Lost Ones

CHAPTER 11

D awn had broken over Ecuador. Light rain fell, and Collette Bascombe lay her head back and let it sprinkle her face. Hidden away in the thick of a banana plantation, clad in the stale clothes she had worn for months in the dungeon, she would have given almost anything for a shower and clean clothes. And perhaps she would get them, soon. For the moment, though, she was just grateful to be back in her own world.

Your world? Really?

The words came unbidden into her mind and the voice of her conscience had an edge. She and Oliver were children of two worlds, the living embodiment of everything the Veil was not. They were human and legend together. But this ordinary world was hers. And still felt like home.

The rain fell. The wind blew. People worked and played, lived and died, and it was all completely ordinary. Little people weren’t likely to come out of the jungle. Monkeys weren’t prone to transforming into men and speaking riddles or holding grudges.

The legend said that a child of human and Borderkind-someone like her, or Oliver-was destined to tear down the Veil between the ordinary and legendary worlds. At the moment, Collette thought this was a spectacularly bad idea. She liked her world just the way it was. Boring. Ordinary. Life had enough peril and ugliness without adding all of the problems of the legendary world to it.

She wished she could stay here. Not hiding among the banana trees-although even that would be preferable-but here in the mundane world. Even a few days’ reprieve would have filled her heart with joy. But there would be no rest. No break at all. Her brother and Julianna were still there, on the other side of the Veil. Julianna would be there forever, it seemed, trapped by the magic that had created the godforsaken barrier between worlds.

Oliver and Julianna were caught in a war zone, and Collette was going back, not just for them, but because-no matter how nice it felt to be in her own world-they all had a score to settle. In life, there were some fights you could never walk away from. Not and forgive yourself.

Yet for the moment, Collette tried to let the peace and quiet of the plantation soothe her. The rain fell warm and gentle. The breeze smelled delicious and earthy. She and Frost had learned they were in Ecuador as soon as they had reached the outskirts of the city. A garbage can by the side of the road had given up a dirty, torn newspaper. They were in Machado, and just a few miles away was Puerto Bolivar, its sister city.

In the night, they had stolen along the perimeter of the city and eventually found the banana plantation.

Collette didn’t want to spend a minute longer than she had to with Frost. The winter man said little. His blue-white eyes issued a kind of cold mist and his expression was grim; a crack in the ice made up his mouth. At the moment, she enjoyed his absence.

Then the light rain turned to brittle, frozen sleet, and she swore under her breath and sat up. The banana trees rustled and a gust of wind blew snow and ice across the sky. Impossibly fast, the small blizzard built itself into a man.

“Time to go,” Frost said.

He glanced around, as though afraid they might be discovered. His hair-like dreadlocks made of ice-clinked together when he moved.

Collette climbed to her feet, feeling tiny beside the winter man. She had never been tall. With the spray of freckles across her nose and her petite stature, she had often had to fight extra hard for people to see her as something more than just “the cute girl.” Now, all of that life was in her past. Her job, her friends in New York, all done with. She tried not to think about whether she would ever be able to go back.

“You found an American Express office?”

Frost narrowed his eyes, ice cracking. “No. We haven’t time for that.”

“That’s the only way out of here,” Collette said. “I need identification. I need money. And you said it’s too dangerous to try to cross back through the Veil so close to Palenque.”

“All true. So come with me.”

The winter man turned and started along a path between two rows of banana trees. The top of the main plantation building could be seen in the other direction. Collette stared at his back a moment, then hurried to catch up.

“Look, it’s going to take weeks-”

“We don’t have weeks!” Frost said, spinning on her. The air around Collette dropped thirty or forty degrees. Her breath fogged and her eyelashes stuck together when she blinked.

“Listen-”

“No. Collette, stop. You haven’t been thinking properly since we crossed the Veil. Perhaps it’s because you’re back in your world and you think, suddenly, that means that you need to follow the rules of humanity. But you can’t think that way. Authorities all across your world will be looking for you, now. You vanished, remember? After your father was murdered.”

“So, now I’m a suspect, the way Oliver was?”

The look on Frost’s face chilled her.

“Perhaps. That does not matter at all. Regardless, you will be questioned. They will want to know where you have been. All of that will take time, during which Oliver and Julianna-and many thousands of others, both of your kind and mine-may lose their lives.”

Collette shivered, then shook it off and faced him. She’d been tormented by the Sandman, kept as his captive, and escaped only to fall into the hands of Ty’Lis and end up in the dungeon at Palenque. In that time, she had learned a great deal about herself. She had found the magic of her mother’s heritage inside her and a strength that came from her own heart. Home had a powerful allure, but the time hadn’t come yet to indulge that.

