The Edge of Everything (Untitled #1)(86)

She needed this to be over, but she kept slowing down, she couldn’t help it. She kept thinking of that day with Stan. She thought of Spock and Uhura huddled on top of Jonah in the snow, saving his life. She thought of Stan throwing Spock into the freezing water and holding him down with his foot. She thought of X doing the same to Stan. The boot on Stan’s head, the frigid water lapping into his mouth—the images were carved into her. They were her tattoos.

They ducked under the snowy archway. The branches groaned above them. Zoe didn’t trust them to hold. She held her breath, waiting for snow to bury them. She thought of the bird that had flown in for their breakfast—but now, instead of being trapped inside the hut, it was trapped inside her. She felt its wings banging and thumping in her rib cage.

“I want to talk to my father alone first,” said Zoe.

X began to object. She shook her head to silence him.

“Just give me a few minutes,” she said. “Then you can come and take him. I want him to know what he’s done to us.”

X agreed reluctantly.

“I will watch from the trees,” he said. “If you want me, I will be at your side before you can even finish the thought.”

They plunged out of the archway. The forest fell away and the world rushed out in every direction.

The smudge they had seen was not a cabin and it did not stand on a plain. It was a dingy shed, smaller even than the hut on the beach.

It stood on a frozen lake.

Zoe felt the bird squeeze up into her throat, scratching and choking her and desperate to get out.

In front of them, a small hill ran down toward the lake. They were out in the open now. If Zoe’s father was in the shed, he might see her at any moment. She thought of hiding, but there were no snowbanks or bushes or rocks and, anyway, she was paralyzed. She couldn’t convince her body to move.

The door of the shed swung open. The sound reached her an instant later, like an echo.

It was her father.

It was her father.

He was skinnier than she remembered, and she didn’t recognize his tattered clothes. But she knew the goofy way he walked—the way his head bobbed, the way his lanky arms swung at his sides.

He carried a fishing pole.

She watched as he loped around, his eyes cast downward to inspect the frozen lake. It took her a moment to understand—to see what he saw—and then the bird in her throat let out a screech so sudden and alien that it shocked even her. X clasped her hand.

Her father turned and saw them.

There were a dozen holes in the ice.





nineteen


X watched as Zoe hiked down the hill. Her arms were crossed tightly around her chest. She was staring straight at her father, refusing to let him look away.

X heard noises behind him in the woods. Something was crunching through the snow. He assumed it was an animal and did not turn. He would not take his eyes off Zoe.

The Trembling made it almost unbearable for X to be so close to his prey. His fever burned beneath his skin. His hands had a will of their own, and began to shake at his sides. They were desperate to act—to kill—even if X was repulsed by the thought.

He reminded himself that killing this one last soul would set him free. But freedom was too strange and vast an idea to hold for more than an instant, and it was followed by a crushing guilt. Why must being with Zoe come at another soul’s expense—and why must that soul be her father? The lords had made even freedom seem a sin. He told himself not to think of his bounty as Zoe’s father, but rather as a faceless, nameless creature to be disposed of: a 16th skull to hang around his neck, no different from the 15 others.

A branch snapped behind him. It was a tiny sound but X was so agitated it assaulted his ears. Still, he refused to turn.

Zoe was halfway down the hill now, halfway to her father.

Before X met her, he’d wrenched souls from the Overworld without so much complaining from his conscience. He used to tell himself that he hated it, but, when the time came, he always managed to summon up enough fury to strike his target down. He wondered if he’d been such a fierce bounty hunter because he had the blood of a lord in his veins—or because he’d never lived a true life and never known the value of a soul.

The noises returned. It was not an animal behind him. He knew that now. It was a human being.

A hiker, perhaps, or a hunter.

X could hear the man’s breath.

He could not have someone stumbling on the scene about to unfold. He forced himself to look away from Zoe. He spun back to the trees. He saw a flash of gold through the parted branches of a fir.

Aggravated by the interruption, X stalked back down the path, the trees exploding with snow as he pushed past them. He would terrify whoever it was and send him running. It wouldn’t be difficult. He knew how grim and malevolent he must look with his wild eyes and his hair trailing him, ragged as fire.

The glint of gold was maybe 200 feet back, still hidden by trees. X bore down on the intruder. Whoever it was would surely turn and flee before he’d even reached him.

But something strange happened. Rather than retreating, the figure moved toward him, scudding through the snow.

X himself was being hunted.

Ripper appeared suddenly, breathless and fierce and firing words.

“The lords are coming,” she said. “I am here to warn you.”

X was so shocked to see her that he could not speak. Ripper waited a moment, then continued, her voice rising.