“Don’t even think about it, Princess,” he warned in a small hiss while I glared at him from beneath my bangs. Something in his face changed as he looked at me. Then he leaned close to my ear, his breath buzzing the short hairs there, stirring dangerous thoughts that were doused in the next instance. “If they’re looking for us, they’ll kill her, Lu. Don’t do that to her.”
Fight knocked out of me, I nodded into his hand. His fingers still smelled of blood and gore and the sticky sap of grass. It wasn’t until they were slowly pulled away, one after the other, his eyes locked on mine and looking as lost as I felt, that it hit me. Jared wasn’t truly worried about the woman. He was worried about what it would do to me if I got her killed.
Ali poked at my shoulder. I swayed. Jared bared his teeth, but Alastair ignored him. Then we were off once more, tramping through the small copse of woods we’d been following to get from farm to farm. Eventually we arrived at the tall grasses of a farmer’s fields, tall enough to swallow us whole. Jared’s heated gaze burned into my back. It was hot enough to make me feel empty and full of longing for some ending I could never have.
There, in the twilight barn, we chew the cold stuff in silence. The wind kicks up. The air is layered with the smell of hay and fire and smoke, darker than a campfire.
“What do you think it is?” I ask, sniffing. “That smell? You think there’s a fire nearby?” I don’t miss the dark and brooding looks Jared and Ali exchange. “What?” I ask, mystified.
Jared’s growl nearly drowns out Alastair’s answer. “The soldiers were setting fire to the train cars as they went through.”
My stomach jerks violently. I barely have time to stagger to my feet before I get sick on a pile of hay in the corner. Ali wisely stays put, though Jared comes up behind me. He throws one arm around my back, and with the other wipes my hair from my face. Breathing heavily and leaning my weight against an old wooden beam, still smelling of nice things—trees and dirt and earth—I try and fail to put sense to the attack on the train.
“Does anyone understand what happened back there?” I finally rasp through a scratchy throat.
Unlike in Dominion, there are no clocks here. There’s nothing to mark the gaps between moments. Instead there’s just the silence of the grave until Jared scrapes his foot along the wooden floor.
His eyes glow green against the darkness of the hayloft as I turn to him. “Things have changed.”
“You think I don’t know that? Stop trying to protect me. I’m not a baby.”
Those eyes deepen, the muscles in his neck tense. But then he shifts his hands behind him, and the loafer is back. Unconcerned, untouched by the chaos and death and violence all around him.
“All I’m saying, Princess—”
“Do not call me that,” I bark. And oddly enough, it works.
Jared nods, his eyes snapping back to indigo. “All I’m saying is, things changed the moment we figured out there are Watchers here.”
I don’t feel myself moving, just feel the moment of impact as I flop down in front of him. “I know it. I feel it. I just don’t understand what it means.”
There’s a question behind the question if he’s smart enough to find it.
“You already know the answer to that, Lucy,” he says solemnly.
“Do I?” I eye him, wondering if I have enough of the pieces to puzzle it out.
“I think we should abort.”
“No!” My hand shoots out to Jared’s chest. “No, we can’t. We’ve come all this way.”
“Jared’s right, Lucy,” Ali chimes in. “This is a whole bag of awful. Going back to Dominion is about the only sensible thing we can do.”
I dart a glare at Ali and turn to plead with Jared. “We can figure this out, Jared. I know we can.” My fingers curl and tighten around his wrist.
Jared flexes his fingers, and my own hand flares out in response. He stares down at his cuticles, still rust-colored, as though surprised by them. “What do you think it means that there were Watcher signs on the train?”
“That there are Watchers here, obviously.”
A ghost of a smile tips onto his lips, disappears. “What else? Other than the obvious.”
Think like Foxes. The familiar refrain jogs through my head. What does it mean that soldiers tried to abduct us on board a train marked by Watchers? “I suppose… I guess it means there’s a preacher here somewhere, or someone who is connected to Dominion.”
“Right. And what do the preachers in Dominion want?”
“Me.” My heart sags as I struggle with the words. “Margot and me.” Admitting all that violence is because of us, because of my sister and me, is worse than living through it.
