CHAPTER
14
Lily saw the milky-jade glimmer of the speaking stone and eased back in the stirrups to let her drake know she wanted it to slow down. It cupped its wings forward, essentially stopping in midair before the sheer cliff on the eastern side of the mountain.
Lily didn’t have all the proper signals learned after her single flight with Leto, but she had noticed that drakes were much more sensitive to commands than any horse she’d ever ridden and as such only required a minimum of direction—the rest, the drake figured out on its own by reading its rider’s body language. Lily touched the side of its neck with her heel and gently indicated by shifting her weight that she wanted it to land. She felt Rowan’s hands on her waist tighten as the drake flew them into the treetops, but to his credit, he didn’t panic when the drake clamped on to a violently swaying tree and scrambled down the trunk in a barrage of cracking timber and whipping branches.
As they dismounted, Lily realized she didn’t know how to make the drake fly back to camp. She tried pointing in the direction they’d come and saying go home to it several times, but either it didn’t understand or it didn’t want to. After a few failed attempts, Lily gave up and allowed the drake to follow her and Rowan through the trees to the speaking stone. It tucked its wings back and waddled alongside her like a very large dog. Rowan eyed it skeptically a few times, uncomfortable with being accompanied by a Woven in the dark, but again he showed a commendable amount of restraint and held his tongue.
“It’ll be a miracle if she’s there already,” Lily mumbled.
“Maybe not,” Rowan replied. “The Woven are capable of incredible things.”
Lily looked at him, surprised. “That almost sounded like respect,” she commented.
“Don’t get carried away,” he said, pursing his lips around a smile. He bent down to build a small fire at Lily’s feet.
She touched the speaking stone and reached out to Pale One. Her mind dove into the fast-moving river of the relay, whipping past thousands of miles of country, and finally rested inside one of the yellow-hued speaking stones on the Ocean of Grass. She called out to her claimed and felt her excitement. Pale One yipped and danced in circles.
Lily pictured the Pack. Where are they?
Close. Tending their meat.
Lily saw the seemingly unending herds of bison. She asked Pale One if she could join her inside her skin again. Pale One allowed it.
Lily felt the packed earth under her paws, and just below the surface she felt the gophers in their underground city. She telescoped out and felt the miles and miles of land pressed flat beneath its twin brother, the sky, and it dawned on her that once, long ago, water had covered this land as the sky now covered it. The pressure of the ancient inland sea had pushed the land down, muffling it. The Ocean of Grass still held on to that watery silence. Its vibration was a dull, sleepy thud.
She gathered the heat of a fire as fuel, called out to Rowan’s willstone, and jumped them to Pale One’s location.
She heard Rowan exhale a tensely held breath as he opened his eyes. “That is still unbelievably strange,” he told her, taking in their surroundings.
Pale One let out a series of whines and yelps as she came toward Lily with her head down. Rowan jerked backward, but Lily held out her hands to Pale One and she was greeted with a flurry of licks and nuzzles. Lily could feel she was hungry. She fed Pale One’s willstone with energy, and while she did, Lily felt Lillian reach out to her.
I did it! Lillian told her in mindspeak. I teleported to Salem and then I was able to bring someone back with me! I’m ready, Lily.
Wait for me, Lily replied. I’m gathering more forces.
From where?
Lily hesitated. She thought of how deeply Lillian hated the Woven. You’ll see. Just trust me. Give me one more day, she asked.
I may not have one more day, Lillian replied testily, and then cut contact.
“Lillian is ready to jump her army now,” Lily told Rowan.
“She knows she needs your army or she can’t win. She’ll wait for us,” Rowan said, but his tone was less than certain.
“She doesn’t intend on winning,” Lily reminded him, keeping her voice lowered. “All she needs is to get close enough to detonate. Or so she thinks.”
Lily looked at Pale One. Take us to the Pack, she asked.
Pale One bounded forward, flooding Lily with images from her journey as she went. Her excitement was quickly curtailed as she caught a scent on the breeze. Pale One stopped right in front of Lily, blocking her way and forcing her to stop as well. She howled into the darkness and the lonely sound was answered from a source close by.
They waited, Pale One tensing into the darkness at something the humans couldn’t see, until Lily felt Rowan stiffen. He unsheathed his long knife, thrust out an arm, and tried to put Lily behind him, but as he spun around in a circle she felt him deflating. They were already surrounded.
It’s a trap, Rowan said in mindspeak.
