They walked in silence, eyes and ears trained on the dark and mist, searching for some indication of what Cheney had sensed. The big dog walked point, head lowered and swinging side to side. He had stopped growling, but Hawk couldn’t be sure if that meant the danger had passed or if Cheney was just masking his presence. The silence was unnerving, but he held himself steady and waited it out.
When the screams started, not long after that, they drew up short instantly. Cheney cast about, eyes narrowed and teeth bared. Bear’s stoic face turned pale and then empty of expression. Hawk listened to the screams rise and fall and then disappear. He could not be sure where they had come from. He couldn’t tell who had uttered them. The haze distorted both vision and sound and lent a feeling of disorientation to everything. Hawk tried to sort out what he was hearing and couldn’t.
When the screams stopped, they stood where they were for a long moment, waiting for more. When nothing happened, Bear said, “Should we take a look?”
Hawk shook his head. “Not in that direction.” He took a deep breath, reached down to touch the tire tracks of the AV in the loose soil, and said, “Cheney, track.”
They set off a second time, decidedly uneasy now, less certain of themselves. Hawk, carrying only a prod, reached into his pocket and extracted a viper-prick. If something was going to happen, he thought, it was going to happen soon. He glanced skyward and wished for what must have been the hundredth time that the mist and clouds would clear. But he knew his wish was futile, that there would be no clearing before dawn and perhaps not even then. Finding their way would depend on luck and Cheney’s instincts. Finding the others might depend on more than that.
The minutes dragged on. The silence and the night deepened. Cheney kept moving at a steady pace. Nothing appeared. Hawk had almost decided that nothing would when Cheney gave a deeper, more threatening growl.
Ahead, masked by the haze, something moved.
A BRIGHT PAIR OF EYES appeared from out of nowhere as Sparrow swung the barrel of the Parkhan Spray about, her finger tightening on the trigger. The safety was already off, the clip locked and loaded, and the weapon ready for firing. She almost went the whole way, so startled by the movement that she was ready to shoot anything. She held up just in time, even though the glint of those big eyes caused everything inside to tighten from her throat to her knees. Something about those eyes, some small detail, made her pause, and a second later Cheney’s grizzled head swung into view, clearing the curtain of the mist.
The big dog moved toward her, and a second later Hawk and Bear appeared right behind him.
“Hawk!” she called, lowering her weapon and rushing over to him. “Jeez, am I glad to see you!”
He stared at her in disbelief. “Sparrow, what are you doing out here? I thought you were in the AV. What happened to the others?”
She hugged him impulsively. “I don’t know,” she said into his shoulder, refusing to let go. Clinging to him as if he were a lifeline. Very unlike Sparrow.
As if sensing what he was thinking, she stepped back and abruptly released him. “I was thrown off the roof of the Lightning after we got separated, and they didn’t know I was gone. I’ve been wandering . . .” She gestured toward the wall of mist. “All over.” She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Hawk, I think there’s something out there, tracking me.”
“There’s something out there, all right,” he agreed. “But I don’t know that it’s tracking you. I think it’s just mist and night and some militia people running into each other. Look, we have to get moving, follow the tire tracks of the AV until we find them. It’s not safe to stay here.”
Bear ambled over. “You look spooked, Sparrow,” he said quietly.
She glared at him. “You think? Didn’t you hear those screams?”
He nodded slowly. “I heard.”
“Didn’t they spook you?”
He nodded uncertainly. “Sure.”
“Then shut up.” She turned back to Hawk, her eyes dark and angry. “Can we go now?”
He was about to say yes when the Klee stepped out of the fog.
EIGHTEEN
F OR A FEW ENDLESS MOMENTS, no one moved. Not even Cheney, who must have sensed the danger instinctively. None of them had ever seen anything like the Klee—had not even imagined such a thing could exist. They stared at it as people always stare at things so foreign and so unlikely, they seem a trick of the mind. They stared at it, as well, with the cold realization that they had come up against something much more terrifying than anything they had encountered before.
The Klee stared back at them, immobile against the screen of the dark and the mist.
No, not at them, Hawk corrected, catching the glint of its tiny eyes beneath the heavy brow. Not at them.
It was looking right at him.
Perhaps the others didn’t know this, but he was certain of it. He didn’t know why he had been singled out, but he knew he had. Perhaps something about him had caught its attention. Perhaps it had been looking for him all along. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, he was the one it was focused on, the one it wanted.