Lily dropped the glamour and the gunfire ceased. Shocked faces peered back at her in the dark.
“Get behind me,” she told the children. The guards raised their weapons again and Lily raised her hand. Rowan slid into her head eagerly.
Gift me, Lily.
An earsplitting crack and a blinding flash of light erupted toward her. Lily inhaled the hot rush of power and an unnatural silence bubbled up around the vacuum of absorbed heat, motion, and light. Bullets halted in their progress, their momentum stolen, and then dropped from the air with the sound of scattering stones. A witch wind howled down the tunnel, knocking everyone toward Lily in a wave.
“Witch!” a guard screamed.
Lily unlocked Rowan’s willstone and gifted it with a huge burst of energy. They both embraced the sensation with joy and awe. Lily was inside Rowan and their shared body became a blur of motion and strength as they flowed toward their enemies. Guards fell around them, but Lily felt held back. She wanted them dead at her feet, but Rowan was stopping her.
We must not kill, Lily.
Lily ached to take him over completely, to possess him and wear his body around hers. She would kill all the guards for daring to open fire on her mechanics. She would punish them for taking Rowan away from her, for striking him, for not getting down on their knees and begging her for their lives.
Let me keep myself, Lily. Please don’t do this.
Lily pulled back and released Rowan. Fatigue fell on her instantly and she stumbled under its weight. The iron taste of bloodlust was in her mouth.
“Catch her!” Una ordered, and Lily felt something break her fall.
“Got her,” Pip replied in a squeaky voice. She’d fallen on top of him and nearly squished him. “You alright, Lady Witch?” he asked.
“My head,” Lily moaned.
She rolled off Pip and propped herself up on her hands and knees, still shaken by the depth of the rage she’d felt along with the Gift. Lily looked around blearily. She saw Tristan and Rowan bending down and pressing their fingertips to each of the fallen guards’ necks.
“They’re all alive,” Breakfast told Riley.
Mary let out a sigh. “Any of your people hurt?” she asked.
“No,” Breakfast replied. “Yours?”
“Two got hit with bullets, but not fatally,” she said, waving it off. “A few more got banged up in the fight.” Mary looked down at Lily. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Lily shook her head and used Pip as a prop to haul herself up to her feet. “Will there be more guards?” she asked, staggering where she stood.
“Yes,” Rowan answered, stepping forward to hold Lily up against his side. He turned to Riley. “We need to get on a train and get out of here. Fast.”
Riley looked at Lily uncertainly. “Are you sure—” he began, but Rowan cut him off.
“In about half an hour every guard in Providence is going to be looking for a witch and her mechanics,” he said with certainty. “We have to get out of the city now.”
“Show them the way to the southbound train,” Mary told Riley. She gave Lily a begrudging smile. “And good luck,” she said as she left them to go gather up her wounded people.
“She needs salt,” Rowan told Riley.
Riley nodded and turned to a small girl. She took off like a shot. Riley smiled at Breakfast. “She’s my fastest,” he said.
Riley led Lily and her coven down the branching subway tunnels. Lily limped along, propped up between Rowan and Tristan, but she refused to let them carry her the whole way.
Lily, you’re being impossible.
I know, Tristan. But you and Rowan are tired, too. I can make it.
They went deeper into the subway line, and the walls shrank around them.
“We can’t stay on these tracks,” Una said, looking askance at the close walls. They could hear trains on other tracks now, rumbling down other tunnels, and there was no place for them to duck into if a train came.
“Don’t worry. I know the train schedule better ’en my own mum’s birthday,” Riley said confidently, and then continued on his way.
Rowan picked up Lily and followed. She was going to complain, but realized that would be ridiculous. She couldn’t stand if she tried.
Rowan? What was all that about me blowing up?
It’s not going to happen. You’re not dangerously overheated yet. Don’t worry.
Something about the way Rowan phrased that didn’t put her at ease.
“I’ll take her if you get tired,” Tristan offered. Rowan nodded, but Lily could tell by the way his arms tightened around her that there was no way he was going to pass her off to Tristan.
