Kashmir wasn’t. His hand flew to his knife, and Mr. Hart whirled around—a shot rang like a bell in the cave and I smelled cordite and iron—but it was not Kashmir who stumbled back. It was Mr. Hart.
He clutched his right shoulder with his left hand, but he did not drop the gun as he stared, as we all did, at Blake standing at the mouth of the grotto. The boy stepped forward heavily, into the circle of our torchlight, as though his own feet were made of clay.
“I followed you.” Blake was breathing hard, but his gun was still high in his trembling hand. “I heard it all. Let her go.”
Mr. Hart glared at him while red blood bloomed like a boutonniere on the shoulder of his linen jacket, but then he swung his own hand back up and pointed the gun at Blake. “Put it down, boy.”
“You first.”
Neither moved, and then Mr. Hart smiled again, as bitter as truth. “Just like your father,” he said, and he fired.
Blake fell back into the dark, and I leaped on Mr. Hart’s back, wrapping my arms around his throat. He swung me around as Kashmir came toward him and my legs connected, knocking Kashmir against Slate as I tumbled to the ground.
Mr. Hart pulled up his arm and fired at Kashmir, square in the chest, and I rose, grabbing for Hart’s wounded shoulder and squeezing as hard as I could. He cried out and dropped the gun, but he managed to reach up with his other hand and twist his fingers in my hair until tears stood in my eyes and my own hand opened. Then he grabbed the bag and ran, dragging me along behind him.
We stumbled over Blake’s prone form on the path; he was still moving, reaching out, clutching at Hart’s leg. Mr. Hart yanked out of Blake’s grasp, but I heard the boy’s words, soft and raspy: “Get down.” I tried, but Mr. Hart still had me by the hair. He pushed me into the forest along the narrow path.
“Move!”
Behind us, feet slid through the loam—it must have been Slate—but then came the sound of something ahead: snapping branches and the conch shell and the feet, marching. Our warriors . . . had we brought them this close? But Kashmir had fallen in the cave, so who was sounding the conch? Torchlight shimmered between the trees, blurring in my teary eyes, and I understood what Blake was saying.
“Get down,” I wheezed, sucking in air. “Get down!” Slate heard me, and his footsteps stopped, but Mr. Hart wouldn’t listen.
I closed my eyes and covered them with my hands, blind as he shoved me forward. And then he stopped.
There was a chill and a stillness; then Mr. Hart released my hair. I sagged to my knees and pushed myself down to the earth, among the loam and the leaves. My palm was sticky against my face, and I smelled the tang of blood and something else, a whiff of cold earth and damp stone and dry moss, but I did not look, I did not dare. Blake had warned me about the Hu’akai Po. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t silence; it was the sound of a hundred souls holding their breath.
And I could no longer hear Mr. Hart.
I reached out blindly, tentatively, groping through the empty space beside me where he had just been, but I found nothing. I was relieved; I was appalled. I closed my fingers around a handful of dead leaves and crushed them in my fist to stop my hand from shaking.
I lay there shivering, water seeping up from the soil and into my clothes, along my forearms and elbows and knees as I pressed myself into the ground, until the mournful conch sounded once more, until I felt the rhythm of two hundred feet passing me by and fading away, until the Hu’akai Po vanished beyond all hearing and the only sound was my heart beating in my throat.
And my father’s voice.
“Nixie?”
I crawled over to him, staying low, finding my way with my hands, too scared to open my eyes. I touched his hand and he grabbed my fingers, crushing them in his own. “Are you all right?” I whispered, afraid to speak too loud, and he wrapped me in his arms.
“Oh, God, Nixie.” His breath was hot on my neck as he clutched me tight. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“I’m still here,” I said, half to convince myself.
“And Hart?”
“Gone. They took him, Dad. The Night Marchers. They—” I couldn’t finish the sentence; Slate had tightened his embrace, squeezing the air from my lungs. But there was nothing more for me to say.
“Good,” he murmured. “He’s lucky it wasn’t me.”
I heard footsteps then, and I couldn’t help myself, my eyes flew open. It was Kashmir, and he was propping up Blake, who had blood seeping through his coat. I scrambled to my feet. “Are . . . is he—” I started, but when Kashmir stopped, Blake slumped to his knees, and I didn’t wait for an answer to the question I couldn’t bear to ask. I pulled off Blake’s jacket and groaned at the sight of the blood soaking his side.