Firewalker (20 page)

“What message?” Tristan asked.

Rowan's dark eyes met Lily's, inviting her to answer.

“Come back to my world and take my place, or I'll kill everyone around you,” Lily said.

“Carrick will start with your parents,” Rowan said. “Lily can't be everywhere at once, so when you all scatter to try to protect your families some of you will be separated from her power. He'll be able to pick you off one at a time.”

“What do we do?” Breakfast asked. “My parents are dicks, but I still love them.”

Anger raged in Lily until she had to fight to pull it back. She looked each of her mechanics in the eye in turn, ending back where she began, with Rowan. “I want Carrick dead.”

Rowan nodded once, accepting her order. “He isn't far.”

“You can feel him?” Tristan asked.

“Barely. And that's why I think I know where he is.”

“Surrounded by granite,” Lily guessed.

“Remember that turkey I cooked?” Rowan asked Lily. She nodded—confused, but going with it. “While I was hunting it I followed the Sudbury River and I found a long street cutting through the woods called Salem End Road. On it, there's this huge granite boulder marking the Danforth plantation site. I got curious—for obvious reasons—and looked it up online. There are caves in those woods. Granite ones.”

“The Witch Caves, right?” Juliet said. “I've heard about that. There's a legend of the witches fleeing down Salem End Road to get away from the trials, and supposedly some of them hid in the caves for the winter.”

“If I needed to hide from a witch who wanted me dead, that's where I'd go,” Rowan said. “The more granite, the better.”

“Why is granite so important?” Tristan asked.

“Granite is full of quartz crystal, and quartz vibrates at one rate, like clockwork,” Lily said. “In order for my willstones to affect yours, I need to be able to manipulate matter and energy on the level where it's all just vibrating strings. I change the vibration in order to change the things themselves. But large amounts of quartz in between my willstones and yours block me. It's like drowning out a symphony by outshouting it with one monotonous note.”

“It also blocks mindspeak between willstones,” Rowan continued. “Only people who have a blood bond and don't need willstones to communicate can still hear each other, and even then, just barely.”

“So we'd be cut off from Lily's power,” Una said.

“We'll only have what we take with us into the caves. She won't be able to give us more. And we'll be unable to mindspeak if we separate,” Rowan said. “But while he's in the caves, Carrick won't be able to get energy from Lillian, either. What he's counting on is that if he can take witchcraft out of the equation, he can beat all of us.”

“Really?” Tristan said, insulted. He looked at Rowan. “I don't know about that.”

Rowan smiled back at him. “He's a murderer, Tristan. I know you're a good fighter, but you've never killed a man. Are you sure you're up to this?”

“Don't worry about me,” Tristan replied.

Rowan looked at Breakfast. “You're never to leave Lily's side. Understand?”

“Yeah,” Breakfast said grimly.

“Una, I want you in the fight with Tristan and me,” Rowan said.

“Wouldn't miss it,” she said, her eyes narrowing.

“Juliet, you'll stay here with your mother,” Rowan said. “There's a slim chance Carrick might circle back for her. You'll always be able to reach Lily in mindspeak because you're sisters. If there's a problem, she can get clear of the granite and give you some power to defend Samantha.”

Juliet pursed her trembling lips and nodded resolutely.

“When do we go?” Una asked.

Rowan looked out the window. It was still early afternoon. “Tonight. Until then we should get some sleep.”

The group broke up slowly. Una and Breakfast spent some time outside talking with Tristan. Lily hugged Juliet, checked on her mom, and dragged herself to the bathroom to wash off the sand and salt of the night before. When she got back to her room, Rowan was waiting in her bed. She closed the door behind her and went to him, already crying. He wrapped her up tightly in his arms.

“I'm so angry with you,” she said into his neck.

“I know,” he whispered.

“And I'm angry with my father for never being a father.”

“I know.”

“I feel like I can't really be sad about losing either of you because I'm so angry. It's like you both robbed me of any chance I had at getting over you, because even when I'm done being sad, I'm still going to be angry.”

