Tainted Trail (35 page)

Max swore softly. “Hell, we don't even know who is all Ontongard. There could be dozens of them.”

“If we can figure out who they successfully infected,” Ukiah said, “then we would be ahead of the game.”

“Well,” Sam said slowly. “The fire victims and the drowning victims are most likely the people that failed, so the families of the drowning victims—Brody, Walsh, Landin—could all be Ontongard.”

“Walsh and Landin.” Max cocked his head, thinking. “I saw those names listed together someplace.”

“Carl Landin and Sonnie Walsh both drowned at the end of July.” Sam considered. “But I don't remember giving you their names before. Between the hit and run, multiple shootings, and alien pod people, I haven't had time.”

“They're distant cousins.” Max said slowly, frowning.

Sam shook her head. “No, not that I know of.”

Max snapped his fingers and leaned into the Blazer to root through their bags. “I know where I saw it. Here.” He pulled out the photocopy of
The Death of Magic.
Max flipped a few pages and then gave a hard laugh. “Alicia had put her foot into it. They're all Kicking Deer cousins. The Ontongard are going down the family tree.”

For whatever reason, the author had included a family tree, stemming down from Kicking Deer. Curiously, Magic Boy had been skipped in the first generation. Jay had been straight father-to-son line down from his eldest half brother. By Jesse's day the tree had a massive root structure, and very few of them were named Kicking Deer.

A sudden wealth of blood kin.

Sam frowned. “But Brody isn't here, nor Bridges, which is Vivian's maiden name.”

Max took a sudden deep breath, as realization hit him. “The car accident. They probably had a blood transfusion.”

“Yes.” Sam said. “Matt and Vivian probably did, but Harry wasn't in the accident.”

“Poor kid. He lost either way.” Max sighed.

Sam took the bound photocopies. “Since Max and I aren't
going to be much help setting this machine up, why don't he and I cross reference this with my case files and see what we can turn up?”

 

Closing his eyes, Ukiah took out his favorite memory of Indigo, that first moment he became aware of their mutual attraction.

Her face transformed for a moment with surprise and something that could have been joy. She was suddenly beautiful, all hard lines softening to the point that looking at her took his breath away. She put out a hand to him and he took it. “Ukiah!” she breathed his name, gripping his hand warmly. “I'm so glad that you are alive!”

He could recall the soft strength of her hand in his, as if he held it now. Other treasured moments flowed after it, all filled with the steel sereneness that was Indigo. In the raw ache of losing so many he loved, he found solace just in his memories of her.

He had to call her, and warn her, and maybe, say good-bye forever. She answered with a smile in her voice.

“I just took Kittanning back to your moms'. They're all suntanned and happy. I'm glad you spared them all the horror stories. Where are you? Portland? Houston?”

“We're not coming back.” It hurt to say it. “We think we might be able to get Kraynak, Alicia, and Zoey back.”

There was a long silence from her end, and then, “Really?”

“Yes, we found the scout—”

“Ukiah!” Indigo drowned him out. “This line isn't secure. I just need to know: Do you want me there?”

“I want you here, but I need you there. If I don't call you back by dawn, Degas will be coming for Kittanning. Take care of him, will you? And don't try it alone. Get Hellena to help you.”

Another long silence from her. “I'll burn him to ash if he hurts you.”

He smiled at her cold steel promise. “I know. I love you. I'll try hard to come back to you.”

Simms Quarry, Pendleton, Oregon
Monday, September 6, 2004

In the end, they found the Ontongard too late. The Pack had already found the den sometime before dusk and wiped them out. Ukiah, Max, Sam, and Jared arrived just as full night settled over the quarry. The Demon Curs moved through, cleaning up in a jovial, frantic pace. A bonfire had been built up, the flames throwing wild, shifting shadows over the rugged bareness of the gravel pit. Laughing and joking, the Curs doused the Ontongard dead with gasoline and flung them onto the roaring fire.

Here and there, the dead were reawakening and trying to flee in bodies too damaged to move. The Curs would leap upon the struggling body and club it back to death, and add it quickly to the bonfire. A shout went up when one body simply shattered into mice, which fled quickly in all directions, abandoning the form. The Curs chased the tiny bodies through the dark, snatching them up, crushing the life from them, and flinging the limp bodies in a high long arc into the bonfire.

Sick with fear that he was already too late, Ukiah raced to find Alicia, Kraynak, and Zoey.

He found Zoey, shot through the heart. Her mice cowered in her matted hair. The soft tissue was repairing the damage at amazing speed.

“I've found Zoey,” he radioed to Max. “She's dead. She probably won't cause you any problems.”

“I've got the position,” Max radioed back.

Jared's four-door pickup swung cautiously up the drive. The Demon Curs nearest to the truck cut it off, recognized Jared as Pack, and waved him through. Jared pulled the pickup beside Ukiah, and Sam rolled the first steel barrel off the back. It landed with a deep musical thump.

Max got out, pulling on steel-mesh-lined gloves. “Let's make this quick, people.”

