Chapter Twenty-One

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Taking my time here, however unpleasant, was essential. Debbie had spent time with these people, and it was possible there might be a clue regarding how they planned to take care of her or what their plans were for her. An hour or so passed, and while nothing of that sort came to light, my thorough search did manage to reveal something that was equal parts damning and useful—large, heavy footprints on the north side of the wall leading away from the compound towards Aquila. Someone in the neighborhood of about three hundred pounds walked away from all of this, and Debbie was the only one it could have been. No, not Debbie. After this much carnage, perhaps she didn’t deserve a name. The Battle Born did this.

The trail was easy enough to follow for a little while; then, as if I needed any more proof, the tracks led me to the corpse of a coyote with its neck violently snapped, with a multitude of tiny footprints scattering away from the scene. It was possible that they were hungry enough that they believed she would be an easy meal, but that was unlikely. Coyotes prefer carrion, and an attack on a person is rare. The more likely answer was that animals can sense things that people can overlook, and whatever they sensed in her was something they felt they needed to destroy.

It was maybe a mile out when I saw something that added another wrinkle to all of this. Not far off from the trail I was currently following were a second set of prints that had come from the direction of the highway. They led from the road to a rock long and flat enough to nap upon, and then they turned back the way they came.

I’d been followed, but how? I didn’t see anyone behind me at any point, and I’d left early enough that I would know, unless...

I took off in a dash back to the car. It was early enough in the morning that the sun wasn’t punishing, and my anger fueled me. When I arrived, I immediately began searching the wheel wells above the car tires until I found it. Above the passenger side rear wheel was a magnetic GPS tracker. Caleb didn’t need to see me; he was watching my every move from his phone.

Over a hundred years out of time or not, he was adjusting to modern technology just fine, it would seem.

I briefly considered throwing it out in the desert, but common sense won out. He thought he had this all figured out. He knew how to use me to find the Battle Born, he tracked my movements and spied on me as I saw the compound, and he had the same set of footprints I had. But if what I knew about him held true, he wouldn’t want to be first to the scene. He would want me out of the way, and what better way of doing that than letting the Battle Born and me tire each other out.

No, I would want him to follow me. But I needed to show him how dangerous I was to follow.

Aguila was, for lack of a better term, a very flat town. It was mostly residential buildings with a handful of businesses, almost none of them higher than a single story, and half of them looked to be abandoned. There couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred people in the town and only a couple of places one could have hidden, but that was going to work in my favor.

I parked at the southern edge of the town and gathered my bow, arrows, and whatever I could pocket and began walking. By leaving the car where I did, he would have no choice but to follow me on foot eventually. And I was making no effort to hide. Anyone who looked out a window would be treated to the sight of an elf ready for battle. The lack of police presence in the area also gave me a level of confidence that it was unlikely anyone but Caleb would have anything to say about it.

The long walk to the northernmost point of town also served another purpose. I was gambling that Caleb wouldn’t risk a fight out in the open, especially if he had even a hope that I was leading him to the Battle Born, and that meant he would need to keep his distance if he wished to avoid being seen. So when I reached the derelict packing plant, I had time to pick my spot.

When I was just within sight of the place I dropped into a run around the back, cutting the ruse. I wanted him to know that he’d been had, maybe make him rush in quicker than he might like. Everything was locked and boarded, but the windows were sunbaked and fragile, the paint that had been applied to them heavily faded. Breaking one and getting inside would be easy, but it would also let him know exactly which way I came in.

Which is why I broke three windows.

I climbed in one of the windows and got my first look around. This place had to have been used for some serious food packing at one point, but now it looked to be forgotten. Judging by the thick layers of dust on everything, it had been forgotten for quite some time. That also meant anywhere I planted a foot would make following me a task any child could accomplish. The lack of a second story made things tricky, but there were still plenty of pillars and shelves to conceal my person from any visitors and leaping into the rafters was the obvious choice.

There were numerous ways into the plant, but any one of them would have made a lot of noise, and I had Caleb at a disadvantage. Come and find me or deal with the Battle Born as is and hope I didn’t get to him later. Unfortunately, that pendulum swung both ways, and if I didn’t take care of Caleb now, the fight with the Battle Born might leave me weakened enough that I’d be easy prey for him. Still, I was reasonably sure Caleb would come, if for no other reason than I’d hurt his pride.