Still, she studied Frost closely and did not care that he took offense at her scrutiny.

“You doubt me,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Our goals are the same, Collette. They always have been.”

“Including when you brought Oliver across the Veil and left me to be murdered by the Myth Hunters?”

Frost cocked his head. “They did not kill you.”

“True. The Sandman took me. There were times I would rather have died. Just because Oliver and I are both still alive doesn’t mean you did the right thing,” Collette snapped.

“This is foolishness,” Frost said. He started walking again, but something wavered in his tone and aspect that said he might not be as confident as she had always thought. Collette didn’t know whether to be heartened or frightened.

“Frost-”

“It might not have been the right choice, but it was the only choice. It kept you both alive. Oliver and I owed our lives to each other, several times over.”

Collette caught up to him again. “And through all of that, you never trusted him enough to tell him the truth?”

Frost kept walking. “He was safer not knowing.”

“But he deserved to know. We deserved to know.”

“And now he hates me,” Frost said.

Collette paused. Frost went on several steps under the banana trees, soft rain pattering against his slick, icy form. Then he stopped, but did not turn. Collette had heard the weary sadness in his voice. Maybe all he’d said was true. Perhaps he had thought of Oliver as his friend, and the rift between them pained him.

“No,” she said, softly. “I’m the one who hates you. I’m the one you left behind. Oliver only resents you. Maybe he’ll forgive you, one of these days.”

Slowly, the winter man turned. For the first time, his face-all sharp lines and edges-looked almost human.

“And you?” Frost asked.

Collette shook her head. “You and I were never friends.”

After a moment, the winter man nodded. “Fair enough.”

He turned and strode more quickly along the path. In silence, Collette followed. A little over a minute later and they had reached a fence that ran around the perimeter of the plantation. Frost reached out and froze a section of the fence, then, with a fist, he shattered it.

On the other side they came to a dirt road. Nothing moved along that road-neither person nor vehicle-but twenty yards to the left a small gray truck sat on the shoulder. Rust had eaten away part of the front end and the sides of the truck were spattered with dried mud.

Frost started toward it.

“What the hell is this?” Collette said, hurrying to get a better look at the truck. Anxious, she glanced up and down the road, but they were completely alone. Frost moved with purpose, and that worried her.

“What’ve you done?” she asked.

At the truck, the winter man paused and glanced back at her. Mist rose from his eyes, drifting on the breeze. The rain around him turned to sleet and pelted the truck with a metallic prickling.

“I’ve become a thief,” Frost said. Perhaps he smiled as he said it. “But not a murderer, if that is your concern.”

With a gesture, he indicated the roadside. Under the trees lay a brown shape, and it took her a moment to recognize it as some kind of canvas tarp. Beneath it, she realized, lay the driver of this truck.

“He’s not dead?”

“He’ll live,” Frost replied. “Get in the truck and drive, please.”

“Where are we going?”

The winter man opened the passenger door, climbed in, and closed it, just as if there were nothing strange at all about a creature made entirely of ice and snow riding in a rusty old truck.

Collette did as he asked. The keys were in the ignition and the truck started instantly. The windows were open. Several times Frost simply evaporated out of his seat, drifting up into the sky, a twisting storm cloud rushing ahead of the truck, only to pour himself back into the seat a minute or two later with directions. They stayed north of the city, though Collette got several glimpses of it through her window; she was surprised at how modern it seemed. The truck rattled along plantation roads and then what might have passed for a main road. For a mile or so it seemed they might actually drive into Machala, and then Frost directed her to take a narrow, rutted turn to the northwest.

Moments later, they came in sight of the water. To the south, she could see the port and was stunned to find not only fishing boats but elegant pleasure craft and huge shipping vessels. They bounced through a pothole and she had to focus on the road, but she could still glimpse the port in the rearview mirror. On the left, they rolled past a massive seaside operation that a sign identified as a shrimp farm.

“You really think this is going to work?” she asked.

“What?” the winter man said.

“We’re just going to take a boat? Obviously that’s your plan, because there’s no way anyone is going to let me on a plane with no identification, even if I had the money. Which means we’re stealing a boat.”

Frost glanced at her, his hair clinking together again. “I have already stolen it. The men I stole it from had guns. The hold was full of bags of white powder I assume is cocaine.”

Trying to process this news, her mind snatched one question out of a dozen. “You know what cocaine is?”

The winter man scowled. “I have been crossing the Veil since its magic was first woven. I have seen the best and worst of humanity. One of the men is dead, shot by another and fallen into the sea. The others are incapacitated.”

