Talina tilted her head back to better sniff the night breeze. Where Demon lurked behind her stomach, she could feel the piece of shit’s tension. Rocket’s presence perched on her shoulder, chittering his unease. Bits of memory, flashes of forest, glimpses of long-ago hunts played out in her imagination.
And something else. Something old and terrifying. Something out there in the dark. A looming danger.
She couldn’t put her finger on it.
Quetzal memory.
“What is it?” she asked, concentrating on the thought. Wishing she had a direct link to the quetzal molecules instead of the hit or miss as transferRNA went through its rigmarole in search of the right information.
How the hell did that work, anyway? Too damn many pathways through the nervous system.
Dya had tried to explain it and . . .
Dya.
Dead.
That hurt. In a lot of ways.
Talina still owed the woman: On Clemenceau’s orders, she’d shot Dya’s first husband down in the street. Hardly seemed like she’d come close to making amends. Now Dya was dead. Smart, competent, resourceful Dya. And the loss wasn’t just Kylee’s, wasn’t just Su’s, and rest of her family’s, but all of humanity’s. Dya Simonov had known more about the botany, the genetics, the intricacies of TriNA. She’d been on the verge of a breakthrough with the native plants. Had barely begun to catalog her research.
Gone. Just like that.
Not to mention Mark Talbot. Steady as the stars in the sky. Talina ached for his amused smile, the wry sense of assurance the man possessed. Not to mention his skills when it came time to hunt rogue quetzals.
Where she sat off to the side, Muldare fought a whimper and cradled her arm. The thing was red, swollen. They’d hadn’t been able to pull all the gotcha spines out. How the woman bore the pain and still managed to keep it together was a wonder.
Talina shifted her rifle, stepped over to where Kylee sat; the girl had her back propped against Flute’s side. She looked up, eyes hot in Talina’s IR vision. She’d been crying.
“How you doing, kid?”
“Really, really mad, Tal.”
Behind her, Flute opened his left eye to study Talina. To say that quetzals didn’t deal with death the same as humans did was an understatement. Especially given that they tended to eat their progenitors.
Talina dropped to a crouch, rifle across her knees as she listened to the night sounds. “You and Flute found where this thing got your mom and dad. Was there any clue as to what this is? Some scent? A track? Anything?”
Kylee worked her jaw. Knotted a fist. “A couple of spots of blood, and the roots were already absorbing them. Flute and I looked up. Couldn’t see anything up in the branches. No thermal signature, no shape. Flute’s sense of smell is a lot better than mine; he didn’t catch of a hint of anything unusual. Maybe it had moved on.”
Talina winced at the resentment and guilt in the girl’s voice. Kylee’s words echoed in Tal’s memory: “Everyone I love dies!”
“We’re going to find this thing,” Talina promised. “The way Kalico and Briah described the tentacle, or whatever it was, the creature’s got to be big. Something limited to deep forest where it can anchor among the high branches. And then there’s the biomechanics of being able to lift a person that high that fast.”
Kylee’s lips were pursed, her face contorted. Now she said, “She shouldn’t have been out there in the first place. They drove her out there. You know it just as well as I do.”
At the venom in Kylee’s voice, Talina took a deep breath. “You and Flute going to go on a rampage? Slicing and dicing your way through the Unreconciled? Murder every last one of them?”
“They eat people.”
“So do quetzals. Flash killed and ate three people in the belief that he could synthesize their molecules. Learn who they were. The Unreconciled think that by eating people, they can purify them. Give them immortality. Where’s the difference?”
Kylee’s hot glare would have melted sialon. “I really hate you sometimes.”
“Yeah, it’s a pain in the ass when someone brings up all this rational, put-it-in-perspective stuff when all you want to do is go murder forty or fifty human beings. You gonna kill the kids, too?”
“Don’t be an asshole, Talina.”
“Right back at you, kid. Part of being a decent human being is thinking things through before you’re hip-deep in the blood you’ve spilled.” A pause. “And living with the guilt for the rest of your life.”
Kylee leaned her head forward, buried her face in her hands. “There’s so many things I needed to tell Mom. Tell Mark. Stuff I couldn’t get myself to say. Like, I’m sorry. Like I let her down so many times. And I was there . . . stood there . . . like a fucking rock when Leaper and Diamond killed Rebecca and Shantaya. And I didn’t care. I saw it! I just wanted everything and everyone to die.”
“Your mother knew that. So does Su.”
Talina dropped to a knee as her leg started to cramp. Carefully she scanned the surrounding trees, sorted the sounds of the night. That was the thing about having a quetzal in camp. None of the local wildlife was likely to sneak in for a snack.
“They also knew that you were different because you’d bonded with Rocket. That he’s part of you, part of us.” Talina tapped the side of her head. “Me, I’m a stop-gap. You’re the future. You, and probably Tip and others like you. Dya understood that. Yeah, she loved you, and it broke her heart that it had to be her beloved daughter who was chosen as the bridge to the future.”
“I hurt her.” Kylee sniffed, wiped her nose. “Really, really hurt her.”
Talina shifted her butt. “You know why she left you out there when she could have talked Kalico into sending armed marines to bring you back? It’s because she trusted you. The greatest gift you ever gave your mom was letting her and Mark come visit you out at Briggs’.”
“I’m tired of hurting, Talina.”
“It sucks toilet water, but if you’re going to really live, you’re going to hurt. At least, if you’re normal. Now, take Dan Wirth. He’s a psychopath. Everything is all about him. No remorse. No guilt. No grief. On days like today, psychopathy sounds pretty good.”
“I still want to kill cannibals.”
“I hear you.” Talina glared up at the high basalt escarpment where it blocked the eastern sky. “But here’s the question: They were locked in a living hell, and the only path to survival led to a different kind of hell. If you or I had been there with the choices they had, what would we have chosen?”
“I don’t get it.”
“It’s simple really: Would you have let them cut your throat and cook you? Become food for your fellow passengers? Or would you have chosen to live and cut someone else’s throat, cooked, and eaten them? Choose.”
“There had to be something else they could have—”
“Do you eat, or are you eaten? Pick.”
Kylee glared at her. “It’s never that simple.”
“It was on Ashanti.”
The girl crossed her arms, turning sullen. “Doesn’t matter. When they drove Mom and Mark out into the forest, they weren’t on any damn ship. Whole different rules.”
Talina chuckled, her night-shifted gaze fixed on the heights above. “Yep. And before this is done, I’m going to settle with Messiah Batuhan.”
“What about the rest of them?” Kylee asked.
Talina waved away a pesky night-flying invertebrate. “Well, if what we’ve seen so far is any indication, Donovan’s slowly whittling the numbers down. And we gave them fair warning.”
“And this thing out in the forest?”
“It’ll have to wait its turn, but I promise you this: Its turn is coming.”
“Good,” Kylee whispered fiercely, “because I want to be there when we take it down.”