Rowan carried her up the rungs of a metal ladder to another one of the smaller service tunnels above the track, and Lily could tell they were almost there. Every step brought them closer to the sound of people, milling around nearby platforms. Lily could even hear music being played, probably by street musicians hoping for tips. It wasn’t all that different from the T in her Boston. She heard the sound of a train squealing on the tracks as it slowed and went around a long bend. Beneath them, a hole had been dug right through the concrete.
The runner had not caught up with them. Lily had no salt, and she felt too weak to even consider the acrobatics it would take to jump that train. She couldn’t fuel her mechanics to make up for her weakness, either—that would require even more salt that her system didn’t have.
“We can’t go,” Rowan said, shouting over the sound of the train speeding under them.
“This is the last train. It’s your only chance for the rest of the night,” Riley said.
“Can’t we wait until tomorrow?” Breakfast asked.
Riley shrugged. “We’re out of my gang’s territory. I can’t promise you’ll be safe.”
Lily could sense her mechanics communicating rapidly in mindspeak, but they didn’t want her to hear what they were discussing. A decision was made.
“How do we jump this train?” Una asked Riley, her tone determined.
“Drop through this hole while it slows to go ’round the bend, and you should be able to keep your footing,” Riley answered. “Try not to make too much noise when you land or they’ll set the conductor on you. Hurry, or you’re going to run out of cars.”
Breakfast clasped hands with Riley, and then kissed Una quickly before saying, “Here goes,” and disappearing down the hole. Una went next, silent and graceful as a cat, and then Tristan.
Rowan and Lily went last. They held hands going through the hole and landed at the same time, but as soon as Lily’s feet touched down her wobbly legs gave out. She lost Rowan’s hand and rolled away from him with a desperate cry.
Rowan scrambled on his knees after her, his hands reaching out to grab hers as she grasped frantically for anything. Her legs swung off the side of the car, caught in the draft, and she slid over the edge.
Her free fall stopped short with a joint-popping jerk. Rowan had managed to get a hold of her wrist, and she dangled painfully off the side of the train from her right arm. The train picked up speed as it cleared the bend, and Rowan strained with all his might just to hold on to Lily while the drag of the wind pulled on her hanging body. Lily heard Tristan shout and then she saw his face as he leaned over the side next to Rowan.
“Give me your hand,” Tristan pleaded as he reached frantically for her.
Lily swung her body from her burning shoulder, biting her lip to keep herself from screaming. On the third try she managed to haul herself up enough to reach Tristan’s outstretched hand.
Rowan and Tristan pulled her up on top of the train, both of them holding her in a tight huddle. Una and Breakfast had started running down the length of the train when they saw Lily fall and finally reached them, their faces panicked.
“Her shoulder’s dislocated,” Rowan snarled over the sound of the wind. “I should have insisted we wait until she was strong enough.”
“We had no choice,” Una replied, trying to calm R
owan down. “Can’t we heal her?”
“Without a fire? Not completely,” Rowan said. “We’ll either have to break into one of the private cars to do it, or wait until the train stops.”
“I’ll make it,” Lily said, gritting her teeth. She felt her mechanics exchange another rapid conversation in mindspeak. Being left out, coupled with the pain of her shoulder and her still aching head, annoyed her. “It’s too risky,” she snapped. “We’re lucky there isn’t a conductor up here as it is. We’ll have to wait until the train stops.”
Rowan tilted Lily’s face up to his. “I still have to put it back,” he said grimly. “Your shoulder. We can’t leave it dislocated all night or it will set like that.”
Lily swallowed hard and met his eyes. “Just do it.”
Without another word, Rowan pushed Lily onto her back and pressed his knee into her sternum. With both hands he took her injured arm and held it in front of her, bent at the elbow. He then pushed it down in an L shape next to her head. Lily kept her lips pressed together and screamed behind her teeth while Rowan pulled her arm swiftly up alongside her ear. She heard a grinding pop, and the pain was so intense she felt nauseous with it.
