Salem's Revenge Complete Boxed Set (42 page)

Laney

I
aim my Glock at the Reaper’s face, which has a dark, raised burn mark on his cheek. Other than that, he doesn’t look worse for having survived New America’s missile attack. “What do you want?” I say, squeezing the trigger halfway, ready to end him if he tries anything.

“We saved your life. A thank you might be a good start,” he says, his dark brown eyes sparkling with amusement. I frown. Technically, they did save my life; well, at least the distraction the Boners provided allowed me to save my own life.

I lower my gun, letting the trigger retract to a resting position. “Thank you,” I say. “Now what the hell do you want?”

“Two things,” he says, the lines in his dark-skinned face deepening. “Rhett and your sister.”

“I ditched Rhett a while back and my sister ditched me,” I say. “I’d like to find them as much as you.”

“Maybe we can help each other,” he says.

“Like you helped us when you locked us up and brought Rhett’s girlfriend back from the dead?” I say sharply. It’s all I can do to leave the gun pointed at the ground.

Mr. Jackson sighs, but before he can respond, another figure steps out from behind a nearby tree. “
I
brought her back,” Xavier says. “Not him. I brought Beth back from the dead. You should be angry at me.”

For a moment I’m speechless, shocked to see Rhett’s best friend alive. His already dark eyes look even darker, but other than that, he looks flawless, as if he hasn’t recently been through hell. Smooth brown skin. Neatly trimmed hair and eyebrows. The beginnings of a goatee, a slight change from his clean-shaven look. The last time I saw him he was practically holding up his warlock boyfriend as missiles rained down upon them. “You’re alive,” I say. Duh.

“Not many of us are,” he says, looking away. How did he survive? What happened after we escaped?

“Son,” the Reaper says, looking back at Xavier. “Bring the others. We’ll camp here for the night.”

As Xave turns and walks away, I marvel at how far the all-powerful Necro gang has fallen. From controlling an army of the dead in a massive ward-protected stadium to camping in the woods.

The thought almost makes me smile. “Guess your plans to kill both sides until they’re forced to make peace have changed,” I say.

To my surprise, Mr. Jackson smiles back. “Sometimes it takes having your back shoved against the wall before you can truly fight,” he says.

~~~

I should leave when I have the chance, when it’s just me and Mr. Jackson and my Glock. But he insists I camp with them, for the night at least. “These woods are too dangerous,” he says, which I can’t really argue with considering my run-in with the Slammers.

I’m not scared of the Reaper—not anymore—especially after Xave returns with what’s left of the Necros. I count fourteen witches and warlocks, not including their leader and his son. They’re all wearing their usual dark, hooded cloaks.

From thousands to sixteen. New America’s missiles did their job efficiently. The thought of all those corpses bloody and singed makes me feel somewhat ill, even if I won’t shed any tears for them.

And I notice at least one missing face. Felix. Xave’s boyfriend. He’s a member of the Wardens, not the Necros, but it still seems strange that he wouldn’t be with them. Unless the alliance between the two witch gangs ended when Heinz Field was blown up. In which case they might’ve broken up. Another, darker thought enters my mind. Or what if Felix…

I let the thought drop into a growing pile of Things I Don’t Want To Think About, and return my focus to the activities of the Necros, who all seem to be ignoring me.

First, they build a fire. Well,
build
is probably the wrong word. More like
create
. One of the Necros snaps his fingers and a corner of the collapsed cabin flares up. The only benefit of my temporary shelter’s destruction is that we won’t have to traipse through the woods collecting kindling; we’ve got enough firewood to burn for days.

I sit on a log and watch the Necros organize their meager supplies into neat piles, wondering what the hell I’m doing. It’s only when I realize that I’m staying with them because I’m scared to be alone that I get really angry.

“Do you always camp during the day?” I ask, condescension heavy in my tone.

The Reaper glances at me and raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t respond, continuing to issue orders to his witches and warlocks.

Xave sits beside me on the log. “Necros don’t mind the dark the way humans and other magic-born do,” he says. “Our night vision is very good.”

“Freak,” I mutter, feeling somewhat bad when he winces. My tone softens. “Didn’t you ever notice you could see in the dark when you were growing up?” I ask, actually interested.
Did Trish know she was different than the other kids
? I wonder silently.

Xavier’s glum expression transforms into a smile. For a second, I understand why Rhett was drawn to him. His smile seems to carry the light of the world along its curves. “I couldn’t,” he says. “Magic doesn’t work like that. Even if you have it in your blood, you can’t do anything without practice and knowing how to use it.”

Except that Trish killed my parents using magic. Was it a fluke or is she even more special than anyone thinks?

Silence spreads between us as we both watch the others set up camp. A short, fat warlock builds what appears to be a spit over the fire. A few others construct makeshift teepees with sturdy branches and foliage. Everything they’re doing seems so normal that if they weren’t wearing their cultish cloaks and hoods they might almost appear human.

But I know better.

“You look pretty good for surviving a missile attack,” I say to Xave after a few minutes.

He doesn’t respond, just stares at his clasped hands. “Xave?” I say. I place a hand on his arm. “What the hell happened after we left? How are you still alive?”

“Why’d you leave Rhett?” he asks. A question for a question. A good avoidance strategy.

“If I tell you, will you tell me what happened?”

His eyes finally meet mine and I’m surprised to see that they’re already glistening with unshed tears. He nods once.

I take a deep breath. “Rhett is angry,” I say. “Not at me—at your kind. Necros, witches in general, anyone who’s made a mess of the world. Anyone who might have contributed to Beth’s death.” He asked for the truth so he’ll get it. “He hates that you brought her back to life. That he now has to remember how she looked at the end, instead of the girl he remembers loving. All he wants is revenge.”

A tear dribbles down Xave’s cheek, but he makes no move to wipe it away. “But you’re not angry? You don’t want revenge?” Xave’s questions feel like a cry for help, a hopeless plea for mercy and forgiveness.

I can’t give him any. “I’m every bit as pissed off as Rhett,” I say. “At you. At your father. At this damn broken world. But I’m tired of being scared and unhappy. Tired of being a mouse when I used to be a cat. Tired of being alone. I tried to convince Rhett to run away with us, to build a better life somewhere else, but his vendetta runs too deep. Not that I blame him, not at all. I understand what he has to do and why. I won’t stop him, but I won’t let my sister be a part of it.”

“Your sister?” It’s not Xave, but the Reaper who speaks. “Where is your sister?”

I look at the Reaper, whose eyebrows are raised sharply, and shake my head. “Nuh-uh. Xave and I had a deal. First I spill, then he does.” I glance back at Xave. “Your turn.”

Another tear has joined the first, on the opposite cheek, the two glistening tracks symmetrical, as if his face is a painting. I can see him framed and hung up in an art museum. It could be called
The Sad Necromancer
.

“He saved my life,” he says, his voice breaking. His eyes squeeze shut and more tears leak from the sides.

I know exactly who he means—the last warlock we saw Xave with. “Felix,” I say.

Hearing his boyfriend’s name makes his brown eyes flash open, swimming with emotion. “He was weak from maintaining his Wards for so long, protecting the stadium from the missiles.” He takes a deep swallow, but his eyes never leave mine. “But before the bulk of the rockets hit, he found the last of his strength, somewhere deep inside him. He told me he”—he chokes, coughs, continues—“loved me.”

God. “Then what?” Do I really care? I’m surprised to find myself feeling sorry for him.

“His last Ward surrounded me, like a fortress of glass, except it was created from magic.
His
magic. And then everything was fire and smoke and debris and I couldn’t see him—couldn’t find his eyes. He was gone. I could only hope that he died without pain, before the bombs hit. He saved my life.”

His eyes are red, his face sheened with a blanket of tears.

And despite how much I’ve hated Xave from the moment I met him and realized what he was, despite how much I wanted Rhett to see that his best friend was gone forever, I wrap my arm around his hunched shoulders and pull him into my neck as he sobs into my skin.

At the same time I have the urge to strangle him.

