Guardians of the Portals (9 page)

Though he made short work of the window, dealing with the woman’s battered face proved more difficult. Her lower lip was split to the gum line. It really needed stitches to do the job right, but his medical kit lay on his desk in his small apartment. A similar jagged opening under her left eye still leaked fluid as he manipulated the facial bones, sending small pulses of energy to knit the fractured edges together. It was slow going.

“Dammit, why is this so fucking complicated?”

He needed a plan. Seat of the pants had gotten him this far but it wasn’t going to be enough. He sank to the curb and unwrapped a candy bar, deep in thought.

A mid-size SUV pulled up several parking stalls away and dispensed a bleary-eyed young couple. Curious, he waited until they’d disappeared around the corner of the building, then approached the vehicle, a stray thought quickly taking shape. Suitcases and a cooler jammed the rear compartment with blankets and pillows scattered across the rear seat.

All right, think. Think
.
She needs to be out of sight. I can lay her on the back seat...

Though loath to relinquish his vehicle, he knew he had little choice. He was running out of time. The SUV’s rear compartment yielded to brute force. He dumped the luggage onto the ground and tore through it, grabbing a shirt for himself and a few articles of women’s clothing, probably not a good fit for her but it was the best he could do. He kept a few items he thought they might need and moved the luggage onto the walkway near the Porsche. The woman moaned softly but didn’t awaken as he settled her onto the rear seat and covered her with a blanket.

Swapping out the license plates took only a few minutes, though he wondered if it would make a difference in the long run. He flipped the car key for the Porsche onto its hood, then slid behind the wheel of the SUV and hot-wired it.

He looked back at the sleeping form and quickly scanned his memory in search of the name of the O’Brien woman’s daughter, the information passed over quickly during his researches, of little importance until now. He spoke softly, savouring the intimate feel and the pleasure it brought, “You ready to rock and roll, Caitlin?”

He liked the sound of her name. It spoke to him in some odd, skewed way he could not fathom. But it was also too familiar, too personal, to call her by her given name. He would need to keep her at arm’s length. Though the sagas offered little insight into the mating legends, the fact that he’d been able to sever their link and mask her aura indicated that he’d need to use extraordinary measures to separate their powers. If he allowed her close again and permitted bonding as he had back at the industrial park, it could provide the anomalous signature that would draw both the Althing and GFI directly to them. Accident or not, that single event would now dictate his future actions.

Clouds thickened and lowered over the mountainous terrain, rain coming down in sheets as Trey gunned the SUV west, then south. He had a full tank, food and a plan.

****

“Y
ou heard me, Bjorg. Yes, two squads.” Eirik grimaced as he barked into his cell phone, “He’s officially off the reservation. Yes, best speed you moron! Do you think he’s going to wait around for you to...?”

“Eirik.”

The gothi looked at Tyr, his next most senior Jarl, and waved him off. “Take your goddamn finger out of your...”

“Eirik! Enough. Let them do their job. You screaming at them isn’t going to find Trey any faster.”

Eirik said, “Find him. Now.” He flicked the phone closed with exaggerated care, and sneered, “Happy?”

“Eirik, I... we understand your concern. What I don’t get is why you think your nephew is on the run. It makes more sense to suppose that GFI have him, that his father has him. Look at this. Even those bastards couldn’t keep it out of the newspapers.” Tyr picked up a pile of newsprint and waved it at his gothi. “Dead bodies, the chopper, cars reduced to rubble. All put down to a gang confrontation of epic proportions. Somehow I doubt it was street gangs. This sounds more like Trey’s brand of mayhem. He’s about as subtle as a bull moose. Gunnarr will have every spin doctor in the tri-state area working on how to turn this cluster fuck into a positive for
them
.”

Eirik grumbled, “If they had him, we’d know it. Gunnarr would be calling to gloat and we’ve heard nothing. It’s too quiet at their end. No chatter at all.”

The Jarl murmured, “You might have a point. All right, say he’s gone all Rambo and shot the place to hell and gone, and he manages to evade an army. They still need to come up with something credible to explain this mess away.”

Eirik said, “Well, if he did get away, this other concern will take their minds off looking for him and the woman.”

“Woman. What are you talking about?” Tyr glared at Eirik, seeking answers, not sure he was ready for details, yet he felt compelled to ask, “And how do you...?”

