Ignition Point (10 page)

“Wait! Are you saying there are girls in your tribes who can do what I do?”

Ghost shook his head. “I’ve never seen anyone who can do what you do. I’ve heard stories.” He shrugged with one shoulder. “Probably the same stories that bring the Council to our villages.”

Lena settled back, her mind racing. She could feel Ghost’s eyes on her, but he didn’t speak again for a while, allowing her time to think. Were there other girls like her? Had her father known of these searches? Of course he had, he had been an assistant to Councilor Three before he was killed. Was this the reason he’d hid her?

They’ll take you and send you away to the Ward School, Lena.
He’d told her.
But not for learning. For disappearing.
He’d known something. What were they doing?

“I should go back,” she whispered. “I should try to find out.”

“We won’t be able to go back,” Ghost interrupted her reverie. His voice whispered across the short distance to her. “Damar and I.” He referred to the boy, his brother, whom the Scavs had taken.

“To the city?” Caught up in her own thoughts, Lena didn’t understand what he was saying.

“Home. We won’t be able to go back home. The Scavengers’ people will retrace their route. They’d strike us again, finish what this group started.”

Lena blinked, pushed away her own questions, and focused on Ghost’s dilemma. She nodded agreement. “You’ll have to go somewhere else. You can stay with me until you get your bearings.” She was slightly amused that they were both speaking as if it was a sure thing their plan would work and they’d all survive the night. “But not permanently. My Native neighbors wouldn’t take kindly to another tribe moving into the area.”

She caught the faint movement of his head as he shook it in the half-light.

“I won’t bring any more trouble on you than I have already. We’ll go when this is done.”

“Where?” Lena half-expected him not to answer. She wasn’t sure she would if their roles were reversed, the fact that she’d saved his life once already notwithstanding.

A ghost of a smile flitted across his face. “Texas, maybe.”

Lena rolled her eyes. “Fine, then. Don’t tell me,” she said, but she chuckled to take the sting from her words.

He tilted his head at her.

“Texas is dead,” Lena pointed out. “Everyone knows that.”

Ghost shrugged. “When the Scavengers first came to our area, started with their little raids, sizing us up, I heard our elders discussing another place, a safe zone deep inside Texas, past the slag. But they couldn’t agree on whether to go. They talked too long. We’ll try to find it.”

“You’re going to try to find a place that you’re not sure exists?”

A smile spread across his face, his teeth pale against his black beard and sun-darkened skin. “Try, yes. And hope that where there’s one safe place, there’ll be more.”

Lena opened her mouth to protest, but then snapped it closed. Who was she to talk him out of his plan? She couldn’t imagine going back to the place where everyone she had loved had been slaughtered. She knew what Scavengers did. She’d come across the remains of villages in the south before, after a strike by Scavengers. It wasn’t just the wound to his side that Ghost had survived.

She couldn’t offer any alternative. She couldn’t even offer them a safe place with her. Instead, she nodded. “I hope there is, for both of you.”

Ghost leaned his head back, tracking the stars above with his eyes. When he found the one he was looking for, he kissed the first two fingers of his left hand, then tapped himself on forehead, chin, chest.

Lena followed his eyes. Orion. She couldn’t help but feel it boded well that she hunted with a man who revered the Hunter. Of course, it hadn’t helped his people much. Still, he was here. Somehow he’d been led to her. She nodded. “Are you ready, then?”

“Yes.” His eyes gleamed in the dark.

They rose together, moving across the desert, using the starlight to navigate. They went at a steady pace, careful but sure-footed as they closed on their prey. They found the Scavs before half the night was gone. The dual fires of the Scavenger camp winked at Lena as she and Ghost moved through the arroyos. Once they had moved close enough to clearly see the tents, wagons, and cages spread across the desert, they stopped to crouch to either side of a crooked, bare cottonwood.

