Page 12 of Family Found

We passed the lake. It was completely still, a green blanket of algae covering most of it, and my eyes caught on a leaf that had been blown off the trees by the wind and was now dying and curling on top of the algae, not sinking, just floating there, its purpose as a leaf lost. It was the most unimportant detail to focus on, but I couldn’t help myself.

When we got to the trees, everyone ducked, and so did I, carefully picking my way through the branches that had fallen and were making it hard to get from the golf course to the castle. The landscapers I was certain had maintained this place were long since gone, and nature, in victorious glee, was retaking the green.

We stopped once at a signal from Charles, and I held my breath. I had no idea what he’d seen, but I reached out to the land.

They aren’t aware of you. They feel safe here. No one has ever challenged their presence.

I let out the breath I’d been holding only when my lungs started burning, and before I was all done breathing, we moved again. Instead of looking around, I focused on Inkiri’s hand around my wrist and on Lissir’s horns and the white line running along their length.

Relief flooded me when we got to the castle wall. I stepped on some broken glass and flinched at how it crunched under my weight. When nothing happened and we all kept moving, I glanced up. A window on the first floor was broken. That was not exactly a normal sight unless there were beasts hunting for food. I instinctively covered my mouth and looked around for rapid movement, for something hunting me.

None of them are close enough, but some have changed how they move. They smelled or sensed you and are coming, the land said. Well, what a cheery thought that was.

I clenched my teeth. Do you know when they’ll get here?

If you don’t stay too long, they will not find you. They have been hunting cats, dogs, and other pets who lost their people.

Awesome. The monsters ate pets when they couldn’t find people. Just perfect. But they preferred me. Perfecter.

Inkiri looked back at me, his brow furrowed. I shook my head and gave him a thumbs-up. No need to slow us down when we were this close to getting Kinnek back and the others out, whether Charles was supportive of that or not.

We moved on, and now it was harder to keep my eyes focused on Lissir’s horns. Every movement, every sway of a sapling in the wind made me look that way and scan for too many eyes, for teeth ready to tear me apart.

The rectangle of the castle ended in a corner up ahead, and beyond that, I could see the newer building.

There was a brief stop before the castle wall gave way to the other buildings, and Charles moved back down our group toward me.

“Can you tell me where he is in there?”

I asked the land, and it considered. Do you not see him? it said, and—it was amused?

I glanced over Charles’s shoulder. My jaw dropped.

“For real?”

Kinnek was looking out the window. He saw us, and his eyes went wide, his hard features relaxing so that he looked younger again, more like the Kinnek I knew. He signaled toward us using some military hand gestures maybe. Charles turned.

“The fucking—you brilliant fucking bastard,” Charles mumbled and put a hand on Vergis’s shoulder, almost as if he wanted to stop his son from running toward his dad.

Someone said something in Lugarra, and I caught “mene,” meaning two.

“Hands on your gun, boy, eyes everywhere. Your dad has things in hand, it would seem,” Charles whispered.

Lissir, along with one of the other protectors, made his way forward toward Kinnek, who had vanished back into the building and out of sight.

“Sadir, watch the land,” Inkiri whispered to me. “I will watch over you.”

I nodded. What had Fellisse once said about Raikengana knowing what needed to be done and just doing it? I closed my eyes.

Can you do that thing where I see everything?

The land seemed amused. Yes, if you will let me.

I didn’t see how I let it do anything, because the vertigo hit me hard right away. I was pulled out, out of myself, and then I stretched like a rubber toy.

I was back in the courtyard, where another three Koa Esher had come out from somewhere in the main building. I was also in front of the building we were huddled behind, and the two there had started an agitated conversation. One of them was gesticulating wildly.

Farther out, there were the beasts, running. It was a horde of small yellow ones with orange-brown bristles studding their spines. Each one was maybe the size of a pig, but their faces were flat, and one of them stopped, its jaws closing around a small animal—a weasel? The small creature barely had time to scream before it died horribly. The creature’s teeth were sharp, two serrated sets made for cutting right through flesh and bone. It swallowed the bite it had taken out of the weasel without chewing, blood smearing across its face.