I WAS ALREADY ON THE floor, the blinds falling, glass shattering around my head. Lake was shrieking something. Naomi. I had to get to Naomi. Heart racing, I pulled myself up to my knees swiftly, keeping myself low to avoid the next barrage of bullets. Carefully, painfully, I crawled on my knees atop the broken glass until I reached Naomi’s twitching body. One in the shoulder. Two in the chest. Her eyes were fluttering, rolling to the back of her head.
I scooped her up and made a run for it. My heart pounded in my ears as I tried to stop myself from slipping on the ice. I managed to get past the couch just as a group of men in pitch-black strike-team gear swung through the broken windows from ropes.
As she crouched on the ground, Belle melted the ice wall closing off the hallway with a sweep of her hand. Naomi’s bodyguards, James and Rosa, ran into the room shooting.
“Give her to me!” Rosa said, diving to the ground.
James ran past me, still shooting, just as I felt a bullet pierce my leg. Screaming out in pain, I doubled over and nearly dropped Naomi, but Rosa caught both of us.
The shots and yells pounded my senses. My head screaming, I turned and saw Chae Rin grabbing a soldier’s gun and swiveling it around so it could shoot one of his comrades instead. Lake blew a group of them away with a torrent of wind as Belle sliced across a man’s chest with her sword, melting the ice around the living room to make it easier to move.
Rosa pulled me into the hallway. “Are they Sect?” I grunted in pain as I passed Naomi to her, the weight of her body lifting a bit of pressure off my bleeding leg.
“I can’t tell,” she answered. “Those aren’t Sect uniforms.”
They covered their faces with helmets, like police in riot gear. Black fatigues. Concealed identities.
“We did a perimeter sweep and even checked the room for bugs,” Rosa said. “We weren’t followed. Nobody could have known Naomi would be here. How did they find us?”
The Sect knew we’d be in Prague, but they didn’t know we were meeting Naomi, not even Rhys. And yet Naomi was clearly the target. They’d wasted no time taking her down.
Whoever they were, it was Naomi they wanted dead. And they’d come prepared. The assailants were down, but it wasn’t the end. One last attacker, before he fell, threw a metal ball across the room. It landed hard against the wet floor before I realized Belle was yelling at us to run.
A few seconds of silence, of shoes splashing and scrambling across the ground. The explosion that followed was just big enough to take out the living room. Belle’s warning and the others’ quick senses had saved them; they jumped with the blast, diving to the ground and avoiding the worst of it. Everyone made it out of the living room and into the entrance hallway safely, though Lake’s head was bleeding badly. She still clung to her knapsack’s strap as she sat against the wall we’d found shelter behind.
“Ugh . . .” My ears hadn’t stopped ringing. I could hear screaming and commotion on the other side of the door in front of us. “What do we do?” Getting on my knees, I pressed my hands down on Naomi’s chest, but the blood was swelling up too much. “We have to get her to a hospital.”
“No,” Belle said.
“She’s dying,” I yelled, staring at her incredulously.
“She needs medical attention, but we can’t be seen here,” she clarified. “It’ll raise too many questions. And it’ll make it harder for us to move.”
“Belle’s right,” said Chae Rin. “Whether they were Sect or not, they obviously wanted to kill Naomi before she could tell us anything important. If that doesn’t say we’re on the right track, I don’t know what else could.” Breathing heavily, she stared at Naomi, wincing from the sight of her quivering in her bodyguard’s arms. “Best thing we can do now is get to Prague before they do. But like Belle said, we can’t be seen here.”
Belle stood. “We can leave quickly. Cover our faces. But we have to find another way out of the city. We can’t take the jet that brought us here. The Sect will never let us stray from their sight the moment they find us.”
“No, you can’t.” Naomi’s second bodyguard, James, stood, his left arm bleeding from a gunshot wound. “But I can fly you out on the helicopter I used to bring Mrs. Prince here.”
“What about Naomi?” I said.
“There’re two of us,” he said, flicking his head toward his partner. “Rosa will get Mrs. Prince to the hospital.”
We didn’t have another choice, and time was running out. I took one last look at Rhys’s mother dying in Rosa’s arms before tearing myself away, my lips concealing a sob as we ran through the front door and into the chaos of bodies in the hallway.
