Firewalker (17 page)

“Good,” Rowan said after half an hour of sparring. “Una. Step forward.”

Una faced Rowan with trepidation. “Not the face, okay? I've never done this before and you are scary good,” she said.

“I've had a lot of practice,” Rowan replied, smiling to put her at ease. “But we're not going to spar. The best strategy for your body type is to get in quick, go for an eye gouge or break a finger, and get out.”

“I can do that,” Una said easily.

“I know. You've got grit,” Rowan replied. He looked at Breakfast and Juliet, both of whom had turned a little green at the mention of gouged-out eyes. “Everyone will have their own strategy. Tristan is a big guy, bigger than most, so a standup style is to his advantage. Una is little—but not squeamish. There's an ambush style my people use that I'll teach her.” To illustrate what he meant, Rowan used Lily to pass on an image of a ninja-like fighter to everyone. They all saw a small, nimble person climb up someone's back to slit his throat and then jump down and crouch low to spin across the floor, slicing the Achilles tendons of other enemies. “You strike first, strike to disable or maim, and then clear out. It's not pretty, but it is very effective.”

“Got it,” Una said, already crouching low like the fighter in Rowan's image.

They didn't exchange punches as Tristan and Rowan had—they grappled. Una's new style of fighting relied on her getting in close and zeroing in on fragile little bones or crucial nerves. Rowan taught her how to get right up against her opponents and knock them off balance while she took a joint and broke it, or shot in like a surgeon to skewer a vital artery. By the end of Una's grappling session, both Juliet and Breakfast looked like they were going to upchuck from all the gruesome images Rowan had conveyed to them.

“My girlfriend's an assassin,” Breakfast said disbelievingly when Una brushed the sand off her clothes and sat down next to him. She kissed him loudly on the cheek. “I am so doomed,” he said, grinning.

Juliet looked seasick. “I don't think I can do that,” she said.

“I don't expect you to,” Rowan replied, holding in a laugh. “For you and Breakfast, I'm going to focus more on self-defense, rather than attack. Which is incredibly useful for protecting Lily.” Rowan's tone turned deadly serious. “And that's what this is all about. Protecting your witch. Never forget that without you, she's nearly defenseless, although a powerful witch will always have a few last-ditch tricks up her sleeve. I'll teach you those later, Lily,” he said, tossing Lily a brief image of a witch throwing fireballs and forked tendrils of lightning from the palms of her hands. “But without a witch, a mechanic is as good as dead. Protecting your witch is more important than your individual life, because if she dies,
all
of her claimed are left without her strength. If you care about each other you must protect Lily first, and you must protect her to the last. Do you understand?”

They all nodded solemnly as the weight of this responsibility settled inside them.

“This is about that guy,” Tristan said, his voice low and rough. “The one that you chased last night. Who is he?”

Rowan started to answer, but Lily stopped him. “No, Rowan. Let me.” She took a deep breath and shared a memory of Carrick from the oubliette. For half a second she let all of them feel what she had felt when he touched her willstones, and then she cut off the sensation before any of them could scream.

“Son of a bitch!” Tristan spat.

“He should be torn apart,” Una growled.

“Who is he?” Breakfast asked, his face stony.

“My half brother, Carrick,” Rowan answered, looking down at the sand. “All I know of him is that he was raised by a vile man. Carrick knows just about everything there is to know about torture. And he's here for Lily.” Rowan looked Tristan in the eye. “Can I count on you? Can I count on you to never leave her?”

Tristan nodded. Rowan looked at each of them in turn, waiting until they all nodded in silent agreement.

“Wait. There's something else you need to know. Carrick has a witch fueling him,” Lily said. She turned to Rowan. “You know her better than I do.”

“I'll explain through you,” Rowan said quietly.

Rowan allowed everyone to view a few of his memories of Lillian. He showed them how she started out idealistic and progressive, then how she disappeared for three weeks and came back terribly sick and inexplicably changed. Finally, he showed how she started hunting scientists with a maniacal single-mindedness. He let them all see one moment of his father's body, dropping through the trapdoor on the gallows while Lillian stood no more than two steps away, before he abruptly ended the flow of images.

