After (49 page)

As each trio mounted their carriage, the man locking the virgin and the crone inside the windowless cab before taking the reins, they made their way to the end of the drive, where a quartet of guards swung open the high iron gate. Four carriages rolled over the gravel drive, and turned their teams toward town. But the first rig seemed to have a loose wheel, and the three behind were obliged to halt behind it. One by one the men hopped down and came to the aid of the man with the first carriage, taking turns inspecting the faulty wheel.

High and long, a whistle sounded from inside the gate. On cue, the four men by the faulty wheel drew their pistols and shot their darts into the four men guarding the gate. The guards had time to draw their weapons, but were already sagging toward the ground, vision and muscle control gone, before a shot could be fired.

Locked inside the carriage, Andrea waited in the dark, heard the whistle, listened to the scuffle of boots on gravel. Then the heavy thrum of hoof-beats. Images of The Guard descending on them gnawed at her courage. Her caught breath swelled in her chest, burning her lungs, at the sound of a key scratching at the lock in the carriage door. Light slashed at her eyes. Squinting, she let the man with gray eyes lift her down.

Char hopped down behind her.

Hopeful chaos. Resistance women galloping through the gates, girls in black shifts clinging to their waists. Men and red-cloaked women unharnessing the steeds from the carriages. Two red-cloaked women holding the silver-haired hostage, limp, between them.

“Andrea!” A huge, black-muzzled, roan stallion trotted forward, and Nix said, “Get that cloak off.” Then she bent from her mount and offered her arm. “You ride forward.”

Nix hoisted Andrea to the front of the saddle. Maggie, the smallest of the escapees, was wedged between them. “Got your gun where you can reach it?”

“Yes.”

Nix held their restive steed back as the others, mounted up, charged off the road and across the adjacent field, toward the woods. When they'd gained a lead of a few hundred yards, Nix gave a kick, and the horse surged forward.

“Andrea. Take the reigns.”

Her fear, her hope, the weight of the smooth leather in her hands, the power of the animal bearing them forward gave Andrea a sense of life she'd almost forgotten.

Feeling their stallion respond to her heel, to the touch of the reigns primed her with a feeling of strength. Power.

“Keep him back a bit. Let the others get ahead. That's it. When it's time, he'll close the gap,” Nix coached as they bounded through a blur of high, yellow grass.

A sound. And echo of the pounding of their own mount's hooves.

“Don't look back,” Nix ordered. “Keep your eyes on our group. On the terrain.”

Andrea fought her urge to spur the horse on, to flee at top speed the thunder chasing them down, closing in on them.

“When I say so, let him fly. Fast as he can. And no matter what, don't slow down.

Don't look back. Promise me.”

Andrea nodded her head.

“Okay. Now. Fly home!”

Andrea let out the reins. She didn't even have to kick. Their stallion flew into the wind, closing in on the other horses and riders, pulling away from the thunder behind them.

“Fly home!” Nix cried. “Say it with me. Fly home!”

“Fly home! Fly home! Fly home!” they chanted together, the three of them.

There was a gasp, little Maggie sucking in her breath, then a pitch, a shift in the haunches of their steed. Then they were flying faster, faster, as if the big roan's hooves didn't even touch the earth, faster, faster, and there were only two voices, “Fly home! Fly home! Fly home!”

* * * *

Her body slammed down on rocks and hard earth. Bruised bones. Cut skin. Not the graceful landing she'd hoped for.

Nix lay still in the tall grass. They'd seen her fall. The first would come right to her.

Closer. Closer. Hooves drumming the hard ground, their beats thrumming through her body. Closer. Closer. Then slower. Black hooves, white fetlocks. Stirrups and boots. One of those boots kicked her rather gently in the thigh. She groaned. He laughed.

“Heh. Not one of them fresh young virgins. All the better for me. No penalty for tapping into the rebel well.”

Hands slithered over her pockets, and for good measure, over her breasts and crotch, just in case she had weapons stashed in those hills and valleys. Finding her unarmed, helpless, he laughed again, scooped her up, and threw her over his saddle.

