Some of the lambs move away, but most move closer. They don’t believe me, but they want to, and that might be enough. “Look at me,” I say, holding out my bare arms so they can see smooth skin. “Look how unblemished I am. That’s because I wasn’t here when the blast happened. I was on another world, and I can get you all out of here. I can take you back where I came from.”
They shuffle closer, confused. They trust no one, but they also have nothing to lose. I feel the boy touch my ankle and I look down at him. Before River took his arm I told him I couldn’t help him—I couldn’t even save myself. He looks up at me now, wondering which was the lie. I know I will think of that look on his face for as long as I live. And I must live. I must go back to my world or the same thing that happened here will happen there. I look back up at the lambs and smile brightly, selling my big lie.
“It’s easy,” I say. “I just need for everyone to join hands and stand around me in a tight group.”
They take some encouraging, but all that is required of them is to huddle and they are lambs. They huddle naturally.
“Bare hands, everyone,” I say, stripping the makeshift mittens off the ones around me. Some don’t have hands, and I amend my order. “I need you all to be touching one another’s bare skin in some way. We need to create a circuit of people. Anyone who is left out of the circuit will be left behind.”
They understand and obey. I stand in the middle of them, smelling their rank bodies and their rotten breath. They are dead already, I remind myself. At least this way they will only suffer for a few seconds longer.
I’ve never drained this many, and I have no idea if the energy in their weakened state will be enough to fuel my worldjump, but desperation has a way of silencing doubt. The last person I touch is the boy. His eyes are round with disappointment and he tries to shake me off. I don’t let him. If I am to eat this sin, I must clean the plate.
“Thank you,” I whisper, and then drain the very life from their bodies.
And I reach through the darkness between the worlds, back to my home. The home I must save in order to pay this grisly debt …
*
The sun rose, and Lily found that more than half of her braves had saddled their horses and were preparing to leave her.
“We joined her to fight the Woven, not stand there and stare at them while they circle us,” Dana snapped at Caleb while she cinched her saddle around her horse.
“You’re a coward. You’re afraid of the Hive,” he spat back at her.
“As you should be,” she countered unabashedly. “Even one sting from a Worker can kill—but they don’t always kill you. No. Sometimes they just sting you so you can’t move. That’s when the Sisters come to carry you off, still alive.”
“That’s just something grown-ups tell little children to frighten them,” Caleb scoffed.
“Is it? You know for sure?” Dana asked. “I’ve heard that they do. And we don’t know what they do with the ones they take, because no one that’s been taken by the Hive is ever heard from again.”
“Oh, come on! What’s next, Dana, a ghost story?” Caleb’s face twisted with disgust. “You know, maybe Lily’s right. Maybe the Woven aren’t as bad as I thought. At least they can count on one another to work as a team.”
Dana wheeled her horse to charge at Caleb, and Lily stepped in between, forcing Dana to pull her horse up short.
“Enough. Let them go, Caleb,” Lily said, looking over every one of the braves who were about to leave her. They couldn’t meet her eyes. They hadn’t sworn themselves to Lily, and she couldn’t accuse them of oath breaking, but they all knew that’s what it was.
“Stop them, Lily,” Caleb said in an urgent and low tone. “We can’t make it with just a handful of us.”
“Listen, Caleb,” she said, placing a hand on his wide bicep to calm him. “What I’m trying to do can’t be done if I’m surrounded by people who don’t believe in me. Let them go.”
The rest of Dana’s braves mounted up and started to ride off. None of them stopped, and only Dana looked back.
I’m sorry, Lily. I can’t go any farther, Dana said in mindspeak.