Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker #3)(109)

“How do we get more?”

“All the Hive’s watchtowers are stocked with crossbows.”

Toshi thought of the platforms soaring high above the city streets. “But who can get to them except the Hive?” he asked. Ivan shrugged as if say he could only do so much. “Does the pesticide work at least?”

“Who knows? We can’t test it without alerting the Hive,” Ivan said with a fatalistic laugh. “Come. I need help.”

Toshi rolled up his sleeves. “Grace could wake at any moment. I’m on borrowed time,” he said.

“We all are,” Ivan replied.

Toshi was just about to put on a pair of gloves, when he heard a low hum in the air and felt all three of the Workers clinging to him suddenly lift off his skin. He looked around and noticed that all the Workers in the room were leaving. He and Ivan ran out of the room, hearing startled gasps, and pushed their way past the confused masses and out onto the street.

The sky had gone dark. Toshi looked up. Every inch of airspace was covered with Warrior Sisters. They were all flying toward the perimeter wall simultaneously. Ivan ran back inside, Toshi close on his heels, both of them taking the stairs inside the villa two at a time until they reached the top floor. Ivan pushed open a door to a room that was empty except for a single staircase that led to a trapdoor in the ceiling. They emerged on the roof of the villa and looked out past the wall.

An army stood on the field of flowers, ready for battle.





CHAPTER


15


Lily felt Juliet calling to her after she finished claiming another queen.

Lily, Lillian has taken her army to Bower City without us. They just disappeared.

Rowan’s brow furrowed in question at Lily’s expression. “Lillian didn’t wait for us,” she told him.

I told you I was gathering more forces, Lily called out to Lillian in mindspeak.

I gave you all the time I could, Lillian replied. Join me now or the war is lost.

Lily turned to Rowan. “What do I do?” she asked him.

Over the course of the day they’d managed to claim almost twenty nests, but it was only a tiny fraction of what they needed. Rowan pulled his lower lip through his teeth, his eyes scrambling across the ground as he thought. Finally, he shook his head.

“We don’t have a choice. Dividing our forces would be suicide,” he said. “We have to go.”

“But we don’t have enough soldiers,” Lily said, holding her hands out helplessly.

Rowan was calm. He looked at the Woven Lily had just claimed and smiled to himself. “Then I guess it will come down to which side has the strongest queen,” he said. He took her hand and kissed the backs of her fingers and warmth traced up her arm. “It’s time, Lily.”

Lily nodded. She was exhausted. She had never felt more awake.

Rowan struck flint against steel and sent a spark into the mulch at Lily’s feet. As the fire rose she closed her eyes to gather up all of her claimed.

She started with the insect Woven. Seeing through the pale lavender tinge of the speaking stone near Richmond, she summed all fifty thousand of them. Using the same speaking stone, she moved to her raptors, only one thousand pairs of wings, but they would be invaluable to fight the flying Hive.

Her mind dove into the fast-flowing stream of the speaking stones, heading north. She saw green and stopped to gather the nine thousand of the tank-like Pride and the thirty thousand of her human claimed waiting at the camp. Carrying all of them with her, Lily vaulted across mountains and valleys, her mind swimming across the miles of the continent to where Pale One and the twenty thousand warriors of the Pack were waiting in the flaxen-yellow hue of the Ocean of Grass.

Lily turned her mind, now nearly a hundred thousand strong, through the scorched red of Death Valley, up over the thin pink and rarefied air of the rocky mountains, and into the misty pearlescent throbbing of the westernmost speaking stone. Toshi was standing right next to it. He called out to her.

Lily, has the war begun?

Yes, Lily replied. She played the vibration of the redwood grove and jumped her army. I’m here.

“She’s here,” Toshi said, his eyes searching past the army at Bower City’s gates and into the distant smudge that was the redwood grove.

“Obviously,” Ivan remarked dryly. He looked down at the orderly ranks of disciplined soldiers. “She didn’t bring enough.”

“That’s not Lily,” Toshi said, frowning with confusion. “That’s the other one. The Salem Witch. Mine is coming.”

He craned his head to look up at the Hive as more of them streamed into the air from the city. The din of their wings rattled his bones. He saw Warrior Sisters rising up from the restricted zone. Toshi wondered whether the antidote had ever made it to his family. Whether it even worked.

“There,” Ivan said, pointing to a figure being carried to the ramparts over the main gate. “That’s Grace. They’re building her pyre right there.”

Toshi stared at Ivan. “They’re really going to burn her?”

“Oh yes,” Ivan replied as a sinister memory stole through him. “I hope that witch of yours is as strong as she seemed. I once saw Grace spend two whole days and nights on the pyre.” He looked down at his hands and Toshi could have sworn he saw flames licking inside Ivan’s eyes. “We chopped down every tree. Burnt all the switch grass. We even threw our clothes on the fire. And through it all she burned. Screaming. Laughing.” When Ivan looked up again his eyes were sunken and haunted. “Grace lives for the pyre.” He clapped Toshi on the shoulder, shaking himself. “I have serum to distribute and you have crossbows to steal.” A thought occurred to him. “This would be a lot easier if we were stone kin.”