“We're fighting
you
?” Una asked disbelievingly.

“A version of me,” Lily answered. “You need to understand that no matter how strong I may seem to you, our enemy is just as strong and she's had years more practice. She's mastered things that I'm still struggling to understand. She brought me to her world—something that had never been done before—and now she's sent Carrick here to bring me back to her.”

“Why?” Tristan asked. “Why does she want you?”

“She wants Lily to replace her as the leader because she's sick. From the way she looked in Rowan's last memory, I'd say she was dying,” Juliet answered. Everyone turned to her, surprised that she could guess this. Juliet smiled warmly at Lily. “
You
wouldn't trust anyone but yourself to rule the world. So why would she?”

Lily stared at her sister, hurt.

Am I really like that, Juliet?

You tend to think you know better than everyone else, Lily. Please don't think I'm judging you. I know it's just the way you are.

“Come on,” Rowan said, his eyes on Lily's troubled face. “It's late and you all have to be alert tomorrow.”

He started shoveling sand onto the last embers of the fire.

Breakfast groaned as he hauled himself up to help. “I haven't done any of my homework. Maybe I'll skip school tomorrow.”

“No,” Rowan said firmly. “I need all of you to stay with Lily.”

“Give me your homework, Breakfast. I'll do it for you,” Tristan offered as they headed up the beach.

“Thanks, but I don't think that'd do me any good,” Breakfast said despondently. “My teachers would know I cheated because of all the right answers.”

As they walked back to Lily's house, she could hear Tristan and Rowan speaking quietly to each other at the back of the group.

“In that last memory—that was your father?” Tristan asked.

There was a long pause. “Yeah,” Rowan replied.

“I was there. I saw my face in the crowd,” Tristan said, shaken.

Rowan laughed under his breath. “You were there for me. In my world, you and I have been stone kin since we were kids. You're my best friend, Tristan.”

“No, seriously,” Tristan said disbelievingly.

“We fight all the time,” Rowan said.

“Constantly,” Lily chimed in, looking at them over her shoulder. “When I first got to Rowan's world, you two bickered for hours.”

“Really?” Tristan said, cracking a smile. “About what?”

Rowan shrugged, like the answer was obvious. “What we always fight about. Her.”

“Are we in your world?” Una asked. “Breakfast and me?”

“I don't know,” Rowan answered. “But anything's possible.”

 

CHAPTER

7

Carrick got off the train they called the T. He was so used to trains running only underground that it unnerved him when, occasionally, a train would pop up from the safety of the tunnel system. Luckily, his stop was underground. Carrick made his way up the short staircase to the center of this tiny city of Boston. It was so easy to move around this world. No walls, no citizen checks, no Woven. Anyone could get on a train and go anywhere, even clear across the continent, at any time of the day or night. All one needed was money, which was unbelievably easy to steal here.

Without wards protecting the buildings, Carrick could walk up to nearly any property and let himself in without the tenants ever suspecting his presence. The “alarm systems” people used here were a joke. All Carrick had to do was cast a glamour over himself to blend seamlessly with the shadows, wait a while for a tenant to come home, and watch that tenant type in the entry code on the keypad. The same method applied to those bank machines. Watch a mark's fingers type, pickpocket his card, and off you went with his money. Even more ridiculous were the locks and keys they used on their apartment doors. A nudge from any willstone could knock the inner tumblers into place, opening the door in a moment.

Everyone here was so rich and stupid. This world was one big purse waiting to be robbed. Thieving had never been to Carrick's taste, but there was something gratifying about how naive the people were in this world. It had made the few days he'd spent here remarkably easy. Carrick had only had to trouble Lillian once, asking for power. And that was to escape Rowan.

