Page 49 of Horns & Heart
Chapter18
We walked for a few hours before finding a house in a small town for the night.
Despite my best efforts and sincere intentions to make use of this new boyfriend I had acquired, I passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow, and once more, I slept deeply, not afraid something would come to eat me.
The next day went more or less the same.We encountered a herd of cows that were roaming the countryside unsupervised.A little later, sheep.The wildlife seemed blessedly unbothered by the absence of humans.I wondered, not for the first time, if it was really so bad that most of us were gone.In the grand scheme of things, I wasn’t sure whether it even mattered all that much.
The monsters we encountered weren’t as frightening as the four-eyed purple one.They looked like big sloths, and since they didn’t appear openly hostile, Vergis just led us around them as they grazed and lazed in the sun.
That afternoon, Vergis stopped suddenly while we were walking past a lake, the water to our right, trees to our left.
“What?”Inkiri’s tone of voice took me from daydreamy to alert within a second.
Vergis’s head moved as he looked from the shore to the tree line.“Something isn’t right.”
“What is it?”I asked.
I could tell Vergis was looking around by the movement of his horns.Behind me, I heard the sound of a blade being slowly pulled from its sheath, and Inkiri pushed me behind him before pulling one of his own swords all the way free.
“I see nothing,” Nokim whispered.
“Oh, but they’re here.”Vergis drew his pistol.“I can feel their magic.Fucking Koa Esher.”
Inkiri and at least one of the others growled.“We won’t let them take you, Vergis,” Inkiri said before he glanced back at me.“Either of you.”
“What would they want withme?”My voice rose along with my panic.
“Conduit, remember?”Vergis said absentmindedly while he was focused on our surroundings.“They might not test you for it.Don’t tell them.Act dumb.Which is to say, be yourself.”
I sighed.“You’re being a jerknow?”
Behind me, Fellisse said something in their language.I didn’t have a chance to ask what was happening.A heartbeat later, it became all too clear.
Ahead on our left side, bagua stepped out of the woods.I wasn’t great at judging distances, but those bagua were maybe five car lengths away, and they were not the bagua I had grown used to.
They all wore white.Off-white, in some cases, just a white sash over what looked like a tan uniform, but white all the same.Their ibex horns arced back, and their skin was shades of blue and gray, except for one who was celadon.That one had a particularly mean glint in his eye.He was grinning, showing his teeth.
At a second glance, those bagua definitely were off though.They were smaller, their skin speckled in some cases, and if I compared them to my guys, they seemed, well, pale was the best word.Bloodless.Instead of the beautiful ibex horns, their horns were uneven and twisted in a way I recognized as wrong.Their faces, in a lot of cases, also looked misshapen, eyes too small and too close together, the noses not quite fitting, jaws too big or too small.
Vergis hissed.“Shit.”
The others spoke rapidly in their language.Inkiri turned to me, and the expression on his face was one of distraught pain.He bent toward me.The leader of the white-clad dudes, the celadon one, said something in the other language as well, something directed at our group.
Inkiri ignored it and spoke to me in a hushed whisper.“Rory, my sweet human mate, I love you, no matter what happens here today.Remember it always, Sadir.I loved you.From the moment I saw you.”He kissed me hard and fast and deep.
Vergis turned and looked at me.“Guys, I have a better idea.I’m taking him to pass through the veils.You run and take out as many of them as you can.We’ll meet up at the Stone.”
“What the fuck?!”
I was screaming, my voice like a siren in the relative quiet all around us.I had no idea what was going on here, but from how the celadon guy was smiling, it wasn’t anything good.It was the mad kind of smile.The preacher at the commune had smiled that way, and I’d seen what that guy had been willing to do to other people.I felt all the blood drain from my face.
“That could work,” Lissir said, never taking his eyes off the celadon guy.“Hurry.”
The next few things that happened all sort of blurred together.Over Vergis’s shoulder, I saw the big celadon dude draw a blade of his own, and the short bagua with the twisted horns pulled small glass jars from their robes.I saw something wiggle inside, and my unease ramped up by an order of magnitude.
“Go with Vergis.”Inkiri let go of me.“He will keep you safe.”With a quick touch, he teased the straps of my backpack off my shoulders and took it.
The next thing I knew, Vergis was grabbing my hand, hard, and dragging me toward the lake.