Rowan squeezed her to his chest and brushed her cheek with his fingers. “I know.”

He didn't try to cheer her up or tell her that she was going to feel better in a few months—he just let her feel whatever she needed to feel until she was done. Lily cried herself out and fell asleep on Rowan's shoulder. When she woke up, he was staring at the ceiling.

“Did you sleep?” she asked.

“No,” he replied.

Lily propped herself up on an elbow, her head miraculously clear. It struck her that Rowan was just as angry as she was, and even more sad about having to leave her. Her anger fell away when she really allowed herself to feel his sadness.

“I wanted to travel with you,” he said, his voice breaking. He pulled Lily down until she was resting on his chest again. “I'd even started imagining what it would be like. We'd drive all the way to California and when we got out there, I'd take cooking classes to be a chef someday. We'd get a stupid dog, not because it could hunt or guard anything but because we love it. We'd live in a place with a swimming pool. There'd be no walled cities. No Woven. And we'd never be afraid again.”

Lily could see the whole thing in Rowan's mind. She saw the rolling hills of Napa Valley, and the utterly useless mutt Rowan wanted running blissfully around their yard. She saw the turquoise pool and the wide-open spaces that he didn't have to constantly scan for danger. She could nearly smell the outdoor grill and hear their friends' laughter as the sun set on another perfectly golden California day. But mostly, Lily saw herself. She was happy, always happy, in his mind's eye.

“But every time I'd almost let myself believe in that fantasy,” he continued, “I'd remember something.”

“What?”

“While my life was perfect, every person who I owed that life to would be fighting and dying.”

Lily saw the bright, sunny dream inside his mind's eye hollow out and bleed away and understood what the big, gray emotion she sensed in him was now. It was his dream dying.

“I could rescue them,” she offered weakly, knowing it would never work. “I could get Tristan and Caleb and anyone else you wanted, and bring them all here.”

Rowan sat up, smiling sadly at her. “You know I can't run from this,” he said. “I was born for the world I was born into. Here, I can
feel
good. There, I can
do
good.”

“Then I'm coming with you,” Lily said. Rowan was shaking his head before she even finished the sentence.

“Absolutely not,” he said.

“But, Rowan, if this is really about doing good, I'm the one who can do the
most
good there.”

He rolled over, pinning her under him. “Look at me. You're never going back there, do you understand? I can take a lot of things, but not that.”

“But—”

“No.”

Something hurtful squirmed behind his eyes. Lily heard a whisper in his thoughts, a whisper he shied away from.

… thousands of braves back in my world. An army. With them she could do the most good—or the most evil.

“I don't mean that,” he said, his brow furrowed with regret. “You didn't ask for any of this. You didn't want an army.”

“It's okay, Rowan. I worry about that, too,” Lily said softly. She laughed mirthlessly. “Look at what power did to Lillian.”

“You're nothing like her,” he said. “You don't think like her. You don't agree with her or what she's doing.”

“No, I don't,” Lily said, although they both knew the truth even if they didn't want to accept it. Lily had lived a different life from Lillian, learned different lessons, but they were still the same person down deep. Lily hoped that in her case nurture outweighed nature. “I'd fight her if I ever saw her again,” Lily added bitterly, thinking of her father. Rowan relaxed and laid his forehead against hers.

“Good,” he whispered.

They held each other for a while, both of them trying to get used to the idea that they wouldn't have many more opportunities to be together. When it was dark outside Rowan stood and peeled off his white T-shirt and jeans, exchanging them for his darkest clothes. Lily watched his bare skin sliding through the faint moonlight filtering through her bedroom window, already missing him so horribly she couldn't even cry.

“Wear all black,” he reminded her, looking out the window. “And dress warm. It's snowing. I'll call Tristan, Una, and Breakfast.”

They loaded up Tristan's car with backpacks, weapons, axes to cut firewood, and shovels to bury the embers when they were finished with the bonfire. They arrived at the Framingham-Ashland border before midnight. On one side of Salem End Road there were Colonial-style houses, some of them ancient looking but well maintained; on the other side of the dimly lit and winding road was nothing but forest. A crumbling stone wall, centuries old, rimmed the side of the street, preventing them from pulling the car over.

