No Shelter Trilogy (Omnibus, Books 1-3) Page 11

  Mary stands from the floor and takes a seat on the wooden chair next to the fire. She points at the floor in front of her. “Have a seat, Princess Nada.”

  A few minutes later, Daedric returns from the stockroom with bits of wood from a shelf he broke down for firewood. He smiles when he sees my hair.

  “Wow…” he says.

  Suddenly I have a feeling Mary may have messed up my hair to embarrass me. I run my fingers over my hair, but it’s smooth. Not a hair out of place.

  I turn around and Mary shrugs. “I think I did pretty good.”

  “Can you do mine, too?” Qiana asks.

  Mary’s eyebrows shoot up. “Uh… no.”

  I have to admit it feels good not bearing the brunt of Mary’s rage for once. Still, I can’t help but pity Qiana.

  “I’ll do your hair,” I say, and I can see Daedric trying not to laugh.

  Isaac looks disturbed, as if my touching Qiana’s head will somehow transmit the truth about her identity into my fingertips. Mary gets up so I can sit in the chair and Qiana sits cross-legged in front of me.

  I run the brush through her long black hair. Her hair is coarser than mine, but it’s as glossy as her perfectly white teeth. I do my best braiding job, because I don’t want to be accused of ruining her hair out of spite. I can’t help but worry that when I’m done Isaac will compare us and realize Qiana’s prettier.

  I tuck the end of her hair under at the nape of her neck and secure it with a hairpin. She touches her hair and her face lights up.

  “Thank you.”

  Isaac stares at me for a moment before he speaks. “You look beautiful.”

  Daedric is still tossing more wood onto the fire, but the way his body tenses is obvious. The silence in the room makes me uneasy.

  Mary gasps. “The storm passed!”

  She runs to the window, barely limping, and gazes outside.

  I pull my beanie over my head and draw the hood of my jacket tightly over my beanie. I slip my gloves on and dash outside.

  The reflection of the sun on the snow is blinding. I race down the steps and sink into a knee-high arena of snow. I press on. I have to find something for us to eat. A hibernating bear would be nice.

  I reach into the pocket on my thigh and I feel around for my pocketknife. I don’t use my knife often, but it’s handy for large game. Under the glaring sun, the snow is already melting and seeping into my boots. Someone is following me.

  “Daedric, I need to hunt alone,” I call out.

  “I can’t leave you out here to freeze to death,” Isaac calls back. “I’ll watch from a distance.”

  I continue farther into the forest without looking back. I come across a rocky area. A perfect place to find animal dens.

  I creep over the boulders, trying not to disturb the snow too much. I look around to make sure larger predators are not watching me. Though I can’t see him, I know Isaac is somewhere out there, behind a tree or a rock, observing.

  Isaac and I always hunted together until last winter. It was just Isaac and I then. We hadn’t eaten in three days. I thought I knew of a good spot to find woodpecker holes. Owls love woodpecker holes. Isaac and I searched for hours, but I couldn’t remember where I saw the holes. Exhaustion was wearing us both down and we decided to take a rest inside the hollow umbrage of a giant pine tree.

  The lower branches of the tree brushed the snowy forest floor as they sagged under the weight of the snow. Under the cover of the fluffy branches, I felt like a child again, climbing over the branches as if it were a jungle gym. It didn’t take long for the exhaustion to take hold again and we perched on one of the larger branches. I can’t remember how it happened, but somehow Isaac and I wound up on the snow wrapped in each other’s arms.

  Isaac kissed me hungrily, as if I were his next meal. His hands touched every part of me and at first it felt amazing. Then I came to, as if I were waking from a dream, and it all felt so wrong.

  “Stop,” I said, as I pushed him away.

  But he didn’t stop. I pushed harder and he finally sat up. He was kneeling on the snow between my legs.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  I sat up and tried to look over my shoulder at my back, but I couldn’t see anything.

