Shadowed Ground Page 4

  “I know their motives, Chloe,” he snapped, locking down fury with effort. “I dragged you through a wall of it, even if you only remember in nightmares. Fire. Destruction. Murder. Hate. Have you found that part, yet? The part where people die? Because I know it started long before we were born. The Abandoned didn’t burn the entire world in a day.”

  She chewed her lower lip as if deciding between picking at a band-aid, or just ripping it off. “It’s so terrible, Eliot, and everything fell apart and who’s Taran?” she finally blurted out.

  Eliot froze. Not yet, he thought. Not today.

  Instead of answering, he tossed her an olive green knapsack. “Pack what will fit. We’re leaving.” She stared at him, unbalanced by the sudden shift. Before she could get angry or sad or both, he tried to lighten his tone. “Hey. On the bright side, we get to buy a new car. Or rather, a new used one.”

  “What’s wrong with the car we have?”

  “It’s stolen, for one thing.”

  “Oh-kay.” She drew the word out, playing with it. “This begins to explain things. We’re both petty criminals now, running from the law? So in addition to evil arch-enemies of fire, you actually care about driving a stolen car?”

  Her chin crept up defiantly, and he sighed. “Look, don’t fight me on this, ok? There’s a plan. What do you know about the Delta folkways?”

  She dropped her head down into interlaced hands, bouncing impatiently on her crossed legs. Eliot fought an urge to call on her, as if she’d raised her hand in class. “Folkways: a mode of cultural transmission where ideas, beliefs, and practices are disseminated.” Her smile was blinding and disgustingly academic. “It’s also the name of The Smithsonian’s non-profit record label.”

  “You’re such a nerd.”

  “Better than a petty criminal.” She actually sniffed. “I sat through an entire lecture to learn that. My father even asked me to help him write a paper on it later.”

  Eliot baited his trap with an easy smile. “And why do you think that was?” She bounced some more. “He wasn’t smart enough to do it himself?” he taunted.

  Her eyes flashed. “You arrogant son of…”

  He was in her face before she saw him move, his fingertips sealing her lips shut. “Careful,” he cautioned. “You don’t know who I’m the son of. Not yet.” He leaned back into a half-crouch. “Is it just remotely possible that your father thought you might have to travel them some day?”

  “Oh,” she said, considering. He could almost see her mind deconstructing his words. She bit one side of her lower lip when she did it. It was cute.

  He waited for the onslaught of her argument, then talked right over her. “So if your father thought you should understand them, then perhaps it’s worth taking them seriously as a means of saving our asses.”

  She tried on at least three different expressions before settling for guarded interest. “Why, though? We’re talking about the Delta here. It’s a river. It meanders. Plus it’s at least one state away. If the world’s about to catch fire, and people…uh, things…are trying to kill us, why not go straight up the Interstate in the fastest car you can steal? Straight north, back through Atlanta, then northwest into Gray’s Landing, guns blazing?”

  He was moving again, shoving t-shirts and jeans in a knapsack of his own. ”Because it would almost certainly get us killed. But traveling through the region that created jazz, blues, Creole cooking, voo-doo, Mardi Gras, soul food, and Elvis? It’s the perfect hiding place. Who’s going to notice two sort-of alien refugees, in the middle of all of that?”

  “I was with you until the Elvis part.”

  He spared her one sharp glare before rummaging in the darkest recesses of an overstuffed closet. “The Delta has a heart, Chloe. It’s magic. Literally. People still believe you can stand at the crossroads at midnight and make deals with the devil. They stick glass bottles on tree limbs to catch evil spirits.” Something fell on his head, and he muttered a curse. “We’ll head west of Mobile. Then it’s Delta country until we hit the foothills, backtrack east, and hit the Landing.” He stumbled backwards out of the closet and twisted sideways like a cat, a black case clutched to his heart. His hair stuck up wildly and he sneezed as a cloud of dust settled around him. “It’s the safest way. Not the fastest, true, but the Abandoned are entrenched to the east of the Landing, on the Ravenwood side of the river. We’re coming in through low mountains and forest, from the west, with the magic of the road at our backs.” He peeked into the case and grinned.

