Dark Company (34 page)

“No. You’ll slow me down. And the mark will make you vulnerable.”

Caddy wasn’t going to be put off so easily. “You need me to find the way back through the forest.” It was a lie. She didn’t know how to get back. Red had taken her through the caves. She was so
turned around there was no way she could possibly find her way out. Poe didn’t know that though. “When do we leave?”

“Tonight.”

Caddy and Poe waited for the Weavers to gather for the dream. Poe took his knife, struggling to secure it to his belt. Caddy pulled her bag over her shoulder and offered to help him. He refused. He had to learn to do it himself, he said. When he’d managed to secure it, he hid the knife beneath his shirt, in case they met someone on the way out. They would walk apart until they cleared the compound, he decided, so as not to arouse suspicion.

Caddy stuck her head out of the room. The hallway was empty. She wasn’t sure which way to go so she went the only way she knew, to the left, toward the Gathering Space. She changed her mind immediately and went right. She passed the showers and Poe began to follow, keeping his distance.

At the end of the corridor the hall broke left and right. The place was a rabbit warren of passages. Caddy decided to go left. The hall constricted and broke left and right again. To the left, the hall seemed to double back on itself. To the right, it narrowed even further to a low, arched door. She checked over her shoulder. Poe was waiting at the end of the hall. She went right, stooping as the ceiling closed in on her. Reaching the door, she saw that it was heavily bolted. She tested the latch. It wouldn’t budge. Using the heel of her hand, she pressed with all her strength. The bolt was fixed. Poe would have to help. She waved him forward. He ducked into the shadows and crept along the hallway, his head nearly touching the ceiling by the time he reached the door.

“It won’t open,” Caddy said.

He tested the bolt. It wouldn’t move it. Taking his knife from his belt, he tapped the butt end on the lever. After several quick hits he was able to pry it into position, then hammer the bolt loose.
It gave, and the door popped open. The air was musty and smelled of stale water and earth. The passage was little more than a rugged tunnel carved from the rock, claustrophobic and pitch black.

“I have this …” Poe fumbled his knife back onto his belt and pulled an old Zippo lighter from his pocket. He worked it open with his thumb and lit it. The flame reflected off the rocks and tree roots, freeing the shadows from the stone. They danced erratically against the wall.

Caddy peered into the tunnel. She definitely hadn’t come this way with Red. “It looks as though no one’s ever used it.”

“It’s probably some kind of emergency exit,” Poe said. “They must not expect people to come in this way with the door bolted from the inside.”

“How will we lock it behind us?”

“We won’t.”

“We can’t just leave it open.”

“We’ll hide the entrance from the outside. That way no one will find it.”

Caddy had her doubts, but she didn’t want to argue with him. She followed him into the tunnel, pulling the door closed behind her.

It was a challenging passage. The rocks were sharp and the tunnel went deeper before it began to rise. The air was suffocating and thin. She could barely catch her breath. Poe didn’t complain, but she could see his disadvantage was making things difficult. The roots caught on his bandage, causing him to curse under his breath.

After a hard stretch, the passage took a turn upward. They could see another door, bolted from the inside at the top of makeshift stairs chipped from the stone.

Caddy held the Zippo while Poe worked the bolt, water drops ticking out the seconds through the seam in the door onto the stairs. This one gave easier, the weight of the door assisting the
bolt in the mechanism. The whole thing was grown over, a mass of soil and roots fusing it shut. Bracing his back, legs straining, teeth clenched, Poe heaved the door open, soil and rain showering down. He struggled through the opening and reached back to help her up. Holding his hand, Caddy climbed out, her feet scrabbling, the rain beating around them.

Poe closed the door and fit the green wig of grass over it, pressing the roots and earth in place so that it was impossible to see the entrance.

“How will we find it again?” Caddy asked.

“Here.” Poe held up a square chunk of limestone. “Remember it. It’ll be our marker.” He placed it near the door. “Which way?”