Shrugging him off with, “I still have some resources when it comes to keeping track of my brother,” he said, avoiding a direct answer.

Tyr sat at Eirik’s desk and drummed his manicured fingers on the walnut veneer. Finally he broke down and demanded, “Who in god’s name is she anyway?”

“We think—and I emphasize ‘think’—that’s she’s this mystery ‘other’ Trey’s been going on about.” Eirik sat opposite his Jarl and willed himself to calm down. “She’s, um, related to the asset, the one he lost.”

“Hmm, yes, unfortunate that. She had potential from what I’ve been told.” Tyr glared at the gothi with displeasure. “Not to go off on a tangent, but isn’t it time we took control over the research division? They operate semi-autonomously.”

“That’s their job.”

“They keep secrets.” Tyr opened and shut the desk drawer with a slam. “I don’t like secrets.”

Sneering with disdain, Eirik rose from his seat to pace the room. “Here’s what we know. I sent my nephew ... in a car, did I tell you that part,” he shoved a photograph of the Porsche over to his Jarl, “to do a simple reconnoiter.”

Tyr asked, “How did you get a picture of this?”

“Oh, this is good. The boy had our research group install GPS so he could find his way out of the city.”

The Jarl laughed out loud. “Oh, sweet Freyja. Despite his fascination with technology, your ward can be dumb as a post sometimes. Act first, think later. Sounds just like him. Well, that means we can track him. Problem solved, friend.”

“Not solved. This ‘thing’ is now in a Baltimore city impound getting the CSI treatment while we sit here spinning our wheels.”

The Jarl gagged at that news. “How the hell did it...? They don’t have him, do they?”

“No, some people in West Virginia had their car stolen, but the thief was oh-so-kind. He left them the key to this Porsche instead, along with their luggage, at least most of it.”

“Trey.”

“Too right. So we know he now drives a Lincoln Navigator. For the time being.”

“I wouldn’t have given him credit for being so inventive. Your nephew was always single-minded to a fault. This shows a degree of ingenuity I hadn’t expected.” The Jarl looked up quickly and said with a smirk, “Those vehicles come with GPS!”

Eirik barked a laugh and said, “Disabled. They found it at a rest area off the interstate at the border of West Virginia and Kentucky. Apparently he is going south.”

Tyr perked up at that news. “We have a substation in Atlanta.”

“On it. Believe me, we’ll have him by this time tomorrow. I’ve authorized the use of jump points for both squads.”

“Good. What do you want from me? As always, Gothi, my resources are at your complete disposal.”

“We need intel and we need it bad. I think it’s safe to assume he still has that ‘someone else’ with him, whether by choice or not we can’t be sure. Find out exactly what went down at Greyfalcon. Right now I only care about getting my nephew back in one piece but it wouldn’t hurt to know what else—and who—we might confront while doing that.”

“I’ll put my trackers on this immediately. They’ll ferret out whatever the hell is going on.” Tyr paused at the door. “Uh, Eirik? Does he still have that weapon with him?”

The gothi said, “It wasn’t in the Porsche.”

“Ah. Two squads might not be enough.”

“I’m aware of that. Safe passage, my friend.”

Eirik waited until his Jarl had exited the chamber, then picked up his cell phone and placed a call he really wanted to avoid. He was about to change his mind when an irritated voice barked, “What,” at the other end.

“Gunnarr? It’s Eirik. We have a problem.”

****

T
rey pulled into a ramshackle barn and eased out of the ancient Toyota. He slid the barn doors closed and rested his head against the cool metal. Beyond exhausted, he’d expended every bit of energy to stay awake and to keep the woman unconscious. He’d traversed the interstates, heading south and west for hours, swapping vehicles along the way, until his head swam from the effort.

Heat and humidity took their toll as he’d driven the empty reaches of eastern Colorado. Hoping to make the Wyoming border by nightfall, he’d turned north on Route 287 but the weather threatened to turn nasty with tornado warnings flagged across the entire eastern half of the state. He decided that pulling over for the night, resting and getting something to eat might put him in better spirits.

