Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(89)
Dunja wiped the back of her hand against the silk of her pants, than hawked and spat in Mara’s general direction. She searched for me over her shoulder, eyes blazing as they met mine. “Now, Iris. DO IT NOW.”
I reached out and squeezed Lina’s hand until I heard her indrawn hiss; I needed her to galvanize me again, to spark that primal, indomitable instinct to protect her above all else. Once I felt it roar to life, I turned inward and unspooled the wisteria of my will, letting it loose in a flood like a river choked with petals, a crashing tsunami of branch and blossom that rolled over everything. It rushed over Mara’s throne and the women in the banquet hall like a living net, a floral cage that pinned and trapped them even as it cleared a path for us.
Dunja grasped both of our hands, and the three of us ran together, heading toward the massive chalet doors and then out into the night.
TWENTY-EIGHT
WE BOUNDED THROUGH THE DARKENED FOREST, BETWEEN tree trunks and past fallen, moss-furred pines. Moonlight poured between the trees, bright as headlight beams. On the lower levels, where the sun couldn’t reach during the day, the branches grew bare of needles, instead curved and sharp like thorns. Forest mulch, a mix of fern, pine needles, and bursting mushrooms, squelched beneath our bare, pounding feet.
Far ahead of us Dunja flashed between the pines with white hair whipping behind her, following no route that I could see, fleet-footed and agile as a deer. My own breath had already grown ragged and Malina kept tripping beside me over the hem of her ridiculous metal-feathered dress. Dunja had paused in our headlong tumble only for long enough to unweave the ribbons from our hair, her fingers flying inhumanly fast before she plucked them all out and dropped them on the floor, grinding them viciously underfoot. After that, it had been running and running, until my knees felt like aspic.
“Could you possibly move an iota faster, pretties?” Dunja tossed over her shoulder. “She’ll cut herself free soon with those sharp old claws, and once she does, she’ll rouse the others.”
“Would you like to carry us on your back, auntie?” I called back between pants. “Because we don’t get any faster than this.”
We finally burst into a little clearing, choked with mud and massive, weathered logs. A battered white van was parked there, backed against the logs. Dunja unlocked the doors and we piled into the crowded insides, scrambling over stuffed animals and threadbare pillows. There was a collection of pots and pans in the farthest back, along with a carton of provisions, dried meats and fruits, juice boxes, and canned vegetables. It smelled like baby powder, chili pepper, and soap.
“Where did this come from?” Malina asked her. “This looks like someone’s home.”
“I bought it from some American tourists after I left Perast,” Dunja replied. “A traveling family, I think. With children.”
“And they just gave it to you? Along with all their things?”
“I may have stolen it a bit,” she admitted vaguely. “But I left money in its place, I think. Learning to drive it properly was the larger problem, though everyone emerged from that relatively unscathed.”
Malina and I exchanged uneasy glances as to what that meant as I tucked a matted-haired Barbie into the seat pocket to make more room for us.
“We’ll be staying in the woods for a while,” she continued as she fired up the ignition. “Now that your ribbons are gone, Mara won’t be able to track you through them any longer. But ?abljak is too small for us to hide there properly until all this is over, however it all ends. The coven is known there, the chalet a ‘retreat’ for rich eccentrics. Someone might tattle on us for the right price.”
“How exactly will ‘all this’ be over?” I asked her. “How did it even begin?”
“With one of you fair ladies falling in love, I believe,” she replied as she shifted the van into gear. The engine sputtered alarmingly, but turned over. “That was when you first drew his notice. Like I said, Jasmina and I had sworn an oath to each other: the one chosen would love Death so fiercely he wouldn’t want another, and the other would run and hide from the coven, live freely and never have children. So I told him I’d be the last, and he believed me—you two were the first to ever grow up outside of coven, disconnected from Mara. He couldn’t feel you through his connection with her, didn’t even know that you existed. And he was so happy with me, content enough he even claimed he wanted me to be the last. Because after me no other would compare.”
I looked over at Lina, whose hand was at her mouth. “Mama told us never to fall in love,” she said faintly. “Is that why?”
“That’s why,” Dunja confirmed. I watched her in the rearview mirror, her lips twisting with sadness. “When he felt one of you fall, he just couldn’t help himself. He had to see you, to go look for himself. He’s like a spoiled child that way, drawn by each new thing. No matter how much he claims to love the one he has.”
A lightning shudder of chills flashed through me, a tingle of familiarity. A spoiled child, drawn by each new thing. I knew a bit about what that looked like. In fact, I knew exactly what it looked like. “So Death really is a person?”
The car lurched as she turned onto a rutted semblance of a road. Some little forest animal dashed across the path in front of us, its brushy tail disappearing last as it plunged into a thicket of fern and wild strawberry.