Though only fourteen at the time and small for his age, he gripped her flesh hand with the strength of a man twice his size, holding on as if she were his last tether to this earth. Westie was in agony as he crushed her fingers together, but she refused to pull away.
Heavy tears fell from her eyes into his wounds. She’d thought about strangling him with her new powerful arm, but looking into his glittering eyes, she couldn’t bring herself to end his suffering. After losing her family to cannibals, Westie knew losing someone else—even a stranger—in the same violent way would be too much for her heart to bear. And so she begged him to live. She kissed his forehead and begged and begged.
Nigel came back covered in the blood of the cannibal men and looked like a creature out of her worst dreams. She turned her begging on him and asked him to save the boy’s life.
He slid from his saddle and crouched over the boy, examining the wounds.
“You have to save him,” Westie demanded, tears blurring her vision.
Nigel smoothed the boy’s hair and whispered. “Westie, I don’t know if—”
“No! You have to,” she cried, her voice echoing off the trees.
He let out a long sigh and nodded. “I’ll try.”
Alistair sat on the edge of death for weeks after infection ravaged his body, but Nigel managed to save him. Westie stayed with Alistair through his recovery, through his nightmares and sorrow. She never once left his side. Like a silly girl, she believed he lived for her, so he was hers and she was his.
“Don’t go,” Alistair said, interrupting her memories. “Creatures and bandits are all that travel the wagon trail now that the trains and airships have come back from the war.”
Westie closed her eyes, memorized how his touch felt against her skin before shaking him off.
“I have to.”
“I am going with her,” Bena said. “She will be safe.”
Alistair wouldn’t give up that easily. “Why are you going back there?”
It wasn’t the first time Westie had tried to get into that cabin to learn more about her family’s killers. Once, two years ago, she and Bena had ridden out to the cabin in search of clues. An old man had made the place his home and refused to let them in. This time Westie wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Proof,” Westie said. “Solid evidence is the only way I’ll convince Nigel that the Fairfields are cannibals, and Nigel’s word is the only way the sheriff will believe it.”
“It’s been seven years since your family died in that cabin. What do you expect to find?”
“A photo, a piece of paper with their names—I’ll know it when I see it.” From what Westie had seen of the old man living in the cabin, he didn’t throw anything away.
“What about Emma? Nigel needs the Fairfields’ money to finish it.”
Westie glanced at Bena, who checked her paint’s hooves and acted like she wasn’t paying attention, though Westie knew better.
“I won’t say anything till they hand the money to Nigel. That’ll give me enough time to gather the evidence I need to build a case against the Fairfields, one as solid as a steel wall that neither Nigel nor the sheriff can deny.” She mounted Henry and pulled the reins to face Alistair. “We need to get on before Nigel wakes up.”
Alistair took a deep breath that made his mask hiss. “I’m going with you.”
It had been so long since they’d spent any length of time together that she wasn’t sure how to act around him. She tried to breathe around the lump in her throat.
“Suit yourself.” She clicked her tongue, urging Henry out of the barn.
Ten
They left as soon as Alistair’s bags were packed. The shock of him wanting to travel to the cabin with her had yet to wear off. She’d been making bad decisions all her life and he’d never been concerned before. She wondered what the real reason was for him wanting to go, and refused to let herself believe it was because he’d missed her.
Bena rode ahead, leaving Westie and Alistair alone. Westie started to think about the red huntress. She thought about James too, wondering what part he played in the family, and if he was one of them. Shaking her head, she rid herself of the thoughts before they consumed her.
She needed a distraction, a way to pull herself out of her head and away from the Fairfields and James for a time. She looked at Alistair. Despite the oppressive heat, he wore a bowler hat atop his thicket of dark tangles, a black wool duster buttoned up to his neck, black leather riding gloves, black trousers, and his mask. He looked like a henchman. Sweat spilled down the sides of his pale face into his mask.
