CHAPTER
8
Lily’s eyes unfocused for a moment, the pavement still scrawling beneath her while the desert and mountains in front of her hung forever far away, like a movie backdrop. Lillian was reaching out to her. After a moment’s hesitation Lily let her make contact.
Simms is coming, Lillian told her. She got information from the people at the house on the bluff.
Is she going to Yosemite or Salem?
She just arrived in Yosemite. She will know soon that you aren’t there. She tracks you with more than the pictures from the Walmart and the witnesses from the party. She tracks you with her yearning. Stay off the main roads.
I will.
Are you coming back to my world?
Yes. Once I get far enough east in this world I’m going to worldjump my coven back to yours, Lily told her. There was no point in trying to hide her plans from Lillian anymore.
It will do you no good to try and talk me off the path of war, Lillian warned.
I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m coming back to exterminate the Hive.
Finally, we agree. My army marches. Gather yours and join me.
Lily breathed an ironic laugh at the thought of joining forces with Lillian, and then the laugh turned to a chill as she considered another enemy-ally. How do you know about Simms, Lillian?
Lillian did not answer. Lily’s skin started to crawl.
Did you worldjump Carrick? Where is he?
Lily felt the connection end and brought herself back to the present. She glanced up at the rearview mirror and saw Rowan sitting in the back, looking at her.
“Lillian?” he guessed. Lily nodded, still not completely sure how he always seemed to know who she was mindspeaking with. “Is she still planning to attack Bower City alone?” he asked.
Lily smirked at him. “She asked me to join her, but she isn’t waiting around for my answer. She isn’t going to like what I have to say about teaming up with Alaric, no matter how much sense it makes.” A thought occurred to her. “There’s only one person she ever listened to, and it certainly isn’t me. Someone we’re going to need to pull this off.” Rowan narrowed his eyes in question. “Forget it,” Lily said. “Just strategizing.”
Rowan nodded and let his gaze drift out the window, a vague smile on his lips. The rest of the coven was sleeping, but Rowan didn’t seem to want to miss one second of the scenery.
“Where is she?” he asked after a long silence.
Lily let her senses drift out to join her other self for a moment. She saw columns of men and women on the move. Loaded wagons, horses, and pack animals hastened with unnatural speed through the heat and haze of a humid forest. Around the army prowled guardians, and above the trees circled greater and lesser drakes to spot wild Woven, flush them out, and kill them before they could threaten human lives. Tame Woven hunting wild Woven. Not even Lillian could avoid using the Woven in some way, no matter how much she hated them.
Lily thought of Pale One, her claimed, and reached out to her. It was far, but Lily could feel the sensory tangle of her mind, a chaotic swirl of scent and information, and she could feel the keen edge of her devotion. Pale One had managed to slip away in the confusion after she had knocked down Grace. Clever little creature. Compared to her, Lillian’s gigantic drakes were mere pets—impressive attack dogs, not true claimed. Unlike Pale One, the tame Woven created by the eastern Covens didn’t have willstones and couldn’t be claimed by a witch. Lillian saw her Woven as animals and nothing more. Lily knew in her heart that was a mistake.
“Lily?” Rowan prompted.
“They haven’t crossed the Appalachians yet,” she answered, shaking herself back to this world. “Lillian’s giving her army strength and speed, but it’s wearing on her.”
Lily glanced up at the mirror and saw Rowan’s worried expression. “Do you want me to drive?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Lily said gratefully.
She pulled over and they both got out, taking a moment to stretch their stiff limbs and wipe the cobwebs from their eyes. They’d been driving nonstop in shifts for sixteen hours. There was a chill in the early morning air and Lily heard Rowan suck in a shivering breath while he looked at the desert around them and the mountains beyond.
Sand dunes rolled on either side of the black stretch of asphalt—a vast golden ocean, its heaving tides held in a moment. Sharp, young mountains spiked the clear sky behind them.
“I don’t know which place is more lovely,” Rowan said. “The ocean or the desert.”
Lily nodded her agreement, feeling the dry breeze brush back her hair and trace across her neck. “I think we’re about to enter a national park. The dunes or something.”
A jeep came up behind them and they got back in the van and shut the doors.
“Start the engine,” she told him.
The jeep slowed enough for the driver to peek in their window. A young man wearing a wide-brimmed hat sat behind the wheel.