Jared gives me a look so full of tenderness and understanding I think I’ll crack in two. “Lu, this isn’t your fault, honey.” He stretches his other hand over mine, the heat seeping into my cold bones. “Let’s think about this. The Watchers want you. The Watchers are here. But here’s what I’m thinking. There’s no way that Father Wes is organized enough or, hell, rich enough to stretch his sticky fingers across the big pond.”
Of course. What’s my father’s cardinal rule? Follow the money.
Light blooms in my mind as the idea takes root. “So the Watchers have a backer. And that backer wants the Fox sisters.”
“I think so. Badly enough that he or she is willing to invest in resources all the way over here.”
“Wow.” It’s all I can manage for a moment while I contemplate the staggering amount of money that would be necessary to pull the strings of a group like the Watchers—and on two continents nonetheless. Only one of the Upper Circle’s most elite could afford that kind of clout. The niggling thought claws at the back of my mind.
“So the Watchers clearly know that Margot is here, too… As did, I suspect, our buddies back there on the train.” Jared scratches at his jaw.
“What do you suppose the soldiers wanted? I don’t think they know where Margot is, either.”
“Well, they sure as hell weren’t throwing you a Reveal party. My best theory is that they were hoping you’d tell them where Margot is and they’d nab you both. Not a bad idea, really. Whoever was in charge of that little operation, they had at least a few brain cells rubbing together.”
“That doctor…” My stomach shrinks again. “And I was stupid enough to mention her.”
“Aw, c’mon. Stop making her feel bad,” Alastair drawls from nearby, his soup cup abandoned.
Jared cuts him with his eyes. “Stay out of this.”
“I’m as in this as a body can get,” Ali grumbles, and busies his hands with his rock.
Jared fixes on me. Every line and juncture of his body is tense and ready to spring, despite his best laid-back act. “It was either that or we were going to be lab rats, poked and prodded until we were in even more hot water. You did what you had to, Lu. You got us out of there, and without bloodshed.”
“But what if—”
“No,” he cracks out. I don’t think he intends to sound as harsh as he does. “Never think about the ‘what-ifs,’ Lu. They’ll eat you alive. This is survival. This is war.” His finger jabs the floorboards as he talks, punctuating his words like bullets.
But the question behind the question remains hidden, unanswered. As quiet-quiet and deep as the riddle of my blood.
Who pulls the Watchers’ strings?
I don’t know what wakes me. A slight tension in Jared’s back, maybe, nestled so close to mine his heat is like a blanket. I can feel his wakefulness moments before headlights cut the darkness around our heads, lighting up the shadows of the barn like search beacons. Jared soundlessly jumps to a crouch and presses himself to the side of the small open window like a perfectly trained merc.
I’d been dreaming of the baby. Bald, its anemic face drawn and purpling in death. When I went to hold it, my fingers turned a mottled blueberry, infected by the baby’s last sharp, stabbing cries. I dropped it and it fell with a thud, and I knew it had been lo
st. Its family gone. Then, in the darkness of my dream, I heard Margot. Just her voice, my sister’s words echoing through my head like a summer’s breeze.
“It’s too late, you know. The babies have already come and gone.”
And just before the dream ended, I saw a bank of metal monsters—huge, glistening metal machines that pushed skyward in a vast space, skyscrapers growing like metal flowers under a roof. A wall of cribs fell under the shadow of the metal monsters, teeth polished and bared. And then the world erupted into flame.
When I open my eyes, I’m sure the warmth I feel is coming from the flames of the fire that had consumed me, stripping the flesh from my bones and leaving me nothing. My mouth full of ashes. Wet tracks soaking my face. I press the heel of my hand across my mouth to stop my whimpers.
Alastair’s still-sleeping breath fills the small hayloft. I touch Jared’s shoulder, his flesh scalding me through his light-blue cotton T-shirt. He turns his head slightly, a wry look to his lips that tells me we’re on the same page. There’s no way Alastair is from Dominion’s mean streets if he can sleep like that. Lasters in Dominion sleep with one eye open and a hand on the trigger, if they’re lucky enough to have one.
