by David Estes
“Counted?” I say.
Bil nods. “I’ve been conducting surveillance in the area for a couple of days, just before you arrived in the tunnel, which I was using as my base of operations. It’s safer outside the city, that’s for damn sure.”
“And you saw other gangs in the area?” I ask, right away thinking of the Sirens killing the farmers and all the Shifters’ talk about how the Necros were offering a reward for handing me over to them.
“Yeah,” Bil says. “We’ve got one helluva fight on our hands.”
I’m about to ask my next question when the sky blazes with fire and lightning.
Chapter Forty-Six
We barely have time to duck beneath the thick leaves of a nearby tree before the Destroyers are overhead, circling in wide arcs.
They’re not alone.
In flashes of light against the dark blue sky, we see them in shadowy profile. Other witches and warlocks are hanging onto airborne chariots wreathed in fire and crackles of electricity. The Destroyers are pulling them across the starry firmament.
Pyros and Volts and Destroyers: all working together. And according to Bil they’re all working with the Necros. Not good.
“I told you,” Bil hisses.
“Shut your mouth before I shut it for you,” Laney hisses back.
“They’re looking for us,” I whisper. “They heard the sound and are investigating.”
Bil and Laney both nod. At least they agree on something.
Trish touches my arm. Motions up, into the tree. “Huh?” I say.
Hex—who thankfully had the intelligence to turn off his inner light when the witches appeared—gets Trish’s message before I do, and starts rising up into the tree. He lands on a wide branch and settles on his haunches.
“Climb,” Laney says, stretching up and grabbing the lowest branch. Doing a chin up, she pulls herself onto the bottom rung and then reaches down for Trish to grab her hand. I cup my hands and let Trish step into them, boosting her into Laney’s waiting arms.
“Why doesn’t the witch just fly herself up?” Bil mutters.
I get in his face. “You want to work with us? You’ll keep those comments to yourself,” I say. “If I have to choose between the two of you, I choose Trish.” My own words surprise me, and I have to turn away and start climbing the tree so Bil doesn’t recognize my muddled expression. Am I really siding with a witch? Where’s Rhett Carter, feared witch hunter, and what have you done with him?
Simply using the long reach of my right arm, I’m easily able to pull myself onto the first branch without relying on my left arm. There, I stop to reposition myself, keeping my injured arm tight against my side.
As I start to reach for the second branch, I realize something. You can remake yourself a thousand times in a thousand ways, but deep down, where it counts the most, you’ll always be the same. Hating based on being born into a group is just not in me, whether it’s people of other religions, races, or...even witches. I can’t hate Trish any more than I could hate the son of a serial killer. What we do with our lives, and how we are judged by others, should be entirely up to us.
My epiphany still sliding around in my head, I climb higher and then settle in on a large, well-hidden branch, next to Laney, making sure the only room left for Bil is on my opposite side. I’d rather be between them, especially when silence is of the essence.
We arrange ourselves not a moment too soon, as there’s a heavy WHUMP! when a chariot-pulling Destroyer lands atop the hill. I can just make out a pale black-cloaked warlock. I almost mistake him for a Necro, except his robe doesn’t have a hood to hide his face.
“Nice landing,” a female voice says sarcastically. “I’ll be aching for days.” A tall, red-haired woman steps into view. Her hands are on fire. Laney grabs my arm, her nails digging into my skin. I bear it in silence.
“I’m not your chauffer,” the Destroyer says, looking around. With a flick of his hand he sends a ripple through the air, which collides with a bush. The foliage immediately turns as gray and solid as stone.
“You’re not good for much else,” the Pyro says snidely, sending a blue-green fireball bouncing across the grass, creating a trail of flames, before setting a small tree alight.
“Is that right?” the Destroyer says. “You want to try to back that up?” He aims a fist in her direction, like a challenge.
You can try to make them work together, I think wryly, but you can’t make them be friends.
“You’re not going to trick me into a childish test of power,” the Pyro says, tossing her long hair behind her. “You should stay focused on figuring out where the hell that scream came from. We thought we’d killed off the last of the Claires, but if there are any left…”
“Yeah, yeah. They’re our top priority,” the Destroyer says, firing another ripple at the petrified bush, which shatters in a hailstorm of rock and rubble. “Seems like everything’s our top priority these days. Getting more corpses. Capturing the elusive witch hunter. Penetrating New Washington’s defenses. We’ve got to start focusing or we’ll stretch ourselves too thin.”
Claires? I wonder. Is that another witch gang? I thought Mr. Jackson had taught me about all of them, even the ones that had been killed off, but that name doesn’t sound familiar.
“Are you questioning his orders?” the Pyro says. “Because if so, I’d be happy to pass your ideas along…”
“Shut. It. You know I’m not saying anything different than anyone else. And don’t even try to accuse me of treason. You don’t want to pick a fight with the Destroyers.” He kicks a chunk of rock that used to be part of the bush.
“We’d rip you apart,” the Pyro says noncommittally.
The Destroyer laughs. “Ha! I heard about what happened just south of here. An entire Pyro gang finished off. By who? That pathetic group of cowboys that call themselves The End? Shameful.”