His little brother was faster and stronger. He had years of experience being a mechanic on his side. Carrick escaped only because he'd led Rowan into a populated area. Carrick didn't care if he injured or killed innocent bystanders as he ran through traffic, but Rowan did. Next time he wasn't so sure Rowan would let him go, not even to save innocents. While Carrick learned more about his new skills as a mechanic he'd have to try a different tactic. Facing Rowan head-on would be suicide right now, especially since Rowan was swelling Lily's ranks with native recruits. Her growing circle of mechanics had some real talent among them, but Lily was vulnerable in other ways. People who cared about other people always were.

It wasn't a long walk from the station to Carrick's destination. Lillian had found where Carrick's target lived in this world. Carrick sometimes forgot James existed because he had so little to do with Lillian's life, although their estranged relationship was a constant source of gossip-fodder among the bored and vapid city folk back in his world. Apparently, this version of James had little to do with Lily's life as well.

Carrick let himself into the apartment building, nodded at the sorry excuse for a guard at the front desk, and took the elevator up to the correct floor. He paused at the door, savoring these last few seconds of knowing something that someone else didn't.

Carrick knew with utter certainty that the man in this apartment would be in agony in a few moments. The man, on the other hand, knew with utter certainty that he would be safe for the rest of the night. For just this one moment they were both right. Two possible universes coexisted inside one.

Carrick slid the bolt on the door aside with the faintest nudge from his willstone and let himself in. With that one choice, the two universes collapsed into one. The one that was filled with agony.

*   *   *

My father!

“Lily? What happened?” Rowan propped himself up on an elbow, his willstone flaring with magelight. Lily's panicked face looked like a pale mask in the otherworldly glow. Rowan got up from his mattress on the floor and sat on the edge of her bed.

“He's in pain. My father's in pain,” she said through panting breaths.

“Nightmare?” Rowan asked.

“No.” Her brow wrinkled with doubt. “Maybe. I don't know.”

“Check. Reach out to your father,” Rowan urged.

Lily tried, but all she felt was numb darkness. “He's there, but out. Completely unconscious.”

“Deep sleep?”

She looked at the clock. It wasn't even four a.m. yet. “That would make sense.”

“It could have been
his
nightmare then,” Rowan said comfortingly. “Deep sleep usually follows vivid dreams. If you don't wake up, that is.”

Lily flopped back onto her pillows and sighed. “That's annoying.” She reached up and touched the bare skin at the base of Rowan's throat, circling her finger slowly around his willstone. “I don't mind sharing your bad dreams, but my dad's? I don't want to accidentally stumble into any of his dreams—bad or good.” A disturbing thought occurred to her. “Especially not a
really
good one. Ew.”

“Block him out.”

“Yeah. Maybe I'd better.”

Rowan smiled down at her, and a thought occurred to him. “I don't have as many nightmares in this world.”

“Because your subconscious knows there are no Woven here.”

“Must be it,” he agreed.

Lily pulled on Rowan's arms. “Lie down with me.”

A pained look crossed his face. “You should sleep.”

“Can't. I'm wide awake,” she whispered, easing Rowan down on top of her.

He gave in with a lost expression, allowing himself to be pulled under the covers. The silence in the room filled up with the tense sound of their half-held breaths and the low, almost imperceptible hum of their shaking. Rowan pushed her nightshirt up over her head and laid his cool chest on her warm one. He slid a knee between her thighs, rocking his hips against her as he kissed her. Lily opened herself up and let Rowan feel what she felt.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he whispered, suddenly turning his head aside, his eyes squeezed shut.

“Why?” Lily asked, smiling patiently up at him. “And this time, tell me the real reason.”

He looked young and scared. Lily felt that huge gray emotion sweep through him again. “Because I can't stay in this world,” he answered. “And I don't think I'd be strong enough to ever leave if I make love to you.”

Lily shook her head, his words not sinking in. She sat up and fixed her nightshirt, pushing him back so she could see him clearly. “What are you talking about?”

“We left at the start of a
war
,” he said, his voice wavering. “My friends, my people—they're fighting and dying. No matter how much I love you right now I know that if I stay here for you, I'll start to hate you. I'll hate you because I'll hate myself for not going back.”