Page 66 of Katya and the Young God

With one last look around the campsite for anything useful and light, she starts back down, the dog at her heels.

* * *

By her estimation,she gets about two thirds of the way down before the night is too thick and the chill is too sharp for her to make it any further.

She tucks herself away against a rock face, with just enough covering to provide something resembling a shelter, but not enough that she feels like she’s back in the cave.

The moment she lays out her sleeping mat and sits on it, her feet weary and her heart wearier, Stepan immediately sits next to her, flopping over on her feet.

She would start a fire, but she doesn’t want to be identifiable at a distance, in case they go back to the campsite and find her missing. Or, in case the police find the site and see the dead body. Or, in case of any wild animals who may prey on humans, drawing them from their fires.

She doesn’t even know what animals are in this forest. In California she’d worry about mountain lions, keep a wary eye out for coyotes or the adventurous bobcat, maybe black bears further into the mountains, but out here…

A fire is too much of a risk, so she’ll have cold food again.

She shivers in the Colorado night air, and, very, very briefly, lets herself feel sorry for herself.

She failed.

She unequivocally, unmistakably failed. Failed at her orders, failed at keeping others safe, failed at stopping any deaths, and failed at letting the ‘power source’ into others hands.

And failed Selene, condemning her to whatever life of experimentation or torture awaits wherever Feketer is taking her. Wherever Pieter takes her.

She doesn’t know how to feel about him.

As she shivers, she hugs her knees. There is, by her estimation, equal chance that she’s been hoodwinked by him into keeping the girl alive for his own usage, or that he merely did what he thought was the only option to get the girl out alive. He could still be operating in Selene’s best interest, it all couldn’t be an act, Katya can’t be that stupid.

But.

But she knows she might be. Tricked by some weird camaraderie that she felt forming by the proximity and trauma of the deaths under the mountain, blinded by the need to protect someone, that she just may have handed him what he wanted from the beginning.

Something resembling bile climbs up in her throat, and Stepan cranes his neck to look up at her, whining deep in the back of his throat.

“Yeah, I know,” she murmurs to the dog, and he puts his head back down with a huff.

She can’t fix it from here.

She doesn’t even know if she can fix it at all.

* * *

Dawn creepsover her the next morning with a fine soft rain, filtering in her hair and seeping into her clothing, but there’s a warm heavy weight against her chest.

She opens her eyes, and the sky above her is a muted gray, streaked with white and darker clouds, and Stepan the dog is laying on top of her.

For a moment she can’t breathe, the air trapped in her lungs, trapped in her throat, like a fist closing around her, before she forces herself to exhale, forces herself to inhale, relishing in the shock of cold air in her lungs.

She’s still alive.

“Okay,” she whispers, and the dog twitches awake, rolling away with a shake of his fur.

It’s surreal, fog entwining around trees and obscuring the branches above, like something out of a fantasy book or a grand epic movie, and she climbs to her feet, looking out at the view.

The rain isn’t hard enough to hit the leaves with any real force, instead collecting and dripping down when each leaf is full, filling the air with a rich scent. The ground darkens with each drop, a brilliant and deep brown, a stark difference from the sandy ground of Southern California clay.

She stretches, her shoulder a frozen knot, but with the end of the hike comes the promise of getting back to civilization, of getting back to showers and chiropractors and medical equipment she can benefit from. Of getting back to proper beds in enclosed areas and warm food she can make for herself.

After doing his business, Stepan comes trotting back up to her, pushing his nose onto her hand, and, automatically, she lays out a portion of the dog food in his bag, which he scarfs down. “Does he feed you in the morning and at night, or just the morning?” She asks him, because talking to a dog is much better than talking to oneself. “I don’t know when he’s coming back, I’ll have to take care of you until he does.”

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