Текст книги "Burned"
Автор книги: Karen Marie Moning
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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
32
I ain’t scared of your teeth, I admire what’s in ’em
MAC
The problem with having all chiefs and no Indians in your teepee is that unless you’re the chief dictating the current warpath, or in tight with that chief, you have no bloody idea what’s going on.
I’m not in tight with Ryodan, and apparently not with Barrons either.
I have news for them: if they think I’m going to be one of the squaws in their chauvinistic tent, they’re wrong.
Dageus and Drustan left the bookstore, less angry than I expected them to be, with Dageus making a comment about heading back to wherever it is they’re staying to spend time with his wife, and I got the impression they were either in on the plan or had reason to believe Ryodan and Barrons were actively furthering their aim of rescuing Christian. The Keltar remind me of Ryodan, men accustomed to patiently mounting complicated campaigns in pursuit of long-term goals. I suspect they see a few chess moves ahead better than I do. At the moment. I’m learning.
I have no clue if Jada/Dani was in the know or as miffed as me. Her cold, beautiful face had betrayed nothing. I’d slipped behind a bookcase and held perfectly still until I heard the doorbell tinkle as she left, then remained motionless an additional interminable ten minutes to be certain she wasn’t faking an exit while crouching silently near, a tiger ready to pounce the moment I moved so she could try to take my spear and lock me up beneath the abbey.
Eventually I’d eased out and taken a thorough look around. She was gone, ostensibly no more anxious to spend time with me than I was with her.
Now, sitting in front of the fireplace, munching a bag of slightly stale chips, I wonder why, in whatever chess game they’re playing, Barrons and Ryodan would want to make the princes think their wards didn’t work on them any longer.
I smile faintly. I am getting better at this. Soon I’ll be devising the plans, instead of merely decoding them while they’re being implemented without me.
Because the princes would relax.
Encouraging them to further lower their defenses, Ryodan made them believe they were essential to his plan, and power goes to an Unseelie Prince’s head faster than night comes slamming down in Faery.
When one feels threatened, one clears the house before going to bed, but when one feels safe – a foolish thing to ever believe – one doesn’t compulsively check all windows and doors, or is perhaps busy celebrating what one perceives as a victory over one’s enemy.
And that’s precisely when the enemy strikes.
Barrons and Ryodan went after the princes.
Ryodan usurped the contract Jada sought: offered to kill the princes in exchange for Christian’s location, and after what I heard him asking Papa Roach in his office, I suspect he upped the ante, offering R’jan to the princess as well, thus allying himself with the only royal remaining in Dublin. At least for a time. Why bother dealing with three Fae princes when you can deal with a single Fae princess?
They went after my rapists without me.
I murmur, “Son of a bitch.” Now I’m pissed at Barrons about two things.
An hour later when the doorbell tinkles, I don’t bother turning around. On the chesterfield, with my back to the door, I know it’s Barrons. I feel him.
“If you came back to tell me you killed the princes, I’m never speaking to you again.”
I half expect him to say, Good. I wondered when you’d finally shut up.
The only reply is a deep, atavistic rattling noise, and I tense. It’s primitively terrifying on a cellular level. It’s not Barrons behind me.
It’s the beast version of the man.
I hear the scrape of taloned claws on the floor as he prowls into the bookstore, the prehistoric panting around what sounds like a death rattle caught in its chest. The beast version of Barrons is death: a primeval executioner at the top of his game. Although I’ve seen him transform partially on multiple occasions, I’ve only seen him wearing its full skin twice. Both times I was acutely aware that I was in the presence of a thing not at all human, governed by vastly different imperatives, a beast that had no mercy for anything but others of its kind.
It’s behind me, beside me, then the creature passes the couch and hulks into my line of vision.