Then Lily saw them—dozens of pairs of softly reflective eyes staring at her. She didn’t know how far back into the gloom the Pack stretched, but Lily could feel that the darkness all around her was alive.
Not hunting you, Pale One assured Lily. They are afraid. And angry.
Lily wasn’t sure if that was any better. Can you tell them I mean no harm?
Speak, and they will understand.
Lily hesitated, not sure she understood Pale One correctly. Mindspeak was one thing, where concepts were passed along as much as words. The times when Lily had doubts that her Woven claimed could understand her all she’d had to do was picture what she wanted and pass the images along, as they did with her. Speaking aloud was different. Language, and the ability to understand it, was different. She hadn’t even attempted speaking aloud with Pale One yet, thinking it might be too complicated for her.
Speak with sounds, Pale One urged. They lose trust for you.
“I come to ask for your help,” Lily said, trying to sound confident. She heard growls as a response.
“Lily, what are you doing?” Rowan asked. “They can’t understand you.”
“We understand the witch,” said a low, raspy voice.
Rowan said something in Cherokee that was no doubt a swear word, and then a different raspy voice said something in Cherokee back to him. Rowan went very still.
I don’t believe it, he whispered inside Lily’s mind.
“Have you always been able to talk?” Lily asked.
She heard something like a bark and a laugh coming from the dark. “Of course,” growled another member of the Pack.
A different voice picked up the dialogue. “We have always had language and the use of tools,” it said.
“Why wouldn’t we?” asked a fourth voice.
“We are more like you than we are like wolves,” purred a fifth.
The Pack was circling them, passing the duty of responding from one member to another as if they were one mind with many voices.
They are a coven, Rowan said, realizing it at the same time Lily did. They’re sharing mindspeak as they talk to you.
They’re toying with us, Lily replied to both Rowan and Pale One, connecting them to each other through her.
Circling closer and closer, Pale One added. Lily felt Rowan startle to hear the Woven in his mind, but he accepted it.
Pale One, watch Lily’s flank, Rowan ordered, taking the defensive lead.
Next thing: one will come inside circle and snap with teeth to show they are Biggers, Pale One said as she followed Rowan’s order.
They may be Biggers, but they aren’t stronger, Lily replied.
“Where is your witch?” Lily demanded, suddenly sick of playing this game for dominance. “Bring me to her.”
“We need no witch,” hissed yet another voice from the dark. Lily felt Rowan count six in his mind.
Many more, Pale One said, disagreeing. Many, many smells.
“You have no fire, witch,” sneered a seventh.
“You are meat,” said yet another.
“I didn’t bring fire because I didn’t come here to fight you,” Lily said. “I came here to ask you to join us. In three days we go to destroy the Hive.”
Yips and barks burst from the Pack. There were dozens of them out there in the dark. Maybe hundreds. Lily felt Rowan slump, knowing they didn’t stand a chance against so many.
“My army is thirty thousand strong,” Lily said proudly, her voice ringing out in the darkness.
“The Hive are millions,” said a softer voice, and all of the other Pack members fell silent at the sound of it. “Thirty thousand is not enough, not even for a witch.”
Lily turned to face the soft voice. “I am not like other witches,” she said.
The soft voice chuckled. “And yet you still need our help,” it taunted.
“I need the Pack, the Pride, the raptors, the simians, and even the insect Woven, or I don’t stand a chance,” Lily admitted shamelessly. “And you need me or you don’t stand a chance. Because if I fail, the Hive will be coming for you next.”
There was a momentary silence. “The Hive can’t reach this far. Their range—”
“Their range will mean nothing in a few days,” Lily said, interrupting. “The witch who fuels them is going to learn how to appear anywhere she wants in the blink of eye. She’ll be able to be practically everywhere at once, and when she can do that, she’ll claim new Queens who will start new Hive colonies, spreading farther and farther until she’s conquered the whole world. Unless we stop her.”
Lily stared into the silent darkness, her heart in her throat, as the seconds ticked by. Finally, the soft voice spoke again.
“Light a fire and let the witch see us,” it said.
A spark was struck and torches flared. Lily tried not to show her reaction to the half-human, half-wolf figures that came to light. Their faces were snouted and fanged, and their arms were elongated to reach the ground in a sloped-back posture that had them hunkering over their dog-like hind legs. Their hands were clawed and padded with thick calluses like a canine’s, but still five fingered and mobile like a human’s, and their eyes had round pupils.
