Scavenger of Souls (23 page)

Dust and bare rock and dunes rippled out beneath it, stunted trees clinging to life between the arid land and chalky heavens. It was a place I could never say I loved—what was there to love?—but it was the only place I'd known. I breathed it in, felt the dust coating my face and hands. Clouds scudded across the moon, breaking its light like rapid blinks of an eye.

“There's a storm coming,” someone said, stepping up behind me. I turned and saw my mother. Aleka. The commander of Survival Colony 27.

She was with my brother, Yov. Both wore their typical camouflage uniforms. He wore his typical sneer.

Through blowing veils of dust, I saw the tent they'd come from, the tent my older brother and I shared. A memory
jumped into my head: a memory of Aleka visiting me after Yov was asleep to help me sound out the words of my one book, a threadbare book with faded pictures and half-gone cutouts of huge armor-plated reptiles that had once walked the land until a hunk of fiery rock from outer space put an end to their reign. But she hadn't read to me in years, not since we lost the book in an evacuation, not since Yov's height and hatred grew to their full size. The tent stood in the center of camp, with other tents around it, a portable generator or two, thirty or forty additional people—men, women, and teens—milling around like shadows made of dust. I started to ask Aleka a question, when all at once the dust blew away and everything changed.

We were standing in the second of three concentric rings formed by human bodies. Six children, the youngest ones in camp, occupied the central circle. I held one of their hands. It was a defensive posture, the kind we never adopted unless we weren't sure where our enemy might be coming from, who our enemy might be.

Skaldi
, I thought.

I watched it happen.

It started with a tall man whose name, I remembered, was Avel. One second he stood there gripping a flamethrower, the next his body collapsed, the weapon clattering to the ground beside what was left of him. Another colonist reached for it, a teenage girl named Hezka, but she jerked back unnaturally, stumbling out of formation. A third colonist
sent a stream of fire at her, only to watch her skin curl up like a scrap of paper. The outer ring collapsed, colonists running to escape a creature whose position was impossible to tell. Aleka shouted for order and the middle ring stood firm, but her words flew past the others like handfuls of dust scattered by the wind of the creature's rampage.

One by one, the fleeing colonists fell. Yelling words I couldn't hear over the chaos of pounding feet, Aleka grabbed the abandoned flamethrower and pursued the creature.

She tracked it through camp, following the trail of bodies.

It consumed them all.

She wheeled when the final body sank to the ground, turned to me and Yov and the others who stood in an ineffectual barrier around the little kids. Her voice issued a warning that was more like a scream, and I watched the man closest to me shrivel like a piece of plastic thrown in the fire. The next instant, I felt my gut twist inside out, and I knew the Skaldi had taken hold. My hand flew free from the kid I'd been protecting, and if I didn't know better I'd have expected to watch my own body crumple and fold like an emptied shell.

But what happened next I didn't expect at all.

A blinding light exploded from my body. Yov and Aleka were tossed in the air, landing with soft thuds and rolling over, stunned but alive. The little kids took the force of the white-hot blast, their bodies disintegrating as if they'd been consumed by Skaldi. The kid whose hand I'd been holding splattered my face with ash. For an instant I thought I saw the
Skaldi leap clear, an arc of light that shot like an arrow straight for Yov, who was cursing and struggling to stand. Then I staggered and fell, just as Aleka dragged herself toward me with the flamethrower trained on my face.

Then I was rushing along a black tunnel toward daylight, knowing nothing about my past—not my name, not my family, not anything. There was only one thing I knew for sure.

The power in me had killed those children. My body's reaction to the Skaldi had wiped them away as surely as if the creature itself had attacked them.

I didn't want that power. And I didn't want to remember what I'd done.

I only wanted to forget.

My body hit the ground hard, and my eyes opened to a blinding white light. For a moment I thought I was still there, out in the desert with Survival Colony 27, the light exploding from my body. Then I realized it had all been a dream—or not a dream, a memory. A memory of the night I lost my memory. Everything I'd seen was true: the attack, the colonists falling before the creature's onslaught, the children falling before my own.

I knew now why Aleka hadn't been in any hurry to tell me about that night.

I attempted to sit, but the instant I moved, a sharp pain squeezed the breath from my lungs. I ached everywhere, not just my back and arms and legs, but everywhere. My
forehead. My fingers. My teeth. I didn't know where I was, had only a dim memory of something closing in on me, overwhelming me, smothering me . . .

I closed my eyes, tried to concentrate. When I opened them again both the present and the past swam into focus.

I was lying in bed, not on broken stone. My uniform was intact, except for my bare feet. The light came from an identifiable source, a long tube that hung over my head. The pain and weakness came from the attack at the altar, and from whatever had happened when I faced the Skaldi in the impact zone. I had crash-landed back in my body, and it was taking me a long time to claw out of the wreckage.

Too long.

Concentrating all my attention on my legs, I inched them over the side of the bed, felt them drop like stones to the floor. Using their weight to lever my torso up, I pulled myself into a sitting position, more aware of the muscles straining in my abdomen than I'd ever been. With my palms flat on the bed and my feet pressed against the floor, I took a couple breaths as deep as I could manage and shoved myself upright.

I wobbled but didn't fall. I'd come to a temporary agreement with gravity, which told me it wouldn't drop me if I upheld my end of the bargain.

A pair of boots sat by the bed. I tugged them on with clumsy fingers. Lurching as if these were my first steps, I made my way to the door. I knew now where I was. The sheets, the fluorescent tube, the whitewashed walls, the uniform that
had been just as spotless until my flight with Mercy across the impact zone: Udain's base. The small protograph screen on the wall gave me a specific location: Mercy's room. Somehow, I'd come back. I couldn't have walked here, not after the attack at the altar. So someone must still be alive. Someone who cared enough to transport me, put me in bed, and wait to see if I'd wake up. Someone like Mercy.