• • •
Everyone was too busy fleeing for their lives to notice that there were four Effigies among them. We kept our heads low, navigating down the stairs and through the emergency exit with the rest. Cop cars already lined the street. James took us around the back of the building, through the narrow alleyways until we came to the car he’d driven Naomi in.
“Get in,” he said quickly, and we did. Lake was moaning beside me, still dizzy from the blast. I tore off my sleeve and made a bandage out of it, tying it around her head as we zipped through the streets. The helicopter he’d flown Naomi in was at a private heliport at the edge of the city. Fully fueled. We hopped inside and strapped ourselves in.
“EMA activated,” came the feminine voice from somewhere inside my headset. The ringing in my ears got worse as the helicopter lifted off, as the gravity shifted around me. This would usually be around the time when I wanted to throw up. But my body had become so numb, I could barely feel the helicopter rocking from the turbulence. I let my head sink back against the chair.
I was squished between Lake and Chae Rin, with Belle in the front next to James. Lake was sleeping; her head dangled awkwardly as her languid body leaned forward against her seat belt. Her neck looked like it was going to break off, so I pushed her back up against the seat and positioned her head properly against it before settling back into my own stupor.
“No way this thing can take us all the way to Prague,” Chae Rin said, though with the intense helicopter noise, I could only really listen to her voice through the headset.
“We’ll need to refuel en route,” James said. “I know it’s not as ideal as taking the Sect jet, but it’s faster than driving and less easily followed.”
“Thank you for helping us,” I said. My sleeveless arm was chilly, but we’d left our suitcases at the rooftop bar. Lake was the only one who’d had the sense to take her knapsack with her. All my clothes were back in Madrid.
“It’s what Mrs. Prince wanted. . . .” James’s voice tapered out as the question no one wanted to ask hung in the air. Rosa must have gotten Naomi to a hospital by now. I had to believe that. But when I closed my eyes, I pictured the look of devastation on Rhys’s face and my fingers curled on my lap.
“They’re going to know we had something to do with it,” I said. “They knew we were in the city when it happened. Then we suddenly disappear without telling anyone?”
“And they’ll track us.” I could see the knit in Belle’s eyebrows as she looked out the window. “We need to work quickly.” She looked at James. “And rely on whomever we can trust.”
There had to be a way to mask our frequencies like Saul could. If the Sect could just track us wherever we went, what would be the point? We didn’t know for sure who’d attacked us in Naomi’s apartment, but it had to be them. If they caught us, even if they didn’t kill us, best-case scenario would be that they’d lock us up and question us over Naomi’s attempted murder. Considering Saul was working on a timetable, both options were inconvenient.
We flew in silence, each of us lost in the dark of our thoughts. We were out of the comfort of the APD tower protecting Madrid and the satellite cities. We were low enough in altitude for me to see a Spanish mountain range. Darkened earth covered in thin sheets of snow at the highest peaks, everything blanketed in night. Even in the dark, I could see something shifting and scuttling across the rocky domain, too fast to be human. Phantoms. It’d be impossible to describe them; it was too dark and we were too high. But there were enough of the tiny specks climbing up the rock for me to feel their menace.
“Dead Zone,” I said as we flew over them. “Down below.”
“From what I know, some of these mountains are protected by the mining industry,” James said. “But there’s one prominent barrier to expanding their territo—”
His word cut off with a grunt as the helicopter began to struggle with turbulence.
Or maybe it wasn’t turbulence.
I could see it out of the window to my right: the beginnings of a snarl forming out of the cloud in front of us. The white mist shivered and sank into a gaping hole, black as the night around us; round, soulless eyes shimmered bright like white jewels as the rest of the phantom’s face shook itself free from the cloud. A demon snout, black steam smoking through its long, jagged jaws and off its scaly, leathery hide. A single horn stretched back from the crown of its head. This one had wings, tiny ones, on its back, and short little arms that dangled uselessly from its torso. Its long tail flitted behind it as it began slipping through the air toward us.
“It’s okay,” said James, though he clearly looked more spooked than we did. “Our electromagnetic armor is still operational.”
“Better be,” Chae Rin whispered as the phantom swooped under the helicopter and then curved itself around until its long, spindly body was parallel with us. For an uncomfortable few minutes, it followed beside us. My eyes tracked its body’s mesmerizing undulations, its form silhouetted in the night. It was shadowing us like a faithful pet, waiting for its chance.
