The Arrivals

Chapter 9

After leaving Katherine at camp, Jack fled. He felt foolish for offering to be there for Chloe, especially when there was work to do. The monks and the demon they’d summoned still needed finding. Morning would be soon enough for following up on Edgar’s temper and Francis’ gullibility. Jack had brought Katherine home safely, but he knew—and he suspected that Edgar did too—that she’d simply needed a break. Chloe’s arrival was hard; Mary’s death was still fresh. His baby sister tried to hold her emotions in, but she’d reached her limit. She’d confronted the governor, shot Daniel, patrolled with Jack, and then she’d nursed Chloe through that first horrible day of transition sickness. Unless someone forced her to rest, she’d spend the next few days helping Chloe, who would feel like she had some combination of poisoning and madness. For all the things Katherine did that made him crazy, he couldn’t ever fault her for the way she cared for the new Arrivals.

We all cope in our own ways.

Katherine had gone looking for trouble, and Jack was walking alone in the dark. For him, peace was best found in open spaces. The desert breathed around him as he walked away from camp. Sometimes he felt like he could get lost here, like he could let the sand and sky swallow him whole. It was like being back in the world where they’d all been born, back where things made sense. Despite what some of the others thought, he was certain that they weren’t going to be swept back en masse to the world they’d once known. Aside from the obvious problem of not knowing what year they’d be dropped into—our own year? the current year?—there hadn’t been more than one person to arrive in the Wasteland at a time, except for Katherine and him. Whatever brought them through did it slowly and did it solo.

The shadows shifted around him as he walked, and he was struck by the strange futility of the way they made their living here. Governor Soanes had recruited them when it was just him and Katherine, and they’d grown into a motley unit of sorts when the others arrived. After all these years, he felt like killing the things that went bump in the night was no different from his brief stint as a U.S. Marshal in the West: a lot of fuss for very little progress.

Ajani actively recruited the new Arrivals when possible, offering them positions in his private militia. Instead of using their ability to awaken after dying for some measure of good in their new world, Ajani harnessed it for personal gain. Jack did his best to keep his people out of Ajani’s sight, but they all had to deal with him eventually. The man had been steadily causing problems in the Wasteland, ignoring more and more of the traditions, pack rules, and bloedzuiger etiquette. What he couldn’t buy, he stole. Those he couldn’t convince, he killed. Frustratingly—for reasons Jack couldn’t figure out—Ajani’s people didn’t ever stay dead. Once they joined Ajani, they lived forever. So far. It gave him an almost godlike status with some of the Wastelanders—and made him seem impossible to kill.

But Ajani wasn’t likely to be leaving trails in the desert. Hell, he wasn’t likely to dirty his custom-made shoes by walking in the desert, and following the trail before him was what Jack needed to deal with tonight. When he had returned to camp with Katherine earlier, he’d found more of the tracks he’d sighted yesterday when they found Chloe. These were even closer to camp. If they’d been genuine tracks, the wind would’ve swept them away. The drifting sand wasn’t like mud; it didn’t hold prints. The fact that these were repeatedly near camp and anchored in the sand meant that someone was inviting his attention.

Jack squatted down to look at the prints. They’d been made by boots with a sturdy heel and deep tread. If not for the slightly deeper indentation on the inward curve and the smaller size, he could think they were his own prints. Aside from troublesome humans, the only desert-dwelling monsters likely to wear shoes were bloedzuigers. Any two-natured thing would be traveling on paws in this landscape, and neither demons nor spirits left prints.

Warily, Jack followed the trail until he found the creature who’d laid out the invitation in the sand. Gaunt, sallow-skinned, with lips too red and eyes too pronounced, Garuda was the first bloedzuiger who had sought Jack without malice years ago when he was new to the Wasteland.

Garuda looked him over the way discerning diners examined their meals. “I see that you are staying healthy.”

Jack made a noncommittal noise and studied the area around them. The bloedzuigers had to observe traditions, Wasteland etiquette, as it were, and until those traditions were respected, he and Garuda couldn’t get to whatever business prompted the invitation. Jack didn’t see anything, but he watched the darkness and waited.

Garuda folded himself into an improbable position on a rock, legs and arms bent at inhuman angles, looking rather like a praying mantis. He tilted his head and stared into the shadows at Jack’s left. Jack followed his gaze as a second bloedzuiger launched itself at him. Reflexively, Jack drew and fired on the slavering creature before it reached him.

Jack turned to Garuda. “Really? A newborn?”

Garuda shrugged.

A third bloedzuiger came at Jack from behind him, moving quickly enough that he didn’t notice until its teeth had already closed on the heavy leather of his jacket. Venom slid over the material.

Jack stabbed his knife into the soft flesh under the creature’s chin.

