Right?
“I’ll never leave this farm,” she says. “Leave me alone!” Her voice rises suddenly and sharply. “I just want to be alone.”
“Gladly,” Laney says, stomping out of the room. “I’ll get Trish ready to leave,” she fires over her shoulder. “Immediately.”
I stare at the woman, who stares right back with misty, but now determined eyes. “Please,” I say. “Come with us. Not all is lost.”
“For me it is,” she says. “You wronged me when you saved me.” I should be angry at such an ungrateful statement, but I don’t have it in me. Instead I just feel sad.
“We’ll make it up to you,” I say.
“There’s nothing you can do for me,” she says, and then pauses and looks to the ceiling, as if thinking. “Young man, do you really want to help me?”
“More than anything,” I say. Hex pads into the room and pushes between my legs, his head sticking out to look at the woman, his tail whacking against my knees.
“Bury them.” I arch my eyebrows and start to protest, but she cuts me off. “Please. They’ve lived good lives, all three of them. They deserve a proper burial.”
I have no desire to see the faces of the men and woman I was unable to save, especially because one of those faces is no longer attached to its body, but I can’t say no. “Okay,” I say.
And then I turn away because she’s sobbing into her hands and I don’t have the time or emotional energy to join her.
~~~
When we reach the sunflower fields for the second time, I gasp. “Holy…” Laney says. “What happened?”
The sunflowers, which were so vibrant and golden and beautiful just a day earlier, are now brown and dry and dead, bent over at the waist, their once smiling faces frowning into the dirt at their fallen brothers and sisters.
“The magic is gone,” I say. “The surviving Siren has moved on.”
“It’s sad,” Laney says, her arm around Trish’s shoulder.
“What is?”
“That something so beautiful could be created from such evil.”
Hex chuffs, as if in agreement. He moves off into the fields, nuzzling his snout against the first dead sunflower he comes to. My jaw drops open when the sunflower shudders and then straightens, reaching for the sky, as if stretching after a long sleep. A healthy bright green blush returns to its stem, which just a moment ago was brown and brittle. The flower itself glows unnaturally golden yellow for a moment, before settling into a happy-sun yellow.
As if it was no big deal, Hex moves on without looking back, touching his wet nose to each sunflower he passes, resurrecting them and creating a golden path through the fields.
“Your dog is awesome,” Laney breathes, clearly as in awe as I am.
“You hadn’t realized that yet?” I say.
“Okay. Even awesomer than I thought.”
With Laney and Trish behind me, I follow the yellow sunflower road that Hex has created. Opposite to the last time I pushed through the field—when I hacked and slashed at the flowers as if they were the enemy, in league with the Sirens—I’m extra careful not to touch any of the stalks, for fear that I’ll undo Hex’s magic.
When we reach the clearing, Hex is sniffing at the ground.
The empty, empty ground.
Chapter Forty-Two
“Gone,” I say. “All gone.”
There are footprints and bloody drag marks—which Hex seems to find particularly interesting—but no bodies, neither Siren nor human.
Something clicks. A rare answer to one of the many questions I’ve been pondering. Apparently Laney has the same thought, because she says, “Necros.”
I nod. “That’s why the Sirens were killing rather than enslaving the humans. They weren’t for them. They were for the Necros.”
“A trade?” Laney says, raising her eyebrows. “Corpses for…what?”
“Who knows? Something we’d probably rather not know about.” I run a hand over my short bristly hair. “But it provides further proof that the Necros are allying themselves with other witch gangs for some greater purpose. They want bodies, as many as possible.” Dark shadows crowd around my heart.
“Why?” Laney asks.
My heart pounds and my hands start to sweat. “They’re creating an army,” I say.
~~~
Today is the longest day of our journey so far. Mostly because we’re determined to reach Pittsburgh without stopping again. Every time we stop we seem to almost die, which is really starting to suck.