Four more descended from the sky and sank below us; they were making their way toward the mountains instead. Something else had caught their attention.
I gasped and held my seat belt to keep myself stable from the sudden convulsions of the helicopter.
“Ugh,” James grunted. There really was turbulence. “Hold on.” He gripped his controls even tighter. The helicopter shook so violently, Lake shuddered awake. “Just let me get this under control.”
He didn’t get the chance. Two shots were fired from below, and they were too close for comfort. The helicopter swerved dangerously, tilting us over with a violent jerk. I held on to my seat belt for dear life, my body half raised out of my seat as James tried to get the helicopter level.
“What’s happening?” I screamed. “What was that?”
James shook his head, his jaws clenched. “I don’t know!”
Belle was trying to see where the shots had come from, but soon another two rang out. The haunting, whalelike cries of a phantom pierced the air as one of the bright flares blasted into the sky in front of the cockpit.
“It got hit!” Chae Rin looked out her window, eyes wide as the phantom that had been following alongside us barreled high into the sky, screeching with agitation, its tail burned off. “The phantom! The phantoms are being attacked, not us!”
But we were, even if not intentionally. Just as one blast shot off the head of a phantom, another one blasted off the helicopter’s tail rotor. The helicopter shuddered and shrieked out its warning, the loud, dull sound bleating against my eardrums. We were going down.
James was clicking buttons desperately, but we were spinning out of control too quickly.
Gulping in air with short, desperate inhales, I grabbed Lake. “Get us out of here!”
Lake could barely breathe; she tried lifting her arms up to still the air, but that required concentration she didn’t have with the helicopter flinging out of control.
“Jump!” she screamed. “Jump now!” Grabbing her bag, she started unbuckling her seat belt. “Trust me!”
There was no time for debate. Belle pulled a petrified James out with her into the night, Chae Rin, Lake, and I following close behind. Holding my breath, I plummeted through the sky, the cold wind biting my skin. Below us, two halves of a smoking, bloodied phantom crashed into the mountainside, but I was too far up to see who’d hit them.
Another phantom went down with a well-aimed shot, but there were more circling back toward us with gaping jaws. Belle and I attacked at the same time, one phantom bursting into flames and the other falling back down to the earth, encapsulated in ice. The wind rushed past my ears as I continued to fall to the mountainside.
“Lake!” I heard Chae Rin scream, but we were already starting to slow down. The wind rushed up to meet me but softened to a caress as it pillowed my body. The farther we descended, the clearer the figures below became. For the first time, I could see the people who’d killed the phantoms. There were three of them bundled up in thick jackets and climbing boots: a woman and two men—no, not two men, but one man and one kid. I couldn’t see their faces properly, but I did see the smoking barrels of their giant, body-length guns flashing with blue electricity.
Guns aimed at us.
“Stop!” I cried, but they weren’t looking at us. One last phantom. I could hear its screeching drawing closer to us from above. Our feet touched the ground just as two more shots were fired, but they both missed their target. Belle already had her sword out, but it was Chae Rin who rushed forward and, leaping, caught the phantom’s thick neck in her arms with her incredible strength. It pushed her back, but as she slid across the rocky terrain, she held the phantom’s gaping jaw in place. With her magic, the earth caved in and snatched the phantom’s tail, pulling him in like a sinkhole. She had to let go of its snapping jaw and jump out of the way so that the stone and soil could do their work, swallowing it up and crushing its body. By the time the earth had finished shifting, the phantom’s horn was all that was left peeking out of the soil. Chae Rin kicked it off.
That’s when I heard the click behind my head.
“Who are you?” a female voice, deeply inflected with a Spanish accent, rumbled in a low and throaty tone as the gun pressed against the back of my head.
“I thought that would be obvious,” I answered coolly, even as I raised my hands in the air. “Seeing as we just smoked a few phantoms for you.”
“Abril, enough,” said the man to my right. His face was hidden behind a blue scarf, but from his Scottish-inflected voice I could tell he was young, maybe a bit older than us. I recognized the huge, long-range weapon he’d used to fire at the phantoms in the sky. The metal covering, the electric blue bars that slid up the sides as it powered up—it was the same weapon Howard had used to fight off the phantoms in New York. A Sect weapon. The design was exactly the same.
The man rested it against the ground while his hands fumbled in his bag, searching for something. He took out a metal stick that, when he tugged at it, stretched out in new sections. “We need to set up protection or we’ll get eaten out here. Put your gun down. This isn’t over.”