Sam caught the gloves Max threw her. “Are you sure we shouldn't put air holes into this?”

“Can't.” Ukiah pried off the drum's lid. “The Ontongard don't have the same sense of self as the Pack do. They'll splinter down to gnats if they have to in order to escape.”

“But won't they suffocate?” Sam asked.

“Ukiah,” Max asked. “How long can you hold your breath?”

“Depends.” Ukiah caught Max's look. “A real long time.”

“See?” Max said with the tone of a problem settled.

Sam helped Max snatch up Zoey's mice, dropping them into tall canning jars, while Ukiah and Jared quickly searched her for weapons.

Jared growled softly the whole time. He lifted Zoey up, small and limp in his arms. Ukiah could feel him fighting the urge to break the small body, destroy the dormant being. “There's so much of him that I can barely sense her—and I hate her for it.”

“Not her.” Ukiah took Zoey's body from him and slid it carefully into the steel drum. “Him.” Ukiah slapped the steel lid back on the drum and tightened down the locks. “That's one.”

“Damn, missed a mouse!” Max hissed as a mouse scurried toward the protective bulk of the pickup.

Jared stomped down on the mouse, reducing it to a dead bundle of fur and broken bones.

Sam startled at the brutality with a slight “Jeez!” of dismay.

“It will be fine,” Max said, dropping a metal top and lid
on the canning jar and giving it a spin to twist the lid tight. “Just grab it and can it. Go on, Ukiah, find the others.”

Ukiah loped into the darkness, casting about for familiar scents while Jared and Max lifted the barrel onto the pickup truck. Ukiah located Kraynak, extremely battered and very much dead, just as Rennie found him.

“What are you doing here?” Rennie said.

“Looking for our dead.” Ukiah tried to ignore him, wishing he was better at lying and that Rennie couldn't read his mind. “Max, I found Kraynak.”

Rennie grabbed him and hauled him around to face him. “I told you to leave!”

“I can't! I can't just run away and leave them!”

Rennie snarled into his face as the pickup pulled up. “Damn you, why can't you, just this once, use your head instead of your heart?”

“If you wanted him to use his head”—Jared climbed out of the pickup—“you shouldn't have left me with him.”

Rennie pushed Ukiah toward Jared. “I left
him
with
you
—so
you
could keep him safe. It was the only way I could be both places at once.”

“There was the small matter of puking my guts out for a day and a half,” Jared said. “By the time I was seeing things from your perspective, things were too far gone.”

“Totally.” Sam rolled a drum off the back of the truck. “So can we stick with the plan? We secure the ones we came for and then talk, okay?”

Max helped her right the drum, unlock and pry off the lid, and ready it for Kraynak's body. “She has a point.”

Jared reached for Kraynak. Rennie looked at him hard with a fleeting desire for him to be still. Jared froze, hand outstretched. Anger flared in his eyes a moment, and then it too was gone, washed away by Rennie's will. In that moment, two Rennies turned to look at Ukiah with disapproval.

“Stop it!” Ukiah shoved Rennie. “Don't do that to him!”

Rennie considered striking Ukiah a crippling blow and sending him away, making Ukiah flinch, and then discarded the action as too dangerous with Degas so close by. Jared's
own anger flickered back into his eyes as Rennie released him.

“You're starting to sound like a spoiled brat,” Rennie snarled.

“You knew Jared was part of my family before the Curs took him. Even if I had left before Degas turned him, I would have found out sooner or later. You know me. You knew how I was going to react. Why did you let them take him?”

“You know the edge I walk with Degas. You know there was no ‘letting' or ‘allowing,' just surviving.”

Ukiah looked away, feeling like a thunderstorm filled him; dark rage, guilt, and hurt howled over a landscape pelted with sorrow and lashed with brilliant lightning strikes of fear. He trembled with the furious chaos of emotions, all of it wanting to escape into mindless violence.

“Just go. There is danger for us all here.” Rennie pushed then, trying to shove aside Ukiah's own will with his own.

Oddly, Ukiah knew that yesterday he would have gone. He had been weaker then, just a wild Wolf Boy with a thin veneer of civilization. Deepened by Magic Boy and Little Slow Magic, he looked levelly at Rennie and shook his head. “No.”

Rennie frowned, puzzled at the sudden show of strength. “What have you done to yourself?”

“I've found part of myself I had lost.”

Rennie glanced about the flame-licked dark, trying to find Degas. “Take those you already found and go, before Degas sees you.”

“One more,” Ukiah said. “Alicia.”

“No.”

“Come, come, Rennie,” Degas's baritone came out of the darkness. “Let the brat dig his grave a little deeper.”

They turned. The dog-gleam of Degas's eyes reflected the bonfire's light. He came out of the night, holding a struggling Alicia. She fought to break down, flee. Degas's will held her in check, something Ukiah would have thought was impossible.

A low growl woke in Ukiah's chest as fear and anger twined together there in a tight, hot knot.

Alicia radiated hate at all of them. “Growl, you idiotic dogs! Tear each other apart! I keep hoping you'll embrace your nature and kill each other!”