By the time he'd mounted, his comrades were catching up.

“What're you slowing down for?” Nix's captor hollered, “This one isn't what we're after. Get after them girls!”

Three horsemen went galloping past, and the guard who'd caught her slapped her ass, laughed and said, “I'm going to have a real good time, getting you to tell me where your friends are taking those girls.”

It must have been a surprise, and a cruel disappointment when, as he brought his horse around and dug his heels in to drive it toward town, Nix snatched his gun from his holster, flicked back the safety, touched the muzzle to the man's chest, and pulled the trigger.

She was disappointed, too. The dying man had clutched her hair, and dragged her with him, back to the rough, hard ground. By the time she got to her feet, the three who'd charged on for the girls and their rescuers had been brought around by the sound of gunfire, and she could see them, hear their voices, even if she couldn't glean the words. Probably deciding: punish her, or keep on after the others, getting further off, deeper in the woods with each second, harder and harder to catch. She was a sure thing.

And from behind, more guards on horseback. Hiding the gun, she waited.

Hooves scuffled to a halt. Boots hit the earth. And as two others galloped by, intent, still, on the girls in the woods, her guard tore her shirt from her shoulders. Then he fired. Into the air. Thundering hoof-beats fell silent.

He yelled, “Subvert!”

From ahead and behind, all five guards converged as she spun, finger on the trigger. He caught her wrist, wrenched the gun from her hand, threw it to the ground behind him. Smiled.

Artel.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Motherfucking bastard. He'd followed her. Tracked her to the resistance base.

Artel laughed. The way he'd laughed with Dorset.

“I guess your instincts were right. Not trusting me.”

All of those girls. And her comrades. She'd doomed them all.

“No,” he teased, “don't do that. Get all crushed. It takes all the pleasure out of this, if you go all soft on me. I want you hard. Full of hate. Like that first day, when I picked you up off my bathroom floor.”

The five guards were off their horses, now, circling her like wolves around wounded prey.

“I know this one,” Artel told them. “Been tracking this little bitch for days, from four towns over.”

“Guess we can use our discretion, working out how to get it out of her, where the others have gone,” one of the guards joked with Artel.

“We don't need her, for that. I know where the base is.”

“What? You just let them pull that job today?”

“Good training, if you ask me. You see how fucking sloppy things are getting?

Don't worry. We'll have those girls safely tucked into bed before night falls,” Artel growled, watching Nix's eyes. Then, under his breath, just to her, “There it is. That murderous hate. Much better.” To the others he said, “No reason we can't enjoy ourselves a bit, before we get back to business, eh?”

He pulled his pistol from its holster, racked the slide, and touched the muzzle to her lips.

The sadist.

“It's been a few days, hasn't it? I'll let you practice on this, so you can get the kinks out.”

Grabbing a fistful of her hair, he worked the barrel between her lips, between her teeth, and the cold, hard barrel slid over her tongue, smooth and tasting of metal. She'd never been scared they'd kill her. Women were so, so rare, it was hard for them, destroying what could be fucked. Artel, though. He really might. Even through the choking, chilling terror, she willed him to pull the trigger. Fucking her mouth with the gun, Artel slid the smooth, metal barrel forward and back over her tongue, between her lips.

“That's enough practice.”

Strange. He wasn't smiling. Or hard. His grey eyes locked on hers.

“Are you ready for the real thing?”

He pulled the gun from between her lips, and shoved her to the ground, facedown in the tall grass.

Shot after shot after shot.

Nix crawled through the grass, looking, feeling for the gun he had pried from her hand and tossed away. When her fingers brushed over a cool, squared cylinder, she snatched the pistol, rolled onto her side and sought a target. Through the screen of swaying yellow blades she took aim and caught one in the forehead. The next was moving around too much. She aimed for his chest. He went down a little soon. Maybe Artel had gotten him first. Now the only man still standing was Artel. When she pointed her gun at him, he lowered his firearm, and waited.

She scanned the horizon, three-sixty. No sign of anyone coming.

“If you're not going to shoot me, we should go,” he said.

