Black dawn (7 page)

The redhead glanced back over her shoulder, at
the same time reaching around to grasp the bottom
of her shirt in back.

Her expression was unreadable, but suddenly
Maggie was nervous.

"What are you doing?"

The red-haired girl gave a strange little smile and
pulled the shirt up, exposing her back.

Somebody had been playing tic-tac-toe there.

The lines were cut into the flesh of her back, the
scars shiny pink and only half healed. In the
squares were Xs and Os, raggedy-looking and
brighter red because for the most part they'd been
burned in. A few looked cut, like the strategic posi
tion in the middle which would have been taken
first. Somebody had won, three diagonal Xs, and
had run a burn-line through the winning marks.

Maggie gasped. She kept on gasping. She started to hyperventilate, and then she started to faint.

The world seemed to recede from her, narrowing
down to a one-dimensional point of light. But there
wasn't room to actually fall over. As she slumped
backward, she hit the wall of the cart. The world
wobbled and came back, shiny at the edges.

"Oh, God," Maggie said.
"Oh,
God.
They did this
to you? How could they
do
that?"

"This is nothing," the girl said. "They did it when
I escaped the first time. And now I escaped
again
and
I got caught again. This time they'll do some
thing worse." She let go of her top and it slid down
to cover her back again.

Maggie tried to swallow, but her mouth was too
dry. Before she knew she was moving, she found
herself grabbing the girl's arms from behind.

"What's your name?"

"Who ca-"

"What's your name?"

The red-haired girl gave her a peculiar look over her shoulder. Then her arms lifted slightly under Maggie's hands
as she shrugged.

"Jeanne."

"Jeanne. It's got to stop," Maggie said. "We can't let them
do
things like that to people. And we've
got to get away. If they're already going to punish
you for escaping, what difference does it make if
you try it again now? Don't you think?"

Maggie liked the way that sounded, calm and
competent and logical. The swift decision for ac
tion didn't blot out the memory of what she'd just seen, but it made the whole situation more bear
able. She'd witnessed an injustice and she was
going to do something about it.
That simple.
Some
thing so wicked had to be fixed,
now.

She started to cry.

Jeanne turned around, gave her a long, assessing
look. P.J. was crying, too, very quietly.

Maggie found her tears running out. They
weren't doing any good. When she stopped, Jeanne
was still watching her with narrowed eyes.

"So you're going to take on the whole Night
World alone," she said.

Maggie wiped her cheeks with her hands.
"No,
just the ones here."

Jeanne stared at her another moment, then
straightened abruptly. "Okay," she said, so sud
denly that Maggie was startled. "Let's do it.
If we
can figure out a way."

Maggie looked toward the back of the cart.
"What about those doors?"

"Locked and chained on the outside. It's no good
kicking them."

From nowhere, an image came into Maggie's
mind.
Herself and Miles in a rowboat on
Lake Che
lan
with their grandfather.
Deliberately rocking it while their grandfather yelled and fumed.

"What if we all throw our weight from one side
to the other? If we could turn the cart over, maybe
the doors would pop open. You know how armored
cars always seem to do that. Or maybe it would
smash one of the walls enough that we could get
out."

"And maybe we'd go falling straight down a ra
vine," Jeanne said acidly. "It's a long way down to the valley, and this road is narrow." But there was
a certain unwilling respect in her eyes. "I guess we
could try it when we get to a meadow," she said
slowly. "I know a place. I'm not saying it would work; it probably won't. But ..."

"We have
to
try," Maggie said. She was looking
straight at Jeanne. For a moment there was some
thing between them-a flash of understanding and
agreement.
A bond.

"Once we got out, we'd have to run," Jeanne said,
still slowly. "They're sitting up
there."
She pointed
to the ceiling at the front of the cart, above Mag
gie's head. "This thing is like a stagecoach, okay?
There's a seat up there, and the two guys are on
it. Professional slave traders are tough. They're not
going to want us to get away."

"They might get smashed up when we roll over,"
Maggie said.

Jeanne shook her head sharply. "Night People are
strong. It takes a lot more than that
to
kill them.
We'd have
to
just take off and head for the forest

as
fast as we could. Our only chance is to get lost
in the trees-and hope they can't track us."

"Okay," Maggie said. She looked at P.J. "Do you
think you could do that? Just run and keep
running?"

P.J. gulped twice, sank her teeth into her top lip, and nodded. She twisted her baseball cap around so the visor faced the back.

"I can run," she said.

Maggie gave her
an
approving nod. Then she
looked at the fourth girl, the one still curled up
asleep. She leaned over to touch the girl's shoulder.

"Forget it," Jeanne said shortly. "We can't take
her."

Maggie looked up at her, shocked. "What are you
talking about?
Why not?"

CHAPTER 6

Because there's no point.
She's as good as dead already." Jeanne's expression was as hard and
closed
as
it had been in the beginning.

"But--"

"Can't you see? She'd slow us down. There's no
way she could run without help. And besides that,
P.J. says she's blind."

Blind. A new little shock went though Maggie.
What would that be like, to be in this situation and
sick and blind on top of it?

She tugged on the girl's shoulder gently, trying
to see the averted face.

But she's beautiful.

The girl had smooth skin the color of coffee with cream, delicate features, high cheekbones,
perfect
lips. Her black hair was pulled into a loose, glossy
knot on her neck. Her eyes were shut, long eye
lashes trembling
as if she were dreaming.

