7
DAY 249 A.F.
“Sooo . . . anybody else have a sense of impending doom?” Finn asked around a mouthful of Mayday bar. “I mean, more so than usual. Or maybe just of being watched?”
Teeth clattering, I said, “Oh, y-yeah.” I had since we’d left Requiem two days ago.
That first night we’d spent miserable, restless hours huddled in the shelter of some rocks. Tonight, after we’d plodded around nearly blind in the dark, Jack had come across a hunter’s shooting house. Basically it was a metal hut about five feet tall, with peeling camouflage paint and one open end.
When we’d all piled into his “find,” Jack had gazed at the sky for patience, but didn’t say anything.
There was enough room inside for each of us to have a little space, if we didn’t try to stand up. It allowed us to escape the drizzle and provided some protection until we could set out at dawn.
We were betting our lives that the Baggers couldn’t catch up with us before then.
I squeezed out my hair, settling in. “I’ve g-got an ominous f-feeling.”
Finn had produced another illusion lantern for us. I could swear the nights were getting longer, even as we headed into summer months, while the temperature kept dropping.
One day, would the sun forget to rise?
Despite everyone being waterlogged and freezing—except for Selena with her perfect outdoor gear—we didn’t light a fire. She had dry kindling in her pack, natch, but any wet firewood would smoke like crazy, and we still had Bagmen on our tail.
All day we’d wondered if the zombies could match our hectic pace. From what I understood, they didn’t heal from injuries, and most had been created the night of the Flash. At eight months old, they must have some wear and tear there.
Unless they’d been newly created by a Bagman’s contagious bite.
Fifteen hours ago at dawn, Selena had run back and scouted. Her assessment? “There are more of them.”
I’d asked her, “Where are they going to spend the day?” Though drizzly, it’d still been bright. And we hadn’t passed a single house, just mile after mile of burned-out woods.
She’d hesitated, then said, “They’re burrowing. Into the muck. The good news is that if any Arcana think to follow us, they’ll be in for a hell of a surprise.”
Like a Bagman minefield. I’d shivered at the imagery. And for the rest of the day, I’d wondered with my every step if I was going to find a Bagmine.
Now Selena said, “I’m getting the same feeling as you two. Like we’re being stalked, as hunters do with deer.” Plucking her bowstring, she admitted, “I’m not used to being on this side of things.”
I gazed over at Jackson, sitting outside our circle near the open exit, on edge as well. He’d told me that nothing could get the drop on him, and for the past several weeks, nothing had.
Did he remain with us because we shared a mutual direction, or because he felt forced to keep that promise to my mother? Since he’d refused to talk to me, I couldn’t imagine how he was handling everything. Matthew had said he burned with curiosity. Tonight I could almost feel the intensity of it.
Though Jackson hadn’t asked a single question—not his party, I supposed—he was listening, learning. During the day, I’d caught him staring at me again and again, his expression ranging from enraged to . . . confused.
“Matthew, do you sense anything?”
In answer, he studied his hand. He was pensive about something too. I wished he would talk to me, even if I understood little of what he said.
I placed half of my Mayday bar in his hand, curling my gloved fingers around his until he held it on his own. Eventually he glanced down, appearing surprised to find it in his hand. But he ate it.
“Who could be watching us?” I asked.
“Not Bagmen,” Selena said. “They would just attack. Cannibals?”
Finn shook his head. “They don’t hunt far from home.”
We were coming up on one of the charred holes in Selena’s map. I almost got the sense that we were about to fall off the face of the earth, like it should read: Here be dragons!
But as long as we were edging away from those mines—and a horde of Bagmen—I was game to go on. “We’d hear other Arcana calls, right?”
Suddenly Finn jerked a glance over his shoulder. The rest of us tensed and stared out the open end of the hut in that same direction, all at the same time, like meerkats.
He muttered, “I wish whatever’s out there would nut up or shut up.”
“Hear, hear.” Needing to take my mind off my jitters, I turned to Selena. “If you’re so keen to be in an alliance with us, why don’t you tell us what you know?”
With a condescending smile, she opened her bag—and took out a deck of Tarot cards.
“You had a deck the whole time! At moments like this, I can see the appeal of the game.”