~~~

“My turn,” the Reaper says much later on, when the sun is well past its peak and the trees are casting late-afternoon shadows across our makeshift camp.

After Xave apologized for soaking my shirt with his tears, I lay down for some much needed sleep after my harrowing night. I didn’t even worry about whether the Necros would do anything; if they wanted to kill me, they’d have done it already. And anyway, I have nothing left to lose.

Even still, I couldn’t sleep for an hour. The pain of Xave’s story had left me shattered, which I hated. He didn’t deserve my compassion, not after everything he put Rhett through. And yet, it felt so wrong to say.

Eventually, however, I slept, my dreams filled with images of Trish, sometimes alone in the forest, sometimes screaming at the sky, sometimes transforming into the red-haired Changeling.

Now I’m sitting across from the Reaper and Xave. Father and son. Xave’s face is dry again, his eyes clear.

“Where’s your sister?” the Reaper asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

The Reaper stares at me for a few seconds before blinking, as if trying to decide whether to believe me. “Look at me that way again and I’ll fill you with cursed steel,” I say.

His eyebrows go up, practically all the way to the treetops. “I’ve forgotten how…
abrasive
you can be,” he says. Is that a grin that Xave just flashed me? If so, it’s gone even quicker than it appeared.

“Look, douchebag, I’m not going to lie to you—if I don’t want to tell you something, I’ll say I don’t want to tell you. But when it comes to my sister, I don’t have the slightest freaking clue where the hell she is. What I do know is that the red Siren showed up in this cabin, only she’s not a Siren at all, she’s a Changeling, and my sister was gone and the freaking Siren/Changeling/Witch—whatever she is—said Trish left to meet up with her kind.” I realize I’ve been rambling and haven’t taken a breath for a while, so I stop and fill my lungs. The Reaper’s mouth is open slightly, as if he wants to say something. “Any questions?” I say. “Because if not I’m going to go find my sister.”

“Wait,” the Reaper says, just as I stand up. “Sit.”

I don’t like being told what to do, so I stay standing. “What now?” I say.

He scratches his chin, as if trying to figure out where to start. Just to piss him off, I put my hands on my hips and tap one toe impatiently. “I don’t have all day,” I say.

“You’re saying the Siren is a Changeling?” the Reaper says.

“Did I not speak English?” I say.

He nods, murmurs under his breath. “That explains a lot.”

“It did for me, too,” I admit.

“I’ve been such a fool,” he says.

“Can’t argue with that.”

“Let the fox right into the henhouse…”

“You said some…
things
about the Changelings,” I say. “Before. When you were keeping us prisoner.”

“For your own protection,” he says.

“So you say.”

“So I say,” he says. He raises a hand to cut off my retort, which is hot and bitter on the tip of my tongue. “I don’t want to fight,” he says.

I take a deep breath. Okay. He’s right. Arguing won’t solve anything at this point. If he has information, I need to get it out of him. “About the Changelings…” I say.

Xave chimes in. “We don’t know much about what they’ve been up to, only the rumors.”

“And what are the rumors?” I ask, finally sitting down, on my own terms.

“The other witch gangs say the Changelings are ruthless,” the Reaper says.

“Ruthless like raising an army of the dead or ruthless like putting out a blanket order for corpses?” I say.

The Reaper sighs, massages his chest. The truth hurts sometimes. “We made mistakes.
I
made mistakes. I shouldn’t have trusted the other witch gangs to gather only already dead corpses.”