I ran farther and harder, the distance of the shadowstep taking its toll on me, but I didn’t care. I needed to know. My lungs fought for more of the Dark Room’s dead, thin air, and when I couldn’t take it anymore, I stumbled out into reality, my foot catching on the grassy ground as I emerged in a cool, damp clearing just outside of town.
There were fires, everywhere, and just as many people running around to put them out. But as I watched, the roar and crackle of flame playing as the orchestra to the screams of the townspeople, I realized with stark horror that each of the flames was moving. Running.
Every flame was a human being, flailing and screaming. Each one was a candle that Agatha Black had set alight with her magic. And every last one of them was burning alive.
Chapter 17
The countryside was cool, the air sweet with the smell of lush grass. I sat on the side of a hill, by rights in a perfect place to relax, to take in the quiet rush of wind through the trees, of a clear night lit by a canopy of stars.
But inside, my body was screaming.
Mercifully, the fires had ended. Royce and the others arrived in time, doing what they could to help the victims of Agatha’s flames, but even Romira’s mastery of pyromancy could do nothing to reverse the intensity of the fires the witch had created. There were, in short, no survivors, only piles of ash and blackened skeletons.
We hauled our asses away just as we heard the first siren. We couldn’t very well hang around inside town. This was the modern day, far, far away from a time when people would be condemned to the stake as witches. But when the appearance of unfamiliar foreign faces coincides with the spontaneous combustion of dozens of locals, it behooves those strange faces to flee the scene as soon as humanly possible.
Far below us, down at the foot of the hill, the city was bathed in the red and blue of sirens, emergency services doing their damnedest best to help where they could. I shook my head mournfully. Those people didn’t need paramedics and police. No one could help them. Send a hearse instead.
My insides clenched with the sobering reality of once again coming to terms with the lioness’s power. What, if anything, could we have possibly done to stop her?
“There was nothing we could do.”
Bastion sighed as he slumped onto the grass next to me. Even with the distance the pulse of his body was warm from exertion. It was comforting to have something human nearby.
“You read my mind,” I sighed. “I don’t even know what we’re supposed to do now.”
Bastion shook his head. His fingers dug into the earth, clawing and pulling at tufts of grass, his knuckles white, his hand shaking.
“We find her,” he said. “We kill her. All thirteen of her.”
“Easier said than done.”
“We don’t have a choice,” he said coldly. “We do something – anything. We fight. I knew there would be casualties along the way, but – not like this.”
I placed my hand on the back of his. I didn’t know what else to do. Bastion stiffened, but he didn’t draw away.
“We’re just sitting here loudly agreeing with each other,” I said, “when we both know the answer. We have to suck it up and carry on. What the hell else can we do? It’s not like we can just give up.”
>
He nodded, his hand sliding up to squeeze mine briefly, quickly across the wrist. Then he retrieved it, folding his hands in his lap. I only really remembered myself then, that a gesture I would have used with a friend was suddenly so different, so accidentally meaningful with someone like Bastion. But again, I thought, who was he to me, anyway?
“I never even once imagined that the trip to find Durandal would end this way.”
I looked up at the sound of Herald’s voice. His glasses glowed blue, then red, then white, alternately reflecting the sirens and the stars. On instinct, my hand flitted as far away from Bastion as possible, slipping into my pocket as Herald sat to my other side to join us.
Bastion sighed. “You and me both. But we do what we gotta do. Regroup, and figure this out.”
Herald leaned lightly against me, the back of his hand brushing against my thigh. Even through the denim of my jeans, it felt warm, familiar, and correct.
“I hate to put it this way because it’s so stupid and cheesy, but the world is counting on us,” Herald said. “They don’t know it at all, but they are.”
“Speaking of which,” Bastion said. “I should go join the others. It’s not a good look for the Lorica that I’m not over there with them.”
He clambered to his feet, brushing off the back of his jeans, even though it was too dark for anyone to find grass stains there anyway. Just Bastion being Bastion. I followed his figure as he walked off to the other end of the hill, joining Royce, Romira, Prudence, and – the others.
The Boneyard boys, mainly Mason, Asher, and Sterling, had kept to their own little huddle, sitting not too far from me and Herald on their own little patch of grass, speaking to each other in hushed tones. Sterling kept to himself in silence, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Near them, splayed out in the grass, was Gil in his human form, gently snoring.
But the others, the Lorica people – I didn’t envy them. They had business to attend to.