by David Estes
They speak to her with closed lips.
Mother, they say. Welcome.
Eat. Drink. We have gathered a feast for your return.
Thank you, my children, she says, the words coming to her mind without thought.
A low table appears where there wasn’t one before. The oaken slab is laden with goblets of brightly colored liquids and dishes of shiny red and yellow apples, crimson cherries, and green pistachios.
The earth provides, the willowy blond-haired woman says. No, not just a woman, she remembers. Her child. One of many.
Eat, another child says, a tiny sprite of a girl with sparkling emerald eyes and a boyish haircut.
Yes, eat, Mother, the other children echo, ushering her to the table, lowering her onto a tasseled pillow. They sit around her, laughing, happy.
She feels…complete. As if an enormous hole in her heart has been filled. And yet…something is missing. No, someone.
Laney, she tells them. My sister.
She cannot come, they say. We live near humans but not with them.
Their words hurt her deeply because she knows they’re true.
The first apple is perfect. The right mix of crunchy and sweet. Juicy and bitter. The second is even better. She has a pile of cherry pits in front of her in seconds. She doesn’t need any of it—that much she knows—but she can’t stop, not until the food is gone.
Was it delicious, Mother? her children ask, as one.
She sees that they have not eaten. That she has eaten it all.
I—I’m sorry, she says.
For what, Mother? the sprite-child says, munching on an apple.
Trish blinks and the table is full again, this time with green grapes and raspberries. The children eat as she looks on in awe. The earth provides, she says, echoing her child’s words from earlier, finally understanding.
She realizes it’s coursing through her, the…
(energy?)
(life force?)
(souls?)
She can see it through her skin, glowing blue and pulsing with silver edges and lines. We are ready, her most beautiful child says. Trish sees that the energy is in her child, too. In all of them.
Yes. We are ready, she echoes.
Suddenly, she’s aware of a presence approaching. Not one of them. Not one of her children. She turns and sees her. The red-haired Changeling. Her skin is pale and her eyes as green as the grapes. Her red dress shimmers with each step, swishing around her feet. She’s not alone. Many more cluster behind her, in their natural, unchanged state. But she’s the leader.
“Do you know why you’re here?” the Changeling leader asks.
Trish feels so strong, so full of life. In control. Awake. First I want news of my sister, she says in the Changeling’s head.
“She’s alive and”—she motions to her leg, which is heavily bandaged; Trish only just now notices she’s walking with a limp—“as feisty as ever.”
Trish stifles a giggle, because feisty is the perfect word for Laney. Sorry, she says. And thank you for talking to her.
“She doesn’t understand,” the Changeling says.
She will, Trish says. All will be revealed in time. The words spill from her mind although she’s not sure she herself understands what will be revealed. What she’s been brought here to do.
“Her strength is growing,” the Changeling says. Whose strength? Trish wonders. The answer feels so close, as if it’s just on the edge of her vision, but she can’t seem to see it, no matter how quickly she turns her head.
“We have no choice but to end her,” the Changeling says.
End? Trish says.
“Kill.”
Murmurs ripple through her children’s minds. We do not kill, Trish says, remembering when she did before she knew. What she did to her parents. She had to do it to save her sister, she reminds herself.
“But we do,” the Changeling says, gesturing to her people. “We only need your help to get through their defenses, and then we’ll do the rest.”
Who is it? Who must die? Trish blurts out, before she can stop herself.
The Changeling looks at her strangely.
Her willowy child says, She has only just fully awakened. Only just eaten the fruit and gathered the earth to her. She will be ready soon.
“I hope so,” the Changeling says. “Because President Washington must die.”
Chapter Thirteen
Rhett
“How did you find me?” I ask as we pass a highway rest stop. Cars are scattered throughout the parking lot, some positioned next to fuel pumps. If I don’t look too closely, I can pretend they’re just normal travelers refueling and eating at Subway or Burger King. If I don’t look too closely, I can’t tell that several of the cars are flipped over, their windshields shattered. And if I don’t look too closely, maybe there won’t be corpses scattered all over the asphalt. Evidently the Necros and their scavengers didn’t make it this far south collecting bodies.
But I do look closely and I almost wish the Necros had been through here.
Beside me, Bil Nez laughs.
Not at my question, at the carnage.
“Human ants,” he says.
Oh no, I think. We’re heading for loonytown. From my recent experiences with the Native American witch hunter, I’ve found him to act like two different people—one relatively normal and the other unpredictable and somewhat crazy. Okay, a lot crazy. His issues seem to stem from an awful experience he had with a Siren, where he was forced to kill her, her witch friends, and their human playthings. Before he realized she was a Siren, he’d loved her—or at least thought he had.
“Um,” I say.
Hex whines at my leg. His instincts are telling him what’s coming, too.
Bil looks at me sharply, his eyes wide and white, as if he’s only just realized he’s not alone. He adds to his earlier statement. “Human ants crushed under magic-born boots,” he says. Then he laughs again, this time with his whole body, even slapping his knee for good measure.
“Yeah. People dying are funny,” I say dryly. Hex gives me a look that says, Why can’t you ever learn to keep your mouth shut?