Rowan eased off her chest and she saw his willstone flare with light. The pain slackened, and Lily rolled onto her uninjured side, moaning quietly to herself through tight breaths. She saw Tristan’s stone glow, and the pain lessened some more. She heard Rowan giving her mechanics instructions in mindspeak.
Encourage the fluid to circulate. Keep the blood moving to help heal the site of injury. Repress the pain signals from the nerves. Easy. We don’t want her to go numb, we just want to block the pain. Use your own stores of energy and take nothing from our witch. It will make you tired, but not as tired as she is.
Lily took a deep breath and sighed it out, tears tracing a hot path into her hairline.
“Damn,” she heard Una murmur. “Are you okay?”
Lily laughed unevenly, catching her breath. Her shoulder was still a mess, but at least she couldn’t feel it anymore. “I’ve been through worse.”
CHAPTER
11
Carrick followed their trail through the woods. At one of their camps he found blood in the snow. He tasted it just to make sure, and spit it out when he confirmed it was Woven’s blood. They’d made good time on their journey. His little brother had pushed the pace, almost as if he knew they were being followed. Maybe Rowan did know, somehow. As Carrick came upon the end of the forest and the edge of Providence’s Killing Fields he imagined his brother running in front of him. Hounded.
Carrick licked his lips and looked out across the Killing Fields of Providence, thinking of the glory days when the Killing Fields had earned their name. Every one of the Thirteen Cities was surrounded by a huge meadow where many had died. Witches loved nothing more than fighting a bloody battle right in front of their cities. In the Age of Strife, when witches regularly sent out their armies to slaughter each other, the Killing Fields were soaked with so much blood that the buildup of salt from that blood left the soil sterile for decades. Even now, trees would not grow.
Rowan’s trail led Carrick to an exhumed metal plate at the edge of the forest. His little brother had gone into the train tunnels for shelter. Carrick knew that if he followed, the tons of earth might cut him off from his witch, giving his quarry the advantage.
Lillian. I have to go underground to continue following Lily and her coven.
Go, Carrick. Stay close to them, but don’t be discovered.
As you wish, My Lady.
* * *
Lily slept very little that night. Her mechanics tried to help, but they had to use their own faltering stores of energy to do it. Until she was healed and the injury dealt with, her mechanics could only mask her pain—and they couldn’t keep that up for long. They were all tired, cold, and hungry.
After only an hour Lily demanded that they stop, and she gutted it out alone for the rest of the night. Every bump on the tracks brought pain, jarring her out of whatever doze she managed to fall into and the night turned into one long half sleep that was more torturous than it would have been if she’d simply stayed awake. Her mechanics tried to give her comfort by smoothing her hair and holding her hand, but as Lily had already learned, pain builds a barrier between the hurt and the whole. It leaves the sufferer isolated, with nothing but an ocean of time to cross.
Lily could feel herself rising up on her raft, and she could hear Lillian calling to her from the Mist. Lily didn’t want to go back to the barn. She fought it, but Lillian was better at directing the currents in the spirit world, and like it or not Lily felt her raft being drawn into Lillian’s memory.
… I stay in a huddle all night. I back myself into a corner, knees drawn to my chest, watching the lambs watch me. They keep their distance—too beaten down to approach me. Or maybe I just make them sad. Seeing me, they’re probably all reminded of their own first night in the barn.
I hear the sounds of the Woven outside. The chittering noises they make in the dark. My skin crawls. Dawn comes and light seeps through the cracks in the roof, illuminating shafts of dusty air. The feeble sun is not enough to warm anyone in this never-ending winter. I am so low on energy that even I’m shivering.
One of the lambs creeps forward—a little boy no older than seven or eight. He holds out the edge of his shawl, offering to share half. I know it’s awful of me, but before I accept I check him for bloody stumps.
“It’s okay,” the boy says, understanding my hesitation. “The doctor hasn’t caught me yet.”
I look down, ashamed of myself. The boy is sweet and I smile, gratefully accepting his company. “The doctor?” I ask.
