The elevated longhouse was eerie in its silence, somehow more so than the other buildings they’d found. Perhaps it was because when Char had seen videos of structures like this, they were always full of life, families working and laughing. Or maybe it was the way the wind blew through it, making the cheerful fabric of the curtains flap.

  A set of rickety-looking stairs led up to the porch, but Char walked past them to get a better look at something deeper in the shade beneath the house. When she reached the disturbed and stained patch of earth, she crouched for a better look. Declan stopped by her side, but Lulu continued past her to sniff at the macabre scene.

  The ground was pushed upward from below, just as it had been where they fought the Myriapod. The people who had been ambushed here hadn’t had the warning that Lulu had given, though. The ground around the hole was dark with splattered blood. A lone blue tennis shoe lay upside-down nearby. It was the slip-on sort of shoe that didn’t need laces, the sort used by boaters and inmates. The way her luck had been going, Char wasn’t going to bet on finding a marina at the end of the trail.

  “The centipede thing?” Declan asked, but the tone of his voice said he already knew the answer.

  “Most likely. They fought it, but it grabbed one and left. See how the blood streaks continue into the hole?” She pointed to other disturbances in the soil, “Looks like four or five survivors went back towards the stairs after the fight, maybe more. Hard to tell. This isn’t fresh. Couple days old, maybe.”

  Declan looked at the scuffs and faint prints in the dirt. Char watched his face as he examined them, his eyes following the confused mess around the hole, and the trail back to the stairs. His head jerked, and his eyes widened for a second before going distant and unfocused. “Hey, I just got the tracking skill! Does that make me a ranger, now?”

  Char grunted. “Good. Let’s see what they left upstairs.” She stood and suddenly realized that her knees didn’t twinge when she did. It was a tiny, tarnished silver lining to the apocalypse, but she’d take her good news where she could get it.

  There were footprints on the stairs, but she didn’t point them out, letting Declan practice his newest skill. They were smudges of bloody mud, several of them made by smooth-soled shoes similar to the one on the ground below. She revised her estimate of the number of survivors upward as she counted the different sizes and types on their way up the stairs. The footprints were accompanied by a trail of rusty dried blood drops.

  The footprints crossed the porch into the house. Inside, they found all the signs of a life interrupted. The longhouse was one large, open space on the inside, but lines draped with curtains showed where it had been divided when needed. Reed mats and neatly rolled blankets suggested at least six people had lived here, once.

  A set of Ikea shelves stood out among the more rustic, handmade furniture, and a discarded and cracked iPod, wrapped with a rubber band to keep the case together, lay on the floor against the wall. Tiny touches of modernity mixed with traditional furnishings in a way that made the house feel more real to Char, less like a set-piece yanked out of a history book. This had been a home to real people doing their best to get by.

  The footprints spread out, and Char got a better read on them. There were seven sets, and an injured person was being carried. Eight people in all, maybe. Most of the mud had been knocked off on the stairs, so the prints weren’t as clear. Blood smears marred one of the reed mats, and scraps of cloth soaked in dried blood were piled next to it. They had tended to the injured person here.

  “Looks like they took all the food and knives, just like at the apartments,” Declan said as he poked through the detritus that had been a cooking area at one time. “How long ago do you think this happened?”

  Char shook her head. “Don’t know. The blood on these bandages is dry, so it’s been a day or two at least. Maybe longer.”

  “The quest called it a horrible crime, but we haven’t seen any bodies. Aside from whatever happened below, I mean. They even tended someone’s wounds. Do you think the system cares about people robbing and kidnapping other people? I mean, it doesn’t seem like they care about us at all, so why would it give us this quest?” Declan stared at the bloody mat from across the room as he spoke. His voice dropped to nearly a whisper, “You don’t think there were kids…” his voice trailed off, not wanting to voice the thought. Then he shook his head and answered his own question. “No… no, it couldn’t be. Mira’s daughter… when the system came, when we all went to that white space, she didn’t come back. Mira got a notification that all of the kids had been transported to a school or something.”

  “Whoa, wait, what now? This is the first I’m hearing about this. What school?” Char looked away from the bloody rags and walked over to Declan. She leaned against a table and crossed her arms. Lulu, who had been sniffing all of the mats, trotted over, sensing Char’s unease. She leaned against Char’s leg, and her warmth was comforting.

