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As Xhex made the pronouncement, John Matthew gave her two thumbs-up and a smile from his hospital bed. Then, like he could read her mind, he signed,You’re doing the right thing.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Go, I’m okay. Promise.
She kissed him on the mouth, brushed his hair back—and then pressed her lips to his forehead. After a lingering look into his blue eyes, she beat feet out of his recovery room before she changed her mind. She wasn’t sure leaving John was the right thing. She wasn’t sure what she was doing meeting that guy up on the mountain. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go on that trail again—
No, she was sure she didn’t want that ascent. She hadn’t liked what she’d found up there the last time, and she had no expectation that the passage of months had improved what she was likely to cross paths with.
But if you do not start… you will never, ever finish.
Whatever.
Heading down the training center’s corridor to the left, she proceeded past the unused classrooms and punched out of the steel door into the parking area. A couple of blacked-out box vans were parked facing toward the exit, and then there was Fritz’s high-class version of a school bus—that had absolutely nothing in common with the orange-painted bread loaves that took human children back and forth to their places of learning.
She was halfway down the lane leading out of the parking area, on track to meet the first of the defensive barrier systems, when she realized she couldn’t have taken a more inefficient route. Everything was wrapped with steel as a safety precaution. No dematerializing into, or out of, the facility.
She was going to have to hoof it for a while.
Then again, she needed to get her shit together, so maybe the delay was good.
The ascension to ground level went fairly quick, V clearing her at every security point just as she arrived. Man, if she’d intended to get off the Brotherhood property without anyone noticing, she’d picked the worst way. And the fact that Vishous never once asked her what she was doing or why she was leaving by foot along the vehicle tunnel? Probably meant she was going to be followed.
Take out the “probably.” And dematerializingwasn’t going to free her. No doubt the recovery room was bugged, so he had heard her talking to John about her plan. Hell, given that V was responsible for the cell phones everyone used? He no doubt had a record of her conversation.
At least Rehv would get off her back because she was finally following through with his fucking bright idea.
As she approached a triple lineup of twenty-five-foot-high bars that were thick as her thighs and wrapped with steel mesh, she glanced at the monitoring pods that were mounted around the concrete ceiling along with the fluorescent lights. The locking system released with aclink!and then the segments retracted one by one with awhoosh.
The fresh air was tantalizing and cool, marked with the fragrance of pine and dirt.
She wished John were with her, she thought as she started walking again.
Finally, she was aboveground, and as the gates relocked behind her with a series of clangs, she looked up at the stars. Seconds later, she was flying free, traveling through the downright cold night in a scatter of molecules, moving north and to the west. When she re-formed, it was at the foot of Deer Mountain, on the shoulder of a county road that wrapped itself around the contours of a riverbed. Glancing into the tree line, she heard a couple of nocturnal animals scamper awayfrom her presence—raccoons, she guessed, given that they went faster than a porcupine could, yet were not so large as a doe or a buck would be.
Good survival instinct—
The sense that something was behind her made her turn around. And then she refocused on what was in front of her. Thanks to her vampire eyes, she could penetrate quite far into the trunks and stumps, but whatever it was did not want to be seen. All she caught was a fast shadow that darted off.
If it had been a Brother, they would have sheepishly identified themselves.
Putting her hand to her hip, she drew her autoloader and flipped the safety off with her thumb. Then she closed her eyes again and went for another travel through the November air.
This time, when she came back into her corporeal form, it was up on the summit of the mountain, in front of the broad view of a valley down below. From this lofty vantage point, the carpet of pines was solid as a train model’s, looking almost fake in its perfection—except for the gouge across the way: At about the same altitude, on the other side of the evergreen’d topography, there was a man-made extravagance, the construction long as God’s arm and set deep into Mother Nature’s dominion. Work on the resort was ongoing, all kinds of earthmovers, bucket loaders, and cranes sitting dormant,like Transformers waiting to come to life the second there was enough daylight again.
“What a fucking eyesore,” she muttered to herself.
Then she rolled her eyes—
—and swung her gun around. Pointing the muzzle into a stand of pines, she said, “I don’t know what you’re doing back there, but after the last twelve hours, I’ve got an itchy trigger finger and this gun is ready to go to work.”
There was a pause, and then she saw the glowing hazel eyes. A moment later, a gray wolf padded out into the clearing.
Except it wasn’t a wolf in the conventional sense, was it.
Drawing in some air through her nose, Xhex frowned and slowly lowered her weapon. “So you’re the wolven V was talking about when he saw my future.”
EIGHTEEN
