“Aster, I don’t think—” Tansy began.
“Just do it. Unless you want to shoot him yourself.”
“Give it here,” Mallow said quietly. She took Tansy’s gun, turned, and brought down the last lawman. But Aster could hear the clamor of hooves not far behind—the lawmaster and the other officers had mounted up to pursue them.
And the raveners would be along for the ride.
Almost to the deadwall now. Weaving through the graveyard. Every breath Aster took was like swallowing fire. Her muscles were turning to jelly, and the sack of shine kept banging into her leg. She was certain she could feel her brain bouncing in her skull. The pain of her favor had weakened her, had weakened all of them. They couldn’t keep this up. If they didn’t make it back to their own horses, they’d be caught.
“I see them! They’re at the edge of the boneyard!” one of the lawmen shouted.
There was the grappling hook. Zee would be waiting for them on the other side.
Thank the dead.
Aster hurried, swinging and releasing the grappling hook. It glanced off the wall and clattered to the ground.
“Aster—”
She swallowed, tried again. This time it stuck.
“All right, everyone up,” Aster said. Tansy went first—it was only then that Aster saw her cheeks were wet with tears. Violet went next, cursing as she did so. Then Clementine, begging Aster to be careful. Then Mallow, leaving Aster alone.
Aster slung the bag of shine over her back. You’re going to have to leave it, a small voice said. No way you’re getting over the wall with that thing, not before they catch you.
Shots rang out. The mounted lawmen had almost reached her.
But damned if she was going to let this all be for nothing.
Aster clenched the neck of the sack between her teeth. Climbed up the wall. Reached the top. Threw the grappling hook down so the lawmen couldn’t follow her. Then she dropped the sack and fell after it, landing in a heap. The others helped her up, their expressions shattered by fresh panic.
“What?” Aster asked, holding back her bile. “What’s wrong now?”
No one answered. They didn’t have to. She could see for herself.
Zee and the horses were nowhere in sight.
13
“Where the hell is he?” Aster demanded, running to the edge of the woods. The moon was high in the sky by now, painting the trees with silver light. They couldn’t wait around for Zee here; the Scarcliff raveners would be on them any minute.
“I don’t know,” Clementine said, her voice raw and broken. “He wouldn’t have abandoned us unless it was an emergency. You know he wouldn’t.”
Aster exchanged glances with Violet. What if he had abandoned them? What if he had finally decided they were too much trouble for their worth, and left them here to die?
Or what if Clementine’s right, and he’s in some kind of trouble?
On the other side of the wall, the roar of horse hooves grew louder. The lawmen had arrived.
“We’ll go back to camp, see if he’s there,” Aster decided.
“But we already packed it up—” Tansy began.
“Well, where else would you have us go?” Aster asked roughly. “Those lawmen are at the wall, and their ravener friends will have no trouble getting over it. We can’t stay here. That old campsite is one other spot Zee would know where to meet us. We’ll see if he’s there and then figure out what to do.”
“All right, but Aster, we don’t have the theomite ring,” Violet said.
Shit.
The realization knocked the last of the fight out of Aster. She became suddenly, singularly aware of the rising and falling cries of the vengeants just beyond the tree line. You got used to the sound of them, growing up in the Scab. You learned to ignore them like you learned to ignore the rush of your own blood in your ears. But pretending the vengeants didn’t exist didn’t make them go away.
If Aster led everyone into that forest unprotected, they’d be torn apart.
“To hell with it,” Mallow swore then, plunging into the trees before Aster could stop her. “I’d rather let the dead have me than those bastards back there. Camp’s only half a mile away, we can make it.”
“Wait!” Tansy cried, running after her.
Clementine looked at Aster in shock. “Aster, I—I have to go with them,” she stammered. “They won’t be able to see the vengeants coming. And Zee—”
Aster nodded. She motioned for Violet to follow them. “Come on!”
Violet hesitated, as if weighing another option. Clearly, though, there wasn’t one.
They dove into the black teeth of the forest.