I sit motionless, staring up at it. Nine feet tall or more, its skin is ebony, it’s nude and enormously male. Massively muscled, with thick veins and tendons, it has crimson eyes with inhuman, slitted, vertical pupils. Three rows of long, deadly horns at bony intervals frame each side of its head and there are bits of bloody things stuck on them.
Its prominent, crested forehead is a throwback to ancient times. It has long, lethal black fangs, and when it snarls – as it’s doing now – like a lion, it becomes all teeth and deep, rumbling roar.
It’s horrifying, it’s bestial, yet in this form I still find Barrons savagely beautiful. I’m envious of how well he’s engineered to survive, to conquer, to outlast apocalypse.
I remain completely still. I’m invisible.
It whips its head to the left and looks directly at me, peering down through matted hanks of black hair.
Well, shit, I realize, I’m making butt-cheek-shaped indents on the soft leather.
It’s holding the severed heads of Kiall and Rath, still dripping a bluish-black blood.
“Some crimes,” I quote Ryodan stiffly, “are so personal, blood-vengeance belongs only to the one who suffered them.”
The beast snarls at me and gouges the floor with a taloned foot, ripping long gashes into the priceless rug. Crimson eyes flash. So much for the damage my heels do. I’ll remind him of this the next time he comments on my shoes.
“I wanted to be the one that killed them,” I say, in case I hadn’t made myself perfectly clear.
It roars so loudly, the windows rattle in their panes, then stalks forward, shaking the severed heads at me in wordless rebuke, crimson eyes flashing.
I stare into the princes’ faces. Eyes rolled back in their heads, their mouths open on screams. Faces don’t freeze like that unless pushed to breaking, where death itself becomes the kindness.
Around enormous fangs, the beast snarls, “You had ample time. You didn’t. Your time ran the fuck out.” Its horns begin to melt and run down the sides of its face. Its head becomes grossly misshapen, expands and contracts, pulses and shrinks before expanding again – as if too much mass is being compacted into too small a form and the beast is resisting. Massive shoulders collapse inward, straighten then collapse again. The princes’ heads thud wetly to the floor. The beast gouges deep splinters of wood up through what used to be a priceless rug, as it bows upon itself, shuddering.
Talons splay across the rug and become fingers. Haunches lift, slam down, and become legs. But they aren’t right. The limbs contort, the bones don’t bend where they should, rubbery in some places, knobbed in others.
Still it bays, but the sound is changing. Its misshapen head whips from side to side. I catch a glimpse through matted hair of wild eyes glittering with moonlight, of black fangs and spittle as it snarls. Then the tangled locks abruptly melt, the sleek black skin begins to lighten. It hits the floor, convulsing.
I can’t help but compare it to the sudden swiftness with which Ryodan transforms. Although both can become the beast quickly, Barrons’s reversion to human is lengthy.
I enjoy the beast, Barrons had said. Ryodan enjoys the man.
Although both are animal, they prefer to stalk different terrains. Ryodan dons the concrete and glass of the urban jungle like a second skin. Barrons glides into the dark, primitive, forested jungle with the lusty hunger of a long-confined, feral lion escaped from a zoo.
Suddenly it shoots up on all fours, head down. Bones crunch and crack, settling into a new shape. Shoulders form, strong, smooth, bunched with muscle. Hands brace wide. One leg stretched back, the other bent as it tenses in a low lunge.
A naked man crouches on the floor.
Barrons lifts his head and stares straight at me, a few feet above my indent on the sofa. “It was my crime, too. I may not have been there to see it, but I’ve seen it in my head every fucking day since.”
“I was the one that got raped.”
“I was the one that failed to save you.”
“And because you blamed yourself—”
“I wasn’t the only one blaming me.”
“I didn’t blame you for not saving me,” I growl. It’s nobody’s responsibility to save me but mine.”
“You blamed me for letting them live.”
“I did—” not is what I intended to say. But I’m startled to realize that he’s right.
Deep down I was harboring a grudge. I’d despised that Barrons hadn’t killed them the instant he learned what they’d done to me.
