by David Estes
“Thirty seconds!” Flora growls, and I utter a curse and Bil Nez says, “We’re meat.” He’s back to his pessimistic self.
“Run,” I breathe, and we do, half-sprinting, half-hobbling, skidding on the floor, which is exceptionally smooth like everything in this hellish cave, doing our own version of a three-legged race even without being tied together. Because the light paints a glowing path down the center of the wide corridor, we head to the right for the shadowy cover of the boulders. Rounding one, we come face to face with a black hole in the wall, as if one step inside will transport us to another dimension.
“A tunnel,” Bil whispers, which, of course, is exactly right.
“Zero,” Flora shrieks. “Come out, come out, wherever yow are!”
We don’t have time to discuss the pros and cons of throwing ourselves down an unlit tunnel that might lead to the bowels of hell for all we know. “Inside,” I hiss, extending my arms like a battering ram and pushing into the tunnel.
The impact is like a swarm of wintry sleet raking across my cheek, but with strength behind it. I’m rocked back into Bil’s arms, which, weakened, are unable to handle my weight, collapsing beneath me. We tumble out of the tunnel and skid into the boulder. Bil grunts and I raise a hand to my cheek, my palm coming away streaked with blood.
As I roll off of Bil, a form materializes from the darkness. A leopard, its eyes full of hunger, stalks toward us. We should’ve known that although only three were playing Flora’s deadly game, there would be others involved. The Shifter stops a few feet away and seems to smile. “Good luck,” the leopard says in a surprisingly light and airy female voice.
Using the slick rock as leverage, I pull to my feet and help Bil up after me. Single file, we hustle along the edge of the boulders, half-expecting Flora to tackle me at any moment. More black hole tunnels appear on our right, but we ignore them, confident that they promise more pain than safety. Anyway, darkness isn’t our friend, not when Flora’s heightened feline senses include night vision.
When we round the last boulder in the sequence, I slam on the brakes and Bil smashes into my back, nearly bowling me over. As it is, he sort of clings to me and I to him in an embrace that’s much more intimate than I ever thought I’d get with him. Than I ever wanted to get. But embarrassing body positions are the last things on my mind right now. Not when there’s a massive chest-beating gorilla blocking the path forward. The Shifter makes me think of what the gorillas in Planet of the Apes would look like if they weren’t computer-generated. Real and deadly and like he could squash our heads into jelly between his enormous opposable-thumb-wielding hands. Sometimes evolution catches up to you in a hurry.
Squirming away from Bil, I spin around to find the leopard stalking toward us with silky strides.
We’re trapped.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rhett
Nothing is going right.
We somehow manage to win the fight of our lives and defeat the Head of the Witch Council, and yet we still can’t get the humans and the magic-born to agree on a damn thing. So now the humans are packing up and getting ready for a one way trip to the afterlife, courtesy of the Shifters and their allies.
And to top it all off, the witch hunters are joining them.
“We’re not going to abandon them,” Floss says, fiddling with one of the dozen piercings running up the side of her ear. “They’re our people.”
I swear we’ve been over this ten times, but I take a deep breath and try again. “I’m not saying to abandon them. I’m saying that if we’re leaving Alliance on some ridiculous journey, we need to be smart about security. We can’t just all charge out into the open and expect to survive against an enemy that’s built to hunt us.”
“There’s no ‘we,’” Floss says. “This isn’t working. The humans aren’t interested in having the magic-born around anymore. That’s the whole point. I’m sorry, Rhett, I really am. If it was up to you and me, we’d all stay in Alliance and defend it to the death. But that’s not in the cards this time. I want you to come with us, but you’ll have to leave your friends. I’m sorry.”
A wave of loneliness surges through me as I watch her walk away, joining the other witch hunters, who are checking and rechecking their weapons, filling their packs with canteens and food.
Getting ready to leave.
I close my eyes, defeated, but almost immediately snap them open when I feel pressure on my shoulder. Turning my head, I see a dark hand. The same hand that used to beat the crap out of me in Witch Hunter Training 101.