For one long second, his eyes linger over my face, my neck. He crosses one spectacular arm over his shoulder to touch the hand I’ve left there, capturing me for a moment. I lean harder into his back. His flesh hard and muscular, a jungle cat. I inhale the unique him-smells, now mixed with sweat and hay and dirt. His back heaves, as though he hasn’t breathed deeply in a year or more. I feel us both relax despite the dangers below.
We have visitors. The car that drives up is olden-times, a Rolls. I’d seen them often enough at the homes of Dominion’s most elite, chauffeured by mercs in drivers’ uniforms and strapped with semis. It parks with a final loud purr in front of the farmhouse. The sudden silence is deafening. All four doors open, spilling out men in uniform.
Jared presses himself tighter against the window frame, pulling my body with him, huddling me close at his back. I can see nothing now but the cloudy outline of a bright yellow moon. A cat’s eye, as Margot liked to call it. Rapid-fire Russian drifts up from below. I catch about every word in three. “Woman.” “Guns.” “General.”
“Jared,” I whisper, grabbing a fistful of his T-shirt. He tenses and shifts, leaning his ear down to hear me. My lips meet his flesh as I make the words. “They are on the hunt, too.”
For hunters, they’re doing a lousy job, I think to myself as the sounds of merriment waft up to us where we hide like mice in the corners of the hayloft. The night has deepened from gray-black to gray-blue, a sure sign dawn is coming.
One of the soldiers sings a bawdy song, loudly and off-key, on the farmhouse porch. A moment later there’s a telltale sound of a zipper being pulled, a stream of water hitting the dirt off the porch. The glug of a bottle as the soldier drinks and sings another verse.
Then the shuffling of boots on the wooden beams of the porch. The door bangs open again and the festive sounds of a party spill out over the hum of cicadas before it’s muffled by another bang. Jared still stands sentinel at the window frame, keeping an eye on the one lousy guard posted at the perimeter of the farmhouse.
Jared whispers in my ear. “They should have been smart enough to search the grounds. And if they were smart,” he tells me with a wicked, feral grin, “they would have posted at least four sentries. Would have kept the odds a little even.”
We wait some more. In the early dawn light, the yard is washed out, everything turning the soft color of bone. Ali’s rock skips over his fingers soundlessly. He hasn’t said much since we woke him with a hush. But it’s become clear that with these so-called hunters on the loose, the only thing they’ll manage to shoot is one another. Someone named Sergei is being shouted at—something about his mother. In another few moments they stumble out again into the yard, all of them staggering as they weave over to the Rolls.
It’s Sergei, the one who looks like a barrel-chested bear, who says in a thick, slow baritone, slow enough that I can understand him, “Russia is big and she—she is small.” His grin is sloppy as he holds up for his friends a grainy black-and-white surveillance image blown up on a Feed page.
Another one—I heard someone call him Aleksei—tries to grab the image with fat white fingers. “That bounty is mine, Sergei. I’ll get her.” His words slur and he trips, falling flat on his back in the dirt.
The other two laugh, knee-slapping laughs. And Sergei holds up his prize again, this time high enough for me to see.
A pale face, pointed chin. Hair falling in loose curls just past the shoulders, a color I’d as soon say was reddish brown if the NewsFeed image were in color. I can’t see the eye color but it doesn’t matter—I know her face as well as I know my twin’s.
18
I see rather than hear Jared’s snick of breath as he gets a good glimpse of the NewsFeed image. Feel his primal rage building, hot lava under a still surface. His muscles twitch with the effort of staying calm, of not turning into a murderous machine. His eyes flash bright. I reach out my hand. He takes it in his, the sharpening nails grazing my skin.
Another loud crack fills the air. I wince, and we turn our attention to the scene outside. Sergei’s pistol is drawn. He holds a corner of the Feed screen, now torn and smoking, while the rest lies in shards on the ground. The men are laughing again. It sounds like the barking of hyenas. On the ground, the one called Aleksei rolls, tears falling over his reddened face. A dark patch mushrooms across the front of his uniform. The third man says something and points to Aleksei’s crotch and the men rooster with laughter again.