“I wanted to,” he says tightly. “They were fucking linchpins.”
V’lane had needled me that Barrons permitted my rapists to live, to go on after the hellish things they’d done to me. I’d hungered for him to go bloodlust crazy for vengeance, to do precisely what he’d done tonight, rip their heads off and bring them to me in a silent I may not have saved you but I fucking avenged you. All this time some part of me was measuring him by his failure to retaliate on my behalf, holding a piece of myself back. How could he not want them dead?
He’s right about the other part, too. I could have hunted the princes months ago. I didn’t want to. They changed me. Before the rape, I was good, genuinely never had a mean thought. If I hurt someone, it was by accident and I felt bad about it. But when they were done with me, there was something new inside me: something ruthless and feral and beyond law that hungered to be the one perpetrating the savagery, because when you are the savage, no one messes with you. I’d wanted to be bad. It’s safer to be bad.
When someone hurts you – and I’m not talking about forgivable offenses, some things are irrevocable and demand recompense – you have two choices: slice them out of your life or slice them into delicious, bloody pieces. While the latter would be infinitely more satisfying in an immediate, animalistic way, it changes you. And, although you think the memory of the battle won will be a pleasure – if it is a pleasure, you’ve lost the war.
They raped me. I survived. I moved on. I wanted someone else to be the animal I didn’t want to become.
I could have cold-bloodedly stalked into their goth mansion months ago. I would have enjoyed mutilating and torturing them, killing them slowly. Savored every minute of it. Painted my face with their blood, reveling in my dominance.
But it wouldn’t have been a sheepdog that walked out that gothic, towering front door.
It would have been a wolf.
“Wolves don’t kill with hate,” Barrons says. “They kill because it’s what they do.”
“What are you saying?”
“Only humans kill with hate. When you kill, you must kill like an animal.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What happens when a sheepdog gets bit by a wolf?”
“Duh. It becomes a wolf.”
“No. It becomes a sheepdog that fights with the savagery and lawlessness of a wolf.”
“Debatable.” I feel like a wolf inside and I don’t know what to do with it. I think my soul was turned. It worries me.
Two of the princes who raped me are dead, their heads lying at my feet. The third one, Dani killed months ago. The fourth one – about whom Barrons knows nothing – is imprisoned behind bars of ice.
I have a bad feeling if he ever gets out, I might grow those fangs I don’t want.
“The princess is waiting for their heads,” Barrons says. “She will not give us Christian’s precise location until she receives them.”
I sigh and say something I never thought I’d hear myself say to a completely, beautifully, naked Barrons. “Get dressed. I’m ready.”
As he leaves the room, I glance at the severed heads, the tortured expressions, and I feel a festering, messy wound inside me finally begin to grow a thin covering of healing skin.
It’s over. With the deaths of those who so deeply cut me, I can finally put the horror to rest.
I add softly, “And thank you.”
Walking invisible behind Barrons through Chester’s many subclubs is annoying as hell. When I rode his wake before, between being aggravated with him and intoxicated by my new super-sleuthing state, I hadn’t spared a glance beyond his wide shoulders.
Tonight I’m looking. Tonight I see the dozens and dozens of heads rotating to follow him as he passes, the blatantly sexual looks the women give him (and more than a few men!), and I growl with irritation.
“Problem, Ms. Lane?”
“Nope,” I mutter, then voice something I can’t quite wrap my brain around. “Why are you and Ryodan willing to help rescue Christian?”
“Beats looking for a bloody spell all the time,” he says dryly.
“Aha, I knew I forgot to tell you something! I saw the Dreamy-Eyed Guy in Chester’s and again on the street. We don’t need to keep looking. The king is hanging around Dublin again.”
“You continue to cling to the absurd hope he’ll free you from your burden, no harm, no foul. Doesn’t look like much of a burden at the moment, Ms. Lane. Rather seems you’re enjoying it.”