It was more than just the physical features,
though. There was a serenity about this girl's face,
a gentleness and stillness that was
... unique.

"Hey, there," Maggie said softly. "Can you hear
me? I'm Maggie. What's your name?"

The girl's eyelashes fluttered; her lips parted. To
Maggie's surprise, she murmured something. Maggie had to lean down close to catch it.

"
Arcadia
?" she repeated. It was a strange name; she wasn't sure she'd heard right.

The girl seemed to nod, murmuring again.

She can hear me, Maggie thought. She can
respond.

"Okay. Can I call you Cady? Listen to me, Cady."
Maggie shook the girl's shoulder slightly. "We're in
a bad place but we're going to try to escape. If we help you out, do you think you can run?"

Again, the eyelashes fluttered. Then the eyes
opened.

Doe eyes, Maggie thought, startled. They were
extraordinarily large and clear, a warm brown with
an inner radiance. And they might be blind, but
Maggie had the oddest sensation that she had just
been
seen
more clearly than ever before in her life.

"I'll try," Cady murmured. She sounded dazed
and in pain, but quietly rational. "Sometimes I feel
strong for a little while." She pushed herself up. Maggie had to help her get into a sitting position.

She's tall. But she's pretty light
...
and I've got
good muscles. I can support her.

"What are you
doing?"
Jeanne said in a voice that
was not just harsh and impatient but horrified. "Don't you see? You're only making it worse. You should just have let her sleep."

Maggie glanced up. "Look. I don't know what
you're thinking, but we can't leave anybody with
them.
How would you like to be left behind if it
was you?"

Jeanne's face changed. For a moment, she looked
more like a savage animal than a girl. "I'd under
stand," she snarled. "Because that's the way it has to be. It's the law of the jungle, here. Only strong
people survive. The weak ones
... ."
She shook her
head. "They're better off dead. And the faster you
learn that, the more chance you'll have."

Maggie felt a spurt of horror and anger-and
^,
fear. Because Jeanne clearly knew the most about this place, and Jeanne might be right. They might
all get caught because of one weak person who

wouldn't
make it anyway....

She turned and looked at the lovely face again.
Arcadia
was Miles's age, eighteen or nineteen. And
although she seemed to hear what Jeanne was say

ing
-she'd
turned her face that way-she didn't
speak or argue. She didn't lose her still gentle
ness, either.

I can't leave her. What if Miles is alive but hurt
somewhere,
and somebody won't help him?

Maggie shot a glance at P.J. in her baseball cap.
She was young-she might be able to take care of
herself, but that was all.

"Look, this isn't your problem," she finally said
to Jeanne. "You just help P.J. get away safe, okay?
You take care of her, and III be responsible for Cady."

"You'll be caught with Cady," Jeanne said flatly.
"Don't worry about it."

"I'm not. And I'm telling you right now; I'm not
going to help you if you get in trouble."

"I don't
want
you to," Maggie said. She looked
right into Jeanne's angry eyes.
"Really.
I don't want
to wreck your chances, okay? But I'm not going to
leave her."

Jeanne looked furious for another moment; then
she shrugged. All the emotion drained from her
face as if she were deliberately distancing herself.
The bond she and Maggie had shared for that brief moment was severed.

She turned, looked through a crack behind her,
then
turned back.

"Fine," she said in a dull, indifferent tone. "What
ever you're going to do, you'd better get ready to
do it now.
Because the place is coming right up."

"Ready?" Maggie said.

They were all standing-or crouching, actually,
since there wasn't room to straighten up-with
their backs against the walls of the cart.
Jeanne
and P.J. on one side, Maggie on the other, with
Cady in the corner.

"When I say go, you guys jump over here. Then
all of us throw ourselves back that way," Maggie
whispered.

Jeanne was peering out of the crack. "Okay, this
is it," she said.
"Now."

Maggie said,
"Go!"

She had been a little worried that P.J. would freeze. But the moment the word was out of Mag
gie's mouth, Jeanne launched herself across the
cart, crashing heavily into her, and P.J. followed.

The
cart
rocked
surprisingly
hard
and
Maggie
heard the groan of wood.

"Back!" she yelled, and everybody lunged the other way. Maggie hit a solid wall and knew she
would have bruises, but the cart rocked again.

"Come on!" she yelled, and realized that they were all already coming on, throwing themselves
to the other side in perfect sync. It was as if some
flocking instinct had taken over and they were all three moving as one, throwing their weight alter
nately back and forth.

And the cart was responding, grinding to a halt and lurching off balance. It was like one of those
party tricks where five or six people each use only two fingers to lift someone on a chair. Their com
bined force was impressive.

But not enough to tip the cart over.
It was sur
prisingly well-balanced. And at any minute, Maggie
realized, the people driving it were going to jump
out and put a stop to it.

"Everybody-come on!
Really hard!
Really hard!"
She was yelling as if she were encouraging her soc
cer team. "We've got to do it,
now."

She launched herself at the other side as the cart
began to sway that way, jumping as high
as
she
could, hitting the wall
as
it reached the farthest
point of its rock. She could feel the other girls
flinging themselves with
her,
she could hear Jeanne
giving a primal yell as she crashed into the wood.

And then there was a splintering sound, amaz
ingly loud, amazingly long. A sort of groaning and shrieking that came from the wood itself, and an
even louder scream of panic that Maggie realized
must have come from the horses. The whole world was,
Run, Maggie thought. Stop looking now.
Run.