  He cursed as he pulled up the back of my jacket and shirt. My back was blistering red from the snow. I pulled my shirt down and stood from the snow, dizzy with hunger. Isaac clutched my arm to keep me from toppling. That was the day I made Isaac promise we would never be anything more than friends.

  Two weeks later, Mary showed up and Isaac kept his promise to me, until Daedric showed up four months ago.

  I brush away the snow from a ledge that may be an animal den. There’s at least four feet of snow covering this ledge. I keep brushing the snow aside lightly, until a small crevice is revealed. It would be very foolish of me to stick my hand inside this crevice. It could be a snake den. But I’m desperate.

  I stuff my arm into the crevice and immediately hear a loud screeching as my hand hits something furry. It attacks my hand, but the gloves protect me. I swallow my nerves and strike the animal, but I can’t get enough leverage in this position to do any real harm. The screeching continues and I realize it’s a raccoon. I wave my hand wildly until I grasp one of its legs and yank the animal out of the crevice.

  It’s a big one and it’s angry. I try to grab the raccoon’s neck to snap it, but it keeps biting me. I take a deep breath and smash its head against the rocks. After two blows to the head, it’s unconscious and I snap his neck to put him out of his misery.

  Isaac climbs over the top of the boulder and looks down at me with a proud expression on his face.

  My nose is running from the cold and I wipe it on the back of my forearm. I realize too late I’ve wiped raccoon blood on my face. Isaac jumps down from the boulder and holds my face as he uses his sleeve to wipe the blood off my nose and lips.

  “Thanks,” I whisper, trying not to look him in the eye.

  “Nada?” he says, and I look up.

  His eyes hold all our secrets. Everything I’ve ever shared with him. All the things I can’t share with Daedric. There was a time I thought Isaac was like a brother to me. I was lying to myself.

  He kisses the corner of my lips softly. “I’m not giving up,” he whispers.

  He takes the raccoon from my hand and starts back toward the gift shop.

  CHAPTER 8

  Something shifts behind me and I turn around. Something is moving in the treetop of an elm tree twenty yards away. Something large and black.

  Isaac is gone. I watch him trot off toward the shop, hoping he’ll turn around. Finally, he turns around and sees me standing still next to the raccoon’s den.

  I can’t move. Something or someone is watching.

  Isaac sees the alarm in my face as he races back to me. I nod toward the tree and the branches flutter as the black thing moves.

  “We have to run,” he whispers.

  I shake my head.

  “Okay, you run and I’ll stay here.”

  I shake my head again. “If that’s a bear, it can outrun both of us.”

  “It’s not… Just please listen to me, Nada. Just this once.”

  “Give me the raccoon,” I say, and he hands it to me.

  I half-sprint and half-trudge toward the gift shop without looking back. I make it to the steps of the shop and turn around, but Isaac isn’t there.

  I toss the raccoon behind me where it slams into the front door of the shop and race back.

  “Nada!” Mary yells behind me.

  I keep running along the path Isaac and I have carved into the snow. I reach the rocks and Isaac is gone. I scramble over the top of the boulders to the other side, but he’s not there.

  It’s happening again.

  Qiana and Mary arrive at my side. Isaac stumbles out from behind the tree and I race to him. The scar on his eyebrow has been reopened by a large gash that drips brilliant red blood all over the snow.


  He appears dazed as Mary and I attempt to help him walk straight. He shoos us away dismissively.

  “I’m fine,” he says. “Let’s go eat some raccoon.”

  “What happened to you?” Mary asks.

  “Just a bear,” he replies.

  “Just a bear?” I say.

  Qiana looks dubious. She turns around and heads back to the shop ahead of us.

  Mary butchers the raccoon and hangs the pelt over the fireplace like a trophy. She skewers half the meat for today’s meals and slices the rest razor-thin for jerky.

  Daedric hasn’t spoken to me since I brought the raccoon back, so I take a seat next to Isaac to confront him.

  “Are the Guardians still after you?” I whisper.

