Dangerous Talents Read online

  Everything she knew told her to stay put so Search and Rescue could find her quickly. But Search and Rescue would never find her here. She was nowhere near where she’d told Elaine she’d be. She checked her phone again. Still no signal. And the little GPS icon was missing.

  What am I going to do?

  Water. She had to find water.

  The raven cawed and flew east, along the base of the hills.

  Birds need open water too. Maybe if she followed it, she’d find a stream flowing out to the valley. It wasn’t likely, but it was the only chance she had. She started walking.

  Cele kept on searching even after the sun set. The raven was long gone. A full moon rose before her in the cloudless sky, huge and yellow as it topped the mountains, casting long shadows toward her. She kept walking, hoping to find a stream, unwilling to stop, unwilling to accept that she was lost in an alien landscape.

  The moon was high when she stumbled and fell, too exhausted to rise. She allowed herself two tiny sips of water from the bottle, swishing the liquid around her mouth before swallowing. The tepid water didn’t come anywhere near close to satisfying her thirst, but she had to make her water last.

  Her stomach cramped with hunger and she tried to ignore its empty complaint. I’ll just close my eyes for a second. Then I’ll go on.

  *

  Cele startled awake, heart thumping, hands clutching the earth. She wasn’t falling. It was just a nightmare. Just a replay. Except her hair had been black in the dream, instead of blond. She laughed sourly. Why should I expect my dreams to make more sense than reality?

  Insects churred in the dark, and something rustled in the bushes to her right. She’d been too tired to worry about scorpions, snakes, or mountain lions before. Now she looked around nervously. Moonlight silvered the desert, cutting sharp shadows on the sand. She struggled to her feet, shivering. As hot as it was during the day, the desert temperature had dropped during the night without the concrete and asphalt of the city to hold the heat. She rubbed her arms and stared with amazement at the sky.

  She’d never seen so many stars. Even with a full moon, the panoply of light was breathtaking. And strange. Where was the Big Dipper? Where was Scorpio? She searched the heavens until the stars seemed to spin.

  I’m not in Kansas anymore. Or Tucson. Her stomach tightened painfully at yet more proof she was far from home.

  If only I hadn’t insisted on seeing those petroglyphs. But second-guessing the past wouldn’t help now. She pulled out her phone. She wasn’t surprised to find no signal. Resigned, she gathered her things. Something was missing. She looked around. Her camera! It must have come free of its strap when she’d fallen.

  The loss felt like a blow. It wasn’t the most up-to-date model, but it was the last camera her mother had bought before she’d gotten sick. She’d been so proud of it. Cele blinked back tears. Her mother was gone. Her camera was gone. She was lost. But she was still her mother’s daughter and she wasn’t going to just lie down and die. Cele put on her hat and resumed her search for water.

  She tried to be methodical. She walked back up into each cleft, between hills where the plants grew thicker, hoping to scent moisture or hear the distinctive burble of running water. Thorny branches clawed her legs and arms as she edged past shadowed thickets. Each time she worked her way into a new defile, a peculiar certainty warned her she was wasting her time and energy. Water wasn’t there. But she had no foundation for that surety, so she continued to search in the logical places.

  When the first graying of the eastern sky announced the coming dawn, she drank a small swig of water, cool and chilled by the desert night. Cele had never tasted anything so sweet. There was only a tiny bit left. Should she drink it now or save it? Did it matter? She stared at the squeeze bottle, her mouth aching. Then she up-ended the container and swallowed the precious liquid. That was it, the last of it. If she didn’t find water soon, she wouldn’t have the strength to keep looking. She would die, desperate and delirious. Ruthlessly, Cele pushed away the ugly thoughts.

  The sun and the heat rose higher as Cele’s spirits and strength dropped lower. Her mouth itched and tickled and ached for moisture. She tucked a pebble in her cheek to suck on. It helped a little, but not enough. She finally took shelter beneath the low hanging branches of a scrubby tree between two hills. She was so tired. Her eyelids drooped and she didn’t try to resist.