While miles of mostly empty highway pounds away under our feet, Laney and I talk ourselves around and around in circles. About missiles and witch hunters and Sirens and the Reaper and, for a few minutes, Mr. Jackson. But I cut that conversation off pretty quick because Laney has a snide way of saying his name that I don’t like. Without Mr. Jackson, I’d be dead and no closer to avenging my friends than I was three months ago. Which is to say, nowhere.
Hex joins in the discussion occasionally, offering his opinions in yips and barks, although it’s very possible he’s just telling us to Shut up already! Trish, shockingly, is a silent observer. She even foregoes any air-drawing, preferring to just stare at us with creepy, unblinking—does she ever blink?—eyes.
Eventually, a green sign informs us that the next exit is for I-376 toward Pittsburgh. I extend my arm to the right, like a biker signaling a turn. Laney doesn’t laugh, Trish just stares, and Hex pretends he doesn’t know me.
We take the exit. Immediately there’s a noticeable increase in the number of abandoned cars on the road. Most of them are banged up, with large dents, flat tires, shattered windshields—some are even flipped over, resting on their roofs. These late-night drivers were heading home from…where? Out of town business trips or visiting family? They were so close to home, to their warm beds, to seeing their families or pets or whoever would greet them at the door.
All dead. All murdered in cold blood by an enemy they never even knew existed, despite the fact that the magic-born went to their churches, worked in their offices, shopped at their supermarkets, and were members of their gyms.
The familiar ache of anger that Mr. Jackson warned me against creeps into my bones.
“Are you going to hit me?” Laney says, glancing down at my sides.
I realize my hands are tightened into fists. I shake my head.
“You know, you can’t go around hitting people just because they don’t laugh at your stupid jokes,” she says, grinning.
I relax my fingers, and some of the tension eases from my bones and muscles. “It’s not that,” I say.
“I know, dummy,” Laney says. “I’m pissed, too. All these people…” She trails off, scanning the automobile graveyard as we slalom through it. “Wait a minute. What people?”
I was so hung up on my own imagination—picturing what might have happened here: a dark wizard, maybe, standing in the middle of the highway, shooting invisible rockets at the cars barreling right at him, slamming on their brakes, never having a chance—that I didn’t even notice that there are no bodies, decaying or otherwise. Just cars. Empty, driverless cars.
We exchange a look, but neither of us has to say a word to know what the other is thinking. Necros. Building an army of the dead. Mr. Jackson’s words stream through my head on repeat. The Necros deal in dark magic, using the dead as their tool of choice. The Necros deal in dark magic, using the dead as their tool of choice. The Necros deal in dark magic…
“Where’d you go?” Laney says, and I twitch, jerking out of my stupor.
“Uh, nowhere,” I say.
“You were thinking about something,” she says, skepticism in her narrowed eyes.
“There are just a lot of unanswered questions,” I say, which seems to satisfy her as she once more faces forward, weaving between an overturned tractor-trailer and a black, tinted-window Cadillac Escalade.
“Nice car,” Laney comments.
“Yeah, if you want to singlehandedly burn a planet-size
d hole through the ozone layer,” I say.
Laney smirks. “Now that’s a bright side for you. At least without anyone driving cars—other than the vehicles running on magic and Huckle’s solar-powered van—global warming might not be such an issue.”
I raise a finger in the air. “I think you’re on to something. What if the witches are just environmental activists looking to make a point?”
Our eyes meet and the brief moment of levity goes a long way to easing the strain my body’s feeling after my thoughts about Mr. Jackson’s description of the Necros. Will I ever see him again? Do I even want to see him again? Has he been looking for me? Is he alive?
An hour goes by as we swoop down a large decline and then up an even larger hill. I never realized Pittsburgh was so hilly. With the snow in the winter, it’s a wonder anyone can leave their houses. Thankfully, the snow and ice are months behind us, and the late summer heat has evaporated into a breezy even temperature that helps with our long hike, which is finally starting to take a toll on my feet and legs. Laney and Trish look tired, too. Only Hex seems to be able to walk all day and look as refreshed as if he just woke up from an eight-hour nap.