He was right. I could feel the rumbling beneath my feet.
“They’re coming!”
The kid. He’d pulled his scarf down long enough for me to see his olive-skinned face before he turned around again and aimed his weapon at the mountain peaks. Several phantoms, as black, rotted, and smoking as the rest, crawled over the hills on thin, towering spider legs. They were moving too rapidly toward us, even despite the weight of their giant, cicada-like torsos.
I batted Abril’s gun away with my hand, and though her face was covered with a red scarf and a thick hood, I could see her eyes rounding in fear at the sight of the phantoms. Shoving her gun back into her holster, she dove for her Sect weapon on the ground.
As big as the phantoms were, they were fast enough to dodge the blasts, scuttling back and forth. The kid jumped out of the way, narrowly avoiding the sharp edge of a phantom’s leg as they came for us.
One leapt out from behind us so quickly, Lake and James didn’t have time to react. Lake screamed as the phantom smashed its leg into James hard and he flew back, landing on the ground with a heavy thud, out cold. I couldn’t see if he was breathing or not.
Belle ran, ducking to avoid Abril’s hectic blast, and slid, cutting off two legs in one go. Chae Rin created another sinkhole in the mountain, which took a phantom down, but she had to be careful—the Scottish boy had to run and duck out of the way to avoid being taken with it.
It was chaos. With a great yell, Lake managed to push one of the phantoms back, but there were two more coming around the corner. Rushing forward, I summoned every bit of strength I had to set them on fire. I managed to burn off some legs, though there were so many trees nearby, I had to be careful not to start a wildfire.
Off to the side somewhere, the Scottish boy was busy fiddling with that stick he’d pulled out of his bag while his partners shot blue electricity from their Sect weapons. But one phantom slipped through the perimeter just as I heard a weapon jam with a series of frustrated clicks. Spinning around, I saw the boy a few feet away eyeing his weapon in terror, desperately trying to shake it awake. As a phantom lurched toward him, I was already running for him.
“Derrek!” Abril yelled, but she was too busy fighting off her own phantom to go to him.
Derrek screamed and dropped his weapon, falling back and covering his head with his arm. I threw a wave of flame at it, but it brushed it off with a shake of its shelled head. It raised its needle-sharp leg and brought it down on Derrek’s head so fast I barely had time to think. On instinct alone, I slipped underneath it, blocking its attack with my arm and crying out in pain as the thin point pierced through my flesh.
My blood dripped down the needle onto the forehead of a terrified Derrek, who lay flat on his back looking up with wide, blue eyes at the two of us monsters, Effigy and phantom, struggling over the fate of his life. Grabbing the leg with my other arm, I sent a tunnel of fire scorching up its length until the torso was aflame. Then, with a heave, I pushed it over and hit the ground even before it did, grasping my bloodied arm.
“Are you okay?” Derrek sounded Eastern European somehow. He had that harsh lilt to his voice, but it felt mixed with many things, as if he’d been moved around too much before his voice could settle anywhere. When he pulled down his scarf, I could see his thick pink lips and his rounded cheeks. He took his cap off, revealing the pincer-straight black hair covering his ears. “You . . . you saved me.” He looked at me in utter awe.
“I need a bandage,” I told him, but there wouldn’t be any time for first aid, not when there were more phantoms coming.
“It’s done!”
The Scottish man. He was finished setting up his trinket: a tripod that glowed from the metal feet to the glowing tip that reached just above his head. A few swift clicks and it was operational.
“Take this, you little fuckers,” he swore. The moment he turned it on, a wave of blue light flashed out in a circle, evaporating the phantoms in the area as far as I could see.
We were safe, but it didn’t seem like there’d be any time to rest. The Scottish man pulled down his scarf and pushed off his hood with a flick of his head. His brown eyes matched the dark chestnut hair curling over his forehead in ringlets. His jaw was square and straight, his jawline defined as he surveyed the mountains.
“All right, everyone move your arses. This isn’t going to hold forever.” He looked at me and grinned. “That is, unless you Effigies come with APD systems built into those indestructible little bodies.”
“Not indestructible,” I said, holding up my bloodied arm.
“And not little.” Chae Rin approached him slowly, looking him up and down. He didn’t seem to mind. Seeing a disheveled Chae Rin approach him menacingly only made his grin turn wicked. “Who are you?”
