Arena (46 page)

“Oh, Meg,” Callie murmured. “What happened?”

Meg probed the swollen skin around it with hesitant fingers, tears glittering in her eyes. “No one would sew it up. And we don’t carry antibiotics. Garth says we don’t need them as long as we have the curtain.”

“Which you aren’t using.” She’d known that from the beginning. Meg lacked the curtain aura.

“I didn’t like what it did to me. I didn’t like what it did to them. I guess maybe I saw—well, anyway, I only used it a couple times.” Her eyes watched Garth’s men, setting up their generator. “It’s getting better, though. I think it’s going to heal, given enough time.”

“The scar will be horrendous.”

Meg smiled bitterly. “As if that matters.”

“Of course it matters. The Aggillon may be able to resuscitate us, but they might not be able to do anything about scars. Teish, do you have some of that miracle salve?”

“Not anymore.”

“I’ve got some,” John said, handing over a small plastic vial.

Callie took it and sat Meg on a tilted block.

Her friend eyed the vial. “Miracle salve?”

“We got it in a harries’ nest. More than that, you don’t want to know. But it works wonders.”

“You were in a harries’ nest?”

Callie nodded. “They ignored us. I guess they only get aggressive outside their nests.” She frowned at the wound. “I oughta wash this first.”

She got up and asked Lokai, who was their guard, for some water. He met her gaze sullenly, dark eyes blank in his gaunt face. After a few seconds, he looked away. “She chose to let it fester, she can suffer with it.”

“Don’t be a jerk, Lokai. Give me the water.”

He shifted uncomfortably, and then Garth joined them. “There a problem here?”

Like the others, he had removed his goggles. One of his eyes rested blindly askew in a horribly scarred socket. Now he grinned at Callie with a familiar leer, and she fought to keep from walking away.

“I want some water,” she said.

Garth stroked her face. “You still look good enough to eat, babe.”

She slapped his fingers and he grabbed her hand, jerking her close.

“Don’t get feisty, girl. I can have anything I want from you, anytime I choose.”

“Except my respect.”

His eyes flashed and his teeth bared. Then he smiled. “Maybe I only want your body.”

She glared at him. “Can I have the water?”

Working his jaw, he released her and motioned for Lokai to get it. But he stood grinning while the man complied, and when she turned away, bottle in hand, he pinched her bottom. She flinched, swallowed her cry of outrage, and hurried on, his laughter burning in her ears.

Pierce stood twenty feet away, fists clenched. Whit blocked his path, one hand on his chest, the other on his arm. John had the other arm.

“You know he’s nuts,” Callie murmured as she drew even with them. “It’s not worth making trouble over.”

Pierce didn’t acknowledge her comments, his gaze fixed on Garth. She exchanged glances with Whit, then returned to her patient.

Meg hissed at Callie’s first touch but held still after that. Presently she said, “You know him? The General, I mean?”

“Remember Garth?”

“The one who abandoned you on the trail?” Meg turned wide eyes upon her. “That’s
him?
”

“He’s bigger now. And uglier.” Callie set the rag aside, fingered oily salve from the vial, and daubed it onto the wound. Meg hissed again and ground her teeth until she was finished. The stuff stung fiercely— Callie knew from experience.

As Callie recapped the container, Meg sobbed. “Oh, Cal, I’ve been such a fool. And I’m so sorry I said all those things to you.”

Callie sat back on her heels, wiping her fingers on her pants. “Well, I deserved most of it. And you were right about me and Pierce.” She smiled. “I am in love with him.”

Meg’s eyes rounded. “Does he know?”

Callie nodded.

Her friend glanced over her shoulder at him, sitting now with Whit and John, their backs braced against the tottering masonry. “Does he . . . care?”

Callie held up the hand with the ring on it. “You might say that.”

Meg’s eyes widened further. She seized Callie’s hand and pulled it close to inspect the ring, a single blood crystal on a band of gold. “He gave this to you?” She looked up. “You’re going to
marry
him?”

Callie nodded, enjoying Meg’s shock. “When we get back.”

She expected Meg to squeal and giggle hysterically. Instead, after a minute of stunned silence, her friend burst into tears and threw her arms around her. As Meg bawled into her shoulder, Callie patted her back, completely bewildered.

