Shadows (Ashes Trilogy 2)

“Oh God,” Ruby quailed. “More?”

Probably another squad, Alex guessed. The newcomers were evenly divided between girls and boys, in more or less the same outfit: white on white, with matching balaclavas, so that only the dark holes of their eyes showed, like sockets in skulls. Each wore a wildly colored bandana made of tattooed skin tied around his or her forehead, like a kamikaze pilot. Gliding to a stop, they began shucking camouflage assault packs.

“Jesus, they got some serious gear,” Ray said.

He was right, but Alex knew the packs didn’t belong to these new Changed. The scents of the original owners were very fresh. She inhaled again, more deeply. Oh my God, there’s food. Cinnamon and raisins, peanuts and chocolate, and crackers, there were crackers and . . . Saliva poured into her mouth, and she could feel her knees start to shiver. She thought there might even be a wedge of cheese. Her hunger was so great that even the knowledge that the packs’ owners had been alive only a short time ago didn’t make much of a dent. She just wanted the food.

Spider’s scent suddenly cut at her nose, and then she spied the girl, on skis, floating out of the woods like a bad dream. Blood freckled Spider’s wolf skin and parka. Along the way, her hair had come undone to tumble around her face. Her wound oozed pus, but the silver shine in her eyes was bright and excited, the blood fever giving her skin a glow.

But instead of Wolf, a lanky boy she’d never seen before pulled at the snow by her side. The boy’s snow-white outfit was misted with blood and reeked of iron, scorched metal, burnt powder.

Blowback , she thought. The shot had been up close, too. The kid was pretty buff, like a sleek, red-spotted snow leopard. Kicking off his skis, the boy came up behind Spider and pressed against the girl, reaching up to cup her br**sts. Eyes closed, neck arched, Spider leaned back into the boy, grinding her hips, her arms snaking up to pull his head down to the angle of her neck. Their mingled scent—roadkill and iron and Spider’s rot—thickened, their excitement steaming up to turn the air turgid and so heavy Alex thought she might choke. She could feel the other newcomers coming alive, and then they were all knotting together in a frenzy of feverish mouths and groping hands.

“Hey, get a room, you little bastards!” Sharon shouted.

“Holy God,” Ray said. “They’re going to have an orgy out here, on the snow?”

She doubted it. This was bloodlust and, she thought, the release that came from surviving some kind of battle. That would explain the many packs that did not belong to them, the scent of spent powder, Beretta’s injury, and the blood.

But Wolf . . . She concentrated, trying to reach past the general stink—so many new scents and, over it all, the arching fever of sex—but she couldn’t smell him. Oh my God, he’s not—

“Where’s the other boy?” Ruby asked. “The wolf one?”

“Dead, if we’re lucky.” Sharon jabbed Alex with a knobby elbow. “Cheer up. That pimply one seems awful sweet. If you don’t like him, those other boys look ready for a little horizontal mambo.”

Alex said nothing, but she was surprised that the idea that Wolf might be dead actually hurt. As if she’d lost something, too.

No, don’t you dare. He was a monster and never your friend.

She forced her attention back to the newcomers. Spider and Leopard were still sucking face, but their smell was less intense now. Even a sex-crazed Changed wasn’t about to get down and dirty in the snow when there was that nice house and, probably, plenty of bedrooms. Maybe even a wet bar and Jacuzzi, which wouldn’t work, but it was the principle of the thing. The others had calmed, too, and were clustering around Beretta the way football players huddled over a downed teammate. Now that they were closer to the fire, she caught the quicksilver shine of long knives strapped to the newcomers’ backs. They were packing, too, lots and lots of firepower: rifles and matte-black handguns in cross-carry holsters and gleaming bullets on bandoliers. And was that one kid wearing a grenade belt?

“Shit,” Ray said in a hushed undertone. “They’re like some kind of crazy-ass ninja kill squad.”

That was, she thought, exactly right. So, friends? Allies? Or just a different tribe who happened to link up for a little neighborly potlatch? Her eyes brushed over Spider and Leopard, noted the way their hands ran over one another. That any Changed actually had sex made her flesh crawl.

But there had been Wolf, and that hunger, she thought. Maybe sex and hunger are all part of the same stew.

“Lot of guns,” Sharon murmured.

“Yeah,” Alex breathed, glad to focus on anything other than Spider and Leopard exploring each other’s tonsils. She eyed one kid brandishing an Uzi. Where the hell had they gotten assault weapons? “But there are too many guns. These can’t all be theirs. I think the weapons are like their booty or something, just like the packs. The question is, who did they fight?”

“Who’s crazy enough to fight them, you mean,” Sharon said.

“Who cares? About time someone had some balls.” Ray paused then leaned in closer. “Listen, they’re all over there, and we’re here. Know what I’m saying?”

“Bad idea,” Sharon muttered.

For once, Alex agreed. “They’ve still got guns. They’ll hunt us down easy, if the storm doesn’t kill us first.”

“But maybe not,” Ray hissed. “You saw them. They’re wired, distracted. Come on, Alex, you’re the one always going on about getting off our butts.”

“Yeah,” Sharon said, “but getting shot in the back isn’t what she had—”

An angry shout erupted from the woods. Even Acne jumped, and then all the Changed were squinting past snow and into the dark.

“Jesus,” Ray breathed. “Who—”

Oh no. Even if she hadn’t seen the look Acne and Slash tossed one another, or read it in the body language of the others, or remembered that, with rare exceptions, the Changed did not speak or make many sounds—she would know. Still, she sampled the air, let it drift over her tongue, hoping that maybe she was wrong.

She wasn’t.

28

First, there was a crack and then a glassy splash as the picture window exploded. Jagged shards rained onto hardwood. Something whirred, cleaving air as it spun past her right ear, and then there was a softer puh as the bullet smacked into bone and flesh. The man’s head snapped back at nearly the same moment his skull blew out with a sound that was dull and wet, like a pumpkin squashed by a truck. The man toppled.