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Between charging inefficiencies, river monster showdowns, and getting lost a half-dozen times already (we tend to realize only when the road dead-ends), I’m pretty sure whatever extra margin we had from pursuit has shrunk to nothing.
But we have to be close now. How many more mountains could there really be before we hit the coast?
Still, I can’t stop checking behind us. We’ve stopped waiting for the bike to charge, taking turns pushing it when it runs down, even in the rain. And its not just pursuit from Nine Peaks I have to worry about. My nightmares are catching up.
The dead of Refuge haunt my sleep and half of my waking hours, too. Cadence and Ravel take turns talking to keep me focused—which would work better if they could actually hear one another. Whatever dreamwalker potential Ravel has, apparently it doesn’t extend to hearing Cadence, and every time he speaks over her just makes her more pissed off.
“Have you noticed how the trees on the ridge look like people from the corners of your eyes?” Ravel says. “I keep thinking there’s someone watching us.”
I grunt. My foot sloshes in the mud filling my shoe, while the shoe slips in the mud outside, only in a slightly different direction. There’s mud everywhere, including the insides of everything we’re wearing. It’s been raining for two days, and we won’t be able to recharge the bike until it stops.
“Still think nature is romantic?” Cadence says, but the snide remark is lost on Ravel, as usual, and I don’t bother repeating it for him.
I slide and stagger with each step, blisters growing and bursting and growing again. It’s my turn to push, but Ravel leans into the bike from the other side, stabilizing and providing more than his fair share of forward momentum.
I should be appreciative of his efforts, but the extra effort it takes to keep both the bike and myself upright is something I desperately need to stay focused on the here and now, the only way I can even begin to push back against what gnaws at the edges of my mind.
“Hey, so listen. We need to talk about how we’re going to—” His voice fades out as the dead rise.
The day is already dark with rain, but its edges grow even darker, hollowing out until the only things that seem real are the bodies hovering before me.
Some, I know well. The long dead. The familiar ones I failed to save, glaring and gesticulating and howling in raw, deafening whispers that slip in and out of static.
This isn’t the dreamscape—I’m almost certain it’s not. It’s not my magic returning, nor the Mara, but the ghosts of my city calling me back. Warning—and urging. And there are more of them every day.
I’m running out of time. I try not to look when they descend, afraid to see the faces of friends among their numbers, but I know it’s only a matter of time until I will.
The living world returns gradually, the whispers of the ghostly horde ebbing amidst the rush of icy raindrops, the only warmth in the world the twin points where Ravel grips my shoulders and shakes.
We’ve been through this enough times by now that I shouldn’t see worry in his eyes, pale yellow like a guttering candle, wavering behind a sheet of rain and the inky fringe plastered against his scalp.
The mud slurps underfoot as I struggle to find my balance, reluctant to release its hold. I reach down to haul the dropped bike from its grip and Ravel shoulders between us, getting both the bike and me upright and moving forward, if barely.
“We need to find shelter,” he says, leaning close. Only, I’m the one leaning.
I shake my head. Somehow, my cheek ends up against his shoulder. I can’t summon the energy to move away. “Nowhere to stop. No time.”
“Pull it together,” Cadence grumbles, but she’s not the one slogging through the mountains in the rain, and I’m too worn out to argue.
“Tell me.” My teeth chatter. “You wanted to talk. About something. Before . . .”
His grip tightens. “It can wait.”
“Talk.”
He reaches over to adjust something on the bike. I sway, shivering all the harder in his absence. I hate feeling this pathetic.
I stumble to the other side of the bike. It holds me up, more than the other way around, but this way is better. Distance is better.
Ravel’s shoulders stiffen, sending me back to that day not so long ago in a warm, clean-ish room when he raged and raved and took out his fear of rejection on me. He’s been more enemy than ally to me, and yet here we are. Somewhere along the way, I lost all the fear of him I had left, and most of the anger.
“You know better than to trust him,” Cadence says.
I agree. But I’m alone in the mountains. And he’s the one here with me. He’s sacrificed and suffered just for a chance to go back and fight.
Power-hungry he may be, but the truth is he’s nearly as powerless and desperate as I am to save our people right now. And they are our people, if for no other reason than that no one else seems to care to save them.
But that doesn’t make him trustworthy.