He'd forced his gun into her mouth. Tricked them. Killed them. Tracked her.

Saved her. Discovered the others. Helped them.

The urge, the want was still there. Squeeze the trigger. Be sure he couldn't take her in. Expose the others.

He offered his hand.

When she tried to stand, pain tore through her knee, so she took his arm, let him hoist her to her feet.

“Are you alright?” he asked. Then, when she didn't answer, he asked, “Can you ride?”

Her right leg wouldn't take her weight.

“Yeah. But I can't walk.”

The horses, startled by the gunfire, had shied off, but hadn't gone far. Artel holstered his gun and started toward the sturdiest-looking, rather than the nearest steed. She let him help her into the saddle, then watched Artel pick his mount and canter toward her.

“You going to them? Back to the base?” he asked her.

“You really know where it is?”

“The low gray building two miles southwest of town. You went in by the cellar door on the east side of the structure.”

How could she have gotten so sloppy? If his intentions had been different, the girls would be going through another auction tomorrow, and the others would be getting branded, and worse, and it would have been her fault.

“I can't go there. I'm too much of a liability, like this. They'll have it hard enough without having to take care of me if something goes down.”

“I know a place, maybe seven miles off. I think we'd be safe there.”

“Another picturesque farm?”

“No. More of a haunted house. A wreck of a hotel just off the old highway. That, plus a gas station, a restaurant and a market were probably a pit stop between towns, once. But from the look of things, it was a ghost town long before the dying.”

Still no sign of movement from the direction of the town and the orphanage. But time was short. She could worry about what he was up to, what he wanted, later.

She said, “If we lead the rest of the horses, we can create a false trail. Get whoever comes next off their scent. Or at least split up the search.”

Leading the five riderless horses, they delved into the woods, then cut east.

Every shift of her mount beneath her sent a surge of burning pain through her knee.

When she put any weight into the stirrup, it felt like something was sawing through her tendons. Twice, her vision had blanked, and she'd almost lost consciousness. When her horse halted, it took her a moment to realize Artel had the reins.

“You can't ride like that. You're going to fall off, and cripple the rest of you. If you don't crack your skull.”

He dropped down from his black beauty and pulled a length of rope from the saddlebag and looped it through bridle after bridle, until the horses were linked in a single, long chain, the gleaming black at the lead.

Artel came close. Gently slipped the stirrup from her useless foot. Holding her gaze he planted his own foot in her stirrup.

Did he know that look? That particular stiffening of the body that meant resignation? It felt like this. Giving in to them, when there was no choice.

He swung up behind her.

“Okay?” he asked.

All along her back she could feel him. In her gut, that familiar knot, pulling at her insides. Making her nauseous.

“Okay.”

Artel guided their mount alongside the black mare, leaned out and got hold of her reins.

“Just to keep you from falling,” he said, then hooked his forearm around her middle. “Alright?”

So he wouldn't hear her voice hitch, she just nodded.

She felt the flex of his body against hers as he gave the horse a kick. She could hear his breathing, feel it in her hair. Feel the flex and sway of his body against hers as he kept them balanced. But, even at a gallop, the pain was less, now that she wasn't using her injured leg to sit her mount. She held her hurt arm against her belly, reluctantly letting it rest atop Artel's forearm, and easily managed the reigns with her good arm while he kept control of the other horses. They traveled until there was only the dim, flat blue of twilight illuminating their surroundings. When they'd stripped the horses of bits and saddles and set them loose, she made her familiar bargain with herself and let Artel carry her the final few hundred yards through the wilderness that had crept from the woods, inch by inch, month by month, year after year, finally swallowing up the four buildings at the edge of the narrow highway where, long ago, before the silent war had stopped the machines and killed the people, men and women and families had driven past in fuel-powered cars, or stopped along their way to somewhere, and bought a tank of gas, or stayed for half an hour to eat a hot meal.

Families. It was almost a lost word.

“It can be locked from the inside,” Artel told her as he swung her near so she could lift the rusty iron latch, then carried her over the threshold and set her down at the bottom of a wide staircase, just visible in the last faint bit of fading light.