Criminy, that woman is flashing him her boobs! Slanting him a come-hither look, gyrating seductively to the music, pulling up her shirt (no, there’s not a damn thing but skin and perky nipples underneath), gaze moving hungrily from his face to his crotch as she prowls closer.
I veer to the right and jostle her before she gets to him, knocking her off balance. She has no idea what hits her. She stumbles into a chair then crashes into a table, drinks go flying, and she lands in a tangled heap on the floor. A bottle of beer mysteriously tips itself over and pours all over her head.
Now she looks like a drowned rat. “It does have perks,” I agree.
“Little testy tonight?”
“That woman’s boobs do not belong in your face.”
“It’s not as if I can see yours at the moment.”
“Well, you’re damn well going to feel them. Soon.”
“One hopes,” he murmurs.
“So, why is Ryodan willing to get involved in all this again?” I circle back to my earlier question. “I thought he couldn’t stand Christian.”
“Jada will go after the Highlander herself if she discovers where he is. Ryodan won’t let that happen.”
“He cares about her. A great deal.”
Barrons says nothing, but I didn’t expect him to.
When we step into Ryodan’s office, Barrons removes the princes’ heads from a duffel bag and tosses them onto the desk next to R’jan’s.
I never knew I could be happy to see three gruesome, severed heads. More princes will no doubt be made, transformed from whatever raw material the Fae realm likes to pick up and use. But at the moment the only two princes that remain are Christian and Cruce.
“Risky as fuck,” Ryodan says, staring down at the heads.
“What?” I ask.
“Killing them now,” Barrons replies. “Their continued use as linchpins was debatable. Their absence problematic.”
“Well, at least now we can get the women out of their mansion, help the ones they turned Pri-ya,” I say.
Ryodan says, “More princes will be made.”
“Yeah, but they’ll have to do something like eat Unseelie flesh. And participate in a botched ritual.”
“Any here that haven’t eaten Unseelie flesh, raise your hand,” Barrons says dryly. He glances down through the glass floor. “Ask the same question down there.”
“Humans are eternally performing botched rituals,” Ryodan says. “Every fucking time they use a Ouija board. Among other things.”
“Really, a Ouija board?” I knew it! The macabre board game played with unseen participants always made me uneasy. Someone tells you, Here, I’m giving you a door to death, and you play with it? Not me. No clue what’s on the other side but I’d bet it sure as hell isn’t going to be my dead sister. No matter how much I’d like to think so.
By such criteria, half this city could start turning Fae. “Barrons could become Rath. I could become Kiall,” Ryodan says.
I protest instantly, “You two are immune—”
“Not to the princess’s magic. Not to K’Vruck,” Barrons points out. “When the Fae royal court is reduced, someone or something will always be altered to complete it. Who’s to say we’re immune to being transformed?”
I refuse to entertain the possibility. “Speaking of the princess,” I ask Ryodan, changing the subject, “how are you controlling her?”
“How are you controlling the Sinsar Dubh,” Ryodan mocks.
“Day by day,” I say coolly. “And I’m doing just fine.”
Ryodan smiles faintly. “Welcome to war games, Mac, where the terrain never stops changing and he who adapts fastest wins.”
None of us adapt fast enough in the next moment. But then we have absolutely no warning.
The Unseelie Princess sifts in, snatches the princes’ heads, and sifts out before my brain manages to process what my eyes just saw.
“Son of a bitch,” Barrons snarls.
“Don’t make me hunt you, Princess,” Ryodan warns softly. “You’ll become my sole target, my obsession, my compulsion, my undying homicidal fantasy, the object of my every fucking thought and inclination, and the more time I have to contemplate what I’m going to do to you when I find you—”
Christ, he’s freaking even me out. I’d never want to be that to him.
A disembodied voice snaps, “As you do not intend to kill the final prince, the Compact between us is complete. We will spare no further aid to rescue one of our enemies.” A scrap of paper materializes and floats to the desk.