I stop breathing, and Laney’s grip tightens on my arm. Although Huckle already told us it was The End that killed the Pyro gang, there was a part of me that didn’t want to believe it. But hearing it from another source makes it all the more real. To do that much damage they must be growing stronger, recruiting more witch hunters to their “cause.”
“Whatever,” the Pyro says. “Driver! Take me back to the field. There’s no one here.”
With that, the Destroyer/Pyro duo roar into the night sky, joining the dozens of others who are swarming toward the city empty handed.
~~~
Sitting on the edge of Mt. Washington, the city is dark and foreboding, but beautiful, too. I imagine it would have been even more beautiful before Salem’s Revenge, full of lights and city bustle.
Now the buildings are dark, and made even darker by a mountainous black cloud that hovers over everything like a shadow.
The city is surrounded on two sides by two rivers, which come together at the corner closest to us, before forming a third river and racing off toward Ohio and the west. It’s no wonder they call Pittsburgh the city of bridges—there’s no way to get to the city without crossing at least one. However, as I scan the length of the three rivers, I notice only two bridges remain intact: the one just beneath us, the Fort Pitt Bridge; and another, just to the west of the city. The others, including the famous Liberty Bridge, have been devastated by an unnatural force, shattered into concrete shards and twisted metal beams that poke from the water, sending whitewater current flowing around them.
I shiver, but not from the cool autumn night.
As my eyes adjust to the dark, I realize something that Laney has already noticed. “Rubble,” she mutters. “Too much damn rubble.” She’s not referring to the bridges, but the city itself.
Peering through the empty expanse of river and air between us and the city, I make out the truth of the dark beauty I recognized earlier. Amongst the shadows of the buildings are mounds of destruction. At least half of Pittsburgh’s buildings have been brought down, as if the city has been bombed to hell and back again.
> “What happened here?” I ask absently to myself.
Bil’s white teeth grin at me in the dark, completely out of place considering what we’re seeing. “The witches destroyed half and New America obliterated the other half,” he says, his voice rising, almost sounding giddy with excitement.
Crap. The slightly insane Bil is back. Where did he go when he seemed almost normal earlier? I believe everyone’s got a crazy gene in them, but for some it’s larger or more prevalent, like a protruding nose or a particularly flabby set of jowls. I’m not saying my crazy gene is tiny, because it’s not, but it’s certainly not as big as Bil Nez’s. Not yet anyway.
Before I can stop Laney from getting him riled up, she says, “You blew up the city?”
Bil’s on his feet in an instant, his hand curling over his shoulder to grab his crossbow. “New America did! I just gave them the information!” I’m almost afraid his shouts will be enough to draw the Destroyers out again.
“Whoa, Soaring Eagle, chill out. It was just a question,” Laney says, surprisingly calm.
“Questions have teeth,” Bil says.
“I won’t even try to figure out what that means,” Laney says.
“They bite and tear.” Bil gnashes his teeth. Oh boy, this situation is about two seconds from getting out of control.
I put a hand on Laney’s arm. Let me handle this, I plead silently. “We understand why you had to do it. There are hundreds of witches here.”
“Thousands,” Bil says.
God. “Thousands,” I correct, a sick feeling creeping into my stomach. If there are thousands of witches, what chance do we have? “So you had no choice. Destroy a city to take out a large portion of the enemy, right?”
Bil just stares at us, his hand still touching the weapon strapped to his back. He looks surprised, like he’s expecting more of a confrontation than he’s getting. “So New America bombed the city?” I’ve got to get him talking, make him feel calm and comfortable. Try to bring the “normal” Bil back to the forefront.
When Bil removes his hand from his crossbow, I do my best to hide the breath I release. “Yeah,” he says. “I told them the situation. That there were thousands of magic-born from all different gangs in Pittsburgh. A day later they bombed the hell out of it while I was watching from the tunnel.”
“Awesome,” I say, although it doesn’t feel very awesome. Fear is rising inside me faster than I can swallow it down. How many innocents were killed in the bombings? And what if Beth and Xave were here?
The familiar rush of denial takes away my breath. They’re dead they’re dead they’re dead, I chant in my head.
The smarter part of my brain says Why would the Necros take any prisoners? I grit my teeth and blink away the moisture in my eyes and try to cling to the very last shred of hope I’ve got. But hope is an elusive thing, always there, but never where you expect it to be. After all, hope’s brother is despair, and they’re always working together to crush the minds and souls of even the strongest men and women.
“But the witches are still here?” Laney asks, shrewdly taking over the questioning. As usual, she proves my equal in intelligence. She’s realized that Bil requires a special kind of touch to keep him from snapping.
I pat the spot on the ground next to me. Bil looks at it, but remains standing. We’re not out of the crazy forest yet.
“The witches REFUSE to die,” he says, his hands raking a path through his jet black hair. He throws his ponytail over his shoulder to the front, where it hangs like a rope.
“It’s okay, Bil,” I say soothingly. “You’ve got friends now. We’re going to help you.”
“And New America?” he says.
“Yes,” I say. “And New America.” I don’t know much about the new government in place, but for now I’ll say anything to keep him calm. “But we need to know what happened after the bombing.”
