By the time the three of us had navigated the mines and the stone forest, rain began pouring. Jack pulled up the hood of his jacket. Without a glance back at me, he spurred his horse, setting a punishing pace.
As I followed, I wondered what we would encounter out on the road? Or when we faced the twins?
And how was I going to keep Aric and Jack from killing each other?
Jack was my boyfriend—maybe. If he hadn’t washed his hands of me for being hitched to Death, and if I could figure out how to trust him.
Aric was my lethal “husband”—a master manipulator, one who clearly had a trick up his sleeve.
Me, Jack, and Death on a mission.
What could possibly go wrong?
23
Our journey’s first stumbling block on the slaver route was like a macabre brainteaser.
One: a narrow dirt road is carpeted with layers of bloated corpses. Two: they died from drowning. Three: there are no rivers or lakes nearby.
After several hours of hauling ass, we’d stopped at the edge of the bodies. The rain had eased to a drizzle, the temperature dropping. That bizarre A.F. fog enveloped us, distorting ambient sounds and cloaking our way. “What happened here?” I’d thought I would welcome any chance to take a break. My migraine worsened with every mile, and I’d lost sensation in my limbs.
“Dam went out,” Jack said, without a glance in my direction. “Carried the dead down the ravine for miles and miles.”
Most of the victims were older men. Apparently, they’d managed to avoid slavers and the plague, then got wiped out by something they’d never seen coming—and couldn’t fight against.
We might be goan extinct.
Aric lifted his visor, revealing his glorious face. “I’ve seen this in other places. Catastrophic dam failure. The drought cracked the dams, and now we have nonstop rains. No one’s manning the plants, no one’s discharging overflows.”
“So this will keep happening.” A new post-apocalypse reality. “Why are the bodies laid out like this?” They formed a nearly level rise a couple of feet high and a hundred feet long, spanning the sides of the ravine.
“They’re probably lining much of this section of road.” Aric ran his gloved hand over Thanatos’s neck. “I suspect they’ve been here for weeks, entombed in silt, gradually uncovered by rain. We could be riding over others beneath this very layer of soil.”
Chilling. “We have to go across the exposed ones?” I didn’t see any way around it.
He nodded. “And it’s trickier than one would think. Corpses can roll unpredictably. Their skin is slippery and rotted. Sometimes the dead clutch things to them, like packs and weapons. Just follow me, and Thanatos will establish a track.” His massive warhorse had sharpened hooves. This ought to be interesting. And by interesting, I meant vomit-inducing.
Jack looked annoyed, no doubt thinking I should have stayed at the fort. He’d once told me that he kept his eye on me to monitor how I was doing because I never complained. But Aric was right; Jack could scarcely glance my way.
In contrast, I found Aric’s eyes on me again and again. And as much as he’d been watching me, he’d been studying Jack.
Earlier, when we’d been forced to slow on a washed-out mountain pass, Jack had finally snapped, “What the hell are you looking at?”
“Something about you is not right.”
“You got a lot of nerve to be saying that about me, Grim Reaper.”
There’d been a couple of other tense exchanges between the two. But for the most part, they’d behaved.
Jack spurred his mount forward over the corpses at a brisk pace. His horse’s hooves ruptured carcasses, sending slushy remains squelching into the air. Bones cracked.
Crack, squelch, crack.
“Just follow my lead, Empress.” Aric started across. Thanatos’s immense weight compacted bodies. Chest cavities and skulls disintegrated under its hooves.
Crack, squelch, crack.
Driving a car over a corpse was one thing, but this . . .
I rolled my head on my neck, then urged my mare forward to pick her way through Thanatos’s gory wake. I really needed to give this poor horse a name. She high-stepped, as if saying “ick, ick” with every hoof fall.
Ahead of me, Death suddenly gripped a sword hilt. Thanatos grew agitated, braided tail flicking.
“What is it?” I called. “Did you hear something?” Over the sounds of our headway?
Jack reined around. Crack, squelch, crack. “Why you slowing down, Reaper?”
“There’s a threat nearby.”
“What direction?” Jack swept his gaze, crossbow ready.
“Even with my uncanny senses, I can’t pinpoint it.” Death surveyed the area with a cool glance. “I doubt anyone could in this fog.”
“Probably just Baggers.” Jack slung his bow back over his shoulder. “Hell, maybe nothing’s out there, and you’re stalling us on purpose.”
“Again, feel free to move on.”
“For all I know, you could be allied with the Lovers, you. All the other Arcana worked together against them. But you showed up a day after.” Jack started forward.
Aric rode up beside him. Crack, squelch, crack. Our gruesome soundtrack seemed to be ratcheting up their tempers. “Perhaps I am merely vigilant when taking the Empress over corpses cloaked in preternatural fog. Do you not have any combat sense?”
“We’re on a clock.”
“Ah. So to rescue the girl you presently favor, you would risk the one you used to favor. You might have a spare female, but I’m intent on keeping the one I have.”
“You stirring up shit? It woan work.”
“To save your precious Archer, you’re leading the Empress of all Arcana on a treacherous journey directly to the Lovers—despite the fact that fate marked her. Still you press onward.”
“It was coo-yôn who told us to ride out together—in order to save Evie!”
“The Fool didn’t say to do it recklessly. He didn’t say to sacrifice one female for the other. I value the Empress above all things. Just as you do the Archer.”
Crack, squelch, crack.
“You doan know what you’re talking about.”
I muttered, “Back here, guys. Falling farther behind you.” I’d only made it about halfway through. Wait . . . Had the bodies beneath me just moved?
No, no. Of course not.
Aric kept at Jack. “You’ve made a life with Selena. Sharing meals, missions, victory celebrations. The king and queen of Fort Arcana, the hunter and his huntress.”