“You’re looking a little green, Alley,” she said in a goading tone.
There was nothing that chafed him more than Westie pestering him to take his mask off. And there was nothing that gave her more pleasure than chafing Alistair. Picking on him was the distraction she needed.
“You should take a drink of that cool water I packed in your canteen. This trip’s going to be a long one—don’t want to dry up without Nigel’s medicines around,” she said.
Alistair’s head bobbed lazily with his horse’s stride as if he were agreeing with her, which he was not, at least not openly.
“Take that damn thing off,” she said. “Don’t be such a stubborn ass.”
She wanted so badly to see her old friend.
“I’m quite all right, thank you,” he said in a metallic voice that reminded her of the idling purr of a steam engine. “Speaking of drying up, perhaps you should be more worried about yourself. You’re looking a little sober. Shouldn’t your face be planted in Henry’s mane by now? I mean, since you’re drinking again.”
She snarled, wanting to spit an insult back at him, but he had a point. If she was to face the nearly three-day round-trip journey to the cabin where her family died and the memories that went along with it, she’d need more courage than she had.
Reaching into her bags, she shoved her clothes and food aside, but found only leather at the bottom.
“Alley, where’s my flask?” It had to be a mistake. She’d packed it the night before, she was sure of it. “Alley?” She looked into his eyes for answers, for guilt. There was no guilt, but there were secrets. Her next words came out like a coiled snake ready to strike. “What did you do?”
“What I should’ve done years ago,” he said.
Suddenly she felt every step Henry took, every hobble, every bounce. Her head was thick with desperation. Like Alistair’s presence, sobriety had not been part of her plan. She strangled her reins and dug her heels into the gelding’s sides to catch up with Bena.
When she reached her, Westie’s neck was hot, but not from the sun. Bena rode with a swayed back, her eyes scanning the forest around her, stoic like the braves of her tribe.
“Alley shouldn’t have come,” Westie said, wondering what she had done all those years ago to push him away. She remembered the day it had happened, but not the event, or the words she’d said that had led to the demise of their friendship.
It was on her fourteenth birthday. Alistair was a month from turning seventeen. Nigel had insisted on inviting all the teenagers from town to her party, saying she and Alistair spent far too much time alone together and hadn’t been properly socialized. Westie knew most of the kids from her short time in school, but Alistair had been homeschooled and never met any of them.
They all went down to the swimming hole. Westie was splashing around with Isabelle when she noticed Alistair sitting on the bank alone, wearing his mask to hide his scars from the others.
“Alley? What are you doing over there alone? Come swim with us,” Westie said. She splashed at him, but the water didn’t reach.
He stood up and headed toward her, but before he made it, a boy came up behind her, grabbed her waist, and dunked her. By the time she rose from the water, Alistair was gone.
She left the others to go look for him and eventually found him in his room, alone, staring out the window. Standing in the doorway, she knock
ed. When he turned to look at her, his eyes were impossible to read.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. His mask hissed. “Did someone say something about your mask? ’Cause if they did, I swear I’ll knock all their teeth out.”
She smiled at him, hoping to see his eyes squint, but they remained emotionless. He took several steps toward her. Thinking he was going to go with her back to the party, she took a step back, but instead, he closed the door without saying a word.
Months went by before he spoke to her. Eventually, he started talking to her again, but it was never the same. He stopped taking his mask off, and they no longer swam at the hole, or lay in the field at night counting stars. Every time she’d try to touch him, he’d shrug away from her.
He’d been her rock, her only source of comfort, and then he was gone. They lived in a big house like strangers. Each day of silence caused her heart to break a little more until the pain of her loss turned into an old friend. In Alistair’s absence, the nightmares of her dead family returned, and Westie got into the habit of hiding from them behind a bottle. It was also when she became determined to leave Nigel’s mansion and seek the cannibals who had killed her kin.