“Park ranger,” she told Rowan. “Put your directional on.” She waved at the ranger to indicate that they were fine, and he drove on while they pulled back out onto the road. “Make a U turn. Don’t follow him.”
Rowan did as she instructed. “Where to?”
“We’ll have to backtrack a little and go around the park.” Lily pulled out the map and tried to find an alternate route. She saw in the rearview mirror that the ranger had stopped his jeep. “Go faster,” she told Rowan.
“I think it’s too late,” he said.
“I know,” she replied with a sinking feeling in her gut.
She looked at the impassable dunes around them. They had to get off the road, but their van was no match for that kind of terrain. The rest of the coven felt Rowan’s and Lily’s anxiety and woke. A moment of viewing Rowan’s replay of the events, and they all understood the situation.
“Don’t speed, Ro,” Breakfast said.
“They’ve already spotted us,” Una said.
“I know. But we need to be able to see any turnoffs we could go down,” Breakfast countered. “A dirt road. Something to get us off this open stretch.”
“We won’t outrun them,” Lily said in agreement.
They all scanned the side of the road. Caleb kept craning his head to look back.
“I see them,” he said grimly. “Looks like the ranger’s brought all his friends.”
Lily turned and looked back to see several dark specks on the road behind them.
“There!” Tristan said, pointing. “A turnoff.” It was no more than a path through the dunes, but it was their only option.
Rowan cranked the wheel. Sand kicked up behind them as they turned. Lily looked back at the telltale cloud, and drew in a breath. Her willstone flared as she stole the momentum out of the particles of sand and grit, first stilling the cloud and then dropping it back to the ground, covering their tracks.
“Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it, Lily,” Rowan said, teeth clenched as he focused on maintaining control. Sand slipped under the wheels and the ungainly van slid as if on snow.
As Lily quieted the dust, she softened the light hitting the van as well. Without sunlight reflecting off the metal, the tan van blended seamlessly into the tan sand.
Ten minutes, fifteen, half an hour passed, and still there was no sign that they were being followed. They jolted down the path at an arduously slow rate, the axle creaking and the engine growing hotter as the sun climbed in the sky and turned its glaring gaze on the desert.
Lily put her hand on the dashboard and took as much heat from the engine as she could, but there was nothing she could do about the axle if it broke. She fed her mechanics’ willstones with the harvested energy, and as the hours passed the coven grew drunk on strength. When the axle finally gave way with a screech, they were actually relieved to get out of the van and have something to do with all that energy. Lily, however, was not at all happy to have to walk.
She stepped out of the shade of the van and into the sun and felt her fair skin tighten in rebellion. Rowan opened his pack and started stuffing packets of salty chips in it for Lily.
“Keep converting as much of the sun’s energy as you can,” he told her. “That will help. And I have plenty of burn salve for later.”
“Great,” Lily mumbled. She took out a long-sleeved hoodie from her pack and put it on, opting to swelter rather than burn.
Tristan counted the remaining water bottles and glanced at the map. “It’s not bad news, but it isn’t great,” he told Rowan. “We have enough to get us to the next gas station across the dunes, but that would be pushing it.”
“We’ll push it, then,” Rowan said. He didn’t have to remind them that they couldn’t wait a few hours for the sun to set. They had to keep moving.
Rowan took one of the water bottles and shook a combination of herbs into it. “Here,” he said, pulling Lily aside and giving her the spiked water. “It will give you a temporary burst of energy.”
Lily drank it down and felt a jittery lightness quicken her muscles and widen her eyes. The coven set off into the dunes, gliding with unnatural speed over the sand.
Carrick heard the crackle of speech coming through the black device on Simms’s hip and adjusted his uniform to cover the spot of blood on the collar. So many officers had come and gone while Simms plowed on without sleep that she hadn’t noticed when Carrick “replaced” the former occupant of this particular uniform and made himself a fixture at her side.
“A group of teenagers that fit the description was just seen heading toward Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado,” said the disembodied voice. “They had California plates.”
The voice went on to recite the number and letter combination that Carrick had seen on the van. It was Lily’s coven. Somehow Simms’s face lit up with recognition, although she hadn’t seen the plate number as Carrick had.
“That’s them,” she said into the device. “I want them followed, but no one is to approach until I get there.” Simms turned to another officer in plainclothes. “Start the chopper,” she said. Her eyes were dilated and Carrick could smell adrenaline-tinged sweat starting to seep up through her pores, but the other officer balked.
