your pulse is up. I can see it in your throat, feel it in the heat off you…that could be fever. What kind of strain does this…this healing put on you?”

Gideon shrugged, even though he knew what this was costing. This had pushed the limits of Temple’s skills—and he knew where the blood had come from to replace what he’d lost. He glanced at Temple, got back nothing—except a faint stir of amusement at the thought that there’d been any choice. Even with Temple’s patchwork—and Temple’s blood in him, making them even more kin than they had been—Gideon’s body had to do its part. It took every scrap of energy he had left to hang onto coherent thought. He put most of his focus into staying on his feet.

“Around here, Temple used to be…well, shaman is about the closest we’d get to it back home. It’s a lot more involved than that and I don’t know all the details. I’m generally not aware enough when he...”

Gideon let the words trail into a gesture and he saw Carrie’s mouth tighten. Ah, damn, he shouldn’t have said anything because he’d just implied he’d been this bad off before—which wasn’t quite true. He’d never been shot. Carrie looked at Temple and the harshness on her face softened. Temple kept up that black wall of silence, wasn’t even giving a twitch of his mouth to say anything. Carrie’s attention came back to Gideon and the faintest smile curved her lips.

“He’s a witch doctor?” she asked. “So the dolls behind the...”

“Uh, ‘scuse me here.” Jakes stepped forward, one hand resting on the top of his cradled gun, the other hand still not far from the trigger. “Hate to break up the reunion but there’s a couple issues on the table. Like where’s what’s left of your team, Brody?”

Mouth pressed tight, Carrie turned and put her back to Gideon. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened, didn’t want to think about how everyone she’d worked with for the past few months were dead. She’d almost lost Gideon, too, and now she had him back and wanted to keep it that way. She stood between Jakes and Shoup, and Gideon—she’d put herself there by accident and if any shooting started she’d be hit. But she stayed where she was anyway. She wasn’t suicidal—or she didn’t think she was. However, she wasn’t letting anything else get to Gideon. Not today.

Pulling in a breath, she let it out and shook her head. “Jakes, I know—oh, dammit, fine, there’s no easy way to…” She rubbed fingertips over her eyes and that didn’t wipe out the strain or the grit, so she straightened and just dove into it with the same rush of jumping off a cliff. “I think the people I worked with are all dead. At least, I hope they are, and aren’t like…like Chand—” She broke off, swallowed hard and forced the rest of the words out. “He was back there. Near…my lab. Only he’s…his body…it’s no longer a foothold for that thing that had him. And, right now, we’re stuck. So how about backing off for a few hours. We’re safe enough at the moment and—”