“You will sift us there,” Ryodan barks.
She doesn’t reply. The princess is gone.
Barrons picks up the paper. I peer around him and see that it’s a piece of a map. In the middle of a vast mountain range is a tiny red dot. I scowl. “Austria? Christian’s in freaking Austria?”
“Dreitorspitze,” Ryodan murmurs. “Of course. Near enough to Dublin to return for prey, yet difficult to reach.”
If I were in a video game, I ponder irritably, there are two powers I’d be stalking: the cuff of Cruce and the highly useful ability to sift. Austria is hours away by plane, a full day or more by car. With so many fragments of Faery floating around out there since the walls fell, no one takes a plane up anymore. Not even Barrons and his men. It’s too risky. Driving is enough of a challenge, especially if it’s rainy or foggy, but at least you can see the dangerous reality warps coming in a car and have a chance to avoid them. “So, what now? We try to find more sifters?”
“Bloody hell,” Ryodan says to Barrons, “she watched too much Bewitched as a kid.”
Barrons shoots a dry look over his shoulder at the location of my voice. “We do it the old-fashioned, tedious, human way, Ms. Lane. Drive.”
33
“Stuck in the middle with you”
MAC
Thirty-five interminable, testosterone-soaked, cranky hours later, the six of us – me, Barrons, Ryodan, Jada, and the Keltar twins – arrive in a small town at the foothills of the Dreitorspitze mountain range, just before dawn. We stop briefly to siphon more petrol on a narrow street blocked by abandoned vehicles, filling the tank and two cans in the back of the Hummer so we’ll be prepared for a fast getaway.
The past day and a half is a surreal, grim blur in my mind, and if I’m lucky it’ll stay that way. It’s one thing to know with your brain that half the world’s population is gone, and entirely another thing to see it.
As we drove through England, France, and Germany, I’d stared out at the destroyed cities and riot-torn towns, the miles and miles of Shade-stripped landscape, derelict buses and cabs, bent and twisted streetlamps, the diminished presence of wildlife. Those humans that survived have gone to ground, holed up in barricaded homes or gathered in tightly guarded apartment buildings and hotels. Gangs are rampant, their graffiti wars painted on abandoned buildings, community centers, and underpasses. The few people we encountered in the streets when we stopped to siphon gas, or in the stores we paused to loot, were heavily armed and kept a wary distance. It appears Dublin is rebounding far more quickly than most cities. In three countries, I’ve seen no sign of people working together to rebuild, like Mom’s Green-Up group.
When I was eleven, the town a few miles east of Ashford got hit hard by a tornado, twenty-three dead and hundreds of homes destroyed. Our parents took Alina and me to help with the cleanup, food and clothing donations, and rebuilding. Though some of their friends couldn’t believe they let their kids see such horrifying devastation, we’d been glad they did, happy to help, and there’d been plenty for us to do. I still remember seeing Southwest Maple Avenue for the first time after the storm, with the quaint antique shops, pizza parlor, elaborate playground, and my favorite old-fashioned ice-cream store, destroyed, reduced to a shambles of crushed, flattened buildings, twisted slides, and fallen wires, with debris everywhere. It had made me feel dizzy and disoriented.
I’ve felt that same disorientation on this drive, multiplied exponentially.
The world is no longer the same. My world, like my Dani, is a thing of the past. I understand now why Ryodan prizes adaptability. I can’t imagine how many times their world changed dramatically overnight, with civilizations rising, falling, new ones being born. Over countless millennia, the armies they allied themselves with were defeated or did the defeating, and a new world order was born, again and again.
They’ve seen endless cyclical changes. That’s one hell of a wave to keep riding and coming out on top.
Or even coming out with your sanity. I feel grief for what we had, I mourn the Paris in the springtime I never got to experience, the bustling London I didn’t get to explore and now never will. I rue the world that’s gone.