  He doesn’t answer, which is enough of an answer for me. I should have known they didn’t just release him. The fact he’s still alive means he has something they want. But what could he possibly have that the Guardians want?

  I can’t sleep. I slither out of the sleeping bag as slowly as possible, but I still wake Daedric.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “Yeah. Go back to sleep,” I say.

  I wait until I know he’s fallen back to sleep before I slip into my boots and coat and tiptoe outside. The steps are covered in snow. I crouch on the porch and hug my knees to my face to stay warm. I stare out into the dark forest. Are the Guardians out there watching me?

  The door creaks open and Isaac steps outside fully clothed. He closes the door quietly and does a double take when he sees me.

  “Nada… What are you doing out here? It’s freezing. You should be inside.”

  He’s trying to sneak away in the middle of the night.

  “I thought you weren’t giving up,” I say, as I stand.

  “I’m not,” he says. “I’m trying to give you all a chance.”

  “How noble of you.”

  “I can’t stay here,” he says. “I need to go back to the cave. It’s the only place they won’t find me.”

  “I can’t believe you were going to leave without saying good-bye.”

  He shakes his head. “You don’t understand how hard this is for me… having to choose between putting you in danger and leaving you.”

  “Why are they still after you, Isaac?” I ask. “If you don’t tell me now I will never forgive you.”

  “Come with me and I’ll tell you.”

  Suddenly I’m thrust back in time four months to when Isaac began running from the Guardians after he stole my mother’s necklace. He wanted me to run away with him and leave Mary and Eve behind, but I couldn’t.

  I look through the glass door of the gift shop to where Daedric is sleeping by the fire. I want to crawl into Daedric’s arms and forget all of this ever happened: the storm, Whitmore, the Salton Sea… all of it. But I can’t forget.

  All those things are a part of me. Isaac is a part of me. And I’ll never be able to share that part with Daedric.

  “Please don’t go,” I whisper. “We came all the way out here for you. Don’t do this.”

  Isaac kisses my forehead and wraps his arms around my waist. I throw my arms around his neck and he lifts me off the ground as he holds me tightly.

  “I’ll never regret anything more than this,” he whispers in my ear before he set me down gently.

  He walks away and I feel as if my chest is being crushed beneath a concrete slab. I can’t breathe. It seems utterly surreal that I came all this way just to watch everything slip from my grasp again.

  With every step he takes I feel myself being pulled away from the gift shop. Through all the blackness of the past two years, Isaac has always been my sun. I can’t fight his gravity.

  I take the first step down then the second. I descend the last step slowly before I break into a run. Isaac turns around at the sound of my footsteps.

  I stop next to him. “I’m not giving up either.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Isaac appears torn. “Are you sure?”

  I walk ahead of him without answering. I want to get as far from the gift shop before I think of answering that question.

  There’s nothing Isaac and I can’t do together. I keep repeating this in my head.

  We hike through the moonlit forest in what we assume is a northwest direction. We’re going home.

  We don’t speak. If we have any hope of ditching the Guardians, we have to remain quiet and vigilant. Every time we reach a steep hill or small cliff, Isaac lowers me down gently. Finally, we reach a meadow where the snow is patchy. I press on, but Isaac grabs my hand.

  “We’re almost at the base of the mountain,” he says. “I’ll understand if you want to turn around. I’ll walk you back.”

  “I’m not going back,” I say. “But now that you’ve broken the silence, why don’t you tell me why the Guardians are hunting you. Why are they out there waiting?”

  He pulls me out of the moonlit meadow and into the shade of the forest. “We can’t stay out there. Cougars hunt at night.”

  “Can you please answer my question?”

  “Sit down,” he says, pointing at the base of the pine tree.

  I take a seat and pull my knees up to rest my arms.

  “I have some information Vic wants,” he says. “Or, at least, they think I have information Vic wants.”

  “Vic is still alive? But Mary chopped off his hand.”

  “People can survive with just one hand.”

  “What kind of information do you have that he wants?”