“My name is Lily,” she told the one who sat on his haunches across from her.
“We don’t have names like your kind,” he responded. “Who we are is more complicated than that.”
“Who you are is a scent and a rank, both of which are always changing,” Lily said. She saw surprise flash across his eyes and knew she’d guessed right from what she’d gathered from sharing mindspace with Pale One and Blueback. “You’re the alpha. For now.”
“You may call me Alpha.” He regarded Rowan and Pale One in turn. “The western witch only claims Woven,” he remarked, “but you claim all kinds.”
“So you know about Grace,” Rowan said.
Alpha’s eyes flicked over to Rowan. “We’ve always known. She created us to hunt and kill your kind, and your kind hunted and killed us in return. Many of us died. She was a bad alpha.” His eyes went back to Lily. “We would not be ruled by a witch. Not during my ancestors’ time. Not during mine.”
Lily nodded understandingly. “I have no interest in controlling you or forcing you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“We don’t want to go to war.”
“Neither do we,” Lily rebutted.
“Witches always want war,” Alpha said, a faint sneer on his lips.
“Not Lily,” Rowan said. He and Alpha locked eyes. “I didn’t trust her at first, either, but you don’t have to trust her. You just have to decide what’s better—being claimed and having a chance at survival, or being free and getting wiped out by the Hive.”
The Alpha stood, obviously done with this interview. Lily called after him.
“You’ve seen them, haven’t you?” she asked, loud enough for the betas to hear. “You’ve seen the Hive flying through your territory, carrying humans back and forth. You’ve seen the Hive searching for someone. They enter your lands now without fear, and no matter how many of them you’ve tried to turn away at your borders, Grace sends more, doesn’t she?”
The Alpha turned back around and glared at Lily. He gave one curt nod.
“She’s not afraid of you,” Lily said. “Grace allowed the Pack to maintain this land after you defied her because she realized it was too far from her city for her to hold on to it remotely. She let you live, as long as you kept the eastern humans in the east, because she physically couldn’t be everywhere at once. That’s about to change. She’s coming back, and when she does it won’t be to claim you. It will be to exterminate you.”
Toshi ran the last few blocks back to the Governor’s Villa. He tried to imagine that he was just out for a bit of healthy predawn exercise and that the adrenaline pumping through his body was from enjoyment, not fear. He envisioned a stress-reducing jog followed by a little tai chi, and gradually the Workers clinging to his arms lifted off.
After spending the night going to every restaurant, tavern, nightclub and after-hours bar he could think of, looking for people who might want to be claimed by Lily, Toshi was running on fumes. He climbed the stairs two at a time, but stopped before he entered his apartment. He could tell that someone was in there.
He backed away from the door. It burst open and two Warrior Sisters stalked out of his rooms, their whips wrapped around their waists. They grabbed him roughly, tearing his skin with their barbed hands, and even though he struggled against the iron strength of their arms, he knew it was useless. They dragged him to a window. His gut lurched as the Warrior Sisters jumped.
This is it, he thought, and then it occurred to him. He wasn’t alone anymore. Lily! Help me!
Toshi—what’s happening?
The Warrior Sisters flew him around the building and into another set of rooms.
I need strength, he answered as they threw him roughly onto a balcony. I think they’re going to kill me.
Toshi staggered forward and tipped onto his hands and knees. When he looked up he saw Grace lying on the floor in front of him. Next to her was the shaman. They were immobile, barely breathing, and too pale and stiff to be simply sleeping.
They’re spirit walking, Lily told him. You must stop them, Toshi. I have no fire ready—wait—
One of the Warrior Sisters buzzed her wings in agitation and then she grabbed Toshi by the back of the head and dragged him by his hair to Grace’s side. All of the Warrior Sisters in the room seemed distraught. Their heads twitched and their hands grasped at their whips, unraveling them from their waists or from across their chests and then rewrapping again to no purpose. They weren’t attacking him, he realized, not intentionally.
I think they want me to help her, Toshi said.
You can’t, Lily insisted. Toshi felt a swell of fear overtake Lily and he briefly caught a glimpse of an enormous creature looming over her before he felt her leave him.
Lily and Rowan left Pale One with the Pack—her new claimed—and jumped back to the speaking stone on the mountain. Pale One would be no help to them, and maybe even a hindrance, on their subsequent missions. They arrived as the sun was rising.
“I’m running out of time,” Lily said. She looked around for the drake. “Here, boy,” she called, feeling like an idiot. She heard Rowan’s rumbling laugh.
