Page 20 of The Last True Hero

Seven

NEITHER JAKE NOR Jennywaited at the rendezvous point, but someone had tied a torn piece of shirt to the dented grill of an old rusted car. It hadn't been there before.

"Jenny's," Mia said, examining the piece of linen. She couldn't imagine Jake wearing pale pink, even if it were so faded that it was more like a blush-white.

"Where'd they go?"

"Don't know." She looked up. There was a thin silvery gray arrow in the concrete wall straight ahead of her. It looked like someone scratched something metal along the wall. "That way. Camp."

McClain drained his flask, giving a satisfied nod. "Good. Hopefully they'll bring the rest of the group with them and meet us half—"

Mia looked up from where she was retying her bootlace. "Half—?"

McClain stood frozen, his head cocked to the side. He stared back in the direction they'd come from, and Mia swallowed. That stare told her a thousand words.

"What is it?" she whispered.

McClain grabbed her by the arm and set her to moving. "Don't look now, but there's something following us again."

Damn it. She caught herself before she looked. "Is it that thing you sensed before?"

"Maybe." He kept moving, just a little faster than they'd been going. "This must be its hunting ground. It’s near where it stopped tailing us before. "

Thick vines draped from broken balconies. All of a sudden she realized how quiet it was here. The two of them felt all alone in the world. And they were right out in the open.

Anything could be hiding in the rubble around them.

A horde of revenants.... Some kind of critter like a shadow-cat or warg. Even the rest of the reivers.

"Tell me about your bar," McClain said suddenly. "Why whiskey? I mean, your beer's not bad, but you obviously care more about the whiskey."

"What?"

He helped her around a pile of rubble. "Try and act normal. It already knows where we are, and it's stalking us. If it attacks we might be able to take it by surprise."

"Whiskey, right." Mia eyed the enormous hunting knife at his side. "It was my dad's favorite drink. Rare though, because of the price. You couldn't get it up here in the Badlands, you had to import it from down south where they grow heaps of corn and grains. After he died, I wanted something to remember him by. This traveller came through once who knew how to make whiskey. He showed me how to make it, and I rigged up an old copper still behind the bar. Then I talked to Thwaites and he started growing corn, and malted barley. I'm the only one north of the border forts who makes it, I think."

"Which makes you worth your weight in gold," McClain muttered, but most of his attention was behind them.

A piece of stone tumbled down from a ledge, ricocheting off the concrete below. Mia nearly leapt out of her skin. Only that warm hand on her wrist kept her from breaking into a run.

"It's above us," McClain said. "Up on that balcony there."

Nervous sweat trickled down her spine. She wanted to look so badly that she could barely breathe. "What do we do?"

"We can't risk using a gun," he murmured. "The reivers might hear it."

"I'm not so worried about that," she shot back. "If we shoot it, it won't eat us. We can hunt the reivers down later. You're the world's best tracker, aren't you?"

He made a noncommittal sound. "It won't eat us."

"I'm pretty sure it's not just following us because it wants to be friends. If we don't shoot it, then maybe we won't get a chance to rescue Sage from the reivers."

"I'm a bounty hunter, Mia. This is what I do. It won't hurt you, because I won't let it," he told her firmly. "I can kill it with my knife, if it gets close enough."

His confidence was a suit of armor. And it worked, because her nerves died down just a fraction. She wasn't used to this. Sure, she knew how to work a shotgun, ride a motorbike, and skin a deer. She was handy with a knife and knew how to throw a punch, thanks to growing up with Jake.

But she was also just a desperate bar owner who wanted to get her sister back.