Trey looked at the woman, trussed like a turkey, with a strip of duct tape across her mouth. She’d vexed him to his limits so he’d taken extreme measures once more to bring her under control. He’d changed her clothes into loose-fitting cut-offs and a tee shirt two sizes too large. He rubbed at his eye, puffed and swollen from where she’d connected with her designer boots. He’d let her keep the boots but the silly strips of leather he’d tossed into a small lake somewhere in Kansas.

He leaned into the back seat and dragged her out to plop her limp form on the straw-covered floor. With the light failing he needed to scout the area before night fell. He wanted to avoid any more confrontations. His body count in the service of his clan and his gothi had grown to mythic proportions, coating his legend and his soul in blood. He wearied of it yet the longer he fought the bond, the more he slipped into resorting to violence, a trait he’d despised in his father and brothers. It had been so easy then to hate and disavow his lineage. Eirik had freed him, redirected the anger, but not the violence, never that. With every passing day he eased back into the red haze of unrestrained rage—the berserker rage.

“Stay there. I’ll be right back.” He was rewarded with a ‘umph’ and a glare of fear and despair. The more energy he drained from her, the more compliant she became.

Odd pieces of agricultural equipment littered the bays and stalls, nothing of any use. Certainly nothing that would replace the vehicle. He didn’t need to be an auto mechanic to recognize the wheezing and clunking as the death throes of the engine. At the rear of the barn a people door stood partially ajar. He sidled through it and looked up at the sky, an angry purplish green. The super cell would pass to their north though they were still at risk for severe thunderstorms. He walked around the building and stopped abruptly.

With a sharp intake of breath, he surveyed an old Ford truck with a rusted-out bed. The sound of the motor turning over and catching was music to his ears. They’d live to fight another day. Now he needed to contact the one man who could possibly help him, them—his only human friend, Samuel Eagles.

He hopped out and ran to the barn as the heavens let loose.

––––––––

“S
amuel.”

“Trey. Good to see you, boy. What brings you to my neck of the prairie?”

Trey enthusiastically shook the small man’s hand. “I’m going to need your help.”

“Anything you need. I’m in your debt.”

“You say that every time I talk to you.”

“It’s true, son. They were looking to take my business away. Without your help, I’d be stuck in Cheyenne doing God knows what for a living.”

“Yeah, well, it was the least I could do after you patched me up. Those three riggers turned out to be meaner than I gave them credit for.”

Samuel laughed. “But I’m guessing you didn’t come all the way out here just to reminisce about old times.”

Trey took Samuel’s elbow and led him away from the truck. He had the woman tied under a tarp in the truck bed. He needed to keep her presence off his friend’s radar. He did not want to harm the man who had done him a service when he needed it, but at this point he was on a short fuse. No one, no matter how much he cared about them, was safe.

“And I mean it every time. Now, what can I do you for?” Samuel smiled but it did not reach his eyes. Trey could tell his friend didn’t like the ‘feel’ of the situation. It would be best to conclude their business and be on their way.

“I need provisions: two horses, a mule, food, clothes, camping supplies, rations for the animals and whatever you can spare. I need them fit enough to climb.”

Samuel thought it over. “They’re fit. Question is, for how long?”

“I don’t know. How much can the mule carry?”

“If you’re climbing, no more than two hundred pounds. I’ll pack high density grain and hay pellets, dried stuff for you. Who’s going with?”

“Nobody. Just me. Horse is a spare. Just in case.”

“Uh-huh. When do you want to leave?”

“When can you get us packed?”

“Gimme three hours.”

“Make it two and I’ll give you that rifle of mine you’ve been wanting so bad.”

Samuel sucked in a breath and muttered, “You got it.”

“Sam, I need transport to,” Trey consulted a topo map, stabbing a finger at a spot to the north and west of Riverton, “this spot here. There’s a trailhead with parking.”

“Yeah, I know the place; nothing up there but cattle and elk, son. You planning on doing some rustling?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“All right, I’ll be back with the trailer. You’ll want to move that truck into the lean-to, I expect.”

Trey watched Samuel drive away then backed the truck into the shed. He hopped onto the bed of the truck and peeled the tarp off the woman. She lay in a pool of sweat on the ridged metal surface. He’d deliberately made her as uncomfortable as possible. She looked close to caving. Tears stung her eyes and she wore that defeated look, her eyes dull, hair hanging lank and tangled. Neither of them had had access to bathing facilities since their mad dash cross-country, but she was much the worse for wear.