“Tame Woven aren’t boys or girls,” he said.
“I can’t just say ‘here, it.’ Here, Spike,” she called again, figuring that was as good a name as any.
As they searched the gloom for the wayward drake, Lily felt Toshi roaring into her mind in a panic. She stuck out an arm and grabbed Rowan’s hand.
“It’s Toshi,” she said, her eyes far away. “The Hive has him.”
“What about the rebels he was supposed to gather for you to claim?” Rowan asked urgently.
“Shh—wait.” She gasped. “There’s Grace. And Red Leaf. She’s spirit walking.” Her face screwed up as she shared a rapid exchange with Toshi. “I think they want him to heal her?” she said uncertainly.
The bush in front of Lily trembled. As a member of the Pride pounced on her, she vaguely wondered how it was possible that she could have overlooked a cat the size of a rhino. She felt Rowan’s weight coming down on top of her at the last moment, and then she saw the cat Woven jerk backward and lift off the ground. Behind the lion Woven’s outraged roar, Lily heard a sound like the flapping of a sheet in the wind.
Rowan rolled with Lily under him. The two of them came up on their hands and knees to see Spike caging the armored cat to the ground under his talons.
“Wait, Spike,” Lily shouted, holding her hands out in a stop gesture. Spike held the member of the Pride down, his eyes sliding off to the side.
“There are more hidden out there somewhere,” Rowan said, watching the drake’s movements.
Lily came forward and knelt down to look the member of the Pride in the eye. “I want to speak to your alpha,” she said. The Woven made a growling sound in the back of her throat. “I’m not here to kill you. I’m here to help.” The Woven did not respond. Lily looked up at Rowan and shrugged.
“Maybe she doesn’t understand language,” Rowan suggested.
Lily didn’t have many options. She reached out to find the Woven’s willstone, buried somewhere under the skin at her throat.
“Witch,” the Pride member hissed.
“You can speak,” Lily said, removing her hand. “I know the rest of your Pride is out there somewhere. Tell your leader to come forward.”
The Woven’s eyes skipped around in confusion. Rowan tried speaking to the Woven in Cherokee, but her eyes stayed clouded.
“I don’t think she understands much,” Rowan surmised.
“What do we do?” Lily asked. She looked up at the sun, already above the horizon, and remembered Toshi. She reached out to him.
I’m okay, Toshi replied. The Hive is keeping me here to watch over Grace. I get the feeling that as long as she doesn’t die, neither do I.
Wake her.
I’ve been trying to. I’ll keep at it. Aren’t there a bunch of rebels you should be claiming right now?
Are they ready for me?
Ready, willing, and able. They’re waiting to hear your call.
Lily smiled at Rowan. “Toshi’s people are waiting for me,” she said. She looked back down at the Woven. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Lily petted Spike’s talon. “Let her up,” she said.
Spike cautiously lifted his claws. The lion was uninjured. She sat back on her haunches, glowering at Lily.
“What do I do with you?” she asked, not sure if the Woven could understand her. “You’ve got too much will for me to claim you without your consent, but not enough to grasp any verbal argument I could make to convince you.”
The lion cocked her head. Her nearly human eyes narrowed. Maybe she understood more than she could say.
“I need your help,” Lily said. She moved closer to the lion and felt Rowan’s hand shoot out to pull her back. “Just let me try one thing,” she said, pleading with him.
Rowan’s grip on her arm relaxed but he didn’t let Lily get more than an inch away as she moved in closer, holding out her hand for the lion to smell. Lily tried to ignore the fact that her hand was shaking violently as it hovered in front of the lion’s saber teeth, and she kept it outstretched by force of will alone. After a moment that was filled with the sound of Lily’s heart pounding in her ears, the Woven allowed Lily to touch the side of her hulking face. Lily moved her hand onto the big cat’s forehead and closed her eyes, concentrating. She thought about Grace’s face as hard as she could, willing the image into the Woven’s brain, and whispered her name. She heard the cat growl.
“Enemy,” hissed the bushes all around. The rest of the Pride glided forward, surrounding Lily, Rowan, and Spike.
“My enemy, too. Fight her,” Lily replied, looking at each member of the Pride in turn.
The largest female came forward. She looked infinitely bored, like only a cat can, but her agitation was betrayed by the twitching of her tail. She sat down in front of Lily.
“My pride,” she purred, as if daring Lily to take it away from her.
Lily nodded in agreement. “Yours. But I can make it stronger.”
