Salem's Revenge Complete Boxed Set (45 page)

“Your guess wasn’t too far from the truth,” I say. “I’d say ‘freaky cult’ about sums it up.”

He laughs at that, too, which makes me like him slightly more, just above the I-Hate-Your-Stinking-Guts level. He continues: “When I told the Reaper what had happened to Beth, he jolted, like he’d been shocked. He almost looked…sad. It’s not what I expected from a cult leader. He even hugged me, and I let him because I had no strength left. It actually helped. And then, to my surprise, he said he’d get her body. That we could bury her together.”

“Ha!” I say, my mouth getting the better of me again. “As if a Necromancer would ever bury a potential soldier to add to their army.”

Xavier bites his lip. “Two days later he brought Beth’s body. She’d been cleaned up, the blood wiped off of her lips and body. She was dressed in a clean, white dress. If it wasn’t for the decay and the smell, she would’ve almost looked like she was only sleeping.”

Although I can see the emotion on his face, I can’t hold back the fury building in my chest. “Yeah, a mint condition corpse, perfect for reanimation.”

Xavier looks away, blinking quickly, clearly fighting back tears. “It wasn’t like that. I even dug a hole, out behind the warehouse. The Reaper, who was still insisting he was my father, offered to help, or have his men dig it, but this was something I had to do myself, and they let me. They even got me a coffin for her and helped me lower her into the grave. I covered her with dirt.”

Despite the tears on his cheeks, I say, “That’s where you should have left her.”

He nods. “I can’t change the past. I won’t try to justify digging her up, reanimating her, only that I thought it was the right thing at the time.”

“Yeah, I’m sure your father did a great job of convincing you.”

I just make out Xave’s eyebrows going up in the dark. “No,” he says. “He did everything he could to talk me out of it. But he couldn’t. Once I’d seen what the Necros were capable of…once I’d seen what
I
was capable of…there was no changing my mind about Beth. Despite my father’s constant reminders that Reanimates weren’t the same as the person whose body they used, I managed to convince myself that I could do it. That I could perfect the dark magic and bend it to my will. That I could bring Beth back from the dead, not just reanimate her body.”

I shudder, all the talk of corpses and reanimation bringing recent memories to the forefront of my mind. And because I can see the truth in what he’s saying. I mean, I heard the way the reanimated Beth said Rhett’s name. Was it simply an instinctual thing? A random word said over and over again because she’d said it—thought it—so many times before she’d died? Or was she still in there somewhere, trying to make herself known? No. Impossible. The dead stay dead. Even the most powerful magic can’t change that. “She died in your arms,” I say.

“I realize that now, but at the time I thought if I made her perfect on the outside, she’d be perfect on the inside, too.”

The way he says it is so pure, like the simple logic of a child, that I find myself wishing he’d been right. More than that, I find myself on his side, any wall between us having been torn down by his story.

I’m more confused than ever. I don’t seem to have the slightest idea who the enemy is anymore. The Necros have done so many awful things, and yet they seem to be the ones trying to fight against the other witch gangs. My sister, who’s as pure as they come, is a Claire, but what if she’s the exception and the rest of them are evil, having allied with the Changelings? What if they’re brainwashing her right now, convincing her to use her powers against humanity? My stomach aches at the thought.

My thoughts will have to wait, however, because just then we hear a shout from up ahead.

“Found something!” the voice yells.

Rhett

W
e settle down for the night in a Sunoco station. The shelves are empty, looted long ago, but Hex leads us to a small, locked, metal door. There are dozens of dents in it, and the metal lock looks like it’s been shot at, riddled with bullet holes. And yet, somehow, it refused to open.

Bil pulls out his rifle, but I grab the stock, because Hex is already pawing at the door. “You’ll kill yourself with a ricochet. Let Hex do it.”

Hex leaps up and licks the door handle. There’s a click. Bil shakes his head in amazement.

“A lick for a click,” I say. “Good boy.” Hex lets me scratch him behind his dark ear as Bil pushes into the space beyond the door.

“Bingo,” Bil says. “Enough water to last us for weeks and plenty of snacks.”

Hex and I follow him in, where he’s already filling a bag with supplies. Beef jerky. Water bottles. Nuts and dried fruit. There’s even some over-the-counter medicine. Considering my track record for injuries, I’m sure that will come in handy.

There are two stools likely used for reaching the top shelves. Given my height, I don’t need them for that, but I claim one as a seat, placing it against the wall so I have a backrest.

I close my eyes while Bil continues to load up and Hex sniffs everything in sight. I swear the days are getting longer. Was it really only two days earlier that Laney and Trish took off on their own? It seems like weeks since I’ve seen them, each beat of my heart pounding a drum filled only with regret.

Another thought hits me. “Where are all the witches?” I say, thinking out loud. My eyes fly open. Bil looks at me strangely. Hex looks at me even more strangely. “Seriously,” I say. “I haven’t seen a single witch since Pittsburgh. It’s been at least a week.” Which is not normal. There’s one thing that’s been very consistent since this all began: Witches are everywhere.

