Selena snapped, “Or maybe you didn’t miss it—how do we know you’re not working with the Hierophant?”
“Don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Archer, but my happy ass is running right alongside yours, straight into that canyon. And I’ve got twelve paws to be concerned about down there.”
The tree trunks thinned out, the ground turning gravelly. In the distance, gunshots grew sporadic. Truck engines revved as the Teeth began rolling out.
Finn jerked his head around. “They’re coming!” I’d never seen him look so terrified.
“Through there,” Lark called, pointing to the looming canyon.
The rock walls were sheer, about four stories high, the width between them no more than a two-lane highway.
Jack stopped at the entrance, cupping my face. “Stick to me like a shadow, you.” How many times had he told me that?
“I regenerate. I need to go first!”
Dafuq. “You’re goan to stay behind me and step where I step. Same for you, coo-yôn. This ain’t up for discussion!”
“The wolves can go first,” Lark said, concern in her eyes. “They should take the lead.”
Jack raised his brows. “Mais yeah!” For sure. “Send ’em through!”
The trio started forward swiftly. They were difficult to see, blending with the dark. Jack rushed to catch up with them, dragging me behind him, while I yanked on Matthew.
Within the walls, it was even darker. Sound was amplified, the rainfall deafening. I could barely hear the others trailing behind us.
Ten minutes passed, twenty. How much farther could it be? Terror in the rain, Matto? When would it end?
“Hang on, bébé. Not too much longer—”
A scream sounded over the din.
“Ahhh, my leg!”
We whirled around, saw Finn collapsing to his back, a bear trap biting into his right calf. Blood poured.
“Finn!”
As he screamed, his illusions began to flash erratically all around us—day to night, the mountainside he’d created.
Jack rushed back, dropping to his knees, grappling with the metal jaws. The muscles in his neck bulged as he wedged the rusted jaws a couple of inches wider, but they slammed back shut.
Finn screamed again, his eyes rolling back in his head as he passed out.
“I can cut through it!” I called.
“You and coo-yôn doan move a goddamned inch! Look at that boulder, Evie!” He jerked his chin at a nearby rock.
I could see where that trap was attached by a chain to an anchored bolt. I could also see several other bolts and disguised chains leading to still-hidden traps.
We were surrounded by them. Selena, Lark, and Matthew froze. I started sweating in the rain.
Jack used his crossbow to wedge open the jaws, freeing Finn at last. Then he reeled in the chain of the trap, throwing it like a lasso onto the ground between me and him. One trap snapped, leaping off the ground. Another.
He turned behind him, doing the same for Lark and Selena. “There could still be more,” he said as he hefted Finn over his shoulder. “And watch your six for Teeth!”
We’d just started forward when bullets began to rain down.
Lark cried, “They’re above us on the canyon walls!”
“Move your ass, Evie!” Jack yelled as he came storming toward me, Finn secured in a fireman’s carry. The wolves waited until we’d started moving once more.
Bullets pelted the ground around us, but the men were careful not to hit us—
One of the wolves stumbled. Immediately, I heard a thick whizzing sound. A tree trunk hurtled through the air, a battle ram swinging from a height right toward the wolves. Jack lobbed Finn at me, knocking me and Matthew over like dominos—just as the trunk hit a wolf.
Impact. The creature came flying back at us, its great body colliding with Jack. They were both hurled into the air, careening over where we lay. I screamed as they landed, twisting over on my stomach to keep him in sight.
The wolf scrambled up, unharmed, revealing Jack’s limp body, his head bashed against a rock. He was unconscious, blood streaming.
As bullets continued to ping, I untangled myself from Finn and Matthew and crawled to Jack. “Please wake up. Oh, God, please, Jack!”
Behind me, Matthew sat rocking, muttering incoherently. “The three, the three. . . .”
Selena sprinted for me, Lark behind her. “The Teeth are coming down the canyon behind us!”
Fangs bared, Lark’s wolves charged back to attack. Machine-gun fire rang out. Whimpers, howls. Then the wolves went quiet.
The last one limped back to its mistress, falling dead at Lark’s feet, twitching. She stared down with parted lips. Shock.