Lily fought her fatigue and filled Rowan’s willstone with as much strength as she could.
Her newly claimed Pride members watched as Lily and Rowan jumped up onto Spike’s back and he clambered up the trunk of a tall tree and took flight from the topmost branches.
Find more lions, Lily told her Pride. Bring them back here.
They rose, stretched, and rubbed their faces against one another languorously before melting into the trees.
Lily let the drake circle to find the best updrafts in the early morning chill. They soared over to the next valley and found what they were looking for. Three enormous raptors were riding the air currents, scanning the ground for something to eat.
“Get above one,” Rowan said.
Lily directed Spike to fly up, and he beat his wings and stretched out his neck, climbing a ladder into the sky.
When they were high enough and the raptor was just a dark shape beneath them, Rowan put an arm around Lily and swung his legs over to one side of the drake’s neck. Lily felt the hot and cold surges of terror as she took her feet out of the stirrups.
“Are you sure about this?” Rowan asked.
“No,” Lily shouted over the whipping wind. Her voice came out choked as it tried to get around her stomach, which was now lodged in her throat. “But it’s the only way.”
Rowan looked over the side, his face serene as he timed it. Lily saw his willstone pulse as every sense in him sharpened, and he pulled her tightly against his body and launched them off the drake’s neck into thin air.
Lily shrieked uncontrollably, clutching at Rowan desperately as they fell. Rowan spread his other arm out to the side like a rudder to steer them and slow them down. His willstone pulsed again as he changed the air—thickening it until it was almost as viscous as water. By the time they hit the raptor’s back, Rowan had slowed their descent enough to land gently on the Woven.
Startled, the raptor tucked its wings and barrel rolled. Rowan pressed Lily flat against the Woven, holding them tightly to it. Lily scrabbled through its feathers, trying to get her hand up to its forehead, like she had with the lion.
“I can’t reach,” Lily yelled.
Rowan inched them around while the raptor plummeted to the ground. Lily stretched and strained, and as she neared the raptor’s head she started talking, hoping that the raptor could understand.
“I need your help!” she yelled. The raptor shrieked in response. Lily grabbed handfuls of feathers and finally got close enough to lay her hands on the raptor’s head. She concentrated on sending images of Grace’s face, and a fantasy of Lily’s army fighting the Hive.
The raptor kept diving.
“Please!” Lily screamed desperately.
The raptor cupped its wings and pulled out of the dive just in time to land softly on the ground. Lily and Rowan were thrown off the raptor’s neck and tumbled across the ground under its enormous beak. Lily stood and looked into a big yellow-and-black eye that was the size of a car windshield. She stared at the Woven and threw all of her will behind showing it what she intended to do. Her willstone wove a glowing mist around her and she strained to make contact with a creature that was not her claimed. The raptor laid its wings across its flanks.
“I don’t think raptors have any language at all,” Rowan said.
“I’m trying to fight the witch in the west, but I need an army,” Lily said. “Grace Bendingtree. Do you want to fight her?”
The Woven cocked its head to look at Rowan, and then trained its eye again on Lily. Rowan started drawing Lily back.
“This isn’t going to work,” he said.
The raptor fluffed the feathers on its chest. Lily saw a gently glowing chip buried in the down. She stepped forward, hoping that this was an invitation.
“I don’t know if you understand, but I’m not here to make you my slave,” Lily said. She reached out and touched the raptor’s willstone.
The kettle of raptors that Lily had claimed flanked them as she and Rowan sailed over the Woven Woods outside Richmond astride Spike.
Fan out, she told her raptors, picturing what she needed from them. They had even less language than the Pride, and the concept of individual will was beginning to get blurry. Lily sensed that she might have been able to take their willstones without their consent, but she chose not to. She wanted her raptors to want to fight. The kettle broke their tight formation. They were intelligent enough to understand that she was hunting nests of insect Woven, and that they had flown this far east because she wanted the biggest nests they could find.
There were so many things about the Woven’s behavior that hadn’t made sense to Lily before she’d understood their origin. One of those things was how the wild Woven clustered just outside the Thirteen Cities. Unlike normal animals that avoided cities, the greatest numbers of insect Woven were always to be found right outside the city walls. Lily understood it now, of course. Grace positioned their nests outside the densest populations, like a line of pawns on a chessboard, to keep the people from ever wanting to venture out.
