Stained (8 page)

"Won't you get tired? I was thinking we should stop soon."

"Can you sleep here?" He waved at her seat.

"In the car? Yeah."

"Then we don't need to stop."

She remembered what he'd said that morning.
I can get around by myself...
How exactly? She almost took another shot at finding out, but instead asked, "Where are we going?"

"I'll know when we get there," he said. "All I have to do is find him."

Julia wondered what would happen if he found Sam in the middle of nowhere. Or somewhere in the sky. How would they reach him then?

"Is it hard to follow him?"

"No."

"What's it like?"

"Like holding your hand under a faucet and slowly increasing the flow of hot water. The closer we get, the warmer he feels."

That didn't explain anything at all, but Julia knew that was all she was going to get. She
crossed her arms and turned to the window, peeved but trying not to be. It was hard to be understanding when the secrets he kept were so important. She glanced at him, and his lips parted
. He pressed them back together.

"What?" she asked.

Cayne cleared his throat. "What year are you in?"

"What?"

"At school."

Right. That's what she thought she'd heard. Captain Random, back in action. "I was a senior," she said sullenly.

"Do you like it?"

"
Did
you like it. Past tense. And no, not really."

"Why not?"

"I liked some parts okay. But no one really likes school."

"Really?"

"Don't tell me you did."

Cayne smirked. "I'm asking the questions now."

"And you expect me to answer!"

He smirked. "Were you a good student?"

She sighed. "Honor roll."

"Where were you born?"

"In St. Louis."

"St. Louis," he said. "Missouri."

"Yes."

"How old are you?"

"I'm seventeen," she said primly. "See, some of us know how to answer questions about ourselves."

And she had a lot to answer.

What was her favorite time of day? (Dawn.)

What was her favorite time or year? (Fall.)

What was her favorite bird? (Duck.)

What was her favorite thing to think about? (Interpreted to mean favorite shareable fantasy: swimming with manatees.)

What she most afraid of? (Spiders. No, Sam.)

What was her earliest memory? (Trying to use a kid potty when she was two. He thought that was
hilarious
).

Did she prefer being with people or being alone? (Alone, but with exceptions.)

And then Cayne asked what she wanted most, and Julia thought of Harry and Suzanne and couldn't answer. Cayne seemed to get that she was tired of talking (or maybe he was), and by then she was just tired period, and he was driving so well that she reclined her chair and closed her eyes.

She dreamed of enormous charcoal wings, flapping in great whooshes that became whistles. They beat faster and faster and faster, and the air pressed her still. She saw the landscape below her dangling feet; it was flying too, flying beneath her, flat and colorful like a map. She was excited. She was terrified.

Through the cold night she flew, to the pyramid that touched the sky. It was gargantuan, wider than her mind could comprehend and larger than the tallest mountain. And Julia, flying too fast and too low, was going to crash into it. She tried to increase her altitude, to use the momentum that propelled her to avoid the giant crystal, but she couldn't fly high enough.

Up and up she went, and up and up it went, until the fat clouds were cotton balls stretched around her and the air was too thin to breathe and still the pyramid stretched, all the way up to the kingdom of the gods.

Chapter 11

The charcoal feathers fluttered away, the bloodstained sheets folded into the mist, and Nathan's feet touched stone. He ran a hand through his short brown hair as his dark eyes peered across the expanse of flat stone. They were there, as they always were: three lights in the dark.

Nathan understood the need for the crossing--the need to master himself and his history before he faced The Three--but a part of him, a weak part that he couldn't quash, wished he saw, if not happier, than at least less painful visions of his past.

He fingered the small scar on his right check and counted backward until his mind was calm and his actions were automatic. His feet carried him up three steps onto the other half of the massive underground cave--the hidden half.

It was enormous: more than 1,000 feet long, 500 feet wide, and 300 feet high. While the cave was illuminated by the moon and the stars on the common side, The Three's half of the pit was all shadows. Thirty torches staggered the length of the underground theater, a path of light that led to them and only them. There was no other reason to make the crossing. They were all that was.

His footsteps sounded like drum beats in the silence. His breaths were gasps. The dark outside the glow of the torches seemed both to stretch forever and to pin him in. Room to hide but no escape. Just like his life.

Nathan allowed himself a moment to wonder why he had been summoned. Last time, it was because one of the Candidates had disappeared. Perhaps she had been found?

He reached the halfway point, when the last of the lake's mist receded and the hidden gods revealed themselves. Like each time he had appeared before them since the first, Nathan searched for changes in their appearance. He was both comforted and disappointed, as their features became visible, that he found none.

