Branches whipped against their faces. The scent of the tobacco left Aster’s head swimming. A distant shot rang out. One of the men must have had a gun.
And then there were the raveners …
“I—see—the end!” Violet said between breaths.
An instant later they broke free of the field. Aster crossed the short strip of open grass that bordered the woods and dove into the trees. The meeting point was still about a quarter mile away.
Aster and Violet covered the distance in a little over a minute.
“Aster? We heard gunshots—” Zee started when they burst through the trees.
“No time to explain. They’re on our tail. We have to get out of here,” she said. Violet took a grateful gulp of air as they came to a stop. Aster began untying the horses. “We had to leave our horse back there,” she went on. “Clem, you ride with Zee; Violet, with me.”
The sounds of pursuit rolled towards them like a tidal wave. More shots rang out, along with shouted curses. They couldn’t be more than a hundred feet behind them.
“By the Veil,” Mallow swore as the men poured through the trees.
“There are raveners, too, and the law won’t be far behind them,” Aster said grimly.
They spurred their horses into a gallop and bolted deeper into the woods. The men in the posse wouldn’t be able to keep up with them, but the law would be on horseback, too. The law would have no trouble. And they were probably already on high alert, given the stir Aster had caused in Clearwater.
She glanced over at Zee, whose face was drawn beneath the brim of his hat. He seemed to be thinking the same thing.
“How do we lose them this time?” Aster asked, the wind nearly tearing her words away.
He shook his head, eyes trained on the rushing ground ahead. “It’s going to be tough, Aster. There are always extra lawmen at the borders of the Scab.”
Clementine’s arms were wrapped tight around his middle. “So what are we supposed to do?”
“I have an idea. It’s dangerous, though.” He finally spared a glance at Aster. “It’s near nightfall—the vengeants will be out soon. If I lead them onto the lawmen, the rest of you can escape with the theomite ring—”
“Zee, no,” Clementine interrupted.
Aster gripped her horse’s mane as it stumbled while weaving around a tree.
“—keep going until you reach the next town, Stonegate,” he went on, inexorably. “There’s a train station there. It’s the first stop on a line that runs all the way up to Northrock—”
“Zee, you’re coming with us,” Mallow called out, from a bit behind them.
“No,” Aster said then, respect settling in her chest. “I’m going with Zee.”
“No!” Clementine cried. “Not both of you.”
Zee gave Aster a brief nod. He brought his horse to a stop. Aster and Mallow did the same.
“She’s right, Clem,” he said softly. “No horse can carry three full-grown riders. Someone has to stay with me.”
“Let it be me, then. I’m the one they really want—”
“No,” Aster cut her off, already dismounting. “I came all this way to save you, Grace, hear? I’m not giving up on you now.”
“Aster … are you sure?” Tansy asked. “Maybe we can…”
“My decision is final.” She had to end this argument now. Their head start over the lawmen wouldn’t last long. Clementine climbed down from her saddle, tears streaming down her face.
“Promise me you’ll catch up to us,” she whispered, wrapping Aster in a hug.
Aster’s heart beat hard and fast in her chest. “I don’t want you to wait for us. It’s too dangerous—”
“Promise me.”
Aster had never lied to her sister. She didn’t intend to start now. But then she looked up and saw Violet giving her the barest shake of her head.
Sometimes you have to be practical.
“I promise,” Aster whispered back, telling Clementine what she needed to hear. Clem exhaled, thanking her, and saddled up behind Violet. “Wander well, friends.”
Clementine hesitated, words seemingly caught in her throat, but then Violet spurred their horse forward.
The sky had begun to deepen to crimson as the sun sank toward the horizon. The shadows around them had lengthened and turned black. And, to the south, soft but growing stronger, the sound of a hundred horse hooves in pursuit.
“Good luck,” Clementine shouted over her shoulder.
They all took off. Aster and Zee watched them go until they disappeared into the thicket of the forest. Once they were gone, he pulled the shotgun from his back and handed it to Aster.
