“What do you mean?”
He still gazes at the road. “We have something of a deal with our patron. We get supplied with weapons and whatever else we require, and we carry out a task or two here and there. We get first dibs to any anathemas in town. We protect them and we ensure those anathemas stay in line.” He shakes his head. “But first and foremost, we agree on mutual discretion.”
I look at Liam’s harsh profile. Then back at Noelle and the other anathema. She’s still rigid in her seat. The other anathema is directly behind me, watching me intently. Malevolently.
The realization hits me: maybe they’re not here to help me.
We wind up and up in elevation. My ears are popping. Rain begins to drum against the windshield, gray clouds rushing outside with the fierce ocean gale.
Liam is still speaking. “Implicit in this arrangement we have with our boss is the understanding we’ll protect our patron’s identity above all. Now that your role in the massacre is public, hunters are going to flock to you. They’ll want answers from you about how the massacre took place, which will lead them to us. To our firearms. That’s where the trouble comes in. The country has gun laws. The feds are never happy about anathemas with guns. They tend to send in people who legally have guns to remove them by force.”
I remember what Liam said at the Waste about this. If it got out that they had guns, the military might get sent in to deal with them.
“Naturally, we have to neutralize the risk to us, my darling. And the boss decided just how we should do so. That’s where we’re going now. To deal with this situation.”
My blood turns to ice in my veins. A cold sweat breaks out across my body. I thought they picked me up to take me to the Waste. I knew my secret was their secret, and they’d have to protect it.
It hadn’t occurred to me until about two seconds ago that maybe they’re planning to keep their secrets another way. There is one sure way to keep me quiet: silence me permanently.
That’s why they were going to storm my house.
They hadn’t counted on me being idiotic enough to go with them without a fight.
“Liam, come on,” I say.
He laughs, and reaches with his free hand into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes. “Relax. We’re not going to hurt you.” His voice is honey, syrup. His eyes glitter brightly in his gaunt face. I don’t believe him. He’s lying.
I turn back to face front. Liam lights up, and cranks down the window, leaving his right hand carelessly on the wheel. Cold, fierce wind whips in, splattering raindrops. He blows his smoke out the window. My breath is coming quickly in and out of my lungs. We’ve pulled off the highway, and we’re driving alongside the jagged cliffs. Higher. Higher. I consider shoving open the door and jumping out. My eyes fix on the concrete soaring past us. No. No, that would kill me for sure.
“Strange business, the way that footage leaked,” Liam murmurs, half to himself. “We’re lucky it wasn’t all of us, I suppose.”
My fists are clenched in my lap so hard they throb. “Liam, listen. Let’s just go to the Waste. No one will look for me there. I won’t even try to leave. You guys have guns. No hunters will be able to ask me anything. They’d have to get through you.”
“It’s not my call, love.”
“Your boss? Who’s your boss? Let me talk to him. I can reason with him.”
“It’s not in my hands.”
We’re pulling up a side road now, and beginning to slow. I know this is the end. This is my doom. I look behind me urgently, searching for some sign of help. The anathema next to Noelle looks hard, merciless. Noelle’s dark eyes catch mine.
I swallow hard, holding her gaze for a fleeting moment. She seems to already know the plan germinating in my mind. She nods just negligibly, and I see that her seatbelt is on.
Then without a moment to question myself, I seize the wheel and give it a ferocious jerk. Liam yelps out, dropping his cigarette and I hear a scream from behind me. The scenery swerves before me, the momentum pinning me to my seat, fear screaming inside me—and then with a tremendous jolt we’re careening into a tree.
For a moment, all is noise, chaos, splintering. My head jerks forward, and the explosion of an airbag slams me. And then I’m gasping for breath, disoriented, the window shattered before me, everything still.
And then Liam’s door jerks open. “Unbuckle him!” Noelle screams, pulling him out of the car.