“The missiles,” Bil says. “New America flexed its muscles and proved it’s a force to be reckoned with. Most of the magic-born are lying low, considering what to do next. It’s likely they’ll realize once more that fighting each other won’t help them defeat the remaining humans. Like before, they’ll form alliances. It’s quiet because we’re about to begin the final fight for our lives.”

His words wash over me like a cold wave, chilling me to the core. Is he right? Could the witch gangs set aside their differences one more time in order to finish us off? Would we stand any chance if they did? Something twists in my heart. A subtle change. This isn’t about revenge. Not for Beth, not for my foster family, not for all the people I’ve failed to save along the way. This is about the survival of a species. And although I’ll continue to fight in honor of Beth, it won’t be to avenge her death. It will be to make her death matter. So that she’ll be able to see from wherever she is now that I haven’t given up.

So that she’ll be proud.

~~~

“You ever wonder how I found you?” Bil asks me the next day. We’re somewhere in West Virginia, cutting a southeastern track diagonally toward Maryland and eventually to what used to be Washington D.C.—now called New Washington.

I look at Bil to see if he’s being serious. I’ve already asked him that exact question twice, and both times resulted in a huge fight. But that wasn’t him, I remember. At least not the normal him. “Uh, yeah,” I say. “How’d you find me?”

“You know that night on Mount Washington, when I ditched you?”

How could I forget the witch panther, Flora, and her two Hallucinator bodyguards? Getting taken captive isn’t something you usually forget. But I don’t say any of that, I just nod.

“Before I left I put a tracker in the heel of your boot,” he says.

“You did what?” I feel a spike of anger in my chest.

“Would you rather I’d carried out my mission and killed you instead?” he asks. Not waiting for a response, he says, “Sorry, buddy, but at that point I wasn’t sure about you. I wasn’t prepared to kill you, but I didn’t know whether you might switch sides, like President Washington suspected you would. Tracking you was the next best option to killing you, just in case I needed to find you later.”

That makes sense. And clearly it was him making the decisions, not his alter ego. I hate to admit it, but I understand now why he did what he did. “Where were you when everything was going down?” I ask.

“Trying to warn you,” he says. “I hadn’t seen you in days, since the Shifter took you inside the stadium, and I was beginning to wonder whether you really
had
joined the Necros. But something told me that wasn’t it. Either you were dead—which didn’t feel right—or you were captive. I was still in contact with New America and had been informed that the strike would occur later that day, so I sprang into action. While the witches were on a routine patrol, I managed to jump a Pyro and take him out. I stole his clothes and used a little magic trick—his heat retardant gloves and some rubbing alcohol—to show the Wardens I was a Pyro, and managed to sneak in.”

Major. Freaking. Newsflash.

“You were there?”

“Hells yeah I was there. If it wasn’t for being a Resistor, I would’ve been killed seven or eight times. I even got bit by one of those zombies.”

I pull up short, the beautiful lines of Beth’s chin and lips and nose flashing in my mind. The empty unseeing craters that used to be her eyes. “They aren’t zombies,” I say.

Bil stops, too, looking at me strangely. “Who cares what you call ’em?” he says. “They’re the walking dead.”

“They’re Reanimates,” I say, surprising even myself at how pedantic I’m being. The Reaper did the same thing once, during one of our long conversations.

“I don’t care what we call them. They’re scary,” he says. “And they bite like, no offense Hex, like wild dogs.” Hex cocks his head to the side as if to say,
What does that have to do with me?

I let out a deep breath. He’s right. It doesn’t matter what we call them. Beth was never one of them, not really. Xave made sure of that. She was the only one that never tried to attack. She just spoke my name, in that rattling, chilling way. It was her voice, but not her voice.

It wasn’t really her, I remind myself. Just her body—nothing more.

“Where’d you get bitten?” I ask.

“I’m pretty sure you’d rather not see,” Bil says, chuckling to himself.

“I didn’t ask to see.”

“In the butt-ocks,” he says, doing his best Forrest Gump impression.

I snort. “You’re kidding.”

“Alright, I guess I’ll have to show you.” He starts to turn around.

“No no no no no, that’s quite all right, thank you,” I say quickly, covering my eyes in case he ignores me.

Bil laughs. “I was really hoping Laney would be around so I could show her, too,” he says. “Shame she had to go off on her own.”

Thanks for the reminder. “She’d just as soon shoot you as talk to you,” I say. “You’re not exactly in her good books.”

He starts to say something, but I cut him off. “Thanks for trying to warn me of what was about to go down,” I say. “You risked your life.”

“It was more for Laney,” he says, smiling widely. “She may hate me, but I like her. And I was never in any real danger, not with my ska-zillz.”

“Being a Resistor,” I say drily.

“We’re blood brothers,” he says with a wink.

Hex barks.
We should keep moving
, I think he says. But no, that’s not it. He’s stiff, his black/brown body frozen as if encased in ice. His tail is between his legs, not wagging like usual. His black-capped nose is pointed off the road, toward where there’s some kind of a sprawling business park.

“What is it, boy?” I say, crouching beside him, resting my hand on his dark coat. Hex twists his head around to look at me, his eyes dark, his teeth bared. He turns back to the office buildings and lets out a low growl.

A shout breaks the hazy silence, punctuated by the crisp crack of a gunshot.

Hex vanishes.

