“Ah, Tower, you should have taken my offer.” My voice was breathier, evil-sounding. “Poison is such a painful way to go.”
Death whispered —Why must you always taunt them so? Make a clean kill and be done with it.—
Shut up!
Though Joules appeared horrified, his tone was full of bravado. “Do it, then. What I want is on the other side anyway.”
I leaned my head closer to his, savoring the way my burning glyphs reflected in his terrified eyes. “Come. Touch. But you’ll pay a—” The words strangled in my throat, because I’d caught sight of . . .
Jackson.
He’d come running down a nearby alley, bow at the ready, but froze upon seeing me.
My heart leapt. He hadn’t left us?
He took cover behind an old shed not fifty feet away. He wore a hunter’s coat, a hoodie, and fingerless gloves. The straps of his familiar bug-out bag fitted over his broad shoulders. His biker boots had been replaced with hiking boots.
He’d been resupplying before coming back for me! I should’ve had more faith.
Jackson’s lips parted at my appearance. He’d seen the aftermath of my battle with the Alchemist—now he had a front-row seat to an execution.
Execution?
This wasn’t me. I wasn’t a killer. Jack hadn’t left us this morning—but I knew if I did this thing now, I would lose him forever. I glanced down at Joules.
No longer did I see the malicious Tower Card. This was just a kid, sweating with fear. I shook my head hard, reining in the fury. Inhale. Exhale. Glance at Jack. Better.
To Joules, I said, “I told you I didn’t want to kill. The only reason I have this marking on my hand is because I had to defend myself. I did everything I could not to harm the Alchemist.”
“Just get this feckin’ over wit’!”
Seeing how much rage Joules had inside him—and an apparent death wish—made me question my offer of alliance. Though I would pass on recruiting this unmerry band today, I would spare them on one condition. . . . “If I release you, will you vow not to hunt us again?”
Tess cried, “Make the vow!”
Gabriel called, “Do it, Tower.”
Joules blinked at me. “You’ll spare us?”
“This game is different. This time, the Empress isn’t playing. I’ll spare you all.”
Selena, Matthew, and Finn approached, flanking me. A unified front. “None of us are playing.” I gazed up at Selena. “Isn’t that right?”
She sighed. “Apparently, we’re going to figure out a way to kill Death, then stop the game.”
Joules jutted his chin. “Aye, then, I vow I’ll not hunt you. But if you attack us, it’s on.”
Anxious to go talk to Jack, I said, “Good enough!” My barbs dropped once more to the street. My claws morphed back. My glyphs dimmed. With just a thought, I freed Tess and unraveled the Tower, offering my hand to help him up.
Joules stared at it. Muttering, “Bloody hell,” he took it.
With the battle averted, Gabriel landed and gave Selena a formal bow—Archangel dug the Archer?
“Don’t you need to go molt or something?” she sniffed.
In a commiserating tone, Matthew told Tess, “The World wasn’t built in a day.” Then he turned to Joules. Sounding more authoritative than I’d ever heard him, Matthew said, “You need to leave this valley, Tower. Before the sun sets.”
Joules’s gaze flickered over each of us. “Not a problem.”
As soon as the Tower and his allies were out of sight, everything seemed to compete for my attention, when all I wanted to do was talk to Jackson.
Selena slapped me on the back. “If I were a nice person who didn’t loathe you, I’d say you did well.”
A limb from the remaining oak offered itself to my thorn claws, like an arm extended for a blood donation. Energy there for the taking.
Death had his own commentary: —You spared the Tower, of all Arcana? Have you lost your wits, creature?—
But I wasn’t paying attention to any of them; instead I hastened toward Jackson’s spot behind that shed. He’d already begun striding away.
“Jack, wait up.” I trotted after him.
He kept walking toward the mountains. The ones that led to cannibal country.
Selena called after us, “J.D.!” He ignored her.
While the others held back in confusion, I followed him. “What are you doing?”
“Getting my ass out of Requiem.” He tossed me my old bug-out bag, the one I’d thought was lost forever.
I gaped down at it. “How?” He must have retrieved it from the militia. I glanced inside. They’d stolen the heirloom jewelry I’d had for trading, but left some basic supplies—and my flash drive of my family’s photos. “When did you get this?”
“Probably around the time you thought I was making out with Selena.”
My face flamed. “You left your own bag behind last night.”
“Mistake.” Catching my gaze, he said, “Woan happen again.” Then he kept walking.
I tried to keep up with his long-legged strides. “Where are you going?” So quickly? So away from me?
“Into the mountains.”
“The ones that are teeming with cannibals?” Finn called, as he and the others snatched up the various packs and jackets and started trailing us. “That’s where they live, you know, the ones who eat raw human meat, the ones I’ve seen. Does anybody listen to me?”
I did. “We’re heading out the other way,” I told Jack. “Through the bottleneck.”
“Then you’re goan to die.”
“And that wouldn’t bother you?”
His shoulders tensed, but he didn’t slow his step. “There’s a horde of zombies back there.” Bag dare. “Bigger than last night, holed up in a warehouse about six miles down the road.” He turned to address the others with a cruel look on his face. “As slow as Evie is, that ought to put y’all right in their midst by sunset.”
I couldn’t say anything about my slowness. Wasn’t like I could back-handspring my escape.
“Mountains. Or Bagger bait,” Jackson said. “That’s between you and your god. Me? I’m heading away from the closest danger.”