“Not while we have you to hunt,” Rennie growled.

“If I'd known what a thorn you would become, I would have found the damn ship, dug it free with my bare hands, and laid waste to the entire continent! You rabid, moronic beasts!”

Degas grinned. “I love having Hex helpless and ranting.”

“She's not Hex,” Ukiah said. “She's an innocent girl that Hex's tainted.”

“Have you taught him nothing, Rennie? Or is he just as stupid as he is dangerous?” Degas shoved Alicia in Ukiah's direction. “Smell her! Listen to her! Only her hair and fingernails are human anymore! She's Hex's Get!”

“She's my friend,” Ukiah said. “She loved me, and I care for her. Give her to me.”

“Never.” Degas clamped hold of Alicia's throat, choking her.

Alicia thrashed in his hold. Mentally she raged on.
“You imbecilic beasts! You'll never win this war! I'll kill you all like I killed Prime.”

“Cub!” Rennie pulled at his shoulder.

Dimly, Ukiah was aware that Max, Sam, and Jared had canned Kraynak and moved on to someone else, apparently hoping to save more than their three. The Curs continued to add Gets to the fire, almost absently knocking small burning bodies back into the flames. The smell of pine and burning tar mixed with singed hair, burnt fur, smoldering feathers, fresh-spilled blood, and roasting meat. The heat blasted nearly unbearable where they stood, some sixty feet from the flames, and the fire roared an unending deep growl, punctuated with cracks and pops as loud as gunshots.

The way that had been so simplistic in planning had been swallowed in the night. Nothing of that straightforward,
find the Ontongard and return them to human,
remained to guide him. He floundered on, pleading now.

“Degas, please, give her to me, give me a chance to save her.”

“Save her? How in hell do you plan to do that, little Wolf Boy?”

“I found the scout ship,” Ukiah said.

Degas's shocked stillness spread through the Pack until only Max and Sam moved through the darkness. Even Ukiah found his breath frozen in his chest.

Rennie shook himself free of Degas. “How?”

Ukiah forced a hard swallow and managed to continue. “My mother remembered the way, and she told me when I was young. The Kicking Deers had one of my memories, from before I got lost.”

“The ship!”
Alicia's mind pressed suddenly against his.
“Where is it? Where?”

Degas snapped Alicia's neck with a quick, brutal move that silenced her. “What a dangerous little thoughtless brat, you are!” he said to Ukiah.

Ukiah continued, “We salvaged the resequencer. It's one of the few things not gutted. We think we can save the humans recently infected by the Ontongard.”

“Do you plan to let Hex cook up breeders when you're done with it?” Degas said.

“You know that it's not enough for them to make breeders with,” Ukiah growled. “It's useful only in taking back what Hex has stolen.”

“No! They've transitioned, you twit!”

“Cub,” Rennie urged in a low voice. “Forget this idiocy and go home.”

“We can get them back!” Ukiah cried.

“The risk isn't worth it!” Degas snapped. “We must eliminate all of Hex: dig up the roots, burn the leaves, salt the earth.”

“Kill the innocent with the monster?” Ukiah asked.

“Yes,” Degas said.

“I don't accept that,” Ukiah said.

Degas flung Alicia's body aside and snatched at Ukiah, catching him by the collar as Ukiah tried to jerk back. “This is my territory,” Degas snarled into his face. “I lead here. You are just a cub better off dead. Push me, and I will see that it's so. Collin!”

Ukiah saw in Degas's mind that he was about to order Alicia's body burned. “No!” Ukiah twisted in his grip, striking out in anger and fear. Rennie yelled, “Cub!” as if trying to bring a dog to heel. He felt Degas's sudden eagerness, and realized there would be only one end; one of them would kill the other.

Guided by instinct alone, Ukiah's first blow struck hard, breaking Degas's nose into a sudden fount of blood. His second swing, more crippling, Degas dodged with a hard laugh. He used Ukiah's own momentum and the hold on his collar to fling Ukiah to the ground and kicked him viciously in the head. The blow sent darkness and stars whirling in Ukiah's sight. He rolled away from Degas's steel-shod biker boots and scrambled to his feet, shaking his head to clear it.

Degas slid a long knife out of a kidney sheath. “Come on, puppy,” Degas laughed, motioning Ukiah closer with his left hand. “Let's end this, fast and clean.”

Ukiah backed away as Degas came at him, fast and sure. The blade kissed him again and again as he barely dodged the strikes, shredding his shirt and his skin with long, shallow furrows. The heat of the fire spread across his shoulders, intensifying as Degas pushed him backward toward it, until it felt like it would sear the clothes from his body.

Every swing Ukiah took, Degas felt coming and dodged easily.

Suddenly Degas gave him an opening, and he took it without thinking. Ukiah felt Degas's blade stab into his side, just under his ribs, slicing through coils of gut. Degas, though, had overreached to score the blow. Ukiah caught the other's hand, pinning the blade inside of himself, and struck hard at Degas's arm.

The thin bones snapped. Degas screamed, and jammed his left thumb into Ukiah's right eye.