Dead of Winter (22 page)

“Evie, come on!” Jack called.

Some tiny, vanishing part of me needed to keep the peace with them. To not rock the boat. To fall in line with what the boys wanted and expected of me.

Then I remembered that the Empress of all Arcana wore a crown for a reason.

The red witch whispered,
Demeter withholds viciously—and gives lavishly. GIVE.

I spurred the mare, forcing my way past this crowd. They wailed when they believed that I couldn't—or wouldn't—help them. Some crawled after my horse. The sound reached a tumult.

I removed a glove. I rolled up my sleeve, uncovering my golden glyphs. The last time I'd pulled from my spore glyph, I'd only intended to make soldiers sleep.

Now I filled my hand with my most lethal poison. Tears spilling, I held up my flat palm and aimed it back.

Pursing my lips, I blew over my hand.

Blowing a kiss.

I turned away when the closest men's lids grew heavy. Staring straight ahead, silently crying, I rode on. Behind me, my poison spread outward like the wave of a detonation.

The din ebbed until I could hear bodies collapse. A last echo of their moans. A stray whimper here and there.

Then silence. In my wake, I'd left a mass of bodies. Power was my burden.

It weighed as much as a crown of stars.

When I reached the ridge, Jack's brows drew together; Aric's gleaming eyes narrowed. But I didn't care if they were angry.

Jack surprised me by saying, “Now that it's done, I'm glad. You cauterized a wound and saved countless more.”

I pulled my glove back on. “All right, let's hear it, Aric.”

“As the mortal said, it's done. Empress, you delivered many from a short, wretched fate.” His tone was full of pride. “Sometimes a reaper is welcome.”

Jack frowned at him, as if he couldn't reconcile this man with the indiscriminate murderer he imagined the knight to be.

Aric held his gaze. “Never deny the power of Death.”

“This doan feel right,” Jack said from ahead, his bow at the ready. He was taking point along a rutted track inside another a narrow canyon. Aric rode beside me.

Since the colony yesterday, I'd spoken little to either of them. Last night, we'd sheltered in an old gas station, and I'd passed out the second I put my head down.

Despite the fact that we'd been threading the needle through a cluster of cannibal mines.

Now the three of us surveyed our surroundings. Or tried to. After endless miles on the road, the fog had thickened until we had to slow our pace. Jack rode just a dozen or so feet ahead, but I could barely make him out.

“All right, Reaper, you sensing anything?” Jack waited for us to catch up, then fell in on my other side.

Aric cocked his helmeted head. “A threat around the next corner.”

“You want to backtrack, you?”

“Once you've seen me in a real combat, you'll know never to ask me that again.”

And the cutthroat competition continued!

“I said I'd sensed a threat, not an army,” Aric added, lowering his visor. “But if
you're
anxious . . .”

“Just try to keep up, you.”

As we made our way around the corner, I peered into the murk. Something large loomed ahead. Had a tanker toppled over?

Electric spotlights flooded on, spearing the fog, paining my eyes.

When my vision adjusted, I saw a bus parked across the road, sheet metal covering its sides. The words
HUMAN TOLL
were painted in red along the length of it. Atop it? A homemade gun turret. Someone had taken half of an old satellite dish, then carved out a slot for a really big gun.

Was that what Selena had called a fifty-cal? If one of those could eat into a mountain, it could cut us in two.

“Black hat chokepoint,” Jack muttered. “Fuckin' slavers.”

A trio of them manned the top, one behind the turret and two more popping up their heads from behind a shield of corrugated steel. I couldn't see the turret guy, but the others resembled each other with their freckled faces and long red hair sticking out from their caps. Had to be brothers.

The bus didn't stretch all the way to the sides of the ravine, so the slavers had strung rows of razor wire, coiled as high as my shoulders. Escape-proofing their chokepoint.

“Hands where we can see 'em, all of you!” Turret Guy called, swiveling that gun. “This here's a toll booth. You wanna live, then you'll do what we say.”

I raised my hands, frowning at Jack. When had he ridden so close to the bus?