“You did all of this in a couple of hours?”

Frost looked back out through the windshield. “Time is short. They were evil men.”

As though it was that simple. And, Collette realized, perhaps it was. Four or five miles up the coast, the winter man directed her into a narrow drive that led into a wooded, rocky piece of property. Whoever owned the place was wealthy by any standard. Her father had been very well off, but the house that perched on the edge of the ocean here was twice the size of the Bascombe home.

They drove up and parked right in front. Collette felt wary as they got out of the truck. The front door hung from its frame. Several windows were broken. Nothing moved except the door, which swayed loosely with the breeze. Part of her wanted to go inside and see the chaos that Frost had wrought. Instead, she hurried around the side of the house, following a path that led to a dock. Two men lay bruised and bleeding and unconscious on the beach, several feet from the dock. One of them had an arm twisted at the wrong angle, clearly broken.

Collette paused to stare at him, thinking that no matter what this man had done, they ought to call someone. If his injuries were bad enough, he could die.

“We are at war,” Frost said. His voice felt like a chilly whisper against her ear. “If our war took place here, these men would be our foes.”

She took a breath. Much as she still hated Frost for leaving her to the Sandman’s mercies-and much as she had lived her entire life by the laws and morals of her own people-she could not disagree with him.

They walked out onto the dock and boarded the boat. As a child, she had watched reruns of Miami Vice voraciously. Drug lords and cigarette boats. They called them something else, now, but she couldn’t think of the word. Didn’t matter. If those little, slick, swift craft were cigarette boats, this one was a cigar.

Less than an hour ago, she’d been lying beneath the banana trees and thinking how nice it was to be back in her world, where things felt more real. But now, nothing about this felt real. Or maybe it was just that Frost was right-they were at war-and in war, the old rules no longer applied.

“You never asked me if I could drive this thing,” she said as she investigated the instrument panel on the boat. She ought to go below and look at the food and water stores, but there wasn’t time even for that. If she needed something, Frost would provide. She might hate him, but she knew that he needed her, now.

He needs me, because Oliver stayed behind, and if Oliver dies…

She shuddered. Of course. Frost had done it to them again. Oliver had insisted he stay behind to protect Julianna, because she couldn’t pass through the Veil. So Collette couldn’t blame Frost for that. But the truth could not be denied. Once again, he had left one Bascombe behind to live or die, content with the knowledge that he had the other in his safekeeping.

Yet as perverse as it seemed, Collette found some comfort in this. She was Legend-Born. Frost couldn’t afford to let her die. Too much relied upon the Bascombes. The Lost Ones would follow them into war, or fight on their behalf. The Borderkind who feared Atlantis’s efforts to seal off the Veil forever would fight all the harder, knowing the Legend-Born lived.

“You can drive it, can’t you?” the winter man asked.

The salt wind off of the water scoured him, but he seemed to enjoy it, somehow.

“Yes. How did you know?”

Frost cocked his head, as was his habit. “Perhaps Oliver told me. Or perhaps I assumed it, given your background. Your father’s money provided many luxuries.”

Collette sighed and started up the boat. The engine purred. “Right, then. Cast off.”

Frost went to see to the moorings. Collette looked at the water, wondering what had become of the man who’d been shot and fallen in. His corpse would be floating down there, somewhere.

As the winter man breezed up beside her, she glanced at him.

“You know someone will come after us, right? If not the police, then the military. Or other scumbags like the ones back there on the beach. Even if they don’t catch up, we’ll run out of gas long before we reach the California coast-if I haven’t starved to death by then.”

“We should go,” Frost replied.

Collette stared at him. “You’re making this up as you go, aren’t you?”

The winter man said nothing, just retreated into the cabin to get out of the sunlight.

Collette checked her instruments and pushed up on the throttle, pulling away from the dock. Oliver waited for her an entire world away, and she would do whatever had to be done to get back to him.

Ixchel brought them a hose that must have been used when the horse stalls had to be cleaned out, and Oliver and Julianna transformed an empty stall into a makeshift shower, taking turns cleaning off the grime and stink of the dungeons. Their new friend-whose entire knowledge of the English language was Oliver’s last name-made several trips out into the city for them. He brought back soap, clean clothes, and food.

Oliver didn’t think he had ever been so grateful to anyone.

When Ixchel helped him bind and gag the other stable worker-whom Oliver figured might also be the saddle maker-the man’s face was heavy with regret. Julianna and Oliver tried to use the tone of their voice to thank him, and Ixchel nodded his appreciation, but when the other man regained consciousness and glared at his former friend, there could be no consolation.

