Poison Princess

36

Smoke and fog blanketed the air until we could barely see five feet away.

But we could hear panicked soldiers all around us, fighting to secure their encampment. Then we heard a strangled yell: “Bagger breach!” They were past the militia’s defenses.

Guns popped, men screamed—and Bagmen howled as they swarmed the camp. The trio of guards in front of us shifted nervously, guns rattling in their shaking hands.

“Evie!” Jackson?

“I’m here!” He’d come for me!

An arrowhead suddenly jutted from one guard’s back. I just choked down a scream as he collapsed, twitching on the ground.

Jackson’s arrow.

The two remaining guards grew spooked, rifles at the ready, but they couldn’t see their enemy to fight.

Another arrow protruded from a second guard’s neck; he twirled toward us, patting his throat in bewilderment before he drowned on his own blood. The third guard got wise—and fled.

Then I spied Jackson sprinting through the smoke, hell-bent for our cage. He shoved soldiers out of the way, battering them with the end of his crossbow.

He skidded to a stop right before me, scanning me for injuries. “Bébé, are you okay?”

I nodded wordlessly.

“I’m goan to get you out of here.”

“The door’s padlocked, Jackson.”

“Putain.” But that didn’t stop him. He drew back his mighty fist and punched the boards, again and again, ripping at them to get to me. Splinters and blood flying.

I glanced behind him, caught sight of that third guard returning. Right when I was about to scream, Jackson yelled, “Selena, my six!”

The tip of a long arrow emerged from that guard’s chest. He’d just pitched onto his face when Selena came running up. My vision had come true. Sure enough, she saved someone I . . . love.

“Come on, J.D.!” she yelled. “It’s going to blow!”

What was going to blow? Something bigger than the current earthshaking explosions?

As Jackson freed Matthew and me, Finneas gawked at Selena—probably from witnessing her tableau, possibly because she was so freaking gorgeous anyway. “Another chick? Hellooo, hotness.” Though we were surrounded by a melee, Finn took his time checking her out. “Dude. It is raining hot ass today. Screw the toothless daughter—I’m coming with you guys.”

His bindings fell away. Sure enough, he’d escaped them.

Jackson grabbed my upper arm, and we started running, back in the direction of the van. I thought.

As we sprinted past the worst of the fray, I noticed several flaming arrows plugged that gas tanker. Time bomb.

“Come on, Evie!” Jackson was hauling me along; the rest of our group had run ahead. “You got to be faster than this!”

“Trying!”

He had just slowed, probably to toss me over his shoulder, when a soldier emerged from a bank of haze—with a rifle pointed at Jackson’s face.

It was Cou Rouge, the one who’d taken me. He wasn’t more than a few feet away—and he had Jackson dead to rights. “Just be steppin’ away from her, all nice and easylike, and we’ll let you go.”

Jackson evinced no fear. “Not goan to happen.”

“We only want the girl.”

“Well, now, that’s a problem,” Jackson grated, “ ’cause I just got her.”

Cou Rouge shrugged. “Suit yourself.” His finger tightened on the trigger.

Oh dear God, he was about to shoot, and Jackson couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t do anything—

The man pulled the trigger. Click. Nothing. Click. Nothing.

Empty?

Cou Rouge gaped at his gun, then at Jackson, at the chilling expression on the boy’s face.

The same look I’d seen that night in his house, the one promising pain; now it seemed multiplied by a thousand.

I was seeing how much Jackson was about to savor the pain he promised.

Cou Rouge gave a whimper just before Jackson lunged forward, one of his brutal fists connecting with the man’s jaw.

The man went down from a single hit, limp. But Jackson hauled him back up, beating him more, seeming mindless with rage. “Only want the girl?” Another blow shattered the soldier’s nose. “Worst thing you could ever have said!”

“Jackson!” I cried. “Please, let’s go!”

The man’s face grew unrecognizable, shapeless, and still Jackson beat him. I wasn’t witnessing a fight, or a rescue. I was beholding punishment.

A sentence.

When Matthew casually trotted back for me, catching my arm, Jackson yelled, “Get her out of here! I’m right behind.”

“Come with us, please!” I screamed as Matthew forced me away. “Nooo, Matthew! Go grab him!”

Matthew chuckled at that, then shoved me forward.

“Go back, go back!”

He just continued squiring me through a minefield of explosions, brawls, and Bagmen, maneuvering me in different directions.

One time he yanked me back against his chest—just as a bullet whizzed past, missing us by inches. A few seconds later, he palmed my head, shoving me to my knees, and I heard some kind of shrapnel whistle directly above me.

I realized he was seeing a maze of present and future, a web of occurrences visible only to him.

As if he were fate itself. . . .

Still I begged him to go back for Jackson—until I spied soldiers pursuing us.