“Hope you’ve been practicing as much as you say,” he said without a trace of his usual humor. “You’re going to need this.”
18
Aster looked at the gun as if it were a live snake in her hands.
“Shouldn’t you take this?” she asked. Shooting at the padlock had been bad enough, and that was just shooting a small pistol at a damn object.
Zee shook his head as he hurried to find his knife. “Last time I tried to ride and shoot, this happened,” he said, patting his injured thigh. “I’d let you take the reins, but Nugget knows me best. You can do it, Aster.”
Then he sliced open the palm of his hand.
“Zee—what the hell—”
“We have to draw the vengeants to us.”
“They’re not living things. They can’t even smell blood.” He’d lost his mind.
“No, but they’re attracted to pain and fear, and it won’t take much to whet their appetite. We’re already plenty afraid.” He winced, handed her the knife. “You do the same.”
“Zee … I don’t know about this…”
As she spoke, the sun dipped below the horizon, and the forest was plunged into darkness. The vengeants began to wail, low at first, then louder and louder. Aster’s pulse roared between her ears.
She cut her palm.
Aster saw the blood before she felt the pain—and what an awful lot of blood it was. Soon her whole hand was painted red, rivulets running down her wrist and up to her elbow. The wound beat in time with her heart. Her palm burned as if it were on fire. Zee gave her a bandage to wrap herself with, but already she was beginning to feel light-headed.
“Stay sharp,” he said. “Once the vengeants are almost on top of us, we’ll lead them onto the law. We’ll get out of this, I promise.”
She wondered if he was lying, too.
The lawmen were getting closer, making no effort to mask their approach. Every few seconds, they repeated the same shouted warning:
“ATTENTION. YOU ARE UNDER ARREST. DROP YOUR WEAPONS. COME FORWARD WITH YOUR HANDS UP.”
What if the law reached them before the vengeants did? What if there weren’t enough vengeants to stop them? What if—
Zee climbed into the saddle and helped Aster up so they would be ready to run once the lawmen were close enough. She almost dropped the shotgun as she took her seat behind him. It was harder to hold it with her injured hand.
“How many rounds are in this thing?” she asked shakily. The vengeants were coming for them, too, she could sense it, their wings buffeting the air and churning it into short, choppy gusts.
“Six rounds,” Zee answered, stroking Nugget’s neck to soothe her. “It takes a long time to reload—too long. So don’t shoot unless you have to.”
Their breath fogged in front of them. The temperature was dropping, fast. Even so, a bead of sweat trickled down Aster’s hairline. She wiped it away with the back of her wrist. Stared into the dark, flinching at every movement. She did not feel any safer with this gun in her hands. She might as well try to shoot down a thunderstorm.
Then she saw it—an oncoming flash of silver cutting through the moonlight, covering the distance fast as a coyote. She raised the gun—
“Wait,” Zee said. He wheeled the horse around, and the vengeant just missed them, claws whispering past Aster’s face.
“We don’t want to scare them off yet. We need more to come.”
How many?
Because the forest seemed to be boiling with vengeants now, branches snapping as they rushed forward. Their high, gibbering screams rolled over Aster like a wave. Her scalp tightened. Her heart punched through her chest. She felt, more than she saw, another vengeant diving for them from above—
“NOW!” Zee ordered.
She swung the shotgun upwards and fired blindly into the dark. The shot ripped through the night with a roar of noise and a flash of fire, and the kick of the gun practically knocked Aster off the saddle. The vengeant let out a wounded shriek and fell back, but another was right on its heels. Zee finally dug his spurs in and the horse bolted, leading the vengeants after them.
The wind tore at Aster’s face as they galloped towards the lawmen. She held back the rush of panic that always seemed to come when she fired a gun. Held back the vomit heaving up her throat. She couldn’t afford to lose herself. Not now, not here.