“Traffickers.” It was Belle who’d answered, though her gaze was on the weapons they held. “Sect grade. You’ve stolen these.” She looked at the three of them. “Is this what you trade in?”
“Sharp eyes,” said the Scottish boy.
Traffickers. They usually weren’t any of the Sect’s business—we battled monsters, not humans, as sick as those humans may be. But they were criminals nonetheless, setting up hubs for their networks through Dead Zones, smuggling and transporting anything from drugs to people—but I didn’t see either.
“We’re not bad guys, you know,” the man said, putting up his hands as a sign of peace.
“You shot at us,” Chae Rin said.
“By accident!” he insisted. “We were shooting at the phantoms. Come on, seriously, we’re not bad people. Believe me, we’re not your run-of-the-mill group of villains and criminals, and we’re not out here hurting anyone. Never would. Our wares—”
“Sect wares,” Belle interrupted.
“—this antiphantom technology,” he tried again, “is going to places and people that need it. And we’re not a threat to you, obviously. I didn’t get in this to fight any damn Effigies.” He straightened his back. “But since we did just save one another’s lives, let’s all of us calm down and clear things up on the way, yeah? Derrek, Abril. You okay?”
“Yeah, Lucas.” Derrek stood up. “This girl saved me. But she’s bleeding bad.”
“Ah, she can handle it. Don’t you Effigies heal fast?” Lucas laughed.
“Yeah, but as you can see, despite that, I’m still bleeding.” I doubled over. “Actually, I think I’m going to faint.”
“Sorry ’bout that.” Lucas picked up the tripod. “But I’m sure you’ll be fine. You gals can take care of yourselves.” He turned from us, waving Abril over before giving us a quick farewell salute. “Well, we’ll be off now.”
He took several steps before pausing and looking back. “Don’t suppose you’re just going to let us go, are you?”
“We have to go with you,” Belle said. “Not only for medical attention. There’s somewhere we’re heading and we can’t get through these mountains alone.”
Lucas cocked his head to the side. “Sorry, but I don’t believe I asked you to come along.”
“I don’t believe I was asking for your permission,” Belle answered flatly.
Abril’s hand looked like it was itching to fly to her gun.
“You think we’re going to come down on you for selling Sect stuff, right?” I said, wincing from the pain of my wound. “We won’t. Seriously, we don’t care. We’re just trying to get out of here. And you could use the extra muscle, right?” I said this as mine felt like it was about to burst apart like an overheated sausage.
Lucas, Derrek, and Abril exchanged glances. “Fine.” Lucas threw his arms up in exasperation. “I’ll take your word for it, though it’s my arse on the line if you go back.” He shook his tripod. “We’re taking this with us until we get to the campsite. Actually, now that I think of it, our leader, Jin, is probably going to be interested to see you guys.”
“We need to get him medical attention too,” said Chae Rin, flicking her head at James. Lake had already gone to pick him up.
Lucas sighed. “Well, come along, then. We’ll patch your friend up, too.”
He walked ahead of us, Abril and Derrek picking up the equipment and bags and following. Exchanging wary glances, the four of us followed the traffickers down the rocky mountain path.
• • •
Out of the three of them, only Abril was from around the area, but she didn’t speak much, merely grunted every once in a while, whenever her name came up. I suspected she was more comfortable with barking threats and pointing guns at people.
Lucas was the chatty one. And flirty. Didn’t matter which girl. I caught him checking me out a couple of times, and I doubt it was to make sure my arm was any better after Derrek had tied it up with one of the bandages he’d found inside his bag. I couldn’t imagine why a thirteen-year-old would be out in the mountains as part of a criminal gang, but I’d seen stranger things.
As they explained on our way down the mountain, they, like so many others, were an insular, nomadic group that sometimes picked up strays as they traveled—like Abril. She was an orphan and an escapee of a pretty vicious gang herself.
Usually these smaller groups were part of bigger organizations that transported illegal wares through these networks. But some groups, like this one, worked alone, setting up their own pathways, making their own money at the risk of their own lives. The three of them had been sent out by their leader, Jin, to scout a new route through the mountains, but their APDs crapped out at the wrong time. Dangerous life.
It got warmer as we descended, though the air around me was still just chilly enough to keep me alert. Then again, with my lack of sleep, I couldn’t be sure how long that would last.