  “You know I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you sure it’s the best way?”

  “It is, and it’s the safest,” he promised, and she suddenly saw a world of torment in his hazel eyes. “As safe as it can be, anyway. It’s just…” he looked away. “I should tell you I have these, uh, protective instincts. They’re not entirely rational.”

  She had the feeling he was trying to tell her something important, but she couldn’t quite make it out. Perhaps he didn’t entirely know, himself. She half-nodded, considering, while he darted around the room, making piles and packing.

  She thought of her absent mother, putting her life in danger to secure land she didn’t want. She thought of the dead woman who had been her aunt. Eliot was most certainly protective. But then, so was she, in her way.

  Chapter Six: Other Worlds Than These

  Chloe eyed the truck stop from across the parking lot. When she traveled with her father and mother, they’d always avoided truck stops, picking smaller stations and keeping her close. I suppose I know why, now, she mused, empathizing with her parents as she eyed the bustling boxy structure across from her. With people coming and going at all hours to places all over the country, it would be the ideal place for a small child to go missing. She wondered how much of their lives they’d spent looking over their shoulders, worried that they’d be found. All that time, and I never knew.

  She burrowed into her borrowed sweatshirt, hiding in as many shadows as she could pull towards herself. She reached for a spark of curiosity or excitement, but felt only flat despair.

  “We’ll be fine,” he reassured her, brushing her shoulder with his knuckles. He did things like that often since carrying her away from the little house by the beach where she’d come to trust him and believe in the possibility of a new reality. Belief, she was coming to realize, was harder won than trust.

  His words felt hollow and inadequate as she stood, wrapped in shadow. She knew he carried a darkness of his own. She wanted to probe it, this feeling, his words, but she didn’t. There will be time, she told herself. Besides, I don’t know how many more dark secrets about the past, his or mine, I can stand to hear right now. Instead, she pulled her hands all the way into her oversized sleeves. “How can you be sure?”

  He didn’t spare her a glance, but she felt him tense. Good. I’m getting better at reading his body language. “I did a lot of growing up on the road,” he said. His hand settled lightly on the small of her back. The touch felt apologetic and proprietary at the same time. “A lot of running away,” he murmured. He continued to scan the parking lot intently, eyes skipping over their stolen vehicle to the others parked father away. Whatever he found, or didn’t find, in the parking lot seemed to satisfy him. He settled against her lamppost, slowly unfurling his taut muscles against the flaky metallic paint.

  She pulled the hood of the voluminous sweatshirt, last worn by a deadly man she’d never met, down even farther and took a few steps back, deeper into the darkness. “What now?” she asked so quietly she hoped none of her apprehension leaked through.

  “Well, first you explain why you’re looking and acting like a serial killer.” Chloe shrank into herself a little bit more. Stupid Guardian, with his stupid Guardian instincts. Eliot made no move to pull her out of her sheltering shadows, but, as always, he stayed a sword’s length away from her. She didn’t know whether she found this distance comforting or oppressive. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Behind him, in the di
stance, she could see the interstate. Traffic moved across I-10 in a steady pulse of color and noise. The asphalt ribbon, raised high above Highway 59 on huge concrete pillars, had never seemed so fragile. She’d traveled it many times without really seeing it, her nose always in a book or focused on the destination. Highway 59 was just a sign that meant home was hours behind or hours ahead of her. Signs, she realized, her eyes glazing as she looked past the boy against the lamppost. I’ve spent my life looking at the signs, but never the road.

  She bounced a little, in her boots. Her favorite boots with their square heels and bare inches of added height. “I thought these were lost or ruined, you know.” She shook a foot at him, then started grinding at the pebbles strewn along the parking lot’s border. “They’re the only things I have left, from home. My home, in Decatur.”

  ”Chloe.”

