Taken

Chapter 16

“Jesus,” she whispered, and shivered. Zach had his arm over her shoulders, and was actually kind of liking the way she drew closer to him. A thin freezing rain, more like a mist with pretensions, kissed the blackened shell of her apartment building. “Jesus Christ.”

I told you, sweetheart. This isn’t like upir. This is revenge. “Who hates you this much?” He scanned the approaches. There were still a couple cop cars and fire trucks, so he kept them well out of sight. The entire area was cordoned off with yellow tape and orange traffic cones. Thin traceries of steam lifted into the morning air, and the stench of smoke was overpowering. It was like the morning after the fire, when he’d gotten Kyle up on his feet and Kyle got all of them moving toward food and shelter.

Only this time, the shaman was next to him. For once, he hadn’t failed. It was another thing to feel almost-good about.

“I don’t… There’s only one person who might.” She shuddered again, and as much as he liked her leaning into him, he hated the sudden sharp drift of fear boiling from her.

“Let me guess. You were married to him.” He gave a mirthless little laugh when she started and stared up at him, her eyes wide behind her glasses. She looked just like a librarian. A really hot one. “It’s not that hard to figure out,” he said, when he could keep a straight face. “How bad was it, with him?”

She was silent for a long moment, staring at the charred fingers of timber and blackened concrete. “Bad enough,” she finally said, and tried to lean away from him. He didn’t let her, pretending not to notice the little movement.

He decided to push it a little. “How bad is bad enough?”

“Bad enough that I left in the middle of the afternoon while he was due to be gone for two days. He got angry before he left. When I could stand again, I…I didn’t take anything with me except what I was wearing and all the cash I could hide from him.” She halted abruptly, licked her lips. He still didn’t let go of her. “I went to the emergency room and insisted they take pictures. My—Lucy, she got me into a shelter. She didn’t have much, but she managed to keep both of us fed and got me a job at a doctor’s office. She…” This time, when she stopped, it was for good. She took a deep aching breath, and Zach’s chest hurt for a moment.

Goddamn. It was one thing to see it in the divorce papers—the admissions statement from the hospital, copies of the digital photographs, the maneuvering of his high-priced lawyer and the torturous machinations of the justice system. It was another thing to feel the tension running through her, the flinch as if expecting another blow, and to smell the old hurt and fear under the ice and moonlight of a fully triggered shaman. The animal inside him turned over once, restlessly, searching for whatever was threatening her. I’d like to talk to this ex-husband. Right up close and personal.

“I’m sorry about your friend.” I’m glad it wasn’t you, though. “Come on. We’d better not hang around here.”

She stared at the building. Little curls of steam mixed with the fine mist; the wind veered, heavy with the smell of sodden charred things. “It was raining so hard last night. Why did it burn so badly?”

He shrugged, careful to keep his arm lightly around her shoulders. “I don’t know. Upir generally hate fires. Open flame’s deadly for them.”

“This was everything I had.” She sounded sad, clutching her black leather purse to her chest. “Everything. And now it’s gone. Again.”

“I’m sorry.” It was the only thing he could say, and it was completely inadequate. But you’re alive, aren’t you? We’re both alive. You’re going to keep my Family alive, and we’ll make sure you never have to lose anything you don’t want to, ever again.

“It’s not your fault. I guess. Maybe.” She sighed, and sagged hopelessly, leaning against him. “Yes, we’d better go. It was useless to come here.”

“Not quite useless.” He liked her leaning on him, and almost pretended it was for some other reason than the obvious—that she was exhausted, and she had literally nowhere else to go.

“You’re right,” she agreed, almost immediately. “Now I know I’m trapped. I have to go with you.”

It should have felt like a victory. But she looked so lost, clutching her purse, her eyes too bright. She blinked angrily, denying herself tears, and that weird pain speared the inside of his chest. The animal in him turned uneasily, again, searching for the source of the hurt and not finding anything physically wrong.

“It’s a mystery.” He finally took a few experimental steps, pointing them down the street for the bus stop. “Why do they want you so badly?”

“I don’t know. I never even knew you people existed. What the hell would they want from me?” She sounded calm enough, but the trembling stress in her hitched up another notch, and it began to be difficult to keep the animal under control.

“We’ll find out, Sophie. I promise. And when we do, we’ll settle it.”