By the time we’d spotted Selena at the edge of the charred woods, dozens of militiamen were on our trail, calling for their comrades to “Get the girl!”

Selena intercepted them, with two rifles tucked against her sides. She blasted away at them, allowing Matthew and me to dive into a nearby ditch for cover.

A handful of shots sang over our heads, then stopped abruptly. From their shouts, it seemed our pursuers had realized Selena was a she, and ordered a cease-fire.

Selena didn’t follow that order. When they took up positions in a gully opposite us, she emptied her guns at them. Then she dropped into the ditch with us.

As the soldiers decided what to do—they couldn’t risk two females by storming us—Selena snapped, “Where the hell is J.D.? Damn it, there was one person I wanted to see come out of the camp. Not you two.”

I cried, “He wouldn’t come with us!”

“And you took no for an answer? I would’ve made him come with me! You’re not good enough . . .” She trailed off, her attention seized by something beyond our makeshift bunker.

I turned to find Finn strolling past the rednecks to hop down with us. “Yo.”

I found my voice first. “You just . . . walked right by them?”

With a cocky air, he brushed off one shoulder, then the other. “Told you I was a magician.” Then to Selena, he said, “Finn’s my name. Getting you back to my pad’s the plan. You just tell me when this stalemate gets old, because I can seriously change this channel.”

Selena didn’t seem nearly as shocked as I was. She merely patted her bow and said, “As can I.”

“You think you can take out more than I can?” Finn scoffed. “You’re on.”

Should I point out the obvious? “Kid, you don’t have a weapon.”

He chucked me under the chin. “Not to worry, sugartits, I got this.”

With a roll of her eyes, Selena charged up the rise, her bowstring singing.

Finn followed, and began to . . . whisper to the rednecks?

The sound of Selena’s archery was uncanny. In the smoke and confusion, I peeked up over the ridge and saw her shooting arrows with an impossible speed.

A supernatural speed.

Her skin was glowing with that blood-tinged hue—like a hunter’s moon.

Beside her, Finn raised his hands, softly chanting in a language I’d never heard. His breaths seemed to be searing, as if he were diffusing the air with heat. I perceived power, and he was directing it at our attackers.

The shooters he addressed stumbled on their feet, looking as dumbfounded as I felt, because the soldiers beside them now resembled Bagmen.

The rednecks began murdering their own comrades.

Somehow Finn was making these men look like their enemies.

And his ability seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I needed to witness this, needed to reach the memories that felt just on the verge of surfacing.

As Selena picked off stragglers, she winked at Finn; he grinned back. They accepted their powers, readily accepted such abilities in others.

“Arcana,” Matthew murmured at my ear.

“Yes,” I breathed. “This is real? Not another vision?”

“Real.”

I possessed abilities. These three kids did as well. Matthew had his live-streaming foresight, Selena could run and shoot like a goddess of the hunt, Finneas could create illusions.

And me? I smelled my own rose scent steeping the air—so lovely, almost intoxicating. I glanced down to find my claws had flared.

Matthew cast me a relieved look. “Thorns.”

“I can go help Jackson, fight with him!”

He shook his head firmly. “You don’t attack. You await, you beckon.”

Beckon?

Come, touch, but you’ll pay a price. I remembered the witch’s besotted admirer. She’d beckoned him.

The admirable deviousness of briars I’d once admired? Was that guile mine as well?

I heard a twig snap behind us and whirled around.

Matthew was staring at the end of a rifle, the barrel just inches from his face.

I glanced up at the slavering soldier who brandished it. I didn’t dare think he would run out of bullets too. He would capture me and kill Matthew. I had to stop him!

“Beckon, Empress,” Matthew whispered.

And then . . . I did.

I raised a trembling, delicate hand to the man, palm up. A fragile lotus bloomed directly from my skin, right before his riveted gaze. I blew him a kiss across its petals—and the rifle dropped, abandoned.

Because the soldier was clamping his neck, face gone bright red from the spores closing his throat and robbing his lungs of air.

As he thrashed on the ground, helpless, the lotus disappeared; my claws grew, sharpening—but now they were dripping like hypodermic needles.

“Poison.” Matthew grinned. “Lethal.”

I gaped. Ten thorns working like ten needles?

“Pierce him.”

For the briefest instant I wondered if it would feel good to plunge them into flesh.

No! “I-I can’t! Matthew, I can never be like her.”

“You fight her, you’ll face her. You must.”

Sink to her level? I feared I would literally become my worst nightmare, losing myself forever. “Matthew, what if I can’t come back . . . ?”

Selena trotted over with a glare and drilled an arrow into one of the soldier’s wide, disbelieving eyes—

The tanker blew, shaking the world like an atomic blast.