  “I’m trying, ok? It’s complicated.” She eyed a smoke-belching eighteen-wheeler. It swerved around a row of Diesel pumps and flowed onto the highway with the practiced jerky grace of a caterpillar. “Holly calls these my super hero boots, because they make me a little bit taller.” Eliot waited. “I put them on in my own bedroom. The only bedroom I can ever remember having. And then I had the worst night of my life. I nearly… I mean, I almost… died. And… Griffin.”

  He responded to her growl with a soft “Ah,” as if he’d found her pulse. Maybe he had.

  She whipped her head up, squinting through halogen to find stars, but they were obscured by light pollution. “In a way, I did die. The life I had did, anyway. And then I woke up here. Well, not here, exactly. But close enough, in a little house, with you. I had a whole new fucked up history, mortal enemies, a dangerous future, and even brand new freak scars. But I was safe.”

  His entire body relaxed when she said the word, connecting it to him. He leaned towards her as if “safe” from her lips was a deliciously scented liquid and he wanted to drink it. He was actually heavy-lidded, leaning towards her slightly like a purring cat. A very deadly, weapons-carrying cat.

  Maybe it was a Guardian thing.

  She shrugged and plunged ahead. “So, from my point of view, I’ve only been two places in over a week. A horrible nightmare death party, and your little house. Where I woke up an alien, able to do things I shouldn’t be able to do, with weird scars.“ She stomped her heel for punctuation. “Damn straight I’m freaking out. What if people can tell I’m not normal?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, shut it, then opened it again. He turned to scan the parking lot one more time before closing the distance between them. He brushed her chin with thumb and index finger before pulling her face up to his. A pair of dragon flies tornadoed around them. They were skeletal and ugly in the harsh industrial light. “Do you like hot chocolate?” Eliot finally asked. He was deathly still and completely serious.

  “What?”

  “Hot chocolate. Milk, with chocolate in it, heated up…”

  She slapped his shoulder, the leather of his jacket stinging her palm. “I know what hot chocolate is. Don’t you dare make fun of me when you’ve had your whole life to get used to this… this… thing called a future.”

  He ignored the outburst. “It just seems to me that we’re getting things backwards.” When she continued to stare at him as if had lost his mind, he dropped her chin and leaned down until his forehead rested against hers. His skin was cool and slightly damp in the newborn southern night. Her nose was full of the smell of asphalt, leather, and Eliot. “I like hot chocolate, things that go fast, and the color blue,” he whispered solemnly. “I like poetry more than novels because I have a short attention span. And graphic novels. I like too many of those to narrow down a favorite.” He ran his fingers through his dark hair. As always, he managed to tousle it wildly with just one pass. She wondered if his hands carried an electrical charge she didn’t know about, to do that to his hair every time he touched it. “What about you, Chloe? Do you have a favorite book? What’s your favorite flower? Are you a cat or a dog person?” He gripped her shoulders, frustrated. She felt such a strange flickering inside that she briefly revisited her electrical charge hypothesis. “People should know these things about each other before they face death, apocalypse, and insanity together.” She didn’t know how to answer him, or if she even wanted to, so she stayed silent.

  He sighed, and tried again. “So do you like it? Hot chocolate? In fact,” he leaned down as if he were about to impart a terrible secret. “Can I buy you some now?” Finally laughing, she tried to slap his jacket again. Predictably, he was faster. He trapped her wrist while his other hand pushed her sweatshirt hood down until she felt the night brush her healing skin. “I know what you’re afraid of. That’s three times in as many minutes you mentioned your scars. Look, Chloe,” he ordered quietly. “It’s dark. The moon’s out. The rest of your skin is fine. Totally normal.” His thumb rubbed the pulse of her wrist in a small circle. “You’re the same person you’ve always been and were meant to be.” He dropped her hand as if he, too, felt the mythical current, and it burned him. “Even if you don’t choose to stay in Gray’s Landing. If you… move on.” He plastered on a pained, crooked smile, his eyes glassy and distant.

