“Cas!” June’s husky voice floats into the light. “Leave them alone. I told you already, they aren’t worth a brush with the Menghu.”
Cas’s head swings around, trying to pinpoint her voice. “And I told you, you dirty little mouse, that these folks will fetch quite a ransom with the rebels. We could be set for months. Years, even, now that the new kid is here to get us to the Mountain . . .”
June steps into the dim circle of light cast by the quicklights, mouth screwed into a grimace. “You won’t get anywhere near the Mountain.” She points to me and Howl. “These two are being hunted by both sides. Between the Menghu and the Reds, you’ll be dead before you see a single pill. I took all they’ve got. It’s the best you’re going to get if you want to stay alive.”
Tian strides forward, reaching a hand out to grab her. June jumps away, pulling Howl’s gun from the waistband of her pants, cold metal shaking in the dim light. “Don’t. Touch. Me.”
Hate twists June’s face into something foreign, my insides clenching at the bared emotion on her face. What did Tian do to her?
The old woman’s leathery face creases with dislike. “You gonna shoot the only mother you’ve ever known? Put that down.”
The little girl skips backward, away from the advancing Wood Rat. “You are not my mother. If you even touch Howl or Sev—”
Parhat lunges for her, but his cackling laugh cuts off with the sound of a gunshot.
June looks around wildly for the shooter. Cas’s screech pierces my eardrums. More shots ring out, and suddenly the ground is a mass of people running, tripping, swearing. I lose my grip on the packs and fall into the mess, landing on something soft and bony, smelling of rancid sweat. Rolling away, I open my eyes.
It’s Parhat, mouth open in a surprised yell that never hit the air. Blood steams up through the cold as it seeps through his hair, dripping down into his ear. Cas’s body lies facedown next to him, their quicklights on the ground between us.
I pick one up and immediately find Tian, lying prone a few feet away. Her eyes stare up slightly cross-eyed into the night, almost as though she’s trying to see the bullet hole between her eyes. Howl is gone.
“What . . . happened?” My voice sounds crackly and unreal in my ears, my panic rising in the growing silence. “Howl! Where are you?”
Helix jumps out from behind a tree, sprinting toward me. A manic smile tears his face in two as he yells, “You’re next, sweetheart!”
My body moves before I can even think, crashing low into his legs and twisting so I land on top of them. He covers his face with one arm as he falls, and I take the half-second opening, scrambling up to dig one knee into his back. It takes three slams of his hand into the rocky ground before he lets go of the gun, fingers crunched and bloody.
He pulls me over, rolling on top of me and pinning me to the ground with a knee in my ribs. Lifting my head and shoulders off the ground, he smashes me back down. “What is wrong with you, Sev? Your little Wood Rat is going to get away!”
The sentence ends abruptly as the butt of a gun connects with his skull. He seems to fall on top of me in slow motion, head floating down to crack against my shoulder.
Then Howl is on the ground next to us, pushing Helix off me. “Sev! Are you all right?”
A breath rasps in my lungs as my throat refuses to open. He isn’t gone. Alive. His voice is in my ear, urgent and too loud, but I don’t pull away.
I sit up, coughing. Inspecting Howl, I try to see if he is hurt, and I can see he’s doing the same to me. I can’t look away from him, knowing the moment I do, all I will see is death sprawled all around us. Helix did not spare anyone.
“Where is June?” I’d thought Helix was going to shoot me, but I suddenly realize he must have been after her or I’d be dead. Fear pours over me in a white-hot sheet. Those shots seemed too accurate for him to have missed one little girl.
Her voice splinters out from the trees, watery and broken. “Here. I’m here.”
I breathe out the air frozen in my lungs in relief. We feel our way to her voice. She is hovering over one of the bodies, twisted where he fell, a bullet through the side of his head. Liming.
I close my eyes, and it’s cold Sickly yellow light swirls all around me, the smooth cement bruising my knees and feet from kneeling too long. He’s flopped on the polished floor, buried by the cheers and jeering insults from the crowds behind us. His eyes are open, watching me. The memories I’ve long blocked hammer at my brain.
June’s stifled sob tears my eyes back open and I kneel next to her, knowing there is nothing I can do to help. My hand on her shoulder can’t fill the hole ripped through Liming.
“He was trying to help us.” Her voice is numb.
Burying her face in my shoulder, June holds on to me as if I’m the only thing keeping her alive, anchoring her to this world. I’m not even surprised when Howl’s arms wrap around both of us, and I can feel his tears hot on my cheeks.
? ? ?
The morning breaks red and bloody.
June leaves before sunrise, appearing back in camp with a tarp wrapped around some long branches and a fire starter from Cas and Tian’s campsite. We clear a space in the leaves and grass, holding the blue fabric down with a circle of rocks. Dragging her father onto the tarp, she covers him with the pine needles and wood. She stands for a moment at his feet, head bowed. When her eyes spark open, she lights the fire.
I watch for a moment, his soul ascending with the smoke, finally free from SS.
Back in the camp, she gathers her sleeping bag into her knapsack. Extracting the last bag of dried meat from my pack, she looks at me with a question in her eyes.
“You can have it.” I nod. “But don’t leave us. Please. Come to the Mountain.”
Her eyes find Helix, asleep by the tree. His hands are tied behind his back, but it won’t last. We can’t kill him as easily as he killed her family. Some of Tian’s hardness rolls over June’s face like a mask, and she just shakes her head.
“What do you want us to do with the rest of them?”
“Leave them for the gores.”
Before she leaves, she presses a Junis leaf into my hand and says, “When you get out of there, find me.” And with that, she turns and heads off into the forest.
She doesn’t look back.
PART III
CHAPTER 19
HELIX RUNS HIS FINGERS ALONG the rough edges of a cave opening, the mouth jagged like broken teeth. He peers at the stones until his fingers find a blemish, a patch that is lighter than the speckled rock around it. He melts forward into the darkness and goose bumps prickle down my arms. Helix belongs in the dark.
Howl’s hand is a comforting weight on my shoulder. “He was after June, you know.”
I look at him, eyebrows raised.
“You were in the middle. June is an Outsider. A Wood Rat. Helix doesn’t . . .” He shakes his head. “No. I’m not going to defend him.”
I nod. I already know this, and it doesn’t make what Helix did any better. Steeling myself, I force my feet to move toward the cave, my toes dragging against the hard-packed dirt in protest. The image of Helix’s animal smile as he points his gun at my little sister twists in the shadows. June. Not Aya. My sister is dead.
Together, we step into the mouth. The light spot is too distinct to be natural. It looks like the outline of a cat.
“Menghu.” Howl’s hand lines up next to mine on the stone. “It’s their sign. The cache we hid in was marked like this too.”
I fill my lungs until it hurts, until I’m about to burst. Mantis. This is the only way I get Mantis. “Let’s do this. Before I run.”