Instant wariness. “What do you mean, settle it?”

What do you think I mean? “Get them to stop chasing you. Find out what that one rabid upir was doing at the nightclub. Maybe he was someone important. Maybe they’re after us, not you, but you’re a tempting target. They can’t take out shamans very often—they’re too well-protected in most Families. The shaman’s the most important person, you know. Maybe you just got mixed up with us at just the wrong time, I don’t know. It could just be coincidence.” But I don’t think it is.

“But maybe not.” She hunched her shoulders and stared down at the sidewalk, letting him steer her. Little crystal drops of rain clung to her curls, and he had to tear his attention away to watch where they were going. The sidewalk was cracked, and a sudden impulse to tighten his arm around her left him sweating. “There’s no way to be sure, is there?”

“I can take you back to the Family. Then we can go visiting, and searching for information. If you want.” And if you’ll cooperate.

“Go visiting?”

It was like having a baby ask him questions. She knew nothing. But it was far better than her just staring off into the distance with those big eyes, refusing to even engage. “There’re other Tribe around here. If we’ve got a shaman, we can ask them questions. Get some answers. If there’s any of the Bear Tribe around, or the Felinii, we’ll probably even have allies. Best would be other Carcajou, but they’re rare. We haven’t seen many.” And the ones we did scent we stayed downwind and far, far away from, without a shaman. “There’re just a few problems we’ll have to solve before then. Like getting you some clothes and making you comfortable.”

“Comfortable.” She let out a bitter little laugh, and he instantly regretted opening his big fat mouth. Still, she wasn’t screaming and struggling. It was looking up. “Yeah. So what other problems are there?”

“Well, you need a crash course in being a shaman.” And I need a couple days to show you I’m not so bad. “We’ll help you all the way, of course. And then we can find out who wants you dead so bad. Deal?”

The bus stop was a Plexiglas-and-metal cube, its benches littered with trash. Sophie sighed heavily, and hitched her purse up on her shoulder instead of clutching it to her chest. “All right.” The words were almost lost under the sound of traffic, and Zach wished for a better van and a few thousands’ worth of traveling money, to take her and his Family away from all this. “Deal.”

He relaxed a little bit, smiled down at the top of her head. “Okay. Are you still seeing those faces?”

She gave a guilty little flinch. “I—yes. They’re not as clear right now, though.”

“Yup. First lesson: you’ve got to take care of yourself. When you have enough sleep and food in you, you’re going to be able to control seeing the majir better. You’ve been triggered, which means you’ve changed. You’re not going to Change like we do, but you’re kind of halfway between us and the spirits—you can do a lot of things we can’t. Make sense?”

“No.” A humorless little laugh. “But I understand. I’m not stupid.”

I know that. “So I’m going to be asking you how you feel, a lot. You might even get sick of that question, but I’m the alpha and it’s my responsibility to take care of you so you can take care of talking to the spirits for us.”

“Alpha?” She sounded curious, thank God, instead of angry or upset. Or that colorless little tone that somehow hurt him, the one that sounded like she’d given up.

“Yeah. That means I’m responsible.” I’m all that’s left. “The only other choice is Eric and he won’t take it. So it’s up to me.”

“And it’s up to me to talk to the spirits. What if I don’t want to?”

He worked this around in his head for a few moments, trying to see things her way. “It’s the majir. Why wouldn’t you want to?”

“Maybe I want to be normal.”

Jesus Christ, honey, who would want that? “You mean like a bleeder? A nine-to-fiver, one of those sheep? What the hell for?”

She withdrew. It was an almost-physical movement; he could literally see her pulling away, into herself. Walls going up, doors slamming, the essential Sophie retreating behind a blank screen. She gave him a mistrustful glance, her eyes darkening and that cute little mouth turning into a thin line before drawing down, and she looked away.

But she didn’t demur when he kept his arm around her.

The right bus—the 48—came lumbering along, and he cursed his big mouth again. She didn’t say a word after that, no matter how much he tried to engage her in conversation. He ended up just giving her random bits of information, nothing very useful, watching other passengers around them as the bus ground on and on toward his Family and the mist thickened into an actual rain. The temperature was dropping fast, and he had never wished so hard for a brick wall to beat his head against.

Screwed up again, he kept thinking. You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t run again too, you idiot. How could you be so stupid?