His airbag is still deployed. Mine has retracted. Confused, I obey, and fumble between us for his buckle. I get it off. Noelle drags him outside, then reaches in his coat. She pulls out his gun, and shoves him roughly aside. Then she climbs into the driver’s seat.
“Get that one out!” she shouts raggedly at me, jerking her head at the backseat.
Right. The anathema behind me. Him. I hear him groaning. I yank off my own seatbelt, and my door sticks. One strong kick and I get it open, then I stagger around to the back of the car and jerk that door open. The anathema’s eyes snap open just as I’m trying to drag him out, and he raises his gun. I stare down the barrel, unable to believe this is real—and then a deafening bang thunders in my ears.
I belatedly scream and flinch back. But Noelle’s already shot him. His head is split open, a pulverized mess, and it’s with tears in my eyes that I haul him out of the car and deposit him on the ground. I feel like there’s blood all over me.
“Get back in,” Noelle rasps, and then I’m back in the car next to her.
Liam sits up and peers at us through a broken window as we crank up the car, clutching his head. He gropes into his coat, but finds his gun missing. He squints at her, perplexed. “What are you doing?” He casts a glance at the dead anathema. “Why’d you shoot George, you crazy bint?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m done with you.”
Liam’s hand drops from his head. He stares at her through the splintered window. “I’ll have to kill you for this.”
“No, you won’t. I’m with Alexander now.”
He barks an incredulous laugh. “Metz? He-who-hates-us-with-the-fire-of-a-thousand-suns? Why do think he’ll help you?”
“Because he’s my brother.”
A stunned expression floods his face.
“And I’m not a ‘crazy bint’. All these years, and you didn’t even realize I was related to him, did you?” Noelle snarls. Then she cranks the car on, and we pull backwards. A stunned Liam remains on the ground, staring after us as rain pours around him.
It takes me a few minutes to recover my wits. We’re driving back down towards Cordoba Bay. I begin babbling, “Noelle, thank you. Thank you, you saved my life.”
“I saved my life, too. It was only a matter of time before they found out I’m Alexander’s sister. I figured today was an opportune moment to rip off that Band-Aid.”
My head throbs. “What did you mean about going to Alexander?”
Her eyes flash to mine. “He has leverage over the Wasters. He knows the identity of their boss. He has evidence. That’s why I left Liam alive. We’ll need him to communicate with their boss and tell him we’re with Alexander so they’ll know they can’t just come kill us.”
“He knows the boss?” I say sharply. That’s the thing Alexander has that makes him untouchable to the Wasters?
“It’s why he gets away with desertion,” Noelle tells me. “He copied some encrypted files proving Liam is communicating with the citizen funding the Wasters. Alexander can protect all three of us. They can’t kill him, and he’ll make sure they can’t kill us, either. Not if they want their boss’s identity to stay a secret.”
Or they’ll kill all three of us before we can release anything, I think.
“Noelle, I still have hunters coming to town to kill me,” I remind her.
“And you have Wasters in town ready to kill you, too. You’re not safe at home. You’re not safe if you try to leave town. Liam is right. The first stop would’ve killed you. There is one safe place for you: school. Near Alexander.”
&
nbsp; “School, then,” I say numbly.
Raindrops splatter violently on the windshield, blurring the road before us in the murky November light.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The car limps to town. Then Noelle gets out and grabs us another one. I think she stole it, but I don’t ask questions. We drive to school.
Hunters have already gathered around the campus. They’re surveying all the cars leaving, searching for me. None of them think to stop the lone car pulling in. Noelle and I drive straight past them into the haven of the parking lot. There, we duck below window height and survey the gathered hunters.
Members of the same guild don’t always dress alike, but often they do. Noelle can identify many of the guilds on sight.
“Those people in bright orange are part of the Shelter Valley Community Guild. They’re pretty harmless—they formed right after the massacre. I think if we stab one of them, the rest will run.”
“Great,” I say faintly.