Aric raised his hands as well. “We want no trouble.” He sounded like he was trying not to laugh.

The slavers' attention was focused on him, a stranger dressed in full armor. “Where'd you get that suit?” Turret Guy asked. “Raid a museum?” He peeked over the satellite dish for a better look, revealing his lengthy beard and caterpillar eyebrows.

In a resonant voice, Aric explained, “A death deity sent me a vision, directing me to an ossuary, a bone crypt.” Was he stalling for Jack? To
do what? “I found this armor on the body of a notorious warrior, the design ages ahead of its time, with the metal already steeped in death. A good sign for one like me.”

Turret Guy shared a look with his companions. “ 'Nother one round the bend. Your horse sick or something?”

Now might be a good time to
invoke
the red witch. Would the men notice if I pierced my raised hands for blood?

But seeding vines would take too long—

One of those lights shone on me, glaring so brightly I could feel its heat from here.

“You, the boy in the back! Take off your hood.”

I shielded my eyes.
What's happening, Aric?
Jack looked like a shadow figure.

—Your mortal's about to attack. Show them something distracting.—

I reached for my hood, easing it back, inch by inch, as they stared rapt.

Turret Guy sucked in a breath. “Christ on a cracker! A girl! Dibs on seconds!”

One of the redheads said, “A
teen
. Fine as the night is long. Call up to the house.” Was the other one fumbling for a radio?

In the next instant, Jack was standing on his saddle, bow in hand.

“What the hell?” Turret Guy rotated the gun toward him, but it would only turn so far.

Jack leapt for the bus, the toe of one of his boots meeting the metal siding; he caught the railing above with his free hand, then vaulted onto the roof.

“No, Jack!” There were too many!

Death flung his sword, skewering one of the brothers. Jack fired his bow at the other one.

The redheads dropped, but not before a gunshot sounded.

Why was Jack staggering back? He clutched his chest!

Shot.

“NO!”

“The mortal wears his own armor, Empress,” Aric said.

When Jack recovered and charged forward, I choked out a relieved breath. The vest!

Didn't mean I wouldn't kill him for being so reckless. Only one of us could die from a bullet—him!

He aimed the bow at Turret Guy, waving him closer. When Jack motioned down, the man obediently went to his knees.

“How many are up at the house?”

“We never meant no harm, sonny! I wouldn't have hurt her.”

“How many? Or I do this real slow, me.”

“You'll lemme go if I tell you?”

“We'll see. Four. Three. Two. One—”

“Th-there's our boss and fourteen others.”

“Weapons?”

“Armed to the teeth. They're the ones you should go after!
They
would've had their way with your girl,” said the man who'd called dibs.

“You got any females for sale?”

Turret Guy smiled, no doubt thinking he'd been handed a lifeline. He had no idea he was digging his grave. If he admitted to hurting women . . .

“Not here, sonny, but we got a batch of young ones coming in.” He stroked his beard with a sly look. “Sweetest pieces of ass you ever saw. Trained and everything. Hell, I'd let you sample for free—”

Jack shot the man between the eyes. “Fuckin'
hate
slavers.” He collected his arrows.

The radio blared a moment later: “I heard that gunshot earlier, you assholes. I ain't gonna tell you again—no wasting bullets on straggler Bagmen. Do you dipshits copy?”

Jack lifted his gaze. Toward the slaver's house? The one packed with fifteen armed men?

“Jack . . . what are you doing?”

He'd already dropped off the other side of the bus.

“Your mortal's storming the slaver den.” Aric's tone was half-amused,
half-approving. “I'm hereby inviting myself on his incursion.” Eyes lively, he spurred his horse up to the razor wire—and didn't stop.

Like a bulldozer, Thanatos barreled through, catching the wire on its own armor, dragging the snarl free. Barricade destroyed, Aric charged after Jack. I followed.

The slaver boss lived in a sprawling two-story farmhouse that was lit up like a home from before the Flash. Off to the side, gas-guzzling generators hummed. His business must be flourishing.

Aric galloped past Jack to the front entrance. Jack cussed him in French, sprinting on foot to catch up.