They walked along the base of the escarpment. It seemed like a good direction to go. So what if they didn’t find the others? Caddy thought. The best thing they could do would be to keep walking until they were as far away from everyone as possible. They could find a place together and just live, the two of them. Grow things. Forget the Company and Hex and the war. She occupied her mind for miles with this silly fantasy.

Poe stopped and leaned against a maple tree, breaking her reverie.

“Do you need to rest?” she asked.

He shook his head, grasping his arm. Blood was seeping through the bandage with the rain.

“We could take cover under the trees for a while … get out of the wet.…”

“No!” he shouted.

His anger scared her. How long before he realized she didn’t know where she was going? She was thinking of telling him the truth when she recognized the spruce tree, the one they’d used to hide him.

“There,” she said. “There’s an upturned stump not far from here. If we find that, we’re close to the edge of the field.”

A sudden movement in the woods sent them both to the ground. They stared through the rain. She saw it first: someone slipping from the shadows into a clump of cedars. And another.

“Company men?” he whispered.

“Dreamers. Why are they still here?”

“Waiting for communication.”

“Shouldn’t Hex have contacted them by now?”

“Maybe they’re in trouble. We have to talk to them.”

“No,” Caddy said. “Let’s watch for a while to be sure it’s safe.”

S
kylark sat at the Speaker’s feet. With his right hand, he stroked her hair. In his left, he held two soul vials. The violet one was Sebastian’s. The other one, the one with the green mist, held the soul of Kenji’s woman. The Speaker rolled the vials mechanically between his fingers.

“Did you see your precious boy?”

Skylark’s spirit leapt. “Yes, Father. He is everything to me.”

The demon turned his ice-chip eyes on her. “Did you do as I bid?”

“Yes, Father. I gave him the strength and desire to seek out the Dreamers. He will lead the men to their quarry.”

The Speaker growled deep in his throat. “Good. Now rise, child, and take your place beside me as the battle begins.”

Skylark looked to the horizon. In the distance, the Warriors and their lions filed in rows without end. Behind their ranks, the Nightshades hovered, their ravens calling for the souls of the damned. The Speaker yawned, his mouth stretching open. With a deafening shriek the Dark issued forth, coiling upward in a black column against the bloated sky. Serpents slithered from his sleeves. Vermin crawled across his feet. Sizzling globs of black
ooze dropped from the column, spawning towering golems. Teeth flashing, arms and legs pumping, they lurched single-mindedly toward the Light. Skylark shuddered to see it. The horror. But she could think only of Poe. Everything she did, she did for him.

The column of darkness grew, twisting as it poured from the Speaker’s mouth. Rearing up, it met the legions and exploded in a shower of flames and black rain. The golems tore through the ranks. Skylark averted her eyes as Warriors and their totems blew apart, forever lost, the tinkling of their captured souls rising with the cacophony of pain. The Nightshades circled, swallowing the Dark ones as they fell, the demonic column advancing without mercy.

Caddy and Poe watched for movement in the cedars. The Dreamers were holed up like hounded rabbits in the trees. No one had come in or out for some time, and there was no sign of Company men.

“We should make a move,” Poe said. “I’ll go first.”

Caddy vetoed that. “They don’t trust you. You’re an outcast in their minds. They don’t understand why you killed the Company men. I’ll bring them to you and we can explain everything once we take them to safety.”

Caddy slipped into the cedars. The Dreamers huddled in a ragged group on the ground. There were only seven—three women and four men. They barely acknowledged Caddy, they were so beaten.

“Is this all of you?” Caddy asked.

One of the women nodded.

“Where are the others?”

The woman shook her head.

“We found sanctuary,” Caddy said. “There’s food, warmth, real beds. It’s safe from war and bombs and Company men. I can take you there. But we have to go now.”

