Green Jack
Page 51
Chapter 51
Saffron
While Saffron was glad to have four Feral warriors and three coyotes committed to their plan, she was less thrilled that she’d have to spend time in the village. By the time they reached the suburbs, she mostly just wished they’d stop staring at her like she was a salad to be eaten. She was half afraid she’d wake up with bite marks.
The abandoned houses of the suburbs watched them with dead glass eyes dusted with red. “What about the Dust?” Saffron asked, exchanging a glance with Jane.
“Set for tomorrow,” Caradoc replied. “I checked my sources before we left. We’re good if the schedule holds.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Not so good.”
As they cut through a backyard with a damaged fence folded like a paper fan, Caradoc paused, glancing up. The air thrummed. Saffron tried to remember where she’d head that sound before. The coyotes darted instantly under the deck, ears flat.
“Take cover!” Caradoc shouted just as the sky filled with black metal and gunfire. Saffron leapt into a rosebush which thickened around her so quickly she was pierced with thorns. Roarke rolled under a garage door hanging off rusty hinges. Jane flattened herself on the ground and wriggled under a van on the driveway. Caradoc was the last to hide himself as he tried to shove the Ferals to safety. Livia and Augusta dragged Shanti and Anya into the garage with Roarke, just as the helicopters crested the roof.
Saffron pushed at the glossy sharp leaves, trying to see what was happening. The air pushed down on them, slashing at the treetops and flinging dead leaves and litter into the road. One of the feral warriors, Beryl, was too exposed, frozen in shock as she squinted up at the helicopter. Saffron imagined they must look like enormous birds of prey to a people who rarely even used solar batteries.
“Move, idiot!” Saffron yelled at her. Beryl didn’t hear anything except the slash and whir of the blades.
When she finally moved, it was because a bullet slammed through her chest. Two more followed, in her shoulders and her stomach. She crumpled, blood blooming all over her body like deadly flowers. More gunfire followed, but it was broad and basic, without clear direction. Bullets pockmarked the flagstones and the glass left in the house windows shattered. Saffron burrowed deeper into the thorns and petals, wishing she’d hidden somewhere sturdier. The ground exploded at her feet, dirt stinging as it pelted her legs.
The helicopters drifted slowly away, the sounds of the blades fading slowly. It was several minutes before anyone moved. “Saffron,” Roarke barked. “Are you hit?”
“I’m fine,” she said, as the roses spat her out covered in bloody scratches.
“They’ll send foot soldiers in to search the area next.” Caradoc cut her off. “We have to move.”
Shanti and Anya crouched next to Beryl. The feathers in her hair were pale and broken spines. One of the coyotes whined, licking at her foot.
“Did they see the rest of us?” Saffron asked.
“No, that was a routine sweep,” Caradoc said grimly. “They saw her by accident and probably assumed she was a squatter. If they’d seen the rest of us, we’d all be dead. Which will happen if we hang around here much longer. We got lucky. Let’s not push it.”
“Tell that to Beryl,” Shanti said darkly.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But we have to go. Now.”
“We can’t just leave her here,” Anya said through clenched teeth. “She has to be set high for the birds to carry her soul to the Underworld. There are rituals.”
“There’s no time,” Caradoc said. “If you stay to do your rituals, you’ll be joining her. We can’t stay here.”
The Ferals stood together, tension rumbling through them. The coyotes growled, scenting the sharpness between them. Jane stepped forward, glancing at Saffron. “If we get her up into a tree, can you grow it around her so the soldiers don’t see her body?
“Probably.”
“I know it’s not the same,” Jane said to Anya. “But the bonebirds will find her, and there must be hawks and other birds around here.”
They looked at each other, muttering words in their own language. Finally, Shanti stepped forward. “Will you also make the marks?” she asked Saffron. “As the Green Jill?”
“I don’t know what that means, but yes,” she replied. As long as it got them out of here.
“Quickly,” Caradoc barked, already hoisting Beryl off the ground. The warriors closed in, helping to carry her to a tree across the street. Saffron leaned against the tree, flattening her palms.
“Hi, tree,” she said. “Grow. And fast, please. Like really fast.”
“The birds eat her bones clean so she can travel swiftly,” Anya said as they lifted Beryl’s body up to the lowering branches. “We paint the wings on her face so they can find her.”
“I didn’t exactly pack my paintbrushes,” Saffron said.
“Use her blood.”
As Saffron climbed up onto a branch, the leaves were already covering Beryl, rolling her into a green cocoon. She dipped her finger into the wet bullet hole in Beryl’s shoulder, stomach roiling. It was hot and raw to the touch and no amount of imaging could make her pretend it was just red paint. She made the two diagonal lines above the eyebrows and the slashes down the length of her cheekbones as Anya described them to her.
Caradoc waited for her to shimmy back down to the ground. “Move out.”