But how long had they been waiting?

I needed to find out what had happened. To Mercy, and Nessa, and the kids. Even if that meant discovering their deaths were on my hands too. I hadn't done any of it on purpose—the children of Survival Colony 27, the opening of the rift at the altar, the loss of Soon and Wali—but that didn't change how I felt. Guilt staggered me as much as the burden of my own body. Guilt
was
a body, or more than one, all the deaths I was responsible for a weight I knew I'd carry for the rest of my life.

My hands fumbled with the door, but there was no knob, nothing but a keypad. The code could be anything, and I didn't have time to punch random keys. So I punched the door instead. Pain ignited in my knuckles as I hammered at it, but it wouldn't give. I took a step back and threw myself against the thick metal, which did nothing except bruise my shoulder. I fell back, breathing hard, gravity threatening to break our brittle accord. I drew a breath and yelled.

“In here!” I shouted. My voice sounded husky and raw. “I'm alive! In here!”

No one came.

I looked around the room. No windows, no other doors. No way out.

One way out?

I squeezed my eyes shut, called up as vivid a memory as I could of the Skaldi attacking me. I felt the sick twisting of my gut as clawed hands clutched at my soul. I inhaled their death stench, heard their moans echoing deep inside. I didn't know if memory could do what an actual attack did. But I was desperate to get out of the room, and that must have been what tilted the odds in my favor.

The pulse rippled from me like a wave. When I opened my eyes, all that was left of the door was a ragged hole, molten around the edges. Its heat pricked my skin as I squeezed through.

There was one more door between me and the outside. It suffered the same fate as the first.

I stumbled from Mercy's quarters into the compound's cement courtyard. Bright daylight assaulted me. Quickly I oriented myself, spotting the guard tower that stood by the front gate, the building that served as Udain's headquarters, the smaller building that housed the infirmary. From the direction of the gate, I heard the buzzing sound of the perimeter fence. Someone was shouting, words I couldn't make out from this distance. If I listened closely, I thought I heard not only human voices but something else, a single long howl like the sound the Skaldi had made the night Survival
Colony 9 fought them at their nest. We'd believed, or at least prayed, that we had defeated them that night. Feeling dizzy and sick at heart, I summoned all the energy I could and raced for the gate.

When I drew level with the cage, I saw that the compound's power had been restored: the pale glow, washed out by daylight, infused the bars and the twenty-foot palisade of the perimeter fence. The cage itself was empty, the remains of the Skaldi cleared away, but up ahead I saw human figures lining the interior of the fence to either side of the front gate. Twenty, maybe thirty of them. All wore the uniform of Udain's camp, and from what I could tell they were a mixed group of men and women, grown-ups and kids. My eyes caught a couple more in the guard tower, aiming energy rifles at the fence. When I closed within a hundred feet, I saw what they were shooting at.

And I also saw that they had no chance of taking down their target.

The dusty plain outside the compound seethed with Skaldi. I only had to look at their numbers to know this was the army I'd summoned at the altar: they emerged from the gleaming black expanse of the impact zone in columns at least a hundred across and double that deep. They crawled toward the perimeter fence, each row shearing off in sparks of yellow flame as they made contact with the beam, which must have been set to burn, not just to stun. The stench of their flaming bodies—a smell somewhere between rubber
and cooked flesh—mingled with the rot they produced on their own. Many bodies lay smoking and motionless on the plain, but the creatures behind them merely climbed over the carcasses and crawled inexorably toward the compound. Thirty people—thirty battalions—couldn't hold them off forever. Eventually, the bodies would pile so high the creatures would simply spill over the top of the fence, and then the compound would be overrun.

I took a step toward the survivors, knowing that against an army this size there was little I could do except die along with them. But then I froze when one of the figures in the tower turned to face me.

She was tall, and so thin her uniform hung on her like a tent draped over a wooden frame. Her cheekbones pressed against her wasted flesh, the hollows of her eyes seemed as cavernous as a skull's. She held her rifle in her left hand, and I realized with a sick lurch that her right sleeve hung empty, flapping uselessly at her side. But her eyes were the same gray they'd always been, and they blazed in her pale face with the determination I'd always known.

She was my mother. She had survived. And she was leading the battle against the creatures I had summoned to our home.

“Aleka!” I called out, and my voice carried across the courtyard, over the din of battle.

She must have heard me, because she responded with a quick nod before turning back to the creatures at the fence.

I ran to join her, and as I drew closer, I realized I knew the others as well. Mercy, small and agile, danced along the fence with her rifle, zapping any creature that didn't fall victim to the beam. Nessa, her hair cut short like my mother's, her uniform jacket stripped off to show tanned arms covered in muscle and blood, stood at the head of a ragtag army: Keely and Bea and the other children of Survival Colony 9, still tiny but hardly children anymore as they wielded guns in defense of the compound. Zataias had stripped down to the waist, and the energy rifle he held looked enormous against his puny arms and ribbed torso. The guards from Udain's compound—pimple-faced Geller, the one Mercy had called Ramos, and others—stood among the child warriors. A few of my comrades I didn't see—Tyris, and Adem, and Nekane—and there was no sign of Udain. But the rest were there, looking weary and wounded but as resolute as their leader, who waved them on with her one remaining arm and shouted from the top of the tower.

I'd nearly reached the fence when one of the Skaldi forced itself through the sparks and landed at Mercy's feet. Preoccupied with another creature, she didn't react as it reached a shaky hand toward her. I yelled a warning, but my words were drowned out by a roar that came from the tower.