Perhaps three hours after they had first been discovered, Ixchel went out again. This time, he did not come back right away. Oliver and Julianna busied themselves feeding the horses, avoiding any conversation about what to do next. Eventually, they could put it off no longer.

“He’s been gone a while,” Julianna said.

She’d tied her hair back with a strip of cloth. The shirt Ixchel had gotten for her was too small and the pants too large, but Oliver thought she looked adorable.

They met in the middle of the stable. The smell of leather and hay filled their nostrils. Oliver took her hand and leaned over to kiss her.

“He’ll be back.”

“How do you know?” Julianna asked, forehead creased with worry. She had not feared many things in her life. It troubled him to see fear in her eyes now.

“Jules, you’ve got to let it go.”

Her gaze hardened and her nostrils flared. “Let what go?”

Oliver took her face in his hands and stared into her eyes. “I’m not leaving you here. If you have to stay, then I stay. We’ll both survive it.”

A sad smile touched her lips and he knew that-though she would always remember the girl she had been-this moment they had built a wall between past and future.

“We start from right now?” she said.

Oliver nodded. “From right now. We get out of here. We go north and hook up with King Hunyadi somehow.”

“I like him.”

“I know you do. If this is our world, now, we’ll live in it together.”

Julianna squeezed his fingers in hers, and Oliver knew that his fiancee wasn’t the only one who had gone through a door that had closed forever behind her. The man he’d been, once upon a time, no longer existed. He would not grieve, though. For better or worse, he’d become who he had always been meant to be. His mother’s son. His father’s son. Himself.

A soft knock came at the stable door. They darted together into the stall they’d used as a shower, even as one of the front doors creaked open. Ixchel entered with another man-a thin, distinguished-looking fellow with silver and black hair. They spoke rapidly and Oliver had the distinct impression the other man was demanding to know why Ixchel had dragged him here.

Ixchel pointed toward their hiding place. “Bascombe,” he said.

Oliver stepped out of the stall, holding Julianna by the hand.

The newcomer stared at them in something like terror, and then his face slowly transformed into a smile.

“You,” the man said, in thickly accented English. “You are really him? You are Oliver Bascombe?”

“I am. And you?”

The man clapped Ixchel on the arm, then rushed forward to shake Oliver’s hand. “I am Lorenzo Baleeiro. Many call me Professor, because I have worked as a scholar and teacher.”

“Professor-” Oliver began.

“Lorenzo, please.”

“All right. Lorenzo,” he agreed, taking the man’s hand before gesturing to his fiancee. “And this is Julianna Whitney. We’re both very grateful to you for coming. I admit, we were a little anxious given how long Ixchel was gone.”

Lorenzo waved this away. “You have nothing to worry about for the moment, my friends. Like many of us, Ixchel believes in the Legend-Born. It is our honor to be able to give you whatever assistance we can provide.”

Oliver glanced at Julianna. She shivered, obviously as unnerved by this statement as he was.

“Look, Professor…Lorenzo,” he said, “I appreciate it. We both do. But I’m no savior, y’know? I’ve been on this side of the Veil for a while now and I know how much stories and legends mean, here. But I’ve also learned that every legend has a core of truth. Monsters and heroes all have their own true nature that sometimes doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the stories people tell about them.”

He ran a hand through his hair, enjoying the sensation of being truly clean for the first time in months, though his mind whirled as he tried to determine their next move.

“Truth is,” Oliver said, reaching out for Julianna’s hand, “we’re just people in trouble.”

Lorenzo smiled warmly. “You may feel ordinary, Senor Bascombe, but trust me, you are not. Unless you are not truly Legend-Born?”

Oliver fought the urge to hide from the truth. Instead, he met the professor’s gaze firmly. “I’m told my mother was a French legend, a Borderkind named Melisande. My sister and I are being hunted for that heritage. I’m not sure if we’re ever going to be able to bring the Lost Ones home the way the prophecy says, but there are some things that Collette and I can do, things we’ve discovered, so we know we’re not as normal as we always thought.”

The professor chuckled contentedly, nodding. “Excellent. We really have been waiting for you for ages. Belief in the Legend-Born is one of the few things that the Lost Ones in Euphrasia and Yucatazca have in common. Which leads me to the obvious question.”

Oliver raised an eyebrow.

Julianna stepped closer to the professor. “What might that be?”

“Why, what to do now, of course. You didn’t escape from the dungeon just to spend the rest of the war stashed in the hayloft of an old stable, did you?”

A grin split Julianna’s face. “I sure as hell hope not.”

“I thought not.”

Oliver hesitated to discuss their plans with anyone, yet he felt he could trust this man. “We thought we’d wait until nightfall and slip out of the city. I want to travel north and find King Hunyadi. Someone has to tell him that Atlantis is responsible for all this.”