It was much harder running through woodland than it had been running through Scarcliff. The rocky, uneven ground threatened to throw them off balance with every step, and the thorny branches of the low-lying scrub bush clawed at their arms and legs. The moonlight was only just bright enough to see by. Aster tried her best to keep up with the others, though her hard landing had shaken her. They were still close enough to the deadwall that they hadn’t been swarmed by vengeants yet, but any moment now—
And then, there they were. Their attention surrounded Aster, cold and craving. It crawled over her skin like a voltric current. The temperature dropped.
Tansy shrieked from somewhere up ahead.
“Sophia!” Mallow shouted—Tansy’s true name. Clementine put on a burst of speed and disappeared into the darkness.
“Ripping hell, Aster, you just couldn’t have let us run a normal heist—” Violet said through her teeth.
“Shut up!”
Aster and Violet caught up to the others: Tansy was curled up on the ground in a ball, her hands wrapped protectively around her head. Mallow crouched at her side, begging her to get up. Clementine looked around them with the wild eyes of a rabbit in a trap.
“Is she hurt?” Aster asked.
“No, she’s just—she just panicked,” Mallow said. “I’ve never seen her like this.” Mallow had never sounded as young as she did then. An unnatural wind had started up around them, tugging at the hems of their clothes.
“You have to get her to calm down!” Clementine said shrilly. “They’re attracted to fear, they’re coming!”
“How many are there?” Aster demanded.
“I count seven right now. They’re circling like vultures. There’ll be more on the way. They—Violet, duck!”
Violet screamed and dropped to the ground. An instant later invisible claws raked the trunk of the tree she’d been standing under. The wood cracked and splintered with an explosion of sound. The vengeant shrieked like a motherless child, then took off with heavy wingbeats that buffeted the air.
“Have mercy, have mercy, have mercy,” Violet prayed. Aster ran over to her, grabbed her, and lugged her to her feet.
“Come on, we have to keep going! It’s our only chance!”
“We’ll never make it,” Violet said dully.
The air around them grew colder still. Aster’s sweat froze along the small of her back. Tansy, screaming. Mallow, pleading. Violet, losing faith. Aster, losing her mind. Clementine staggered back as she watched the vengeants circle faster and faster, churning up a storm that stripped the needles from the trees. They were so loud now, so close, that Aster could barely hear herself think.
Violet’s right, Aster realized then. She let out a weak trickle of laughter.
We’re not going to make it.
Mallow grabbed Tansy’s hand and helped her climb, shaking, to her feet. The girls circled up, back to back. Aster drew her knife for the last time, though it would do nothing to save her.
And then Clementine suddenly broke away, dodging the grasp of the vengeants’ claws.
“Clem, what are you doing? Clem!” Aster shouted.
“Grayleaf! It grows at the base of pine trees.”
Aster struggled to understand. She was uncoupling from reality. It seemed to take all her effort just to make her mouth work.
“… Grayleaf?” she repeated.
“She’s right, we can burn it, keep the vengeants back,” Mallow said. She looked at Tansy and seemed to make a decision, steeling herself before running after Clementine. “We’re going to make these bastards sorry they ever came for us.”
Finally Aster realized what they meant. It lit up a flicker of hope.
“I’ll help them,” Violet said. “You stay with Tansy and get the fire started.”
Aster nodded and turned to face Tansy.
“I’m sorry, Aster,” Tansy whimpered. She dropped down and started searching for kindling. “I’m so sorry. I’ve seen what vengeants do to people and I just—I just froze.”
Aster dug in her coat pocket for a book of matches. “It’s all right, Tansy,” she said softly. “I froze back at the saloon. I almost froze again just now. It’s happened to all of us.”
Tansy piled together the kindling she’d found. Aster struck a match with shaking hands. She ran through her memories of Zee’s advice about building a fire. Which wood would burn bright, which would burn hot, which would burn the longest or produce the most smoke—none of that mattered now. All that mattered was burning enough grayleaf to drive the vengeants back.