A man spoke. It was the angry one Caddy had argued with before. “We must wait for Hex. She’ll take us to the next dreaming place.”

“There’s no time. The Company men will come.”

“The world is at war,” the man said. “It’s more important than ever that we hold the vision.”

Poe appeared through the trees. “If you don’t come, you’ll die out here.”

The man sneered at the sight of him. His voice was caustic. “Leave us. If we’re to die, we’ll do so on our own terms.”

“Your own terms are based on a lie,” Poe said. “Hex is working against you. The mark will condemn you to death and everything you care about will be lost.”

“He’s right.” The woman spoke. “We should go with him. What good is it to die in the rain?”

“Shut up,” the man ordered. He pointed at Poe. “You brought this upon us. Your hatred will condemn us all.”

“We came to help you,” Poe said. “You’ll die for nothing—all of you.”

The man spat on the ground with loathing. “Then let us die.”

They’d wasted their time. Caddy knew there was nothing she could say to persuade them. “We should go,” she said to Poe.

They’d cleared the spruce trees when they heard the screams. The Company men had routed the Dreamers. Caddy ran, the rain stinging her face. Poe was somewhere behind her. She looked back and the sky split open with a fiery blast. The earth shook, and the wind rushed in, the trees bending like grass. Caddy was blown face down to the ground. She covered her head, shouting into the blur of branches, mud, and rain.

When the wind finally stopped, Caddy knew the city was gone, and perhaps her father with it. Her shining song played in a loop over the whine of white noise in her head. Something was pulling her arm. It was Poe, trying to get her to stand. She teetered to her feet, fell, and staggered up again.

Poe’s face was savage. “They’re here,” he yelled, his voice small and far away in her ears.

“The bomb,” Caddy said, her own voice a muted garble of sound, as if she were speaking under water. “I think it hit the city …”

He grabbed her hand and dragged her stumbling through the woods, her feet catching on broken tree limbs and clumps of earth. The forest was torn apart. He kept pulling her forward, yelling at her to go faster, but her feet wouldn’t listen.

At the limestone rock, Poe dropped to his knees and clawed at the grass with his hand. Caddy saw torches leaping through the rain. “Hurry,” she said.

Poe found the door and yanked it open. He pushed the Zippo into her hand and fed her by one arm down the hole. She slipped on the wet rocks, hitting the ground at the bottom of the stairs. Poe started yelling and she cried out as the Company men swarmed him. The door smacked shut. Over the noise in her head she thought she heard Poe say, “Run!”

Caddy crashed through the tunnel, the Zippo’s flame wobbling frantically as she ran. She cleared the door, the Company men behind her. Fighting with the bolt, she managed to secure the lock, but only just. There was a crash of splintering wood and the door broke away from its hinges. Caddy ran down the corridor, shouting. The Weavers poured out to meet her, panicking when they saw the Company men with their knives and fire.

In the crush of bodies, Caddy slipped into the seed room. She stayed there, cowering in a corner, screams and cries filling the corridor. From the chaos, Hex emerged, slithering into the room, her blue eye dancing with delight over her luck.

“Well, well, well …” she hissed and raised her knife, its silver blade stained red with Weavers’ blood.

Caddy braced for the strike. The hit never came. Zephyr had jumped between them.

“Get away from her!”

Hex struck with the speed of a cobra, slashing Zephyr across the chest before she was able to knock the knife from Hex’s hand. The viper attacked again, this time tearing the medallion from Zephyr’s neck. Caddy rushed her and was heel-punched in the chest and sent crashing against the wall. Hex and Zephyr fought, blow for blow, hitting the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. Hex grabbed Zephyr’s hair, yanked her head back and drove her thumb into Zephyr’s sky-blue eye. Caddy flung herself on Hex and was thrown to the ground. Red burst into the room. He grabbed the knife and lunged, pushing the blade beneath the curve of Hex’s jawbone. She writhed to the floor, blood throbbing from her neck and lips.