Chapter 5: The Adobe Houses
Watching the fuel gauge, Drifter tried to calculate how many miles they had come. He had put about three pounds of fuel into the car when it was almost empty. It got an average of a two hundred miles to the pound. The fuel gauge was a little more than two-thirds empty. Perhaps five hundred miles.
“How far to go?” Loran asked him as if reading his mind. He wouldn’t be surprised if she had. When the people of Haven had spoken of her, he thought she must be scorch-mad. Meeting her, he knew that was not the truth; she wasn’t even touched by it. Instead, she had some talent for empathy and understanding of the future. Dangerous gifts for those around her.
“Another five hundred miles, at least,” Drifter answered her question, “it’s out on Terminal Point. That cinderized sign we passed said ‘Grish sector’. Never heard of it before, but I can judge how far we’ve gone by the fuel the car’s burnt.”
“I believe,” Loran touched a finger to her lips, “that it said 'Grisk’, not 'Grish’. The letters were too blackened to read easily. In that case, I have heard of the Grisk sector before. It lies in between the lake of Gloutan to the south and the mountains of Grisk, which gives it their name, to the north.”
“Nice,” Drifter grunted as he navigated around the front of a building laying shattered across the road. “What sort of sector was it?”
“Partially small businesses and contractor’s yards. Nearer the lake, it is mostly vacation homes and the like. I believe it was a much-envied sector.”
“That means that whoever lives here now will be even more off their rocker than most. And it will probably be packed with phantoms.”
“You don’t like people, do you?”
Drifter simply cut her a look like charred twigs caught in ice.
The buildings here were a little less ambitious in scale and style than those in the sectors they had recently left. Some had even been built of wood, which had charred away, or thin metal that had melted. Foundations stood bare beside gravel parking lots, water pipes sticking crazily into the air from the stranded plumbing. Rows of buildings constructed of the typical stone had their roofs smashed in, fronts faced by broken colonnades. Old signs hung half destroyed from rusty iron posts, advertising items and stores that were long gone. The wind picked up as the travelers drove down one of the many avenues, dust and bits of garbage blowing before them.
In one yard, Drifter’s gaze was attracted by a vehicle with its hood open, cab burnt out. Someone had come more recently and yanked the doors off, leaving one laying on the ground while the other was carted away. For a moment, the memory of how he came to survive in his car flashed through his mind. He shook it away, distracting himself by asking Loran, “you’ve been studying it. Why do you think the Greenspark fell?”
She leaned her small chin on one hand by the window. “I’m not yet sure. At first I wondered if it could be some sort of meteor fallout. Perhaps one struck the moon and sheared off an avalanche of stone blocks? But then I thought about the odd nature of the Greenspark fire, how it caused electromagnetic type disturbances and earthquakes. I’m trying to find out now: was it man-made? A satellite or weapon gone wrong? But there are the wraiths, too...”
“Yes, what about them?” Drifter encouraged laconically.
With a sigh, Loran shook her head and looked at him. “The same questions and answers apply. What about you, what do you think?”
The driver’s eyes seemed to light up for a moment at the question, but not with pleasure. “I think that the Greenspark is the beginning of the end of the world. The 'abomination of desolation.’ We’ve just lived through the apocalypse and are waiting for the very end in the post-apocalyptic world. As for the phantoms...? Angels perhaps. I don’t know.”
“Not very likely.” Loran raised an eyebrow at him. “How many phantoms have you seen?”
“It’s hard to say how many. They could all be a single being, shifting shapes, or many creatures coalescing into a single shape. I’ve seen them a few times.”
“What was it like?”
Drifter’s expression became bleak. It reflected the world outside of the window, which was shifting past them as they drove. Stores, homes, yards of wrecked equipment. All emptied of the life that once sang within them. All scorched. All silent.
“I only ask for my research, not to pry.”
For a time it seemed he still would not answer the question. Then he chose the memory least likely to awaken others from the far past.
“It was out on the Glass-Ebon bridge. Ever been there?”
Loran shook her head.
“They built it out of glass. Like icicles and cobwebs all strung together with silver cables. It spans the Ebon river, known for its dark color and strange fish…but the bridge shattered, of course. Despite all the precautions built into it, half of the bridge fell into the river. The other half still stands, connected to land. Like a skeleton without a head. A monster reaching across the darkness. I drove out on it one night to…watch the water flowing underneath.”
