The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [183]
Two hours later, her legs were aching, and she couldn't stop shivering. Night had fallen over the city, and the lights dazzled her eyes, making her jet-lagged head throb. She drank the last swig of the hazelnut latte she had bought a while back at Starbucks. It was ice-cold. She gagged, swallowed the viscous liquid down, then tossed the cup in a trash can.
Beltan threw his own cup into the trash, then held a hand to his head. “I feel like there are bees in my skull and wolves in my stomach.”
She allowed herself a smirk. “I told you two was too many.”
At Starbucks, the blond man had gotten the largest size mocha they offered, and he had sucked it down so quickly that, when they passed another Starbucks a few blocks later, he had hijacked her and made her buy him a second.
“I guess I have a lot to learn about this world.”
Deirdre sighed, regretting her joke. “No, Beltan. You're doing great. Really. No one would ever know you weren't from Earth. You blend in perfectly.”
Almost too perfectly, it occurred to her. She knew Vani had spent several years on Earth; the assassin had had time to learn the language and customs. But what about Beltan? He had spent most of his one, brief visit to Earth locked in a laboratory.
“The fairy blood,” he said. He must have guessed what she was thinking. “It helps me to know things I shouldn't. Like how to speak the language of this land.”
Deirdre felt a tingling in her chest. “What other sorts of things do you know?”
“I'm not sure. The feelings are weaker here than they are on Eldh. Muffled.”
“Try.”
He shut his eyes. “I know the moon is up,” he said after a minute, “but you can't see it. It's behind the buildings. I know there is a storm coming over the mountains, and that it brings snow with it. I know there's a river nearby, even though we have yet to come upon it. It's shallow, and in no hurry to reach the ocean. And I know . . .” His forehead wrinkled in a frown.
She touched his arm. “What?”
“I know there's something wrong in this city. Something terrible and hungry, like a shadow. And it's growing. I know it, just as I know he's here somewhere, not far away. Just as I know he's in danger.”
He opened his eyes. They were haunted in the cast-off light of a neon sign.
“Do you think I'm crazy?”
She shook her head.
He sighed. “Neither do I.”
“Come on.” Deirdre hooked her arm around his. “We've done enough for our first scouting mission. Let's get back to the hotel and get warm.”
Together they started up Seventeenth Street. They had covered much of downtown on foot, and while they hadn't seen any sign of Travis, they had discovered some things of interest all the same. Beltan was right about the shadow growing in the city. The clues were everywhere. The newspaper headlines warned of the crashing economy, the rising crime rate. The televisions blared the same bleak news. People moved about their everyday lives, only furtively, with fear in their eyes. And everywhere—stapled to every telephone pole, taped to the side of every fence—were the posters bearing the faces of the missing.
Deirdre had read about it on the plane, but she hadn't realized how serious it was. At first the disappearances had been limited to the homeless—the neglected, the ill, the forgotten. However, over the last few days, others had begun to vanish. The posters that covered the city now showed the smiling faces of well-dressed, healthy people: husbands and wives, sons and daughters. Loved. Missed.
They turned the corner onto Court Street, and Deirdre saw a woman taping a photocopied flyer to the side of a mailbox. The flyer showed the picture of a teenage girl with glasses, smiling. A high school yearbook picture. The woman looked up, her face exhausted, her eyes red and dry.
“I'm sorry,” Deirdre murmured, but the woman had already turned away to shuffle down the street, flyers and tape in hand.
When they stepped into their suite at the Brown Palace, they found Vani and Anders already there. The