Page 43 of Snag (Conduit #2)

I reach for the handle of the passenger door without further hesitation.

The universe tugs at me — hard and away from the vehicle, away from Reck.

Muta twists on my extended arm, taking his bushmaster form in an instant. Seriously heavy and completely pissed — over being abruptly awoken, I presume — he twines up my arm, over my shoulder, and around my neck.

“I don’t have the black box disabled yet,” Coda says over the speakers. “Should I loop in Rought?”

“Not yet,” Reck says, answering for me. His gaze is riveted to Muta .

The death god trapped in the form of a huge snake rears partially up off my shoulder, hissing when this display of dominance results in his head getting covered in my hair. He looks ridiculous, like he’s wearing a wig.

I see Reck’s lip twitch as he suppresses a smile.

Unfortunately, those annoyingly full lips thin as the Authority Reck personality takes over again. “Bellamy was clear about the sequence of events that need to happen now. Give us a fifteen-minute head start.”

“Bellamy’s schedule …” I say. “And why would Presh voluntarily leave the property? What is Bellamy holding over her?”

“Nothing,” Reck snaps.

“Nothing,” Coda says over the phone, oddly agreeable. “Not according to the text messages.”

“Just her soft fucking heart,” Reck mutters. “And the promise of a sister.”

“And an inference that Bellamy needs help,” Coda says dryly. “To escape the Cataclysm’s clutches.”

“Same thing,” Reck huffs.

“Redemption …” I murmur. My stomach anxiously churns as I recall the tail end of my conversation with Presh.

“What?” Reck snaps.

“Isn’t Bellamy already being aided by your agents?” I say, more to rub it in than to confirm it.

“Yes,” Reck huffs, pissed about actually confirming it. “It wasn’t clear before that they …” His nostrils flare as he takes a breath, then corrects himself. “I didn’t think they’d come for Presh.”

He’s not lying. I don’t think he’s lied to me once. Yet. He knows … he knows that much about me, at least. And he knew my aunt as well. The Conduit is hard to lie to, to hi de anything from. Not if the universe needs us to know the truth.

“Maybe Bellamy needs help getting away from both the Cataclysm and the Authority,” I say, as if I’m actually thinking it all through. I’m not, really. I’ll react in the moment as I always do. I’m just giving the universe a chance to weigh in for a second time.

“This exposes them,” Coda says over the phone speakers, fingers flying over multiple keyboards in the background.

“Don’t worry, Sergeant …” The awry tech sneers Reck’s title.

“I’m putting a tidy little info pack together for you to deliver to your Authority superiors.

Not that the Conduit will be held accountable for whatever actions she’s about to take. ”

Reck’s gaze flicks across my face, as if truly seeing me as the Conduit, not as the girl he knew, for the first time. But his expression once again hardens as it settles on Muta. The bushmaster has managed to untangle himself from my hair.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeats.

“You don’t believe that,” I say mildly. Guessing rather than truly knowing.

“Don’t read me,” he snaps. “If I say it, it’s the truth. Get in the fucking SUV, or Bellamy is going to use DeVille’s life force to fuel a teleportation spell and take Presh back to the Cataclysm.”

I get in the SUV.

The universe tries to force me back out, so strongly that my movements are jerky and uncoordinated.

“Stop fucking around,” Reck snarls.

I laugh joylessly, already knowing where all of this is leading.

It’s probably not a great idea to die only days after my last death, which was only three weeks after the previous death.

What would happen to the Conduit power if the vessel can’t be revived?

Would it fall to another? Even if I’m the only currently living vessel?

Could anyone not bred or destined for that power actually hold it?

I don’t think so.

So what, then? If all the essence that fuels the earth, that protects us, flows through the Conduit and that power doesn’t have its vessel — me — does it all just slowly wither and die?

Reck hits the accelerator, practically fishtailing down the drive.

My shoulder slams into the door, the sharp pain pulling me back into the present. Where I belong.

I buckle my seatbelt.

Muta settles in my lap.

My phone goes dead.

The universe tugs at me, again and again.

I’m not supposed to be with Reck. Maybe I’m not supposed to go after Presh at all, just as I wasn’t really supposed to rescue her at the diner. Or to snip Chains’s threads to save her.

I’m fucking with someone’s destiny right now. Or I’m about to.