  The sun was again sinking when Cele awoke. Her head ached and her scratches stung. She didn’t want to move, but she made herself crawl out from under the tree. Once again, she checked her cell. Not only was there no signal, the battery icon was empty.

  Damn it! She flung the phone against a nearby boulder. It shattered. Her head swam with the sudden effort and she steadied herself against a rock. She had to get out from between the hills to where the air was moving.

  The sun glowed bloody behind her on the western horizon as she rounded yet another hill, looking for dense vegetation that might be a promise of open water. The growth here appeared a little greener than in the open desert, so once again she hiked into the cleft between the hills.

  Once again, that feeling, that damn knowing, told her she’d be disappointed. There’s no water here. Cele shook her head and was struck with a wave of dizziness. She was becoming delirious, imagining things. She had to examine every possibility. What if she died because an irrational hunch had kept her from checking the right spot?

  The heat weighed upon her like a lead apron in a dentist’s chair. Cele slumped on a shaded rock to rest, trying to dredge up enough hope to go on. Two rocks over, a lizard postured as if doing his push-ups.

  She’d stopped trying to figure out what had happened to her. She didn’t care anymore. Water was the one thing, the only thing that mattered. That feeling, that stupid knowing, still nagged at her. There was water somewhere not too far ahead. She had maybe another hour of light left, and she wasn’t going to waste it feeling sorry for herself.

  She stood, and what she saw brought her up short. Heart hammering, Cele blinked and rubbed her gritty eyes, wondering if she’d begun to hallucinate. About fifty yards away, two oddly dressed men rounded the edge of the hill.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Cele’s heart jumped as a jolt of adrenaline hit her. Search and Rescue had found her! She took a step and waved her hat. “Hey!” she tried to shout, but it came out as a croak.

  The men saw her and stopped abruptly, eyes wide. One of them turned and whistled two sharp, high notes, followed by a third, lower tone.

  Quickly, seven more men rounded the hill. The tall, powerfully built hikers wore long-sleeved, rough-spun shirts and scuffed leather pants tucked into high boots. Broad-brimmed hats shaded their bearded faces, and they carried leather packs and blanket rolls on their backs. They were armed with spears, knives, swords, and bows.

  This isn’t Search and Rescue.

  They weren’t here to save her. They looked dangerous.

  She didn’t care. They had water. Without it, she was dead. She waved and stumbled toward them. “I need help,” she croaked. “I need water.”

  One of the men spoke softly and gestured; immediately, all but two of the band fanned out, moving quickly into the hills. When she stopped in front of the remaining men, one of them grabbed her arm and pulled her under an overhanging rock, knocking her hat to the ground.

  “Hey! What–?”

  A calloused hand clamped over her mouth and a rough whisper sounded close to her ear. “Be silent woman, or I will ensure it.”

  Her self-defense training almost kicked in, but the flood of adrenaline had cleared her mind. Even if she overcame this man, there were eight others, and without water she couldn’t escape them for long. She stood, tense and quiet, watching the other man.

  He crouched by a tumble of rocks, scanning the hills with sharp gray eyes. His beard, which had been neatly trimmed not too long ago, was a reddish brown, bleached gold on the surface by the sun. Most important, he had two bota bags hanging
from his shoulders.

  Her tongue rasped like sandpaper. Water was so close, and she couldn’t get to it. She tried to turn her head, to free her mouth so she could ask again, but her captor held her too tightly. His grip on her mouth pressed grit into her flesh. Time and more time passed, while nothing moved.

  Suddenly, the gray-eyed man directed a gesture to someone she couldn’t see. Over the next few minutes, his squad quietly returned from the hills. The leader’s gaze remained fixed on her while his men made their reports. There was no sign of outcasts, they told him. They’d found where she’d rested, nothing else.

  Cele paid scant attention to their conversation, riveted instead on the leather waterbags slung from their shoulders. The leader made a sign and her captor took his hand from her mouth, but kept a tight arm around her waist.