“The white t-shirts are with Project Hope. They’re a non-profit guild associated with cancer hospitals. They actually donate bounties towards treating uninsured kids. Anyway, they’re fairly decent as far as hunters go. They don’t generally hunt you themselves. They’re more like scavengers who stay around when other people are hunting.”
“How does that work?”
“Well, let’s say you’re chased by a guild and critically injured. You can’t get away. You’re sure to die. Sometimes an anathema will ‘donate’ themselves to the Project Hope guild. Like, they’ll go up to them and surrender to them. The Project Hope people will slit your throat, real easy, or even give you a lethal injection if they have a syringe on hand. Then they get your bounty and it goes to sick kids.”
I stare at Noelle, horrified.
“It’s an option of last resort, obviously,” she adds quickly. “It’s only if you’re going to die anyway. It’s always been my plan if I’m about to bite it. Other hunters hate them.”
What a fatalistic way of looking at it. I’d never considered my bounty in terms of who I want to profit most from my death. Ugh.
“The ones in suits are bankers,” Noelle say. “You see them a lot around here. Usually they’re on lunch break looking for some easy money. You get a psychopath here and there, but generally if you kill one of them, it’ll scare the others away. Oh, and see the preppy college boys with the Sigma Pi jackets on? Yeah, they’re doing some macho thing. Pull out a weapon – any weapon – and come at them like you mean it. They scare easily. If they see a little blood, they’ll run.”
If I see a little blood, I’ll probably run.
She giggles. “Oh, and see the Puritan looking people?”
I peer up at the men and women in severe, almost old Quaker-ish outfits.
“They’re a national guild called God’s Crusaders. One time Liam was really drunk and they got the jump on him. So he dropped to his knees and loudly accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Instead of killing him, they had a prayer circle with him and that was that. I wouldn’t recommend that approach unless you’re willing to see whether they’re more hardcore about their religion or their money. It’s a risk.”
“None of these people sound so terrifying,” I say hopefully.
“The bad ones aren’t here yet. The professionals fly in from out of town.”
I swallow hard. “Like Death’s Disciples.”
She nods grimly. “Even the other hunters are scared of them. Trust me, the minute they get here, all these amateurs will clear out. People say Wolfman Savage kills rival hunters when he’s trying for the biggest bounties just to make sure his guild gets it first.”
“But they’re citizens,” I say, shocked.
“He makes it look like anathemas did it. It’s not like the anathemas being framed are allowed to testify in court. Legally, only citizens can testify in court. So Wolfman Savage gets away with it.”
There seem to be snakes writhing in my stomach. I sink down in the passenger’s side seat, pulling my coat over my head. I feel sick. These people are here for me. And I’ve just courteously trapped myself inside their barrier for them. Some part of me screams that I should be leaving town, not staying. It’s too late to change course now. Liam was right: the first gas station would’ve doomed me.
Noelle and I wait in the car until the last bunch of students are trickling from the lobby, then we rush into the empty school. We run down into the service corridor and pound on Alexander’s door.
He’s startled and distinctly upset to see us. He ushers us inside hastily.
“What are you still doing in town?” he whispers fiercely at me. Then, to Noelle, “And why are you with her?”
“Good to see you, too.” Noelle plots down onto his cot. “This is where you’ve been living? You had it better in the caves.”
Alexander kicks the door shut, looking between us. “Answer my questions.”
Noelle leans forward, propping her slim arms onto her knees. Her eyes glint with determination. “We need to use your leverage.”
“What?” Alexander says.
“Alexander, they’re going to kill her, and they’ll kill me now that I’ve turned on them. I want to threaten to drop your bomb,” Noelle says.
He blows a slow breath out of his lips. “It doesn’t work that way, Noelle.”
“What do you mean? You’ve kept yourself alive all these years—”
“You don’t understand,” Alexander says. “I don’t have the name of the boss.”
“What?”
