Monsters & Empire, page 24
“They’re riding mammoths,” Grendel whispered, awe in her voice. Squinting, Bayo made out what looked like harnesses over the massive creatures.
“The mammoths cut through the grass for them,” Bayo said.
Grendel nodded. As the night grew darker, lights sparkled among the people, their glow too even to be torches.
“Ember lights,” Grendel said.
“Yes,” Bayo replied. He thought he caught the sound of chanting. All the native people’s Magick tasted … similar. There had been little Magickal variety between them. He’d noted that some members of the party they’d passed through hadn’t been Magickal at all but had worn Magickal clothing.
“They have Ember lights, yet they have a bonfire,” Grendel said.
“Hmmm …” said Bayo. Did he taste Magick in the air?
“Uh-oh,” said Grendel. “I think that the people we passed through are picking up our trail.”
Bayo blinked and saw that the natives along their trail appeared to be bent over the ground.
“We better get a move on,” he said. They slithered backward and then sprung up, taking off at a brisk trot down the opposite side of the hill.
Bayo was not worried. Grendel, however, was. He felt it.
“We’ve got a good lead on them,” Bayo said.
“I’m not worried,” Grendel grumbled.
The lie made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and he coughed.
“Okay, I am a little worried,” Grendel admitted. “I can’t kill them. They’re Coyote’s children.”
He hadn’t thought of it that way, but now that he did … “We’ve got plenty of lead on them,” he reassured himself.
Bayo looked across the grass jungle, still faintly illuminated by fading sunlight. Stars were already becoming visible to the north, and the moon was rising in the east. The air tasted good, even with the faint Magickal taste of soot. “We’ve been in much worse scrapes than this,” he said. A sudden intense memory of the cave came to him. Only his desire to “outlive” Grendel had kept him going then. Now he wanted to live with Grendel … he just had to convince her of that. In the meantime… “We’ll figure something out. We always do.”
“Everyone thinks they’ll figure something out until they don’t. And then they die,” Grendel grumbled, sounding like a cat that had accidentally taken a dunk in a bath.
Bayo laughed, but said, “Nope, we won’t die. I’ve got to live for Owen and Ian now.” He didn’t mean for the words to sound as grave as they did. He checked over his shoulder. The grass had long since hidden the hilltop. Although the natives’ weapons could fire farther than Bayo’s senses could probe in the Ember, he’d noted they had only fired on Grendel and him in the open: on the river bank and in the clearing created by the body of the canoe and their own tramping. The natives couldn’t fire at what they couldn’t see.
The Ember rippled with Grendel’s mental chill. It felt … out of place … The situation wasn’t that bad.
“Do you hear that?” Grendel asked.
“Do I hear—” But then Bayo did hear it. Chanting. “It’s a spell. They need them.”
“You sound dismissive,” Grendel observed.
“Because I am,” Bayo said. “Magick should be accessible without having to recite nursery rhymes.”
“Did they chant to put us at the bottom of a lake?” Grendel asked.
“They chanted to create a rainstorm up stream that melted some ice that caused a flash flood,” Bayo replied. “They didn’t create all that water and ice out of thin air.”
“Is there a difference?” Grendel asked.
Bayo snorted. “Yes. One would be extremely difficult. And anyway, there are no rivers around here.” Earlier he had to use Magick to keep hypothermia from setting in, but now his clothes were dry. And although the night was cool, at their brisk pace, Bayo didn’t feel it. He was relishing the sights and smells of the alien landscape. And whatever Grendel’s misgivings, he was confident with so much distance between them and the natives that they would find a place of safety. Or Grendel’s friend Coyote would show up, or they’d be discovered by Lupin and Lupina.
“It’s odd that I’ve never run into the natives of Coyote’s world before,” Grendel said.
“Mmmm …” Bayo replied. Keeping his senses tuned to the Ember for signs of human pursuit, or pursuit by whatever animals preyed upon mammoths, he still was enjoying the night. Whatever preyed on mammoths was bound to be enormous and dangerous. He almost hoped they saw the creature. A giant lion maybe?
“I would love to talk to them,” Grendel said.
He had a brief image of sitting down for a chat with a giant lion and wanted to laugh. But then he remembered the Folkt—or at least remembered Grendel’s memories of them. “Drinking mead or whatever they imbibe with them would be a lot better than this … even if it tasted like Malört.”
Grendel laughed softly at the mention of Chicago’s hometown “medicinal” liquor and joke on tourists. For a moment, she was only happy. The path meandered around another hillside, and then Grendel said, “Do you hear Magickal fire?”
“No, I—” He licked his lips. “I taste Magickal soot.”
Grendel’s pace slowed. “It doesn’t sound like Coyote’s fire.”
“Different taste,” Bayo agreed.
“Which direction is it coming from?” Grendel whispered.
Bayo almost shook his head. But then whispered, “Do you hear that?”
Grendel came to an abrupt halt.
“Chanting,” they said in unison.
Grendel added, “Louder now.”
Bayo pushed her toward the edge of the trail, scanning in all directions. All he saw was grass. “Which direction?” he whispered.
They met each other’s eyes and answered again in unison, “Every direction.”
