Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Mina and I collect the car from the Bounty Hunter Depot and drive back to the Bone District. The aftermath of yesterday’s explosion still hangs over the streets—a jagged, unsettled hush—but people carry on. Shutters rise; bone-related businesses open their doors.
I coast along the target street and park a few doors from the Summers’ house.
Nothing moves.
I unclip Mina’s harness and let her barge into the back seat. She circles twice before stretching to her full length in a patch of pale winter sunlight.
I settle in to watch.
Time drags and races in equal measure when you stare at an empty street. The houses here are slightly larger than average, with four or more bedrooms and high walls. Several have guard dogs prowling behind iron gates.
The Summers family have a little money. Not much, but enough to notice.
They keep no dog, which I note.
Eventually, I step out. The open door gives Mina room to join me on the frosted pavement. I tighten my coat and set off, my boots clicking over cracked concrete.
As I step across a split in the path, I think of Bruce and hope he has reached the academy safely.
Finding the right allies took years. At first, I managed alone.
Finding somewhere safe for a child when I could barely feed myself was beyond me, and I could not get anybody out of the Districts at all.
So I moved the first few to other parts of the city and hid them in plain sight, then lay awake waiting for one of them to set fire to something.
I had a handful of people who would help. I kept my face covered and told them I was a family friend. It was messy, all of it, and it worked because people down here have decades of practice at looking the other way.
Later, when I had the aircraft, I went back for them. The ones who wanted to go.
I have no idea how it turned out for the rest.
They were alive.
Then came the father.
I was supposed to kill his daughter. He knelt in the street to beg me for her, and I could not meet his eyes, so I told him the truth instead.
He had a teaching offer across the ocean. We made a plan.
For months he feigned despair, then left quietly, and rumour did the rest: grief had driven him abroad, and the government, valuing his skills, had granted him dispensation.
True enough.
He built a life over there and helped me weave the rescue chain, cautiously, a link at a time. Nothing on paper. Nothing traceable.
Fewer children carry magic every year. Soon there may be none left to throw into that arena, and I try not to wonder what the city will use for sport then.
I circle the street to check the back gardens.
The house is empty.
I move on to the next name on my list, then the next. Windows turn black, and long shadows stretch across the pavement. I am about to call it a day when I spot movement at Sarah’s uncle’s house.
I park and step out. Mina follows, clearly bored senseless. She hates sitting still, though some instinct must tell her this work pays for the dog food.
Just one more check, I tell myself.
Today has been a good day.
The house is a modest terrace. An upstairs curtain twitches, then settles.
Otherwise, it appears quiet.
I loop around once, then drift down the alley towards the rear. I am almost at the yard when a gate swings open. Its rotten base is jagged as teeth, the peeling paint a tired green. The splintered edge misses my face by inches.
Then the bat comes.
I duck.
The cross-swing catches my shoulder instead of my skull. My coat absorbs most of the blow, its enchantment pulling the force inward, but my arm goes numb and pins and needles race towards my fingers.
Without the coat, he would have broken the bone.
As it is, the impact flings me sideways. My back slams into the opposite wall. Red brick grinds against my spine.
Mina charges, teeth bared.
He jumps aside.
I drive my boot into his chest and send him sprawling.
“We will not let you have her!”
Mina returns to my side. She does not go for his throat. She never does; I trained that out of her years ago.
Then I see them.
His entire family blocks the alley at both ends.
The narrow walls hem us in.
I have walked into a kill pen.
My decision is instant. I flick my hand, fingers spread.
Mina whines—one short, unhappy note—but obeys. She darts left, then right, wrong-footing another man with a bat. She threads between a woman’s legs and vanishes around the corner.
That signal means go home.
We are barely three miles away. She knows to keep off the roads and will wait for me.
If I return.
She is clever. The neighbours know her.
She will be all right.
I am less certain about myself.
I almost laugh. They are protecting Sarah fiercely, impressively, with everything they have.
They have no idea.
I dodge another swing as the family closes in.
This is going to hurt. I can only hope they make it quick.
I take the first man’s bat off him and put him down with it. I break the second one’s nose with my elbow. The third comes in low and gets my knee for it.
Then the fourth reaches me, and the fifth, and the alley is full of them, and being good is not the same as being enough.
The marks on my wrists are useless. I can’t reach enough of them fast enough.
At first, I block most of the blows, but fatigue dulls my arms and more slip through.
A fist slams into my stomach.
An open palm cracks across my face hard enough to make my ear ring.
Somewhere in the middle of it, my coat ward gives up.
The blows come faster until I lose track.
Fists. Boots. Each impact lands on nerves already screaming until the pain merges into one enveloping haze.
I understand.
This is what people do when they protect their children. I understand it completely. To be loved so much that your family would fight the world for you.
What a precious thing.