  Her knees wobbled. She’d have fallen if he’d let her go. “Can I–” Her voice cracked from disuse and thirst, and she coughed. It felt like her throat was shredding. Her captor’s grip shifted from restraint to support as she doubled over and clung to his arm, racked by the effort to clear the dust. With a snatch of breath, she croaked a single word. “Water?”

  *

  Dahleven bit out an order. “Give her water, Falsom.” What in the Nine Worlds is a woman doing here in the drylands alone? This was a complication he did not need. Their mission was difficult and dangerous enough without this, too.

  With one hand, Falsom unslung and unstopped his waterskin, then steadied it as the pale-haired woman upended it with shaking hands. Dahleven considered her through narrowed eyes. She was indecently dressed. Even the Daughters of Freya had more modesty. Her arms and long legs were bare and scratched, yet her hands were as smooth as any lady’s and diamonds glittered in her ears. His eyes lingered on her high cheekbones and green eyes, then wandered down to the light golden skin revealed by the open top buttons of her shirt. Her bedraggled state suggested she’d been in the unforgiving drylands for some time. Why she was merely pink and not blistered he could not understand, unless that was her Talent. But it was a minor puzzle, compared to her mere presence.

  The woman tried to drink again, but Dahleven stepped closer and pushed the waterskin away from her lips. Too much water too soon, and she’d be sick. “Who are you? How did you come to be here?”

  Her voice was barely a rasp. “My name is Celia Montrose. I’m lost. Can you get me back to town?”

  A town! In the drylands? In the mountains? Does she mean Kotaki in the Tewakwe Confederation? But Kotaki was five days north, over the pass. And this lady was no dusky-skinned Tewa. “What town do you speak of?”

  “Tucson, of course.”

  “And where is this Toosahn?”

  She stared at him as if he was demented, then tried to drink again.

  It went against his grain to deny her, but he had to have answers and thirst was a powerful motivator. His men’s lives could depend on what she had to say. He held the waterskin away from her parched lips with a firm grasp on her wrist. “No. First you answer my questions.”

  Her eyes sparked. “Look–” The woman broke off, coughing.

  He relented, allowing her another sip of water.

  When she caught her breath, her voice was clear and impatient. “If I knew where Tucson was, I wouldn’t be lost, would I? I wouldn’t be dying of thirst and exposure, and I certainly wouldn’t be playing Twenty Questions with you in the middle of the desert.”

  Her arrogance surprised him, but he wouldn’t be put off. “How did you come to be here, lost,” he raked his eyes over her bare legs, “and exposed?”

  He noted the fear that began to replace her anger. Guilt mingled with satisfaction. He wasn’t in the habit of terrorizing women, but fear sometimes revealed truth.

  “I was hiking and I fell. I must have hit my head. When I woke up, I couldn’t find the trail.”

  “What trail were you following? Where were you going?”

  “It wasn’t a marked trail, exactly. I was taking pictures. If I still had my camera, I’d show you.”

  Though she spoke in a strange rhythm, he could understand her well enough. But some of her words made no sense. Camera. Toosahn. Dahleven suppressed a shiver of dread. She may be Fey-marked. That would explain much. Those the Elves touched were never the same afterward. In any case, it would take time to get the truth from her if she were not too mad to know it, and he didn’t have time to interrogate her here. It would soon be dark and they still had a distance to go. This puzzle would have to wait.

  Dahleven turned to his squad, issuing orders. “We move. We camp at the spring tonight. Sorn, watch the woman.”

  *

  Cele clenched her teeth. Who the hell does this guy think he is? He ordered her around as though he had the right to. And the way he looked at her, as if she were in her underwear, scared her.

  The man who gripped her took the waterskin from her hands before she could take another drink and handed her off to another man, the one called Sorn. Her new keeper’s grip was just as firm as he wrapped his long fingers around her right biceps, but somehow his touch seemed less threatening. He scooped her hat off the ground and handed it to her. Cele looked up at him. She got a quick impression of height and dark hair before he urged her forward and she was forced to pay attention to her feet or fall on her face.

  “Wait!” The leader’s voice stopped Sorn, who pulled Cele up so short she almost fell.

  “Give me that.” The leader pointed to her belt pack.

