Shadow Heart (25 page)

Two of the Specters he had sent off to search other parts of the forest emerged from the trees as he came out, weapons blazing at their sides. He simply shook his head at them, and they deactivated their blades. Gentry came up behind him, and Derek spoke, “We’re still one short. Once he arrives we will make for the edge of the forest, where a Halo will carry us back to the main force. Thank you all for your efforts here.”

They all settled back beneath whatever shelter they could find while they waited. Ten minutes passed, and then twenty, with no sign of their fifth member. The rain had slowed to a slow sprinkle, and would finally end soon. Derek walked over to where Gentry paced in the shadow of a large oak, trying to stay warm with movement. He stopped at Derek’s approach.

“Something is wrong,” Derek said. “He should have returned by now.”

“I agree, sir,” Gentry said. “Should we search for him?”

Derek hesitated. Anything could have happened out there. This forest was supposedly crawling with predators, though he had not seen many. It was possible the Specter had been caught off-guard. But then, it was also possible he had found something, and had been stopped from calling for backup.

“You and I will go,” Derek replied. “I’ll send the others to await the Halo’s arrival.”

-X-

They followed the path the Specter was instructed to travel, a grid of forest that looked no different than the one he and Gentry had searched for hours. It did not take them long to find him. Something fled as they approached, too small to be a fully grown lion...an adolescent, perhaps?

The Specter lay flat on his back at the base of the tree, eyes staring unfocused at a sky as white as his face. Scavenging animals had already gotten to parts of him, which Derek did his best to ignore. But that was not what had killed him. A thin line of red decorated his neck from ear to ear, skin still inflamed but most of the blood washed away.

Gentry knelt beside him, “Garroted. One hour ago, maybe two.”

“He saw something, but did not realize the danger until it was too late,” Derek noted the man’s Gladius discarded nearby. He had taken the time to remove it from his belt, but did not activate it.

“Sawyer, do you think?” Gentry asked.

“No,” Derek shook his head. “She’s a soldier, not an assassin. This is not her style.” But even as he said it, he wondered...perhaps he no longer dealt with Grace Sawyer. Shadow Heart had a separate reputation. Cold. Ruthless. Bent on the World System’s destruction. Still, he had a difficult time believing her capable of this.

And then there was that prickling along his spine...the sense of being watched. He looked around self-consciously, but saw nothing. The eeriness of the forest suddenly became much more potent, as did his desire to be out from under the claws of the trees

“Come on, Specter Captain,” he said after a time. “We’re done here.” He turned from the violent sight and tried to brush off his feeling of alarm. Before long he would be out of this nightmarish place, and back in the warmth of his command tent.

This round goes to you, Shadow Heart. Next time.

-X-

He watched the two men go from his hiding place above and let out a quiet sigh of relief. Not that he couldn’t have handled them, but that was not his mission. Somehow he doubted his master would approve of his leaving several Specters dead in his wake. It might attract too much attention.

The one had been a mistake. Somehow the Specter had caught on to his trail, believing he had in fact found the two women. Rowan had to respect him for that. It was almost a shame to kill him. Almost.

Once the men were out of sight he climbed down from his tree and hit the ground with a wet thud. The rain had stopped, now, but water would continue to fall from the branches of the trees for hours. He returned to the body of the man he had killed—it was no surprise that the Specters had not even thought to pay respect to their compatriot's body with a burial or a return home. Those were sentiments from earlier days, stamped out with cold notions of practicality in System soldiers. He did, however, expect them to seek out and take the Gladius, which is why he had left it.

He bent to retrieve it, the silvery metal glistening beneath droplets of water. Interesting. Most Spectral weapons he’d seen had hilts decorated in some precious stone: ruby, sapphire, some color of tourmaline, or the like. This one was plain, unassuming: a tool of the one who wielded it, nothing more. He found it surprisingly light in his hand, and as he examined it he saw the black engraving on the side:
Legend
.

So, the Specter had not just been a good tracker, he’d been blessed with a sense of humor as well. Rowan smiled. It would be a shame to let such a weapon rot on the forest floor. It was said men untrained with the Gladius were as likely to kill themselves as their opponents, but he would find some use for it. He hid it within his robe, and then turned his attention to the ground alongside the Specter’s body.

He had heard the call from the Specter’s superiors, not long after he had killed him. It sounded as though they had found something. What, Rowan did not know, but he had to find out if they had gotten to his prey before he could. Their tracks weren’t difficult to find. World System soldiers were trained as apex predators. By their very nature, they never accounted for the possibility that someone might hunt
them
.

The cave was not far. The tracks of the two men he had seen mixed with those of two others who wore the same style of boot—more Specters, without a doubt. He saw no signs of anyone else. No sign of his quarry in the cave, either. He followed the tracks further to a small clearing, where a dark red stain decorated the trunk of one of the trees.

Human, perhaps? Or animal?

Rowan pulled a square device from his belt and withdrew a short chisel from the side. With the edge of the blade he scraped away a sample of the blood, then slid the chisel with the sample back into the device. He shook his head. Even those Specters would not have this technology, as it was kept closely guarded in the System’s archives. Sometimes he marveled at the foolishness of politicians who wanted to hoard everything to themselves...especially knowledge. Well, Rowan’s master had his contacts, and so much the better for him.

The device beeped a few times as it examined the sample, followed by a single longer beep as it finished. The results appeared on the screen, and he smiled.

Elizabeth Aurora.

He had been hoping only to confirm that it was human, but this was far better. Now the mission was personal.