“I have a jump drive with encrypted files. They contain the identity of the boss. I can’t copy them. I can just make sure that jump drive makes it into the right hands. It’s in a safe place right now, and if something happens to me, it gets to people who can decrypt it, who can find out what it contains. Then they’ll learn all about some legitimate citizen who’s arming anathemas and using them as lackeys. The thing is, I don’t know who that citizen is, myself. And I only get to use this leverage I’ve got once. I can’t just wave it around anytime I’d like.”
“Oh,” Noelle whispers.
Alexander sags back against the wall behind him, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “That doesn’t mean I can’t protect you. If you both stay close to me, I can see if this threat protects all three of us. But it’s not something I can throw around lightly. It’s like I have a nuclear bomb in my hands. I get one chance to set it off. Liam knows that. He may just go after one or both of you and figure I’ll preserve my leverage rather than you. I wouldn’t, but you still might have been safer if you hadn’t come to me.”
Noelle had done more than that. She’d saved me from Liam. She’d outright told Liam that Alexander is her brother. I don’t mention it. Noelle looks nervous enough as is. I find myself thinking about the hunters out front, nervous flutters in my chest. Even if Alexander can use his encrypted file to protect me and Noelle from Liam, that doesn’t do anything to solve the problem of the other group of people who want me dead.
And if it comes down to it, why would Alexander sacrifice his leverage for me? That’s asking so much. I look between the twin brother and sister who have already given up so much for each other. They would choose to save each other if it came down to it. I’m on my own here.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
It’s odd staying at school long after everyone else has trickled away for the night. The lights dim outside in the hallway. Alexander digs up some blankets to set up more beds in his hidden service corridor room. According to Alexander, the school staff has reduced to a handful of service people and a few after-school clubs on Thursday night. We all have to stay in here and stay quiet. Soon it will get emptier still.
I take out my phone to text my parents that I’m alive and well. Noelle sees me. Her eyes widen and she snatches my phone away. “None of that,” she whispers, and strips out the battery.
“What are you doing?” I say.
“Some of the better funded hunters can track you using these,” No
elle says. “Keep the battery out.”
“If you wait a few hours, the night monitor will get here, and he’s okay,” Alexander advises me. “You can sneak into the computer labs and shoot off an e-mail using an anonymizer to hide your location. I’ll show you how.”
We all fall silent as footsteps move through the hallway beyond us.
For a few minutes, it’s almost exciting to me like we’re young kids playing a game. Here we are, hidden away in a private space, hunted but comfortable for the moment. Alexander’s smuggled supplies from the school cafeteria over the years so we even had stuff to eat, stuff to drink. It’s like a picnic.
But soon the excitement fades. The events of the last few days catch up with me. Russell and the school guild’s attack… Was it just last night? I still wear the bruises around my neck, across my cheek bone. The makeup I used to hide it from my parents has long since rubbed off. Then the near murder by Liam and the Wasters, and now this. My eyelids grow heavy, and Alexander suggests I take the cot.
“Nothing else to do for a few hours.”
I fall asleep to the hum of the overhead lights.
I stir when a blanket is being tucked over me.
“She looks cold,” Alexander notes.
“Think I can risk a bathroom run yet?” Noelle asks.
“Wait about twenty minutes more. The night monitor, Rusty, is okay. He’s seen me. Sometimes I find things just lying out near my room. Like toothpaste. Clothes. Leftovers. He knows I’m living here. He’s been decent.”
Silence falls between them. I try to remember who Rusty was from the pool of school staff I’d profiled for the paper. I probably hadn’t interviewed him if he only worked nights. Now I wish I had.
“So this is your life. Have you thought about what you’ll do when you graduate?”
“It depends on you. I could go to Mexico tomorrow, Noelle. We both could.”
“That’s just trading one danger for another. I know all about surviving hunters. Cartels are another matter. There are other groups of anathemas out there. The Wasters are just one.”
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