The professor’s eyes went grave. “That has been the rumor. Do you confirm it, now? That Atlanteans are the cause of the war?”

Oliver nodded, and Ixchel started asking questions. Lorenzo quickly translated. As the two men spoke, Julianna moved closer to Oliver.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

Oliver fixed her with a glance. “Something. I’m doing something, Jules. Maybe for the first time in my life. My father-no matter how benevolent his motives-took this from me. And I’m taking it back.”

Julianna reached behind his head, fingers curling in his hair, and kissed him hard. When she broke away, both of them a bit breathless, she wore a small, suggestive grin.

“I guess you are. And y’know what? It’s kinda sexy.”

Oliver shook his head, smiling, and together they turned to face their newfound friends once more. Ixchel and the professor were talking rapidly now, hands gesturing too quickly to follow. They nodded to one another in agreement.

“Lorenzo.”

The professor looked up.

“We don’t want to interrupt, but we need to get out of here,” Julianna said. “And not just out of Palenque, but out of Yucatazca completely. We’d appreciate any help you could provide.”

Lorenzo looked stricken. Ixchel tapped the older man’s arm and asked a question in his native tongue. The professor ignored him, staring at Oliver.

“You cannot simply slip away in the dark, my friend. There is so much good you could do here, not only for Yucatazca, but for yourself. The Atlantean scum who have usurped our throne claim that you murdered King Mahacuhta. They deny the existence of the Legend-Born. They send us to war against Euphrasia. But already many do not believe the edicts that are issued from the palace in the name of Prince Tzajin. If you were to speak to the people-to stand and speak the truth-many in the city would believe you, and others would at least begin to doubt.”

“Wait, what about the prince? If they’re doing all this in his name, where is he?”

“In Atlantis,” Lorenzo replied. “Once, I was his teacher, but Ty’Lis convinced the king that the boy should learn at the feet of the scholars of Atlantis. Now with Mahacuhta dead, we do not even know if Tzajin still lives and, if he does, if he knows of his father’s murder.”

Julianna looked sick. “So this boy who should be king now is basically a prisoner in Atlantis?”

Ixchel watched them all impatiently. Oliver understood how frustrating it was to be surrounded by people speaking another language, but the conversation ran too fast for Lorenzo to translate.

“Yes,” the professor replied. “That is what I believe. I know Tzajin. He was my student. If he were here, this war would not be taking place. The boy would have made certain of the truth before breaking the truce and attacking Euphrasia.”

Oliver took both of Julianna’s hands in his. They shared a long moment of unspoken communication. He knew her determination and her courage, and she knew that his years of bending to his father’s will had made him unable to turn away from a fight that didn’t involve his old man.

Ixchel muttered something to Lorenzo and the professor replied quickly. The stablehand turned to them and spoke as though they could understand him. When he finished, he gave Lorenzo a pleading glance.

“What is he saying?” Julianna asked.

Lorenzo took a breath, defeated. “He says we must help you leave the city. There are still Borderkind here. Ixchel believes there are some from the north, working in secret with people and legends in Palenque. But Palenque is uneasy. As you said, soldiers were in the streets this morning looking for you. Many people shouted at them and even threw things. Several were arrested.”

Oliver narrowed his eyes, studying the man.

The professor surrendered. “As Ixchel says, you must leave. Your safety is in our hands. I believe I know a place-a bar-where many meet who could help us find the Borderkind. It will be up to them to see that you reach the north. Tonight, we will go to this bar. I will take you there myself.”

“Or we could just go right now.”

Julianna stared at him. “Oliver, no.”

“The place is a powder keg,” he said. “If we can set it off before we leave here, all the better. Whatever Collette and I are supposed to do or be, there’s an opportunity here that you and I can’t ignore. We want to help Hunyadi win this war, and make sure Atlantis doesn’t take over the Two Kingdoms. And we can’t do it from the shadows.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Oliver touched her cheek. “I’ve spent too many years in the shadows as it is.”

Julianna hesitated, then looked at Ixchel. “Saddle us some horses.”

Lorenzo translated the request. Ixchel’s eyes lit with excitement and he ran to comply.

“We’re horse thieves, now?” Oliver asked.

“No. Apparently, we’re fucking heroes.”

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” he teased.

But once spoken, the words could not be taken back. Julianna would never see her mother again.

The light went out of her eyes and her smile vanished. Powerless to soothe her, Oliver could only pull her close and hold her tightly. He kissed her temple but did not bother trying to summon any words of comfort. Nothing could be said.