“We’re almost at camp. Now, maybe you girls can tell me what you’re doing here?” Lucas hoisted the tripod up as it started slipping down his hands. The field it generated was still going strong. I could only see a slight blue tinge of the waving particles spreading out from around us in a perfect sphere, blanketing the night. The leaves of the trees around us shimmered from its hue: a beautiful sight marred by the foreboding scuttles of phantoms off in the distance.
“Four Effigies lost in the Urbión Peaks. And I was just looking at your pictures at an awards show not too long ago. Get around fast, don’t you? ’Round the world in eighty damn days.” Lucas’s laughter was as light and rosy as the natural flush of his face. “You each looked quite gorgeous in your photos, by the way.”
“Thanks!” Lake said very genuinely, her hands gripped around both straps of the knapsack she carried on her back.
“Yeah, thanks,” Chae Rin grunted while hoisting James higher up her back. Of course, with her strength, she could carry him just fine. But he was a considerably unappealing accessory, especially when he kept unconsciously murmuring delirious nothings in her ear.
“We’re trying to get somewhere,” answered Belle. “We have to get there as quickly as possible.”
“You’re on a schedule, huh? Well, aren’t we all. I saw the video that terrorist sent out yesterday. Saul, right?”
My teeth naturally clenched at his name.
“He’s given us all seven days to live or some’n like that.” He shrugged his broad shoulders.
I kept my hand pressed around the bloodied bandage as we descended through the thick of mountain trees. One wrong step and I’d trip over the gray slabs of rock, so I watched every step carefully. “Well, that’s why we need to hurry,” I said. “We need transportation.”
“To do what?” Lucas said. “You gonna stop Saul?”
“Yes.” I pushed the word out with a little more force than necessary, probably in defiance to the way his eyebrow arched in amusement. “Of course we are. We’re Effigies.”
Abril led the pack carrying one of the Sect’s long-range guns on her back. It got warmer as we descended, so she took off her hood and let her shaved, slender head cool off with the slight chill in the air. She was already a few paces ahead of us, but even from where I was, I could hear her stifling a derisive chuckle under her breath.
“You have something to say?” Chae Rin barked as she tightened her elbow grip around James’s knees. Abril, predictably, didn’t respond, though little Derrek nudged her warningly.
“Come on, you can’t blame her if she’s a bit skeptical, can ya?” Lucas answered for her with a shrug. “Not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but since that video was broadcast around the world, everyone’s been wondering where the hell you are and what you’ve been up to. Hell, last anyone seen of you, you were at some awards show like a bloody girl group.”
I could feel the warm, wet blood from my bandage seep into my fingernails as I gripped it. “You’re saying people are losing faith?” I asked quietly.
“People have been losing faith for a while out there. Well, for me it’s not really a problem. We do what we do, never needed an Effigy to solve things for us. But you had Saul and you lost him and now he’s out here killing politicians and doing as he pleases. Isn’t he an Effigy too? Not hard to see why your fan club’s getting a little smaller by the day.”
The four of us fell silent. The stinging pain of my arm was enough to bear. This was salt in an already festering wound.
“I’m not,” said Derrek ahead of us. “Losing faith. If it weren’t for you, we’d be dead. I’d be dead.” He turned around so I could see his smile. “If they’re out here, it’s for a good reason.”
“I wonder about that.” Lucas gave us a sidelong look.
“There’s a lot going on,” I said as Naomi’s limp body crawled back into my memories. “But we’re doing what we can under the circumstances.”
“Do you even know what Saul’s planning?”
Belle narrowed her eyes, her expression graver than usual. “That’s what we need to figure out.”
The note of finality in her voice made it very clear that the interrogation was over. Except for Lucas, who switched to chatting easily about the mountains, the rest of our party stayed quiet. We ventured down the mountain in silence until we could hear voices.
“They’re just beyond those trees,” Lucas said. “Wonder how they’ll react.”
The cacophony of voices grew louder, but it wasn’t until we made it through the forest that I could see them: a small camp of people packing Sect equipment into small trucks and vans, or sitting on logs smoking food by a campfire. They were lined up all around the circumference of a beautiful lake, its obsidian surface rippling gently under the slightest caress of wind. A few feet away from us was a metal ball snuggled between the protruding roots of a tree—the same as the one we’d used in the Sahara. If I squinted, I could probably find more of them lined up around the perimeter. This is how they lived, these nomads, day to day, trying to escape the wrath of phantoms as they lived among them.