“Hang on!” Zee said, and he pushed them even faster, into a gallop. Branches scratched at their arms and legs. Aster’s bones rattled from the pounding of the horse hooves. She sensed at least two vengeants keeping pace with them, one on either side. Aster hesitated, not sure where to aim. Then the one on the right lunged, sank its fangs into her calf, and pulled—
Aster screamed. Fired the shotgun twice at her attacker, and then a third time, to drive off the other vengeant on the left.
That’s over half the shells gone already.
“Are you okay?” Zee shouted.
“I’ll be fine,” Aster barked back. But her leg throbbed, and her vision swam.
Human shouts rang out from up ahead. They’d heard the gunshots.
“All right, we’re almost there,” Zee said. And sure enough, Aster could just make out the dark shapes of mounted lawmen riding towards them from about a hundred feet away. Two dozen men, at least, a few of them carrying grayleaf torches—enough to ward off a vengeant or two each, but certainly not enough to drive back the horde Zee and Aster were bringing down on them.
“STAND DOWN!” the lawmaster in front shouted.
Zee kept riding.
The first scattered gunshots cracked through the air.
“I thought they weren’t allowed to kill us,” Zee snarled, ducking his head.
“I guess they’d rather bring in our bodies than let us escape again,” Aster said grimly. Her leg was soaked with blood by now from the vengeant’s bite, and another vengeant was catching up to them, its wingbeats heavy and powerful.
Fifty feet away from the lawmen now.
“Damn it,” Zee cursed, reeling backwards into Aster. He clutched his shoulder. He’d been shot. The horse staggered without his guidance. Their speed flagged.
Shit—
Aster whirled around and shot the moonlit vengeant above them just as it dove for the kill, claws outstretched and jaws yawning. It squealed, and its form flickered as it turned and fled.
Twenty-five feet. Zee had taken up the reins again, breathing raggedly as he did so. They gathered speed. Hurtled towards the posse of lawmen.
“STOP RIGHT THERE—”
Zee let out a wild, desperate yell. Aster aimed her gun over his shoulder and fired her last shot, forcing the lawmaster to duck out of their way. And then they barreled through the patrol, a horde of vengeants at their heels.
Madness.
A volley of shots rang out around them. Aster and Zee both ducked, covering their heads. Men shouted as they were attacked by vengeants, dragged down from their horses or carried up into the trees. The screams of the living and the dead rose in a chorus that curdled Aster’s blood.
It didn’t take long for the lawmen to turn and run—not after Aster and Zee, but away from the teeming horde. People scattered in all directions. The smell of blood and gunpowder thickened in the air. Zee took advantage of the confusion, leaving the vengeants and their new prey behind. Aster felt a flutter of hope as they turned north. Towards Stonegate. Towards their friends.
We did it.
Aster reeled with a rush of elation that swept away her fear. For a time, both of them were silent, listening to the rhythm of the hoofbeats and the fading sounds of the chaos they’d created. Then Aster’s weariness hit her like a hammer, and it was all she could do to stay upright. Zee fumbled for his canteen with his good hand and took a drink.
“You know what Clem’s gonna say when she sees us, don’t you?” Zee said finally, wiping his mouth and passing the canteen back to Aster. She heard the smile in his voice.
Aster smiled back, despite everything. “I told you so.”
* * *
Once they were clear of danger, Aster and Zee stopped to clean and dress their wounds as best they could. Zee ripped off a piece of his shirt to make a sling for his arm, while Aster did the same to bandage her calf. Then they reloaded the shotgun, saddled up, and continued riding for the rest of the night, following the others’ trail. The sooner they caught up, the sooner they all could leave the Scab behind.
Aster rode in a half-sleeping haze, her head lolling with the horse’s every step. She was beginning to feel like she had on the night after she killed the ravener. Disconnected, unreal. Not okay. The vengeant attack, the lawmen’s gunfire, the roar of the shotgun in her hands—it was all getting to be too much.
