Crossed (9 page)

EIGHT

I spin around looking for Chi. He stands amid a pile of demon corpses. His face is twisted into a snarl and his shirt is in blood-stained tatters. A knife almost big enough to be called a sword is clenched in his fist. He’s in one piece, most notably, his legs. We’re going to need them right now.

I dive towards him and grab his arm. “Run!” He takes his eyes off the oncoming demons—there have to be a hundred—and looks at me surprised. “Run, you idiot!” I scream again.

“The kids,” he says, with a short shake of this head. And I look up, and all the other Crusaders are standing there, holding their ground. The kids, in the shelter. They won’t abandon them to be eaten. I twist to look back at the oncoming demons. We’re wildly, wildly out-numbered—we can’t save them. We’ll be lucky if we save ourselves. But I know it won’t do any good to argue with Chi.

So I don’t. I slam my elbow in the side of his head and throw him over my shoulder cave-woman style.

I have a rule about arguing with idiots. Don’t.

Rex sees what I’ve done. I turn and he catches my eye, but I don’t have time to care. The demons are coming.

He looks away, not disguising his disgust.

Good. One more body to slow the demons.

I run. I take the dead weight of my favorite idiot and I run like the whole host of hell is on my heels—which, I suppose, it is. We’re halfway across the valley when the demons and Crusaders meet, the screams and explosions so loud they drown out my own grunts. I pump my legs, driving us up the steep side of the mountain. It was genius of the demons to trap us here—one road in and one road out. We’ll have to cut through the mountains, which is slow. Time enough to call reinforcements, to circle around, to catch us.

I hit the trees and keep running, my legs and lungs burning as we go up, up, up. I lunge through thorn bushes and leap over logs. I run until my lungs feel like they’re going to collapse. Until the sound of the battle behind us has died—though, I suspect, not because we’re out of range to hear it but because it’s already been brutally ended. I dump Chi in a pile of detritus and try to figure out my next move.

I have many thoughts, most of them starting with an F. Thank God I said them all silently, because over it I hear the rustling of leaves, coming from ahead of us, up the mountain. It could be a deer, but I’m not betting my life on it. I duck and crawl on my belly toward Chi. I put one hand over his mouth and slap the crap out of him with the other. He comes to with a lunge, but I pin him down.

“Shhhhhhhhhh.” He stills under my hand, and I remove it. I point up the mountain, and he gives a quick nod of understanding, and flips silently on to his belly to look towards where I pointed. He shakes his head, trying to clear it from the results of my little love tap earlier. We both watch, silent, then he jerks his head to the right, a question in his eyes, and I respond with a movement that’s part agreement, part shrug. Better safe than sorry—I prefer to avoid a confrontation just yet, especially as we don’t know how many there are.

He leads the way and we run silently, half crouched, to the west, until we leave the rustling behind. Then we cut back up the side of the mountain. Three times we hear movement and have to hide.

Chi freezes and holds up his hand—never a good sign. He drops down slowly and I follow his lead, then he rotates and points behind me, toward a creek bed. Without a word we climb down the hill and slip behind the ledge of the creek bed.

Chi peeks over the edge of the creek bed. His mouth flattens into a grim line and he points.

Demons, dozens of them, standing so still I didn’t notice them. They’re in a row, no more than a dozen feet between each of them. Just standing there, perfectly still.

The hell?
I ask with my expression. We duck behind the safety of the creek bed to confer.

“How much you want to bet they ring the whole valley?” Chi whispers. For a moment I’m in awe. The sheer numbers, the planning, necessary execute this trap is mind boggling—not to mention, terrifying. I don’t know what I’m more upset about—that we’re trapped in what has become Death Valley, or that Chi figured it out before I did. “We need reinforcements. We just need to survive until they get here.”

I eye the half-dozen of the no-doubt hundreds of demons holding us captive. “Gee, is that all?”

He grins, then mutters the quick incantation to send out the emergency signal, a silent shout to the Crusaders listening for it.