“The witches knew it was coming!” Bil says, spit flying from his mouth. “A traitor! There’s a traitor!”
“Shhh,” Laney says. “We’ve got to be quiet. The hills have eyes and ears and we don’t want to make it any easier for them.” I try not to laugh at the forced seriousness in her tone. Thankfully, Bil doesn’t seem to realize she’s mocking him.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry.” Finally he sits down, lowers his voice. “They had already relocated their stronghold from the city to…there.” He points to the left of the city, west, across one of the rivers, where the second bridge remains intact. A large dark oval blots the landscape.
“The football field,” I say. “The Pyro told the Destroyer to take her back to the field.”
Bil nods. “That’s where they are,” he says solemnly. “New America bombed the city, but no one was there. I told them about the field, but when the missiles came, they vanished as if they never existed in the first place.”
The statement could just be the ramblings of a mad man, but somehow I don’t think so. “They’ve got wards around the football field,” I say. “Heinz Field.”
Bil’s next words seem as lucid as he’s ever sounded, despite the message of violence they carry. “If we can find a way to remove the wards, New America can kill them all.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
There’s no need to break a window; every house on the mountain is wide open. We pick one that has a long driveway and is partially obscured by trees and its neighboring houses. The moment Bil curls up on a dusty old couch, Laney and I agree to take turns keeping watch.
I’m thankful when Laney volunteers for first watch, because my eyelids are heavier than a concrete block tied to a corpse’s feet.
She wakes me up four minutes later. Except it’s really four hours later.
“You look like hell,” Laney says. I want to say So do you, but exhaustion doesn’t seem to touch her appearance.
“Anything?” I say.
“Nope. Looney Tunes has been sleeping like a baby. In this screwed up world, I guess the crazy ones are able to get a good night’s rest, while the rest of us toss and turn.”
“Was I…”
“Tossing and turning? Yep. I’m glad I wasn’t sleeping next to you or I’d look like Rocky after his last boxing match. You were mumbling in your sleep, too.”
I’m tempted to ask what I was saying, but the smirk on her lips tells me the embarrassment wouldn’t be worth the knowledge. As Laney steals a pillow from under Bil and stretches out on the floor, I try to remember what I might have been dreaming about, but there’s nothing but a big blank hole in my memory.
I don’t feel rested. My eyes sting. My shoulder is a tight ball of pain. Avenging my friends is just a river crossing away—well, two river crossings, technically—and yet getting there feels impossible. Not with thousands of witches standing in the way.
Did I think this was going to be easy? If I ever did, because of some stupid form of teenage male belief in invincibility, or because I almost defeated Mr. Jackson on that life-changing day, I don’t anymore. If nothing else, the miles and battles have taught me that nothing in life comes easy anymore. Maybe they never did.
Because of how late it was when we finally settled down for the night, the light of dawn is already finding its way through the windows. Bored, I climb the stairs to the second floor and peer out the window to see if I can see the city. I can just make out the dark cloud that shrouded the city last night. If I could get a little higher…
The pull-down ladder to the attic creaks with each step. The area is no more than a storage crawl space with more head room in the middle where the roof comes to a point. I push forward on elbows and knees, coughing when I suck in a mouthful of kicked up dust. A dirty circular window provides a northern view, like an all-seeing eye. I clean the window with the back of my shirtsleeve.
The devastated city appears, the scene so different than it looked last night.
In daylight, Pittsburgh is so shrouded in rising mist it’s as if an artist has painted the city on a landscape, just
smudges and nondescript brush strokes. An abstract creation. And to the west…
Something catches my eye, barely. A darting shape, quick and lithe and gone.
Did I imagine it?
There it is again: a dark swirl of fur flashes past a tree and forms a there-and-then-gone arc as it deftly leaps over a wooden fence and into the backyard.
The black blur takes shape as it stops suddenly, sniffing the air.
No.
It can’t be.
Flora the panther Shifter looks up at me with bright yellow eyes.
She smiles a knife-sharp smile.
Chapter Forty-Eight
The attic steps don’t creak on the way down, because my feet don’t touch them. THUD! I land heavily on the floorboards, but I’m already moving forward to the stairs, taking them two at a time, my hand brushing the rail to steady myself.
Hex is barking his head off.
I swing around the bottom of the banister and into the den and I—
Freeze.
Numb horror washes over me.
Flora’s got Laney, her claws out and a hairsbreadth away from her neck, from slashing her open, from releasing her life to the open air. Laney’s jaw is tight and her eyes narrow with defiance. If she’s scared, I can’t tell.
Trish is standing nearby, watching, her mouth closed for the moment. Can she scream fast enough to kill Flora before the witch slices her claws across her sister’s neck? Probably not. It’s too risky. I only hope that the nine-year-old witch is thinking the same way.
Hex stops barking when he sees me. It seems even his magic is helpless with Laney in such a precarious position.
And Bil…a shock runs through me when I realize Bil’s nowhere to be seen.
“Hell-ow, Rhett Carter,” Flora says. Hearing a full-fledged panther speak raises the hairs on the back of my neck.