“This is so screwed,” I say. “They’re all going to die for nothing.”
“Not necessarily,” he says, giving me pause.
Mr. Jackson doesn’t make bold predictions and he’s not an optimist by nature. But this time he’s wrong. Dead wrong. “We barely had a chance even in Alliance,” I say. “Out there, they’ll be sitting ducks, fighting on the Shifters’ home turf.”
“They won’t die for nothing,” Mr. Jackson says, and I finally understand why he seemed so confident in his previous statement. He’s not saying they’re not going to die, just that it won’t be for nothing. Oh great. This is the unfeeling Mr. Jackson I know and despise.
“Yeah, I guess the Necros will have plenty of raw materials for their magic after the Shifters are finished with them. Your army will be huge. The Necros will pretty much take over things, I guess. Maybe the humans are right to leave.”
I turn away from him, glaring at the sun, which is already well past its peak. I stare at it, willing it to stop, to turn back, to end this madness. If anything, it seems to fall further toward the horizon, laughing the whole way. It’s as if the entire world is laughing at me.
“You know,” Mr. Jackson says, “Xave is trying to convince me to follow the humans.”
I don’t move. Don’t react. “Why would he do that?” I ask, my tone even. Disinterested.
“Because he cares. Because he believes in you. Because he thinks peace isn’t a lost cause.”
“Then he’s a fool,” I say. “I’ll talk to him. I’ll try to persuade him to help me find Laney, Hex, and Bil, and then get as far away from here as we can. We can find a safe place and be happy. Forget about you and Salem’s Revenge. Forget the last year of our lives ever happened.” At some point my hands tighten into fists, as if supporting my words with a show of strength.
“You don’t mean that,” Mr. Jackson says, and I hate him because he’s right.
I don’t say anything, just bore holes into the witch hunters with my eyes.
“I’m considering Xave’s advice,” Mr. Jackson says.
What does that even mean? Xave wants the Necros to go with the humans, but the humans don’t want the magic-born anywhere near them. They hate them. Loathe them. Want them dead. Deader than dead—burnt to ash, just like when the government was authorizing the burning of witches during Salem’s Return. If not for the stupidity of humans in the first place, none of this would’ve happened. The magic-born would’ve never fought back.
“They won’t even know we’re protecting them,” Mr. Jackson says.
I say nothing. He’s giving me hope, just before stripping it away. It’s what he does. What he’s always done. I won’t fall for it again.
“The other Necros will follow me anywhere,” he adds, without arrogance, as if simply stating the facts.
“Sheep,” I say.
“Our army is substantial.”
The Reaper has been extremely secretive about the location and quantity of his undead army, so his statement piques my interest. “How substantial?”
“Twelve,” he says.
“Twelve hundred?” The size of the number surprises me, but it likely won’t be nearly enough. According to the Claires’ estimates, the number of Shifters and their allies, including their army of mud, could stretch to as many as ten thousand.
Mr. Jackson chuckles. “A good guess before Xavier. But my son has changed everything. His magic makes mine look like a
child’s beginner chemistry set. What he can do…it’s beautiful.”
I’m dumbstruck on so many levels. If my guess is wrong, then he must mean, “Twelve thousand,” I say, the words coming out a whisper, as if I’ve spoken them aloud accidentally. My mind is still fighting between the sheer magnitude of the number and the fact that he’s lifted Xave onto such a high pedestal.
“Yes,” Mr. Jackson says, and I turn, my eyes meeting his. “Twelve thousand Reanimates will be defending Mr. Cameron Hardy and his foolish followers. The Claires have agreed to accompany us, too, as has your friend, the Medium.”
“Mags,” I say, in disbelief.
“I prefer to think of her as Ye Old Hag, but you can call her what you want.” A smile plays on the edges of Mr. Jackson’s lips.
“Why are you doing this?” I say, my eyes narrowing. There must be an ulterior motive, some endgame that will serve the Necros above all.