She shrugged, laying them out atop her silvery reflective heat blanket.
“If you were trying to get me into an alliance, why keep all this secret?” I persisted.
“Because of that whole I-don’t-remember-the-game line you’ve been feeding us. I thought you were lying.” She dealt the cards in a cross formation, much like Gran used to. As soon as I saw the Tarot images, memories came into focus, springing to life like poppies bursting through a layer of snow.
Trying to draw Matthew into our conversation, I said, “Look, here’s Matthew’s.” I pointed out his card; on it, a smiling young man with an oblivious expression walked a desolate land, carrying a rucksack and a single white rose. A yapping dog nipped at his heels.
Matthew tilted his head at the likeness. “In a place where nothing grows, I carry a flower. The memory of you.”
I smiled at him. “That is so sweet.”
He frowned. “That literally happened.”
“Oh.”
Finn said, “That’s just like the image I saw the first time we met. It flashed over him.”
I nodded. “We all have those. They’re called tableaux.”
Finn held the card up next to Matthew’s face, comparing the likeness. “You look stoned, Matto.”
Matthew sighed with contentment. “Thank you.”
I held up Selena’s card. “The Moon.” Hers depicted a glowing goddess of the hunt.
Finn’s expression darkened. “Not interested. Next.”
Selena glared at him.
I pulled another card. The lightning-struck tower. “You guys already know the Tower, that pleasant Irishman who was such a joy to meet. And here’s Death.” I pointed to his card. The Reaper was clad in that black armor, scythe at the ready, riding a pale horse with evil red eyes. He carried a black flag emblazoned with a white rose.
Finn muttered, “Jesus. That dude’s real?” He wadded up his Mayday wrapper, tossing it into the shadows. “So what are his powers?”
Everyone looked at me for an answer. Even Matthew, as if he were quizzing me.
“He’s a horseman and knight with supernatural speed and strength. He uses two swords and can strike with them so fast they’re a blur. His armor is impenetrable, even to my claws. He’s fearless. In one of Matthew’s visions, I saw him walk into Joules’s lightning shower like it was nothing.” Kind of the way I imagined Jackson had walked into a hail of militia bullets. “His touch is deadly.” And he’d been able to read my mind for weeks. Though not without detection; I felt him even now.
“Weaknesses?” Finn asked.
“One,” Selena answered. “The Empress.”
“Yeah, so I keep hearing,” I said.
Finn frowned. “If he’s a swordsman, what’s to stop him from chopping down your trees, going all Paul Bunyan on your ass?”
Had Jackson eased closer to us? To me?
Selena said, “It must be her poison, then.”
“So how do I get close enough to him to deliver a toxin without getting stabbed myself? How do I get past his armor?”
Selena pinned me with her gaze. “We’ll have to figure that out if we want to live.”
After a moment, I looked away. “To think I used to feel sorry for him.”
—I do not want your sympathy, creature!—
You no longer have it!
—I’ve missed our times together. Missed touching you.—
Because he killed with his touch.
You’re sick!
“Evie?” Finn snapped his fingers in front of me.
“What? What’d you say?”
“Your card.” He held it up.
The Empress sat upon a throne with her arms opened wide. In the background were rolling hills of green and red, from crops—and blood. A waterfall cascaded in the distance.
“You look scary. And sexy.”
I was about to say, Not me. But it had been me, in a previous life.
Finn showed the card to Jackson, whose gray gaze flicked from the card to me and back.
“Okay, so you’ve got poison in your claws,” Finn said, “and a lotus thingy that pops up from your palm to choke and paralyze people, and a tornado of thorns, and your blood revives dead plants. Oh, and wound regeneration. Did I miss anything?”
Toxic spores from my hair. I could lay waste to an entire city with them. Hearing someone else outline these things, I felt even more like a freak. I gazed at Jackson, wishing he could understand that no one wanted to be a monster, to be feared. Hell, even a fiend like Death called me creature.
One of the good things about going full-on Empress? When I was burning with that white-hot battle fury, there was no room for doubt.
Now, as Jackson tilted his head at me, I was awash in it.
Selena happily added, “She can also mesmerize guys.” Revealed, no doubt, for Jackson’s benefit.