One of her raptors found what Lily was looking for. His keen eyes showed her a startlingly bright and clear image of a very large hill of sticks and twigs. The shape and size of it reminded Lily of an English barrow.
Keep searching. Find all of the big ones, she commanded.
Lily signaled for her drake to land and, as Spike crashed through the branches of a stately old black walnut tree, Lily could sense Rowan’s hesitance.
“Whoa, boy,” he said to Spike before they reached the ground.
Spike obeyed and stopped. He wrapped his tail around the central trunk, clasped the thick lower branches with the hand-like appendages that stuck out of the leading joint of his wings, and hung upside down like a bat. Lily and Rowan clambered awkwardly onto a branch to dismount the upside-down drake.
“What’s the matter?” Lily asked.
“Just stay here in the tree for a second, okay?” Rowan snapped. His forehead was furrowed with worry and Lily could see the pulse in his neck throbbing fast. His willstone flared and he jumped out of the tree. He landed silently and stole away toward the nest.
Lily waited in the tree next to Spike. She reached out and petted his iridescent scales, more to soothe herself than him, until she saw Rowan reappear and signal for her to climb down.
I don’t like this, he told her in mindspeak.
Lily knew why. These Woven were not like the Pride and the Pack, or even like the less-organized raptors and simians. These Woven were the most alien, both in looks and behavior. Rowan had been fighting them his whole life and he still didn’t understand them. These particular Woven—the hodgepodge ones that were the odds and ends of insects and reptiles and mammals and birds all thrown together without rhyme or reason—these were the creatures that had chased him in his nightmares since he first learned what it was to fear.
I don’t think you’re going to be able to communicate with them at all, he said in mindspeak.
I don’t think so, either, Lily admitted. But I won’t need to. She took his hand and made him meet her eyes. Find the one that laid the eggs. I’ve got a plan.
You can’t reason with these Woven, he argued.
I know. That’s why I need the queen. If I claim her, I claim all of her offspring.
Rowan gave her a questioning look. How do you know that?
Lily thought for a moment before answering. Grace started with wolves and apes and lions because they work in groups and they instinctively follow a leader. They aren’t fully human, and they don’t have self-awareness exactly like we do, so she could bend their will to hers.
Invade a willstone without shattering it, Rowan thought.
Yes. But remote claiming forms a weaker bond, and they started breaking away from her. Even if they weren’t human, these kinds of Woven still had wills of their own. Grace had to go to the insect kingdom to get what she needed.
And what’s that?
Total, unquestioning obedience. Lily looked at Rowan. Ever wonder why she doesn’t have a human coven?
Because mechanics argue too much with witches?
Lily shook her head. “Because you have minds of your own and you can leave us,” she whispered.
She felt Rowan wanting to say that he would never leave her, but of course, he already had. His face fell when he realized that the complete honesty of mindspeak wouldn’t allow him to make that vow.
“It’s okay,” she said, “I don’t need you to say that. If I don’t treat you right, you should leave me. All of you. Caleb, Una, Breakfast. Even Juliet.”
Rowan dropped his gaze in thought. For a moment it looked like he was going to say something.
“What?” Lily asked. “I know there’s something you’ve been wanting to tell me.” But he shook his head, unwilling to answer.
“The queen should be close,” he said. “This nest is fresh. Let’s give her a reason to come back and defend it.” Rowan took Lily’s hand and brought her to the top of the mound. “That should get her attention.”
Rowan had Lily stand tall at the very top while he lay flat against the mound and covered himself with some of the mulch. It wasn’t long before Lily heard something coming through the trees, hissing.
The queen was enormous—fifteen feet tall, and twice as long. She had eight spidery legs attached to a bony body. Her head was triangular like an alligator’s, but it was her mouth that terrified Lily. As she stalked forward, she hissed another sinister warning and the pincers on either side of her mouth opened to display rows of needle-like teeth as long as Lily’s forearm.
Lily looked at the queen and deliberately kicked the nest.
The queen darted forward, her eight legs a blur as she mounted her nest. Lily fought the urge to run and planted her feet. When the queen was just inches from tearing Lily in half, Rowan sprang up from the mulch, jumped astride her back, and wrenched her head back, exposing the queen’s neck. Lily lunged forward, her gorge rising in revulsion, as she placed her hands on the queen’s pebbly skin and searched for the willstone.
