Endless Knight(35)

She pulled it out of her pack, handing it over.

Jack slung his crossbow over his back. “Remember the last valley we passed, with the stretch of flat ground? It’s a kill zone, a tactical nightmare. Hard to get out of. If the cannibals are in trucks, they’ll have to drive through there to get as close to us as possible. So we lure the Baggers to them. Selena and I can get their attention, get them to chase us.”


Jack as bait? There had to be a better way.

Selena studied the area. “It’s perfect, but we’d be creating more zombies.” One bite was contagious, assuming the victim lived through the attack.

Jack shrugged. “Lesser of two evils. At least Baggers can’t think.”


“I have an idea,” I said. “We should drive the Bagmen down there. I could make a chute of briars, corralling them.”


Finn tapped a spot on the map. “I could make it look like the mountain starts here, creating a funnel into Evie’s briars.”


“My wolves could nip at their heels, driving them down.”


Jack said, “Selena and I could be firing on them at the same time, spooking them forward.”


A gauntlet of briars, snapping wolves, illusions, and arrows. “If this works, those cannibals would be dead, and the Bagmen would drink from them for days. We’d have plenty of time to escape.”


Jack nodded. “How long would it take us to get ready?”


How long for me to bloodlet enough to create a plant feature like that? “Two hours?”


In French, Jack said to me, “Good. Then we have some time to talk to the girl and find out if any of this is even approaching true.”


13


Crunch.

I grimaced each time Lark’s giant wolves bit through a bone.

After completing our preparations, we’d found a nearby cave, unable to do anything but kick back and wait for the battle to come. Lark’s falcon would keep us updated on any arrivals. Once we’d settled in, her wolves—Scarface, Cyclops, and Maneater—had disappeared for a while, coming back with old bones. Human ones.

As Lark had explained, “Wolves gotta eat. Corpses are A.F. Alpo.”


To distract myself, I kept gazing out at my briar chute like a proud parent.

It was a thing of beauty, if I did say so myself. I’d seeded enough plants to make two twelve-foot-high walls, thickly tangled. Impenetrable. So glossy and green against the ashy black earth. Thorns jutted out protectively, each a few inches long.

I wanted to live among the stalks, but I doubted Jack would want to live with me there.

I was sitting with my back against his chest. Blood loss had left me freezing, but I was gradually warming up from the heat of him and from the fire we’d built. Matthew was close by, drowsy, staring at the flames, while Selena tweaked more of her makeshift arrows.

Lark sat shoulder to shoulder with Finn, with the wolves spread out behind her. We’d learned that these war wolves had heightened intelligence, ferocity—and apparently appetites.

Crunch. Crunch.

Jack seemed to be handling all this insanity well. Earlier, when I’d rolled up my coat sleeve to make the first slice of my skin, he’d been uneasy.

“Are you sure you want to see this?” I’d asked, hesitating with my claws above one wrist.

Lips thinned, he’d said, “Ouais.”


I’d sliced. He’d winced.

“It’ll heal, Jack.”


“But it’s still got to hurt, no?”


Bloodletting always hurt like hell. I’d gritted my teeth, white-knuckling through the pain as I sliced my arms up and down. As my skin had healed, he’d watched, riveted. I was dizzy and chilled through by the time it was done.

He’d rubbed my shoulders for warmth. “So that is how you were making food for your mère.”


While we’d worked on the chute, Selena had been scouting the area for any holes to be plugged. Matthew had rested under a nearby overhang, almost obscured by a thick veil of water. Not far away, Finn had been practicing his illusions, with a wide-eyed Lark at his side.

I’d heard some of their conversation and had been delighted that he’d recovered his beautiful bullshit. “I’m not perfect, Lark,” he’d told her gravely. “Due to some self-esteem issues, I always put out on the first date. Working through that, though. Help me?”


She’d laughed, clearly liking him too. Maybe they did have some kind of infinity-symbol connection. It gave me a tendril of hope. If they fell in love, we’d have another pair of Arcana who would never hurt the other. One more stick of dynamite in the machine.

Normally I wouldn’t be thinking about hookups at a time like this. But these mini-alliances were critical.

Now Selena asked her, “What do you know about the game, Lark?”


“You want to talk about the specifics in front of a Muggle?” She hiked her thumb at Jack.

“He knows everything,” I assured her. “What can you tell us?”


“My family chronicled,” she said, buffing her claws. They weren’t like my thorn ones. Hers were narrower and curling, talonlike. Plus, hers never disappeared completely.

Selena gave a laugh. “Oh, really? See, I heard you got capped first in the previous game. Numero uno. When would you have had time to set up a centuries-old paper trail for your family’s descendants?”