Two days ago, I would have said that as the Conduit, I had no destiny, no fated path. But in this moment, I have a feeling I might be about to reweave a section of my own tapestry.

And it’s going to hurt.

It always does.

“Was it you, then?” I finally ask, resting my head back against the seat and watching the road speed by.

Fifteen minutes ago, we left the ocean and any sign of thriving civilization behind us, entering into another stretch of the wilds.

But unlike the unclaimed or unaffiliated coastal regions of Oregon, here on the edge of the barrens, only the remnants of a once-verdant landscape remain.

The ruins of farmhouses and barns. The occasional rusted coil of barbed wire on a broken section of fencing.

Even the flora and fauna have been slow to reclaim this land.

It’s still overcast, but we’ve even left the rain behind.

Muta in my lap is fixated on Reck. My phone is still seemingly dead in my hand. Coda must be seriously pissed at me for willingly sitting inside a literal black box. We’ve been driving in silence for almost an hour, taking the highway due east.

“Was it me what?” Reck snaps, as if he loathes talking to me, loathes being in the same space as me.

“Was it you who killed me?” I ask evenly. “You who severed all our soul bonds?”

Reck takes a breath— then another, even more ragged. His hands tighten on the steering wheel until the molded leather and steel groan under the pressure he’s exerting.

“No,” he rasps. “It wasn’t me. Not … by my hand, at least.”

He carries some sort of guilt over my first death. And Rought seems to think Reck’s done something that makes him dangerous to me, for me.

I give him space to elaborate. He doesn’t. Though the tension threading through his hands and up through his shoulders eases a little as more minutes, then another quarter hour, pass in silence.

The landscape continues to change around us as we close in on the barrens and the essence-scorched plateaus that run all the way to the base of the Rocky Mountains just over the border into Idaho.

Reck has been driving at double any reasonable speed limit the whole way. Not that I’ve seen any posted signs or monitoring devices. And even though the road is nearly dead straight and not that badly maintained, the vehicle doesn’t run smoothly at this velocity.

The multitiered breakdown of the political landscape of North America over a century ago destroyed much of the verdant farmlands, the vineyards and orchards that once defined this area.

Closer to the mountains and rivers, nature is slowly reclaiming the territory.

These so-called wilds are vastly different than the overgrown sections of the coast that the Outcast MC is claiming and rehabilitating.

Rather than slowly crumbling from neglect as it is along the coastline, any hint of civilization has been scrubbed from these lands.

Random ranger-overseen outposts pop up all along the highway, all the way through the rest of Oregon and into Idaho. I’m fairly certain those outposts are more for emergency situations rather than being continually occupied. Again, the overall governance of the wilds of Cascadia is … spotty.

If I were to roll my window down, I might catch the scent of dire-mage-wrought essence still etched deeply into the earth. Or of the weapons the nulls deployed to stop those mages from claiming this previously resource-rich land.

A trio of my Gage ancestors stepped in to quell the conflict in this area, then helped define and fortify the newly drawn borders between Canada to the northeast, the Navajo Nation to the east, and California to the south .

Not that the name ‘Gage’ appears in any null-written history books. Within those pages, only the deployment of a weapon of mass destruction is mentioned. With nothing of note about the miraculous recovery from that nuclear fallout.

“It’s ironic,” I say, catching sight of essence scorch marks still marring the barren rock out my window. “For a dire awry to choose this as her meeting spot.”

“The border between Cascadia and California isn’t as fortified as the border between Cascadia and the Navajo Nation.

” Reck flicks his thumb to indicate the GPS map on the dashboard.

We’re still at least an hour away from the location pin that has updated three times on Reck’s map, always moving farther east. As if someone is silently sending through new coordinates.

“Even so, Bellamy can retreat in two directions from here, then cross into Canada or the US.”

“The United States is practically walled off.”

“It’s the border between the US and the Federation, and between the Federation and Mexico, that’s fortified to that extent. Everyone who shares a border with Cascadia and California has been easing crossings for the last decade or so, especially trade.”

I hum thoughtfully, not all that interested in the conversation. Though the fact that Reck is speaking to me with actual civility is a nice change. International borders never impacted me much as Zaya Gage, and they certainly don’t impact the Conduit from moving where the universe wills her.

And yes, I’m still ignoring that the universe actively doesn’t want me in this vehicle, or with Reck, or perhaps both.