“We’ve gotten a dozen of these calls,” he argued. “Half the high school graduates in the US are taking road trips to the national parks right now. Why don’t we have the locals pull them over and send us pictures for our informant to identify?”
“Abbot, it’s them,” Simms said. “I know it. We’re just wasting time.” Her irrational vehemence only weakened her position in the other officer’s eyes.
The officer sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s been a really long couple of days.”
“It’s them,” Simms promised quietly. “Something’s been wrong with this whole situation right from the start. Strange disappearances. Ritual murders. And now talk of a nuclear weapon. We need to stop them before they do something . . .” Simms trailed off, unable to pinpoint what it was she thought they might do.
“We don’t know it’s even them,” he began.
Simms didn’t stay to hear the rest. She stepped around the other officer and went outside to order the chopper for herself.
“Damn it,” Abbot said, giving in. “Send backup to her location.”
“How much?” another officer asked.
“All of it,” Abbot answered, throwing up his hands.
Carrick followed Simms outside. She was shouting at the helmsman of a small aircraft that had rotary blades on top. The blades seemed to chop the air, and Carrick put two and two together.
“I am in charge here, not Abbot,” Simms was yelling at the helmsman, “and I don’t think I need to remind you that these are terrorists we’re dealing with, and—” She noticed another figure approaching the aircraft. It was Miller, the informant. “What are you doing here?” she shouted at the desperate young man.
“I’m coming with you,” he said. “It’s her, we both know it.” Miller shifted from foot to foot. “I have to come with you.”
Simms looked at Carrick as if noticing him for the first time. “And you?”
“Chief Abbot ordered me to go with you,” he lied smoothly. Carrick looked at the helmsman. “He said we’d better get moving,” he said with the hint of warning that two underlings would use while dealing with petulant superiors.
The helmsman threw up his hands and starting hitting buttons. “Everyone in,” he said.
Carrick jumped up into the back row of the chopper and let Simms take the place in front of him. Not that she noticed him, anyway. Both she and Miller were too intent on being near Lily’s power to care about anything else. Carrick smiled slightly and stared at the back of Simms’s head while the chopper took to the sky.
People always looked the wrong way when they were looking forward to something, he thought.
Lily. Simms has found you. She’s in flight and approaching rapidly with many people in uniform following behind. They heard you discussing Alaric’s bombs and they gave you a special name that has swelled the ranks of your opposition.
What name?
Terrorist.
Lily stopped and looked across the street at the gas station that was just a few hundred yards away, the word still whispering ominously in her head.
“What is it?” Rowan asked.
“Simms found us. She’s close.”
The coven looked down the narrow strip of asphalt until it shimmered in the distance. It was a back road, seldom used. The only car they’d seen on it since they’d emerged from the dunes was a big-rig truck that sped by with a roar and a gust of baked air.
“We need water,” Una said.
Lily swallowed. Tristan watched her with worried eyes. She tried to smile at him, but it hurt her cracked lips. He looked up at the gas station and made a frustrated sound.
“I’m going in,” he said. Rowan’s hand shot out to stop him, but Tristan shook it off. “We won’t make it to the next one. It’s now or never, Ro,” he said. Rowan gave in.
Breakfast sighed and followed Tristan. “I guess someone who’s actually seen American money ought to go with him.”
The rest of the coven stayed on the other side of the road with the dunes behind them. The wind whistled past, snatching moisture from their bodies. The sky was streaked with white clouds that were stretched so thin they only served to turn the blue milky. They had entered the never-ending late afternoon of a summer day—the time of antsy, exasperated waiting for sunset.
The witching hour, someone else whispered inside Lily’s head.
“I swear to Christmas that if he’s in there bullshitting with the cashier . . .” Una let her threat run out.
Breakfast appeared after what felt like an eternal five minutes. He was halfway across the street when Lily saw Tristan’s bright smile as he emerged from the shop. Then she heard the woof-woof-woof of the helicopter.
“Run!” Caleb hollered.
Blue and red lights flashed to the left and the right, both lanes suddenly filled with police cars converging on their location. Breakfast bounded the last few steps across the street to grab Una’s outstretched hands. A helicopter lifted up and over the phalanx of police cars to hover above the coven. The air spilled down on top of their heads like water being poured from above.
