Chapter Twenty-Four BEE
TWENTY-FOUR
BEE
My boots are beating down on the snowy, gravel roads that weave around cabins and campervans.
In the distance behind me, the rapid song of a run raining down on a trail is gone. Maybe I have outrun it. I don’t stick around to find out, I just keep running.
I don’t give it the chance to catch up to me.
Whatever it is, it’s wringing my insides.
That sickly sensation coiling through me propels me faster down the road to the end of the park. I clammer over the gate in a rush, legs slipping along the snowy metal bars.
I land with a stagger.
Arms outstretched, I balance myself on the slushy road. I cut right, running on the grassy border of the road, because the road itself is too slippery.
The steady thud, thud, thud of my backpack smacking against my spine matches the pace of my ragged breaths.
Tess told me the direction to go for the brewery, but I knew that already, and since I read and reread the map, burned this area into my mind, I also know that it should be five minutes ahead.
I don’t pause.
I don’t falter.
The noise that chased me up the lakeside might be gone, but that doesn’t slow me down. It could have been anything thundering up that path. It could have been a wolf, a feral dog, a not so friendly person, a fucking bear—or worst of all, the what if…
It could have been bootfalls.
That was my thought. My instinct. My panic.
That it was him.
Dare, chasing up the slim one-way trail beyond the trees, parallel to the lake and the path.
I know it’s not a light thing to abandon one’s unit. In my own land, Licht, the punishment can range from being buried neck-down in the sand for days and nights to having one’s nails torn out.
My twin brother paid his price for it.
He abandoned his unit after a brutal loss on the battlefield.
He was one of the few still standing. But Licht customs have warriors throwing themselves onto their own swords rather than return home, defeated, or leave a single breathing comrade on the battlefield—and when he escaped, some were still breathing.
So they took his left eye.
Carved it clean out of his skull.
And for ten years, he is to wear no patch or false eye. It must be seen.
Dare wouldn’t have left his unit to chase me down, to hunt me, because he is of Dorcha, of the dark armies, and their punishments should be more gruesome than I can even imagine.
And yet, and yet… the logic isn’t fashioning with the fear. It isn’t merging as it should.
And it is fear that grips me.
It is cold in me, a blizzard in my chest that pushes me along the road, a race against a what if, and I chase any semblance of safety I can find.
My boots don’t slip as easily on the snowy grass, so I keep to it for as long as I can—until I reach the brewery.
Or what was once a brewery.
Arm raised out in front of me, I aim my nightlights at the face of the shack standing before me.
That’s what it is.
A shack.
The wooden boards that should slat across the face of the brewery are disjointed and, some, torn off the nails. The door sits crooked and cracked at the side.
It’s been ransacked.
More than once.
And it has faced a battle. Not recently, since below the broken windows, glass should be littered along the porch, but the porch is buried in snow, and the windows are poorly boarded up.
Must have been when the blackout hit, and panic turned on people.
I’ll be better off if I keep on the road all the way up to the town and find someplace there to take shelter.
I need a spot to hide out before the girls close the distance between us.
But I’ve been moving since I got caught in the dark unit’s bounds, and I haven’t stopped to let myself rest. I feel the exertion in my legs, muscles stretched and tugged and taut.
It’s the snow.
Steps aren’t easy through the snow.
I need the rest now, so I start up the creaky steps for the porch.
My face twists with a cringe—too much noise, always too much noise. But there’s no avoiding it. The porch groans just as loud, and the door creaks at the slightest push.
I slip through the gap, then gently close the door behind me. The latch takes a moment to wrench into place and lock. Once it’s secure, I turn my back on the door and reach out the bracelet of nightlights.
Pushing the dusty light onwards, I move through the brewery.
My teeth bare in a grimace.
A minefield of old corpses and toppled chairs and fallen tables, empty shells and bullet casings
I sneak around the minefield to the doors on the opposite wall. A storage closet, the doors hanging off the hinges, and part of the wood blasted away.
