Firewalker (Worldwalker 2)

Got any more, Rowan?

Rowan turned to Breakfast, and Lily could tell they were conversing in mindspeak. Lily looked hazily at her coven and realized that at some point they’d all earned one another’s trust enough to become stone k

in. Her claimed had claimed each other.

“I love you guys,” she blurted out. She sounded drunk.

“Is she going to be okay?” Riley asked, backing away fearfully. “She’s not going to blow up, is she? ’Cause I’ve heard the strongest witches do that when they croak.”

“Of course I’m not going to blow up,” Lily said, laughing. She leaned back too far, lost her balance, and slid off the rail and onto the gravel of the track.

Rowan helped her back up and lifted one of Lily’s wrists to his mouth. He licked her damp skin, tasting her. A muscle in his jaw jumped and he looked at Tristan, sharing mindspeak. They looked worried.

The group heard a shout coming down the tunnel and picked up their heads. A cluster of lookout teens were running down the tracks, waving their arms overhead.

“City guards,” the lookouts shouted. “It’s a raid!”

“They’re rounding up the older boys to ship out to the ranches. We’ve got to hide,” Riley said. Rowan picked Lily up in his arms and they all started running down the tracks, back toward the main group. “Whatever you do,” Riley added anxiously, “don’t kill anyone. We’ll all lose our citizenship if a guard dies in the tunnels, and outside the walls we’re as good as Woven chow.”

They darted through the people scrambling in the tent city and jumped over a small barricade, ducking down behind it to hide. Riley doused the torches around them and told everyone to stay still.

Rowan passed Lily to Tristan and made a move to jump back out into the panicked crowd.

“No, they’ll catch you!” Riley said, grabbing him.

“I have to get Lily salt,” Rowan said, easing his arm out of Riley’s grip. “As soon as you see your chance to run, you take it, you hear me? I’ll find you.”

“How?” Una asked. “What if we get blocked by all this?” She gestured to the fact that they were underground, and with enough soil between them it would be impossible to mindspeak.

“I can track anything. Especially my witch,” he said, and launched himself over the barricade. Lily made a small noise of protest as she watched him go and peered over the barricade, but in moments he was lost in the swirl of running bodies.

The rest of the group kept their heads down until most of the commotion had passed, and after minutes that seemed to drag on like hours, Riley finally decided it was time to move. Lily reached out for Rowan, but she was too weak and he was too far away for her to feel anything more than the energy of his willstone. She could tell he was still alive and uninjured, but mindspeak was already impossible. Lily leaned against Tristan as they crouched low, ducking behind what little cover they could find, and headed back toward the tunnel that led them away from the main group. They were no more than a few paces away when Riley stiffened and stopped.

Guards were marching down the tunnel, escorting captured boys to their new life on one of the ranches. Lily caught a glimpse of the captured boys’ desperate expressions and shuddered. A memory of the barn with its smell of blood and filth loomed up in her mind, hellish and overpowering.

“In here,” Riley whispered. He ran to the wall and started prying at what seemed to be nothing. On closer inspection, Lily could make out the bare outline of a service door. “Let me in,” he said, kicking at the blocked door.

It opened long enough to allow Lily’s group to get inside, and then slammed shut behind them. Among the few pale ovals of scared faces that peered out of the near dark, Lily could just make out Pip and Mary.

“How many did they get?” Riley asked Mary.

“I saw seven taken,” she answered. Mary looked at Lily, a hint of compassion softening her eyes. “One of them was your man. Rowan.”

Lily pushed herself up and stood straight, sheer panic giving her the strength. “Which way did they go?” she asked.

“You can’t help him now,” Mary said sadly. “He’ll be shipped out to a ranch like the rest of our boys.”

“Over my dead body,” Lily said, turning and pulling on the door.

Images of the filthy barn and the bestial men who ran it clamored in her head and the thought of Rowan being among them was unbearable. She wouldn’t let it happen. She’d send fire roaring down the tunnels, charring every guard to cinders if she had to, but there was no way she was going to allow Rowan to set foot in one of those death camps. Hands reached out and tried to pull her back, but Lily wrenched free of them.

“You can’t! Lady Witch, please,” Riley begged. “You’ll get us all thrown out of the city. We’ll die out there with the Woven.”

Lily stopped struggling to pull away and looked back at the pleading faces behind her. She couldn’t kill the guards and doom these people.

“The Woven,” she said, stumbling across a thought. “Everyone’s afraid of the Woven.” She turned to her coven and saw perplexed expressions, and then widened her regard to include everyone. “Don’t worry. I won’t kill anyone, but will you all help me? Maybe I can get our boys back. Did anyone see which way they went?”

“I did,” Mary said, stepping forward. “This plan of yours better be good.”