“I’m sorry,” Meg blubbered. “It’s just—from the night I left you at the lake it’s been one awful thing after another. Coming down that road was a nightmare. We had to leave the injured, and they begged us to kill them so the Trogs wouldn’t get them. There was no place to hide, no place to rest. We didn’t sleep for days. And then the harries came. And the fear—you have no idea. Constant terror, never knowing what was going to happen. I thought I’d go crazy. When the General saved us, we were so happy. But then he—”

Her face twitched and she looked away, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Her eyes fastened on Garth as he supervised the construction of the fire curtain, the poles extending eight feet high now. Hatred hardened her face, and, given what Callie knew of Garth’s sexual appetite before his exposure to the fire curtain, she guessed what must’ve happened. “Oh, Meg,” she murmured.

“The second night after he rescued us,” Meg said bitterly. “And any time he’s wanted it since. It doesn’t matter where we are. Or who’s around to see.” Her face crumpled and she started crying again.

Callie held her, swaying with nausea and fury and a hot regret for having told her about Pierce. Meg’s nightmare made her own good fortune seem hideously unfair and sent an irrational knife of guilt twisting into her heart.

It took Meg a while to stop weeping. Then they sat in silence, holding each other until Meg asked, “What’s going to happen now?”

“I don’t know. But something will turn up. You can count on that.”

Meg raised hopeful eyes. “You honestly believe that? Even now?”

“Especially now. This is the way Elhanu works. You’ll see.”

The ground began to shake, and everyone froze, all eyes darting to the darkness above. Dirt and small rocks rained briefly upon them, then the tremor faded. Gradually activity started up again.

The grit of a footstep and the sense of someone nearby drew their eyes to Brody, standing beside them, his eyes on Meg, his expression hesitant. “You okay?”

Meg wiped her face again, smearing dirt across her freckles. “Better than I’ve been in a while.”

Brody squatted beside her, and suddenly Callie felt like a third wheel. Murmuring an excuse she knew neither of them heard, she went to join Pierce. Whit idly tossed a palm-sized rock in one hand as the others watched their captors put the final touches on the curtain.

“How is she?” Pierce asked as she settled beside him.

“About as gutted as this substation.” She watched Garth gesticulating at his cronies. “I hope he does make it to the portal. And that I’m there to see him fry when he tries to go through it.”

Pierce said nothing. But after a moment his hand slid over the back of her neck, fingers massaging away the gathered tension. She leaned into the pressure, grateful for the comfort of his touch, wishing there was some way to offer similar comfort to her friend.

Meg and Brody were talking quietly now, keeping their distance, their body language still strained. Their trials had forged them into different people—there was a brokenness in Meg, a humility and soberness Callie had never seen before, and in Brody, a compassion and a gentleness that reminded her of Mr. C.

“I don’t get it,” John muttered. “What’re they doing here?” He gestured toward Garth and the others. “Why were they allowed to make it up that canyon?”

“For the same reason Mander was allowed to bring Jacki and Brian to the top of the cliff,” Pierce said. “Volition. The cliffs aren’t there to keep people out of the Inner Realm so much as to discourage them from seeking the Exit before they’ve been Changed. They make it harder to do the wrong thing, rather than removing the opportunity altogether. But those who are determined to go their own way, no matter how difficult, will ultimately be allowed to do so.”

“And in the end reap the consequences of their decisions,” Whit said, still tossing the stone in his hand.

“Yes,” Pierce said softly. To Callie’s ear, sensitive as it was to the subtle tones of his voice, he sounded almost sad.

Garth’s voice rose abruptly over the murmur of conversation. “No, you moron! If they’re all battered, they’ll only hold us back.” He said something more in a lower voice, and then more loudly, “We’ll do this fast and get out, understand? Now turn it on.”

Someone flipped a switch and a high-pitched hum accompanied the leap of energy from one pole to the other. Neon shades of green and blue oozed between slowly shifting globs of black, the light reflecting in a greenish arc that betrayed an ominous gathering of Watchers in the shadows around them.

The curtain had long ceased to entice Callie. Now its whine only triggered an annoying vibration in her teeth.