Drifter paused, moving his head so that it was hidden by his hood. “At the jagged end. I had been standing there for some time when I caught a movement behind me. Turning, I saw a white shape glide out into the road on the bridge perhaps fifty yards away.”
“No one ever sees where the wraiths come from or where they go,” Loran murmured.
“That’s true. Unless you call watching them disappear ‘seeing where they go’.” Drifter took a hand from the wheel to gesture once with it, sharply. “Anyway, the wraith slid out into the middle of the road. I couldn’t tell what it was shaped like. A human, basically. Man or woman could not be discerned. Tendrils floated around it, waves of white rippled from its limbs. It started to dance. Without a noise it whirled and twirled in the middle of the bridge. I watched…before suddenly it vanished. That’s it.”
The woman sat quietly on her side of the seat, one hand resting on the window. She seemed to be thinking over what he had said. Every once in a while, she would nod her head slowly as if his words agreed with something she had known before. Drifter did not offer any further explanation or press her for her own thoughts.
This silence had gone on for some time before Drifter noticed something odd beside the road up ahead of them. They were driving down a long, straight avenue between ruined buildings that had once housed small businesses. Rusted signs and lights with the glass melted out overhung the street. When he first saw the odd shape he thought that it was a signpost someone had hung old cloths and a backpack on. But when they had come a little closer he realized that it was a man, an extremely thin man, standing on the curb with one arm sticking out.
Drifter began to slow, taking in the whole scene to check for danger. The man seemed to be alone, and the only building behind him was turned into low rubble, too broken for people to be hiding in. It could still be a trap, though the figure did not seem too concerned about anything around him. He was dressed in an orange shirt, not too worn, with sunset and palm tree stylized on the front of it. His shorts were denim, cut off too neatly to have once been jeans. On his back was a dull green backpack, stuffed with junk, including what looked like a thermos tied to the top of it. His right arm was sticking out as if made of wood, the thumb pointing upwards.
Loran and Drifter exchanged a glance. Pulling up in front of the man, the driver rolled down Loran’s window with a push of a button. His gaze took in the jutting, cliff-like jaw of the fellow and his squinty eyes. He did not appear to be looking at them, or at anything else, but his thumb stayed stubbornly upright.
“You trying to hitch a ride?” Drifter queried.
The figure finally moved, hand straightening and raising to brush his long, bleached hair back out of his face. “Yeah.”
His voice was surprisingly deep, with an edge of surf and wave to it.
“Where to?”
“‘Bout ten miles down the road.”
“Well, what’s one more?” Drifter said with a note of irritation. “Move over, Loran.”
The woman did not look pleased, but scooted over until she was in the middle of the bench seat, robe brushing the shifter. The hitch-hiker took off his pack with a serpentine, gradual undulation and insinuated it in the back of the car on top of the other packages. Then he slid himself onto the seat, bony knees sticking up like more knobs for the dash panel. His huge feet were stuck in sandals with curling velcro straps. The toes sticking out of the front looked almost the same as the straps, nails blackened and curling upwards.
“Thanks,” the hitch-hiker said once he had slammed the door. “I heard you coming and thought I would try for it. Don’t get much traffic here these days. I’m Colgrin. Clarence Colgrin. You folks?”
In his usual terse style Drifter introduced both of them. Loran kept giving small, distasteful movements of her hooded head towards the newcomer and shifting away from him. But this soon put her right up against Drifter, who gave a snort and scooted right up against the door himself.
“Hold still.”
Without any preamble Clarence remarked, “I don’t eat people, you know.”
“Glad to hear it.” Drifter shrugged, steering them around a washing machine sitting half-melted in the road.
As if he hadn’t replied, the hitch-hiker went on, “it wouldn’t be, like… cool.”
Then, after a minute he added, “not to mention it’s bad for the diet. Makes your hair fall out. And you never really know what a person’s been eating or doing with themselves, do you?”
“No. Not really.”
They drove on in silence until the hitch-hiker seemed to feel they needed more conversation, though he still would not look at the others or acknowledge they were there.
“I eat algae.”
“Algae?” Loran was finally drawn out of her frosty silence.
“And pigeons. Algae and pigeons are healthy as well as easy to catch. Algae doesn’t even run away, you know?”
Both of the other occupants of the car showed that they did, indeed, agree that algae couldn’t run away when you tried to catch it.
“The pigeons haven’t changed much. Just a little more rubbery, I think. And their red crests are kinda grotesque. A lot of things have changed lately, haven’t they?”
