Enclave (23 page)

My daggers in hand, I joined the battle with Fade close behind. As I whirled into the attack, I counted—part of my Huntress nature. Twenty Freaks. We’d once faced almost as many underground, but they had been weak and stupid, plus the shelter offered a certain amount of protection.

We stood back-to-back, blocking and striking in harmony; sometimes it felt like his arms and legs were an extension of me. I could count on him to keep them off me from behind. My daggers became a blur as I cut and thrust, driving the Freaks back. I couldn’t spare any focus to see how Tegan and Pearl fared. I didn’t use any of my flashier moves—no kicks or spins. My goal was to protect Fade’s back. I heard Silk telling me relentlessly
, Take them down. Simple and clean is best. Don’t waste energy.

Now that he wasn’t trying to kill me, I admired Stalker’s style. He was incredibly fast, using two small blades strapped to the backs of his hands.
Slash, slash, slash.
Fighting him, you wouldn’t die of one great wound, but instead bleed out slowly, surprised to find yourself weak and dying after a thousand cuts.

The Freaks dropped back after the first wave fell. They studied us with their red eyes, as if assessing for weakness. Beneath my feet, the floor flowed with blood. We’d lost three of Stalker’s Wolves, and I didn’t see Pearl anywhere. Tegan was hiding—smart girl. This wasn’t like knocking cubs unconscious.

“What
are
those things?” Stalker asked.

That answered my question as to whether they’d seen them before. “We called them Freaks underground. I’ve also heard them called Eaters. I don’t know what they are. I do know they’re hungry.”

His pale eyes widened as the Freaks decided to make another run at us. But he had no chance to ask further questions as the fight began anew. We’d taken ten of their number at a cost of three. The Freaks seemed to think math favored them—those who survived would feast on the dead—and I wasn’t sure they were wrong about the odds.

But Stalker and his sole remaining Wolf went back-to-back like Fade and me. They didn’t have our rapport or our rhythm, but they made up for it in desperation and ferocity. I slashed open a Freak’s jugular and blocked with my left hand. But I was slow. It sank its teeth into my arm. I screamed and slammed a dagger into its eye. The pop and squelch turned my stomach every bit as much as the smell.

And Fade went feral. He broke formation, fighting as he’d done in the tournament; it seemed so long ago now. His hands and feet were a blur as he demolished the one trying to eat me. When all enemies stilled, red spattered him from head to toe and he was shaking.

The last Wolf had taken grievous wounds. He bled from four different bites and had a painful claw wound across his chest. I couldn’t tell if Stalker was hurt. Like Fade, he had too much blood on him for me to be sure if any belonged to him. He stared at me with his odd, light eyes, wearing an unreadable expression.

So help me,
I thought,
if he tries to fight us now …

“Are there more of those?”

“A lot more,” I said. “Underground. I guess they found a way out.”

Part of me feared they’d broken through to the Burrowers and discovered those subtunnels with the holes that led up the surface. Jengu might be dead, and there was nothing I could do about it. The whole
enclave
might be dead by now. I feared for Stone and Thimble; maybe the underground tribes were no more. Quickly I put those worries aside.

“We need to move,” Fade said. “If I know anything about those things, there will be more. They’ll smell the blood and come, looking to eat.”

Stalker gazed down at his fallen and shook his head as if apologizing for leaving them to become Freak food. I doubted they minded, now.
The strong survive, and the dead are past saving.

“Tegan,” I called. “Let’s go.”

She crawled out from under a table nearby, shaking from head to toe. “That was … the way you…”

“I grew up learning how to fight them,” I said simply.

There was no reason for her to be ashamed of her fear. I was afraid of the sky and the sun, after all, and those things probably wouldn’t hurt me. Not like the Freaks, though I was less than convinced the sun served any benevolent purpose.

“Where’s Pearl?” Fade asked.

She’d called him Semyon. It sounded exotic to my ears, a hint of a past I would never share. I tried not to mind when he went looking for her. He’d chosen to stay with me when he could’ve remained in peace and comfort. A choked sound echoed, and I went to find him.

Fade stood over the body of a Freak. Pearl lay partly chewed between the shelves. She’d tried to run and had drawn the attention of a hungry monster. While the rest of us battled and talked, it had been eating her, quietly. These really were smarter than the rest. If it had been clever enough to slip away before we finished fighting, we never would’ve caught the thing.

“Come on,” I said. “You can’t help her now.”

“She died because she let us look at her dad’s maps.”

That was true. We’d led Stalker to her door, and once we left, he had forced entry and taken her. So I had no words of comfort to offer.

We rejoined the others. I had no fears for Tegan anymore. Stalker had his hands full trying to get his lone Wolf out of the library before more Freaks showed up. Regardless of Fade’s sadness, that had to be our priority too.

“The city’s going to be overrun,” I said quietly. “As more Freaks find the way out, they’ll go looking for food.”

“It’s time to go,” Tegan agreed.

I skirted the pile of bodies and still left a bloody trail of footprints as I headed for the door. She followed and after a few seconds, Fade got moving. Stalker caught up with us halfway down, more or less dragging his man.

“Go where?” he asked.

I didn’t want to tell him, but he
had
helped us against the Freaks. “North. It’s supposed to be better outside the ruins.”

“Who says?”

“My dad,” Fade said quietly.

“Was he some kind of holocaust expert?” Stalker’s tone was mocking.

Fade shrugged. “He had a lot of books.”

I wasn’t about to let this disintegrate into an argument on the steps. We had a long way to go and no real idea where we were heading. “Which way is north?”

He tinkered with his watch and then pointed. “That way.”

“Then let’s walk until the sun comes up. Let the light mark our rest breaks.” Stalker and his Wolf didn’t need to know my fears.

