Free Night Beyond The Night by Joss Ware Page A

Jade realized that the men were approaching. So much for the hope that they might not come in this direction.
    Peering around the edge of her hiding place, Jade saw the two figures. They were outlined in the gathering shadows, black against the blue-gray of falling night. And beneath one of their shirts, faint but unmistakable, she saw a faint glow. Very subtle, hardly noticeable if you weren’t looking for it and if the fabric wasn’t too heavy.
    A Stranger.
    Here in Envy, lurking in the darkness.
    Jade’s heart ramrodded in her throat and a trickle of nervous perspiration rolled down her spine. But her shock increased as they drew closer.
    For, even in the low light, she recognized one of them—the one without the crystal glow of immortality. Rob Nurmikko, one of the plastic workers. He melted down a variety of objects left over from before the Change—milk cartons, parts of cars, toys, whatever he could find—and created furniture and other goods from them. Jade had one of his heart-shaped chairs in her room.
    He was working with a Stranger?
    Jade held her breath as they drew nearer.
    “It’s not my fault they never showed last night,” Rob was saying. “I can’t exactly drag—”
    “I’ll be happy to give your excuses to Preston,” interrupted the Stranger coolly. “You know how well that’ll go over.”
    “No, wait.
Wait.
I’ll get ’em. How much time?” Rob’s voice was strained and thready.
    “The shipment’s going on Friday,” replied his companion flatly. “Everything’s got to be ready by then, or he’ll have your fucking head. If you screw up this shipment, he’ll send the Marcks after you.”
    “I’ll have the cargo by then.” The plastics maker’s voice didn’t sound very convincing.
    “Either that, or you’d best disappear. Because if you don’t manage it this time—and he’s expecting prime goods—then you’ll be
ganga
lunch.” The other man laughed as they passed by Jade’s hiding place and she closed her eyes, praying that they wouldn’t look into the darkness.
    “I need more grit,” Jade heard Rob whine as the two men faded into distance and darkness, but she could discern nothing else after that, for the ominous conversation still rang in her mind.
    Preston
. Just hearing his name was enough to make her knees tremble and the bottom drop out of her stomach . . . but to know that someone here, in Envy, had a connection to him . . . was preparing a cargo for him . . . threatened to give her nightmares. She’d hoped, maybe in the deepest part of her heart, that something had happened to Preston in the last three years . . . but what, after all, could happen to an immortal man?
    Not much, as long as he had his crystal.
    But the other thing that settled in her mind, besides the fear that she would be discovered as Diana Kapiza, was Rob’s plea for more grit.
    Crystal grit. Also known as pixie or crystal dust.
    A hallucinogen she’d become horribly, frighteningly familiar with during her captivity. What had Rob gotten himself mixed up in?
    The daylong trek took Elliott and his friends north through the mountains, and by the time they made it through the pass, the western horizon had bisected the sun. Darkness would soon come, and with it, the night creatures, and according to the kids, they still had about an hour’s worth of travel.
    Fence and Wyatt each carried a bottle bomb, ready to be lit. Quent had his arrows, and Simon and Elliott each had one of the group’s precious firearms, loaded with even more precious bullets.
    Bullets for the wolves, bottle bombs for the
gangas
.
    During the day, Elliott saw several old and rusted-out vehicles along the side of the overgrown road, but he’d stopped wondering where the rest of them had gone. Just as he no longer expected to find bodies, or even skeletons, lurking in the buildings into which they’d ventured. If there had been any, they’d disappeared long ago, perhaps taken off by wolves or wild dogs . . . or