“Cole,” he says. Not “flame” or “Victoire” or any of the other pet names meant to shove me into the shape of who he wants me to be. “I need to tell you something.”
“So talk.” It’s less a rush of adrenaline than a trickle. But it pushes back the cold, if only for a few more steps. I shake off exhaustion and focus. “Tell me.”
“There are things you don’t know,” he says. I growl in frustration, but he hurries on before I can get a more articulate complaint out. “There’s no way you could. I shouldn’t know most of them either. I’m not even sure where to start. But maybe it can help us come up with a better plan, so . . .”
A plan. What a wonderful, impossible, idea. All our plans keep blowing up in our faces. But, sure, why not come up with a new one?
“How do you think I found you?” The corner of his mouth lifts in a wry smile. “I didn’t have a decent map. I certainly didn’t trail you and then hide out in the woods for weeks.”
I don’t bother pointing out there are so many impossibilities to his presence I’d long since given up trying to get answers. None of it makes sense. How did he get out of the city in this first place? Past the Mara, and the water monsters, and the barrier? How did he even know I’d left, never mind where I’d gone?
The only thing I could guess was he’d somehow heard I’d taken off without realizing how useless I’d become, and stormed down to Under to demand answers, but . . .
Oh no.
“Is she okay?”
He stops pushing for a moment. I stagger as the bike slides out from under me.
“Who?” he asks, leaning back in to stabilize us.
“Ange. What did you do to her? If you hurt her—”
“Why would I—look, like I said, Ange and I have been friends since before you even got to Refuge. She owes me her life a hundred times over. Trust me, she’s fine.”
“Then how—”
“I can feel you,” he says. Then he swallows. “That sounded weird. I mean . . . I can, uh, feel . . . Where you are? When I want to? Ever since you arrived in the city?”
He keeps glancing at me, then away, like a guilty child. But it’s far from the weirdest thing I’ve encountered over the last few months.
“Do you have any other abilities? Useful ones?”
Cadence snorts. “He wishes.”
“Um. It’s not an ability, exactly. Not magic, or even something I’ve trained myself to master. It’s more like . . . technology?”
I’ve had more than enough of that question in his voice. “I’m not mad at you.” At least, not about this.
He closes his eyes. “You don’t understand.”
“I don’t care what you call it. Magical powers. Technology. Purple brain sparks. Just tell me what you can do. Or,”—when he still hesitates—“just start with what you have done.”
He pushes the bike with renewed energy—hard enough I have to scramble to keep up.
“You know about the Influence. I can talk to the Mara, sure, but I don’t know if that’s part of it or if . . . Anyway, there’s the way people listen to me, do what I say. And I can find you and, uh, if there were others like you, I’d probably be able to find them, too. It has something to do with the tattoos—they’re not just for show, you know. But it’s more than that, I think. Monsters like the Mara don’t like me, exactly, but they don’t seem to think I’m all that tasty, either. Substances don’t have the same effect on me. And I can pass through barriers.”
“Barriers like—”
“Yeah, apparently I can leave the city whenever I want.”
I’d figured that much out already, given that he had just up and appeared outside Nine Peaks. But the real question, the one that matters so much I’m almost afraid to ask, is: “Can you take others with you?”
“Dunno. Never tried. Can you?”
I shrug, but our bare shadow of a plan is starting to coalesce. Ash obviously got me out of the city somehow, but he’s no longer around to help. And if he, or someone like him, could have brought everyone out of the reach of the Mara, I have to assume we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. Which means it’s not just a matter of being able to remove people from the city, but convincing them to actually leave.
“Totally. No big deal,” Cadence mocks. “You’re great at convincing people.”
“Maybe not, but he is.”
“I’m what?” Ravel asks, hearing only my half of the conversation, as usual.
“Persuasive. And able to cross barriers. If you can take people with you, that’s all we need.”
Between his ability to cross the barrier and his Influence, whether that really was some kind of talent, or technology—whatever he meant by that—or just the inherent power of being the son of the mayor and deliverer of the Mara’s favourite treats, it means we might have a real chance.
I wonder if it occurs to him that he never needed me to begin with. I hold my breath, but his grin shows no sign of cutting me out of the plan, and I’m not about to give up now.
I set out to save my city. If Ravel is the tool I need to do it, good enough.
“Sure. Just keep telling yourself that,” Cadence says.