I shrug and Bil stops, his jovial expression changing to anger in an instant. “What do you know of the dead?” he says, stepping in so close I can smell the spicy beef jerky on his breath.
There are so many things I could say—that I’ve had many people close to me die, that my best friend happens to be a dead-raiser, that I fought an army of the dead—but I know this version of Bil is not to be argued with. And his twitching fingers tell me he’s just itching to use either his crossbow or rifle. So instead I just say, “Not much.”
He’s frozen for a moment, and then his whole body relaxes as he laughs loudly. “Me either,” he says. “We see the bodies, but we can’t see the souls.”
“My friend Tillman Huckle once saw the ghost of his deceased girlfriend,” I say.
“The weapons seller?” Bil asks, and for a second it almost feels like a normal conversation.
“Yeah,” I say. “The one and only.”
“That guy is crazy,” he says.
If I can just keep this conversation simple, maybe this version of Bil will actually be more forthcoming than his usual self. So I repeat the question he ignored earlier. “How did you find me?”
More laughter. More knee slapping. The joke’s on me, apparently.
“The night in the house,” he says.
Although it’s not much to go on, I know exactly when he means. “You mean when you ditched us?” I say, wishing the accusatory tone out of my voice the moment the words leave my lips.
In one swift motion, he snatches his crossbow from where it’s strapped to his back, a bolt already spring-loaded. He aims it at my face.
Hex bares his teeth and issues a low growl.
Oops, I think, which Laney would probably call a major understatement.
“You don’t know me!” Bil shouts, his lips bubbling with spittle. Maybe it
was a big mistake trusting him to get me to New Washington, but he’d seemed so much more…stable…just an hour earlier, when we shared beef jerky and a bottle of water before leaving the farmhouse behind.
I’m backing away, my hands in the air, wondering whether he’ll be able to hit a moving target as Hex and I bolt for cover. That’s when I remember Laney’s approach to handling Bil while on the top of Mount Washington, what feels like an eternity ago. Her voice whispers in my ear. Play along with him.
“No!” I shout, taking a step forward. My foot feels like lead. “I don’t know you, I don’t know me, I don’t know anyone! All I know is that these witches gotta die!”
Bil cocks his head to the left. “That’s what I’ve been saying,” he says. “I’ve been saying that to everyone. And when I told President Washington, she sent me on a mission to kill you. But you’re not a witch, Rhett Carter.”
“No,” I say. “I’m not. Because witches are girls. But I’m not a warlock either, my friend. I’m a freaking witch hunter!”
Bil finally drops his crossbow to his side, and my heart, which has been hammering in my chest, starts to slow. Thanks Laney, I think. Wherever you are.
“Witch hunters should rule the world,” Bil says.
“And you could be president,” I say.
He laughs.
~~~
For the last three hours, Bil’s been shooting his crossbow at nothing. Hex, surprisingly acting like a relatively normal dog, has been treating it like a game of fetch, racing off to retrieve the bolt. It’s made for slow going, but at least we’re going.
But it hasn’t cooled the anger I’ve felt since hearing my father’s recording.
Hex takes off after another bolt, which clatters down the road. I take a deep breath, trying to relax, but it doesn’t work. Instead, liquid fire burns through my veins, pumping into my heart, turning me into an inferno. I’ll help New America kill all the witches. I have to.
Just off the side of the road, I notice a small anthill, teeming with activity. Thousands of tiny black ants march in the dirt, each one carrying something. Food or building materials. To and from the hill they go, stopping only briefly to greet each other with what appears to be a kiss on the cheek, oblivious to the destruction wrought upon the world by the magic-born. Unaffected. Are humans—and even magic-born—so insignificant in the scheme of things that the world barely notices us? The seasons keep on changing, insects continue their lives as if nothing has happened, fish keep swimming, the earth rotates around the sun and the moon around the earth. Do we even matter?
“Oh God, did it happen again?” Bil asks, his voice closer than I expected.
I flinch slightly. When did he strap his crossbow to his back and settle in beside me? “Um, did what happen?” I say.
Hex trots up, the bolt in his mouth, dropping it at Bil’s feet and looking up at him expectantly. Again?
Bil snatches the bolt and shoves it in his pocket. “Did I go away again?” he asks.
The truth hits me in the chest. He knows. He knows about his own insanity, his mood changes. He’s aware of it but unable to stop it.
A new bolt appears in Hex’s mouth and he drops it at my feet this time. I grab it absently and chuck it down the road, my attention fully on Bil.
“Yes,” I say. “You pointed your crossbow at my head.”
His cheeks bulge out and he closes his eyes. “Rhett, I—” Whatever he was going to say, an apology I suspect, vanishes on his tongue.
“It’s okay,” I say, just happy to be able to have a normal conversation again. I’ve been trapped with my own thoughts for far too long.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know what’s happening to me,” he says. “Rhett, I’m scared, man.”
He sounds broken, like he’s almost on the verge of tears. His tough-as-nails act gives way in an instant, and he looks more like the teenager that he is than I’ve ever seen.
Hex returns and gives me the slimy, dirty bolt, which I shove in my pocket. A new one appears in his mouth seconds later, but I ignore him.