There were other things to be said, other questions to be asked—
“Have fun, Empress.” He sneered the word.
“Why are you so angry with me?” I knew anger was his go-to emotion, but he was shaking with it.
He whipped around and stalked toward me. “You. Ain’t. Right. None of you.”
I gasped, rocked to the core. “I-I can’t help the way I am.”
“Doan mean I got to deal with it. You doan need me to babysit you anymore.” He pulled up his hoodie, turned and trudged onward.
“Are you madder about what I am, or that I kept it from you?”
“Split it down the middle. Call it a day.”
“You—you made a promise to my mother to get me to Gran’s!”
He cast a narrow-eyed glance over his shoulder. “You’re goan to pull that shit with me? Fine. Try to keep up, ’cause I’m goan that way.” He pointed to the mountains, as if daring me to follow.
As if hoping I wouldn’t.
While I stood there in shock, Matthew drew up beside me.
“Should we follow Jack?” I asked him.
“I’ll lead you on the correct path. Let you know when you step off it.” He trotted past me, following the Cajun.
That was the correct path? The others looked at me, again like I was their leader.
“We’ll skate close to the edge,” I assured Finn and Selena. “Head south to the end of the range, then cut back for North Carolina. We won’t go deep into the mountains.”
“And if we lose our way?” Finn asked. “There are tons of mines up there. Each one’s filled with cannibals, like ants in a hill. I told you I’d never cross the Appalachians again.”
“I follow Matthew.” Jackson had nothing to do with my choice. Bullshit, Eves.
Selena almost disguised her relief that we’d stick with Jack for now. Finn almost hid his dread. Ahead, Matthew’s steps swerved as he caught rain on his tongue.
“Let’s go. . . .”
For the next half hour, we meandered through the burned-out ghost town, seeing no one, expecting no one. We did pass piles of bodies left over from the Flash, though. Stripped of clothes, they looked like stacked mannequins.
I gazed up at the mountains we were heading toward. The lower parts of the rise had once been covered with forest. The Flash had scorched the trees into charred trunks, resembling power-line poles without the lines. The ground was covered with ash.
Ash. The Flash-fried remains of trees, animals, and people. I shivered, phobic about it. Since the apocalypse, it’d swirled in the windstorms and settled in drifts against the face of that incline.
A low bank of fog poured down the nearest mountain, slinking around the base of it. When it closed in on us, that ominous feeling from earlier thickened till I thought I would choke on it.
Just when I was about to tell the others that I was rethinking this plan, a Bagman wailed behind us. Onward, Evie.
What awaited us in those dark hills?
6
We were being watched.
After trudging uphill in the mud for what seemed like hours, we hadn’t gotten anywhere near the center of this range, so it couldn’t be cannibals. Nor Arcana—none of their calls sounded close by. Nor was it Bagmen; we could hear them baying in the valley below us, held in check by the diluted sun.
For now.
As the afternoon wore on, my foreboding feeling grew and grew. I was dragging ass, huffing and puffing, the acrid scent of burned wood stinging my nose. I’d trained as a dancer for years, but compared to the boys and Selena, my stamina was laughable. The ongoing drizzle provided enough moisture for the ash and mud to congeal like glue.
I’d toppled over so many times, my hands were coated with globs of it, my hair as well. Remains. In my hair.
Finn was just ahead, Matthew at my side like a pilot fish. Selena and Jackson were staggered, far in the lead as we headed for the next valley to the south. She’d mentioned seeing a town there on her map; I supposed we were heading toward it. Jackson must have been as well.
So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours, I struggled to process it all. Arthur’s defeat, the return of some of my memories, the showdown with Joules, the dream of Death.
Jackson admitting what he thought of me.
Selena had been bang-on when she’d said he was disgusted. I would have given anything to talk to him, to explain that I might not be right, but it wasn’t a choice I’d made to hurt him. It wasn’t a choice whatsoever.
“You okay back there, Evie?” Finn asked with a worried look. “Maybe we ought to stop for a minute.”
“I’m fine.” I’m dying! “Got to keep moving.” I would chop off my right, marked hand to stop. We’d never had to contend with mud before. I hoped it would slow down any zombies—or Arcana—who decided to pursue us.
“Okay. Cool.” He carried on ahead as if I’d told him the truth or something.
I could barely talk, but questions were swirling in my head. Under my ragged breath, I said, “Matthew, last night I dreamed of a time when Death stabbed a past Empress with a sword. Did you send me that dream?”
“Yep.”
“Why now? I’ve already learned about my abilities.” I’d used most of them yesterday and today.
“Learn to defeat Death. You will fight him with your powers.”
That Empress in my dream hadn’t been able to use any powers for me to learn from. “All of those dreams have seemed familiar, but in this one, I could feel Death’s sword entering my body.”
“You felt it.”
“Yeah, that’s what I just said.”
He nodded, effortlessly meandering beside me. “You felt it in a past life.”
I turned on him, gritting out the words: “Past life?” He’d never told me that the nightmares I’d had were in fact about me. “You never said that we were reincarnates.”
Of course, he’d never said we weren’t reincarnates. Hadn’t I suspected? From the visions Matthew had revealed, I’d witnessed a past Empress so horrific, I’d dubbed her the red witch.
But hadn’t her deeds felt like memories?
“The Empress has a sense of humor this time,” Matthew said, repeating a comment he’d made weeks ago.
This time. Because I was the same card, just a different version. Hundreds of years ago, she’d been a vicious killer.