Lena knew Ghost was looking for the same thing she was—the silhouettes of the guards as they moved in front of the fire. They remained in place behind the dead tree, watching the camp. They noted the dark shadows of the two men as they made their circuits. Lena timed their paths and intervals.

At this distance, she couldn’t smell the smoke of the fire or the human misery of their prisoners, but she could still see it. She could imagine it. The only things moving down there, other than the guards, were the shadows hunched in the cages. One of them was her companion’s brother. She looked at Ghost.

There was a tension to him now that hadn’t been there before. While he crouched beside the tree in a mirror of her own posture, he gave the impression of a snake coiled, watching. One of his hands curled into the coarse bark of the tree while the fingers of the other rubbed a slow circle over the spot where his wound had festered. He’d have no pain lingering there, she knew. It was the memory. She recognized the motion as a promise to himself to repay the pain in kind.

He turned his face to her. She nodded, ready. With the curt return movement of his head, they began.

Ghost slid forward, close to the ground and silent. He made no noise, drifting across the area between Lena and the camp like his namesake until he eased into position behind a huge bushy juniper. Lena focused on the guard closest, allowing him to move forward, closer, his patrol bringing him within feet of Ghost’s hidden position.

Lena exhaled, air sighing out long and slow as she reached with her mind.

Hello, little friends. Hello. Listen: hold your host still for me. Please? So still—no movement, no breath, no sound. Lock his muscles for me, little friends?

The Dust inside the man stirred at the touch of her mind then exploded into answering movement. The Dust wanted to help.

She’d warned Ghost to look for the stillness. Now, as the Dust stole the man’s movement, stilled his heart and lungs, Ghost paused. His wide eyes swept over the man once, then again, before he slipped out from his hiding place to wrap his wiry arms around the big man, tip him back, and drag him away behind a gnarled desert willow.

Lena knew the moment his knife spilled the Scavenger’s blood onto the hard earth of the desert. She felt it as a sudden surging movement of normally quiet Dust. Most of the Dust, feeling the host’s energy dying away until the forces of nature changed it again, swept out with the flow and joined the Dust in the ground.

A moment later, Ghost reappeared. He stared at her where she crouched beside the tree, her fingers mindlessly tracing the jagged rocks embedded in the dirt at her feet. His head tilted in the direction of the other guard.

Lena rose. They moved together to skirt the camp, slip into position, and repeat the tactic they’d used before: disabling of body, slashing of throat.

Sentries disposed of, they approached the sleeping camp. At the perimeter, far enough back she had an overview of the camp, Lena held back. She knelt in the rocky sand, tuning out the sharp edges pressing into her knees, the smell of woodsmoke, and the stink of unwashed humans that the wind carried to her now. She focused on Ghost.

He made his way into the Scavenger camp, sliding in past the wagons. She waited for the horses to stir in response, for any dogs the Scavs might have to alert, but the young Neo-Barb lived up to his name. He moved among them like a ghost, a promise of death, though none of them knew it. Yet.

Lena’s gaze flicked to the opposite end of camp, to the two big cages holding the Scavengers’ haul of human treasure. Whether the people inside were now sleeping or simply exhausted and hopeless, they were also still.

Ghost made his way to the first of the four rough tents, ran his hand up the opening, and slid inside.

For several long moments, there was only the quiet of the wind in her ears. Her eyes wide, Lena leaned in, waiting. Ghost reappeared, slipping out from between the tent flaps. He glanced back at her, holding up a hand with three fingers raised.

Lena’s brows rose. She might have thought he meant three altogether, including the two sentries, if he hadn’t been delayed so long in the tent. Instead, she understood that he’d just disposed of three men. There were seven Scav men left. She waited, tilting her head from side to side to relieve the muscles in her neck and shoulders while keeping her eyes on Ghost as he entered the next tent.

She didn’t have to wait for Ghost’s return this time. Moments after he dipped under the tent flap, there was a bellow of rage. Ghost darted out of the tent, followed by two burly Scavengers. One shouted, hand clapped to his neck, blood dripping in spurts between his fingers.

