Touch (26 page)

The sickly green fire did nothing to stem the chill of the winter air in any other
way.

The voices drew closer. “We can’t move at this speed. The ground’s trapped.”

“I noticed,” the woman replied.

Chase slid away from his tree, gesturing for Allison to stay put. He couldn’t move
silently, but their enemies were making enough noise it probably didn’t matter.

“Don’t approach the areas where the vines have withered. It’s the only safe place
for our enemy to stand.”

That, Allison thought, had to be the Necromancer, or at least one of the two. Her
fingers curled around the knife Chase had given her; she could barely feel it. She
hesitated, then removed her right glove, shoving it into her pocket. The air was cold.

The vines spread as green fire encased their circular, twisting forms. But they spread
in a narrow line that seemed to travel straight ahead. As they did, they began to
gain height. Watching in silence as she breathed into her sleeve, Allison realized
they were forming a wall. A wall, a hedge of burning fire and thorns. She’d seen this
before, and understood that they meant to enclose the area.

The area and everyone who was trapped within it.

“Come out,” a male voice said. “Come out and I may choose to spare your lives. All
we want at the moment is information.”

She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that this might end without death—either
hers or Chase’s.

All she loses is a few years. A few years, in the existence of the dead, is nothing.

She couldn’t. Fear was a horrible pressure against her chest and the insides of her
throat—but it couldn’t make her stupid enough. And if she were, Chase wouldn’t be.
Chase would walk out of here alive, or the Necromancer would—not both.

Voices drifted closer and then veered away. She pressed her back into the tree, willing
herself to be invisible. The green light the vines shed made it harder, and Allison
knew, as she watched them grow, it would soon be impossible. She’d be seen.

She checked the necklace at her throat.
Think
. One of the men had given instructions to avoid the areas where the vines had withered.
Something Chase had done—something he’d planted, iron maybe—had killed the vines being
powered by Necromantic magic.

By the dead.

She heard another curse—a woman’s voice. It was followed by two gunshots. At this
range, they sounded like firecrackers, but louder, fuller. “Longland,” the woman said,
as the reverberation died into silence. “You go ahead.”

“I don’t have your vision.”

“You won’t need it. You’re already dead. If they damage your body, it doesn’t matter;
it can be fixed.”

Longland was here.

“Those weren’t the Queen’s orders,” Longland replied. After a longer pause, he added,
“And I can’t breach the barrier.”

“The Queen’s not here.
I
am. Go in. The ground’s contaminated; cross in the contaminated zone; it shouldn’t
stop you. If the hunter tries to leave, he’ll be leaving through those gaps; we’re
unearthing the iron we can find.” The gun fired again, and this time, Longland cursed.
“Your job was to find the kids. Ours was to clean up. Find them.”

* * *

Eric stopped at the edge of the ravine. The snow was newly broken in several places;
the air was cold, the night clear. Trees loomed like the broken pillars of ancient
walls. From between those broken pillars stepped Brendan Hall, his eyes silver, like
contained stars.

“They’re here,” he said.

Eric hadn’t asked Brendan Hall to scout ahead, but he was grateful for his presence.
He could see more or less what Emma’s father could see: The ground was glowing a faint,
sickly green, and the sky above the ravine was paler than it should have been at this
time of night. “How many?”

“Two Necromancers.”

“They did this with two?” He didn’t ask Emma’s father how long it had taken; the dead
did not have a concrete sense of the passage of time.

Emma’s father nodded. “Chase is wounded.”

“Badly?”

“Not enough to stop him immediately.”

Eric cursed. “Allison?”

“Frightened. Bruised, but otherwise whole.” He hesitated.

“You went in?” Eric’s brows rose.

“Chase had time to salt the earth. There are gaps in the barrier. I don’t know how
long they’ll last. I can slide through them, with some effort—but if I breach the
barrier, the Necromancers will know.”

“If anything breaches that barrier, they’ll know if they’re paying attention.” Eric
looked into the darkness from which no sound escaped.
Hang on, Chase. I’ll be there soon
.