The sky abruptly brightened, with light spreading up from the tops of the grass to the sky. The chanting increased in volume. Bayo turned in a slow circle. “Grendel, we are surrounded by fire.” Grass was in flames in every direction in a circle about seventy-five meters wide. He waited a beat, and added, “And it is closing in.”
Raising her claws to the sky, Grendel stamped a foot. “Darn them to Heck!” She turned to him, her delicate features contorted in rage, her eyes glowing, fangs extended and gleaming. “Stay here,” she ordered. He felt the pull of the out-of-time … caught it … and let it go. He blinked. Grendel had disappeared.
He looked out at the grass tops, took a deep breath, and choked on smoke.
CHAPTER 25
Bayo sat down on the ground to avoid the smoke.
A heartbeat later, Grendel reappeared, coated in grime. Her hair had gone from white to dingy-gray, and her nails were black. The Ember burned with her exhaustion, hunger, and frustration.
Sitting on her heels beside him, she said, “I dug us a hole.”
Bayo snorted. “And you look like a mole.”
She blew a raspberry at him. “Come on.”
Rising to a crouch, she started back the way they’d come.
For a moment, he wondered … could he successfully create a protective bubble around himself and Grendel strong enough to withstand fire? He quickly discarded the idea. Typically, grass burned for about an hour—unlike trees that could burn for 100 or 1,000 hours. He doubted he could maintain a protective bubble around their entire bodies for more than a few minutes. Staying low, he followed her a few paces. She pointed to a shadow on the ground. He blinked at a pile of dirt and past that a hole that entered the hillside they had been circling, no wider than his shoulders, and only high enough to crawl through.
His skin flushed. This is what they’d been reduced to? He looked at her, canted his head, and mouthed the word, “Really?”
She rolled her eyes. Coughed. And said, “The flames are too high and too wide. We’re not jumping over them. Even in the out-of-time.” She coughed again. “We need to … ” She broke into a coughing fit. He put his hand on her shoulder and frowned at her. Then he bent down and belly crawled into the hole, spitting roots from his mouth and blowing at others that tickled his nose. The tunnel stretched about four feet longer than he was tall, and it was higher and wider at the end than it had been at the entrance. But not much.
Grendel coughed from the opening. “You think it’s enough air for eight hours?”
“I don’t think we need that long,” he said. Before she could ask, he said, “But yes, I think we have eight or twelve hours in your mole hole here.”
Grendel hissed. “If you don’t like it—”
“It’s fine!” Bayo snapped. And then grumbled, “I’m not angry at you.”
He felt the Ember shift when he reached the end and resisted the urge to follow Grendel into the out-of-time. His ears popped. Seconds later, and she was back in real-time again. The air was still, and it might have been his imagination, but it already smelled stale. She’d closed the tunnel. She turned around in the darkness and scooted up next to him. He felt her chin at the level of his shoulder.
“I packed the earth at the entrance,” Grendel said. “But it might still not be airtight. The fire might suck out the air and then—”
Bayo reached out with his senses. “No, we’re well and truly buried alive.”
“Joy,” said Grendel. She buried her nose in her hands, her body tight as a wire. She was claustrophobic and hated cramped dark places because she was The Worst Vampire Ever. He swallowed a lump in his throat and the desire to pull her to him. Once, she might have tucked her face against his shoulder. He sent spark lights into the air, and she relaxed, but only a fraction.
Anger built in his chest.
“We could have killed them,” he growled. “And this is how they say thank you.”
“They’re Coyote’s children,” Grendel said.
Bayo had a deeper understanding of what that meant now. It didn’t matter. “I have to protect my children. I won’t let his keep me from doing that.”
Grendel lifted her head and blinked at him. Her glowing eyes were the only part of her that wasn’t filthy. He had sudden flashes of memory … their lodgings in Folktlan, the hotel they’d stayed at the first night they’d been together, and the cottage in Scotland. Grendel could handle almost all aspects of poverty, but she loved long showers, hot baths, and fancy soaps—not to mention soft, warm beds with blankets thick as clouds.
“Where is Coyote?” Bayo demanded.
Grendel shrugged. “I don’t know. I know sometimes when he does big things, he burns himself out.” She looked upward. “I think literally.”
Bayo frowned. “This can’t go on.”
“No, it can’t,” she agreed, but worry slunk through the Ember, and hunger and longing, too. He wanted to run a hand down her side to smooth away her worry, but he was afraid of her flinching away from him. Her gaze roved over the Earthen walls and ceiling, everywhere but him. “I think we’re safe in here,” she said. “Still … I think I better go to sleep. To save oxygen.” She shifted uncomfortably, closed her eyes, and tucked herself into a fetal position. She wasn’t just conserving oxygen. She was hiding from him. Bayo itched to protest but held his tongue.
Within minutes, Grendel did slip into sleep. It was something Vampires could do, a defensive mechanism of last resort. Her body trembled. Sometimes Vampires dreamed. He was awake and didn’t expect to be sucked into hers, but he underestimated the power of proximity. A snowy landscape, with naked trees and far-off mountains, filled his eyes. Multi-colored lights were dancing across the sky. He found himself on a sled pulled by dogs.