The dark seriousness in his eyes is enough to confirm the truth of his words before he speaks them. “Because I always wanted peace, from the very beginning. My methods were crude and hard for a human to understand, but they were all I had. Until Xave showed me another way.”
Beautiful. The Reaper called his son’s methods beautiful. I’m not sure what that means, but from my standpoint there’s nothing aesthetically pleasing about corpses lurching to life, growing claws and fangs that scratch and bite. But still, the guy who was my first and best friend, the guy who’s stood up for me my entire life, has shown his own father, the Reaper, master of the dead, “another way.”
I can’t hold the smile from my face, because that’s who Xavier Jackson’s always been. A Changer of Perspectives. A Defender of the Weak. For the first time since I discovered he was a warlock, I truly see him again as the boy he was, unchanged in the one place it counts the most: his heart.
~~~
I’m preparing to leave—not with the humans, but with the Necros—when the Claire finds me. You have many decisions to make, Tara says in my head.
“Not really,” I say, tightening a belt lined with six cursed throwing stars, two magged-up knives, and the triple-bladed sword that Tillman Huckle sold me just over a week ago.
Light seems to pulse from her white dress, as if she’s laughing. Her face, however, remains impassive, a mask of unamused beauty. You have committed yourself to one cause? she says.
My mouth and throat suddenly feel so dry I wish I could speak directly into her head. “There is only one cause,” I manage to scratch out, pushing away the dark thoughts that threaten to cloud my judgment. Hex. Laney. My father. Bil Nez. Am I seriously ranking the friends in my life? If so, I vow never to tell Laney that I subconsciously placed my dog at the front of the line.
I once told you there was another way to remove your father’s curse, Tara says.
Although I can feel her presence calming me from the inside out, a bolt of anger rises up, burning my dry throat. “Yeah, and then you said I’d only know what it was when the time was right. Well, the time is not right. That ship has sailed. I can’t think about my father, or anyone, right now. I have to focus. I have to not be selfish for one damn day.”
If she’s surprised at my outburst, Tara doesn’t show it in her expression, which remains stoic and wise. The curse can be transferred from your father to another, she says. But only to someone who truly loves you, as he does.
Before I can even begin to process her revelation, her dress whirls and she glides away.
I punch the dirt and bury my head in my hands.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hex
There’s a winged beast guarding one of the entrances to the caves. To Hex, it looks like an oversized pigeon, which makes him want to dash into the open, barking and leaping and trying to rip it from the air.
Not to hurt it. Just to play with it. For fun.
But he knows this is not the time for fun, which seems counterintuitive to every instinct he has. It should always be the time for fun. It’s these bad witches and warlocks that make things not fun. They are the fun ruiners, and they have Laney and Bil Nez in those caves somewhere. He could go and get Rhett, show him where to go, but then Rhett might die, too. And Hex can’t have that. He cannot imagine a world without Rhett or Laney or Bil Nez. Or even Grogg.
Grogg says, “We can’t get inside with flappy flapper watching.”
Hex knows his friend is right. Flappy flapper sees everything with her beady eyes, and despite his earlier thoughts, he’s pretty sure she’s a lot more dangerous than an old pigeon.
“We have to kill it,” Grogg says, and Hex can’t tell if he means the both of them or simply himself. “Grogg be bait. Woofy woof do rest.” The mud troll has never called him that before, but he smiles appreciatively at the nickname, his tongue dripping into a puddle at Grogg’s feet.
Grogg splashes a few times in the drool, saying “Ahhhh!” and then scurries out from hiding, shrieking, “Ooga ooga ooga what?”
Hex doesn’t have time to wonder what Grogg means by his exclamation, if anything, because the Shifter is already diving for the ground, zeroing in on the mud-creature like he’s nothing more than a lunchtime surprise waiting to be scooped up in his long curved beak, which is wide open and ready for business.
Grogg stops and stares upward, making exaggerated gestures with his arms, almost taunting the massive bird. Hex is about to dive from cover, but Grogg shouts, “Wait for us!” and begins scurrying back toward him.