Sure enough, I didn’t have to wait long. A few minutes later and a service door exploded inward after the third time it had been rammed. Sunlight streamed in behind him, adding a touch of illumination to the darkened space. Of all the ways he could have entered, this provided my most challenging shot, and if my arrow didn’t put him down right away, he’d be able to hide. I pushed down the urge to pull my bowstring and instead opted for patience.

Caleb took a step inside and addressed the room. “Don’t suppose it would do any good to give you the chance to walk out of here?” A moment passed, and he took that as its own answer. “Fair enough, we can do this the hard way, then.”

Caleb cautiously entered into the plant, surprising me by not drawing a gun right away. His choice, I suppose, but he had something in his right hand that I couldn’t see, and I found that worrisome.

“I ain’t got an arrow through my skull yet, so I must assume you ain’t looking to kill me,” he continued. “That or you ain’t got a shot. Gotta be one of the two.”

As open as the floorplan was, I couldn’t see everything, and as Caleb continued walking away from me, I cursed silently to myself at having to make the split-second decision to follow him or hope that he wandered back into my field of vision. Devious as he was, I felt following was my best option.

Careful not to make a sound, I leaped over one rafter beam to another. Caleb was still searching, still trying to draw me out. “Never took you for a coward, though, if’n I’m being honest,” he drawled, carefully peeking around a corner. “Come to think of it, though, it makes sense, don’t it? Word gets around, you’re all alone these days, and it seems your solo career is going about as well as a house cat trying to swim upstream. Battle Born about beat you senseless. Then I understand that street preacher fella whammied you. Not to mention the harpy, she damn near killed you as well. Then I took care of her, easy as pie! Stands to reason you’d be worried I got your number as well. Maybe I’ll be the one to knock some sense into you finally.”

There was some truth to his words, skewed as the information may have been. And he was surprisingly well informed. But I wasn’t about to be rattled, even as I made another leap to follow him and find my shot.

“And again, no judgment, no shame or nothing like that. You’re just an elf, after all, and that ain’t nothing special. Just weird is all. If you think long ears are about to scare me or that your sticks and stones’ll break my bones, well darlin’, you must not have heard enough about me.”

I was mid leap yet again when I realized it all too late. This was the fourth left turn Caleb had made in a row. Something I must have done tipped him off, and he hadn’t shown it. I drew an arrow as quickly as I could, but his left hand was already pulling a gun. Disabling shot be damned, I had less than a split second to correct my aim as I released and shot the gun.

The gun spiraled away from him, but not before he managed to get off a shot. His aim was ruined enough that the bullet only grazed my arm rather than pierce my heart, but it burned with the heat of a hot poker all the same. I didn’t have the focus to land safely, ignore the pain, and maintain the grip on my bow. One of those had to give, and it was the bow that toppled to the ground.

At the same instant I landed on the beam, I found out what Caleb had been holding in his right hand as a length of chain shot up and wrapped itself around my forearm. My leather bracers protected me somewhat, but not entirely as the exposed flesh the chain touched burned in such a way that I instantly forgot all about the bullet wound. I howled in agony as I felt the burning sensation penetrate parts of me that were beyond physical.

My scream was still echoing out through the plant as Caleb yanked me to the ground. I tried to roll with the motion, to land on the meat of my shoulder to avoid injury, but I was only partially successful. My mind was consumed only with getting the chain away from me. I landed with a sickening thump.

“Cold iron and Fae don’t mix, am I right?” Caleb asked smugly. That second cost him as I unwrapped my wrist from the chain and scrambled out of sight. The speed with which I moved seemed to surprise him.

By some miracle of miracles, I had the presence of mind to snatch my bow up with my more functional hand as I got away, though the pain of having been assaulted by that chain was all I could think about for the next precious few seconds. I’d have rather been branded than experience that. The pain of cold iron touches the Fae in our very souls, and humans rarely understood what they were doing when they used it as a weapon.

Two more shots exploded behind me as I made my mad dash away from him, but having to draw his other pistols gave me the small window I needed not to get gunned down right then and there.

