The Prey (30 page)

Utterly lost.

She no longer knows which way the fire is coming from and which way the others went. The smoke is all
around her. Flames, too. She opens her mouth to shout for help, but all that comes out is a strangled yelp, immediately swallowed by the din of devouring flames.

The fire is closing in, the heat pressing against her like a smothering blanket. Furnace waves of air brush her face, tug at her clothes. Between the stinging smoke and blinding heat, she can barely open her eyes. She staggers forward, hands outstretched, waving weakly at the smoke.

Sound swallows sound until the fire becomes a living, breathing thing. No longer emanating from a single direction, but from many. All around her.

She stumbles to the ground and falls. The hot earth accepts her.
This is the end,
she tells herself, knowing it's only seconds before she's consumed by flames.

A lone figure materializes in the wall of fog: Argos, bounding forward with a series of insistent barks. He's followed by a person—a Less Than by the looks of it—but Hope can't tell. Whoever it is, he heads right for her, waving at the smoke, his silhouette wreathed by fire. Only when he's by her side can she make him out.

It's Book. He's come back for her. She has to stifle tears at the sight of him.

“Come on!” he says, extending his hand. She grabs it and they run, led by Argos, who seems to know exactly the best way out. She has touched Book's hand before, but this time as she grips it, it feels oddly different. It
seems a thing of strength, of comfort, of
salvation
.

They find the others in a small clearing, where they're coughing and gagging and spitting great gobs of black mucus. Hope has never been so happy to see them in her life, and she gives a sideways glance to Book—a look of gratitude and thanks. He is staring off in another direction.

She's still shaking from being stranded in the smoke, and barely notices when a flaming ember torches her cheek. Then another lands. And another. The air is suddenly full of them, tiny red coals being borne along by the ferocious wind. They tattoo her skin and burn holes in clothing.

A red ball of fire explodes a couple hundred yards away—not from the ground but from the forest canopy itself. The fire is crowning, leaping from one treetop to another. There's not even the slightest hope of outrunning it now.

Hope realizes with a shudder their fate is obvious. Either they find some miracle path out of there . . . or they're cooked. The fire scorches their backs. They have to do
something
.

It's Book who comes up with the idea.

He rips off his shirt and begins tearing it in strips. The others watch, dumbfounded. No one seems to know what he's doing.

Except Hope.

She rips off her outer shirt and also tears it into long rectangles. “Come on!” she yells. “Help us!”

Others follow, not knowing what they're doing or why they're doing it, only that Book and Hope demand it. Book turns to Cat.

“Give me your arrows.”

“How many?”

“All of them.”

Cat doesn't hesitate. He empties his quiver onto the ground. Some still have Hunters' blood on them.

“Wrap those around the tips,” Hope orders.

The Sisters and Less Thans look at her blankly. Most of them think she's lost it.

“Now!” she shouts, and they begin doing as she says.

When all the arrows are capped with tiny cloth coverings, Book and Hope begin moving through the haze, stopping at an edge of the Brown Forest. Before them, bathed in white smoke, stretches a wide pasture, free of trees but covered in tall prairie grass. The Brown Forest resumes on the other side.

Book looks to Hope and gives a nod. “You're the better shot,” he says.

Without hesitating, she dips the arrow's tip against an ember and sets it aflame. She draws the arrow back, angles it, and sends it flying. It soars high above the prairie in a perfect arc, landing somewhere in the middle of that enormous grassy field. A small fire erupts.

Now it's Book's turn. He does exactly the same, lighting a second small blaze.

“If we ignite this whole prairie . . .” Book begins.

“. . . then there's a chance it'll burn out before the fire reaches us . . .” Hope says.

“. . . and we can dig in and hope the fire passes over.” There's an ease in how they complete the other's thoughts. Like their minds are suddenly and perfectly in sync.

Cat's eyes open wide above his bandanna. “You really think this'll work?”

“It has to,” Book responds.

The rest of the archers follow suit, sending flaming arrows into the pasture, landing more or less along the line Hope and Book created.

