“You said we would find a quicker way to get wherever it is we’re going than by taking one of the trucks. I believed you.”
“We will.” The tatterdemalion didn’t even look back this time. “Be patient.”
Be patient, Angel thought in disgust. She had been patient for almost four hours and look where she was. She should have been more trusting, but she hadn’t stayed alive this long by relying on trust. She did not think that the creature she followed meant her any harm, but all too often good intentions coupled with poor judgment was all it took. She knew nothing of Ailie’s capabilities. In point of fact, she knew nothing about her at all. She was a Faerie creature sent by the Lady, but she would have a life span of not much more than sixty days, so her experience couldn’t amount to much. That, all by itself, was troubling.
What was more troubling, physically speaking, were the wounds she had received in her battle with the demon. The claw marks down her back and along her shoulder burned like fire, and she was battered and bruised from head to foot. She needed to bathe and rest. She was unlikely to get a chance to do either anytime soon.
She kicked at the dirt of the road they were following. What was she doing out here anyway, not only out of the city, but away from anything familiar? Dios mia! Hunting for Elves? She didn’t even believe in Elves. Well, she supposed that maybe she did, knowing that there were so many other kinds of Faerie creatures in the world. But still. Hunting for Elves? She should have gone with Helen and the children. She should have told Ailie that this wasn’t for her.
After all, how did she even know that the Lady had sent Ailie? She only had Ailie’s word for it. She had no way of knowing what was going on, what sort of game she might be a pawn in. How could she know what to believe?
Except that she did. She knew because her instincts told her what to believe and what not to believe, and it had very little to do with common sense or life experience.
She sighed, realizing she was being foolish. Most of what she did as a Knight of the Word required a suspension of disbelief and an acceptance that things you couldn’t see were still there. You couldn’t see the feeders, after all, unless you were a Faerie creature or a Knight of the Word. But they were there all the same, tracking after you, smelling you out, waiting for you to let your darker emotions gain control before they destroyed you. She had watched it happen to those who couldn’t see them. Being unaware of their presence hadn’t saved those people. So she might as well stop questioning the presence of Elves.
She might as well accept that most of what she thought she knew was only half right.
Nevertheless.
“Are we looking for something?” she asked Ailie with controlled exasperation.
The Faerie creature shook her head, her floating blue hair shimmering in what remained of the fading daylight. “It isn’t far now, Angel.”
It better not be, Angel thought. She tramped on, maintaining a sullen silence.
It was almost dark by the time they reached the storage complex. It sat near the intersection of the dirt road they had been following and a paved highway, well east of where they had started out. The sun had dropped behind the hills to the west, and the sky had turned gray and flat. Frequently there were glorious sunsets in the world, but not tonight. There was a lessening of color, but nothing more. Angel glanced west, thinking suddenly of Anaheim and the ruined compound, of how the fires and the smoke would be reflecting against the darkness, and then turned her attention to the storage complex.
She had seen others like it many times before. A series of low sheet-metal buildings fronted the highway, receding toward the trees in long rows. Most had been broken into and emptied of their contents, the remnants left strewn about the grounds in ragged heaps. Furniture, clothing, books, housewares—everything imaginable— tossed aside and abandoned. She found herself wondering what had been taken. In a world in which power sources were primitive and difficult to obtain, and in which transportation and commerce were essentially destroyed, what was left that would be worth stealing?
There was only one answer, of course. Weapons. Whatever else might happen in this postapocalyptic world, people would still continue to kill one another.
She caught up with Ailie. “This is it? This is what we’ve been trying to reach?”