The closer I get, the stronger the stench of chemicals. I take a quick peek at the shelves, and though I expected it, the sight of the shotgun-blasted bleach bottles sags me.
Bleach is the best way to mute a scent.
But I’m out of luck—and it’s feeling a lot like I’m cursed these past six hours or so, like the gods are working against me.
Still, hope flickers in me like a candle flame, and I check the next door.
It opens to the kitchen.
Rat droppings are scattered all over the counter tops.
I kick through the cupboard doors here and there, but all I find is a bottle of water.
No bleach, no tinned food, just a bottle of water.
I take it back into the open area, then climb my way over the fallen fridge to hide behind the bar.
I can’t complain.
At least I’m not stuck out there.
This brewery gives shelter from the snow, the ice, the winds, and I just have to wait it out, wait for Tess to find me.
As I do wait, I fish through my backpack for something to eat. I pick out a protein bar and salted trail mix.
For a while, I nibble.
No appetite fuels me.
I eat because I am stopped, and I don’t know when I will be able to stop and eat again.
This is one of our rules, our ways.
I toss aside a wrapper and watch it flitter to the blood-stained floorboards. My head tilts as I eye the dried blood streaks before I realise they are drag marks.
I trace them to the edge of my boot before a yawn rises through me.
Weariness is crawling over me with the weight of a woollen blanket.
Fighting the lull of my lashes, I unscrew the lid of the water bottle and down the whole thing in loud, ugly gulps. I toss aside the plastic.
The bottle bounces off the floorboards before knocking off the side of my boot.
The fae in me—in my blood—curls my upper lip at the abomination that plastic is. And maybe a part of me understands the dark ones, their invasion, this war they have declared on humanity.
I get it.
But I’m a selfish kinta, and their invasion is a fucking inconvenience. Might have been nice to have a little heads up from Eamon, then maybe I wouldn’t have travelled my ass to another continent before the dark came billowing through the skies.
I would be safe in Licht, away from the dark ones, away from this massacre I’m trapped in.
I shouldn’t think of it.
I squeeze my eyes shut against the intrusion.
Dad.
All it does to think about him is swell a thickness in my throat and bring a weight down on my heart. But he burrows into my mind, reminds me of him every quiet moment.
Dad…
A human man who lives in the human realm. But before that, he was in a bargain with my fae mother—and I am an obvious result of that bargain.
Sagged against the bar, I let myself wonder if he made it back to the light lands when the darkness first invaded. He knows some bridges around London, he could have left behind his second wife and fled to safety in my mother’s home.
If he didn’t, he’s dead.
No question, no doubt. Dead.
But if he did make it to the village I was raised in…
The next wonder is if my mother offered him sanctuary.
Their bargain is ended, it ended the morning of my sixteenth birthday.
He delivered his side of the deal, gave her two children, twins, one halfling male, one kinta female.
If it wasn’t for my brother, my dad’s bargain would not have ended with my birth.
A kinta isn’t a suitable babe.
But their bargain is ended, and I can only hope that maybe my mother softened to my dad over the years he stayed with her in the light lands. Maybe for us, her children, she would have opened her door to him and given him the sanctuary he needed to escape the war waged on the human realm.
I hope she spared him.
I hope he made it to the light lands.
I hope I make it, too.
I hope Tess makes it back with me.
Maybe I hope too much.
I sink into the wooden wall of the bar with those thoughts, a lull that’s kneading into me. The more my thoughts drift, the more my back slouches, the more my eyes shut.
But my lashes only just touch down when a thunderous crash shudders the whole shack.
I jolt upright, stiff, and throw my wild glare up at the ceiling.
Dust and snow rain down from the gaps in the wooden slats. The rattle loosens all the old debris up on the roof and poisons the air.
I shove myself under the safety of the bar, hooking my arm to my face, and stilling my breath.
Cringed, I wait for the rattle to end, for the shudder to stop—
But when it does, my blood runs cold.
The rattle ends, the shack stills…
And Dare’s familiar voice is slick through the air, “Found you.”