Firewalker (30 page)

“So this should really scare the hell out of them, shouldn't it?” Lily said, hoping she sounded more sure than she felt.

Mary looked uncertain, but nodded her assent anyway. “If the guards don't go for it, you all scramble,” she told her people.

Lily turned away and shut her eyes, concentrating on gathering energy from the torch. She was so depleted she didn't know if she'd be able to transmute the heat. Luckily glamours required little energy, or Lily knew she wouldn't be able to do this at all. She concentrated on making each individual in the group look like a different kind of Woven. Her imagination failed her, so she delved into her nightmares instead. They never seemed to run out of strange concoctions of tentacles and pincers, armor and scales.

Lily heard a gasp of surprise coming from Mary and knew that her trick was working. At least for now. When Lily opened her eyes she had to look away. Staring at her nightmares-made-real was too unsettling.

“We've got to really sell this, or it won't work,” Breakfast said, turning to Riley.

Riley looked down at the younger kids and gave them an order. “You three pretend you're monkey Woven. I want you to make a lot of noise.” The kids were silent and staring, too shaken from the reality of Lily's glamour to move. “Snap out of it!” Riley commanded. “Keep it together, you lot, or we're sunk.”

Lily felt a wave of nausea. “I can't hold this forever,” she told them.

“We're going,” Tristan said.

“Everybody start making noises,” Una said encouragingly, and then started moaning like a zombie. The kids followed her cue and started hooting like monkeys.

Rowan. It's a glamour. We're trying to scare off the guards.

I'll try to keep the captured boys from running, but I don't know if I can.

Lily stayed next to the torch while the rest of them started running down the tunnel, clanging on pipes as they went and shrieking at the top of their lungs. She heard a huge commotion of screams and scrambling footfalls. Tristan's mind brushed up against hers.

It's working! They're running away! Wait …

Lily heard gunshots.

“No!” she shouted.

She ran down the tunnel, abandoning the torch. When she rounded the bend, she saw the captured tunnel boys fleeing in every direction. Most of the guards had taken off in the opposite direction down the tracks, but a few had remained and they were firing wildly at what they believed to be Woven.

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 Rowan 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.