This was another undeniable statement. Clarence Colgrin did not appear to notice their lack of response. After a polite pause in case they wished to make a remark, he continued in a dull monotone.
“I don’t care for how some things have changed. Just isn’t cool. Like the… uh… like the… uh...”
Every word he said began to go up in tone, until he was almost screaming on last ones. “Uh… like the Chardogs that eat people in the middle of the night and tried to bite me! Agh, tried to bite me!”
The last sentence was screamed, hysterically. His long, knobby limbs began to thrash and flail around the cab. A long, drawn-out shriek issued from his cavernous mouth as he convulsed terribly.
Drifter slammed on the breaks, reaching for the door, about to jump out and drag the hitch-hiker from the other side. But before he could make his move, Loran had reached out and lay her hands on their hysterical companion’s head.
“Calm. Calm my friend, quiet. Everything is peaceful here.”
At the sound of her firm, cool voice his thrashing slowed. He gulped and the shriek came to an end. Loran took her hands away, and a moment later Clarence was sitting as calmly as he had been before.
“Sorry.” Even his voice was back to the monotone. “Sometimes life gets to me. Been a lot of changes around here lately.”
Hoping to distract him from another outburst along the same lines, Drifter waved a hand out of the window. “Look, we must have gone almost ten miles by now. Will this spot do for you?”
Clarence turned his head to look out at the scene around them. It wasn’t much different than where he had been standing before. There was a long, dusty-red firetruck parked nearby, ladder extended towards a collapsed building and hoses melted all about it. Emergency vehicles had been dispatched when the Greenspark had first started falling, sent to wherever the first meteors touched down and conflagrations ignited. But the amount of emergencies was soon overwhelming. There were not enough response vehicles to go around. What had been sent out was being destroyed faster than the fires could be put out. Fuel tanks were hit and exploded, airplanes struck down out of the sky and the emergency personnel died in agony.
“Yeah, this will do,” Clarence said, nodding at the side of the road. But he did not make a move to get out. Instead, his voice went on as he stared out of the window.
“You know, I met this strange guy once. He was really weird, far out. Had glowing eyes. And he said…uh…he said that…uh...”
Once again the hitch-hiker’s voice rose without warning to a screaming note, “he said that he came from another universe!”
The tuneless shriek began to issue from his mouth again. This time his limbs were perfectly still, ridged and tight as he gripped the chair in his fingers. Loran tried to calm him, as she had before, but this time her words and touch had no effect. He continued to sit staring into the distance, fingers like talons and squinted eyes blank. The scream of mental pain did not cease.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Drifter jerked open the door, moving around to the passenger side in a few strides. Opening the door, he grasped Clarence’s arm and leg, pulling him bodily from the car. His hands ripped loose from the seat. He continued to make his endless, inhuman cry. Drifter dragged him over and left him sitting on the cement sidewalk, pulling his backpack from the car to slam down next to him. Clarence did not seem to notice.
Sliding back into the car, Drifter drove away.
Loran looked over her shoulder through the back window, watching as the miserable figure dwindled away. Like the thin, far-off cry of a hunting bird his voice faded with him.
Once they were had gone some distance, Drifter turned his head to Loran. “How did you do it the first time?”
“Calm him?”
Drifter nodded once.
“The human mind is always hungry for assurance, sympathy. I gave it to him and it calmed his immediate fear of loneliness and pain. But he is still deeply shocked from the disaster. Certain memories will bring it out. The fear becomes so strong I can do nothing.”
“I see.” The driver turned back to pay attention to the cluttered road. “We’re all just enigmas for you to work out.”
“But I--”
“What about the last things he said?” Drifter interrupted. “Do you believe what he said about someone from another universe?”
Loran’s gaze was long and slanted before she answered, “I’m not sure. It sounds far-fetched to me. Perhaps it was just someone he met who had been so altered by the disaster it was hard to recognize them as human.”
“Perhaps.” Drifter grunted. He waited some time before murmuring, “or it could have been one of the riders of the apocalypse, eyes flashing with vengeance. Sent from another realm.”
With a small flutter of her hand, Loran brushed his remark aside. “You’re too caught up in the idea that this is the end of the world. Just because things are bad now doesn’t mean we can’t rebuild.”
“Oh?” A grim quirk twisted the edge of Drifter’s mouth. “We’ll see about that.”
