Poison Princess ac-1

by Kresley Cole

  Matthew cast me a relieved look. “Thorns.”

  “I can go help Jackson, fight with him!”

  He shook his head firmly. “You don’t attack. You await, you beckon.”

  Beckon?

  Come, touch, but you’ll pay a price. I remembered the witch’s besotted admirer. She’d beckoned him.

  The admirable deviousness of briars I’d once admired? Was that guile mine as well?

  I heard a twig snap behind us and whirled around.

  Matthew was staring at the end of a rifle, the barrel just inches from his face.

  I glanced up at the slavering soldier who brandished it. I didn’t dare think he would run out of bullets too. He would capture me and kill Matthew. I had to stop him!

  “Beckon, Empress,” Matthew whispered.

  And then . . . I did.

  I raised a trembling, delicate hand to the man, palm up. A fragile lotus bloomed directly from my skin, right before his riveted gaze. I blew him a kiss across its petals—and the rifle dropped, abandoned.

  Because the soldier was clamping his neck, face gone bright red from the spores closing his throat and robbing his lungs of air.

  As he thrashed on the ground, helpless, the lotus disappeared; my claws grew, sharpening—but now they were dripping like hypodermic needles.

  “Poison.” Matthew grinned. “Lethal.”

  I gaped. Ten thorns working like ten needles?

  “Pierce him.”

  For the briefest instant I wondered if it would feel good to plunge them into flesh.

  No! “I-I can’t! Matthew, I can never be like her.”

  “You fight her, you’ll face her. You must.”

  Sink to her level? I feared I would literally become my worst nightmare, losing myself forever. “Matthew, what if I can’t come back . . . ?”

  Selena trotted over with a glare and drilled an arrow into one of the soldier’s wide, disbelieving eyes—

  The tanker blew, shaking the world like an atomic blast.

  37

  When we realized Jackson wasn’t at the spot where he was supposed to meet Selena, Matthew had to hold me upright.

  He can’t be dead, can’t be dead.

  But if he’d gotten caught in that blast, how could he have survived?

  I’d just stifled a sob when Finn asked, “So what do we do now?”

  “We wait for Jackson,” I quickly said. “Or we go back in for him.”

  “This is your fault!” Selena snapped at me. “God, will you turn off that scent?”

  “Just shut up and let me think!”

  With his lids at half-mast, Finn said, “I dunno. I really like the way she smells.” When he lifted a lock of my hair and inhaled, Selena rolled her eyes.

  “So what’s up with you guys?” he asked, still sniffing me. “Are you like the Super Friends?”

  Matthew said, “Cards. Cards! Cards. Cards—”

  “Stop, please.” I jerked back from both boys. “Just let me think! Finn, can you get back into the camp, or disguise me?”

  Selena scoffed. “They’ll smell you, little shop of horrors. I still can’t believe you left him behind!”

  Neither could I. “Why don’t we save the blame for later—for now we need to FIND JACK!”

  “Evie?”

  I whirled around.

  Emerging from the smoke, Jackson stumbled toward us, covered with grit and ash, his clothes blood-spattered. One of his calves was burned severely.

  I gave a cry of relief and ran toward him, wanting to help him, but his furious gaze made my steps falter.

  “Jackson?”

  Still quaking from his fight, he just held up one finger, warning me away.

  So volatile. Had he just killed a man with his bare hands?

  Finn broke up the tension. “Okay, now that the gang’s all here, let’s start making tracks back to my totally secure pad.”

  * * *

  An hour later, we learned that Jackson did not agree with Finn about the security of his pad.

  It was a weekender, secluded in a blackened forest, overlooking what used to be a lake. A Bagman draw.

  But Finn vowed that no one would bother us—just as they hadn’t on our trek to get to his place.

  Selena, Matthew, and I had known that Finn was disguising us. Jackson hadn’t. He’d limped along, bow at the ready, taking point. No one, not even Selena, had dared to approach him. We’d held back, agreeing not to discuss our new discoveries around Jackson. . . .

  At the front door, he said, “You doan board your windows here, boy?” He cautiously entered, motioning for me to follow right behind him. Matthew trailed me.

