The Keeper of Wolves

Chapter 8

New Mexico was arid, volatile, and sandy. Kosazana disliked it immediately when she exited Soren's stream of magic and stepped out into the landscape. Used to humid climates with plentiful rain and abundant vegetation, Kosazana found the lack of moisture in the air and subsequently the landscape to be offensive and unpleasant. Wrinkling her nose a bit as the wind suddenly gusted across the open plains and whipped her exposed skin with tiny pinpricks of sand, she stepped out of the way for a number of other immortals to exit behind her. The witches and werewolves had all gone ahead, safe in the daylight; the vampires and drow and all the rest had waited, needing to stay hidden until the sun's poisonous influence faded from the sky.

Voldsa had come, Kosazana noted, as well as Soren and Solvecde. The former was flanked by a small handful of equally-intense-looking women; the latter two still refused company outside of each other, and occasionally, Kosazana. Kosazana suspected that, if they had it their way, the two men would retreat into hiding for a good year or so to delve back into each other's company appropriately. Unfortunately, there just happened to be a war going on.

"Where to?" Kosazana asked Soren when he walked by, falling into step beside him. Tyr had somewhat grudgingly named Soren second-in-command, and therefore, in charge in his absence.

"You see that huge rise, right over there?" Kosazana followed Soren's gesture until her gaze landed on a huge, upward-rising structure apparently composed of rock. It was a perfect right angle on one side, and it sloped down to fade into the ground on the other. The young witch briefly contemplated what could possibly result in such a shape naturally, but returned her focus to Soren when he spoke again. "There is another government facility hidden underneath it. We suspect, based on the decoded information we found from previous raids, that it was structured similarly to Area 51."

"A re we thinking...it will be quite similar in all aspects?" Kosazana questioned hesitantly. She was loathe to think of another experience like the first: the images of immortals caged away beneath the earth still haunted her when she closed her eyes. The only thing that allowed her to settle down and sleep at night was remembering their faces when the bars and glass and doors were lifted.

"We think so," Soren murmured, now at the front of the pack and striding forward confidently. "But we don't think there will be anything quite like Solvecde."

Kosazana supposed she ought to try to take comfort from that statement, but all she could remember now was the crippling agony that had lanced through her at first contact with the Elf. She wondered now if it had been a reaction to his attack, or some spillover of his own emotions.

"We need to get in close and find a good place to wait," Soren informed her, seeing her expression beginning to darken and her demeanor begin to close off. "Once we do, we'll formulate a plan of entry. When the rest join us, we'll be able to move immediately."

The problem with flat landscapes, Kosazana discovered expediently, was that everything looked much closer than it actually was. They hadn't wanted to drop in any closer, Soren explained, to avoid catching the eye of anyone who might be on the lookout after their raid of Area 51. That was all well and good, except that it left them with a hike of several hours through the hot, windy desert. More than once, Kosazana thanked herself for being sensible enough to wear jeans, boots, and a t-shirt again: trying to make this trek in the sandals she frequently wore at home would have been downright miserable.

Soren called a halt once they reached the last viable hiding place for their group: a cluster of cactuses, shrubs, and tumbleweeds that had fortuitously blown together in a little gulley. The ground all around them was splintered and cracked for lack of moisture, but the cactuses didn't seem to mind. Kosazana flopped down in the dust and gratefully accepted the water bottle that Solvecde wordlessly handed to her. Her feet hurt, her shirt was sticky with sweat that had evaporated before she even felt damp, and her eyes and lips were dry from the wind constantly snatching away their moisture. Taking a drink helped immensely, though, and she realized that her mood improved exponentially with the ability to hydrate again.