Siege of Shadows (Effigies #2)(105)
“Come on, you can’t blame her if she’s a bit skeptical, can ya?” Lucas answered for her with a shrug. “Not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but since that video was broadcast around the world, everyone’s been wondering where the hell you are and what you’ve been up to. Hell, last anyone seen of you, you were at some awards show like a bloody girl group.”
I could feel the warm, wet blood from my bandage seep into my fingernails as I gripped it. “You’re saying people are losing faith?” I asked quietly.
“People have been losing faith for a while out there. Well, for me it’s not really a problem. We do what we do, never needed an Effigy to solve things for us. But you had Saul and you lost him and now he’s out here killing politicians and doing as he pleases. Isn’t he an Effigy too? Not hard to see why your fan club’s getting a little smaller by the day.”
The four of us fell silent. The stinging pain of my arm was enough to bear. This was salt in an already festering wound.
“I’m not,” said Derrek ahead of us. “Losing faith. If it weren’t for you, we’d be dead. I’d be dead.” He turned around so I could see his smile. “If they’re out here, it’s for a good reason.”
“I wonder about that.” Lucas gave us a sidelong look.
“There’s a lot going on,” I said as Naomi’s limp body crawled back into my memories. “But we’re doing what we can under the circumstances.”
“Do you even know what Saul’s planning?”
Belle narrowed her eyes, her expression graver than usual. “That’s what we need to figure out.”
The note of finality in her voice made it very clear that the interrogation was over. Except for Lucas, who switched to chatting easily about the mountains, the rest of our party stayed quiet. We ventured down the mountain in silence until we could hear voices.
“They’re just beyond those trees,” Lucas said. “Wonder how they’ll react.”
The cacophony of voices grew louder, but it wasn’t until we made it through the forest that I could see them: a small camp of people packing Sect equipment into small trucks and vans, or sitting on logs smoking food by a campfire. They were lined up all around the circumference of a beautiful lake, its obsidian surface rippling gently under the slightest caress of wind. A few feet away from us was a metal ball snuggled between the protruding roots of a tree—the same as the one we’d used in the Sahara. If I squinted, I could probably find more of them lined up around the perimeter. This is how they lived, these nomads, day to day, trying to escape the wrath of phantoms as they lived among them.
“Welcome to Black Lagoon, girls.” Lucas whistled as we entered the camp space, drawing all eyes to us. It was inevitable; they recognized us right away. I saw one person reach for his gun, but Lucas waved a hand to stop him. “?’S all right. They’re not here about what we do. They’re only looking for a ride into town.” He gave me a friendly pat on the back. “They’re Effigies in transit. Fell from the sky just as we were getting attacked by a particularly vicious group o’ phantoms, didn’t they?” He smirked. “Four falling stars.”
“What do you mean attacked?” A large man who’d been standing with his back to us by the lake turned around, his long brown coat sweeping the rocky earth. His thin, pink lips almost disappeared inside his thick hickory beard, which had annexed the bottom half of his face. His eyes peeked out from behind some rather familiar flat black hair—familiar because it was the same as Derrek’s. The boy jogged up to him, flinching a bit when the man patted his head. “Derrek, what happened?”
“Dad, our tech malfunctioned. We would’ve been dead if it weren’t for those girls.” He gestured toward the four of us as we carefully entered the camp. “That one with the bushy hair protected me.”
That one with the bushy hair must have meant me. The man’s eyes traced a line from my face to the blood dripping down my arm.
“She needs to be stitched. Abril, help patch her up.”
Abril clearly didn’t want to. But even though she shot me a withering look, she didn’t protest. With a bitter scowl, she strode over to one of the vans nearby, gesturing me to follow with a curt wave of her hand. There was a first aid kit over by some coolers. Sitting on one of the coolers, she swept off her jacket, revealing her thin, bony form, and picked up the first aid kit, rummaging around until she found some disinfectant and a needle.
“You’ll be gentle, right?” I smiled. She didn’t. This was gonna hurt.
As Abril went to work, Chae Rin passed James’s unconscious body to a couple of men, who set him down rather roughly by a log. I tried not to look at Abril’s needle as it pierced my arm, stitching my flesh together with the exact amount of finesse I expected from someone who didn’t even bother to flinch at my whimpers. Wincing, I watched the busy men and women instead as they packed loaded weapons and APDs into vans already weighed down with cargo.
Vans. “Sir,” I called, jolting a bit once I felt the tip of the needle in my flesh.
“Jin,” he corrected. “My name is Jin. And thank you for saving my son.”
“You’re welcome.” I looked at the other girls, who nodded. “We really need help. We were actually flying overhead in a helicopter when we got attacked and crashed here.”