  Declan shrugged, “I don’t know. We didn’t get any more information than that. All of the children, aged fifteen and younger, were being transported to a school and a… creche? I’m not sure if that was the right word, but Mira said it meant something like a nursery. The notification said that they would be educated and trained and would be returned to the ‘training area’ when they were of age.” He made air-quotes around the words ‘training area’. “Her daughter is thirteen. She was freaking out for a while, then she just got kind of quiet-mad… the sort of mad that’s scarier than loud-mad, if you know what I mean?”

  Char nodded, “Oh, yeah, I know exactly what you mean.” She thought about her cousins. They were all around her age, but Jimmy had kids in Middle School. He must be mad with worry if they just vanished. And Tina… she was expecting her firstborn in a couple of months. Would she be able to survive long enough to give birth? Would the aliens zap her child away? One more reason to find her family; one more reason to get strong enough to put her foot up an Aldevari behind.

  Declan watched her face, “Yeah. Yeah, I guess you do.” He took an unconscious step back from her, and Char realized that she’d clenched her fists so hard that her knuckles were turning white. Lulu chuffed, and a ripple of flame went down her back. Char felt a wave of support from her, and a readiness to rip apart whatever was pissing her off.

  Char tried to force herself to relax, to put the anger back in its box. Its target was out of reach for the moment, but she’d get there, she promised herself. “At least they didn’t leave kids to the meat grinder, but the idea that they might do anything to them… indoctrinating them, or abusing them somehow, and we can’t do anything…” She ran her hands through her hair and paced across the room, trying to force herself to let it go for now, to focus on what they could change. It took her a minute.

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  When she felt like she could talk without snarling, she came back, “As for why the system gave us this quest? I doubt it cares about human-on-human violence. They want us to fight. That first quest I got led me to a dungeon. More than likely, this one is leading us to something, too. Maybe another dungeon, maybe not.” She shrugged. “I hate that they can play us like this. They want us to get stronger, and they’ve made it so we have no choice but to play their game, and they know exactly what sort of bait to use. If there are people in trouble…” She let the thought trail off.

  “Then we need to help them. Yeah,” Declan nodded, seeing her point. “So, we keep going?”

  Char nodded, “We keep going.” She glanced at Lulu and added, “As long as we can follow the trail.” She snorted with amusement as something occurred to her.

  “What?”

  “You ever listen to Robert Johnson?”

  “Um… never heard of him. Who’s Robert Johnson?”

  Char tutted and shook her head in mock disappointment. “Only the greatest bluesman who ever lived. Legend says he sold his soul to the Devil at a crossroads in exchange for his talent. He had a song called ‘Hell Hound on My Trail.’” She motioned to Lulu, “Never thought I’d see it play out for real.”

  Declan raised his eyebrows in exaggerated skepticism, “Sold his soul to the Devil at a crossroads?”

  “That’s the story. I know you’ve heard at least one of his songs. Crossroad Blues? There's a pretty famous Clapton cover of it.” Char went with the tangent. There were so many things they should be talking about that were more important, but she needed to think about something normal, just for a few minutes. Just to cling to what used to be for a little while. It helped her put the anger back in its box. She could take it back out again when she needed it.

  She headed to the back door of the longhouse. All of the footprints on the front stairs had been heading up, so their quarry must have left through the back. She froze mid-step when Declan said, “Clapton? Who’s that?” Slowly, she turned to stare at him, incredulous.

  Declan was grinning and barely holding in laughter, “You should see the look on your face. Oh, man, I wish I had my phone so I could get a picture. Yeah, I know who Eric Clapton is. You can stop with the crazy eye thing.”

  Char rolled her eyes and snorted, barely holding back her own grin. “Come on, smart-ass. Not much more to learn here. Let’s see if we can pick the trail back up.” She turned back to the door and stepped out onto the porch on the side opposite from where they’d entered. She was glad she hadn’t sent Declan away when he’d followed her. She didn’t want to be responsible for someone else, but the kid was good for keeping her out of her head. The jokes and laughter might not seem appropriate, but they were good for her sanity.