But to Aster’s surprise, Zee’s presence was helping her stay grounded in the moment. She still wasn’t entirely comfortable being near him, and she suspected she never truly would be. And there was still something about his past that she knew he wasn’t telling them, something he was ashamed of, or afraid of, or both. But she had her own fair share of secrets, and she knew what it was to be silenced by her own fear and shame. Aster trusted Zee, she realized, more than she had ever expected to when she’d first met him.
She had not believed it was possible to have that with a boy—an honest friendship.
“Zee,” Aster said tiredly, talking to keep herself awake. “With everything that happened, I never got a chance to tell you … but I’m sorry you never found your sisters.”
Zee didn’t answer, and Aster wondered if he’d heard her, wondered if she’d even spoken or if she’d just dreamed the words. But then he replied, his voice soft as the early morning light pouring into the forest.
“Me, too.”
“What will you do now? After you’re done with us?”
“I haven’t given up on them,” he sighed. “And I never will. But the trail’s gone cold. I checked every welcome house in the Scab, and there was no sign of them. It’s like they just … vanished.”
A chill crept down Aster’s spine. Not knowing what happened to your family—that was almost worse than losing them outright. You couldn’t grieve, couldn’t move on.
Clementine would probably say, You’ll figure something out, I know it, or I’m sure they’re together, wherever they are. And she might even actually believe it. But Aster couldn’t summon the words. False hope was too cruel a gift to give a friend.
“Well, if there’s ever anything we can do to help, you tell me, hear?” she said instead. Zee’s sisters deserved freedom just as much as she and Clem did, or Mallow and Tansy, or Violet, or Adeline, or any of the other hundreds of Good Luck Girls in the Scab.
“Thanks, Aster,” Zee said, sounding surprised. “I’ll make sure I do.”
They reached Stonegate just as the sun had risen properly over the valley, and they stopped at the top of a ridge, looking down at the town below. It was by far the biggest they’d seen yet, and rather than a deadwall, it had a giant stone arch in the middle of town. Zee explained that the arch represented the gateway into and out of the Scab, even though, in actuality, folks arrived at and departed from the train station on the east side of town. The tracks wound north, glinting in the light like a ribbon of steel. The train waited in the station.
But where were Clementine and the others?
Zee dismounted and knelt to
check the trail he’d been following. Now that it was daylight, Aster could see just how exhausted he looked, his face drawn and his movements slow and pained. She knew she looked as bad or worse.
“Their trail stops here. They didn’t go into town,” he said uncertainly.
“So they’re waiting for us, like they said. But where?”
“They must be nearby.”
Aster dismounted and joined him in looking around, worry cutting through her foggy-headedness. What if someone else had found their trail? Had they been captured? Or maybe some accident had befallen them—
Then Clementine’s voice cut through the silence.
“They’re here! They made it! I told you all they would.”
Aster whirled around. Clementine had emerged from the trees on foot, running towards them. Mallow, Tansy, and Violet were right behind her. Aster barely had time to exhale with relief before her sister wrapped her in a crushing hug.
“Good to see you, too,” Aster said with a tired laugh, and it was only then that she realized just how close she had come to never seeing Clementine again. Her throat tightened, and she swallowed back a teary feeling.
Clementine released her and turned to hug Zee next, then stopped short when she saw his arm in a sling.
“The hell happened to you?” Mallow asked, eyes widening.
“We’ll tell you all about it,” Zee said. “But first, we have to catch that train.”
He pointed to the freighter in the station.
Violet scowled. “Does it have to be that train? We’ve had a hell of a long night, Zee. We only got here about an hour before you.”
“Afraid so,” Zee said. “That’ll be the last freighter running until tonight. During the day they run passenger trains—no chance of us stowing away on one of those.”
“And no chance of us hanging around here until nightfall undiscovered,” Tansy concluded.
“Exactly. But once we’re on the train, we can rest up all the way to Northrock. It’s a full day’s ride. Where are the horses?”
The Good Luck Girls Page 24