Twenty-five
We walk for days more without incident, though Alex never loses that desperate look to his eyes. He keeps watch, hunting small game and only very lightly sleeping at night. When we sleep, we sleep nestled close to one another and I don't bother to fight it. It's comforting to have his arms around me, and it seems to help him as much as it helps me.
“We'll be there by sunset,” Alex finally says. He looks at me and I can only nod, glad that we'll finally be somewhere. As gorgeous as the forest is, I'm already sick of it. Then I realize that whatever our destination might be, it means the end of our journey.
Alex watches me closely. He doesn't push so hard this last day, but his eyes are constantly on me. After a while I'm even sick of that.
The sun is changing colors by the time we near our destination. Alex slows slightly, possibly because of me or possibly because he doesn't want to take me further. I recognize that last thought as nothing more than wishful thinking. It's his daughter he cares about. She's the one he should care about.
Alex stops suddenly, throwing out his arm to force me to stop alongside him. I look up at him quickly, just noticing now that I've been walking with my head mostly down. He doesn't look at me. His eyes are faced forward and his entire body is rigid. With the hand in front of me, he gives me a push behind him as I catch a glimpse of a young boy and girl.
They don't look like anything special at first, though something about the boy gives me the creeps. He stands slightly in front with dark blond hair and dark eyes. The sun is at his back, so a shadow falls over his face. The boy can't be older than thirteen, but something in his expression makes him look much older. It's in the air, a challenge of some sort. Like the bristling of a dog's fur when it meets another dog it doesn't like.
“We mean no harm,” Alex says.
The boy isn't alone. There's a girl with him. She's a few inches taller than him, but her eyes are large. She doesn't look away from the boy, not even to us. Her small mouth turns down a bit as she pleads quietly with the boy. “Please. Let's just go, Michael.”
I'm not sure what's supposed to happen. The blond boy, the one the girl calls Michael, looks at me with a gaze much too steady for one so young. I take a step further behind Alex. The boy isn't a normal, average boy. It's clear that he's another entity all together. Another one with powers, but he makes even Alex nervous.
“Michael,” the girl's voice, soft and high pitched, suddenly becomes very stern. “Please. Let's go.”
The boy softens then. His eyes fall away from us, landing on her, and then in a flash, they're gone.
Alex turns around and pulls me to him. “Are you okay?” It seems a silly question to ask since he saw that the boy never touched me. He never even came near either of us.
“Yeah, I'm fine. Who was that?”
“A powerful one. Very powerful for being so young. He's dangerous.”
Alex holds me against him for a while longer without explaining more. I think of Alex's desperate looks and the way he's been pushing us this whole time and I can't help wondering if that boy was what he'd been expecting.
I ask. Alex shakes his head though. “There are others. Smaller tribes. I have never seen him before.”
Both of us are shaken then with our unexpected introduction of sorts. I hope we don't see him again or anyone like him.
Alex runs his hand through my hair, staring into my face in a way that makes me uncomfortable. I glance away and shove my hair behind my ear hoping to encourage him to snap out of it and move on. He's much too close, and my cheeks heat up.
"They could still be nearby. We should go."
Alex's brows raise ever so slightly as if he were disappointed. He still stands close, as if ready to pull me against him again, but he doesn't. He gives a small nod. “Let's go.” Then he takes my hand and leads me away.
Our destination is a hole in the ground. We step down stairs that are hidden by bushes and trees into a small stone room with piles of dirt in the corners. Different kinds of weeds grow in the piled dirt and against the wall. The room is only lit by the fading orange glow of the sun. Alex leads me into the dark corner where the light doesn't reach. There's a metal door that he knocks on with his bare knuckles and I wince, imagining the discomfort though Alex doesn't react.
It takes a moment before the door is opened for us and a man stands there. He smiles at Alex and gives him a nod, recognizing him right away. “Alex. You're back.” He pauses and raises one eyebrow. “You don't remember me, do you? I knew you wouldn't. I even told you so. Do you remember that?”
Alex nods at that though he still looks unsure about it.
The man in front of Alex rubs at his chin, covered in dark stubble. It draws attention to his attempt at a smile as he looks Alex over. It fails when he notices me though, nearly tethered to Alex's side and probably looking exhausted and dirty. “Who's this?”
Alex looks at the floor. “Brandon's weakness.”
I stiffen. Alex glances at me. In the dim light, there is a soft sadness to his eyes, and the smallest threat. His eyes are his weapons. I swallow, remembering that I agreed to this, inadvertently, managing to betray Brandon in the process of deciding to trust Alex. My hand falls to my stomach, trying to hold it in place.
The man nods, his mouth tightly pressed together. “C'mon. He's expecting you.”