The bird swoops in and Hex does his best to calm his muscles, which are urging him to “Get the bird, Hex! Get it!” Grogg looks back and then dives, squishing himself flat, as if becoming one with the dirt, returning to the earth that helped create him. Time seems to stop as the bird shrieks, and Hex sees that his earlier comparison to a pigeon couldn’t be further from reality. With the gnarled head of a vulture, a long reptilian neck, a body like a torpedo, and bone-hard legs ending in curving, scythe-like talons, the beast is a deadly foe that would strike fear into the hearts of the bravest of men.
But Hex is no man. He’s not sure if he’s still fully canine either, what with all the strange potions he was forced to ingest by his previous captor. Noxious brews that are surely still running through his veins, mixing with his blood, becoming one with him.
Regardless of what he is, he’s not scared, and as the creepy bird scrapes the ground with her claws, he leaps from hiding, growing in size, not changing into a lion this time, but remaining a dog, albeit a much, much bigger one.
The bird squawk-screams and shouts, “You!” before Hex lands atop her, planting his paws heavily on her back, crushing her to the ground. He hates the bloodlust that roars through him, hates how powerful it makes him feel, hates how out of control he’s become—but he gives into it for the sake of his friends, letting ancient survival instincts guide him as he twists around and sinks his teeth into the bird’s neck, wrenching her flesh from side to side like she’s nothing more than one of the chew toys he used to love so much.
The blood is tangy and warm on his tongue. Tasteable enough that he licks his lips, before remembering himself. What he did. The act of savagery that he already wishes he could forget.
Grogg says, “Dead,” two of his muddy fingers resting on the Shifter’s throat. “Good doggy.”
Hex doesn’t feel good at the moment—he feels ill. His tail isn’t even wagging, and he wants to curl in a ball and sleep. Killing is the worst thing in the world to him, even if it’s necessary.
And when Grogg places a hand on the bird’s head and says, “The blood of three children Shifted this witch,” Hex knows without a doubt that killing this monster was necessary.
Hex closes his eyes and tries to remember the faces of the ones he loves. They spiral through his mind, filling him with warm feelings of belly rubs and wet, slobbery kisses. He relishes the moment, feeling the sun on his fur, his mouth open to catch the breeze. He remains like that until Grogg says, “There’s a girl. Grogg knows her.”
; Hex’s eyes blink open and he sees her running toward them, cascading down from the cave entrance like the first sparkling drops of a waterfall, her red hair flashing in the sun. She stops in front of them and says, “You killed it. I couldn’t leave until you killed it.”
Grogg peeks around Hex’s side and says, “Chloe is escaping?”
The girl who must be named Chloe, says, “Grogg. You’re different. You’ve changed.”
Grogg says, “We are our master now. Master is not master. Master is enemy.”
And Chloe says, “Then I need your help.”
“Help with what?” Hex barks.
The little girl screws up her face in confusion. “What are you trying to say, boy? You’re not a normal doggy, are you?” she says.
Grogg says, “Hex is our friend. And you can be, too. We’re looking for someone. Two someones. Laney and Bil. Can you help us?”
“Yes,” Chloe says, and Hex’s tail starts wagging again. “I can take you right to them.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Laney
Bil says, “I’ll let them eat me first. I’d rather not watch you get eaten and then get eaten anyway.”
“How chivalrous,” I mutter, my eyes flicking between the advancing gorilla and leopard. What happened to Flora’s master plan to use Bil’s Resistance powers during the battle and me to lure Rhett out of hiding? How did we go from prized prisoners to the first option on today’s lunch menu?
The gorilla lumbers forward, using all four limbs in a loping gallop. The leopard charges, faster than a blur. Bil screams like a girl.
I grab Bil and haul him toward the wall that splits the space between the two Shifters. Only it’s not a wall; it’s empty and black, leading into a fathomless abyss, likely the home of an even scarier beast, like a bear or the freaking boogey monster. Great plan, I think sarcastically, as I push Bil headlong into the inky blackness, throwing myself after him.