As Lily claimed the queen, she saw as if through neon facets. The world had grown another color around the edges as if a new wavelength of light were now visible. Moving shapes left tracks across her eyes and chemicals lit up the air like dancing motes of information. Fear was not fear—it was extra energy to spur on action. Hate was not hate—it was nails on a chalkboard that needed to be silenced. There was no self. No conscience. No memory. There was only on or off, stop or go, attack or stay.
Lily separated herself from the exchange and looked at Rowan as he climbed down off the now-docile Woven’s back. She recalled him telling her a story about a little girl from his tribe who had tried to make a pet of one of the insect Woven. A shudder went down her back at the thought of a little girl cuddling up to something like the queen.
“You were right,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. “These Woven are nothing like us.”
Rowan nodded, also remembering the little girl who had been eaten by her pet. “Do you control the whole nest now?”
Lily searched inside and felt the web of creatures now bound to her by chemicals and scents. There were thousands spawned by this one queen. “Yes,” she said dully. It was not a pleasant feeling to share mindspace with these unfeeling creatures. “Unfortunately.”
He took her hand. “Where’s the next nest?” he asked gently.
Lily reached out to one of her raptors. “About twenty miles from here,” she replied, her gaze far away and eagle sharp.
Lily heard Lillian calling out for her and allowed contact.
Breakfast just told us that Red Leaf is teaching Grace how to spirit walk, Lillian said in mindspeak. Red Leaf told him that Grace is learning fast. Our time is up. We need to attack.
Wait, Lillian. Please. We’re dead if we go with as few fighters as we have now.
We can’t wait. If Grace learns how to teleport the Hive, the Thirteen Cities will be destroyed in a matter of hours. It’s now or never.
Don’t use that bomb, Lily pleaded. Give me more time.
Lily felt Lillian cut her out.
“What is it?” Rowan asked. Lily shared the exchange with him and he broke into a run, pulling her along behind him.
Lily heard what sounded like the flapping of a huge sheet and the drake’s talons raked the ground in front of them as it landed. Rowan pulled up short, surprised.
“I told you they were intelligent,” Lily said. Rowan didn’t argue as they jumped on Spike’s neck and flew to the next nest.
The hour when Toshi was supposed to have met his contact had long since come and gone, and still, he was stuck tending to Grace. Now he had no way of knowing how the tests for the sting antidote had turned out. He hoped Ivan was having better luck with the pesticide.
Toshi rolled the cluster of extra serum vials in his pocket between his fingers, unable to tell if they could protect him and Red Leaf during an escape attempt or if it was suicide to try. He played a little game with himself. If more of the vials were facing up than down he would risk it. He pulled them out of his pocket and looked.
Half up, half down. He’d have to make his own luck.
“Are you ill?” Grace asked.
“Tired,” he replied immediately. Respond fast and be as honest as possible.
“You’ve been working too hard,” Grace said, almost as if she cared about him.
Toshi couldn’t figure out why she was still acting like everything was normal between them. He knew what she was, and she knew he knew. There didn’t seem to be any purpose to it, and then it occurred to him. Maybe this was normal for her.
Grace took the long silence as an invitation to bait him some more. “Or is it Mala keeping you up at night?” she asked with a tilted eyebrow.
“Mala?” Toshi repeated, and then he remembered. They were supposed to be engaged. He hadn’t seen Mala in days, and he was quite sure that Grace knew that. “I wish,” he said playfully. “But, no. I’ve just been working.”
Grace studied him with hard eyes, her teeth grinding together faintly. She wanted him to confess. That’s why she was playing this game. She wanted to hear from Toshi that his involvement with Mala was a lie. Red Leaf stirred and Grace turned her attention to him.
“Give him another dose,” she said.
“I don’t think keeping him unconscious is—”
“Give him another dose,” she ordered. “I don’t want him contacting anyone.”
“You’ll kill him,” Toshi said quietly.
She huffed, as if Red Leaf’s death would be nothing more than an annoying inconvenience for her. “Fine,” she said. “I may as well go under again, then. I’ll keep him in the overworld myself.” She lay down next to Red Leaf on the floor, laughing. “I know I’m getting close because he keeps insisting that he won’t show me any more,” she said excitedly.
Toshi looked at Red Leaf in sympathy, wondering what kind of emotional damage Grace was doing to him in the overworld. Grace slipped into cold stillness and the Warrior Sisters guarding her grew anxious. To them it seemed as if Grace were dying, and even though Grace had explained it to them, they still got frantic when she left her body.
One of them prodded Toshi with the handle of her whip, indicating he should attend to Grace. Toshi held up his hands, signaling that there was nothing he could do. At least he hoped that’s what he was signaling. He had to get out of this room. He had to get to the lab.