Between the two of them, I feel as if there is more going on than what I can see. Both become very somber very suddenly. The man steps back to let me and Alex in then he shuts the door behind us and leads us to more stairs, a small oil lamp in his hand. We head down a few flights before we reach the tunnels that he starts leading us through.
The two don't say much, and I don't add to conversation. I stare at the walls. They look different from the tunnels that Uncle Wiley lived in, but the basic idea is there. More tunnels. This seems like it was once something important. It feels more like a structure that was here previously before the current residents moved in. Wiley always said that the tunnels had always been there. He didn't know why, and there was no record of them. I bet he'd be interested to know that there was a tunnel like his elsewhere in the Wildlands.
We take a turn and step through a door into a wide open room filled with tents and children running around playing with each other as the adults talk, standing around watching them and watching us when they notice the two strangers. I stick close to Alex, and he holds my hand tightly as the one in front leads us solemnly.
Another turn leads us down more tunnels, but these had holes in the walls with coverings over them. The couple of people who peek out from these watch us with sharp eyes as if they're just waiting for trouble from us. But they don't move forward.
“So what's your name?” I ask him, just to have some sort of conversation going because the lack of speaking is making me nervous.
He slows down some and looks back at me, his face a tiny bit more neutral than it was earlier when Alex introduced us. “It's okay. You won't remember.”
“I won't remember?”
“Nope. You might remember that you met someone, but you won't remember any details about me personally.” He smiles and dips his head in an almost humble manner as if he's just used to being basically non-existent.
I don't bother asking any further. The man looks at Alex, slowing us down some more. “She's safe, Alex. I've kept an eye on her.”
Alex gives a nod and a quiet and quick, “Thank you.”
The man stops at the mouth of another tunnel. “He's through there. I'll get your daughter.” His eyes harden, and it's hard to read him. I don't get a feeling from him that he's a bad man, just that he's in a difficult position. It's an added on feeling that there's more going on here than I know. The only thing I can do is try to trust Alex, to believe him when he says that this is what he needs me to do.
Alex squeezes my hand, but he looks up at the man and shakes his head. In a low voice he tells the man, “Get someone else to do it. You'll be needed up front.”
There's a shift in the man's expression, but it's hard for me to pin down before he locks it tight again with a nod and then heads off back the way we came.
Alex looks down at me, his eyes, large and green and dewy. For half a second, I worry that he's going to grab me and hug me again, but he doesn't. He takes my hand and pulls me into the extra tunnel.
There are some mean looking men guarding the extra tunnel. They see us enter, but they seem to recognize Alex as he walks up with his free hand in the air. They take a look at me and they can see right away that I'm no threat. I'm nothing, just a human girl, and they let us pass.
At the end of the tunnel, there's no cloth. A man sits in a seat faced with a few other men who are talking to him. They turn to look at us when we enter. At the sight of Alex, most of them seem surprised. They step to the side and Alex stops just behind them, his grip on my hand starting to hurt.
The man in the seat looks from Alex to me and a smile breaks out on his face. He doesn't look like anything special, but something about him makes me uncomfortable anyway. His eyes rake over me from the bottom up before he looks back at Alex. “I didn't expect you'd return. Who's this?”
The other men who had been in front of him step back along the walls to give us room, but stay close enough to watch.
Alex keeps his eyes on the man in front of us. “Brandon's weakness.”
The man stands up. He's taller than Alex. He wears no shirt, exposing plenty of handmade tattoos that are rougher than Alex's across his chest and on his arms. On his chest there is a scorpion, a creature of myth supposedly based on a real animal, with its tail pointing threateningly at anyone he faces.
“Who is she? What's her connection to him? He doesn't keep pets.” The man looks down at me and I shrink behind Alex.
Alex hesitates. The man looks up at Alex, but where he was just curious with me, he looks annoyed now. “Well?”
“She's their mother's daughter.”
Alex says it quickly as if I won't hear it if he can speak fast enough. It catches me off guard to hear him lying, He's horrible at it. Even if I didn't know, it's clear that he's not being honest. In some small way, it relieves me to know that he's not a great liar. But why is he trying to lie now about something so basic too? Why doesn't he want this man to know how I'm related to Brandon?
There's a telepath in the room. I remember when I catch the eyes of the girl behind the man. She's small, probably only fourteen. Her eyes are clear and grey and her hair is cut short exposing her delicate neck and bony shoulders. When I see her, that's when I realize that my thoughts aren't free. A tingle jumps down the base of my skill, and I give a small shudder.
“You're not being honest,” the man says. He's watching me again, a strange light in his eyes. "She's Henri's. Even better, not that he'll care until I've killed his second in command.”
Henri hardly knows me. I don't know how or why my relation would make a difference, but from the look in the man's eyes it makes a big difference.
Alex still looks away. The man smiles at me. “So I have a little sister.” He laughs at my sudden confusion. “I'm Killer, your oldest brother.”