Fade gave me a knowing glance but he nodded. “Moving.”

“We’re coming with you,” Stalker said.

Tegan froze. “No. If you try, I swear I’ll kill you in your sleep.”

“What about your cubs?” I asked.

“They might be meat by now. If those things are swarming, then I can’t help them by getting myself eaten on the way back.”

“But why do you want to come with
us
?” Tegan demanded. “Just a little while ago, you wanted us dead!”

“Wanted. Not anymore. Those two”—he jerked his head at Fade and me—“seem to know how to fight these things. That means I need to stick with them if I want to survive.” Then he fixed a pale gaze on her again. “I don’t care what
you
do. You’re useless to me.”

Silk would find his attitude commendable. He embodied the Hunter tenet: “The strong survive.” Part of me hated him for what he’d let the other Wolves do to Tegan, but the Huntress half of me wondered why she hadn’t fought until she died. And I admired his ruthless skill with those blades that seemed an extension of his hands.

I glanced at Fade. “It’s up to you.”

“We can use another fighter,” he said. “It’s likely to be a tough journey.” He glanced at the Wolf. “But I’m not sure he’s going to make it.”

He didn’t state the obvious—that the bleeding wounds would draw more Freaks. If they could smell warm meat down in the stench of the tunnels, it would be like an invitation on the clean, crisp wind. I waited to see how Stalker replied, interested in how deep his pragmatism ran. He was ready to abandon his cubs. Would he leave his Wolf?

The question became unimportant when the boy in Stalker’s arms gasped for breath. Blood bubbled up. We laid him down on the steps and when I peeled back his ragged shirt, I saw the wound was much worse than we’d originally thought. As a brat, I’d tended gut wounds in Hunters because nobody else wanted to, and they always died. Sometimes it took a long time but there was no coming back from the kind of damage I saw. The claws had torn into his belly, scrambling the flesh. Stalker whispered to him, and the boy gave a jerky nod. He ended things for him, and then we left him.

We walked along the dead streets in silence. None of us had the energy to do more. The vast wreckage around us weighed on me, as if I could hear echoes down the years from a time when these ruins were live and vibrant. Instead, there were only our footsteps, echoing in the dark.

Tegan hunched her shoulders, tension in the lines of her body. From the way she kept stealing glances, she seemed upset with Fade’s decision. I suspected she would follow through on her threat to kill Stalker in his sleep. Or
try
, at least. I didn’t think he would prove an easy target, even then. If he had fought his way to the top of the Wolves, then he qualified as strong.

As we walked, I kept my eyes down. I ignored the throbbing of my arm and the weight of the dark sky above. Sometimes I stole a look and the scope of it overwhelmed me. Fade had told me about the pricks of light above; he didn’t know what they were, exactly. I imagined they were torches from a city built on high. It would take a bird to reach it, so maybe the people who lived up there had wings. They would be pale and beautiful with ivory feathers and starry hair.

We passed a dark pond with still water, where rainwater had pooled in the broken rock. It smelled stale, but I used it to wash the blood off. The others followed suit. Afterward, the chill made me draw my head covering up. Then we walked on until light showed on the far edge of the sky. It began in a gray that softened to pink and then gold. Before the sun came up fully, I could admit it was beautiful, the way it tinted the buildings and softened their ruined lines.

This far north, I saw no ganger markings. Stalker noticed it as well. “We learned how to survive close to home. We never went beyond our territories.”

“Unless you were raiding for Breeders,” Tegan said bitterly.

Stalker shrugged, as though her opinion didn’t matter to him.
I understood,
I thought. He could respect Fade and me because we’d fought. Because she hadn’t, Tegan might never gain full value in his eyes.

“Even then, we never came this far,” Stalker said.

“Let’s look for another shop,” I said. “Maybe we can find more tinned food and water. I’d rather not build a fire before we leave the ruins.”

The others agreed, so as we went on, the light starting to hurt me, we scouted for a likely place to rest.

Respite

Stopping at three different shops provided us with enough food for a few days, but we didn’t like the way the places smelled. For me, it was more of a danger sense, cultivated during my days as a Huntress. So we kept moving, even through the daylight. By the time we found a building that looked solid and secure, apart from the broken window we crawled through, I was exhausted, and my skin tingled unpleasantly. I went inside first, and Stalker followed.

“You’re red,” he told me. “Haven’t you ever seen the sun before?”

His attention didn’t bother me. I had already proved I could defend myself.

“Not that much. I told you, I’m from an underground tribe.” I used Tegan’s word for us. “College enclave,” I added, as if it would mean anything to him.

“You were serious?”

“Yes.”

Tegan and Fade slid in. He came in first and helped her through. We stood in a hallway illuminated by rays of light that swam with dust. The floors were intriguing, a mix of green and white. I studied the pattern as if it held some clue about this place. It seemed almost like a hidden pathway.

Fade said, “We should split up and scout the place. I’ll take Tegan.”

Maybe he knew she wouldn’t want to go off alone with Stalker whereas I could hold my own, even against his lightning blades. I moved out. The sign on the outside of the building had a number of missing letters, but I’d recognized the word “School.” That was where brats went to learn. We’d had school underground too. The idea of a building this size devoted to teaching brats astonished me.

He fell into step with me, still thinking about what I’d said about coming from underground. “What was it like down there?”

“Dark. Smoky. There wasn’t space like there is up here, so you got used to less. And I grew up knowing there were Freaks out in the tunnels, and that if I was brave enough and strong enough, I’d go out to fight them for the rest of the enclave.”

“And did you?” he asked.

“For a while.” I didn’t want to talk about the exile, but I just knew he was going to ask.