I could get lost in pining for the way things used to be.
Or I could adapt and learn to ride the changes like they do, with eagerness to see what the new day has in store and unquenchable lust for life, however it unfolds. I understand now why Ryodan stays so invested in his day-to-day world and keeps them all together. Everything else falls away except for the family you’re born into, choose, or make; the circle of love you’ll die to protect and keep near you. The only thing that keeps us rooted in the past is our refusal to embrace the present. I can almost see the old Dani flashing me a gamine grin and saying, Dude, you gotta hug it with both arms and legs and hold on tight! The present is all we’ve got. That’s why they call it a present!
Icy, fierce Jada is all that’s left of my Dani.
I’ve thought about that a lot on this ride. Trying to make peace with it, figure out how to move forward with her. Stop beating myself up for chasing her into the Hall of All Days, and wondering if I can reach what’s left of Dani inside, if anything is. I study her when I get the chance, searching for some trace of the teenager in her face, her posture, and finding none. I remember the last fight we had, when I pulled her hair and she bit me. I smile faintly, wondering if we’ll ever have such a silly fight again, hoping we might just because it would mean she was reachable. Yes, Alina was murdered. By a young girl who was forced to kill her. A girl who’d already fragmented to adapt, who was further fragmented intentionally by the one who should have saved her, protected her.
I should have seen what was going on with her but didn’t, blinded by my own pain. I unintentionally drove her further into the fragmentation. I imagine Dani might have known Alina, even liked her, and been forced to end her life. I really know nothing of the details. I wonder if she found my sister the same way she’d tracked me down near Trinity, driven by curiosity and loneliness. I wonder if the two of them talked. I’d like to see the rest of Alina’s journals one day. Jada must know where they are because Dani once surreptitiously sent me pages from them – the ones that told me how much my sister loved me. I’m glad Jada has the cuff of Cruce, although I’d prefer it myself. I don’t want her on the streets without a sword or a shield. I’d worry too much.
Jada thinks she’s the victory for Dani, but Ryodan’s right. Feeling nothing is being dead inside, especially for someone like Dani who used to feel everything so intensely. The only victory here would be Dani back in charge, strengthened by Jada’s traits. I wonder if Jada’s existence is part of what made Dani impulsive and reckless, as if the facets of her personality were neatly dissected down the middle: the adult survivor traits apportioned to one side, the unabashed child to the other. The more controlled Jada was, the wilder Dani could be.
All the anger I harbored is gone, leaving only a locked, barricaded door between us, with no keys in sight. I intend to hammer the hell out of that door. I’m not losing her when she’s right in front of me. But it’ll take a committed, well-thought-out campaign to breach the icy commando’s defenses and find the young woman within. I know part of the reason Ryodan insisted on bringing her along was to force Jada to be around Barrons and me, people Dani spent time with and cared about. If anything might stir emotion inside her, it’s me, good and bad.
Ryodan finishes filling the gas tank, opens the door, and gets back in.
“Ow! If you sit on me one more time.” I growl at him, “I’m going to kill you.”
“Good luck with that. Don’t fucking move every time I get out. You’re on my side of the seat again.”
“Watch out for my indent,” I say crossly.
“Hummer, Mac. Nothing causes indents. Except grenades.”
“I have several of those,” Jada says. “Persist with your pointless bickering, I’ll share one. Pin out.”
I ignore her. “I’m cramped. I needed to stretch.”
“So, get out when I do.”
“I’m afraid you’ll leave me behind since you can’t see me.”
“I’d leave you behind if I could see you.”
“Christ, would the two of you just shut up?” Dageus growls. “You’ve been at it for hours. I think I have a headache.”
“We’ve been sharing two freaking feet of space for a day and a freaking half,” I say sourly. “What do you expect?” I’m beginning to wonder just how long the Book plans to keep me invisible. I’m still enjoying the hell out of it but have no desire to remain unseen forever.