  Isaac rubs my back as he thinks. I don’t know if he’s doing it subconsciously, but it’s making me very sleepy. I grab his arm to stop him.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I was just trying to keep you warm.”

  “It’s okay,” I say, taking his hand in mine. “What kind of information do they think you have?”

  Isaac glances around before he pulls my face to his and kisses me. “Don’t react,” he whispers between kisses. “I know how to get… into Umbra.”

  He pulls his lips back, but he still holds my face in his hands. We’re motionless, our foreheads resting against each other.

  I have so many questions. Where did he get this information? How does he know it’s true? How do we get there?

  And the biggest question of all: Is this the kind of secret we should be keeping from Mary and Eve… and Daedric.

  But I can’t ask those questions out here.

  He kisses me one more time before he pulls away. “We should stay here until the sun comes up.”

  “I should be hunting,” I say. Then I remember my gloves I left behind. “Why did Qiana remember my gloves?”

  “Can we talk about that in the morning?”

  “No.”

  Isaac sighs. “I met Qiana months ago. She used to hawk gloves and belts in the marketplace.”

  “Why did the Guardians have her?”

  “Because she helped me get away after I stole that necklace for you,” he says.

  “That’s it?”

  Isaac takes a long pause before he answers. “That’s it.”

  I don’t want to press the subject, at least not while there’s a possibility we’re being watched. Isaac leans against the tree trunk and I settle into his arms.

  Daedric’s green eyes flash in my mind. I shut my eyes tightly, but he doesn’t disappear. I wonder if he already knows I’m gone. What if he comes looking for us?

  I shake Isaac’s arm. “Isaac?”

  “What?” he mutters.

  I want to tell him we can’t stay here. Daedric and the others may be on their way.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  If Daedric comes for me maybe we’ll all be able to go to Umbra…. Who am I kidding? I’ve just ruined any chance of ever peacefully coexisting with Daedric.

  Isaac’s leg twitches as he falls asleep—the same leg I nursed back to health after the cougar attacked him. The same cougar that would have killed Isaac if it hadn’t been for Daedric showing up with a baseball bat. The baseball bat he f
ound alongside that stupid Red Sox cap he was wearing when I first met him.

  I bury my face in Isaac’s jacket, but this doesn’t halt the tears or the shame. My body trembles like Eve’s, only her shame stems from what was done to her. The coldness inside me is merging with the bitter forest air. My shivering wakes Isaac.

  “You’re cold,” he says, unzipping his jacket to wrap it around me.

  The trembling diminishes to a gentle rumble, but the knot of guilt in my stomach remains. First I left Isaac behind. Now I’m leaving everything behind for Isaac.

  My conscience won’t let me sleep. I try not to wake Isaac until the sun creeps up the horizon. Part of me is relieved Daedric hasn’t shown up.

  I shake his arm. “Wake up.”

  He opens his eyes and smiles, as if we haven’t just abandoned everyone and everything. We have no water, no matches, and no sleeping bags. All we have is each other, and I’m not sure that’s enough.

  “Nada,” he says, as he stands and pulls me upright. “You’re not okay.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t sleep.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “That wasn’t a question,” he says, brushing a couple of stray hairs away from my face. “I’m taking you back.”

  “I don’t want to go back,” I blurt, and I mean it.

  I want to forget Umbra. I want to go home, to the cave, where everything was simple and honest. Just Isaac and I taking care of each other. Everything got twisted when we invited people into our home.

  Isaac’s face hardens. “I can’t take you with me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You need to go back,” he says.

  I search his gray eyes for a trace of jest. His eyes are rich with sincerity and his left eyebrow is as steady as the misery surrounding us.

  “You lied to me,” I say, taking a deep breath as my sorrow transforms into anger. “You said you weren’t giving up.”

  “I’m not giving up,” he replies. “I’m moving on… Nada, this is a nice little fantasy, the two of us together the way we used to be, but it doesn’t make sense anymore. You have Daedric and I have to disappear.”