---
Miles later the architecture had shifted once again, this time to a type they had not met with previously on their trip. It seemed to be an experimental sector, though they could not find a sign still standing to tell its name. There was a sort of division line between it and the last sector, an open space of charred ground with nothing on it but the blackened sticks of fences that had been destroyed and trees that had died. Beyond this strip of 'open range’ a line of beige walls rose in tiers one upon the other. Arched doors and round windows opened empty eyes out onto the charred ground. Streaks of black ran up the sides of the adobe walls, along with the jagged lines of cracks. Few of the buildings looked to be fully destroyed. Being made of cured clay they were impervious to heat. But any decorations on their outside had been charred off and the earthquakes had made many of the walls break, even fall down.
The road ran into a canyon between the adobe houses, crossed high up by an arch tinted dull red. If it had once held the name of the sector there was nothing left now. Drifter aimed for it but slowed as they neared the entrance. To each side of the road posts had recently been rammed into the ground. Something hung from each post like a ragged sack with holes torn in it. But it was not sacks. It was corpses, their clothes in rags and faces torn by the ravages of scavenging birds. It was impossible to tell what they had looked like before, but they had become a easily readable sign since they were hung there. The sign read 'Warning’ in crimson flesh.
“This place is bad.” Drifter came to a stop, eyes cutting from one side to another.
“Why don’t we go around?” Loran made a small movement with her hand, the first she had made in some time.
“Not enough fuel.”
The sun was hanging on the western side of the sky behind them, throwing long shadows in front. It made the walls of the houses an each side of the road seem darker, looming into the street streaked in black and peach.
Drifter looked at the fuel gauge again and shook his head. “Not enough fuel to go around, because this is the best place I’ve seen so far for finding crystal fuel. The buildings aren’t completely destroyed, so it won’t have sparked off as easily.”
“Despite those things?” Loran tilted her head towards the warnings without looking at them directly.
“Yes.” He started driving again, car sliding into the shadows of the adobe houses. “Those probably mean that there is a gang controlling part of this place. But no gang is omnipresent, or can have found all of the hidden supplies. I’ll take my chances with them rather than with running out of fuel and having to go the rest of the way on foot.”
“Our chances.” Loran reminded him dourly. “I’m trying to get to the Academy sector as well.”
With a grunt and a shrug, Drifter pushed her words away. His foot pressed on the accelerator and they glided forwards.
Some of the buildings in the section had evidently been more than houses. Taller office buildings, garages with scorched metal doors and medical offices with worn signs depicting bones, teeth or eyes were set into the homogeneous flow. Most of the adobe houses did not have individual lawns or spaces around them, only drives and small patches of shriveled grass in front. They made a sheer canyon wall on each side of the car, many with balconies, ledges or flower boxes protruding beneath the openings of windows and doors.
Charred lines showed where rugs and banners used to hang from these protrusions. Large cracks gaped in the walls here and there, displaying teeth made of steel where support rods ran through the adobe.
Drifter flicked a gaze at the top of one building, then returned his stare to the road. After a minute he pointed the gray vehicle down a different street, running between buildings tinted faintly green. The shadows were deeper here and his car almost seemed to creep into them like a living thing.
“Someone was posted up there.” Drifter jerked his head back the way they had come from. “Watching the entrance road. I saw him move off to report to base.”
“So they already know we’re coming,” Loran commented in a soft voice.
“But they won’t know where we are for long, unless they have scouts all across the sector.” Turning down another street, Drifter kept to the shadows and drove slower, so that the engine noise would not travel as far. He took one path between buildings after another, until they came to a dead-end lined in garages and stacks of private dwellings.
“This will do.” Piloting the car over to one side, Drifter slipped into a garage of which the door had fallen down and been blown aside. Inside there were a few cardboard boxes, marvelously whole, a shelf containing rusty tools and a workbench empty of everything except for a cracked coffee mug. It was shadowy inside, the darkness deep and menacingly quiet in the corners. Once the car was shut off, the inside of the garage felt like a swept tomb.
Stepping out onto the cement floor, Drifter gestured to his companion. “You can come with me. If the car’s going to get stolen it’s better that you’re not in it.”
“I could watch over it,” Loran offered, looking up through the car’s open door.
He shook his head in a negative. “Too dangerous. They might come in numbers. The best we can do is hope it keeps hidden here.”
With a shrug, the woman stood out of her side and closed the door without a soft sound, before settling the purple skirt around her and making sure the hood of her robe would stay up. She seemed put out by Drifter’s abrupt commands.