Westie felt a deep ache from the memory and looked down so Bena wouldn’t see it reflected on her face.
“Alley’s a distraction,” Westie said. “If we come across creatures and I die, it’ll be because of him.”
Bena didn’t even pretend interest. She was Westie’s oldest friend, but when it came to matters of the heart, Bena was as deaf as Alistair was mute.
“Many travelers have taken this road recently,” Bena said, ignoring Westie’s outburst.
“Is that bad?”
“Could be if they’re bandits. We should avoid the road. I know a path.”
“I don’t know which is worse, bandits or rattlesnakes.”
Bena gave her a cool look. She was being as stuffy as Alistair.
“A rattlesnake will not rape you, take your gold, and leave you for the creatures.”
“Fine.” Westie rolled her head back, letting the sun kiss her face. “Rattlesnakes it is. They can’t possibly be worse company than the two of you.”
A cold finger walked up Westie’s spine as they passed the blue-painted trees that stood as a warning, letting human travelers know they were leaving the safety of Wintu protection. She looked up at the dome, saw the smooth curve of it like a bell jar over the town, where it had stood for eight years. When settlers had first come to the area, the Wintu—as a peace offering—conjured the dome to protect the settlers from creatures, with the agreement that the Wintu’s sacred sites were off-limits. Every time Westie left that protection, she felt like she was running naked through a rose garden. It was only a matter of time before things got dangerous.
They traveled north along a game trail next to the Sacramento River. By the time the sun fell behind the mountain, Westie’s stomach was in a riot from nerves.
They cooled their saddles near the river for the night, far enough away from the rushing water so that they could hear anyone approach but close enough to catch the breeze.
Westie was laying out her bedroll when Bena sat down in front of a pile of wood and debris she’d gathered to build a fire. Whispering words to the earth in Wintu, she held her hands over the wood. Westie had seen her do the same thing countless times. Each time a fire would roar to life without a single spark. This time it didn’t work. Bena’s jaw clenched, and she tried again.
“Shit!” Bena said, and stood up.
Any other time, hearing Bena use a cuss word would’ve made Westie laugh, but there was nothing funny about seeing her friend so upset.
With a defeated moan, Bena said, “I’m going hunting.”
While Bena was away, Westie lit the fire, and Alistair brushed the horses. Westie sat on a fallen tree near the fire, watching him in the saffron glow.
“I’d lend you a hand, but it seems I’ve grown attached to it.” She waved her clockwork arm at him. “Unlike some of those with mechanical parts that are removable.” She leaned her head back and grinned even though her face wanted to do just the opposite. “That breeze is something to smile about. Feels nice against my face.”
He ignored her digs the same way he always did, but his eyes narrowed and he began to brush faster.
“Maybe you ought to take your mask off?” she said, unlacing her bodice to expose her cleavage to the breeze, pretending she didn’t see his cheeks turning red and the front of his trousers getting tight. His sudden fury to hide it made her choke on laughter. She looked away, cheeks hot, heart speeding up. It was the first time she’d ever seen him react physically to her. She felt shy and hopeful, but pushed it down. He would probably react the same way to any woman showing skin.
He mumbled something under his breath—something unpleasant, she was sure—before tossing his brush to the side and disappearing into the woods.
He came back to the camp only when Bena returned with her catch of plump rabbits and blackberries. Alistair left again, walking to the river to eat alone. Westie had a headache and wasn’t hungry anymore. She fell asleep and was tossed into the same familiar nightmare of running through the cabin trying to escape from the cannibals, only she was able to force herself to wake before the worst of it.
Her eyes opened to a star-bloated sky and to Alistair sitting beside her, brushing her sweaty hair off her face with a gentle finger.
The light of the dying fire shimmered in his eyes. “It was only a dream,” he whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
She wondered if she had woken him, or if he’d been sitting with her all along. As he petted her hair, her lids grew heavy, and she was reminded of a time when they were younger, when she was still struggling to use her machine. The mechanical arm had been such a tiresome burden back then. Every time she’d go to scratch an itch on her nose, she’d punch herself in the face, knocking herself out for hours at a time. She was never without a blackened eye or bloody nose in those days.
