Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2)(46)

Baz is standing at the edge of the creek. His hair is lank. His skin is grey.

Simon is chewing his lip. I haven’t had enough magic to hide his wings today. I tried, but they just blinked off and back on. I’m not sure I’ve ever been this drained. It takes so much magic to stay alive in America.

“All right,” Simon says. “We have to keep moving. Shepard is probably looking for us—and the magickal creatures might be looking for us. The last we knew, Agatha was in San Diego. So we keep heading west. We keep Baz out of the sun. We keep my wings under wraps. We steal food and clothes when we can—or we magick them. And we have the Internet now. We can find these NowNext people down some rabbit hole.” He glances over at me. “I mean, you think?”

I nod. “Yeah. It’s a good plan.”

Baz nods, too. “Good plan, Snow.” He looks into the trees. “I should hunt. So we don’t have to stop again.”

“Not by yourself,” Simon says.

“I’m not letting you watch—”

Simon spreads his wings. “Not by yourself.”



* * *



I can’t be alone right now. I follow along after them, from a respectful distance.

I’ve known about Baz’s vampirism for at least a year—and Simon suspected for years before that—but Baz is still self-conscious about it. He won’t ever feed in front of us. He won’t even eat a sandwich if he thinks you’re watching. Simon says it’s because Baz’s fangs pop, and he’s embarrassed, so I always look away. (Though I would love to get a better look at them, for scientific purposes.) I know Baz casts spells sometimes, to lure in his prey. But today he doesn’t have to. There’s a large wild cat, crouched on the ground ahead of us. I wait for Baz to strike.

Instead he stamps his feet, shouting at it. “Go! Away!”

The cat startles and runs away from us.

“What on earth?” I say. “Do you prefer it when they play hard to get?”

“I don’t kill predators,” he says.

“Why not? Fellow feeling?”

“They’re too important to the ecosystem. Besides, there are sheep around here, of some sort. I saw tracks.”

He leads us deeper into the trees. “I could manage this perfectly well on my own, you know,” he mutters.

“Yeah, yeah,” Simon whispers. “You’re well fierce.”

Baz glances back, frowning. “I am.”

It’s darker here. We’re pushing through evergreen branches—and there’s a fog hanging at our knees. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that even trees would be different in America. Simon and I have spent plenty of time wandering around in woods back home. But never woods like these.

Baz stops. He’s caught a scent.

He runs forward, faster than Simon and I can keep up, and more graceful than we could dream. When we do catch up, Baz is kneeling at the edge of the stream, a horned sheep dead in his lap, both of them blanketed in mist. I think he’s broken its neck.

“All right,” he says. “Give me a minute.”

I look down. The fog is up to my chest, and it’s so dark. I hold up my ring.

“Poaching…” someone says. It sounds like a woman. And it feels like she’s saying it inside of me. The darkness has risen up over my chin. “Bloodeater poaching on my very back.” The voice—I swear it’s in my head—sounds English. Northern.

“We can explain!” Baz calls out. He must hear it, too.

“We didn’t know!” I shout.

Simon takes my hand. “We’re not from around here!”

“No,” the voice says. “Can see that. Can smell that.… You are something different. Not just bloodeaters. Something much more foul…”

I close my eyes and cast into the murk—“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

“Mages,” the voice says, scornfully.

And then the darkness swallows me.





35





BAZ


I can’t move.

I try again—I can’t move. My arms are tied.

I can’t sit up. My legs are tied.

My face hurts. I’m lying on a rock.

I can’t move.

I can’t breathe!

No—I can. I can. My mouth is gagged, but I can still breathe.

I can’t move. I can’t see—

I open my eyes.…

I’m lying on my shoulder near a campfire. There’s a woman sitting on the other side. An older woman—or perhaps a younger woman with long white hair. She’s holding her hands out over the fire. There are gold rings on every finger and gold bands around her wrists. She’s watching me.

“Urrrghhff.” Simon is struggling, somewhere close to me—thrashing around by the sound of it. I wish I could tell him to calm down. I grunt, so that he knows I’m here.

He thrashes harder.

“Should send you back to sleep,” the woman says. Her mouth doesn’t move. Her voice is inside my head. “All of you. Don’t need you awake to sort you out.”

She stands and walks over to me. She is old, I think, though she moves like a young person. She’s wearing worn jeans and a beaded red shawl that glints in the firelight. Her eyes are pale, that shade of green you only see on cats. She lifts my chin with the tip of her grey cowboy boot. “Heard about you,” she says. “Didn’t think they’d manage it, but here you are. You smell like blood and magic, boy. Both gone rancid.” Her lip curls. “Not. On. My. Mountain.” She kicks me in the stomach.