* * *

Snow, rain, safe houses that changed from one minute to the next—these had been Chase
Loern’s life. He didn’t have a home. He hadn’t for a long time. If you asked him on
the wrong day, he didn’t have friends, either; he had enemies. He had a mission.

He glanced over his shoulder at a tree.

He’d learned a few things since he’d lost his home, his friends, and the life he’d
taken pretty much for granted. He’d stepped into a world of kill or be killed, and
he was fine with that. Killing? He’d make the bastards pay. They’d left him alive.
They’d regret it, right up until the time they got lucky or he got careless.

Until then? He’d fight.

He’d learned how to do that. No sweat. He’d learned how to kill Necromancers. If he’d
known then what he knew now—but no. No.

What he’d learned, the most important lesson, was that the world was a harsh, bitter
place. You had to get its attention. It didn’t negotiate with a man on his knees;
no point. It had you where it wanted you.

Chase didn’t beg. He didn’t plead. He didn’t pray. He’d tried that once, and he’d
learned. He knew that the person with the power got to dictate the terms—any terms.
Life or death. In Chase’s world, power meant one thing.

But he glanced at the tree again, knowing who sheltered behind it.

In his old life, he wouldn’t have noticed her. That was the truth. She was plain.
She was surrounded by people who weren’t. She was quiet; she didn’t demand attention,
and she didn’t reach out—the way Amy did—and grab it with both hands, shaking it until
she got what she wanted. She would never have crossed his path.

But the first night he’d seen her, she’d almost slapped him. She had been practically
quivering with indignant rage. She was willing to say what her best friend wouldn’t:
He had come to kill Emma. The fact that Emma was demonstrably not dead didn’t change
her fury one bit. The fact that Emma didn’t
want
her anger or the confrontation it would cause hadn’t changed it either.

Among the hunters, tempers frayed. Life on the edge did that. It was all about the
fraying. He’d seen temper before; he’d see it again. But not Allison’s temper. Not
Allison’s rage. It wasn’t for herself. It wasn’t for her loss. She’d known what was
right—and what was wrong. And Chase was wrong.

He wouldn’t have raised a hand against her if she
had
slapped him. He wouldn’t have raised his voice. For a minute—for just a minute—he
could see the world as she saw it. And it felt familiar. It felt like—like home. Like
the home he’d lost. Like the home he’d never tried to build again.

It was
stupid
. It was
wrong
. His entire life had proved that. Tonight would prove that to Allison. It would open
her eyes.

And he didn’t want that. He wanted her to live in the world she saw. He wanted her
to have what he’d lost—what he should never have lost, if the world were sane. Because
he thought Allison could somehow defend her corner of the universe. Not with knives.
Not with cold steel, or silver, or guns, or weapons; those weren’t her particular
strength. She might be able to learn them; Chase had.

But even armed as she stood, sanity—angry, furious sanity—had roots that were deep
enough, strong enough, to weather the storms that surrounded her.

He had no home. It was better to have no home; he’d only have to leave it. But he
knew now that some glimmer of it had remained dormant in him, and she had touched
it.

He couldn’t pray. He couldn’t beg. He couldn’t plead. But what he wanted now depended
on the things he had learned since the last time he’d tried. With his own hands, with
his own power, he intended to protect the things he loved.

* * *

Allison looked for the gaps in the growing wall. She looked for the places where vines
had, as the unseen speaker had claimed, withered. The tree she was sheltering behind
was no longer good cover; green light had become too bright. She hesitated. Chase
had told her to stay put. He knew Necromancers. He knew their powers. He’d given her
the knife she held in a shaking hand, and he’d told her to cut and run if necessary.

But running with no destination was a disaster in the making. She didn’t know where
the Necromancers were, but their voices had drawn closer. She could see the wall of
risen vines; it towered above her in the distance. As she narrowed her eyes, she could
see gaps in that wall. The vines at these locations were brown and dark; the fire
didn’t burn around them. They were almost evenly spaced, and they weren’t wide—but
they were there. If she could make it that far, she should be able to push through
them; they were just about wide enough.

