Music Box (The Dollhouse Books, #4) (9 page)

I walk near Deandra. His eyes follow me, then focus on the gun in Deandra’s hand. “Did you shoot the parents of those kids?”

He snaps back, shuffling his big, awkward-looking feet. “I din’t shoot ’em. I din’t shot nobody.”

“So who did?”

He shuts up again.

Deandra shoots me a look—she’s going to take it from here.

“Rory,” says Deandra calmly, “Why were you after those kids?”

Rory stares at her like she’s a school teacher and she just asked him something he has no choice but to answer.

“We was told to bunch this job. Any runaways we gotta get. Get every last one out and onto the trucks.”

I guessed
bunch
meant
finish
in Rory-speak.

“What’s happening here, exactly?” she asked him. “We saw explosions in the sky the night before. I want you to tell me what they were.”

His breaths are rapid. “They’re fighting back.”

A frown dents her forehead. “Who’s fighting back?”

“Everyone in the city.”

She walks a step closer to him. “Why?”

“’Cos they know stuff.”

“What do they know? Rory, you need to tell me everything, okay?”

He wipes sweat from inside his collar and nods at her. “Months back, some people found out what’s really out there in the ocean—the monsters—an’ they spread the word. Chicago’s become a battle zone. It’s full of these abandoned old buildings—like from decades ago, an’ people are holin’ up in those and throwing bombs and stealin’ trucks. Our job’s to get ’em out and stop ’em from telling everyone.”

He drops his head like he’s waiting for judgment. He knows he’s spilled too much already.

I lean against the wall. “What’s out there in the ocean? Describe the monsters for us.”

His eyes look a bit crazed. I’ve seen that look in rangers many times—on the faces of the ones who struggle against what they’ve been dragged into. The chair flies along the floor as Rory’s big frame rushes toward the door. This time, Jack stops him. Rory crashes against the door’s frame as Jack tackles him to the ground.

Sam comes running out. From the look on his face, I know he expected the worst—that a load of rangers were barreling in to take everyone prisoner. We don’t have long before that scenario becomes a reality.

Rory crawls away and sits with his back against the wall, no longer willing or able to talk. Sweat trickles in the soft fuzz of his jowls. Jack doesn’t leave his post by the door.

The other three kids poke their heads out of the room.

Jack leans back against the door, like he isn’t sure his legs will hold his weight. “Jesus... my family are down there in the camp.”

Deandra’s mouth trembles. “What on earth do we do? We can’t risk the kids getting taken anywhere by these people.”

Jack looks like all the blood has drained from his face—the frost-nipped patches contrasting on his grayish skin. “I don’t know.”

“We have to get out of here,” she tells him.

“I have to get word to Mike... somehow.” Jack exchanges glances with me. There’s a question in his eyes and I know what that question is.

Purposefully, I look away. In Jack’s view, I’m one person on their own and he’s a guy with a family who needs to protect that family. But if I risk going down to find Jack’s brother, then I risk getting caught. I risk not getting back to Cassie.

Sam eyes the view beyond the window anxiously. He wants to keep running—get far away. But he and his brother won’t get far before they either die of exposure or they get picked up again by rangers.

I picture the scene over the hill as I saw it when Sam and his brother came tearing away from the rangers. Trucks parked on the ice. A dozen or so rangers guarding the buildings where the people were waiting to be taken to the next camp. That was not a large number of rangers—compared to the thousands of people held there.

I take a deep breath, wondering if I’ll regret my next words. “The best way of getting your brother out... is by getting them all out—everyone.”

Deandra’s dark eyes are piercing, intense. “How?” That’s all she says. It’s not a word said in some kind of hopeless despair. It’s a request for the specifics—she’s already on board.

I exhale slowly. Nothing is clear in my head. But the best I’ve got is the best I’ve got. “When they drive the trucks away, we ambush and take control of them. We take the people to wherever we can where there’s others to defend them. To the city. We bring back truckloads of rebels to the camp—whoever we can find who’s prepared to fight.” I hesitate. “And then I leave.”

The look on Jack’s face is as though I’ve just told him we need to drive the trucks to the tip of Mount Everest and back. “This can’t work. They’ve got ammunition—lots of it. We’re three adults with two—no, four—kids in tow.”

I shake my head. “Once they drive the trucks away, the only people we’ll be dealing with are whoever is in the front seat—no more than two or three of them in each truck. And they seem to only have two trucks at their disposal. If we know which truck your brother gets put on, we can get into the back, find him, and tell him what’s going on. Then convince some more of them. We won’t tell them the whole story. Just enough so they understand that they’ve got to help us.”

Jack swallows hard. “Tell me—what is the whole story? What are we really dealing with here?”

Four sets of small faces turn our way. I indicate to Jack to walk with me toward the kneading machines.

“Look,” I tell him, “America is frozen solid. All of it. And maybe most of South America. And Europe. And Asia. Are you getting the picture?”

