City of Light (Outcast 1)

“How did you meet them? It’s obvious that Branna isn’t exactly on friendly terms with anyone.”

“No, he’s just not on friendly terms with you. And he hates liars.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Which doesn’t exactly gel with what you said earlier about him not trusting you for a year. Does that mean he thought you were lying about something?”

“No, but as I also said, he’s a lion shifter, and they tend to take a long time before they trust.”

“Why does he hate déchet so much?”

“His family was killed by them.”

My stomach sunk. That wasn’t the news I’d wanted to hear. “So he was born during the war? He doesn’t look that old.”

“Most shifters tend to hold their age better than humans, and their life spans are generally double.”

“Yes, but if he was born during the war, then he’s at least a hundred years old. He should be showing some signs of age, and he’s not.”

Jonas shrugged again and reached behind the seat to snag a backpack. “Hungry?”

“In other words, question time is over.”

His gaze met mine, green eyes glacial. “When you start telling your secrets, I might. Fruit or trail ration?”

“Fruit.”

He tossed me an apple, then ripped open the plastic surround on what smelled like beef jerky and began eating. Silence fell, but it certainly wasn’t an easy silence. It was too filled with awareness.

When I finished the apple, I tossed the core out the window, then crossed my arms and stared at the countryside whizzing by. It had been ages since I’d been this far out, and it was good to see that the scars of war had all but disappeared into a sea of green. Here and there the remnants of a human city jutted skeletal metal and concrete fingers toward the sky, but as we got farther away from Central, the forests and ruins gave way to the vast tracts of farmland that were Central’s lifeline.

It took another hour to reach the Broken Mountains, and as the ATV began to climb, Jonas switched to stealth mode and silence fell around us. The shadows got deeper and the air colder, until I once again began wishing I’d brought a coat with me.

“Here, wear this.” Jonas pulled an old military coat from the floor behind his seat and handed it to me. It smelled vaguely of oil and musky male; it wasn’t Jonas’s scent, but someone else’s. Someone I hadn’t met yet. “It belongs to Micale, our mechanic, but I’m sure he won’t mind you borrowing it.”

I raised my eyebrows as I pulled the coat on. It was about two sizes too large, but right then I wasn’t caring, given it was also thick and warm. “You own this thing?”

“We do. It comes in handy if we are hired for work outside of Central.”

“And does that happen often?”

He flashed me another of those all-too-fleeting grins. “Often enough to warrant owning an ATV.”

I half smiled. “So where do you keep it? Obviously not in Chaos.”

“No. Aside from the fact it’s too wide to get through the lower-level streets, leaving any piece of technology unguarded in that place is just an open invitation for scavengers to help themselves.”

“So you keep it in Central?”

“Maybe.”

Frustration rolled through me, but I could hardly complain about his not directly answering questions when I was doing exactly the same thing. The GPS began to ping softly, and I glanced down as the screen came online. Our destination was a little circle of red we were rapidly approaching. Jonas switched back t

o manual mode, then pulled off the road and drove into the scrub. The ATV’s treads crashed their way through the undergrowth, leaving a thick trail of destruction behind us.

“There’s little point of remaining in stealth mode right now,” I commented. “Anyone with decent hearing is going to hear this thing ripping through the forest a mile away.”

“Which is why,” he said, hitting the kill switch, “we walk from here.”

The ATV came to a halt and the doors raised. I grabbed my pack and climbed out. The air was thick with the scent of eucalyptus and freshly churned dirt, and the light uneven. I glanced upward; all that was visible was a sea of mottled green. Bright shafts of sunlight stabbed through the canopy, spearing downward but not really lifting the deeper gloom of the forest floor.