Another dogsled was slightly ahead of him. The bundled figure was too slight to be male. It had to be Grendel. It was her dream.
“Are the lights a dream … or?” he wondered aloud.
Without looking back, Grendel replied, “Those are the Northern Lights. They happen when the solar wind bombards our atmosphere.”
“An atmospheric phenomenon?” Bayo said. “Why haven’t I seen them before?” And what was the “solar wind”? She’d said it as though it were something everyone would know.
“Because they’re only visible at the poles,” Grendel replied. She looked back at him, a gentle smile on her face. The smile morphed into exasperation. “Again!” she shouted and woke up.
Lifting her head, she bared her fangs and made fists with her claws. “Why are you invading my dreams?”
And Bayo’s patience hit its limit.
Bayo glared down at Grendel. A muscle in his jaw jumped.
“Bite him!” screamed her ghosts.
An instinct, older and more primitive, wanted her to cower.
She did neither. She glared back.
“Invading?” Bayo said, lip curling. “You’re sucking me into your dreams.”
Grendel’s eyes went wide. She felt herself blush. Screwing her eyes shut, she moaned, “Whhyyyy?”
Bayo exhaled softly. “Because I love you—”
Grendel’s entire body froze. He’d never said that before.
“—and you know it.”
She did know. She squinted up at him through one eye.
He met her gaze. “And you … you … care. But you hold yourself back.”
She frowned. It was true. Once, she had loved him unreservedly, but now …
He swallowed. “For good reasons.”
Grendel’s eyes widened at the insight and the admission.
“I hurt you,” he said. “Physically—”
Grendel’s lips parted. She almost protested.
“You have forgiven me for that, because of bad intel and mind control. But worse, I hurt you emotionally … I let you down when I let Mandy and my children down …” His Adam’s apple bobbed.
She swallowed. His slip of the tongue had hurt. She’d been ashamed that she’d loved him, and she’d wondered if she’d misjudged him. He hadn’t just insulted Owen. His slip of the tongue had been a slight against Mandy and Geoff … and Grendel when she’d been human, her children, grandchildren, and husband.
All couples hurt each other, all friends did, all family. You couldn’t have a long-term relationship without pain. It was how the couple dealt with pain that determined whether the relationship could or should continue.
Bayo exhaled. “I thought heroism was something that only came in battle. But lately, I realize there are other types of quiet heroism. Enduring the day to day may not endanger someone physically, but it’s hard. Harder when you can see no way out.”
He was talking about what Mandy had endured—and countless others still endured.
“Co-parenting taught you this?” Grendel asked.
Bayo grimaced. “A little. Owen and Ian are five and not so bad. But Taig dared me to help him watch his one and three-year-old grandchildren when his daughter was in the hospital.”
Grendel’s eyebrows rose.
Bayo stared at the ceiling, his expression vaguely shellshocked.
Grendel cackled. “Have trouble keeping them alive?”
He wiped his face and nodded.
“And was it tediously boring at the same time?” she asked, not unsympathetically.
He nodded again, closed his eyes, and said, “I got a tiny taste of what Mandy endured every day. But it was worse for her. She couldn’t imagine a happy ending, and there was no one to help her.”
“No, there wasn’t,” Grendel said. “She did an incredible job, though, and I think the boys will understand that as they get older.”
Bayo’s brow furrowed. “I think so, too.” He cleared his throat. “I also judged people’s worth by their Magickal ability.”
“I know,” Grendel said.
His gaze met hers. He was about to ask her if she wanted their relationship to continue. She didn’t know.
Bayo lifted a hand, as though he might touch her, but then put it down. “You dream about me, because despite all that, you know that we’d be good together.”
She shook her head. “We are good together in crises. That doesn’t mean we’d be good at grocery shopping. And a lot more of life is grocery shopping than crises. Life is monotony and obligations, many of them boring and tedious, that you just have to shoulder through.”
Bayo cocked his head. “You’re ready to leave grocery shopping behind. You long to see the world again.”
Grendel almost denied it … but couldn’t bring herself to lie. She remembered the tension she’d felt at home, how the walls seemed to close in on her.
“You never dream of your basement, Grendel,” he whispered, as though he’d read her mind.
Her heart rate picked up. He was right. The urge to see what had happened to the world she had known had been growing within her for a long time. Maybe even before she’d met him. She’d been wandering further and further afield. She’d told herself that she was propelled by her nightmares and duty, but maybe it was more than that.
He lifted his hand again, but still didn’t touch her. “In your heart, you know I’d be perfect for the journey you long to take …”
The tiny hole seemed to get tighter. And then he said, “… in about twenty years.”
The pressure in the mole hole eased. She laughed. “Twenty years?”
He grimaced. “I have to make sure Owen—both of them—live until twenty-five.” His eyes rolled heavenward. “Owen seems determined to make me fail.”
“He’s a lot like you,” Grendel said.
“I know,” he whispered.
She swallowed. Maybe he did feel everything that was wrong with the word “Common.” He met her eyes. She’d forgotten how deep and warm his eyes were, and how incongruous the brown was with his gold hair.
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