  Inside, I was looking less at the windows and more at the Sam’s Club warehouse of goods stored here. Yes, that militia had been rich; apparently, Finn had taken full advantage of his abilities.

  Wares were piled high: batteries, boxes of chocolate bars, Coleman lanterns, crates of bottled water, cereal.

  Selena snidely observed, “Kind of looks like your mom’s old place, Matt.”

  Matthew squeezed my shoulder, just preventing me from a screeching girl-fight attack. Even Jackson frowned at her.

  “No need to board up any windows,” Finn told Jackson as he fetched three Duraflame logs—from a towering pile of them. He bundled them over to a fireplace with a stone hearth and antlers above the rough-hewn mantel.

  Jackson eyed him cagily. “And no one can see the smoke, either?”

  “Seriously, Cajun-type guy. We’re camouflaged here. I’ve stayed at this cabin for weeks, stealing from that militia.”

  As the fire started warding off the chill inside, we raided Finn’s food, dragging our fruit cups, Doritos, and Chef Boyardee cans in front of the hearth.

  But not Jackson. With ash and blood still streaked all over, he rummaged till he’d found a fifth of whiskey.

  Bow strapped over his back and bottle clenched in one mangled hand, he limped to a bench before the fire, sinking down. He sat with his elbows on his knees, staring at the flames, drinking heavily as we finished stuffing ourselves.

  I put together a selection of food for him, but he declined with a sharp shake of his head, turning up the bottle instead. Then he leveled bloodshot eyes at Finn. “How have you been getting in and out with all this stuff?”

  Finn shrugged. “Candy. Baby. I even made it out with one of their trucks. It’s out back.” When Jackson looked incredulous, Finn said, “What can I say? I’m crafty. I’ve had that Tahoe gassed up and ready to take me back to Cali. But it’s been so easy leeching off those reds that I guess I got lazy. Plus, I like to play pranks on them—more of a compulsion really. Not to mention that I’ve had this excruciating boner for Hickette.”

  Casting a significant glance at Selena, he added, “I’ll never set my sights so low again.”

  Seeming unfazed by Finn’s colorful personality, Jackson swigged that bottle. “Somebody want to explain to me why those soldiers were shooting each other?”

  Jackson had seen that? I glanced at Finneas, counting on him to have a ready answer.

  He smoothly said, “Inbreeding?”

  God, this night must be awful for Jackson. Probably nothing was making sense to him, puzzles left and right, and we were hiding all the pieces from him.

  “You been north of here, boy?”

  “I have. All over the Carolinas. And I will not be going back.”

  “That’s where we been goan.” Jackson must be getting buzzed for his accent to sound so thick. “To the Oudder Banks.”

  “Bad idea, Cajun. There’re three ways to get there from here, each one worse than the last. You can either hold your breath through the plague colonies, slip through Slaverville, or take the mountain route.” Something flashed in his expression, something somber, which seemed out of place on his animated face. “That’s where the cannibals really like to hole up.”

  “You’ve seen them?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah. And it’s, like, totally worse than you can im
agine. Their steady diet of grilled Homo sapiens really screws with their heads. And the miner cannibals in North Carolina? They’re the worst! Dude. They don’t even grill.”

  Selena said, “The Outer Banks are looking less and less like my future.”

  “We sure will miss you, Selena,” I said, sugar and snide.

  When Jackson unsteadily rose, favoring his good leg, I shot to my feet to help him. “We need to get your burn bandaged up.” No response. “Jackson? Please eat something.” He glowered. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I wonder, me.” Without another word, he took his bottle and bow, then limped out on the porch.

  He so clearly wanted to be alone. Deciding to let him go for now, I returned to sit with the others.

  When only the four Arcana remained, Finn asked, “So how long have you guys known you were different?”

  In an airy tone, Selena said, “Awhile now.”

  Matthew answered, “Different?”

  I replied, “Um. Just found out recently.” All of us were hesitant to offer more, all of us on guard.

  “So, what I really want to know is how. And why.” Finn gazed from one of us to the next. “Shit. I was hoping you guys could tell me something.”