  “I wish things weren’t backwards, too, Eliot.” She wanted to hold on to her anger, like armor, but his thumb moved lightly over her pulse, soothing her. She wrenched her arm back, embarrassed. “You owe me a hot chocolate,” she blurted out, trying to pull back from the brink of trusting him with more than just her safety; she wanted to trust him with who she was, and who she was becoming.

  “Now that,” he said, propelling her across the dark river of possibilities that was also a truck stop parking lot, “was the saddest response to that question I have ever heard.”

  He hung back as she wandered the little store. There was more distance between them than he was entirely comfortable with in a strange public place. He was developing a kind of internal radar with Chloe Burke as its only blip. There were two settings that didn’t set off his internal alarms: arm’s length, and sword’s length, away from him. Any further and he grew uncomfortable. Locked doors were just barely manageable, if he was on the other side of them and the locks weren’t too strong. I really did just think that, he realized with disgust. I’m even creeping myself out. Embarrassment warred with instinct as he sank deeper into a rack of cheap t-shirts. And she thinks she’s the freak. If she only knew. He shoved his discomfort down and put it on the list of things he wished he could ask his uncle. Right now, he was exactly two paces and one lunge away from her. As badly as he wanted to shadow her, he forced himself to hang back.

  She moved between glassed-in, rotating display cases and shelves of gifts. Then something specific caught her eye. He marked its approximate location as she moved away.

  She wandered the few aisles of toys, books, cheap electronics, and other gifts a man who was returning to his family after weeks on the road might bring them. She held a porcelain doll with wild blond ringlets when he slipped behind her. Her slim fingers twined around the doll’s hair, smoothed its fake satin dress, adjusted a shoe. “Some people might find that annoying,” she said without turning. “The way you sneak up on them.”

  “Annoyed is the least of what most people would be if I snuck up on them.”

  She snorted. “I can’t tell if you’re bragging, or handing out a death threat. It’s kind of sweet, really.”

  “I don’t sneak up on you.” The words tumbled out, spiced with indignation. He was losing the ability to surprise her. Just then he’d moved up behind her as quietly as possible and still she’d known.

  “That’s true,” she murmured, caressing the doll’s face. “I feel you. Like radar, or something.” He jerked back involuntarily at her near-exact echo of his earlier thoughts. I hope mind reading isn’t next, he thought grimly, but she didn’t respond. “I didn’t expect to find toys,” she murmured. She yanked viciously on the doll’s hair then slammed it back on the shelf. “My father brought me this exact doll hom
e. After a ‘conference.’ But now I have to wonder. How many times did he lie about where he went?” She was flushed; her voice climbed. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pushed her towards the restaurant section, hurrying them away before she drew stares. “He used to say, ‘There are other worlds than these,’ when he wrote in that damn book. But he didn’t just mean myths, or a burned and forgotten world.” She barely noticed when he pushed her into a booth. “He meant this one. Places like this. A world right under my nose. A world where people can just… go.” Her eyes burned into his.

  In the bright diner, her skin looked almost translucent. “I don’t expect you to do it, you know,” he said after a long moment of rustling plastic-coated menus. “The binding. The sacrifice. I understand, maybe better than you do, why you wouldn’t want to. But there is no one else.” She didn’t ask him to elaborate. “Just come. Come see my home. Stand on the cliffs and see the stars, so clear and close you try to find them when they fall out of the sky, if you’re eight and extremely lonely.” He grew frustrated, as he always did when he tried to put a feeling like home into words. “Just… promise me. You’ll come. With an open mind.”

  She slumped back against the red vinyl seat, wearing her tiny smile. “Even if I had a choice, which I don’t because some maniac boy in black keeps telling me it’s the one place my nightmares can’t kill me, I would still go.”

  “Even if something happened to me?” he asked flatly, keeping his eyes on his menu. He watched her brown eyes narrow and flash in fury and fear.

  “I already promised, so please shut the hell up now.” She raised her menu as a barrier between them. “You’re making me regret I’m letting you buy me hot chocolate.”