Only this time it’s not so silent.

Just as Chi finishes his muttering there’s an explosive clap, like thunder. The sky above us turns brilliant white, like a mushroom cloud. “What’d you do?” I demand, but I don’t bother to wait for a response. I stick my head over the side to check on the demons.

Yeah. They noticed.

A dozen or so run towards us. I hear cracking from behind us and see more charging through the woods. I hesitate, just a second, to repeat Chi’s spell. Another boom roars overhead, but this time I close my eyes so I’m not blinded by the light. Might as well double check to see if Chi screwed us or the demons did.

Definitely the demons. Somehow they’ve managed to use our emergency beacon against us. Instead of a cry of help to the Crusaders, it’s become a “come and get me” to the demons.

So. Not. Good.

No time to think about it now, though, there’s a dozen-plus demons racing towards us—and those are the only ones I can see. Everyone within a ten-mile radius saw the damn fireworks.

The creek runs diagonally across the mountain side, carrying water down from the top of the mountains. We race down it, taking advantage of its steep sides to at least keep ourselves out of view—and firing range. They’re shouting behind us, and I know they’ve come up on the stream bed and figured it out. I leap over a tree that’s fallen across the bank and hear Chi leap over behind me.

Then we turn the corner and come face to face with three more demons, apparently coming to catch us in the middle. I slam on the breaks, but Chi does the opposite and flies past me into the first one, before they’ve even registered they’ve found us. He has the first one down, holding him face down in the water. I grab the second and smash him into the third, just as I see Chi grab his blade and shove it through the neck of his. He spins and takes one of my demons as I rip the throat out of the third. It’s over in a blink, but still that’s too long. I hear a cry from behind us—we’ve been spotted.

“It’s
her!
We got her!”

The trap. The trap is for me.

I scramble up the side of the embankment and out into the woods, to break their line of sight, Chi hot on my heels. Ahead of us is the ruin of an old farmhouse, roofless, half-collapsed, with a tree growing from the center of it. Behind is the skeleton of a barn, and some other buildings I don’t take the time to identify. I aim for it; in the very least we can use it to block their view and somehow manage to lose them. Somehow.

We make it to the house before the demons make it out of the embankment and I cut straight back, putting it between us and our enemies.

“Meda!” Chi calls behind me, and I jerk back to see him pointing to the east of us. He must have heard something because I don’t see it. Shit, shit, shit. I try to put on another burst of speed, but with nowhere to go I’m not sure what good it’s going to do. We cut around the barn, trying to angle it toward whoever is coming from the east, but it hardly matters.

Thud, thud, thud
, my heart keeps rhythm with my feet.

I leap up a small hill without breaking stride.

Thud, thud, THUMP
.

Thump? I throw on the breaks and whirl around. The hill. I leap back down to its base and use both arms to clear leaves and dirt until I reveal wooden planking. I stick my fingers in to the cracks and haul it up as hard as I can. It breaks free with a sharp
crack
revealing a root-cellar, or at least the remains of one. “Chi!” I manage in choked scream. He pounds up behind me just as I manage to slide the rotten plank door out of the way.

I shoot panicked look around, but the demons aren’t in sight yet. Chi half-jumps, half falls into the hole. I don’t follow him, yet. Instead I shove branches and leaves and crap back on top of the door to disguise it. The crash of the demons’ approach cuts my attempts short. I slide in the gap and Chi eases the door over us closed.

I slap a hand over my mouth to muffle my harsh breathing and Chi’s mouth is open wide as he tries to pull in as much air as he can without giving any betraying gasp. I ripped the door off its hinges in my urgency so he holds it in place, his arms stretched over his head, bracing it so it doesn’t collapse in on us. The fact that there’s enough sunlight coming in that I can see Chi at all is bad; it means my attempt at covering the surface was not especially successful. Each stripe of sunlight on his face is a gap in our meager protection.