“He takes our arms and legs in a way that doesn’t kill us,” he whispers. His eyes are blank with terror and he presses against me, trying to warm his emaciated body. “He’s the most scary of them all.”
“How often does he come?” I ask, my own fear feeding off his.
“Every day when the sun goes down,” he says with haunted reverence.
We spend the morning clinging to each other. We don’t talk. When a canteen of water is passed around at noon I refuse, allowing the boy to drink my share. He thinks I’m being kind, but really I’m only doing it to protect myself. I doubt anyone who gets put in the barn gets fed, but the less food or drink I allow into my body, the longer it will take for me to pass my willstones. The extra dose of water gives the boy a burst of energy—enough to speak anyway.
“Are you a witch?” he asks, half holding his breath in excitement.
I nod and mime swallowing my willstone. He smiles at me brightly, and then his face falls. “They took mine and smashed it. They smashed all our willstones to make us quiet.”
That’s why they’re all so docile. And why our captors had no qualms about throwing me in the barn with them, no matter how strong a witch I might be. If the lambs don’t have willstones, I can’t claim them and fill them with power so we can fight our way out. The boy nestled against me has talent, too. He senses I’m a witch and he feels the need to be close to me. He could have been a mechanic.
“You look like the Lady of Salem,” he whispers.
I smile at him, but I don’t answer. I don’t know if admitting it would get me killed faster or not.
“You still have your willstone,” he presses. “Could you help us?”
I look around at the squalor and despair surrounding me. There’s nothing to burn and no source of energy. “Right now I can’t even help myself,” I say. The boy goes quiet, his last ray of hope snuffed out.
I look at the lambs. There are well over fifty people here, crammed close to share their body heat. A dark thought occurs to me. They’re all dying anyway. I push the thought away, clinging to my humanity for as long as I can.
The day drags by, marked only by the change in position of the shafts of dusty light piercing through the darkness. As the light lengthens, the lambs grow restless. Panicky. The doctor is on his way.
At sunset, the doors burst open and the lambs start screaming. They push to the back, stepping over one another in a desperate bid to get away. I stand where I am, hiding the boy behind me. Let them try and take him away from me.
Armed men push into the room, laughing. Enjoying the chaos and fear of a riot. They avoid me, shouting for everyone to steer clear of me. I notice that they are guarding one lean shape in the middle of their group. His long, silky black hair is braided with vulture feathers.
“That’s him!” the boy squeals, hiding his face in my skirts. “That’s the doctor.”
I know him. The shape of his sensitive mouth, the way he walks, even the curve of his broad shoulders is as familiar to me as the moon in the sky because he gave these features to someone I love more than I love anything. I stagger forward, thinking that if I come closer to him his face will somehow change. That he won’t be who I know he is.
“River Fall!” I shout, hoping beyond hope that he doesn’t respond. But he turns to me. Tears burn my eyes and grip at my throat.
“Lillian,” he says. No emotion. There’s nothing inside of him. He comes toward me and his guards move swiftly to pin me down with their noose poles. I’m too stunned to fight. They capture me by the neck and push me against the wall, choking me. The boy lets go of my skirts and rushes forward, attacking my assailants with his little fists, and gets himself captured.
“No,” I beg. Not River. He’s the gentlest, kindest man I’d ever met. “It can’t be you.”
“Where is my son, Lillian?” he asks, his deep voice rumbling.
“I don’t—” I stop and reach out for Rowan. I can’t feel him at all in this world. There’s simply no vibration where his huge and powerful presence should be. “He’s dead, River.”
River’s eyes blaze and he comes toward me, snarling. “He’s alive! He’s alive and he will set all this right again,” River says. He makes a wide gesture with his arms, taking in not just the horror inside the barn, but the broken world outside the barn’s doors. “My son was taken by another ranch and they hold him hostage. I send them food”—he points at the lambs, spit flying from his mouth—“and they keep him alive. But he’ll be back. Rowan will be back and he’ll fix everything. My son is the most powerful mechanic ever. He’ll fix all of this.”
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