Soon, the prairie is ablaze. A dozen different fires stretch from one side of the clearing to the other. The flames spread, then join, pushed along by the firestorm's winds. Their idea is either the smartest of all time . . . or the dumbest.

The back-burn has to devour the entire pasture before they can even think of moving forward. In the meantime, the wall of flame behind them creeps closer. Century-old trees plummet to the ground with earsplitting crashes.

“Stay down,” Hope commands, pressing herself into the dirt. Whenever she lifts her head and peers through
the darkening smoke, the prairie is still in flames. Have they misjudged? Is there too much grass? Will it take too long to burn out?

Meanwhile, the red flames behind them leap from tree to tree, emitting roiling spheres of black smoke. The sky is dark, the sun completely blotted out.

“How much longer?” Flush shouts.

Hope and Book both understand the need to wait. They also know if they hesitate much longer they'll be cooked to a crisp. When the rubber soles of Twitch's shoes burst into flames, they can wait no longer.

“Now!” Book and Hope both cry, and the Less Thans and Sisters take off in a mad dash.

They run as a clump, a force of bodies. There are no trees to dodge, no boulders to hurdle, just prairie grass six feet high in places. Their arms are machetes, hacking at the offending blades of grass, parting them as though stepping through a curtain.

With no warning whatsoever they emerge from the tall grass, finding themselves in the middle of a vast field. The earth before them is scorched and blackened, topped by thin ribbons of white smoke. Twenty yards away is the backside of a wall of flames, devouring the next section of prairie grass. But it's moving the other way.

They've done it. Book and Hope have come up with the plan that just saved their lives. The two exchange a
glance, and this time they don't look away.

“Hey,” Cat says, and something in his tone whips them around.

The inferno is nearly upon them. The pasture they just ran through is an advancing army of fire and heat. It won't be minutes before it reaches them, but seconds. Any sense of self-congratulation is burned away in the charging flames. Panic swells in Hope's breast. All she can say is a single word.

“Dig!”

She flings herself onto the scorched earth, the heat scalding her knees and hands. She doesn't care. Like a dog digging a hole, she tears at the blackened dirt, carving out a shallow trench, even as the heat singes her fingertips and bites into her skin.

Once the others figure out what she's doing, they do the same, creating small cavities in the earth. Even Four Fingers senses their desperation and digs as frantically as the rest.

The wall of flame grows closer. The searing heat blisters Hope's back like bubbling tar. Trees fall, crash, explode. Embers zoom and soar, pasting their clothes and bodies. They shake them off as best they can, but the ash is coming down like snow. A spring blizzard.

Although Hope's trench is ridiculously shallow, it will have to work. She's run out of time. “Cover yourselves! Now!”

Just as she's about to fold herself into the narrow ditch, she notices Argos off to one side. Tail drooped, hypnotized by the flames, he seems incapable of movement.

“Argos!” she yells, but he doesn't hear her. She tries again. “Argos! Come!”

Nothing. He just stands there, slowly backing away, whimpering, his tail between his legs.

The wall of fire is nearly on them. And suddenly, as though emerging from the flames themselves, Book is scuttling forward and grabbing Argos up. When he races back to the hole, he rolls into a tight ball with Argos tucked safely against his chest.

A second later the fire hits.

T
HE SOUND OF THE
inferno was the most god-awful, thundering cacophony imaginable. I felt like I was lying atop an erupting volcano.

Worse was the heat. Once the wall of flame reached the edge of prairie grass, it was like a sizzling glove pressing down upon my skin. Bubbles of perspiration danced on my back like pebbles of grease atop a red-hot skillet.

Stinging embers tattooed themselves into my body. Lethal snowflakes. But to shift my position meant exposing my face—and Argos—to the passing flames. So the embers landed, hissing and spitting as they seared my skin, burned my hair.

Hell on earth.

All the while I cursed the decision to create this back-burn, to climb Skeleton Ridge, to leave Camp Liberty in the first place. If only we had stayed put. What were we thinking?

I have no idea how long we lay there, only that it seemed an eternity. I passed out . . . and was confronted with a familiar image.