  “What? Why?” Cele asked. It was sheer stubbornness. She was in enough trouble. What difference did it make if he wanted her pack?

  In answer, he reached for the strap hooked around her waist.

  “Hey!” Cele batted at his hands but had enough sense not to try any of the more effective self-defense moves she knew. Sorn still had a firm grip on her arm.

  The leader ignored her, pulling at the waist strap of the pack. He examined the plastic clasp in an oddly diffident way, touching her no more than necessary, then said again, “Give this to me.”

  “No.” She must have lost her mind. She would never have held out on a mugger like this. But the word was said, and she wouldn’t back down for no good reason.

  The leader drew his knife. The double-edged blade must have been a foot long. That’s a good reason. Cele sucked in a noisy breath and drew back from the threat as she groped for the catch. “Okay, okay! It’s yours.” Her hands fumbled, then the plastic clasp released. She thrust it out to him at arm’s length. “Here, take it if you want it that bad!”

  He looked at her oddly, then sheathed his knife with one hand while taking the pack with the other. Then he walked off into the dusk.

  The others had already left in twos and threes and Cele quickly lost track of them in the fading light. They continued in the direction Cele had been headed: east, along the base of the hills. Sorn set a brisk pace and it was all she could do to stay on her feet. When she stumbled, he stopped and gave her more to drink, then a moment later urged her forward again. But his grip on her arm shifted, and she felt he wasn’t so much restraining her as holding her up.

  She began to steal glances at her escort when she could take her eyes off her feet. Cele couldn’t make out details, but she sensed his vigilance in the way he held his head. His alertness wasn’t centered on her, but on the country around them. She thought of trying to escape, then dismissed the idea. She was too weak. He’d catch her in a second.

  If he wasn’t wary of her, maybe she could get some information from him, find out how much trouble she was in. Was she being “rescued” by drug runners? There was a lot of drug traffic this close to Mexican border. Or maybe they were coyotes, people who smuggled illegals across the border. They’d have no qualms about leaving her here to die–if they left her alive at all.

  A slow death in the desert might be better than some of the other things they could do.

  Cele stole another look at her captor. The leader might be ready to knife her for her belt pa
ck, but this guy seemed a little safer. “You’re called Sorn?” she asked in a raw whisper.

  His attention snapped to her, then returned to their surroundings. His look didn’t have any of the speculation men’s eyes so often held. “Yes.” Sorn’s voice was so low Cele doubted it could be heard two paces away.

  “I’m Celia Montrose.”

  “Yes, my lady, I heard.”

  My lady? Maybe these guys are historical re-creationists. But they act more like hysterical survivalists. Don’t upset him. Start with a nice basic question. “Where are you taking me?”

  “To a spring a little way from here. We’ll camp there tonight.”

  “And then?”

  “And then Dahleven will decide.”

  “Dahleven?”

  “Lord Dahleven. The one who spoke to you before.”

  Lord Dahleven. The one who trades water for information. What would he do with her? Memories of the day’s heat shriveling her flesh and the shivering cold of the previous night flashed through Cele’s mind, accompanied by thoughts of coyotes abandoning people to die a slow and horrible death. “Will–will he leave me in the desert?”

  Sorn frowned as though he didn’t like what he was thinking. “No. That he will not do.”

  “What are you guys doing out here?”

  Sorn refused to answer any more questions, and in only a few minutes more they were at the camp. Cele knew water was here, and very close, even before she heard the faint splashing and smelled the distinct odor of wet dust. Well, of course, Montrose. They told you there’s a spring. But it was more than that. She felt it.

  Six men sat scattered around, eating and talking. Conversation halted as she and Sorn came into camp. Every eye turned to her. Cele caught herself edging closer to Sorn, but then she made herself straighten and stare right back at the men. She wasn’t going to let them intimidate her. Most of the men turned back to their dinners, but one rose and came toward her. His face was pleasant and his sandy hair fell forward into his face. His beard, like most of the others, had been closely trimmed some days ago. Before he could speak to her, Dahleven barked his name.