Another hour trudges by before we see the sign for the tunnel. Maintain speed through tunnel, it reads. “Shouldn’t be a problem,” I mutter. Maintaining our four miles an hour pace is as easy as putting one foot in front of the other and then repeating over and over again until you feel each step all the way to your spine.
“We should slow down,” Laney jokes. “See if we get a ticket.”
I’m too tired to laugh. Should we keep going? I’m anxious to reach our destination, but showing up exhausted in a big city with who knows how many gangs patrolling the streets is a recipe for disaster, even with Trish-the-missile-exploder and Hex-the-wonder-dog on our side.
“I see how it is,” Laney says. “I don’t laugh at your joke so you don’t laugh at mine. Hold a grudge much?”
“I was laughing on the inside,” I say.
“I’ll bet you were.”
Another ten minutes slip by in silence as the road curves one way, then the other, and then a gray square block appears, surrounded by greenery that rises to the hill above. Two black corridors, one on either side of the highway, are drilled into its face like nail holes in a plank of wood. The words Fort Pitt Tunnel are etched into the gray stone. What I hope is red spray-painted graffiti, marks the tunnel entrance: KILL THEM ALL! Was it painted by witches or surviving humans?
Matching hundred-car pileups are mashed into the tunnels on both sides, their fenders dented, their front hoods jammed up like accordions, and…their passengers gone. I only wish they’d fled the scene, but I can’t fool my mind into thinking that. They were taken.
The Necros don’t usually kill people on their own, Mr. Jackson told me. It seemed like he made this point a dozen times in the few short months I was with him. They scavenge the dead, and then the dead do the killing for them.
With that sickening thought curling through my mind, I say, “We should probably hide out in the tunnel for the night.”
Hex whines and Laney says, “You want to stay in there?”
“Scared?” I say.
“Stop being a child, we’re not on a camping trip in some haunted forest. You know I’m not scared, but look at it. It’s jam-packed with cars.”
“All the more reason why no one would go in there to bother us,” I say. “We’re either going to have to trek up and over or through. Your choice.”
She sighs.
I say what I know I have to say even if I don’t want to say it. “Look, I appreciate you coming this far with me, I really do. I’ll understand if you want to take Trish somewhere…safer.”
“No.”
“Just let me know where you’re headed and I can try to catch up with you after I’m done with this thing.”
“This thing? You mean your mission to kill every last Necro? Is that the thing you mean? And oh yeah, I’m sure you’ll stop there. Next it will be all the rest of the witches, right?” Oh no. Her hands are on her hips, her eyes blazing with molten steel.
“Uh…”
“Choose your next words very carefully, Carter.”
I look at Trish, who offers no air-drawn words of advice. Hex seems to be smiling, as if enjoying our little confrontation. “You’re welcome to come with me?” I say.
“Is that a question or an invitation?” Laney asks sharply.
“Both.”
“We’re coming. You’re my only friend and I’ll be damned if I let you get yourself killed.”
End. Of. Discussion.
Chapter Forty-Three
As we crawl onto the cars, I find myself thinking about what happened here when the most catastrophic event the world has ever borne witness to struck. Was this very tunnel the home to flashes of humanity during Salem’s Revenge? Did people try to help one another, pulling each other from crumpled cars, standing between the helpless and whatever witch gang was assaulting them? Or was it every person for themselves, the faster, stronger ones having a better chance of surviving and escaping? Would I blame any of them if that’s the way it was?
The metal creaks and groans beneath our feet as we scramble from one car to the next, picking our way through the tunnel. My wrapped-up shoulder groans, too, firing bolts of pain through my arm, but I ignore it. Hex lights the way with a new trick: A flashlight-like beam shoots from his open mouth.