He stood up and crossed to the door. Two Warrior Sisters barred his exit, their wings buzzing.
“I have to go get medicine,” he said, overenunciating his words. Little good it did him. He picked up an empty dose of the drug he’d been using on Red Leaf. “Medicine,” he repeated, pointing to it.
One of the other Warrior Sisters picked up one of full doses that were left on the table and showed it to him as if to say you still have more. They weren’t stupid, but what they understood and what they didn’t was still a mystery to him.
He took the medicine from her and pointed at Red Leaf, nodding. Then he pointed at Grace and shook his head dramatically, still holding up the vial. “Bad for her. Need different medicine,” he said.
The two Warrior Sisters by the door twitched their heads atop their stalk-like necks and stepped away from the door. Toshi made for the door as if walking on a tightrope. Three Workers attached themselves to him, one of them positioning her stinger right over his jugular. She clung to him tighter than usual, as if in warning.
As soon as he was out the door, Toshi walked to the lab. He had no idea how long Grace would remain spirit walking, and when she woke it was possible she’d decide that she’d had enough of toying with him and order the Worker to kill him. He took one of the vials out of his pocket, twisted it open, and tipped the few drops inside onto his tongue, figuring the illusion of safety was better than nothing.
As Toshi approached the lab he saw an orderly line of people snaking through the hallway. He glanced out a window and saw that the line went outside and all the way down the street. At the head of the line Mala was calmly distributing vials of the antidote.
“Where’s Ivan?” Toshi asked.
“Inside. Making more,” she answered. “We thought you were keeping Grace occupied.” Her eyes were wide and staring with fear, but she was breathing slowly, forcing herself to keep it together. “We need you to keep her occupied,” she stressed.
Toshi looked down the line. Tight faces looked back at him. If everyone stayed calm, the Hive would have no idea that anything was amiss, but only so long as Grace’s full attention was elsewhere. As soon as she saw people lining up outside Ivan’s lab through the Hive’s eyes, they were caught.
“It’s not me. She’s still playing with her new guest,” Toshi replied bitterly. “Are we sure about the formula?”
Mala’s face fell. “That was your job.”
“I missed meeting my contact,” he said, and she glared at him as if it were his fault Grace had kept him locked in his rooms for hours. “I’d better get in there,” he said, and brushed past her to join Ivan.
Inside the lab, dozens of people were very calmly, very carefully packing vials of antidote into whatever bags or satchels they happened to have handy, and leaving the lab with haste—but not too much haste. Most of the faces Toshi recognized as contacts of his, although he knew none of their names.
“For the restricted zone,” Ivan said, gesturing to the people leaving with bags.
“And the pesticide?” Toshi asked.
“Over there,” he replied, pointing to a line of vats against the opposite wall. “We’ve managed to retrofit a few crossbows to distribute it.” Ivan picked up a crossbow and demonstrated. “Shoot a dart into a swarm of Workers, the dart explodes and sends out a mist of pesticide. Trouble is, there are only so many crossbows to go around—just what a few rebels here and there have managed to steal over the years.”
“How do we get more?”
“All the Hive’s watchtowers are stocked with crossbows.”
Toshi thought of the platforms soaring high above the city streets. “But who can get to them except the Hive?” he asked. Ivan shrugged as if say he could only do so much. “Does the pesticide work at least?”
“Who knows? We can’t test it without alerting the Hive,” Ivan said with a fatalistic laugh. “Come. I need help.”
Toshi rolled up his sleeves. “Grace could wake at any moment. I’m on borrowed time,” he said.
“We all are,” Ivan replied.
Toshi was just about to put on a pair of gloves, when he heard a low hum in the air and felt all three of the Workers clinging to him suddenly lift off his skin. He looked around and noticed that all the Workers in the room were leaving. He and Ivan ran out of the room, hearing startled gasps, and pushed their way past the confused masses and out onto the street.
The sky had gone dark. Toshi looked up. Every inch of airspace was covered with Warrior Sisters. They were all flying toward the perimeter wall simultaneously. Ivan ran back inside, Toshi close on his heels, both of them taking the stairs inside the villa two at a time until they reached the top floor. Ivan pushed open a door to a room that was empty except for a single staircase that led to a trapdoor in the ceiling. They emerged on the roof of the villa and looked out past the wall.
An army stood on the field of flowers, ready for battle.