It let out a shriek and clawed at the hilt of the knife with one hand while swinging at Jack with the other. In time, it would become a proper predator—if it survived that long. For now, though, it was nothing more than a mass of spindly limbs and dripping fangs bound to obey its master.

It looked at Garuda for instructions.

Garuda motioned it forward with a careless wave of stick-thin fingers. The gesture was elegant for their sort, but it still resembled the waving of insect legs.

The bloedzuiger went to its master and stood motionless as Garuda withdrew the knife and tossed it toward Jack.

He moved so it fell to the ground at his feet. “Thank you.”

The bloedzuiger grinned and pointed out, “You missed.”

“True.” After Jack rolled the knife in the sand with the toe of his boot, he lifted it with his left hand, being careful not to get the blood on him. Blood wasn’t as dangerous as venom, but blood from mouth wounds was liable to have venom in it. That was a problem. It wouldn’t do permanent damage unless it got into his veins, but it still blistered the skin something awful.

Just to be safe, Jack stabbed the knife into the sand so any toxins could be wiped clean. “Are we done here, then? Just those two?”

Garuda looked at the two hapless bloedzuigers he’d brought, smiled, and said, “I didn’t want to waste valuable time with our pleasantries.”

There was no point arguing that defending himself against bloedzuigers wasn’t pleasant. Traditions were what they were, and expecting them to change was like thinking the second moon would disappear. Of course, Garuda wasn’t above adding a surprise attack after he’d suggested they were done, so Jack looked around before he approached the rock where the bloedzuiger perched.

“You wanted to talk?”

“I hear things, Jackson.” Garuda’s emaciated fingers tapped against the rock with a clicking, rasping sound. “The brethren has a benefactor who’s interested in your little pack.”

Jack didn’t correct Garuda’s terminology. The old bloedzuiger made sense of the Arrivals by imposing his own species’ dynamics on them. It had made him decide that Jack was his equal, and that particular decision was useful more often than not. The label of a thing mattered less than the results—not that Jack could convince his baby sister of that. She had issues with Garuda that Jack didn’t understand.

“Ajani?” Jack asked. “He was over in the Divide last I’d heard. Are you sure?”

Garuda lifted his shoulder slightly in a small shrug. He wouldn’t accuse any Wastelander without evidence, but he obviously thought that Ajani was involved. If he believed that it was someone insignificant, he wouldn’t trouble himself to seek Jack. Such squabbles were, in bloedzuiger society, unavoidable and unimportant. There were rules, etiquette that had to be observed. Everything with bloedzuigers involved etiquette.

“I’ll look into it,” Jack said. He’d learned years ago to take Garuda’s warnings seriously. Among the creatures that roamed the Wasteland, none had held power and influence as long as Garuda. Ajani and the governor were powerful now, but Garuda had walked the Wasteland before either of those men drew their first breaths. Of course, that also meant that the bloedzuiger had more reasons than most to mistrust both Ajani and the governor.

Garuda stared into the distance, pointedly not looking at Jack. “Have you spoken to the governor lately?”

“I have. I need to find the rest of the brethren and deal with the demon troubles.” Jack watched the bloedzuiger with the sort of attention that came from years of conversations between them. What was unsaid was often as useful as what was said.

“Yet you cannot travel while your new packmate recovers,” Garuda mused. “If someone were looking for you, now would be a good time. You’ve been in one place for a while already because of the brethren. If the governor were no longer to be trusted or if the brethren were to be employed by someone who means you ill, you would be quite vulnerable right now.”

Jack knew the bloedzuiger was suspicious of everyone, but he couldn’t see why the governor would tie himself to Ajani. The two were at odds over politics and territories too often for that to make sense. The brotherhood working with Ajani made a certain sense, but not the governor. “I can handle the brethren.”

“And the demon?”

“Hopefully we’ll find it soon. If not, we’ll come back.”

Garuda raised both brows. “So you would ask me to believe you can ‘handle’ the brethren, a demon, and any treachery?”

“We always do,” Jack said. He did what he could to maintain order in the Wasteland, but he wasn’t going to ignore any insights Garuda was willing to offer. That was the path that led to injury sooner or later. Maybe this time the bloedzuiger was wrong, but even if he was wrong now, he’d been right often enough that Jack had learned years ago to take his warnings seriously.

At a gesture from Garuda, one of the newborns toddled over and extended his wrist. “If you’d like refreshment, it would be our privilege as your host,” Garuda said.

Jack didn’t point out that Garuda had no obligation to offer a host gift since they were in the middle of the desert. “I don’t want to insult you, but—”

With the striking speed of a viper, Garuda took Jack’s knife from the hilt on his thigh and slashed open the newborn bloedzuiger’s wrist just below the pack brand on its forearm. “You would throw my gift away?”