“No place to park,” Tristan said. “And there's no parking lot or hiking trails through these woods. It's just rocks and trees in there.”

They had to circle around the forest to the Ashland side. They drove up another dark, rambling road, aptly named Winter Street. The snow-blasted trees bent over the road from both sides, forming what looked like a tunnel of white ice. It seemed to snow even harder here. The wind kicked up flurries from the ground so that the air billowed with sparkling crystals.

“It's a dead end,” Rowan said.

“Let's just leave the car here,” Una said. She looked back up the street. “Wait a sec.”

They all turned to see car lights coming up the street behind them. Tristan killed his engine. The car behind them seemed to slow down and stop. After a few moments the driver backed up and turned down a street to the right, the headlights finally disappearing.

They got out of the car, shouldered their gear, and sank silently into the woods. Rowan closed his eyes. “Follow me,” he said, feeling his way toward Carrick.

They found something like a path, and crunched through the super-chilled snow for almost an hour. The brush was thick underfoot in places, and it gripped at them, dragging them back with spindly fingers.

“Stop,” Rowan whispered. He pointed in front of them. In the moonlight, Lily could barely make out a rocky cliff through the trees. Close to the top, but still inside the cliff face, came the faint orange glow of a campfire.

“That's it,” Tristan whispered. “I saw some pictures online. The Witch Caves are in the cliffs.”

“Damn it,” Rowan said under his breath. “He has the high ground.” The fire suddenly went out. “And he knows we're here.”

“How—” Tristan began.

“Because he's been waiting for us.” Rowan shook his head impatiently. “Let's get a fire going.”

“You're not going up there, are you? How can you defend yourselves from him if you're busy climbing?” Breakfast asked, whispering frantically. He looked at Una pleadingly. “Don't.”

“Stuart,” she said, smiling softly, “we either do this now, or we live in fear forever. I won't live in fear again. You know that.”

Breakfast stared at Una, probably sharing a private exchange in mindspeak, before finally nodding.

“We have to hurry,” Rowan said.

They gathered as much wood as they could and piled it in front of Lily. All the wood was wet, and it smoked ferociously when Rowan finally got it lit. “It could go out at any time,” he warned Breakfast. “Watch it carefully.”

Lily's mechanics stood around her, packs resting on the ground, knives sheathed at their belts, all of them anxiously awaiting her strength. She drew the heat of the fire into her willstones and a witch wind howled down the cliffs and through the trees. Power surged through Lily, lifting her feet off the ground as a shrieking column of witch wind formed around her. She rose up in the air, suspended as if she were floating in water. As she filled her mechanics' stones with pure force, one cold-blooded thought echoed through her mind.

Kill him
.

Her three warriors went streaking to the cliffs like black lightning. Lily stayed connected with Rowan, Tristan, and Una as they climbed but she lost them one by one as each ducked into a different cave to seek out Carrick. They would have to check every crevice. It was Carrick's goal to pick them off one at a time, and it occurred to Lily that he probably didn't want to meet Rowan first. Carrick had far less experience as a mechanic and simply wasn't ready to face his half brother. Carrick would go for the weakest, but how would he know who was the weakest when he didn't know any of their potential abilities?

He wouldn't, she realized.

He'd let Rowan decide who was the least capable fighter—by waiting to see which one he left behind.

In a panic, Lily's eyes snapped open and she saw a hunched, crow-like shape appear between the slim trunks of a birch tree stand.

“Breakfast!” she shouted, but not in time. Carrick's willstone flared with Lillian's power, and in an instant he was on top of him. Carrick took Breakfast by the throat so that he couldn't even scream.

“Someone help!” Lily wailed. She saw a flicker of silver in one of Carrick's hands. She filled Breakfast's willstone with power and he wrenched an arm free, stopping the descending blade just inches from his eye.