Selena grabbed my arm. “We need to run, Evie!”
Run? Jack and Finn were unconscious. “Never! I’m not leaving them.”
“You’re going to get them killed! We run and draw the fire.” Though the bastards weren’t aiming at us, bullets were ricocheting right above our heads. “We can break the guys out later, just like J.D. and I did with the militia.”
What she said made sense, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave Jack. “Wake up, Jack! Please wake up!”
Spotlights flared down, blinding us. By the time my eyes adjusted, we were surrounded, armed cannibals spilling out of a nearby trap door in the ground.
Like ants.
17
Hell was a cannibal mine, and its entrance was just as we expected—torchlit, foggy, littered with bones.
Ten guards surrounded us, forcing us closer. They had spiky teeth and sickly skin. Their bodies were gaunt, starving.
Each had milky white, clouded eyes, a sign of the Hierophant’s enthrallment.
Seven of the men leveled rifles at Selena, Lark, Matthew, and me, even though we were bound, stripped of gear and weapons.
Neither Jack nor Finn had awakened, filling me with even more panic. One guard dragged Finn by an ankle. Two more hauled Jack by his arms. Matthew seemed not to register any of this, just kept murmuring, “The three. Water. The three.”
With dread, I realized the Hierophant’s call was getting louder. “He’s down there,” I whispered to Selena.
She nodded, her eyes a little wild. “Just stay calm. Your glyphs are dark. Every second we can survive, you recharge from the Bagger attack.”
“Recharge? In a mine?” My stomach roiled, my steps halting. I glanced over my shoulder, saw Lark’s eyes fill with tears. She was too young for this. We were all too young. She’d lost her beloved wolves, and we’d still been captured.
At the threshold, the lead guard collected a torch. His filed teeth were blackened. Like the others, his eyes were clouded. Sores bubbled around his lips, pus glistening in the firelight. His mouth looked like one you’d see on a meth addict’s mug shot. Meth-mouth.
On the long and jarring truck ride here, he’d lamented that he and his men couldn’t eat one of our “boys” for the road; they were starving, you see. But they obeyed the boss absolutely.
As we stepped into their underground lair, panic took root. Only my concern for the others kept me from resisting. My empty claws ached to sink into flesh.
Our captors forced us to descend deeper. Human bones and skulls were strewn throughout the mine. Rainwater seeped from the rock walls, gathering in streams at the sides of the shaft; it frothed over those bones, snagging them, tumbling them ever lower.
Oh, God, the stench was unimaginable—rot, mold, decomposition. I couldn’t get enough air, as if my lungs were constricting.
Selena said, “Easy, girl, we’ll get out of this.” But with every step deeper, she started to look as freaked out as I was.
Farther in, men were digging ditches to divert the water. From what?
Meth-mouth informed us, “Your arrival came at a perfect time. We were gettin’ mighty low on stores.” On bodies. “Just been nibbling here and there.”
Nibbling? I shuddered.
“We’ve about done starved, you see. Been conserving—but no longer! Tonight we’re gonna celebrate our catch with a feast from the pantry.”
Pantry?
“Why don’t you eat your own fallen?” Selena said with hardly a tremble.
“We’d never eat one of our own,” he said, adding ruefully, “no tougher meat than a cannibal’s.”
They all laughed like this was one of those everyday, regrettable truths, as if he’d just said, “Toast always lands butter-side down.”
When he saw me staring at his filed teeth, he snapped them at me. “The better to eat you with, my pretty.”
Their cackles echoed off the walls.
I tasted blood, realized I’d been biting the inside of my cheek. I was almost glad Jack was knocked out rather than have him witness this.
We entered what looked like their central gathering hub, a cavern that split into more shafts, like the spokes of a wheel. Too few wall torches fought with the dark. Dirty faces peered out from the shadows. Some smiled with excitement, flashing those eerie teeth.
The area was shaped like an amphitheater. The highest level was a raised dais, with a thronelike chair and a bloodstained dining table. A second level had tables and benches, the ground littered with more bones. In the center of the cavern was a depression that looked as if it were filled with oil. But when I saw meat hooks dangling from the high ceiling, I realized the oil was . . . blood.