He narrowed his eyes, his expression saying, Son of a bitch! That explains a lot.
Finn looked excited. “Mesmerize? Really? It goes with your eerie Arcana call.” Making his voice breathy, Finn said, “?‘Come, touch, but you’ll pay a price.’?”
Jackson gave a bitter laugh.
Though the Empress’s arms were welcoming on the card, her gaze was menacing—as if she was thinking her call right at that moment. But then, that was her—my—MO. To beckon, to allure, then to strike.
“Mesmerizing is not something I do every day,” I hastily explained. “Just when I’m in full Empress mode. It doesn’t always work, and not for long anyway. I went all-out against the Alchemist, and he was still keen to slice my tongue out and pickle it in a jar!”
Selena nodded. “Uh-huh, whatever you say, Evie.”
I turned on her. “And what about you, La Luna? You have the power to seed doubt and to lure people to you with moonlight!” Beware the lures. “You set a trap for me at your house in Georgia, but Jack was with me so you held off attacking. You know, I’d bet that wasn’t even your place—I never saw a single photo of you on the walls.”
As she’d told me once before, she said, “Prove it.”
Everyone fell silent.
“What are your weaknesses?” Finn finally asked me.
Again Selena was happy to answer: “When there are no plants around to feed her energy, she taps out quickly, even more so if she has to use her blood to revive or create plants. She needs the sun. Her power is collaborative—some cards are more dependent on the environment than others.”
Keen to get the attention off of me, I said, “And what are your weaknesses?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Selena pointed to her thigh quiver, which held one real arrow and two makeshift ones. She’d been trying to replenish her supply, but, as she’d explained, there wasn’t any green wood to carve new ones from.
I supposed I could help her with that—open a vein, coax a sapling to life—but I didn’t yet trust her enough to weaken myself just to make her stronger. And it wasn’t like I had a lot of juice on tap.
Just as Matthew had warned, my powers continued to deteriorate in this rain.
“Eventually, I will always run out of arrows. Then I have to depend on my enhanced speed, endurance, and grace.”
Rolling my eyes, I picked up the Devil Card. “So, this is Ogen, a.k.a., El Diablo. He allies with Death. He’s got horns and hooves like a goat man, but his body is all ogre—with superhuman strength. His call? I’ll make a feast of your bones.”
“Ogen, the ogre?” Finn raised his brows. “Really?”
I shrugged. “I don’t make the news, I just report it.” I picked up the Judgment Card next. “You guys have met Gabriel as well. He can strike like a missile from above.”
Selena added, “And he’s got animal senses. That’s why it’s so dangerous that he’s hooked up with Joules. Gabriel can scent us even through Finn’s illusions, then Joules could just wait up on some vantage, pointing and shooting, picking us off.”
Strengths and weaknesses. I needed to ask Matthew what could take me out, besides the Touch of Death.
Finn sniffed to Selena, “Hide you with my illusions?”
I’d seen Survivor alliances tighter than mine.
He asked me, “What happens if one of us bites it due to natural causes?”
I didn’t remember the answer, so I waved to Selena.
“The Arcana closest to you gets your icon.”
“What happens to the losers?”
Selena answered him, “They’re reborn, with no memory of their past lives. Well, except for him.” She pointed at Matthew. “The Fool sees everything. That’s what makes him crazy.”
Matthew nodded happily at her.
Directing a scowl her way, I shuffled through some more cards, but Finn stayed my hand over one. “Wait, I’ve seen this guy.” His face paled.
“The Hierophant?” The image was of a robed figure giving a blessing to his kneeling followers. They all had milky white eyes. I handed Finn the card.
In a hushed tone, Matthew said, “Hierophant. He of the Dark Rites.”
I remembered Gran warning me about him: He’s a charmer, Evie, a spellbinder. Never look him in the eyes. You are vulnerable to him. And he’s not the only one. “My grandmother told me he can control your mind to make you commit monstrous acts. Once you do, you’ll be enslaved forever—even after his death, you’ll keep doing whatever it is he wanted from you. The monstrous acts vary each game.” Having been brainwashed in a nuthouse, I had a particular dread of mind control.