~~~

“Where’d he go?” Bil hisses, crouching low beside me, where my dog used to be.

“He does that,” I say. “He’ll find us.”

More gunshots erupt, echoing across the relatively even terrain. Bil and I flatten ourselves out on the highway.

“We should make for the tree cover,” Bil says. “Find a place to hide.”

“Don’t you want to know what’s going on?” I whisper.

“Sorry, my Resistor abilities don’t include stopping bullets. I’d rather face magic than guns any day.” Bil rises up to his knees and starts crawling across the road. I glance at him, tempted to throw a rock at his butt and provide an injury to match his Reanimate bite, but then turn back toward the office park.

Someone dashes along the sidewalk across the front of the first floor offices, a sword swinging from one of her pumping arms, her long, black ponytail bobbing behind her. Her gait is graceful and lithe, as if she’s running on her toes with the wind at her back.

I’d know her anywhere.

The Silent Assassin. Deadly and focused, her narrow Asian eyes seeking her next target. She’s been hunting witches for longer than I have. She’s one of the original members of The End.

And if Silent is here, that means the rest of The End is here, too.

I whistle a breath between my upper and lower teeth and consider my first move. Everything I know about The End cycles through my head. As far as I know, they’re the largest group of witch hunters around. They work for New America, seeking out large pockets of magic-born and calling in coordinated missile strikes on witch strongholds. I’ve seen them in action. Morgantown, West Virginia. Washington, Pennsylvania. And, of course, Heinz Field, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Piles of dead witch and warlock corpses. One of their missiles would have killed Laney, Trish, Tillman Huckle, Hex and I, if not for Trish’s magic-infused scream, which exploded the rocket in midair, saving us all.

What are they doing here? There’s only one likely answer:

Fighting witches.

Adrenaline churning through my veins, I take off, keeping as low as I can, following a side road that twists from right to left into the office parking lot, which stretches between the rows of two-story buildings.

When I reach the first intersection, I peek around the corner. The place is huge, more like a residential suburb than a business park, stretching on for at least ten blocks, crisscrossing roads separating each row of office buildings. Halfway down the first block I find the action, and somehow I’ve managed to come in from the back.

A tall, bearded, grizzly-looking warlock stands in the middle of the road, his arms above his head, palms open, as if he’s appealing to the heavens, to some greater power. His lips are moving.

In front of him are two witch hunters, members of The End, one of whom I recognize and the other who’s a stranger to me. The one I recognize is the Mad Sheriff. As his nickname suggests, he’s a cowboy-hat-wearing, boot-stomping, gun-spinning ex-lawman who, when the witch apocalypse hit, broke out of his padded suite in a place called Sunset Mental Rehabilitation somewhere in Texas.

The woman across from him, who I’ve never seen before, has short brown hair and is holding a short knife, gleaming in the sunlight. And she’s cursing Mad S with a string of obscenities so long and colorful I have the urge to cover my ears.

The Mad Sheriff lifts his pistol, and instead of aiming at the spell-muttering warlock, he points it at the other witch hunter, who takes a step toward him, her knife slashing the air in front of her.

What the hell are they doing?

Although I’m too far away to see Mad pull the trigger, I hear the boom and see the kick of the gun in his hand. The woman’s head snaps back, the knife flying from her hand and high in the air, before clattering to the asphalt next to her dead body.

They’re killing each other?

I expect Mad S to spin on the warlock and take him out next, but instead he points the gun at his own head. My breath catches in my lungs.

I see the black, egg-shaped projectile before I spot the witch hunter who threw it. As it arcs through the air, I follow its path backwards to where another familiar witch hunter stands stalwart on the roof, wearing his usual protective eyewear. They call him Eddie X. The X is for eXplosion. And the grenade he tosses does just that, bouncing twice and then bumping against the warlock’s feet, before combusting in a bright pulse of orange flame and a ground-shaking

BOOM!

Smoke fills the street, temporarily obscuring my vision, but as it clears I can just make out the Mad Sheriff on his knees, shaking his head, looking confused. He was just far enough away from the blast to survive it. Beyond him are a blackened circle and the remains of a blown-apart warlock body.

Everything I just witnessed clicks together, forming a clear picture of what I’m facing:

Hallucinators.

The mind-bending witches and warlocks use magic to trick their enemies into seeing what’s not really there, usually to the point where their victims kill their own friends or even themselves, as Mad was about to do before Eddie’s grenade saved his life.