“The raveners back at Green Creek, they knew this was what I was most afraid of,” Tansy went on. “They’d make me see—”
“Don’t worry about them. Don’t worry about anything. Just think of a song, Tansy, hear? I promise we’ll get you out of this.”
Clementine ran up and threw the first fistful of grayleaf into the fire. The smell of the smoke sweetened immediately.
“There’s more where that came from,” she said, dashing back into the dark.
Violet was next. Then Mallow. Aster was tending the fire in a crouch, making sure it burned as long as possible. The vengeants seemed to be retreating. Their hellish screams echoed with frustration.
By the Veil, we might actually survive this after all—
“Watch out!” Clementine cried.
A flash of movement in the moonlight. A hiss of leaves in a wake of wind. Mallow let out a scream harrowing enough to match the vengeants’. Aster’s skin crawled. Never, even in all her years at the welcome house, had she heard such a desperate sound. She leapt to her feet.
“MAL!” Tansy cried.
She and Aster ran towards where Mallow’s scream had come from. A vengeant had grabbed her by the shoulders with its invisible talons and was dragging her up into the air like an eagle with its prey. Tansy held Mallow’s ankles desperately. Mallow thrashed against the vengeant’s cruel grip. Screamed again. Bite marks appeared across her midsection as a second vengeant attacked. The blood glittered black in the firelight.
“Help!” Mallow begged. “Please!”
Tansy was shoved away with an impatient swipe and went flying half a dozen feet back. The vengeant pulled Mallow higher and higher.
Aster sprinted after them. For a brief instant, the vengeant passed through a shaft of moonlight and Aster saw it in all its terrible beauty: the grinning, antlered skull, the wings made of smoke, the too-long fingers that ended with too-long claws. Mallow’s face was a mask of terror.
A gunshot shattered the night. Aster stumbled in her shock and fell to the ground, hard. Picked herself up. But it was too late. Mallow was nowhere in sight.
A second gunshot, then a third.
What the hell is going on?
Clementine, Tansy, and Violet caught up to her. Why had they left the safety of the fire? Now they were all going to die.
“Dawn—” Clementine’s voice, as dull and distant as if Aster were underwater. Clementine shook her shoulder. “Dawn, come back, we have the ring—”
A fourth gunshot. Zee appeared an instant later, muscling his way through the group. Shotgun cradled against his shoulder, eyes cold with focus. He lowered the weapon and helped Aster to her feet.
“Do we have everyone?” he asked.
“No, Mallow is still out there,” Clementine said. Tansy was shaking, her face wet with tears.
Zee turned to Aster. “Which way did they take her?”
Aster’s lips quivered. She couldn’t seem to make them move.
“Aster.” Zee’s voice was gentle but firm. He looked her in the eyes. “Which way?”
She pointed. Zee ran off without hesitation, raising the shotgun once again. He disappeared into the darkness.
Aster blinked, slowly coming back to focus. She was overwhelmed with the sudden urge to cry. She swallowed it painfully.
“What happened?” she asked the rest of them.
Violet looked as frightened as Aster had ever seen her. “The smoke from our fire,” she said. “Zee tracked us down. We have the ring now, we’re safe.”
“Kind of him to finally join us,” Aster snarled. But she knew her anger was just a balm for her fear.
Two more gunshots rang out.
“Mallow—?” Tansy asked.
Aster shook her head, feeling sick. “I don’t know.”
“Zee will get her back,” Clementine murmured. “He has to.”
“Where the hell has he been?”
“He didn’t have time to explain himself,” Violet answered. “But he told us to mount up. We can’t stay here. The raveners will have seen the smoke, too.”
Aster’s breathing slowed. “All right, then, we better go. Can everyone make it?”
Violet and Clementine were unhurt, although Tansy was limping from being thrown back by the vengeant. She leaned on Clementine for help. Aster had busted her knee open and skinned her palms, too. She ignored the dull throbbing of her injuries and forced herself to stay in the present. They returned to the fire, where the horses were waiting.