I curl into a ball on the frozen, filthy ground and shield my head with my arms as best I can. My ribs, spine and kidneys absorb the worst of the blows.
Blood fills my mouth, coppery and thick.
I breathe through it.
A voice cuts through the clamour.
The blows stop.
I summon what courage remains and peer over my forearms.
A woman strides through the gap the family makes for her—dark-brown hair, dark skin and a face livid with fury. She opens her mouth, then freezes when she recognises me. “You,” she breathes. “You came after my child. After my little girl.”
The past rises, unbidden.
I know that face. I have known it for thirty-two years.
When I last saw her, Keeley Boneson was no older than her daughter is now—young, terrified and caught in the thick of the Games.
I saved her life and ruined mine.
Keeley lets out a short, bitter breath, then looks down at me. “Elenora Morris.” Her voice is quiet with something worse than anger. “How far you’ve fallen.”
She shakes her head. “A bounty hunter. I heard the rumours, but I didn’t believe them. I never thought the girl I knew would become this—a child-killer. Had I known what you would become, I might have let myself die rather than be the reason for it.”
The words sound as though she has carried them for years and can finally set them down.
“Keeley—”
It comes out thick with blood, and it is the only word I get. Her face closes over like a door.
I want to scream. I want to tell her she is wrong, that everything she thinks she knows is a necessary lie.
But I cannot.
The truth belongs not only to me but to every child I have smuggled from this city. To the academy. To the pilot and his crew. To the father across the ocean who trusted me.
All of them would be in danger if I spoke.
It does not matter, I tell myself.
It does not matter what she thinks.
Yet it does.
Someone I once cared for is looking at me as though I am a monster, and I must lie still and accept it.
Silence stretches between us.
“Sarah isn’t here. She’s gone. We got her out of the city.” Keeley’s voice is steady now, cold and deliberate, every word placed with care.
The truth mark stirs beneath my sleeve, unasked, the way it does when somebody speaks straight at me.
It stays cool.
Her words carry no lie.
“There is no one left for you to hunt. Tell your government my daughter is off its list. She is safe. Safe from people like you.” Keeley studies me for a long moment.
“When we’re finished here, we’re leaving too. The house, the District, the lot. None of it matters any more. We’re getting out of this hellhole.” She pauses. “You, though—you’ll stay here, doing the Grim Reaper’s work, playing demon for a city that would sooner see you dead than thank you.”
She crouches, forcing me to meet her gaze. The fury in her eyes dulls to something harder to name. “I hope you live a long, miserable life, Elenora Morris, and when the Fade finally takes you, I hope you suffer.”
They leave me alive. Bleeding and bruised, but alive.
I am glad Sarah is safe.
I need to get home.
I push myself upright with a groan. My lungs and ribs protest, and I spit a mouthful of blood onto the ground.
Then comes the hardest part.
I move.
I roll onto my hands and knees, then wait while the alley sways around me. I hook my fingers into the brickwork and haul myself upright, my legs shaking beneath me.
My own fault.
I celebrated before I reached home. I dared to think today was a good day, decided I was finished, stopped paying attention and walked straight into that alley without running my checks.
Foolish.
Experience should breed caution, not complacency.
I stagger back to the car. The dashboard clock tells me Mina should already be home or close to it.
I check myself over.
I am a mess.
I inhale cautiously. My lungs expand without catching; nothing appears to be punctured, and any fractures are probably clean. I will know for certain in a few hours.
Healing magic is beyond me, and the few potions I possess are reserved for the children. My body will have to cope unaided, as it usually does.
For a moment, I rest both hands on the steering wheel.
I thought nothing could hurt me any more. Not like this. Not the kind of pain that sinks beneath flesh.
Yet it keeps finding new ways in.
The laugh that slips out sounds wretched even to my own ears.
Keeley was a good friend, and that…
Bloody hell, that hurts more than the ribs do.
One man alive knows what I am, and he is an ocean away.
I am stronger than this.
I give myself a moment to breathe, then nod once and start the car.
Even depressing the clutch makes my ribs scream, but I manage.
I park outside the tower block and stare up at it through the windscreen.
Storey after storey of bare concrete. Nothing like the Depot—no sandstone, no carved lettering, nothing that was ever meant to be admired. Years ago someone painted it white, and weather and neglect have stripped it back to the colour of old ash.
It stands near the river, and the air reeks of stagnant water.
The residents know who I am and have collectively chosen to keep their mouths shut. They tolerate me.
They adore Mina because, really, what is not to love?
She is not waiting at the entrance. A neighbour has probably let her inside. Unfortunately, my place is on the eleventh floor. No lift, of course. That would be far too easy.
I enter the stairwell, brace an arm against my ribs and begin the ascent.
Stairs.
So many bloody stairs.
Each step is its own small agony, and I am surprised she has not thundered down to greet me.
Lazy dog.
I reach my landing.
My door.
She is not there.