Undone

Back on the Victory, we raced down the road with the patrol car drafting behind us. Luis’s hand clasped the bare skin around my middle, sealing the co

The red, faint trail of Isabel’s passage on this land was fading but still present. We were on the track, and we were very, very close. Over the next fold of the road rose the growing shadows of mountains. Desert was rapidly giving way to different landscapes and plants, although the toughest, thorniest bushes continued to make their presence felt.

The air changed gradually, too. We were traveling into different climate bands.

As the sharp mountains began to cut the sky in hard, black edges, the trace came blindingly clear, in a flare of hot red.

Luis saw it, too. His hand tightened on my waist. I increased speed, flying toward the site. If they intended to fight us, I was ready. Eager for it.

You will not take this from me. Not this.

Over the next ridge, the road fell into a gentle downward slope. There were no roads leading into the underbrush, no obvious settlements or buildings. No sign at all of human civilization here, except for this road built in a clean, straight line through nature.

I slowed, anxiety building inside me. I had expected to see something—a car, perhaps, or a building.

There was nothing.

And yet the trail ended here.

I slowed the motorcycle again, this time to a coast, with the engine humming and the tires hissing along the gravel at the side of the road.

I stopped.

“Oh, God,” Luis said, and every sound seemed to hang sharp on the clear air. “Where is she?” He sounded as confused and afraid as I felt, and he let go of me and swung his leg over the bike to stride away. He paced like an angry lion, hair blown in a black flag by the whipping winds. Grass bent and whispered its secrets. This flat, open area concealed nothing, but a child might be small enough to be hidden in the grass—

—if the child could not move.

I slowly dismounted the bike and approached Luis, who was stalking the edge of the road, frantically sending out waves of power like radar signals, hoping to get a response.

He did. I heard the sharp intake of his breath, and then he plunged forward, off the road and into the knee-high pale stalks of grass. Insects rose up in confused clouds, disturbed by his passage. I followed him. Behind me, the police car’s doors opened and closed, and I knew the men would be right on my heels.

Luis and I leapfrogged each other, racing through the grasses, both heading for the same point of pulsing red on the aetheric.

When we reached it, there was no sign of a child. No body. No presence at all.

Luis sank down on his haunches near a bare spot in the grasses and held out his hand, palm down, over it. I put my hand on his shoulder, and it popped up in Oversight in hot red.

The soil was darker here.

“What?” Officer Styles barked, as he and his partner stumbled to a halt next to us, looking at—apparently—nothing.

Luis touched his fingers to the soil, and raised them into the light.

Blood, smeared red on his skin.

He rubbed it slowly between his fingers, expression distant and closed even to me.

“It’s hers,” he said softly. “It’s Isabel’s.”

I knew, with a sinking sensation, that he wasn’t wrong.

Something failed inside of him, something that had been tenaciously holding together. His hope was dying here, the precious light of it guttering out like a candle starved of oxygen.

I was on the verge of feeling the same when I became aware of a strange flutter at the edges of my awareness, a kind of red echo.

I let go of Luis’s shoulder and stepped away into the grass, hunting for the source of the dissonance.

I found it. It was a plastic bag, the kind used to store blood for reuse in hospitals. It still contained a red film within it. I crouched next to it, studying it carefully.

Isabel’s blood was inside of it.

“Over here,” I said. Officer Styles was the first to my side.

“Don’t touch it,” he warned. I nodded. I had no need of touching it, in any case. The presence of the bag itself told me all I needed to know.

They had laid a false trail for us to follow. This was Isabel’s blood, taken from her small body, probably while she was unconscious. The bag had held less than a pint. They had sprinkled it along the road, and left a clear trail here, to the spot where they had dumped the rest to draw us in.

I came quickly back to my feet. “Luis,” I said sharply. “Be ready. They would have done this for a reason.”

He looked up at me with dulled eyes, still rubbing his fingers together. Isabel’s blood. He believed she was dead. I showed him the bag, but he seemed not to comprehend.

“They’re coming for us,” I said. “And she’s still—”

I was going to say alive, but I didn’t have the chance.

There was a low growl from the grass; something leapt at Luis’s unprotected back in a dun-colored blur. I heard a chilling roar, one that woke primitive instincts inherited from millions of years of cowering in caves, waiting for predators to attack.

Human instincts, not Dji

The beast attacking Luis was a mountain lion, a large one, but I didn’t have time to come to his aid. There were other animals closing in, moving with u

“Down!” I screamed at Officer Styles, as a mountain lion prepared to leap at his back. He didn’t obey me. Instead, he spun around, gun drawn, and fired. He missed. The mountain lion crashed into him with a vicious snarl and slammed him down on the grass. His partner aimed for the animal’s skull.

I knocked his gun aside at the last moment. The report of the shot startled the big cat, and it lifted its head to focus its attention toward the two of us. Huge gray-green eyes fixed on us with terrifying intensity, and it gathered itself for a leap.

“Behind me!” I shouted, and shoved the man into position. “Don’t fire!”

The mountain lion launched itself into the air, scimitar-sharp claws extended to disembowel me.

“Get out of the way!” I heard the man behind me yell, but my attention was fully on the animal. Someone was pushing it, controlling it, overriding its self-preservation instincts. These creatures weren’t the enemy; they were weapons, confused and terrified beneath the surface fury.

I couldn’t condone their deaths, rare as such predators were on the earth since the proliferation of humans. Luis and I could handle them.

It was a risk—a large one—but I slapped my hands down on the creature’s skull as it barreled into me, bearing me to the ground with a heavy thump. Soft fur, hard bone, powerful flexing muscles. I saw the flash of teeth. Its claws ripped at the leather covering my chest, and I felt the sting of cuts.

My leather had slowed it, but I had seconds, at best. I poured my power into the creature, not to dominate, but to free its mind from the cage of power that had trapped it. It seemed easier in theory, because the faceless enemy had all the strength of a top-class Earth Warden and all the ruthlessness of a Demon. I slashed at the bonds holding the cat, and it sprang away from me, snarling in terror and confusion.

It leapt past the trembling policeman behind me and vanished into the grass.

Luis’s mountain lion lay unconscious on its side, breathing in slow, steady rhythm.

I dragged Officer Styles up to his feet. The four of us formed a square, shoulders touching, as the bears loped closer.

“Next time, put it under,” Luis told me. “They’ll just grab the animals again once you let go.”

He was right. The mountain lion I’d freed from control was veering, turning back toward us at a gliding run. It slowed to a cautious, slow stalk, luminous eyes fixed on me. Its huge paws made almost no sound at all on the grass, but I could hear the low sound of its growl on the cooling air.