Grayson leaned hard against Zoey’s side, tears brightening his eyes.
“Zo,” he said breathlessly, “you didn’t tell me there’d be men with guns chasing us.”
She scoffed, trying to avoid looking at his leg and not think about what would have happened if the bullet had hit higher, in his stomach or chest or head. “Except I’m absolutely certain that I did.”
“Oh, that’s right. And I decided to come anyway.”
“Because you’re an idiot.”
Grayson’s face was tight with pain. “Because I love you.”
“Like I said.” Zoey dropped a kiss on his forehead, a hot lump wedged in her throat. She and Marion helped Grayson up into the boat, onto a low bench on the starboard side.
He clung to her arm, his breathing strained. “I’m pretty scared here, Zo. Don’t tell the others.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
“It’s just that I’ve never gotten shot before.”
Zoey sat beside him, cradling his head against her chest and glaring out at the water. “If they try to hurt you again, I will personally slam their sorry asses into those cliffs.”
“Can I just say it’s really hot that you’re not hyperbolizing?”
Zoey’s mouth quirked into a watery smile. “Yes, you may indeed say that, and frequently. You know I love it when you use those five-dollar words.”
Marion stood at the port side railing, her back to everyone and her black hair streaming out behind her—a dark queen, surveying the battlefield.
“Can you drive this thing?” she called back to Zoey.
“On it,” came Val’s voice, right before the boat’s engine roared to life.
As they sped across the water toward Sawkill, Zoey kept her eye on the two boats in pursuit—small and determined, their lights out and their engines furiously churning the water. She imagined each of them heavy with the weight of angry, thwarted men denied their moment of glory. Adrenaline pulled tight across her limbs, heat slithering from the dip between her collarbones to the ten points of her fingers.
She glanced up at the captain’s seat, where Val stood with rigid posture, glowing hands gripping the rudder, possibly melting it. Bruises and blood mottled the back of her neck.
Not long ago, the sight of Val had turned Zoey just shy of homicidal.
Now . . .
“So Val’s one of us now, huh?” asked Grayson quietly.
“Hell no,” Zoey replied. “She’s just . . . useful.”
Then, Marion, still facing away from them, began to laugh.
Val looked over her shoulder. “What’s she laughing about?”
“Uh, Marion?” Zoey called out. “Honey? The laughing is a little freaky, FYI.”
Marion turned, her face lit up with what Zoey thought might just be mischief. “Don’t be freaked out. It’s just that I’ve had a really, really great idea.”
“It had better be spectacular,” Grayson said, looking up from Zoey’s shoulder. “They’re gaining on us, fast.”
Zoey looked out at the water and confirmed it. “Shit. They’ll be on us as soon as we dock.”
“Almost there!” Val pointed ahead of them at the Tighe family’s pier—a weather-grayed boardwalk that rambled down the grassy hill from the Tighe house before jutting out over piles of stone slick with brown moss.
At the pier’s edge, pistol in hand and hat perched on his head, stood a man. Zoey squinted through the night, her pulse a thin buzz in her ears.
“Someone’s there already,” Val warned. “What should I do?”
Zoey’s fingers curled around Grayson’s hands. “It’s my dad.”
“Can we trust him?” Val glanced over. “He’s one of them, isn’t he?”
“He is,” Zoey said grimly, “and I don’t know.”
“We don’t have time to try and dock somewhere else,” Marion added.
Zoey stood, one hand still clutching Grayson’s, the other clenched in a fist. “If he makes one wrong move, you have my permission to attack him.”
“Didn’t you, like, just figure out how to use this power?” Grayson whispered urgently. “Zo, you could really hurt him.”
“Then I guess he’d better not try to hurt us,” Zoey replied. She raised her voice as Val maneuvered the boat into the dock slip. “One wrong move, Dad, and we’ll blast this dock to pieces.”
