Page 66

John navigated through the Red Zone, leading me through alleyways and backstreets, not slowing for a moment.

I was breathless and exhausted, but I allowed him to pull me along until he found our way back to the vast forest that surrounded the ruined city.

Even once we’d reached the cover of the woods, we walked for a long time, going deeper into the wilderness.

Moonlight was our only guide, but at least the darkness and rough terrain would make it difficult for the cult to follow us.

Finally, when I felt as though I was about to collapse, John stopped. He pushed through overgrown brush until we came into a small clearing. It was as concealed as could be. John clicked on his flashlight and set his pack on the ground. He pulled out a blanket and spread it across the ground.

“Sit,” he ordered before rummaging in his pack again with the light.

My knees gave out as I lowered myself onto the blanket, and I gasped at the surge of pain in my wounded scalp.

My hair was caked with blood and felt disgusting.

Despite the warm evening, my skin was cool and clammy.

I hugged my velvet cloak around myself, shivering.

Battered and bruised, my grip on myself was slowly slipping away, as surely as my sister had in those final moments in the theatre.

“You’re still in shock,” John said, surprisingly calm. He’d trained for this, I supposed. “Take a couple deep breaths for me.”

I tried my best as he retrieved his outrider medical kit from his bag and knelt in front of me. Flashlight in hand, he shone it directly into my eyes, and I flinched.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “Checking for concussion.”

I let him examine my pupils and answered his questions. He determined that concussion was unlikely; I’d been lucky, apparently, even though I felt anything but. He scooted behind me and parted my hair to inspect the laceration on my scalp. His touch was gentle, but I winced anyway.

“It’s not as bad as it seems,” he said, reaching into his kit. “Head wounds bleed a lot, even when they’re not deep. It’ll be okay with a few stitches. ”

I nodded numbly, and he started cleaning the cut with a cloth he dampened with his water bottle.

“What’ll we do about the horses?” I asked, my voice sounding foreign to me.

“We’ll get them tomorrow,” he replied. “Assuming it’s safe.”

I was shaking like a leaf. I didn’t know how I’d ever stop.

“How can we assume that ever again? The Order can obviously track me somehow, even if I’m out of range. Holly was wrong.”

John’s hands in my hair suddenly froze.

“She wasn’t,” he said after a beat. “They found you by accident.”

“What?” I asked, whirling around to look at him. “What do you mean?”

To my confusion, he bit his lip, seeming hesitant.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he finally said with a sigh. “But I want to patch you up first. Just sit tight.”

Still trembling, I gave a small cry behind my hand as he sanitized the wound with alcohol.

He murmured words of reassurance, but I felt no comfort.

I only felt confused as to why this was happening, why I’d left my sister behind for a third time, and guilty because in the end, I hadn’t saved her, and I’d left her to be victimized again by that monster.

I bit down on my tongue as John started suturing. Each stitch delivered a breathtaking sting that made my eyes water, but the pain helped ground me. I focused on each stitch until he’d finished, taking deep breaths to steady myself.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” John asked.

I shook my head, then remembered the harsh slash across the front of his shirt, where dried blood had glued the edges of the fabric to his body.

“What happened to you?”

He moved to sit across from me and clicked off the flashlight. “Sorry. Don’t want to draw attention.”

Darkness engulfed us, and his warm hands found my clammy ones and clasped them tight.

“Baby,” John murmured, “what I’m about to tell you is really hard. But I need you to stay as calm as you can until we get home. We’re not out of the woods yet. ”

I took a shallow breath. “John, you’re scaring me. Please just tell me.”

He squeezed my hands, then launched into the story of what’d happened with Asha in the woods.

He spoke in a low, comforting tone about her utter betrayal.

Her lies. The way she’d manipulated Zach Jameson, and me, and Kimmy, and how we’d all been fooled.

How she’d all but delivered me to the cult with her radio calls, and that Holly had confirmed it when she met John to rescue me.

How she’d attacked him, and he’d shot her in response.

How she’d never been my friend to begin with, and that all my hopes for her building a new life after all that’d happened to her were as dead as she was, lying in some meadow alongside Zach Jameson’s stone-cold corpse.

How the woodshed burning down, and the attack on Danny, and the schoolroom vandalism…

all had been part of a plan to convince me to go with her to this mythical new compound.

How the guilt trips she’d sent me on, and the attempts to turn me against John, weren’t simply side-effects from the trauma she’d endured, but part of a calculated plot.

And her romance with Kimmy was nothing but a way to prevent herself from being excised like the malignant tumour she was.

John told me all of this slowly, bit by bit, as though gently easing me into a boiling-hot cauldron of water in the hope that it’d hurt less. I could tell he was worried about me. He gripped my hands tightly in his, like he never wanted to let me go ever again.

Yet I felt nothing. A yawning abyss had opened underneath me, and I was falling, but I couldn’t scream.

Somewhere, underneath the numbness, I knew there was pain—tremendous, all-consuming, world-ending pain—but I couldn’t access it.

Detachment was my only defence against the whirlwind that had whipped through my life and destroyed my sense of security.

Silence descended when he finished talking, and for a long time, I said nothing. Time didn’t seem real; it felt like all I could do was sit and wait. I didn’t know what for. I only knew that I couldn’t move, and that even on this June evening, I couldn’t get warm.

I couldn’t see John’s face in the dark, but I knew when he spoke again that I’d waited too long to answer.

“Please say something,” he said, his voice breaking for the first time. “I’m sorry I had to hurt your friend. I would never— ”

“You did nothing wrong,” I cut in. At least of that, I was certain. “You saved me. I’m grateful.”

Even to me, my voice sounded oddly foreign, robotic, unlike myself.

“You don’t have to be grateful, baby,” John replied, sounding hurt for reasons I didn’t understand. “If you’re mad at me, I get it. You can be mad. Just talk to me.”

“Not mad at you,” I said with an exhausted sigh. “I’m tired.”

My eyelids fluttered against my will. The adrenaline that’d pushed me forward was wearing off, leaving me drained.

“Lie down and rest,” John said, reverting to his professional, first-responder voice. “You’ve been through a lot. Too much.”

I followed his instructions on autopilot, lying back on the blanket on the ground, wrapping my stained cloak around myself. He lay beside me and drew my still-trembling body close. I couldn’t help clinging to his warmth as my teeth chattered.

“I w-won’t sleep,” I said. “Not safe.”

“It’s okay,” he murmured, brushing my cheek with his callused fingertips. “I’ll keep watch. No one will hurt you.”

I leaned my forehead against his chest. Even when I had every reason to doubt my safety, I believed him. A deep sigh escaped me, and he rubbed the base of my neck, soothing me.

“Just close your eyes,” John whispered, and I did. Tension left my body; I had nothing left to give, and he knew it. So quietly I almost didn’t hear it, he continued: “Morning will come, sweetheart.”