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When I entered the barn, the scent of blood swept me up. In the back, I found Lark coated in it, hers and the creature’s.
Eyes agleam, she dripped crimson from her arm to a huge lump of twitching flesh. With each drop, sinew materialized as if by magic. Scaly skin haphazardly covered immense bones. It looked like a patchwork quilt sewn out of viscera.
Even so, I could tell what Fauna was bringing to life.
I turned to Evie. “You cannot be serious.”
8
The Hunter
“We’re officially in Emperor territory,” Joules muttered from the backseat of the Beast as we eased down the highway.
Whenever he, Gabe, and Finn had made guerrilla incursions against Richter, they’d spotted him in this area more than in any other.
Now the Emperor’s calling card was plain to see; stark ash and fractures marked the sides of the road for miles. Just when we were about to head south toward Louisiana, we’d found a lure.
The hunter in me itched to track it.
Kentarch adjusted the screen on the Beast’s navigation display. “Our turn-off is in a couple of miles.” Even with GPS, we struggled to find our bearings without reliable landmarks and legible signs.
Getting to this point had taken us weeks with all the pileups because Kentarch could only teleport to places he’d previously been or to places he could see. Each snarl had looked like a trap, so I’d been leery of him exiting the truck.
When I hit an unavoidable rut, rattling our trailer, Joules snapped, “Jaysus, Cajun. Watch yourself.” His head was on a swivel as he scanned the wintry wasteland.
“What’s up with you? If Richter shows, we can always teleport.”
Shrug. “Startin’ to feel as barmy as Tarch is.”
Kentarch’s unconcerned expression said, That’s fair. But he’d been doing a world better than before, hadn’t had any lapses of sanity. Well, not any major ones, anyway.
Both he and Joules had eaten heartily of our supplies and recuperated, their powers nearly at full force.
“Swear I think we’re being watched,” Joules admitted. “The Empress used to feel this way when we were out on the road.”
I cast a look at Gabe. “We got company?”
He rolled down the window, inhaling. “I too have been feeling something. Yet I scent and hear nothing acute.”
I glanced at Kentarch, who gave a curt nod.
“Richter and Zara wouldn’t hide,” I said. “But Sol could be scouting us through his Baggers.”
Gabe inhaled once more. “As their scent is everywhere, I cannot differentiate it. If one remained still and silent enough, I wouldn’t be able to detect it.”
“What if it’s not Majors?” Joules asked. “Matthew told the Empress that the Minors were watching us.”
The Cups had been. They’d seen us in a chalice of blood. So what were the other suits up to? “We’ll face whatever bogey we come across.” I drove on.
Out on the road with the guys, I could sometimes turn my mind from Evie for a moment here or there, but I missed her so bad it was like a wound that refused to heal.
As ever, I wondered how she was feeling. I’d bet she glowed with her pregnancy.
Though Dominija updated me about her general health, asking for more details about his pregnant wife would be awkward. So we kept to business.
When I’d last checked in with him, he’d written: You have three Cards under your influence. You are a leader. Lead. Work with them. Their own powers are limited only by their imagination. Even with my plan, we need Richter weakened.
Leading had come easy to me, but after the loss of my army, I didn’t know if I was ready to take on that role again.
Still, Dominija’s text had reminded me of a sunny afternoon before the Flash when I’d watched my half brother’s football practice at Sterling High. Brandon had been a talented quarterback, but he hadn’t connected with his teammates.
At one point the coach had taken aside his star player for a pep talk: “Son, a QB’s main job is to unify his team. You gotta take a pack of hopped-up teenagers and make them work as a cohesive unit, keeping them focused on the task and pushing them to give you a hundred and ten percent.”
I’d laughed at that advice. But lately I saw similarities between Brandon’s situation and mine. Maybe at the end of the world my job was to keep these Arcana focused on one task: fighting evil.
But if I’d been tapped for QB, Dominija was the coach, calling the shots. He’d decreed that we were to retrieve him for a one-way trip if we did locate Richter. Didn’t know how I felt about that, me.
At a fork in the road, I eased to a stop. A battered road sign looked like it’d been sandblasted.
Kentarch glanced over at the odometer. “This is it.” He swept the spotlight. To the south was a fairly clean highway. To the west was more ash and fractures.