“Welcome to Black Lagoon, girls.” Lucas whistled as we entered the camp space, drawing all eyes to us. It was inevitable; they recognized us right away. I saw one person reach for his gun, but Lucas waved a hand to stop him. “ ’S all right. They’re not here about what we do. They’re only looking for a ride into town.” He gave me a friendly pat on the back. “They’re Effigies in transit. Fell from the sky just as we were getting attacked by a particularly vicious group o’ phantoms, didn’t they?” He smirked. “Four falling stars.”
“What do you mean attacked?” A large man who’d been standing with his back to us by the lake turned around, his long brown coat sweeping the rocky earth. His thin, pink lips almost disappeared inside his thick hickory beard, which had annexed the bottom half of his face. His eyes peeked out from behind some rather familiar flat black hair—familiar because it was the same as Derrek’s. The boy jogged up to him, flinching a bit when the man patted his head. “Derrek, what happened?”
“Dad, our tech malfunctioned. We would’ve been dead if it weren’t for those girls.” He gestured toward the four of us as we carefully entered the camp. “That one with the bushy hair protected me.”
That one with the bushy hair must have meant me. The man’s eyes traced a line from my face to the blood dripping down my arm.
“She needs to be stitched. Abril, help patch her up.”
Abril clearly didn’t want to. But even though she shot me a withering look, she didn’t protest. With a bitter scowl, she strode over to one of the vans nearby, gesturing me to follow with a curt wave of her hand. There was a first aid kit over by some coolers. Sitting on one of the coolers, she swept off her jacket, revealing her thin, bony form, and picked up the first aid kit, rummaging around until she found some disinfectant and a needle.
“You’ll be gentle, right?” I smiled. She didn’t. This was gonna hurt.
As Abril went to work, Chae Rin passed James’s unconscious body to a couple of men, who set him down rather roughly by a log. I tried not to look at Abril’s needle as it pierced my arm, stitching my flesh together with the exact amount of finesse I expected from someone who didn’t even bother to flinch at my whimpers. Wincing, I watched the busy men and women instead as they packed loaded weapons and APDs into vans already weighed down with cargo.
Vans. “Sir,” I called, jolting a bit once I felt the tip of the needle in my flesh.
“Jin,” he corrected. “My name is Jin. And thank you for saving my son.”
“You’re welcome.” I looked at the other girls, who nodded. “We really need help. We were actually flying overhead in a helicopter when we got attacked and crashed here.”
“By accident,” said Lucas as he stopped over by Abril and took a beer out of one of the coolers. “That shot wasn’t mine, by the way. That was all her.” Abril rolled her eyes.
“That’s all right, but we need to get out of these mountains. We also need a car. Or a van?” Grunting from the pain of Abril’s handiwork, I not-so-subtly hinted at one of the several that were camped around the lagoon, most of them old and rickety vintage models.
“They’re going to fight to Saul, Dad,” Derrek said. “You know, the terrorist?”
“Saul.” As he stroked his bushy chin, I had no idea how his fingers didn’t just get caught in the wilderness of his beard. Walking away from his son, he sat on a nearby log and stretched out his towering frame. “He’s been moving in networks like these.”
“Saul has? He’s really been—ow!” My arm gave a violent twitch as I cried out. Abril didn’t care.
Belle’s eyes narrowed as she walked past me, approaching Jin. “How do you know this?”
“We move around.” Jin’s voice was a low grumble, the kind you listened to in the subways before it slid to the back of your subconscious as white noise. “You hear things. If you’re paying attention.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Chae Rin. “And what have you heard?”
“Trafficking rings being attacked.” Jin propped his elbows up on his knees and leaned over, resting his chin on intertwined fingers. “Around Europe, mostly. Though I heard of some attacks in Northern Africa. Lots of high-powered weapons being stolen. And people.”
“People?” Lake wiped the sweat from the mountain trek off her forehead. “Stolen people?”
“Or maybe they left on their own.” Jin’s haunting gaze was on her, bottomless and black as the lagoon. “Not too long ago, I heard of an empty camp in the forests of Romania. We’d dealt with the people there before—turf war. You can’t escape that kind of conflict when stepping into another gang’s territory. But if what they say is true, it’s not something we’d have to worry about again. The camp was torched. No bodies. Just footsteps and ashes . . . and ghosts.”