Eyes locked on the image in his shaking hand, Finn said, “He was with the cannibals. I think I can guess what the monstrous act is. He’s making people eat human flesh.”
“No one needs to force people to eat others.” Jackson was joining in the conversation? “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s no food in these mountains. None.”
We were going on months of empty grocery stores and zero crops growing. Few animals were alive to be hunted.
His voice a whisper, Finn said, “These particular cannibals feed . . . on the living. Not just raw. Living. Monstrous enough for you?”
No. No way.
Finn looked at Matthew, his gaze haunted. “These Arcana are sick, and they aren’t just fighting each other. What the hell is the point of our existence?”
Matthew glanced up, startled. “Point? Cachet. We are champions of the gods!”
“Gods?” I croaked, peering up at the low ceiling. “Are there, like, deities running around, controlling the game?”
“They left—”
Suddenly Jackson yanked his crossbow over his back, aiming out the hut’s opening. “We got company.”
Selena had already risen to one knee, her bow and arrow aimed—a little too close to my head. “It’s a wolf,” she said just as I spied gleaming yellow eyes in the burned woods.
Big yellow eyes.
Though Jackson relaxed his aim a fraction, Selena looked even more deadly. Before I could say a word, her arrow zoomed past my ear toward the animal.
When we heard the creature speeding away through the mud, Selena bit out a curse.
“Why would you kill it?” I demanded. “That might be the last of its kind on earth!”
Even Jackson—a seasoned hunter—was giving her a look that said, Not cool.
“That was no ordinary wolf.” Selena looked uneasy. Selena never looked uneasy. “We’ve been scouted by the Strength Card. The Mistress of Fauna.”
I remembered that card, and Gran’s words: Fauna can control animals, Evie, borrowing their senses and making them her familiars.
“Why didn’t we hear her call grow louder?” Finn said.
Selena had already strung one of her makeshift arrows. “Because she isn’t near us, not yet. Only her familiars.”
I scrambled out of the line of fire. “Why didn’t she sic the wolf on us?”
Selena shook her head. “I don’t know why, but Fauna just wanted a look-see. And I think . . .”
“What?”
“I think she wanted us to know she’s watching us. That wolf has been stalking us for days, but I never caught sight of it. Now it reveals itself?”
I swallowed, and Finn said, “What do you mean, watching us? And why would the Strength Card be involved with animals?”
I remembered this one—I’d had the same question eight years ago. “People only started calling her Strength in recent times. She used to be the Fortitude Card, referring to her single-minded purpose. She thinks the way animals do, like beasts on the hunt, with a sole, blood-driven resolve.”
I drew out her card, showing them a delicate girl in a white robe, holding the mouth of a ferocious lion. “Her card is one of the most literal. She can manipulate animals the same way I do plants. Like Gabriel, she has animal senses.”
Selena said, “Not only that—she can tap into the senses of nearby creatures.”
I nodded. “I remember that. If she wanted to spy on us, she could get a crow to fly over and see us through its eyes.” Even Jackson was listening intently to this. “And if she exchanges her blood with an animal, it becomes her familiar, connected to her forever. I don’t know how exactly. Selena?”
“Trade secret. Sometimes we don’t know all the powers. Though Matthew would.”
He cast her a mulish look. “Not your psychic.”
“Matthew, please,” I murmured, “can you tell us anything?”
He gazed down at his hand. Yet now he seemed to be looking for something there.
Or maybe my paranoia was spreading like kudzu. I asked Selena, “Do you ever ally with Fauna? Does her family chronicle?”
“Not normally. Each game she’s allied with different cards.”
Finn stared for long moments at the image. “She’s got an infinity symbol on her card. It’s right above her head. Like on mine.”
Those shared symbols. Death’s card had a waterfall like mine and a rose upon his flag. In essence, he carried a single white rose—as the Fool did on his card. “. . . to be read like a map.”
Seeming to give himself an inner shake, Finn said, “So, to recap, we’ve got zombies on our trail and cannibal mines nearby, and now we’ve got another Arcana on our ass.”
“Look on the bright side,” I said. “How many animals can still be alive? This game, it would suck to be the Mistress of Fauna.” No sooner had the words left my mouth than a wolf howled in the distance.
With plaintive calls, two more answered.