“Why didn’t we put it in a garage with a door?”
“Those things are so unkempt they would shriek like a banshee. And if we need to make a quick getaway it’s best not to be fenced in.”
“I see.”
Drifter waved her after him and stalked towards the inner door, which led from the garage into the house it belonged to. The door opened with a muffled sound, letting them into a dim hallway. There was a carpet on the floor, woven in shades of orange, plum and coral. It was thick with dust, which came up in little poofs as they trod on it. There was no ornamentation on the walls, and the light fixtures in the roof were hidden under tinted shields. At the end, the hall opened out into what had once been the living room. It was in shambles now, the tables broken up around the room, deep cracks inches wide across the floor and burns running down the walls in dark stains from the open windows. Beside one window a wide, low picture hung on the wall, depicting a horse galloping across the open plains. It reared its head, wearing various watercolor hues that a horse would never be seen in alive.
After this space Drifter led the way through a warren of more rooms and halls, all ruined to various extents. Some of the chambers were so unharmed that it felt like they would walk in and find a family still living there. Others were cut through by cracks and scorches, marred by broken furniture strewn across them.
Eventually, they exited through an open, arched doorway into a courtyard placed in the center of one adobe block.
It had once been tiled in bright shades of green, blue and yellow, with potted plants growing in the corners to give vibrancy and life to the scene. Now the tiles were broken and gone, the plants hairy sticks of black in their containers. Reddish spears of sun slanted over the roof tops, striking into the shadowy court. A few scraps of dirty fabric blew skittishly across it.
They stood in a shaded porch overhung with the upper story’s balcony, supported by beams of sculpted adobe which had once held creeping vines. Drifter paused here, surveying the courtyard. When his companion made a move as if to go forward he put out an arm to stop her.
“Wait.” His eyes narrowed as he gazed around. “I heard something move...”
Loran stood still, cocking her head to one side. After a moment she nodded in agreement, touching his arm to draw his attention to a doorway on the left-hand side of the court.
“Someone is in there.”
Drifter’s eyes narrowed at her. “Instincts. Someone or some thing?”
“A human.”
Moving away from her, Drifter nodded at the porch. “Stay here. I’ll check it out.”
He strode to the cracked tiles and, keeping to the deeper shade, began to make his way around the yard. Loran stepped back to lean against the wall, a worried frown on her face. Drifter looked back once to make sure she stayed put. With her purple robe about her, it was hard to make out the woman’s shape against the dim walls.
The noise Drifter had heard was a faint clinking, rattling noise, akin to gravel being sifted through someone’s hands. It had fallen silent as he started to move, before beginning again with an odd consistency. He followed the sound as a wolf stalks a scent, carefully moving across the court to the door.
Inside was a room brightly lit by a pair of olive oil lanterns set on the seats of chairs. Between them a large bowl sat on the floor. An old man, with white hair trailing to his shoulders crouched over the bowl, picking up the contents and letting them roll off of his fingers. It was crystal fuel, pale blue and glittering.
The old man’s fingers were stained with this activity. The thin, bony hands had an odd green-blue tint that only came with long handling of the fuel. He did not seem to see anything around him except for the pale hoard. His clothes were good and he did not look starving, but all he saw was the fuel. As he sifted it the old man muttered in a high, panting tone, “my jewels! My treasure! Oh, my lovely treasure...”
Drifter’s gaze became sharper. Crystal fuel was just what he was looking for. One weak, old man should not be able to stop him from getting it.
Striding into the room, he came up beside the bent figure and looked down into the bowl along with him. The old man hardly seemed to notice until Drifter spoke,
“you have a few pounds of fuel there.”
With a little gasp, the old man looked up at him, eyes becoming round and luminescent like milky marbles. “My treasure!”
“I’ll trade you for it. Bread, meat, coffee…?”
“No, no...” The old man hunched over the bowl, putting out his stained talons in an attempt to cover it. “Mine, mine!”
Drifter crouched in front of him, meeting his gaze. “Look, old one, I need some fuel. I have goods to trade. The fuel’s doing nothing for you in that bowl. I will give you things to make your life happier, for a time, if you give me that fuel.”
But the white head continued to shake in a negative and the hands to tremble over the bowl in defense. Standing up, Drifter decided to use harsher methods. He was about to employ them when he heard a high-pitched whistle from outside. Turning away from the old man with a start, he peered out of the door. The shadows were becoming deeper away from the lantern light, darkness eating the sky. A form moved swiftly through the dark and stepped in at the door, followed by three others.