In one fluid motion, Aric dismounted his still-moving horse. Never slowing, he strode with superhuman speed toward the front door, right up the freaking porch steps! He
knocked
, as if he were about to drop off a casserole, then raised his hands in surrender.

The men would have no fear of answering, would just see some strange armored guy—who had no gun.

A slaver cracked open the door with a threatening look—and a pistol aimed not a foot from Aric's chest.

Death spoke. Whatever he said made the man pull the trigger. The bullet ricocheted, plugging the slaver in the face.

Jack did a double take, then headed toward the back of the house. Aric drew his sword and breached the room.

Then . . . pandemonium.

Lamps crashed to the floor, dimming the area. Shadowy figures moved. Muzzle flashes blazed. Bullets bounced off mystical metal, a repeated
ping ping ping
.

An amoeba would've learned by now not to shoot at Aric's armor.

Yells came from the backyard. I spurred my mare toward Jack. But he didn't need any help, was firing on any who fled. The hunter had known a sight like Death would drive the men out the back. Then he'd merely waited.

The skirmish concluded in minutes. Aric had slain everyone inside; Jack outside.

The line of bodies stretched from the backyard into the house. Right where the arrow corpses stopped, the headless ones started.

The enemy was done. Neither Jack nor Aric had allowed me to contribute whatsoever. No witch invocation necessary.

With a nod of acknowledgment toward me, Jack retrieved his arrows, his bruised face flushed with aggression—and excitement?

The heat of battle.

At the back doorway, Aric lifted the grille of his helmet, smirking at him. “Eight to seven.”

“Only one ahead of me?” Jack snagged a two-way radio from a dead man's belt, clipping it to his own. “And you got body armor from head to toe.”

The two of them were acting like such . . . guys. I wanted to strangle them. Neither should have been this reckless going in—or this pleased with himself afterward.

Or maybe I was aggravated that I hadn't gotten to carry my weight.

At the threshold, a man with an arrow in his eye whimpered. Still alive. Jack strode forward to finish the kill, but Death beat him to it, removing his gauntlet on the way.

Aric stared at Jack as he laid his hand over the man's face.

Ghastly black lines branched out over the half-dead slaver. He gulped a lungful to shriek, clawing Aric's hand in a frenzy.

There was no greater pain than Death's touch. It did outstrip even the plague—and my poison.

“Think twice about trying to strike me,” Aric told Jack as the man went still. “Oh, and now the score's nine to six.” He stood, donning his gauntlet.

Jack snared the arrow, avoiding contact with the dead man's putrefying skin.

Aric chuckled. “My touch isn't contagious, mortal. The Black Death was a tribute to me; I wasn't a tribute to it.”

“All the same . . .” Jack wiped the arrowhead across the bottom of his boot. “If you're done showing off, I'm goan to clear this place.”
He kicked the body out of the doorway and motioned me inside so he could lock up that entrance. “We'll stay here for a spell and rest the mounts.”

I bit my bottom lip. “Do we have time?” Dolor was only a day's ride away, and I burned to get to Selena.

“We'll make it up with fresh horses. Come on, you.”

Claws at the ready, I followed Jack and Aric toward the front of the house. I gaped at Death's destruction: heads and bullet holes everywhere. Sofa tufting clung to the blood splatter on the walls. Guns smoked in clenched hands. The fire in the hearth flickered on, oblivious.

“I'm reluctantly impressed by your take, mortal,” Death said. “I thought you were only good at thievery.”

With a mean smile, Jack drawled, “Thievery's the
second
thing I'm really good at.” He turned to me, all cockiness. “Ain't that right,
bébé  
?”

Death gripped the hilt of his sword. Jack had no idea how close the knight was to cutting him down.

“Aric, why don't you go retrieve your other sword?” I mentally added,
You made me a promise.

—He courts his own doom.—

Please?

“Empress,” he grated, inclining his head before setting off.

Once Aric was out of earshot, I told Jack, “You don't have to bait him like that.”

Jack checked behind a door. Then around a corner. “I bait him to let out steam—or I blow.”