The right and left, or left and right, might have been twins. Both were old, impossibly old, with slick bald scalps that rumpled at the forehead, bushy gray caterpillars for eyebrows, and age-lined faces. They sat in thrones raised seven feet, yet their thick gray beards touched the floor.

They flanked the middle, who was even older. His eyes had sunken to slits in his face, his nose was no more than a gnarl above thin lips, his skin was crisscrossed with a millennium's scars, and his beard stretched 30 feet; 10 feet from his perch above the other two to the ground and another 20, to where Nathan bent to kiss it.

Here he would wait for them to speak.

He did not wait long.

"Our minds are turned toward hers," the right said. His voice was like thunder, and Nathan had to touch the floor to steady himself.

"We shall make contact soon," the left said, his voice like the hiss of steam.

Nathan nodded. "What do I need to do?"

"Make yourself ready," the right said.

"Ready for what?"

The right and left were silent. They were deliberating with the middle, Nathan knew. He, the oldest of The Three, who never spoke aloud. Only to two minds did he project his thoughts; they, the right and left, were his voice.

"The tracker we sent found another," the right said.

"He returned with news," the left said.

Nathan blinked in surprise. He was not aware that a tracker had been dispatched. That he had failed was alarming.

"We cannot lose her," the right thundered.

"We cannot allow him to have her," the left hissed.

The hairs on Nathan's arms stood up. Someone had her? "Who? Is she in danger? Do I--"

"We cannot determine his motives," the right declared.

"His mind blocks ours," the left whispered.

They lapsed into silence again, and Nathan turned his attention to the middle. He was still as stone. Nathan had wondered before if the tall, thin man who was more than man was even alive at all.

The voice of the right shook him out of his musings. "She is with a Hunter."

Nathan nearly choked on his tongue. The familiar fear and rage grabbed him inside, a cold burn that threatened to strip his control, to leave him bare before the gods. "A Hunter," he exclaimed. "Then what the hell are we waiting for? I've got to get her now! He could kill her!"

"He has been her companion for a week," the left said.

"What?" It didn't make any sense. Not unless-- "Does he know?"

"We cannot say," the right said.

"The time for action is approaching, regardless," the left said.

Nathan wanted to scream at them, to challenge them, to disobey them, but he stayed his temper. He was as a fly before them. He had to trust their judgment. "I am to prepare to destroy him?"

"Yes," the right said.

"And her, if need be," the left said.

Nathan nodded. "I will assemble my team."

He waited for them to dismiss him, but no word came. They were conferring again, and Nathan was not prepared for the bombshell they were about to drop.

"Child of the Light," the right said, "this Hunter is among their most accomplished."

"And," the left whispered, "he is one with whom you are acquainted."

Chapter 12

Julia spent the black a.m. hours with her eyes shut, listening to the purr of the wheels on the road and thinking about Cayne.

Losing her first and only real family could've put her in some awful new foster home, or even in a homeless shelter or hospital. But here she sat, comfy in the air-conditioning, reclining in a leather seat, wearing the sort of clothes she'd wanted in her closet for most of her life. And under the protection of someone who looked like a Ralph Lauren model. She couldn't help but feel grateful, despite Cayne's persistent less-than-chattiness.

The truth was, she was starting to like him, and his company helped her feel something like stable. She'd felt so much more okay in the past 48 hours or so that she'd even managed to seal up her grief for Harry and Suzanne. She planned to pull it out when they got to Sam; after that, she figured maybe she could get Cayne to get her admitted to some college. She could get a job somewhere and he could help her with an apartment before he took off to do whatever Caynes usually did.

Of course this was all assuming, when he spilled his Super Secret Insider Knowledge, he didn't tell her she was going to sprout horns, and that they actually managed to deal with Samyaza. Right now, she was telling herself they could.

Julia rested her forehead on the window, scrutinizing her sidekick through the thickness of her half-shut lashes.

Of course he didn't scrutinize back. He didn't do anything but be intense.

For hours she had watched his eyes jump from the rear view mirror to the road to the sky and back again, a rhythm so practiced she doubted it was conscious. When her eyes finally tired of following his, she gazed at the landscape, rolling hills with lonely trees and grass that looked Etch A Sketched under the light of the moon and a blanket of stars.

The land appeared in her dreams in broken, smeared images. And so did he. Grassy, tree-speckled hills hugged Cayne. The pyramid was there, but she was underneath it, looking up. She saw Cayne fly over it. He was listening to an iPod, snapping his fingers to a tune she couldn't hear. The sky was dark gray.
Charcoal
.