  Selena shook her head. “I’ve got nothing. Ask Matthew. The way he was dodging bullets, he must be a clairvoyant.”

  Matthew said, “Kill the bad cards.”

  Bad cards. He’d said that a lot. Maybe the Arcana war was simply a matter of good versus evil.

  As I gazed over this group, I wondered if perhaps we were supposed to band together, like a hand of cards—playing to our strengths and shoring up our weaknesses. As I’d witnessed in that battle of Arcana.

  Matthew had told me I was fated to fight Death. I’d vowed never to face the Reaper; would I reconsider if I had backup?

  Hell. No. Death and Ogen had been unstoppable together.

  Then I noticed all eyes were on me. “I don’t know much more than you guys. But I do know we’re connected to Tarot in some way.” I asked Finn, “Have you ever seen a Tarot deck?”

  “Yeah. It gave me the wiggins. Picked it up and put it right back down.”

  I nodded, knowing the feeling. Well, except for the fact that I’d apparently loved to gawk at Death’s card when I’d been little. “The trump cards are called the Major Arcana, the big bosses of the deck. They represent us. I think. I’m the Empress, Selena’s the Moon, Matthew’s the Fool. And you’re the Magician. There are other kids too.”

  Finn muttered, “Rad-ick-ull.” Then he launched into a spate of questions.

  How’d we get our powers, what are we supposed to do with them, how do we find the other kids?

  “I wish I knew,” I said with a pointed look at Matthew. “But I don’t. I think my grandmother will, though.”

  “Tarasova,” Matthew said in an awed tone. “Mistress of the Tarot, wisewoman, chronicler.”

  What had he once told me? “Beware the old bloodlines, the other families that chronicle. They know all!”

  If my family chronicled, did that mean Gran knew all?

  Selena glared at me. “That was the pressing urgency to reach Granny! You wanted to get the scoop on all of us. Why would she know anything anyway?” Again I got the feeling that she knew exactly why my grandmother would know.

  “I didn’t want to scoop you, Selena! I want to figure out my abilities, my life, the world.” I needed to get to Gran more urgently than ever. I recalled that disturbing impulse in the militia’s cage: not to be a girl at all . . .

  That call to surrender, to go dormant, scared me as much as my ability to hurt that soldier with the lotus.

  “So what? We have abilities,” Selena said with a dismissive wave. “Why do you think there has to be a reason behind it, any more than there was a reason for the Flash?”

  I drew my head back. “Are you . . . are you joking? You have to feel that some force is putting us in each other’s paths. Don’t you sense that this is just starting?”

  Matthew picked up a fruit cup and handed it to me, like a reward. Evie gets a cookie.

  “And what exactly are your abilities again?” Selena asked. “All I saw were some ugly, deformed claws—how helpful! Oh, and you smell good. Big asset! Those rednecks could’ve tracked us by your scent.”

  I hated her! When my claws flared, itching to make contact with her eyeballs, Matthew eased between Selena and me. “You’re brimming tonight,” he told me. “It wouldn’t even be fair.”

  Selena smirked. “That’s right—”

  “Not fair to you,” Matthew said, which shut her up. “Archer in close quarters? Against poison?”

  “She’s poisonous?” Selena cried in a horrified tone.

  A fake horrified tone. All my instincts screamed that Selena already knew this about me—that she knew more about me and all the Arcana than I could even imagine.

  What if Selena had some kind of guidebook or her own Tarasova wisewoman, one who hadn’t been locked up? Selena might have total control over her powers, might have been practicing her entire life.

  Her archery skill was unmatched. What other abilities did she possess?

  I recalled Jackson’s strange behavior when we’d arrived at Selena’s house, how bright the moon had been, seeming to call to us.

  Beware the lures. Maybe Selena could manipulate moonlight the way I did plants. Had she used it to lure me to her house that first night—unaware I’d be with Jackson? She’d said, “I never expected to meet a guy. Here. With you . . . I just never expected him.”

  “Poison?” Finn leaned away from me, but excitedly said, “For real?”

  “My, um, claws are.” When he raised his eyebrows, I displayed them, all ten deadly thorns.