I gazed around at the people impatiently waiting for a body to be hung there. They don’t even grill. My skin crawled, the hair on my nape standing up.
We passed a dug-out room filled with piles of clothes and packs. No, not piles, hills. The Teeth must’ve captured an entire town’s worth of people. Two of the guards chucked our things—bug-out bags, weapons, coats—in there as well.
Selena was gazing longingly at her beloved bow when I muttered, “Be on the watch for the Hierophant. And be careful not to look him in the eye, or you’ll end up like these people.”
She nodded.
The guards steered us into one of those split-off shafts, a murkier corridor. The ceiling was lower, the air colder and more ominous.
The end of the shaft had been remodeled as a jail with iron bars—and plenty of shackles, just like in Arthur’s dungeon. A single torch burned outside, casting flickering shadows over the occupants within.
“Welcome to the pantry,” Meth-mouth said as he and his men forced us inside.
Six prisoners were already fettered, all in various stages of starvation—and mutilation. They were “the stores” the Teeth had been conserving, the ones they’d been nibbling on.
The guards began chaining us throughout the cell, wherever there was a free set of shackles.
I wanted to fight. Needed to. There’s a heat in battle. The Empress didn’t get chained!
As if Selena could tell what I was thinking, she muttered, “This isn’t the time, Evie.”
She was right. There were too many people in this small area. Even if I could disperse spores, I might kill everyone. If I slashed at the guards with my empty claws, the other men would sound the alarm before I could stop them. Jack and Finn remained unconscious, unable to run—Finn couldn’t even if he woke up.
For these reasons, I would wait, but also because my overarching strategy had just changed. In this game, I planned to kill Death—and the Hierophant. My claws tingled at the thought, my poison beginning to renew. I just needed to find him.
I had a feeling he’d soon come to see his catch, but not until we were contained.
Meth-mouth shackled Selena himself, saying, “Prettiest breeders I ever did see.” Spittle bubbled up on his blistered lips. “Don’t you worry—you won’t go on the hooks for a long, long time.”
Matthew stared blankly as he was chained. He’d checked out, and considering our circumstances, I didn’t blame him.
Jack roused just as his wrist cuffs clicked shut. Blood streaming down his face, he lunged for the guard, who laughed.
When Jack and I shared a look, I tried not to reveal how on edge I was.
The men must’ve considered Lark and me to be minimal threats; we were the only ones with a single ankle cuff.
They think we’re helpless girls. I might’ve laughed. Worst mistake of their lives.
As the guards filed out, Meth-mouth pointed to the prisoner closest to me. “You’re on the hooks as soon as we gather the flock.”
The prisoner whimpered at this news. Dressed in rags, he had no limbs, just cauterized, oozing stumps where his legs and arms should be.
“See you in ten.” As they returned to their hub, the guards’ laughter echoed down the mine.
I almost vomited, but choked it back.
The doomed man was in shock, feverish, his eyes glassy. Between chapped lips, he rasped, “T-ten minutes, then.”
The other captives murmured phrases of sympathy to him—because he was about to be eaten. They called him Tad.
Jack grated, “Evie, did they hurt you?”
I shook my head. “Finn’s the worst off.” The wide, bloody holes on his pants leg revealed gouged-out skin. But I didn’t think the bone had snapped. Surely he’d wake soon.
“We’re goan to get out of here. Doan you worry.”
Tad turned those desperate eyes—to me. “Please, h-help me. Can you reach me? They don’t waste a bullet first.”
Finn had said that the cannibals fed on the living. I don’t think I’d quite believed it until tonight. I’d once seen a deer being cleaned, the gutting. For Tad to go through that while conscious . . .
But how could I help him? “We’re going to escape. Just hang on.” Hang on? I bit my lip. Stupid Evie, he doesn’t have arms!
Selena rolled her eyes at me, and I deserved worse.
“Finn, wake up!” With his illusions we could escape. He would make us invisible. The guards would open the cell door, see no one inside, then dash off to recapture us. I would use my claws to sever the chains. We’d stroll out of here.