There were few things in the Wasteland more disgusting or more appealing than Verrot. Jack swallowed and stepped away, trying to put the vile temptation out of reach.

“Don’t be infantile,” Garuda chided.

“I don’t need—”

Garuda drew Jack’s knife across his own wrist then and held it up, not to Jack but to the other bloedzuiger. The creature latched on to Garuda’s arm like a rabid animal. After a minute, Garuda stopped it. The whole time he watched Jack watch them.

“Come now, Jack. I’ve filtered it for you.” He cut the creature’s wrist again and lifted it to Jack. “Don’t court injury by refusing my hospitality.”

Drinking from a newborn wasn’t a new experience, but the side effects of Verrot were always unsettling. With painful slowness, Jack came forward and lowered his mouth. The scents of rot and disease made his eyes water as he swallowed.

He sealed his lips over the wound on the young bloedzuiger’s wrist as best he could. He could feel the blood smearing on the sides of his face; the cut was too wide. Wasteful. Then he sucked, and thinking became more difficult. He had no idea how much time had passed or how much of the foul stuff he swallowed, but when Garuda pulled the creature’s arm away from his mouth, Jack growled at him.

Garuda smiled, and Jack backed away, struggling for self-control. He knew he’d crave Verrot like he was starving without it for the next few weeks. He also knew that it would give him the extra strength, stamina, and a not insubstantial connection to Garuda for much longer. Once a person drank Verrot, the bloedzuiger whose blood it was and that creature’s master could locate the drinker.

As Jack fought not to snatch the bloody wrist back, Garuda motioned the other bloedzuiger over and drained its blood into a thick brown glass bottle. “My gift for your pack.”

“You don’t need to do this,” Jack finally managed to say. “Your gift was already far too generous without . . . this.”

Garuda grinned briefly, and then motioned over the bloedzuiger Jack had drunk from. Its remaining blood filled not quite a third of a second bottle.

The two young bloedzuigers looked completed desiccated. It was odd that so little blood animated them, but something in their physiology made their bodies consume any blood they produced or ingested. If they survived, they’d learn to function despite their ravenous hunger. These two wouldn’t survive.

“If you wouldn’t mind?” Garuda prompted.

Silently, Jack beheaded them. He felt a twinge of guilt he did his best to subdue. If these two weren’t Garuda’s, they would’ve tried to kill him when he’d crossed their line of sight, and even though they were Garuda’s, they wouldn’t have paused if he died as a result of their greetings. They were barely conscious beasts.

But they’re still dead because of me.

Maybe it was because of the blood Jack had taken or maybe just because he knew Jack, but Garuda obviously knew what Jack was thinking.

“I brought two I no longer needed, Jackson,” he said. He stood, straightening his praying-mantis-thin limbs, and held out the two bottles. “They served me more by this act than they would’ve if they’d lived.”

Jack accepted the bottles without commenting.

“I have few friends.” Garuda paused and gave Jack a tentative smile. “That is the word you offered me, is it not?”

“It is,” Jack agreed.

“Ajani grows less reasonable as he gains power. I find the governor’s actions troubling, and the brethren’s strike illogical. Perhaps it is only my paranoia, but if not, your pack will need strength and my aid. I call you friend as well, Jackson. Garuda stepped over the corpses of the bloedzuigers. If anyone could find a way to make Ajani not rise again, I would offer every treasure I have amassed.”

“If I could make him stay dead, I would do it for my own peace of mind,” Jack admitted. “I don’t know how.”

“I look for that answer as well,” Garuda murmured. Then, in nothing more than a few blinks, he vanished into the black desert.

Jack resumed his patrol. His only other options were standing around staring into the dark or returning to the camp, where he’d feel like a caged animal. Neither of those sounded particularly appealing. He felt his heartbeat roaring in his ears, the sound so loud that he felt like his heart was in his mouth instead of his chest. Sometimes drinking Verrot was akin to dying. The one time he’d drunk from Garuda himself, only one mouthful, he’d actually died. His heart had stopped. He’d also woken to life within hours rather than the usual six days. That secret he guarded like few others.

Keeping the rest of the Arrivals safe meant convincing them to drink Verrot. The Arrivals carried very few of their superstitions from the lives they’d known before coming to the Wasteland, but the fear of bloedzuigers was a primal thing that seemed to linger. The bloedzuigers weren’t as dissimilar from the vampires of foolish legends as he’d like to argue, but Jack still trusted Garuda as he trusted no other Wastelander. The bloedzuiger wouldn’t send more than a bottle of Verrot to the camp unless he was more than a little certain that Ajani was getting close. That meant Ajani would come for Chloe sooner than Jack would like.