“I understand,” he called back. He crouched at the pier’s edge and held out his hands. His lip was bloodied, his right eye swollen, but he gave the girls a reassuring nod. Behind him, previously cloaked by the darkness of the night and the rocky climb of the hill that led to the Tighe house, stood a gaping Sergeant Montgomery and two other Sawkill police officers.
Marion positioned herself between Zoey and her father. “Some friends you have, Chief.”
“Those men aren’t my friends,” he replied, his voice made of iron. “Not anymore.”
Marion considered him for a long moment.
Val approached cautiously. “They’re right behind us, Marion.”
“We’ll take care of them,” Zoey’s father replied, extending his hand.
At last Marion relented and climbed out. He helped Val out next, and when his gaze fell upon her black-stained nightgown, the sweater tied around her belly, his mouth turned down at the corners. He shrugged off his jacket, draped it around Val’s shoulders, and squeezed her arm. When Zoey caught the wobbly look of gratitude Val cast upon her father, the answering burst of warmth in Zoey’s heart made her feel like the carpet had been ripped out from under her feet.
She stumbled right into her father’s arms, squeezed her eyes shut, and allowed him to hold her to his broad chest for the space of two inhales.
“Grayson’s hurt,” she said, pulling away, her voice coming out small and shaky. “Not bad, I don’t think, but they shot him in the leg.”
“Who the hell are these people, Chief?” asked Sergeant Montgomery.
The look Ed Harlow cast out to the water turned Zoey’s blood hot-cold. She had never seen such an expression on his face.
“They’re fanatics,” he replied softly. “And until recently, I was one of them.”
He glanced at Marion. “What do you need us to do?”
Marion didn’t hesitate, her eyes afire. “Hold them off. We need to get to the stones.”
“Rosco,” her father barked. “Get Grayson up to his house, and stay there with his parents. Your mother’s up there with them, Marion. She’s fine, and she’s not alone.”
Marion gave him a curt nod, her face unreadable. “Thank you.” She turned to Zoey and Val. “Are you still with me?”
And though Zoey’s legs shook, she said, “Hell yes,” at the same time as Val replied, “Ready.”
Marion nodded, gave them each a small smile. “Then let’s go.”
She and Val ran up the pier toward the boardwalk, each of them limping slightly. Hiding her face from her father, afraid that he would know from one look what they planned to do—if he didn’t already—Zoey leaned off the pier to capture Grayson’s face in her hands and plant a ferocious kiss on his mouth.
“I love you,” she breathed, her forehead touching his, and then before he could reply, she grabbed her bat and raced up the pier to follow her friends, tears in her eyes and an inferno raging in her heart.
Zoey
The Call
But when they reached the Kingshead Woods, something changed.
Their feet hit the soil, and suddenly running through the woods felt like running through one of those terrible dreams in which the air looks like air but it isn’t. Instead it’s something invisible and viscous, and running is impossible, a sluggish and desperate crawl.
Marion touched Val’s shoulder, then flung out her other hand to stop Zoey in her tracks. Zoey leaned against a nearby tree to catch her breath, clutching the stitch in her side. Then she saw Marion’s expression and tensed.
“What is it?” Val asked. Despite being freshly exorcised, she only had a sl
ight shimmer of sweat on her brow. Zoey was too tired to feel annoyed.
Marion’s gaze was distant, her cheeks flushed. “I hear it.”
Zoey straightened. “The bone cry?”
“Yes.” Marion’s solemn gaze lifted to Val’s. “He’s close. And he’s not alone.”
Just as the words left her lips, a man leaped out from the trees, bloody hands reaching.
Val shoved Marion out of the way and whirled on their attacker. Her hands lit up like the novas of distant twin suns. Scrambling to his feet, the man threw up his arms to shield his eyes. Another man burst out of the brush, the blood of fresh burns painting his pale skin.
Briggs.
Zoey raced toward him, her bat gripped in one hand. A surge of movement rippled through the ground beneath her, like the bristling of an angry wolf’s fur.