They are laughing so loud I almost miss the quiet-quiet, merc-like return of the sentry. He bends and says something in low tones to the hysterical Sergei. Sergei listens and nods but doesn’t seem to take the sentry very seriously.
Still, he’s the one to watch. Tall, skinny to the point of being see-through, even in his uniform. And scariest of all—sober. He’s seen something, heard something, I reckon as his eyes track the semidarkness. The sentry looks toward the barn as though he could peel back the dark and see through wood.
Skinny casually slings his Uzi from its resting place across his back to his hands and starts toward the barn. It’s like watching an accident. I can’t pry my eyes away from the scene below, so I miss most of a silent exchange between Jared and Ali. I catch the tail end, though, which involves Ali dragging me, hand over my mouth, to the hay bale nearest our hidden ladder. He shoves me down behind the hay as the first steps scrape and echo on the stone floor below.
Skinny methodically paces the long barn. The occasional clatter or bang tells me he’s opening the doors to the stalls, about ten of them. They are all empty, cleaned of hay, but there is still moldering feed filling the bins, harnesses and equipment I couldn’t name on long nails across the walls like hunting trophies.
He wanders back below the hayloft, his boots slow and steady. Pauses. Sniffs. Here, near the lip of the hayloft, I can smell it, too, and curse myself. Because here, over the scent of the hay, is the smell of my own sick, rubbed clean by hay but not gone.
A sudden thud. I imagine it’s the barrel of the Russian assault rifle Skinny is carrying, smacking against the wooden slats of the hayloft. Once, twice more. Then he moves rapidly to the barn door and calls harshly for his companions to come.
The hay muffles most of the exchange, but I can almost make out Sergei’s lazy, drunken drawl telling Skinny to get out of the barn and drive them somewhere. Skinny argues, moving rapidly toward the other soldiers.
Sparks dance before my eyes. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until the soldier has left the barn. I don’t have time to recover before familiar strong hands clamp around my arms, hauling me out of the hay, Alastair popping up beside me. A crazed look has crept into Jared’s face. It’s an expression I’ve never seen before, something I’d as soon call panic. I don’t have a chance to ponder it long before Ali ha
s jumped down. Jared lifts me effortlessly. A scant second later, I’m flying through the air, down into Ali’s waiting arms. Jared follows, his own landing making a soft thud I’m sure will bring Skinny running. There’s no space for me to protest, so instead I fix Jared with a glare that he promptly ignores.
We slip out the door into the fields not ten feet away, tall and thick enough to block a truck. The stalks slap my face and hands and legs, holding me back. A pressure at my back is Jared’s hand, propelling me forward. Ali takes the lead, forging a zigzagging path.
Shots ring out. A bullet zings past my right ear. Jared flattens me out on the muddy ground as several more whip over his head. The world goes mute. Winded, I try to catch my breath. Jared blazes me with a look that promises death as he cradles my head like an egg.
“You’re all right,” he whispers, his lips thickening as he partially shifts into beast. It’s not a question. His nose riffles gently through my hair. Beneath the scent of my fear, he knows I’m safe. I nod anyway as Jared hauls me up and pantomimes running in a crouch. Bullets keep flying, but with Ali’s zigzagging flight, it seems they keep missing the mark.
Now I can hear them: the crackle of a radio, Sergei shouting loud, crude obscenities at the intruders in the grass as the drunken hunters call in reinforcements. What I don’t hear is our silent stalker.
Where is Skinny?
I reach back, and Jared’s hand is there. It covers mine, stilling the panic in my chest. He puts a finger to his distorted lips that open to a snarl. Underneath his shirt, his muscles ripple, build mass. A True Born about to fly loose. But the grass is blind. They can’t see us, but we can’t see them, either. And already I can hear the sound of distant drones.
They’re coming.
We wade deeper into the ocean of grass and stumble into Ali. He’s bent down over something, I can’t tell what, until I see him writing on a small pad of paper. His pen and paper seem absurdly antique, like the OldenTimes car in the yard.
He spares us the shortest of glances before bending back down to his task and scribbling furiously. He finishes with a snap of a button on the tip of his pen before folding it into some hidden pocket inside his brown duster, then folds the small rectangle of paper into squares.
True North Page 18