Dried blood, tatters of ripped clothing, and discarded personal items, like purses and hats, are everywhere. We even see a dirty stuffed animal, a white bear with a sewn-on smile, crammed between a hubcap and the wall. Did the child it belonged to drop it while being dragged to safety by his or her parents? Or was it only in the child’s final breaths that his or her hands opened, letting the favorite toy drop to its final resting place?
Trish picks up the bear and hugs it to her chest. I’ve never seen her look so child-like.
Laney fires me a look that I interpret as See? She’s just a kid. I don’t care if she’s a witch.
I look away because I don’t know if she’s right.
Clunk, clank, thunk, thump…
THUMP!
Our metallic footfalls echo through the tunnel, the latter being caused by Hex jumping from the hood of a red Nissan to the trunk of a blue Honda, his claws skittering on the metal.
“Quiet!” I hiss. Hex just looks back and wags his tail and then thump-skid, thump-skid, thump-skids! his way to the next car in three large bounds.
I roll my eyes, wishing once more for a stealthy lightweight magical cat.
“Where should we stop?” Laney asks.
I consider the options, wondering whether it’s safer to be closer to the city or to the highway, but before I can respond, a voice says, “Hello, Rhett Carter,” and Hex barks madly in the dark.
~~~
In the first moment I draw my sword with my right hand, and in the second moment I thrust Laney and Trish behind me with my left, which sends razors through my shoulder.
“Who’s there?” I shout, trying to be heard above Hex’s nonstop barking.
My dog also appears to be running in circles, because his light is flashing around like a strobe light, illuminating the walls and then the cars and then the ceiling, and then…
A shadow, walking calmly toward us.
Chook-chook!
“Stop or I’ll shoot!” Laney shouts, roughly pushing her shotgun muzzle past my injured arm, my wound erupting with blinding pain.
“Relax,” the voice says, even as Hex’s barking stops and the movement of his light slows, zoning in on the intruder.
That voice. So familiar…and yet so different than the last time I heard it, when it was full of insanity and barely restrained violence.
“Bil?” I say. “Bil Nez?”
“In the flesh,” the Native American witch hunter says, even as Hex leaps in front of him and shines his light in Bil’s eyes.
Chapter Forty-Four
“You again,” Laney says, refusing to lower her shotgun despite my three polite requests to do so.
“Sorry to disappoint,” Bil says, shielding his eyes from Hex’s light. His hands are empty, weaponless, but the sharp angles of his crossbow rise above his shoulders, almost like strange, skeletal wings. “I’m unarmed.”
“That didn’t seem to matter when you almost shot me the last time I saw you,” I say.
Laney’s lips tighten at the memory and she says, “Want me to do him?”
I gape. “Laney, no. Just no. Lower the gun. It’s okay.” She doesn’t. If anything, she raises it slightly so her aim is on his head.
“Yeah, after I saved your life,” Bil says.
“I was fine,” I say. “I had things under control.”
“The End was about to end you,” Bil says, chuckling lightly at his own joke. “All of you, including your hot new girlfriend.”
“You shut your mouth, Running Bull,” Laney growls. Her grip on the shotgun is so tight all the blood has drained from her fingers, leaving them a pale ghostly white in the dim lighting.
“Can’t take a compliment, can you?” Bil says. Turning back to me, he says, “Look, I know I might’ve seemed…out of sorts…the last time we were together, but I want you to know that’s not me. Not the real me. We’re on the same side in this. I want the witches—the Necros—dead as badly as you do.”
“And The End?” I ask.
“Murderers and mercenaries,” he says. “But we can’t deal with them until we’ve dealt with the witches.”
He seems genuine enough, but he’d seemed himself when he saved me, too, and then…
“Hey,” he says, drawing my eyes to his. “I’m sorry about before. I really am. I barely got out of there alive, and I realized what a fool I’d been, how stupid I was to push away one of my few friends. I’ve just been through a lot lately.”
I can’t help but relate to that. We’ve all been through a lot, and Bil’s story about the girl he met who turned out to be a Siren was certainly horrific. It’d change anybody.