“You’ve been through a lot,” I say neutrally. I don’t want to set him off again. He still hasn’t answered my question about how he found me, despite me having asked it twice.
“So have you,” he scoffs. “So has everyone. But you’re not going crazy. Your friend—Laney, right?—isn’t going crazy. What’s wrong with me?”
Although I’m not sure whether he’s right about me not going crazy, I don’t respond to that. Instead I ask, “Do you remember anything from the last few hours?”
He shakes his head again, defeat clear in the slump of his shoulders, in the way his chin dips toward his chest. “It’s a big blank, like it always is.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” I ask. “When you rescued us from The End.”
He laughs at that, but it’s his normal laugh, not the crazy one. “It’s not the easiest conversation starter,” he says. “Hey, Rhett, good to see you. How’s your magic dog? Killed any witches lately? Have you heard I’ve gone completely nuts?”
I almost want to laugh, because he’s acting like himself again, like the guy I met fighting witches, who camped with me for a night, joking and laughing over a couple of scavenged cans of Pepsi, a few Slim Jims, and a can of barbecue baked beans. Funny how those almost feel like the good old days now.
“Good point,” I say. “Not an easy conversation.”
He offers a wry smile. “I might’ve been in denial, too,” he says. “I was pretending the blackouts were only when I was sleeping, that they were a part of the stress of what happened with the Sirens.”
Although we’ve had our problems over the last few weeks, I feel bad for Bil, like I did when he told me what he’d been through, how he almost ended up a Siren’s slave. Like me, he’s just a kid trying to survive in a terrible, terrible world.
I hate to ask, but if I’m going to continue to travel with him, I have to know. “What do you think it is?”
His lips tighten. “You should’ve been a dancer,” he says. Instinctively, my fingers curl into fists as I assume he’s just slipped back into insanity again.
“A dancer?” I say evenly, preparing to play along if necessary.
He laughs and I cringe. But then he turns toward me, his expression completely lucid. “It’s still me, Rhett,” he says. “It was only an analogy. You’re dancing around the question like Ricky Martin on the stage.”
I try to hide my relief as I blow out a breath. “Oh,” I say.
“I don’t know if I’m bi-polar or schizophrenic or what. For all I know it might be a side effect of the Siren’s magic.”
“But you’re a Resistor,” I point out. “Magic shouldn’t have that strong of a hold on you.”
“Then I guess I’m just plain old nuts,” he says, pushing out a laugh that seems forced.
We walk in silence for a few minutes, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I don’t know what Bil’s thinking about, but I’m wondering whether his unpredictable alter-ego would still consider carrying out his original mission—assassinating me—even if his real self has decided against it. Then I realize it doesn’t matter. If I was in his position, having undergone some kind of a psychotic break, I’d be in desperate need of a friend.
“Bil,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got your back, man. No matter what. As long as you’re not still planning on killing me,” I add, trying to be funny.
He does laugh, so I consider it a win. “Thanks, Rhett. And I’m sorry for everything I put you through.”
We continue for a few minutes, listening to our own footsteps, which have synchronized. A question tugs at the back of my mind. “Just out of curiosity, how close did you get to carrying out your mission?”
He glances my way. “You mean killing you?”
“Yeah.”
There’s a twinkle in his eyes as he says, “Not too close.”
I look away, not comforted in the least.
&n
bsp; Chapter Fourteen
Laney
We break camp as soon as it gets dark, the opposite of what I’m used to.
I can’t see in the dark the way the Necros can, so Xavier agrees to lead me by holding a short rope tied around my wrist.
“Don’t lead me off a cliff,” I mutter.
“You’re welcome,” he says, his white smile and eyes the only things I can see in the dark, his dark skin melting into the night.
“You owe me,” I say.
“For what?”
My Glock is heavy in its holster. “Oh, I don’t know…unlawful imprisonment, raising my friend’s girlfriend from the dead, general awfulness…those sorts of things.”
He turns away and I almost feel bad. I remember all the stories Rhett told me about Xavier, how he was his protector, his loyal friend, the biggest-hearted person he knew. I remember how Xave cried on my shoulder at the loss of Felix.
The compassion I feel for him makes me want to punch a tree.
“C’mon,” he says, tugging at the rope. “We’re falling behind.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” I say, wishing the fight with the Slammers hadn’t left me so scared I won’t even consider going off on my own. But I begin walking, hearing the muffled sounds of the rest of the Necros moving through the woods. The plan is to head south, looking for any sign of the Changelings or Claires, under the assumption that they’ll be moving south, too, in an attempt to get closer to the human stronghold, New Washington.
The heat from the smoldering cabin lessens as we move forward. Although I’m tentative with each step through the forest, Xave does a fantastic job leading me, careful to steer me around anything that might trip me up. He even holds branches away from my face so I can step past them.
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll shoot your warlock ass from behind?” I ask.
“Nope,” he says.
“Why not?”
“Because you won’t.”
How could he possibly know that? He’s right, of course, but how could he know? Lucky guess. I stay silent, focusing on listening for once, making sure no one tries to sneak up on me from behind.