She inhaled, held her breath, and then crouched, peering at half-height around the
cover of the tree’s trunk. She couldn’t see Chase; she couldn’t see anything but green
and white.

She exhaled into her sleeve, although visible breath was fast becoming a nonissue.
Chase had told her to remain where she was. But he’d also told her to cut and run
if necessary.

“Over there!” The woman shouted.

Allison froze. She didn’t have to hide her breath; she stopped breathing for a long,
agonizing minute. But the voice was followed by footsteps—and the footsteps led away
from the tree. Away from her hiding place.

She had no idea what Chase could do. She’d spent one afternoon with Ernest—and Michael—and
all she’d learned was how to run. How to kick someone so she could run. How to hit
them. How to cause enough pain to get away. She’d learned that she needed to wear
a thick, ugly necklace that rode a little too high on her neck; she’d learned that
iron links could be sewn into coat linings. She’d learned that silver was useful.

She hadn’t learned why—and Michael had asked.

She knew that Chase could fight. Chase could use knives. He could use guns. He could
use—in a pinch—crossbows. But she knew that Chase could do more than that; if she
needed proof, she only had to look at the hedge wall.

She even understood—and hated herself for it a minute later—why he hunted Necromancers
before they came into their power. Against people like that—against people who were
almost
normal, she might stand a chance. Against people who had magic, almost none.

She heard another curse, more shouting; she took a deep breath, bit her lip, and headed
in a straight line toward a gap in the fire that limned the wall. She held the knife
clenched in one hand, and it made running harder, somehow, but she knew it could cut
through the Necromantic magic anyone was likely to spare for her.

And she knew, as she reached the dead vines that couldn’t support fire, that she should
push them out of the way. She did that, cutting in places. She made a gap for herself;
she’d be scratched, but whole, when she came out the other side.

But she didn’t push through the hedge. She did the stupid thing. She turned. She looked
back.

Chase was facing two Necromancers. She could see the red shock of hair that made him
visible no matter how many people surrounded him. She could see fire—green fire—enveloping
his body like a bubble.

She knew he was struggling. His movements were slow; the fire had trapped him. It
hadn’t stopped him; it hadn’t killed him. Without help, it was only a matter of time.
She wasn’t the help he needed. Running back to him wouldn’t save his life; it would
only end hers. She suffered no illusions and no false sense of her own abilities.

She turned back to the hedge, and then turned again.

She suffered from no illusions.

She wasn’t brave. She wasn’t kind. She worried about herself and her own needs far
too much. She had been jealous of Nathan. She had wanted him to
go away
. And then, sickeningly, he had. She could spend the rest of her life making up for
that one selfish thought—and it probably wouldn’t be enough.

Jealousy is natural. If you hate yourself for being jealous, you’re going to spend
a lot of time hating yourself. But now that you’ve
said it
, how do you feel?
She could still see her grandfather’s teasing smile, and his voice was so clear he
might have been standing beside her.

Terrible.

Jealous?

Afraid. Afraid that I’ll lose Emma. Afraid that I
deserve
to lose her.

Fear is natural, too. Your mother’s not here, so let me put this the crudest way possible.
Going to the bathroom is natural. If you never do it, you die.
He held up a hand.
Yes, you won’t die if you never experience jealousy, but that’s not the point of the
analogy. You need to go to the bathroom. When you’re an infant, you go anywhere. Your
parents clean up after you. When you’re a toddler, you’re not supposed to drop your
pants and pee on the sidewalk.

But you’ve seen children do it. You even laughed.

Because they’re
children
.

Yes. But they’re doing what comes naturally. They have to
learn
that there’s a time and place to express what’s natural. This is not about what you
feel
. What you feel is natural. It’s understandable.

This is about what you
do.
Fear’s the same. It’s not about the feeling. It’s natural. It’s human. It’s about
what you
do
.