“Look what we have here, brothers. Some sort of scorched scum bullying our father!”
The first man was tall and square-faced, an ugly burn scar running down one cheek. Other than that, he showed no signs of the Greenspark disaster. His clothes were strong and clean, a jacket, vest and jeans which all fit him. A wide-brimmed hat sat on his head, and there was a pistol in his hand. The three men who followed him were all much alike, except for the weapons they carried. One had a semi-automatic rifle and a belt of bullets, another a pair of machetes at his belt and the last a long staff with a metal ferule on the end. They did not look like brothers one should mess with.
“I wasn’t tormenting him.” Drifter’s voice was gravelly in the small room. “I was trying to make a trade.”
“Hah, what have you got to trade, scorched rat?” The eldest brother stepped forward. He was in his early thirties, perhaps, while the youngest brother could have been anywhere between eighteen and his mid twenties.
“Your cloak? That empty fuel cylinder in your belt? Come on, what would you trade?”
Drifter wisely held his tongue. The brothers crowded up on one side of him, while their father continued to crouch over his bowl like a hungry rat on a carcass.
“Won’t talk, eh?” The eldest’s voice became darker, rougher. “We’ll just have to kill you. You might even be part of the Adobe gang. Don’t look it, but it’s better that you’re safely dead than we’re sorry.”
Drifter tensed himself, eyes flicking between the other men.
“Not here!” The old man shrieked, “don’t want his blood in here!”
“Outside.” The leader jerked his head at a lantern. “Josh, bring a light. It will only take a moment.”
His hand reached out and gripped Drifter’s shoulder. The youngest boy, with the stick, grabbed up one of the lanterns. They began to lead the loner towards the door.
At that moment he made his move.
Josh had fallen a little behind with the lamp. Jerking free of the eldest, Drifter kicked at the lantern. His toe contacted and flung the fiery glass to the side, where it exploded on the floor. In a split second Drifter was whirling to knock the pistol from his main captor’s hand. It flew across the room as he felled the man with a series of blows to stomach and face.
But by now the brothers were reacting. Josh swung his staff at the loner in a whistling arc, almost taking off his head. Drifter ducked it just in time, jumping towards him to grasp at the wooden haft. The brother with the rifle whipped it up, pulling a lever before pointing the gun at him. He did not yet dare fire because of the proximity of Josh, but he was ready if Drifter moved away at all. The third brother drew a machete, pushing his way into the fight with it upraised.
“Stop!”
Everything froze as if a spell had been laid on it. Even Drifter paused as the icy, commanding voice reverberated through his bones. All heads turned towards the door.
A tall, slim woman with a pale face and inky dark hair stood framed against the darkness beyond. The hood of her purple robe was pushed back, while the folds of the garment fell gracefully to the floor. Her hands were out in front of her, cupped under a glowing orb of crackling blue light.
Loran moved slowly into the room between the skirmishers. Halting, she let the light go. It fell with a splash to the floor, exploding outwards in tiny droplets of blue before disappearing in mid air. Looking around, the woman said, “I think there is no reason for us to fight and kill each other. If you do not wish to accept Drifter’s offer of trade, we’ll leave.”
The old man was still holding his bowl in his talon fingers. “No! No trade!”
Loran beckoned to Drifter with a flick of her finger. “Then we will go.”
Very calmly, without a twitch of his face, Drifter joined her and they walked out of the door into the gloom of the twilight. As soon as they were out in the dark he grasped her wrist and started running, pulling the woman after him through the doorway on the side of the courtyard, down a hall and into a pitch-dark room. From there he led them at a quick walk back through the warren, to where the car sat in the darkened garage. He took no wrong turns.
Drifter stopped in the garage, turning to her with a quick motion. “So, it isn’t just a mental sensitivity. What was that blue light?”
Loran extracted her wrist and brushed down her robe, panting. “There was no reason to run so fast. They were letting us go.”
“For the moment. Now answer my question.”
The woman hesitated, face a blur in the dark. When she spoke it was with firmness, “I do not question you about your secrets too closely. Do not question me.”
There was a space of silence.
“Fine.”
Drifter surprised her with his answer, moving over to open the door of his car and start it. They both slid into opposite seats and the driver looked over at the woman. “I’ve been fighting too much lately. It’s time to play a new card.”
She forbore from asking as the car slid out into the darkness of the gathering night.