But when they reached the Kingshead Woods, something changed.
Their feet hit the soil, and suddenly running through the woods felt like running through one of those terrible dreams in which the air looks like air but it isn’t. Instead it’s something invisible and viscous, and running is impossible, a sluggish and desperate crawl.
Marion touched Val’s shoulder, then flung out her other hand to stop Zoey in her tracks. Zoey leaned against a nearby tree to catch her breath, clutching the stitch in her side. Then she saw Marion’s expression and tensed.
“What is it?” Val asked. Despite being freshly exorcised, she only had a slight shimmer of sweat on her brow. Zoey was too tired to feel annoyed.
Marion’s gaze was distant, her cheeks flushed. “I hear it.”
Zoey straightened. “The bone cry?”
“Yes.” Marion’s solemn gaze lifted to Val’s. “He’s close. And he’s not alone.”
Just as the words left her lips, a man leaped out from the trees, bloody hands reaching.
Val shoved Marion out of the way and whirled on their attacker. Her hands lit up like the novas of distant twin suns. Scrambling to his feet, the man threw up his arms to shield his eyes. Another man burst out of the brush, the blood of fresh burns painting his pale skin.
Briggs.
Zoey raced toward him, her bat gripped in one hand. A surge of movement rippled through the ground beneath her, like the bristling of an angry wolf’s fur.
She reached Briggs and thrust her hand at him.
He ducked. He’d been expecting this.
She lunged into empty space, flailing to keep her balance, and turned just in time for his fist to hit her jaw. She landed in a heap on the ground.
“Not this time, you little bitch,” spat Briggs. His voice came to Zoey through a muddle of pain. She tried to stand and fell once more. A callused hand gripped her arm and yanked her to her feet.
“Stop,” Briggs called out, his voice frayed as if someone had taken a razor to it. “Or I swear to Christ I’ll bash her brains in.”
Oh, God. Oh, God.
He had her bat.
Zoey felt a surge of unreasonable fury. That was Grayson’s bat, and he’d loaned it to her. It may not have been as impressive-looking as a sword, but still—there was no way in hell that this psychopath had the right to touch her and Grayson’s freaking awesome bat-sword.
She tasted blood and spat it, aiming roughly for Briggs’s face. But it was dark, there were way too many trees in this forest, and her head was spiraling like a top.
“You can’t kill her,” came Marion’s voice, which sounded steadier than Zoey imagined hers would be, if she ever managed to speak again. What kind of bastard slapped a teenage girl like that? Oh, right—the kind of bastard who deserved to have his junk eaten by cockroaches.
“And why is that?” Briggs asked.
“Because you need her for your ritual.”
A chorus of laughter rippled through the woods. Jesus, how many of them were there?
And then Zoey realized that those boats that had been following them must not have held more men than two drivers, and maybe one shooter.
Her heart turned to lead.
The Hand of Light had been waiting for them, this whole time, here in the Mortimers’ woods.
“She doesn’t need to be unharmed for the feeding,” Briggs replied. “Her body, whatever state it’s in, as long she’s breathing, will suffice.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Zoey had never heard Valerie Mortimer’s voice sound so unfinished. “None of this is necessary—”
“I will decide what is necessary!” howled Briggs, his grip tightening painfully around Zoey’s arm. “This is the way it is done. This is the way our fathers taught us.”
“Your fathers,” Val replied, “were full of shit.”
A sharp crack rang through the trees, followed by a muted cry from Val.
Finally, Zoey’s vision began to settle. She could now see the situation they were in—a tight circle of men. Marion to her right, Val to her left, both of them held by two men, one at each arm. Zoey herself was held by Briggs. Three other men hovered nearby, gloved hands holding knives, firearms slung over their shoulders. One of them moved away from Val, a grim sneer on his face.
Val straightened in the arms of her captors. She breathed tightly through her nose, a red handprint blooming on her cheek.
“You’re going to regret hurting her,” said Marion. She had the look, Zoey thought, of a parent waiting patiently for a child to realize his mistake. “You’re going to regret a lot of things.”
Briggs, passing Zoey off to one of his lackeys, ignored her. He withdrew his dagger from the sheath at his hip. “The Collector must feed. He must be banished from our world. So it has been done, and so it is done, and so it shall always be done.”
“And so it shall always be done,” repeated the men, reminding Zoey of the way Borg drones proclaimed they were going to assimilate you, that resistance was futile, that you were screwed and there was no way out, sorry about that. At the thought of never again having Star Trek marathons at Grayson’s house, while his dad popped in every few minutes to remark upon the breathtaking badassery of Kathryn Janeway, Zoey clenched her aching jaw to keep from either sobbing or screaming in rage, she wasn’t sure which.
For the second time that night, she watched Briggs approach. With an exhausted sort of acceptance she thought to Sawkill, Well, sorry. We tried.
But then Marion spoke.
“And so,” she said, her voice low and serene, “it shall never be done again.”
Silence followed her proclamation. Zoey had just enough time to observe that Briggs had frozen, and that the other men were shifting uneasily, before the Kingshead Woods erupted into hoofbeats.
The men holding Zoey released her. Briggs whirled to the east and dropped the bat, his face falling slack with terror.
Zoey tried to look, too, but couldn’t. Val grabbed her hand before she had the chance, dropped to the ground at Marion’s feet, and pulled Zoey with her. The men around them screamed and ran—but resistance, in this case, was indeed futile.
Zoey felt the island thrumming under their feet, heard the thunderclap rhythm of what must have been dozens of hooves, and understood: Marion had asked the Rock for help, and it had answered by summoning all the horses from Kingshead.
Zoey huddled on the ground, Marion’s legs a solid wall against her back, Marion’s hand a gentle reassurance on her head. Zoey pressed her face into Val’s neck and breathed in her scent—the sea, her faint gardenia perfume, the bitter black bile still crusting her arms. Zoey listened to the men’s screams abruptly silenced as they were trampled, heard them run away and beg the woods for mercy, flinched as they were kicked into trees and flattened against boulders.
When all was silent at last, Zoey dared to raise her head, her hands clutching Val’s close to her heart.
A dozen Mortimer Morgans stood a few yards away, scattered throughout the trees. Their velvet-dark sides heaved; their nostrils flared. Two pawed the ground with their front hooves.
But they came no closer, now that their work was finished. They were, Zoey suspected, frightened of the girls they had saved. Especially the one who stood tall and unbroken, staring back at them like she was one of their own—a wild, dangerous creature, somehow sewn up into the form of a girl.
Val let out a shaky breath against Zoey’s shoulder. “Jesus.”
Marion helped them both to their feet. They stood amid this ruination of men, hands joined and gazes locked. Then they turned, as one, and walked deeper into the forest.