She reached Briggs and thrust her hand at him.
He ducked. He’d been expecting this.
She lunged into empty space, flailing to keep her balance, and turned just in time for his fist to hit her jaw. She landed in a heap on the ground.
“Not this time, you little bitch,” spat Briggs. His voice came to Zoey through a muddle of pain. She tried to stand and fell once more. A callused hand gripped her arm and yanked her to her feet.
“Stop,” Briggs called out, his voice frayed as if someone had taken a razor to it. “Or I swear to Christ I’ll bash her brains in.”
Oh, God. Oh, God.
He had her bat.
Zoey felt a surge of unreasonable fury. That was Grayson’s bat, and he’d loaned it to her. It may not have been as impressive-looking as a sword, but still—there was no way in hell that this psychopath had the right to touch her and Grayson’s freaking awesome bat-sword.
She tasted blood and spat it, aiming roughly for Briggs’s face. But it was dark, there were way too many trees in this forest, and her head was spiraling like a top.
“You can’t kill her,” came Marion’s voice, which sounded steadier than Zoey imagined hers would be, if she ever managed to speak again. What kind of bastard slapped a teenage girl like that? Oh, right—the kind of bastard who deserved to have his junk eaten by cockroaches.
“And why is that?” Briggs asked.
“Because you need her for your ritual.”
A chorus of laughter rippled through the woods. Jesus, how many of them were there?
And then Zoey realized that those boats that had been following them must not have held more men than two drivers, and maybe one shooter.
Her heart turned to lead.
The Hand of Light had been waiting for them, this whole time, here in the Mortimers’ woods.
“She doesn’t need to be unharmed for the feeding,” Briggs replied. “Her body, whatever state it’s in, as long she’s breathing, will suffice.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Zoey had never heard Valerie Mortimer’s voice sound so unfinished. “None of this is necessary—”
“I will decide what is necessary!” howled Briggs, his grip tightening painfully around Zoey’s arm. “This is the way it is done. This is the way our fathers taught us.”
“Your fathers,” Val replied, “were full of shit.”
A sharp crack rang through the trees, followed by a muted cry from Val.
Finally, Zoey’s vision began to settle. She could now see the situation they were in—a tight circle of men. Marion to her right, Val to her left, both of them held by two men, one at each arm. Zoey herself was held by Briggs. Three other men hovered nearby, gloved hands holding knives, firearms slung over their shoulders. One of them moved away from Val, a grim sneer on his face.
Val straightened in the arms of her captors. She breathed tightly through her nose, a red handprint blooming on her cheek.
“You’re going to regret hurting her,” said Marion. She had the look, Zoey thought, of a parent waiting patiently for a child to realize his mistake. “You’re going to regret a lot of things.”
Briggs, passing Zoey off to one of his lackeys, ignored her. He withdrew his dagger from the sheath at his hip. “The Collector must feed. He must be banished from our world. So it has been done, and so it is done, and so it shall always be done.”
“And so it shall always be done,” repeated the men, reminding Zoey of the way Borg drones proclaimed they were going to assimilate you, that resistance was futile, that you were screwed and there was no way out, sorry about that. At the thought of never again having Star Trek marathons at Grayson’s house, while his dad popped in every few minutes to remark upon the breathtaking badassery of Kathryn Janeway, Zoey clenched her aching jaw to keep from either sobbing or screaming in rage, she wasn’t sure which.
For the second time that night, she watched Briggs approach. With an exhausted sort of acceptance she thought to Sawkill, Well, sorry. We tried.
But then Marion spoke.
“And so,” she said, her voice low and serene, “it shall never be done again.”
Silence followed her proclamation. Zoey had just enough time to observe that Briggs had frozen, and that the other men were shifting uneasily, before the Kingshead Woods erupted into hoofbeats.
The men holding Zoey released her. Briggs whirled to the east and dropped the bat, his face falling slack with terror.