The first man stepped through, his bloodied right arm hanging limp at his side. The membrane jerked him off the ground, pulling out both arms like a marionette. He cried out as white flashes swarmed along his injured limb like fireflies. For three seconds he hung there, moaning and twitching. It released him abruptly and he staggered through, his arm no longer limp. Immediately he fell upon the food packets.

A man with a ruined leg was shoved through next. The curtain caught him mid-stumble, and he spasmed upright with a cry of pleasure, just like the other man. Again he hung spread-eagled, shivering and shaking as the healing sparks crackled up and down his leg. It reminded Callie of the Aggillon’s regenerating gel, only more aggressive.

They ran several more through, then Garth called for Pierce and Callie. He sat in a field chair about thirty feet from the curtain. This close its energy field sent unpleasant chills across Callie’s skin and set her teeth on edge.

Garth stood and walked around Pierce, looking him up and down. “You’ve tasted it before, haven’t you?” he said at length.

Pierce eyed him calmly. “So what if I have?”

Garth sat down again. “Figured as much. It was the only way you could’ve survived with them as long as you did. Is that why you lived and Tom didn’t?”

Pierce did not answer.

“You’re feeling the pull, aren’t you?” Garth asked with a grin. “The need, the shaking want of it.”

As far as Callie could see, Pierce was calm and solid as a rock.

Garth tilted his head back. “How long’s it been, huh? A week? Two? I can see the craving in your eyes.”

There was nothing of the kind in Pierce’s eyes. He couldn’t have been more deadpan. Besides, with the link so consistently open and active within him, Callie had long ago stopped worrying about his vulnerability to the curtain’s allure. Right now she suspected he was as revolted as she was, and Garth was simply projecting his own desires.

“You can have it now,” Garth said, motioning for the guard to free him. Pierce didn’t move. “If you don’t, you’ll die before the day is over.”

Pierce cocked a brow. “I thought you didn’t hold with accepting alien help.”

Garth laughed. “I don’t see any aliens helping us.”

“What do you call that?” Pierce gestured at the fire curtain.

“It may be an alien device, but
I
stole it for
my
purposes.” He looked at the thing with an expression of warm pride. “That little baby’s given us the edge we need to make it to the Exit.”

Pierce shook his head sadly. “It’s not making it to the Exit that sets us free, Garth. If you’re not Changed first, you’ll only die trying to walk through it. And if you die in this Arena Unchanged, that’s it for you. You’ll never see Earth again. There’ll be no more second chances.”

For a moment it seemed he had captured Garth’s attention, that somehow the respect the man had carried for him all those years they were together pushed itself to the fore and made him listen where he wouldn’t have listened to anyone else. Callie saw it in his face—the sudden uncertainty, even alarm, with which he considered the possibility his old friend was right. But then it was swallowed up by the passions he’d so completely surrendered to of late, and he rejected it with a forceful vulgarity.

Even then Pierce didn’t give up. “Come on, Garth. You must see our bodies aren’t like yours anymore. How else can we walk this realm unprotected and suffer no ill effects? How else can we can touch the toxvine, go unaffected by mite venom, and breathe the poisoned air?”

“I can breathe the air fine.” Garth yanked off his respirator, glaring. “See?”

“Then why were you wearing that thing?”

Garth lurched out of his chair and seized Pierce by the throat. “Don’t mock me, you miserable Trog licker! I could kill you in a heartbeat!”

Pierce’s face turned red. He began to gasp and pry at the fingers gripping his throat. Laughing, Garth lifted him off his feet, holding him one-handed. Callie threw herself at them but was knocked away as if she were a fly. She slammed into the ground, and blinding agony speared her side. At first she could only twitch and gasp, dizzy and nauseated by the pain. When she came back to herself, Garth loomed over her, Pierce still in hand.

“Please,” she said, her voice coming out high-pitched and infuriatingly meek.

He grinned. “Oh, that’s nice. Beg some more, woman. I like it.”

“Don’t hurt him.” She sat up, gathering her feet beneath her, trying to think of something aggressive and useful to do.

Garth’s black eye glittered. “What will you give me in return, babe? Obedience?”

“Yes.” She noticed Rowena behind him, watching avidly, the purloined belt sagging at her waist.

“Respect?” Garth demanded.

Callie swallowed. Nodded. The belt was fastened only by its Velcro tabs—Rowena hadn’t snugged it down, nor had she fed the end into its finishing slot.