Chapter Eight
Vanek
“Vanek!”
At last it registered to him that whoever had been calling his name had been repeating it for some time now.
“What?”
Corde came up to him, eyes of steely gray filled with concern. “You okay? What the hell was that all about? We’re supposed to be out here looking for an Outsider together, man. Together. How am I supposed to trust you if you just stop? You’re supposed to have my back!”
They spoke in low, hushed tones, trying not to draw too much attention to themselves. Neither was much concerned about the locals, despite the seedy-looking nature of the part of town in which they now walked. Their size and body language meant that everyone gave them a wide berth.
No, it was what they hunted that had Corde on edge. It should have Vanek on high alert as well, but his mind continued to wander.
“Sorry. I’m good,” he said, trying to shrug it off.
“No you aren’t. Spill. Did something happen with your mate?” Corde was facing him, standing slightly to the side so that they could watch each other’s back with ease.
Vanek pushed his hair back over his shoulders, wondering not for the first time if he should cut it. It was a new age, after all, a new time. He needed to leave the past in the past eventually. But a part of him, no matter how hard he tried, couldn’t bring himself to do it, to sever the link with his old crew.
“No, nothing happened with her. Everything is fine there,” he reassured his friend. “We had our first kiss earlier tonight.”
“Where is the problem then? Your mind is elsewhere, comrade, and I need it here, with me. These things are no joke to fight.”
Vanek grimaced unhappily, his eyes constantly scanning the street in front of him for threats or danger. “I know. That’s what’s got me distracted.”
“Huh?”
“This whole bullshit about putting us back to sleep, Corde.” He looked at his friend, trying to hide the pain and fear in his eyes. Fear that he wouldn’t be good enough. Again. “If I can’t kill one of these things, then they’re going to do it. They’ll put us all back under.” He snarled, a silent, visible gesture of the frustration building in him. “I can’t let them rip you and Kylie apart, or Elin and Kallore. I will not have that on my conscience as well.”
He saw Corde’s eyes narrow at his last words, and abruptly looked away, unwilling to discuss it further. Not here. Not now.
“Vanek,” Corde said sternly. “You need to realize something.”
“What’s that?” His eyes resumed looking out for a danger they’d been unable to find.
The pair of them had even gone looking for it. Almost every night since Corde had recovered they’d been out patrolling the streets, searching everywhere for any signs of the Outsider. Elin had kept an ear on the hospitals in town, in case any reports of people coming in who had simply "died" for no apparent reason showed up, but again, nothing had come of it.
Everything they had done had been fruitless. How was he supposed to kill something they couldn’t find!
“You’re not alone in this.”
The words caught his attention, dragging his focus over to his friend though he fought it tooth and nail the whole way. Corde too had stopped looking at the street, and was once more looking at him.
“We could just run off,” Corde said after a moment. “The six of us. Just up and go.”
“Kallore would never do that. Elin wouldn’t leave. He’d stay with her.”
“Probably. The four of us though, we could disappear. Kallore is content living on the base with her. He doesn’t need treasure. They’d probably let him stay.”
Vanek smiled and patted his friend on the shoulder. “They’d never let us go, Corde. Ever. You have to know that.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re too strong. Too powerful. They can’t let something like us go free. They’d hunt us down, and either kill us or use our mates as blackmail.”
Corde’s face twisted into an angry visage as he acknowledged the truth of their situation. They were stuck. The military had freed them, and now it was threatening to imprison them once more, after they’d found what they’d always lacked in their previous lives.
“Even if we do find this thing,” Corde said, resuming his lookout, “we still don’t know how to beat it. After I realized that I could draw power from the knowledge that Kylie cared about me, I thought I had it. But even that wasn’t enough to kill it.”
Vanek pursed his lips in thought. Whatever the Outsiders were, they were getting stronger with each confrontation. He had a theory that this was, in fact, the same Outsider. The other dragons shared his thoughts on it, though the military disagreed. They didn’t think it could have healed so quickly, even though they had firsthand evidence of how fast the dragons could heal.
“It’s changing tactics too,” he said. “First it came at Kallore, trying to kill him right away. But with you, it blended in, adapted, learned our ways. It tried to use other humans to do its dirty work, since it knew you would have a hard time killing them.”
Corde snorted, the sound loud in the quiet night air. “Not bloody likely. I only restrained myself because Kylie was insistent that I not use violence. I did it for her, not by my own moral code or anything.”
Vanek smiled. He’d heard about that challenge, and hoped that if it ever came down to it, Harlow would let him do what he felt was necessary. He would honor her request not to kill anyone, but he’d seen the way she cursed at her float and hit it when it didn’t obey her desires. After seeing that, part of him wondered if she would get to it first. The girl might have a bit of a temper.
“I feel like there’s something we’re missing about fighting these things. Something that we don’t quite yet understand. It’s there, at the back of my brain, I can feel it. It just won’t come out for me to understand.”
Corde just shrugged. “I hope you figure it out. I really don’t want to go back to sleep. This world is messed up, but there’s also a certain attitude to it that I like. There’s a big drive for life here—everything is just so vivid and real compared to…well, before.”
“It’ll come to me.” I hope. There’s not that long left. Just a little over a week until the deadline.
The time was swiftly counting down. Vanek hoped he hadn’t just lied to his friend, acting like it was going to all be okay, when in reality it was about to come crashing down around them.
Going through that again just wasn’t an option. He couldn’t lose this team. They needed a leader, and they looked to him for that. Vanek wanted to be that person, the one they could come to for advice, who would lead them into and through glorious battle alive when the day came and the Outsiders arrived in force.
“Come on,” he said, taking charge once more. “Let’s complete our route and get back home. I’ve got some research to do before I go to the warehouse tomorrow.”
Corde shook his head and smiled as he flicked his hair out of his face with a twitch of his head and resumed his jog. “You’re still doing that?”
“Of course. It needs to be fixed. We haven’t even started the woodwork of the inner box or the engine repair either. Plus we still need to clean up and detach the massive wire frame of the statue that was attached to it. Lots to do, my friend. Lots to do. Let’s go.”
They set off into the night, heads moving left and right as they scouted out yet another section of the city, looking for clues, any clues, about the creature's whereabouts. It was still close, he could feel it in his bones, human and dragon.
But where?
Vanek swallowed nervously. He hoped they could find it in time.
He didn’t want to lose Harlow.