He was weakening fast. Not fast enough. His enraged bleats echoed. Lena rose to see better, focusing in, using the Dust to silence him. His voice died, with the man not far behind. It was too late. Answering cries bellowed across the camp now as men appeared at the openings of the last two tents.

Ignoring the men she could do nothing about, Lena focused on the one she could. The Scav who had just deflected Ghost’s blow swung his knife around to the Neo-Barb’s unprotected side. He spasmed as she and the Dust locked his muscles. His momentum carried him forward. He twisted as he fell.

Ghost struck, slashing at the man as he fell. Blood fountained. The man’s arms, however, were still frozen, one raised to block and the other arched to the side as he’d reached out to slash, his hand locked around the hilt of his knife.

Lena’s eyes scanned the camp, counting five men racing toward Ghost. No, four men racing forward. One of them skidded to a stop, eyes riveted by the frozen form of Ghost’s last opponent. His head turned, back and forth, as he scanned the camp and the area around it, his hand reaching down to his side.

Ghost cried out, a wordless raging invitation calling the other men to him.

Lena focused on one, reaching out to his Dust. He would fall, but first…. Her eyes flicked to the fifth man again, his motion on the periphery catching her attention.

He had a rifle. Legs set, head angled, he took careful aim at her.

There was only one group of people who could spark a bullet’s combustion. Among them, only the strongest Ward School trained Agents had any training with the old weapons. Lena’s breath stuttered, the focus she was preparing to bring against another snapping away.

The fifth man was a Spark.

The Scavs
did
have a Spark.

She stepped back, dropping to a crouch. His barrel tracked her. She reached out for the Dust, desperate to stop him or the bullet.

It hit like an iron fist punching her shoulder, the force tossing her backward off her feet. She gaped up at the stars from her back, mouth opening and closing. Running away wasn’t an option. She couldn’t breathe, much less run. She couldn’t even crawl.

The stars shrank. Darkness grew around the edges. It pushed in toward the points of light at the center. She lost the last of them just after recognizing the rhythmic pounding coming closer as the sound of a man running to where she lay.

* * *

Lena woke to the dual sounds of laughter and violent gagging. The woodsmoke was thick in her nose, the acrid stink burning the back of her throat. She was cold. Her left side—heavy with pressure on chest, shoulder, arm—was a throbbing agony so persistent her mouth filled with the watery saliva of nausea. She tried to swallow it down, gagged, and turned her head to spit it out. Had she woken to the sound of her own retching?

No. It sounded again, a hiccupping heaving a few feet away, broken by the sound of panting. Raucous laughter erupted. Muffled sobs moaned as a constant counterpoint to the pain and glee.

Lena opened her eyes. She stared up at another woman seated beside her. Based upon her clothing and none-too-clean face, this woman was a Scav. She had a small, raised burn mark in the shape of letters just below her right eye, but Lena couldn’t make out the letters. The firelight played across her empty face as she watched whatever was happening behind Lena with dark eyes, dead except for flashes of regret, disgust, disappointment. Her arms spoke of emotion her face didn’t dare. They curled tight around the child in her arms, the woman’s hands pressing the small face to her bosom, hands curled around the child’s ears to muffle the sounds. Lena turned her head.

The movement, even slow as she took it, caused her shoulder to sear and throb anew. She squeezed her eyes shut until she’d completed the movement. When she opened them, it was rage instead of pain that took her breath away.

Ghost lay writhing on the ground before the fire, hands tied above his head with rope that looped around a peg driven into the ground. A large Scavenger, stinking of sweat and blood, loomed over him. The Scav worked a long, black iron rod that impaled Ghost’s leg through the knee.

The Scav rocked it back and forth, swiveling it in his hands as he laughed, taunting Ghost. “Heal this, little magic man. Heal this, and we’ll let you all go.”