“How can you think you have a headache?” Drustan says irritably. “Either you do or you don’t.”
“I can’t bloody well think in the backseat, so how would I bloody well know? I drive. I don’t ride.”
Barrons laughs, and I remember him saying something similar once: Who’s driving this motorcycle and who’s in the sidecar? I don’t even own a bike with a pussy sidecar. He turns sharply and we begin our off-road ascent, slowly clambering over the rocky terrain.
“You used to ride horses,” Drustan says.
“I was bloody well controlling the bloody reins.”
“Focus on the mission,” Jada says flatly. “Discomfort is irrelevant. Bloody means bleeding or having bled. Accuracy is expediency. You’ve not heard me complaining.”
“We’ve not heard you talk at all,” Drustan says. “You speak less than that one.” He gestures at Barrons, who just so happens to be driving and has been doing all of the driving since we left Dublin, barely talking to anyone, not even me except for an occasional silent message he shoots me with his eyes. Since he can’t currently see me, my ocular replies are lost on him. “Unless to correct our bloody grammar,” Drustan adds.
“Communication is difficult enough when all parties to the discussion strive for clarity,” she replies coolly. “Employ precision.”
“Precision” and “expediency” rank right up there with “grace” as Jada’s middle freaking names. I puked on the ferry. She sure didn’t. I caught the lovely, not-one-hair-out-of-place Jada scornfully regarding my projectile over the side. We were all testy and tired and the passage was stormy and I don’t have sea legs.
Now we’re in Austria and it’s cold, and although I dressed warmly, anticipating a mountainous climb, I wish I’d put on more layers. I’ve been in a Hummer H1, modified for comfort – as if such a thing is possible in a Hummer – for a day and a half straight, sharing the front seat, half astride its enormous console with Barrons and Ryodan on either side. They put Dageus and Drustan in the backseat, and Jada behind them, to keep her and me as far apart as possible, although, loath though I am to admit it, she’s the most even-tempered of us all, relaxed, focused, and apparently undisturbed by any facet of her current physical conditions.
Sprawled like a long-legged, curvy commando in the far back on top of rappelling gear, gloves, grappling hooks, and other assorted supplies, and aside from eating protein bars and jerky constantly, Jada looks smoothly in her element.
The interior of the Hummer smells of beef jerky. And testosterone. It’s been the most trying road trip I’ve ever been on.
Before plotting our course, we’d studied Ryodan’s map of the many places that were iced, so we could avoid treacherous black holes. Between dodging untethered IFPs – other countries lack the Nine to tidy up for them – detouring around blocked roads and freeways, having to find petrol for the ferry, and siphoning abandoned vehicles for more gas, this drive has made sifting a thousand times more desirable than it already was.
Along the way, amid the eternal grousing that happens when you pack six alphas of varying temperaments – who can work together for a common goal but would probably kill one another – into a sardine can, we’ve been discussing possibilities and plans.
The princess scrawled a picture at the bottom of the scrap of map. After much debate we all managed to agree Christian is somehow attached to the side of a mountain in the Dreitorspitze range, but we have no idea how high or low. We just have to find the right mountain, scale the face of it, and get him down. Oh, and kill the Hag so she doesn’t rain down death on all of us as we try to escape.
Simple, right?
We agree that our primary goal is to rescue Christian, secondary to kill the Hag. However, any way we look at it, both need to happen. The Hag can fly alarmingly fast for short bursts of distance, although Ryodan claims she can’t sustain it for long according to his sources. Considering how creepy-crawly and numerous his sources are, I believe he knows what he’s talking about. If we have to climb up for Christian, it won’t be quite as dangerous. But if we have to go down for him from above, once we free him we’ll all be on top of a mountain, with no cover, and one very pissed off Hag circling. Unless she’s somewhere else, hunting something else, if we could get so lucky. Fact is, we won’t know anything until we see the scene.