  “That is righteous, blondie! Hey, we need to come up with superhero names. How about capes—and codpieces? Just think about the idea for now, chew it over for a bit, let me know,” he said. “Hey, do you guys ever hear . . . voices?”

  I groaned. “All the time. I thought I was going crazy.”

  “Duude,” he said in agreement. “And before the Flash, all kinds of freaky shit was happening to me. I started speaking this weird language. And stuff started transforming—but only in front of me. I saw my cat walking on the ceiling, saw lava coming out of a faucet. The worst? I was doing this girl, and suddenly she looked like my gym teacher!” He shuddered.

  And I’d thought I had it bad. Matthew and Finn had also suffered. “What’d your parents think?” I asked, wondering if Finn had gotten institutionalized too.

  “Dad couldn’t handle my ‘erratic behavior’ anymore, so he pawned me off on Mom. Same result. They were just about to break out the straitjacket—or, worse, military school—when she got the brilliant idea to ship me from Malibu to North Carolina to rough it with my redneck cousins.”

  So Matthew and I hadn’t been the only ones deemed “damaged” by our folks. It made sense, though. I wondered what Selena’s story was.

  “Yeah, Mom figured they’d toughen me up mentally,” Finn said. “I can’t even make this shit up. Mental health—through the chugging of Natty Light, the chasing of hot hick ass, and the killing of ducks and bucks.”

  At least Finn was forthcoming. Though the boy was abrasive—and had he really called me sugartits?—he was starting to grow on me. Especially when compared to Selena.

  I was just about to ask him what my Arcana call was when Selena said, “I don’t hear voices, you two crazycakes.”

  After days with this girl—stifling my irritation, trying to rub along—I’d reached the end of my patience. “If you’re going to lie, I’m not doing any more reveals with you.”

  “I have never heard voices,” she scoffed, worse than my primary shrink ever had.

  I stood, bristling. “You’re a liar, Selena. But that’s what you do best, isn’t it? Deception’s your MO, right?”

  She shot to her feet as well, on guard. “What are you talking about?”

  “When we first met, y
ou behaved as if you recognized nothing about me, but I think you knew exactly who—and what—I was all along. If you’re so bent on acting ignorant, then that means you know a whole hell of a lot more than you’re letting on. Do you know our powers? Maybe you had some kind of teacher or a book. Maybe you were taught everything we’re hoping to discover.”

  She leaned in aggressively. “Prove it.”

  “Now, now, ladies, you two know the rules.” Finn rose, holding up his hands like a referee. “No fights outside of a Jell-O ring.”

  I twirled my be-clawed fingers in front of her face, and eventually she backed off.

  “So tell me what his story is.” Finn jerked his chin in Jackson’s direction. “He’s not one of us?”

  After a final threatening look at Selena, I said, “I don’t think so. I haven’t seen him do anything superhuman.”

  Selena flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Because you haven’t experienced him in the right situation, honey.” Her tone dripped with innuendo.

  Was this the proof that I’d been waiting for? Or another lie? Maybe they had gotten together—at least on the night we’d stayed at her place. And possibly more often.

  Though I did believe Jackson was interested in me again, I didn’t know how I could get past them. Between gritted teeth, I said, “Then tell us what card he is, Selena.”

  She sighed. “My Jack of Hearts.”

  Claws aching, I snapped, “Wrong—deck—hooker.”

  Finn groaned. “This can’t be happening! So you’re both digging that Cajun dude? Both of you? Come on, pussycats, that’s just not right! Spread the wealth.”

  “To you?” Selena raised her brows.

  “Precisely. I’m your guy, Archer. You and me.” He winked. “Think about it.”

  She looked at him as she might at a pesky insect.

  Unperturbed, he asked, “In any case, do we continue to keep our shit secret from the Cajun?”

  “Secret,” Matthew hissed.

  “Right, dude. Guess that answers that. . . .”

  * * *

  By the time we started getting ready for bed an hour later, I was beyond exhausted. Though there were three rooms in the back, I made pallets for Matthew and me by the fire. I wanted to stay near Jackson. He remained just outside on the porch, still drinking.