The crunch-and-crash of the demons” approach seems loud, even muffled through the earthen walls around us. The room is small, probably ten feet by six, with rock walls and a dirt floor. Part of the ceiling has collapsed toward the back, and there’s a pile of leaves and twigs that looks suspiciously like a nest in one corner, but I don’t look too closely. All my attention is attuned to the noises coming above.

Chi holds his breath as the demons get closer, then lets it out as they keep going.

But it’s not over yet. Another group of demons approach. Then another, or maybe it’s the first group coming back. More demons come and we hear them talking. Searching. It seems to last forever, each tense second straining, lingering, lasting ten times as long as any usual second. Chi, his arms stretched over his head to hold the door in place, start to shake. The resulting rustle of the leaves sounds as loud to my ears as a thunderclap. We trade positions, and still we wait, barely daring to breath.

Finally the patrols come less frequently, and the sun sets and we don’t hear any at all. My shoulders are screaming by the time we decide it’s safe enough to move around. My legs are wobbly with spent adrenaline as I climb out of the hole. I set Chi to stabbing short branches into the dirt surrounding the door’s opening, creating a frame to lean the broken door against so we don’t have to hold it in place. While he’s doing that, I artistically arranging vines, branches and leaves over the surface of the door until the guy who built it wouldn’t know it’s there. We work in utter silence

“What the hell are we going to do?” I ask Chi, when we’re safe in our hidey hole.

“Do you think our message got through?”

I think back. It was as if our signal hit something then dissipated outward, like smoke hitting the ceiling. “We have to assume it didn’t, just like Shady Glen.”

“Graff might send reinforcements anyway. When no one returns . . .” Chi trails off, clearly not wanting to think about what happened in the valley.

The adrenaline and panic had kept the thoughts away, but in the quiet they creep out of hiding. The Sarge. The pop and sigh, the way she was just . . . gone. So quietly she left, for such a brash woman. No-nonsense, I suppose, just like the rest of her.

“Maybe,” I agree. Not because I believe it, but just to have something to say. Graff won’t waste living bodies to collect dead ones, and I’ve no doubt that’s all that is left in the valley below.

“So what do we do?”

“We wait,” I say, reaching the only solution. “Once the demons lower their guard, we make a run for it.”

Chi neither argues nor agrees. ‘They’re looking for you.’

I sigh. I’d overheard enough from the wandering patrols to confirm my suspicion, but had hoped Chi hadn’t put it together. I don’t see it as my fault that our entire squad died because of me—they agreed I was more asset than liability months ago when we started fighting, and I’d proven my worth a thousand times over—but the more sentimental types can be irrational. “Yes,” I agree cautiously.

I didn’t give Chi enough credit. He doesn’t point any fingers, but jumps right to the useful (if unfortunate) conclusion. “Then they won’t stop looking, not as long as they think you’re still here.”

“Seems unlikely.”

He huffs a resigned breath, then falls silent. I can practically hear the rusty tick of his thoughts. Something else is on his mind.

Finally, “We’re friends right, Meda?”

“Of course.”

Another long, quiet pause. “Do you think I’ve agreed with all your decisions?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for starters,” he says and I can faintly make out the white gleam of his smile in the darkness, “you once planned to kill me.”

I try to look sheepish, then realize he can’t see me anyway, so give up. I don’t say anything; I’m not about to apologize for the things I
almost
did. I’d never have time for anything else.

“At
least
once,” he adds. I look at his shadow sharply, not for the first time wondering if Chi’s aware of more than he lets on. “You stole the Beacon Map. You ran away.” He holds up fingers as he recounts my crimes. “You almost got my girlfriend killed.”

I wince. “I get it, Chi. So I
occasionally
make
imperfect
decisions.” Magnanimous, that’s me.

When he speaks, it’s slowly. “I might not agree with every decision you make, Meda, but I always let you make them. I always allow you to do what you want to do, even if I don’t like it.”