I didn’t understand how this could happen. I went in with a plan, I had the drop on Caleb, and he still managed to put me on the run. Even now, as I sat behind a rusting conveyor system on the far end of the plant trying to steady my breathing, I had to fight the urge to charge him head on and fill his chest with arrows. Seductive as the idea was, I’d already underestimated him in spite of everything, and there was no doubt in my mind his gun would beat my bow.

My arm was shaking uncontrollably now, and I had to remind myself that it was very temporary to stop myself from screaming. This wasn’t the first time I’d been violently struck with cold iron, and it might not be my last. It was unbearable, but it would pass, and if I lost control now I’d only succeed in giving away my location. It was a dangerous but necessary risk. I shut my eyes and focused directly on the pain and its source, accepting it and not flinching from it. The harder I fought this pain the worse it would get. This affliction was pure nature, in that it was something all of my people carried with them from birth to the grave, but at the moment it was difficult not to think of it as evil. I allowed the pain to pass through me, and, thankfully, I hadn’t been shot in the meantime.

I just had to think this through. I was stronger, faster, and more experienced than Caleb. Caleb had a chain that could burn me to my core, an indifference towards whether or not I lived or died, and guns. So far it felt like a stalemate. There was a solution here, there always was. I needed to consider what else I had. I dug through the pockets of my cloak and retrieved my items. Three potions, marked Steelskin, Boom Boom, and Ox respectively. The two glamours that I’d yet to use, and a fist full of kinetic beads.

I didn’t know for sure if Steelskin would be enough to stop bullets, and with the sort of rounds Caleb was firing, I didn’t feel up to the task of field-testing Wilma’s work. But if I were lucky, I wouldn’t need to. I had a plan just recklessly stupid enough that it would have made Elana proud.

Kinetic beads are precisely what their name implies. To the casual observer, they would appear to be something not unlike a black pearl. Half the size of your eye, if you need to know. But when thrown, they explode with a pure invisible kinetic energy that has been tightly wound into them, barely contained. One bead might hit you with all the impact of an unprotected strike from a heavyweight boxer. But the trick to them isn’t as simple as releasing what has been stored within; the amount of kinetic force released is also proportional to the kinetic energy striking them. So if one bead was a heavyweight’s punch, two thrown simultaneously would make each of them strike with the impact of a moderate car accident.

I had six beads.

Six beads and there were a lot of shelves and machinery for Caleb to hide behind. Once I had watched three beads strike an ogre in the chest and send it clear across an entire lake. That lake had to be at least half a mile across, and the ogre never touched the water. It very obviously didn’t survive. I didn’t know what six beads would do, but this was no time for half measures. I made a silent prayer to the creators, and I flung the handful of mass destruction and ducked back behind the machinery half a second before they struck.

I didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t quite what I got. Every window in the building violently exploded as virtually all of the equipment on that side of the blast soared through the air like a house of cards that went up against a leaf blower. A significant portion of the ceiling even collapsed as a support beam was reduced to twisted metal and gravel. The sound of it wasn’t what I expected either. It was incredibly brief and was something not unlike vinyl being torn.

Small borderline ghost town or no, that was bound to bring some unwanted attention.

It was nearly unmanageable trying to breathe with the amount of dust that had been kicked up and even more difficult to see. Charging in and pressing the advantage while the enemy was disoriented would have been ideal, but impossible under the circumstances. Thankfully, his end of the room was worse than mine, so assuming that we weren’t overrun with townspeople first, I could wait him out.

I pulled an arrow from my quiver and pulled it to a full draw, ready to unleash it at the slightest movement. I held it constant for a full minute. Then two. Then three. There was no movement, not even a cough, and the dust was already beginning to settle. There was a genuine possibility that I might have killed him, and that thought was unnerving. That wasn’t my intent, and even with Caleb bent on putting a bullet in my brain, I didn’t think he deserved death. All the same, I wasn’t about to shed any tears for him if he met his end here today.

The time for waiting was at an end. I wasn’t going to learn anything standing here and time was running out besides. I kept the bow drawn as I tried to make my way through the plant, looking for any sign of Caleb. The mess I’d made didn’t make my job any easier. And right when I was ready to give up and get out of there, I saw it—an arm lying limply near a shelving unit. I inched closer to the body only to see the still form of Caleb Duquesne pinned from the waist down, his eyes closed, his body still and without breath. I sighed at the discovery, relaxing my draw on the bow.

And that’s when I heard the hammer cock on his gun.

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