Chapter Twenty-Nine Shea
Lys doesn’t react to the impact.
He’s a steel wall, cold and unyielding, his back to her.
He’s staring out at something in the street, and it doesn’t take her long to understand what has caught his eye.
A barricade of unmarked vans lines the road before them.
Outside the vans stands a small arsenal of armed militia, each of them wielding weapons retrofitted with wooden bullets.
Soldiers of the watch, here to collect.
Shea thought she was afraid before. Now her heart stops cold. Because standing at their helm is Egor van Haut. He smiles at the sight of them, tugging loose his glasses to clean the lenses.
“You never asked me.” He says it conversationally, as though they’re still at tea in his living room. “You never asked me why the perimeters of my farm are off-limits. Why I live alone, in the middle of nowhere. You never asked what sort of work I’m doing.”
“I don’t care,” grits out Shea.
“You should,” says Egor, unruffled. “I am on the cusp of a groundbreaking discovery. A cure, Shea. A cure . For Nel. For others like him. The trouble is, I cannot do the work that I do for free. Surely, you understand—I’m told your mother is very ill.”
The door behind Shea opens. Asher emerges, flanked by Poppy and Camellia. He draws up short at the sight of the heavily armed presence.
“Oh shit.”
Egor replaces his glasses. “It’s a very big bounty, Private Thorley.”
“Asher Thorley,” calls a uniformed man standing beside Egor. “You are being apprehended and placed under arrest for abandoning your post. You will be transported back to base, where you will be tried and hanged for desertion.”
“Asher,” whispers Camellia, distraught.
Asher says nothing at all. He stands at attention, his gaze shuttered.
“You have the right to remain silent,” continues the man. “Any statement made may be used as evidence against you in a trial by court-martial.”
Egor smiles wanly at Shea. “I am so close to cracking the genome. You must understand—my motivations are good.”
Shea’s heart flies into her throat. “Asher—”
He doesn’t meet her eyes. “Looks like you’ll get what you wanted.”
“Asher, wait—” Her voice cracks. “Wait.”
There’s no chance for an apology. No space to take back what she said. To undo it and undo it. An order is given and two members of the watch ascend the steps, forcing Asher’s hands behind his back. He’s shoved forward, stumbling as he goes.
Still in the shadow of the cathedral, Camellia makes a strangled sound. “Asher?”
“It’s okay,” he calls back to her. “It’s just a formality. Stick together, all right?”
His head is pressed down, and he’s loaded into the back of the van.
“Wait!” Camellia surges forward. “Please, wait. That’s my brother. Please, I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
The door to the van rattles shut with a slam. On the bottom step, Camellia is met with the jagged end of a wooden bayonet.
“That’s far enough,” someone barks. “One more step, and you’re dust.”
“Easy,” chides Egor. “There’s no need to resort to violence. Especially not on Keeling territory. Surely you can understand why she’s upset.”
The engine kicks over. The van departs, careening around the corner and out of sight. Shea feels like half her heart has gone with it.
Beside her, Lys is a statue. Solid as an oak. Rooted as a maple. Rotted as a hawthorn. He takes everything in without a word, watching the van disappear into the gray, gray dawn. The moment it’s out of sight, he turns his attention to Egor.
“I’m curious to know how you saw this going,” he says, and his voice is an entire register too low.
A creature’s voice, not a boy’s. “Is one of those vans for me? Will you cart me back to Pennsylvania? Keep me in a barn, like your sad little son? Feed me from a blood bag and stick me full of needles, like the good old days?”
“I think,” says Egor, “that you’ll be happily compliant, no matter what I ask of you.”
“Compliant,” echoes Lys, his lip curling.
“Yes,” says Egor. “Because you’re going to want a cure.”
There’s a pronounced pause. Then, “I’m listening.”
“I’ve done some digging into Shea Parker,” says Egor. “Into her family. Genes like that, well, they tend to be hereditary. It would be a shame, wouldn’t it? To lose her that way? After everything you’ve sacrificed to keep her intact?”
An excruciating silence follows. Lys smiles his most alluring smile. An aggressive mimicry of a boy.
“You seem to be operating under the misconception that you can hold Shea Parker over my head. That you can use her to manipulate me. To bring me to heel.”
Something in his voice makes the watch creep closer.
“My father made the same mistake,” says Lys mildly.
Without warning, he pulls Shea to him. Her back slams into his chest. His fingers close around her neck. She struggles, fighting against him, as his hold tightens enough to hurt.
“One was the claw,” he mutters into her cheek. “The other one the will.”
His bite clamps down around the soft underside of her throat.
There’s a blister of pain, more familiar than it has any right to be.
The kiss of venom ribbons through her, sugar sweet and ambrosia warm.
Her mind continues to fight, even as her arms go slack.
Distantly, she’s aware of pandemonium—the sounds of shouting, wordless and far away: Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot him, goddamn it!
And then it’s quiet in her head, too.
She blinks and sees her mother in the kitchen, clear-eyed and dressed in yellow, her apron full of wild bergamot.
Her father in his armchair, his hands dancing through the candlelit dark.
Poppy and Camellia in the bottom branches of an old oak, laughing into the sky.
Asher in the surf, the sky falling around him as he leaned in and kissed her.
And then, at the end of it all, is Oliver Keeling, his hair in his eyes, the crooked slash of his smile bright in the dark. His mouth at her throat. His heart in her hands: I’m so gone for you.
Gone.
I’m gone.
There’s a violent impact, and the image shatters. She drops to her knees on warm concrete. Someone is shouting. A man, his voice twisted in fury. There’s the sound of running feet. A rush of bodies. A hand around her wrist. Someone is urging her to get up. To move. To run.
In front of her kneels Oliver Lysander Keeling. The Gravewood Devil, brought to heel. His mouth hangs slack. Her blood paints his chin, runs in red, red rivers down his throat. His cheeks are flush with color. His eyes are clear and bright and blue.
From his chest protrudes a wooden stake.
It takes her a moment to recognize her own trembling hand wrapped around it.
She lets go, toppling back. Gingerly, he pokes at it.
A circle of dark spreads like oil along his shirt.
His eyes lift to hers. Everything is slow, slow, slow, like they’re both underwater.
And then, with a terrible, icy surfacing, all sense comes rushing back.
Sound slams into her as the world tips back into motion.
“The sun is in your eyes,” he whispers.
“Get him up,” bellows Egor, somewhere out of sight. “Help him up! Do it now!”
Lys is wrenched onto his feet, disappearing from her field of view. Boots hammer on the ground. A door slams. An engine turns over.
“Move,” shouts a voice. “Let’s go!”
Tires screech against pavement, loud at first and then quiet. Shea’s knees are scraped open. Her palms gashed. There’s blood everywhere. Hers. His. It gathers in violet pools along the concrete.
“Get up,” cries Poppy. “Please, get up.”
The sun is bleeding, too. It leaks through the buildings in a wide, red swath of brilliance, flooding the space with light.
“Get up , Shea,” cries Poppy. “We have to go.”
The wind intensifies. It buffets Shea in a steady chop, chop, chop , turning the saltwater tug of a breeze to a roar that shuts out all other sound. Her hair whips into her face. Her vision tunnels.
When her head hits the ground, she doesn’t feel anything at all.