Rowan glanced at Lily, a regretful smile on his face. Just over his far shoulder, but separated by distance and bad fortune, was Tristan, stranded on the other side of the road. He knew what she was thinking before she did.
Not him too. Not both of them.
“I’ll protect him. Gift me,” Rowan said, his deep voice penetrating through the din.
Lily called the heat of the desert to her. There was a lifting, like gravity had given up, and for a moment the cars, the police who were running toward them, and even the rocks and dust on the ground, let go of the earth and swam up for the sky. A boom sounded across the barren land and Lily’s witch wind spiraled up in a column as it threw her into the suddenly freezing-cold air. The helicopter gyrated drunkenly to the side in the updraft, and as it listed off, Lily saw the passengers inside as if in tableau.
The pilot wrestled desperately with the stick and didn’t even see Lily floating level with the helicopter. Simms stared at her in a mixture of horror and triumph. Lily recognized Miller, who was utterly terrified, and couldn’t imagine how he’d ended up in the mix. And behind them all was Carrick. The look of hunger he gave Lily stole the breath from her body. She watched him move easily through the cabin, never taking his eyes off her, open the door, and throw himself out of the falling aircraft with the slithering grace of a snake.
The helicopter careened to the ground, narrowly missing the gas station, while Carrick dropped lightly to his knees and rolled smoothly over a shoulder, hitching his stride and flapping the dust off his jacket as he strode forward toward the small army of police that were streaming toward Rowan.
Alone, in the middle of the road, Rowan stood waiting for them. He looked to make sure Tristan had joined the rest of the coven on the dunes, and then looked up at Lily before launching himself at the oncoming tide.
She Gifted him as he leapt into the fray, throwing back her head and shouting with mad joy. Magelight pulsed out of Rowan’s willstone, phosphorus bright. It stunned the officers closest to him and dropped them to their knees as they clutched at their faces to shield their eyes. He hit the second line before they could draw their weapons and wove through their ranks so quickly his progress was only made visible by the trail of unconscious bodies left to slide to the ground behind him.
The third line had their weapons ready by the time he faced them, standing knee deep in a swath of immobile bodies. They fired as one.
The crack of gunfire halted before it could resound across the sand. Lily took the thousands of little explosions into her as jubilantly as the night sky receives fireworks. She Gifted the rest of her coven with the fresh burst of power, and they streamed down the now-frosty dunes like falling stars.
Police cars continued to arrive at both ends of the street until the road looked like a garish river of flashing lights. The gunfire came randomly now, and although Lily was stealing momentum from the bullets as fast as she could, there were some that were starting to slip past her. She couldn’t risk losing any of her claimed. She needed to make them impervious as she had done against the Hive. It was a little thing. One small difference that wasn’t so bad, after all—at least, not compared to death.
Rowan was the only one who felt the difference when Lily invaded his stone and took it over.
No, Lily. What are you doing?
Making you stronger by making myself stronger, she replied. He balked for just one moment more, and then relented.
Lily used their willstones to transmute energy, and with five more loci of power to add to her three, Lily drank a bigger measure of energy than she ever had before. She flooded the bodies of her claimed with so much power even Rowan forgot anything was wrong.
She became They.
They bellowed and screeched with bloodlust, vaulting over the cars in their way to get at the fresh foes behind. It didn’t matter how many They faced. As one, They were unbeatable. Every line but the last fell before Them. They looked down from their throne of air, purring with pleasure, and saw one among themselves who did not belong. He was a sour note that jangled out of tune in Their symphony.
The bubble of ecstasy that surrounded her shattered, and Lily was just herself again.
Carrick was not sparing his opponents. Each officer he faced he killed. Ice flaked in Lily’s blood.
Lillian, you must rein in Carrick. He is killing innocents.
He feels he must kill to protect you, Lillian answered.
He’s lying. He’s only doing it because he likes it.
Lily watched the back ranks of officer as they set up stronger machines of war—rocket, tanks, and high-caliber assault weapons. Carrick would kill them all, and if Lily didn’t stop her coven, they would have no choice but to kill as well.
The officers were signaling to one another. They planned on unleashing all their hardware at the same time, but coordinating their attack would only make Lily stronger. The more power she gathered, the more berserk it made her and her coven.
Rowan saw the firepower arrayed against them and knew what was coming.
Lily, we have to get out of here, he said. Hundreds will die if we don’t. Worldjump us. We can’t make the crossing east in this world with so much against us.