One day, Alistair came to her while she sat in the barn, cuddling with Henry and crying after breaking Isabelle’s hand at school. He’d wiped her tears away, held her metal hand up in front of him, and placed his face in its palm. His blue eyes were bright against the copper as he watched her through the open spaces between her fingers.
You wouldn’t want to crush my skull, would you? he signed. He didn’t use his mask much at all back then.
She sniffed and shook her head.
Then squeeze my face and try not to kill me.
He wouldn’t budge until she gave it a try. She sat there an hour before even attempting it. Eventually she did and was able to squeeze his face without crushing his skull or pinching his skin between the gears. They practiced every day until she learned how much pressure to apply to each situation. But that was a long time ago, she thought. He didn’t even trust her enough now to let her see his face.
“I’m sorry for teasing you, Alley,” she said as she started to slip back into the abyss of sleep. She touched his hand with her copper one. And though she didn’t hear his reply, she knew when he didn’t pull away that she was forgiven.
Eleven
The next morning they packed and were on their way. To get to the cabin, they had to first get back onto the wagon trail. An hour later Westie started to develop blisters in places blisters had no place being. She put her bedroll beneath her, but it was no relief.
“Are we almost there?” she asked. Though it had been only two years since she’d gone with Bena searching for the cabin in the woods, Westie had no idea where they were. It was before she’d struck her deal with Nigel, so she hadn’t been entirely sober during that trip. “I don’t think I can sit in this saddle much longer.”
“Almost,” Bena said.
They veered off the wagon trail again into the woods when Westie finally saw something she recognized. Little figures made of braided twine hung from the branches in the trees ahead.
Those dolls had been there w
hen she’d traveled to the cabin with Bena, but not when her family had crossed through that part of the forest. Perhaps if they had been, things would’ve turned out differently. Instead there had been nothing but trees and snow. Fear churned in her stomach, making her insides a cauldron when the hunting cabin came into view. It was smaller than she remembered, barely a shack. The windows boarded up, the wood gray and swollen with fading red symbols painted on the door. The roof, covered in dried moss, was charred and breaking down. It bowed in the middle and had holes all about. It was buried deep on Wintu land, hidden behind giant pines and scrub brush, impossible to see from the wagon trail.
“How did your family even find this place from the wagon trail?” Alistair asked.
He and Westie stayed behind while Bena looked for signs of life.
“By accident,” Westie said, her voice thick with trepidation as she scanned the forest. “We’d fallen behind the rest of the caravan we’d been traveling with after my brother Tripp had taken ill. Our wagon had gotten caught in the snow and we were out of food, so my pa took us out into the woods to look for food and shelter.”
Westie had been holding Tripp’s hand as they’d searched. He was only a year younger than she was, but he was racked with fever and seemed so fragile. She thought about his sweet face and red hair, clutching the doll she’d given him. Its name was Clementine; her favorite, with a burlap dress, brown yarn hair, and button eyes. The memory made her eyes throb with impending tears.
“Why would you try to cross the mountains so close to winter?”
Westie forced air into her lungs, trying to compose herself. Clearing her throat, she said, “We’d heard California was free of the Undying. They’d taken over the prairie. We didn’t have much choice.”
The Undying’s takeover hadn’t happened all at once, but it felt like it had. Symptoms of the change were gradual, starting with a fever. No one even knew what had caused it at first. There’d been a drought that had lasted nearly two years, killing off crops and cattle so there wasn’t much to eat. Desperate, people began hunting and eating the wolves that roamed prairie. What they didn’t know was that those wolves were no ordinary canines but werewolves. What they also didn’t know at the time were the dire consequences of consuming creatures of magic.
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