The woman with long black hair.

She appeared through a fog of white, beckoning me forward. It occurred to me I might be dead and she was welcoming me to some hazy afterlife.

“You will do what's right,” she said, her face creased with lines of worry.

I gave her a blank look.

She smiled a brittle smile and repeated it. “You will do what's right.” Then, she disappeared as abruptly as ever.

“But I don't know what it means!” I screamed after her.

I felt moisture on my cheek and blinked open my eyes. Argos was licking me to consciousness. I wasn't dead. Raising my head, I saw a distant fire . . . and a series of still, dark mounds: bodies blackened by fire. Less Thans and Sisters.

I lifted myself from the scorched earth and shook the ashes from my clothes. When I ran a hand through my hair, a plume of black ash erupted. I was covered in the
stuff. Argos had fared only slightly better. Although he was turned ebony from ash, I had managed to protect him from the burning embers.

I was turned around and couldn't tell who was who. All the still, dark mounds looked exactly the same. As Argos and I walked toward them, our footsteps exploded in clouds of ash and embers. Twitch's body was the first one we came to. I stuck out a hand and searched for a pulse. I couldn't find one. When he suddenly blinked and raised his head, I nearly fell back.

“We made it?” Twitch asked, his voice hoarse.

“Looks that way.”

“And the others?”

“Don't know yet.”

I helped him to his feet and we began walking from hole to hole. Some of them had managed deeper holes than others and their backs were badly scalded—Red's shirt was still on fire, so was Scylla's—but miraculously, everyone we discovered was still very much alive.

Except for Hope. We hadn't yet found her.

“Where is she?” I asked, pivoting in place, aware of the panic in my voice. “Where's Hope?”

Argos barked and I followed his gaze—to a motionless mound in the charred landscape. I inhaled sharply at the sight of her. My feet were two-ton weights as I slowly approached.

It wasn't just the drifting smoke that made me feel as
if I was walking in a fog; it was the fear of what I was about to find. And as I made my way toward her—feet kicking up a cloud of embers and ash—it occurred to me that if she didn't survive, I wouldn't either. All my life I'd been searching for someone who understood me, someone who made me better, someone who believed in me.

Hope was that person. And without her . . . well, I couldn't bear to think about it.

I crouched down by her side, laying my outstretched hand on her shoulder. As my fingers rested on her warm skin, willing her to be alive, I remembered her body curved into me in the darkened tunnel; the grip of our fingers as we stumbled from the inferno. Things my body couldn't let go of.
Wouldn't
let go of.

But not just memories from the past—it's like my body could sense the future also. Sharing stories and laughter and tears. My hands running down her arms. The tips of my fingers exploring the hollow of her neck. Her milk-scented breath warming my cheek as we lay next to each other, counting the infinite stars above us.

A future that could only happen if she was still alive.

I shook her lightly. “Hope?”

She didn't stir.

“Hope?” I said again, my voice thick with desperation.

Still nothing. I turned away.

Then, I heard it.

“Book?” she asked groggily.

Her eyes blinked open.

A surge of relief shot through me and for a second I thought my knees would buckle. “Yes,” I said. “It's me.”

Her eyes batted away the smoke. “I'm okay?”

I was suddenly incapable of speech. Before I answered her, before I even uttered a single word, I hoisted her to her feet and pulled her into me, throwing my arms around her, hugging her like I'd never hugged anyone in my entire life. We stood there, embracing, our chests pressed against each other, our beating hearts mingling into one.

“You're okay,” I said, whispering in her ear. “You're okay you're okay you're okay!”

She nodded fiercely, and I could feel her tears staining both our cheeks.

When I finally drew away, I looked into her face. Those eyes—those liquid brown pools that had drawn me in since we'd first met—called to me. Beckoned me.

So I kissed her. I leaned forward and slid my hands on either side of her face and brought it gently forward and kissed her—our lips pressing against each other in a kind of quiet desperation. We had kissed once before, but that was clumsy and hurried and maybe even accidental. This time, it was no accident . . . and we were in no hurry.