If we go back to your world it will take us months to travel and gather my army, and in that time Lillian’s army will be wiped out by the Hive. Hundreds of thousands will die, Lily argued.
They needed to get east, and they needed to be there now. She had to at least try to jump them. She sent her spirit out to look.
High in the air, Lily could see the face of the land. She saw the sand on top of the bedrock, like wrinkled skin over bones. She sent her spirit out, and let it sink a little deeper to touch the mind behind the face. The land had a pulse—a unique identity that resolved into a low thumping vibration. There was no other place on earth with this exact rhythm, and Lily knew that if she ever wanted to return here all she had to do was replay that rhythm in her willstone to unlock the path. She called her spirit back into her body again.
Lily looked down to see Simms glaring up at her. Blood streaked down her face from a ghastly head wound, but she had not given up. Simms would never give up, no more than Lily would. Simms had said once that she had been raised just a few miles away from Lily in the town of Beverly. Maybe it was something in the land that made them as pigheaded as they were. Maybe that something was a vibration she could key into.
Lily saw the commanding officer raise an arm and scream the word fire. Desperate, she sent her spirit out, grateful now that the burning desert had left her so dangerously dehydrated. She quickly found the Mist, passed through it rather than coasted along it on the raft, and soared into the overworld.
She looked around at what seemed to be a slippery facsimile of the world, more spirit than location. Lily knew she could travel vast distances in a moment, or it could take an infinity for her to take one step. It was a shadowy landscape with an ever-changing map and, like the worldfoam, it was impossible to traverse without some kind of beacon to guide her spirit through it. She thought of her home. She thought of how the cantankerous water pounded ceaselessly at the stubborn rocks of the shore. She thought of the low whistle of the wind and the quiet thrum of the rocky soil. Her spirit arrived there in a single step.
In spirit, Lily could easily feel the vibration of the land. She wasn’t surprised to learn that she had known it all along. It was in her blood, more than skin deep. She called her spirit back and it rejoined her suspended form in an instant.
The bright wall of fire arrived just as Lily played the vibration of her particular Salem in her willstone, and with the ocean of energy her opponent unwittingly gave her, she gathered up her coven and jumped them across the continent.
Carrick picked his head up from the carnage long enough to realize that every person in a uniform was running away. That could only mean one thing. They were going to attempt a massive salvo to end the conflict, which would make Lily stronger, but not Lillian. Lillian wasn’t present to harvest the energy.
Lady, I need more strength, he called to his witch.
I can’t help you anymore, Carrick, Lillian replied, exhausted. I suggest you run.
During the fighting, Carrick had somehow worked his way back to where he had started and found himself near the wreckage of the helicopter. He leapt behind it for some cover and felt himself being pulled down.
“Hold him,” Simms barked.
Miller and the helmsman wrestled Carrick to the ground just as he felt the last of Lillian’s strength bleed out of him. The helmsman pulled a pistol from a holster on his hip and pointed it at Carrick, ending the struggle. Carrick sat back and showed them his hands. They were covered in blood.
Simms stood and looked up at Lily, who was soaring above the battle, her arms flung wide and her delicate feet dangling.
“I’d duck if I were you,” Carrick warned.
A second later a roar erupted from the back of the police barricade . . . and was silenced. The flash of the salvo fell back onto itself just as the sound did. Then, in the absence of noise, thunks and pings could be heard as the projectiles that had been launched at Lily simply fell out of the air—robbed of their momentum. There was a great whooshing sound, as if the wind were inhaling, and then Lily and her coven vanished.
Silence. For a moment, everyone present just stared, and then the moans of the injured and the gasps of the amazed started to swell up in a clamor. Simms turned on Carrick and crouched down in front of him. She was pale under the wash of gore down her face.
“You’re going to explain this to me,” she said, her voice quiet and shaking. “And after you explain, you’re going to tell me where she went and how to capture her.”
Carrick narrowed his eyes at her. “Tell me why I should.”
Simms gestured at the helmsman, and he cocked his pistol. “You aren’t going to be arrested or put on trial. There’ll be no jail cells or opportunities for you to vanish into thin air like the rest of them did. You’ll just die right here, right now,” she promised. “Or you can explain.”
Carrick smiled at her appreciatively. “This universe doesn’t suit you. But I know one that does,” he told her, and then began.