Zoey tried to look, too, but couldn’t. Val grabbed her hand before she had the chance, dropped to the ground at Marion’s feet, and pulled Zoey with her. The men around them screamed and ran—but resistance, in this case, was indeed futile.
Zoey felt the island thrumming under their feet, heard the thunderclap rhythm of what must have been dozens of hooves, and understood: Marion had asked the Rock for help, and it had answered by summoning all the horses from Kingshead.
Zoey huddled on the ground, Marion’s legs a solid wall against her back, Marion’s hand a gentle reassurance on her head. Zoey pressed her face into Val’s neck and breathed in her scent—the sea, her faint gardenia perfume, the bitter black bile still crusting her arms. Zoey listened to the men’s screams abruptly silenced as they were trampled, heard them run away and beg the woods for mercy, flinched as they were kicked into trees and flattened against boulders.
When all was silent at last, Zoey dared to raise her head, her hands clutching Val’s close to her heart.
A dozen Mortimer Morgans stood a few yards away, scattered throughout the trees. Their velvet-dark sides heaved; their nostrils flared. Two pawed the ground with their front hooves.
But they came no closer, now that their work was finished. They were, Zoey suspected, frightened of the girls they had saved. Especially the one who stood tall and unbroken, staring back at them like she was one of their own—a wild, dangerous creature, somehow sewn up into the form of a girl.
Val let out a shaky breath against Zoey’s shoulder. “Jesus.”
Marion helped them both to their feet. They stood amid this ruination of men, hands joined and gazes locked. Then they turned, as one, and walked deeper into the forest.
Val
The Gate
The moment Val saw the stones appear ahead of them in the woods, white and unassuming, she jerked to a halt. Light-headed, she clutched the rough bark of a nearby tree, turned her face into a clutch of wet leaves.
“What is it?” Marion’s voice came to her as if through a dream. Val realized the steadiness she felt at her elbow was in fact Zoey, holding her up.
“Sorry, I—” Val took a few deep breaths to calm her roiling stomach. She was no longer content to give him her tears.
Marion cupped her face and directed her gaze up from the ground. “I’m here,” she said, her thumb caressing Val’s cheek. “We’re both right here. You don’t have to do this alone anymore.”
Zoey squeezed her hand, and the simple gesture gave Val enough strength to look up at Marion with clear eyes and say, “Let’s go slay this son of a bitch.”
Her words were flint against steel; three pairs of eyes flashed in the night. They turned and ran.
Zoey took the lead without being asked, and as Val watched her leap into the stones, she felt a surge of affection so ferocious that, when she pushed off the ground to take that final step, euphoria swept through her body.
She landed within the stones on two solid feet, heard the furious snarl of the monster who’d owned her body since she took her first screaming breaths between her mother’s legs, and turned with blazing hands to face him.
He huddled in a corner of the stone circle, a patch of scribbled ink against the softer darkness of the woods. When Val’s gaze landed upon him, he flew. He roared and ricocheted. He careened through the space allowed him by the stones; he clawed for freedom and was denied it.
Val stood, knees loose and ready, light swelling in her hands. As they’d discussed, Marion stood behind her, with Zoey on her other side. They flanked Marion—one girl with fire at her fingertips, the other vibrating with raw electric power.
They’d decided that it might be impossible for Marion to find the original gate the Collector had crawled through. And, considering that it had been made by a monster not of their world, it might not even be possible for them to pass through it.
So Marion had decided she would have to make a gate of her own.
The Collector fell silent, gathering himself between two far stones. Dark jagged cords stretched from where he lay to the low-hanging branches of an oak tree. The tree shivered and creaked; a branch snapped in half. Two white, round eyes opened in the darkness. Val was reminded of a child playing hide-and-seek, waiting for just the right moment to jump out and scare the seeker. It wasn’t the point of the game, but that savage animal heart could not resist.
Laughter, slick and congested, bubbled up from the ground where he waited.
Sawkill Girls Page 28