After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only a few moments, Zee joined them, carrying Mallow across his shoulders. Tansy ran to meet them with staggering steps.
“Is she alive?” Tansy choked through her tears.
“For now,” Zee said grimly. He set her down. “But she’s losing a lot of blood, Tansy.”
The group worked together to ease Mallow into the saddle, the wails of the dead rising and falling in the distance.
* * *
“There was a patrol working around the outer perimeter of the deadwall,” Zee explained. “I had to make a run for it so they wouldn’t catch me.”
He leaned back against the wall of the shallow cave where they’d retreated, his face drawn with remorse. Aster, Clementine, and Violet sat in a circle around him while Tansy began to dress Mallow’s wounds by the light of a lantern. She had asked the others to give her space to work, but they couldn’t help but look over worriedly as Zee told his story. Mallow still hadn’t woken up.
“Did the patrol see you?” Clementine asked, chewing her lip.
Zee nodded. “It’s hard to escape attention when you’re trying to herd four scared horses into the woods. Luckily the two lawmen didn’t follow me far—they weren’t equipped to deal with vengeants—but they kept me on the run long enough that I missed you all.” He swallowed, leaning forward to clasp Clementine’s hand. “I’m so sorry, Clem. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there—”
“I’m just glad you’re all right,” she said, putting her hand over his. Clementine looked upset by the story, but Aster was relieved that was all there was to it. “We thought you’d been hurt.” Or that you’d abandoned us.
“It could’ve turned out a lot worse, that’s for certain,” Zee admitted. “We’re going to have to be more careful from now on.” He sat back and pulled his knees up, wincing. “In fact, it’d be dangerous to stay here much longer. The raveners will be able to track us here from the fire.”
Aster tensed, defensive. “We didn’t know what else to do. The grayleaf was all we had.”
“No, no, you all did right,” Zee reassured her. “I couldn’t have done better myself. We just have to keep going, is all.” He looked over to Tansy. “Mallow—can she travel?”
Tansy looked up at them
, her eyes red and swollen. Mallow lay unmoving beside her. There was a sickly green sallowness beneath her brown skin, and her chest rose and fell with painful slowness. Every inch of her body was covered with scrapes and bruises from being dragged through the forest and dropped from the air. Deeper cuts from the vengeant’s claws had carved wickedly into the muscles of her shoulders. They’d been sewn together with thick black stitches and wrapped with clean white cloth.
But worst of all was the crushing bite to her side. Tansy had removed her shirt and wrapped her up as best she could, but already the bandages were soaked through with blood. Aster’s stomach twisted with sympathetic agony. Her wounds seemed small compared to Mallow’s.
“I—I don’t know,” Tansy stammered. “It was dangerous bringing her even this far. I was able to clean and bandage her shoulders, but this wound on her side—” Tansy’s voice broke. “We only have basic supplies out here. She needs a hospital.”
“Hey, easy,” Clementine said, crawling over to Tansy to soothe her.
“This is all my fault. I lost my courage when we were trying to get away.”
No, Aster thought, It’s all my fault for getting us into this mess in the first place.
I was too reckless. I almost got everyone killed. Violet. My sister.
And Mallow … I did this to her …
“The vengeants would’ve caught up to us anyway.” Clementine shot Aster a meaningful look. “Right?”
“Absolutely,” Aster said, forcing the damning thoughts away. “It’s not your fault that Mal got hurt—if anything, it’s to your credit that she might still make it.”
“Might?”
“No—that’s not what I meant—”
“Oh no, I can’t lose her,” Tansy went on, now clutching Mallow’s hand. She shook her head. “I can’t do this without her. Mal’s been there for me from the beginning. My first night at the welcome house I couldn’t stop crying, and she stayed with me until I fell asleep.”
“I remember that,” Violet murmured. For once, she kept any spiteful thoughts to herself.
“So I have to stay with her now until she wakes up,” Tansy said. Her voice steadied. “I can’t expect you all to stay, too. Not if the raveners are coming. But at least if they catch us, we’ll be together.”
The Good Luck Girls Page 17