  There wasn’t much of a visible trail to follow down the back stairs; most of the mud had dried or been knocked away by the time the people they were following had passed this way, but Lulu had picked up the scent. They followed her out into the desert.

  The trail made a beeline for a cluster of vehicles half a mile away. At first, Char thought it was just another random patch of parking lot, but as they drew closer, she could see that all of the vehicles were the same. They were all Sprinter vans with some sort of fleet logo on them. There were six of them, parked in two neat rows of three each. As with the cars in the woods, a patch of lined asphalt had been moved with them. The language on the side wasn’t one she recognized; it used the alphabet she knew, but there were a ton of extra accent marks over the letters. The stylized drawing of a package on the logo suggested that they were part of a delivery fleet.

  When they reached them, Declan looked one over and tried to peer into the windows while Char examined the ground for signs of people passing through. “Looks like someone bought a whole new fleet and never got to use it. Some of these still have plastic on the seats.”

  “They stopped long enough to relieve themselves, and there was some sort of scuffle.” She pointed to a dark spot on the asphalt near the rear tire of one of the vans, then to a dent in the side of the van at shoulder height that was spotted with a small smear of dried blood. “Lulu still has the trail. There’s another building off that way.” The next cutout was about a mile away; too far to make out any details about the low, dark building. The wind was picking up, lifting the fine sand into a dusty haze that was going to make tracking difficult. The trail seemed to lead in that direction, so, even if Lulu lost the scent, it was pretty obvious what their next stop would be.

  There were other cutouts in the distance around them, buildings of all shapes and sizes, stretches of road lined with abandoned vehicles, and, in the far distance, Char saw what looked like half of a curving interstate flyover-style interchange that just ended in mid-air.

  “Plenty of places they could have gone. Why did they pick the creepy-looking one?” Declan asked, shading his eyes in an attempt to see it better against the glare of the desert sun.

  “It’s all creepy, Dec.” Char started walking, and Declan followed. Lulu darted ahead, snuffling, but as the wind continued to blow, Char caught feelings of frustration from her as she zig-zagged and sniffed, losing the scent and trying to find it again. Char sent her reassurance and an image of the building in the distance, hoping that she would understand. She seemed to; she gave up on sniffing for the trail and focused on watching for danger as they walked.

  The wind continued to increase as they walked. Char picked up the pace, worried about being caught in a sandstorm. Her father had told her about the haboobs he’d seen during his time in the desert, and she didn’t like the idea of being caught out in one. She anxiously scanned the horizon, worried that she’d see the dark line of a wall of sand and wind bearing down on them.

  The building they were headed for turned out to be a long red brick building, three stories tall and gabled. It had rows of tall windows and looked like a cross between an English manor house and a dormitory. Hexagonal Victorian-style faux-towers flanked a set of double doors at the entrance.

  The building sat on a patch of tended lawn, the grass turning brown in the arid heat. Part of an iron fence stretched around the front building, but whatever force had scooped it from its previous location had sliced neatly through the fence as well as the landscape. Where the driveway passed through the fence, it was flanked by brick pillars that supported an iron arch. The arch held a word spelled out in large iron letters. “Ravenmoor”

  “Yeah. OK. I take it back. Some of these are definitely creepier than others,” Char admitted when they were close enough to make out the lettering.

  “There’s smoke coming from one of the chimneys.” Declan pointed, and Char looked where he indicated. There was a thin stream of gray smoke blowing almost sideways before the wind dispersed it entirely.

  “The windows have bars on them,” Char pointed out. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” The brick pillar on the right had a sign mounted to it, but they had to get quite a bit closer before Char could read it. It read: Ravenmoor High Security Psychiatric Hospital. Visitation by Appointment Only. There was a phone number at the bottom and the name of the Director, but the name had been smeared with something Char didn’t want to speculate about.

  “Did you just quote Star Wars?” Declan asked, one eyebrow raised.

  Char shook her head. “Not intentionally.” She tried to flash him a grin, but it fell flat. “There’s something off about the mana here. It feels like something is watching us and drooling. I’m still trying to get a handle on this magic stuff, but I’m pretty sure there’s some bad ju-ju going on here.”

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