He tucked the device away and bent low to the ground, hoping he might see something the Specters missed. Unfortunately their tracks had tainted the area, so he wasn’t hopeful. But then he saw it, at the very edge of the clearing, so slight it was almost unnoticeable: a woman’s footprint, ball only, nearly washed away by the rain.

Rowan bent to inspect it, attempting to discern the direction she had been walking. He found the toe of the mark and looked up, frustrated. The cave. He had just come from there, and seen nothing. But then it hit him. Nothing was itself a clue. No animal tracks, no sign of any Undocumented humans who might have taken shelter in a perfectly good cave...in a place like that, signs should remain for weeks...months even.

It had been cleaned, and recently.

He returned to the shelter and looked more closely, again forced to ignore the prints of clumsy Specters.
If I were her, where would I build the fire?

Rowan knelt in the selected place and touched his fingers to the ground several times, searching. For a time there was nothing, but then: heat. He grinned. They had been here, and not long ago. They had simply covered their tracks extraordinarily well. But where had they gone? Back into the forest?

He stepped back to the mouth of the cave and surveyed the area, thinking. They could not have left very far in advance of Specter’s arrival, and the chances they would not have been seen...

He strode back inside and ran his hands over the walls, unsure what he was looking for but determined to be thorough. When he reached the back he heard a click, distinctive and familiar—and it was not the sound of rock and dirt. He grinned again, fighting the urge to turn. Rowan had a feeling there was something strange about this forest. So quiet, so eerie. It should have been crawling with mountain lions, the same as every other region in this part of the Wilderness. Here was the answer as to why.

Rowan could not take action now. There were eyes on him. Best if, for the moment, they believed he had discovered nothing. That he knew nothing. He sighed in feigned exasperation, then turned and slunk out of the cave.

But the hunt was not over. Snakes that slither underground must always come out again.

Now the fun part would begin.

L
IZ RAN HER FINGERS
over the crude stone wall of the room where the cave men had placed them, contemplating how she always managed to get into these situations. Once again she found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The room was barely ten yards from the secret entrance inside the cave, undoubtedly planned for visitors such as she and Grace that they just couldn’t figure out what to do with. The cave men had taken their firearms, as promised, but left both Gladii alone. Idiots.

She paced the room, uneasy, while Grace reclined calmly against the opposite wall. How could she have let this happen? Why just walk into their custody with no inkling of their intentions? For all Liz knew, the cave men could be in the next room deciding how they were going to cook them. Liz hoped the Silent Thunder commander knew something she did not, and was just not sharing. But it was a fragile hope.

“How long do you think the moles will keep us waiting?”

Grace frowned, “You shouldn’t call them that.”

“Why not?” Liz retorted. “Little inferior creatures that dig holes and tunnels underground...seems like the perfect fit to me. One of those men looked as if his mother might have
been
a mole. Don’t tell me you didn’t see the resemblance.”

Grace tried, but couldn’t quite conceal her grin. Liz counted that a victory.

“We should never have let them take us,” she went on quietly. “We should have made a run for it and taken our chances in the Wilderness.”

“If what they said was true, they probably saved our lives,” Grace said.

“Unfortunately there’s no way for us to know for sure.”

“You alright?” Grace asked. “You’re acting a little...fidgety.”

“I just don’t like being confined,” Liz replied, continuing to pace the room.
Especially when I possess the means to escape
. She let her hand rest on
Ignis
. Would it be enough, if the cave men turned out to have unsavory intentions?

She stopped pacing and pounded her fist lightly against the wall. Thin, like the rest. If the worst happened, diamond armor would cut through to the tunnels beyond. She knew the way back to the surface...hopefully. She shook her head, trying to ignore all her inner warnings. Why couldn’t she just be calm, like Grace?

What she needed was a distraction.

Liz leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms, silent as she considered her next move. There was still a goal here: to win Grace Sawyer’s trust, whether for herself or for the Conglomerate, should she choose to return. The thought of betraying Grace unnerved her, but so did the alternative: never finding her true family...the place where she belonged.

She didn’t have to decide the end, not yet. The means would be the same either way.

“You still wear it,” Liz said, breaking the silence. “The slave’s mark. I had heard rumors, but thought for sure they were wrong.”

Grace moved her hand to that place on her opposite arm, as though to hide what lay beneath her uniform. “Yes. I kept it.”

“Not many escape the World System’s slavery. Those that do, I imagine, are eager to get rid of the evidence as quickly as they can.”

“I would have been, if the mark still symbolized my slavery,” Grace smiled. “But that’s not what it meant to me, not by the time I was free.”

Liz stared at the spot, and though she couldn’t see it she knew what it said. She had been there that day, in the palace courtyard. She had seen Grace tied to that post, elevated for every man in the courtyard to see. She was the only woman in attendance...the only
free
woman, perhaps, if you could use that word to describe her life. She remembered the disgust, the anger, and the shame she felt at the spectacle.

The woman who stood before her now looked nothing like that helpless creature. Since then she had passed through fire and become something far greater than even she had probably imagined at the time.

“I saw you on that day, you know,” Liz said.

“In the courtyard?”

“I was there as well, but that wasn’t what I meant,” Liz said. “The Central Square.”

Grace’s features became hard and distant, as they did every time the conversation wandered near him.
That must have been it
, Liz thought.
The day everything changed
. She had lost her father, but though tragic it could not have been something she had not prepared for. But the loss of 301 and the defeat of Silent Thunder by the forces of Alexandria... That was when Shadow Heart had truly been born.