“Come on, you don’t actually believe that, do you?” Lucas laughed, but he couldn’t hide his shiver even from underneath his heavy mountain jacket.
“He appeared with the wind and left no trace when he was gone,” Jin said. “That’s what I heard.”
“Yeah.” I looked at the other girls, my expression grim. “We know someone like that.”
“So what?” Chae Rin folded her arms. “In the middle of attacking trafficking gangs, he took a bit of time off to kill a Canadian politician? Well, he’s been busy.”
“The only camps I’ve heard of being attacked were those who move high-powered weapons, like ourselves. These weapons aren’t just from the Sect, either. Some are military-grade, new models.” Jin looked at me when he added, “And luckily for us, there are even some newer weapons that would be a danger to you Effigies.”
My body tensed, but he shook his head. “Some of that is for sale and some of that is for our own protection. If we need to fight Saul, we’re prepared. But knowing what he can do, I’m not sure even we’d win if he ever strode into our camp like he did all the others.”
“Are you sure he’s really doing all that?” Lake gripped the straps of her knapsack.
“I’ve been doing this long enough to know there’s a grain of truth in every story out here.” Jin lowered his arms, letting his hands dangle in the space between his thighs. “We do what we do and stay under the radar. But if even we can’t stay out of Saul’s way . . .” He looked at his son. “If you say you can stop him, then do it. I’ll do what I can to help.” He nodded to a group of men lugging silver cases to the vehicles. “Unload one of the smaller vans—we can spare one.”
“Thanks, but even if we can get to where we need to go, we can still be tracked by the Sect,” Chae Rin reminded us. “As long as they can track our cylithium.”
“Wait.” Lucas almost dropped the beer in his hand. “The Sect can track you?”
He wasn’t the only one staring at us. It was a good thing Abril had just finished stitching me and bandaging up my throbbing arm, because I could sense our time here running out.
Jin was already on his feet. “You should have told us from the beginning. Everyone, finishing loading. We’re heading farther west.”
“Well,” Lake started, twisting quickly to avoid the bodies rushing by her, “it’s not like the Sect cares about illegal activity out here.”
“They’ll care about it if it has to do with their stolen shit, miss.” Lucas nodded to Abril, who got up from the cooler and joined the rest, though not without giving us one last glare.
“Stolen . . .” The light bulb went off. “Inoculation!” Rubbing my sore arm, I stood from the ground. “Jin, you said you guys have weapons that could be used against us Effigies. What about an inoculation device?”
Chae Rin narrowed her eyes. “Are you crazy?”
“If our powers go dead, they may not be able to track us.”
“You may be right,” Belle said.
Jin ordered his people to unload some of the silver cases, and after some frenzied checking, they managed to find a case with five long black tubes lined up on the inside. They were a little smaller than the one I’d used against Saul. That one had been disguised as a pen, but it was too bulky; these were streamlined and sleek. It fit into my palm when I picked it up, and if I ignored the little silver pump at the top, I might have thought it was a pen shooting out ink instead of Effigy poison or whatever it was that jammed our powers.
“I didn’t know they’d made more of these,” Lake whispered, peering over my shoulder as I studied it against my palm. “Maybe because of Saul?”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Chae Rin didn’t sound convinced. “Put that back. Hey, we’re taking this. Anyone got a problem?”
If they did, I doubted anyone wanted to fight her over it.
“You can take the van at the far end of the line.” Stopping next to Derrek, Jin pointed toward the rusty-looking old one at the curvature of the restful lagoon. “You’ll have to head north to get into town. Lucas will give you a map.”
“Thanks,” said Belle. “We’ll take our friend and drop him off there.”
Naomi had still given us a mission. Find the secret volume. Maybe find out the truth about Saul while we were at it. With the counter running down, we’d have to move quickly.
“Girls.” Jin stopped us just as we began toward the van. “Saul’s hand reaches far. Not even we here in the mountains are safe.”
Nobody in Jin’s group stopped moving and loading long enough to say so, but their uneasy gazes told me as much.
“We’re all counting on you.” He gripped the shoulders of his son. “All of us.”
That was the burden Effigies couldn’t escape. But we weren’t running away. We nodded our silent promise before setting off.