It took all my concentration to change my course. I shifted direction and went careering toward the wall—too fast. But just as I was about to smash face-first into it, my feet kicked off from the ground and I jumped up in the air. My fingers lightly brushed the top of the wall as I leaped over it in half a second flat.
My feet hit the ground with barely a sound, and I slowed to a jog as I approached a three-way intersection. The road stretched out to both the right and left, and a gravel-strewn lane led into a cul-de-sac of dilapidated houses. Talbot was nowhere to be seen, but I could taste his warm scent.
I took a few steps to the left and tested the air. I picked up on the Gelal stench and took another five steps. The Gelal scent faded, as did Talbot’s trail. I did the same thing heading right, but that wasn’t the correct direction, either. I went back to where I’d started in the intersection and picked up the mixture of scents again. I jogged into the cul-de-sac a little ways. The scent was still strong in the air. Talbot had headed toward one of these houses. But which one?
I turned in a slow circle, breathing in air. Which pretty much made me feel like a dog chasing her own tail. But I picked out a strong path of smells and cautiously followed it to the driveway of what had once been a beautiful Victorian mansion, but now looked as if it should have been condemned at least a decade ago. The smell of rotting meat and sour milk got positively overwhelming as I approached the gravel driveway. Talbot was still missing.
“What now?” I asked out loud with a huff. And then I felt something hard clamp over my mouth and I was pulled behind a tall bush.
I thrashed at my assailant at first, but then I was enveloped in Talbot’s warm scent and I heard him whisper, “Shhh. They’ve got supersenses, too, you know.”
He uncovered my mouth, and I turned toward him. “They?” I whispered so softly I was practically just mouthing the words. “So they’re here?”
Talbot nodded. “See if you can tell how many.” He tapped my ear to indicate that I should listen carefully.
I held my breath, My heart still pounded from running, and I willed it to calm. I listened beyond the crickets chirruping in the bush with us, and pushed away all nearby noises until I could concentrate on the sounds behind the walls of the house. “There are three of them,” I whispered. “There’s someone snoring, and another two people who sound like they’re sitting at a table.”
“Four,” Talbot said. “There’s someone else on the second level. The one sleeping is probably a Gelal. Akhs don’t usually sleep.” Talbot took off his backpack and opened it. He pulled out what looked like a short sword, the hilt wrapped in black leather cording, and a thick piece of wood, whittled into a point at the end. “You prefer steel or wood?” he asked.
“What?”
“You look as if you like wood,” he said with a smirk, and tossed me the stick … or stake, I guess I should say.
My hand snapped out and I caught it in midair without even thinking. I could definitely get used to these reflexes. “What are you doing? We’re not seriously going in there?”
“Of course we are.” Talbot unsheathed the sword. It looked awfully sharp. “Four against two. Those aren’t bad odds.”
“Okay, no way.” My hand shook so hard I almost dropped the stake. “This is a little more than basic training for my first day. I can’t go in there.”
“Yes, you can, Grace,” Talbot whispered. He stared at me with his piercing green eyes. “What if this was your one chance to rescue your brother, and you just walked away? What if he’s in there right now? What if they’re holding him captive? Maybe that’s who’s upstairs. For all you know, they’ve got him chained up in there and they’re saving him for their next meal. Don’t you want to make them pay for that?”
I could feel that tight, flaming knot forming in my stomach—the same feeling I’d had when I saw that masked Gelal with that gun to Talbot’s head. Suddenly, I could picture Jude tied up in that house, bloody and bruised. A monster crouched over him, threatening to tear him apart. I wrapped my fingers around the stake. “Okay, let’s do this.”
62.5 HEARTBEATS LATER