Firewalker

Her head was the most disturbing part of her. She had a long stalk for a neck and her skull was ovoid, hairless, and topped with huge, multifaceted eyes. Her mouth was a jumble of tubes that was framed with a pair of shortened legs that brushed her face and constantly cleaned ash off her iridescent, alien eyes. Her head twitched and swiveled on her stalk-neck in blindingly fast and jerky motions. Lily got the sense that the Sister could see in a complete circle around her. She had no blind spot—not below or behind or above.

The Sister was over ten feet tall and she strode toward Lily’s Tristan, her enormous black-veined wings vibrating irritably as she tucked them behind her. Those human hands of hers unwound something she had wrapped around her narrow waist. It was a whip that was tipped in barbs. She unfurled the whip in one hand as she neared and ran her other hand across the small of her back, which came back covered in vaguely golden ichor. She transferred the ichor to the barbs at the end of the whip.

She milked herself for venom, Lily.

I saw, Tristan. Everyone, listen—don’t let the Sisters catch you with the ends of their whips! Cut them off if you can!

As Lily sent out her warning to all her braves the Sister spun her whip over her head and cracked it at Tristan. He dove to the side, narrowly escaping the stinging cat-o’-nine-tails she wielded. She reversed the direction of the whip and sent it back at him, but he wove his way inside the arc of her lash and stuck his blade between the plates of her exoskeleton.

The Sister twitched as she died. Three more Sisters dropped from the sky and a swarm of Workers zeroed in to attack Tristan in concert. Lily heard no spoken commands from the Sisters or the Workers, but they fought as one.

They are all connected. The Hive has one mind and it fights as an organism.

Lily didn’t know if the thought was hers, one of the Tristans’, Una’s, or everyone’s, but she sent it out to all her braves. If the Hive fought as one, so must they. She pulled her single consciousness out of her Tristan and instead imagined herself as plural, like a tapestry of many threads. Lily let go of her sense of I, of being one person, and became They.

They moved into a circle and focused first on becoming fire. They allowed the fire to engulf them, but fire would not kill them—it could only fuel them. The Workers died in droves, falling off their skin as husks of blackened carbon, and the Sisters cringed for a moment before diving back into the flames with Lily’s They.

They cut through the Sisters—charred bodies falling around them and piling up, but more came. Always more. They lost one, two, then three threads. They howled and wept with every loss of Themselves. The whips cracked and the Workers flew into the fire to die without hesitation. Wave after wave. Sting after sting. The wildfire moved on, but They were pinned down by the bodies of Workers and Warrior Sisters everywhere—thousands of bodies.

They lost one more thread—an absence unlike any other—and Lily pulled herself out of the tapestry.

Tristan!

No answer.

“Tristan!” Lily screamed, but only a thin wail came out of her.

She heard a whip crack and felt the lash across her back. Hot and numb, the venom seeped into her blood. Lily could see Sisters swooping down to pick up her loved ones and fly off with them. She saw Juliet, Breakfast, Una, Caleb, and the other Tristan getting hauled up into the air.

Her Tristan, her best friend, was not among them.

She felt nothing—not hands holding her nor the temperature changing nor the wind rushing past—but she saw the ground get smaller and farther away as she was lifted off her stomach and flown upward. The black battlefield below still smoked. Everything went dark.

*

Carrick saw the smoke from miles away. Then he felt the thunder in the ground. A prairie fire was stampeding the buffalo.

Carrick didn’t feel fear often, but he felt it now. There was no high ground to climb, no river to put between him and the tide of hooves and horns, and he’d lost his connection with Lillian when he followed Rowan over the mountains. Strength from his witch would not avail him, anyway. Neither would cleverness or high ground or any river but one of the great ones, for that matter. Surviving a stampede came down to luck. Either the buffalo came your way or they didn’t.

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