He chews his cheek from the inside. “That would be an ice age.”

“Yeah. But not a natural one.”

“So, you’re saying this,” he jerks a thumb towards the snow-encrusted scene outside the window, “is man-made?”

“No.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“You heard me ask Rory to tell you what’s out there in the ocean, right?”

“Yeah,” he says. “And something’s wrong—very wrong—but I don’t get it. What the hell are the
snake monsters?
Is that some kind of biological weapon gone haywire? Are we in a war?”

I eye him with a level gaze. “Yeah, we’re in a war, Jack. I’m just going to tell it to you straight. Are you ready?”

He meets my gaze, but his eyes aren’t blinking, which is never a good sign. He’s looking a little punch-drunk already, like someone who’s been told more than they can process.

“Jack, the monsters are real. They came from somewhere else. Another planet. I know that’s going to be hard to wrap your head around. They’re aliens. They’re able to change the environment—make it cold so they can survive. I don’t know if there’s any military left—anywhere in the world. The aliens are intelligent, and they have the ability to send out some kind of weapon from themselves that looks like a shadow. And the shadows are deadly. They’ve killed anyone and anything that’s a threat to them. The rest of the human population—and our sea creatures—are food for them. The people pretending to be military down in the camp are just helping the aliens, to protect themselves. And there’s people like that everywhere. Mercenaries.”

I leave out the rest. How can I explain travel between universes or the people of the castle and the ancient book they’re seeking? Things that make it seem like you’ve been living your life with your eyes closed and now your eyelids have been ripped away.

Jack is silent for what seems a long time. Like he’s trying to make up his mind if he’s going to accept the impossible or not. It’s a battle inside him.

Someone steps up behind us. I turn to see Rory standing with his hands thrust deep into his pockets. Deandra still has a gun on him, but she let him walk over here for some reason. She nods at him, as though prompting him to speak.

Rory’s expression is changed—his guard is down. He looks directly at us. “I’m s’posed to be on board one of the trucks in another hour. I wanna help you. You tell me what you want me to do, an’ I’ll do it.”

~.~

Within two days, we’d gained control of the trucks and taken the families to safety in the city, and returned with more than enough men and women to destroy the camp. They took the rangers as prisoners, to question them on operations in New York City. Then they took the war there.

I watched explosions everywhere stamp the black sky white as I left. Jack and Deandra are staying behind with their family and the two boys in Chicago, where they’ll be the safest.

Now, I make my way south with a truck of rebels. We bring a message. And the message is war.

We’re fighting back, and saving as many people as we can. We spread the word. We’re a virus—a force to weaken and infect those who help the serpents, and dismantle their operations. The other rebels have collected photos and videos of the serpents—whatever they can to make sure people know the truth. We help the people of each town and city gather arms and make bombs and ambush the rangers.

I push on relentlessly. In the cold silence of night, I see Cassie’s face before me. She haunts me. I tell myself that every day brings me closer to her, but I feel her slipping away.

We’re living in the darkest of days.

Nabaasa once said to me, ‘When we can fight, we will fight, and when we can no longer fight, we will endure’.

It is time to fight.

C
ASSIE

That night, I dreamed of the tower. All its darkness descended on me. Its window was an eye piercing my soul, watching my every move. It had watched me all my life—I was sure of that now.

I woke with a shuddering intake of breath.

I had to push all thought of the tower from my mind. I needed to find out more about Reed and Etiennette. There had to be some clue here in the chambers—Zach had told me that Etiennette had spent her first year here, only moving up to a room inside the castle sometime after she had her babies. But I had no liberty to wander the chambers—Voulo had complete control over my movements.

Behind the gauzy curtains of the bed, Balthazar slept on.

When Voulo came to open my compartment once again, I left for the ocean passage, and ate the meal of thick soup and crusty bread that sat on the table in the vestibule. And then waited. I had no way of knowing how many hours had passed or how close the morning was drawing to dawn. I decided to take a chance and return to the chambers early.

Stealing inside the half-open door, revulsion crawled over me—as it did every time I entered the chambers. Balthazar remained still, but I sensed the insane, restless desires inside his mind.

The chambers resembled a painting of one of the old renaissance masters, with lamps picking out the small details in the midst of impenetrable darkness, with a demon lying in wait for the unwary. And I had been one of the unwary. From the first time I had set foot in the dollhouse, wheels were being set in motion. Tunnels within the dollhouse led straight to the castle, straight to Balthazar and his horror and madness.

I crept to the set of drawers that stood next to the cribs. Quietly, I pulled the top drawer open. Swollen with moisture from the underground, the drawer wasn’t easy to budge. I almost gave up for fear of making a sound, but then the drawer slid out. Inside were the remnants of folded baby clothing. Much of it had rotted away. I opened each of the drawers in turn. Most contained clothing and tiny shoes. One drawer was filled with gold and silver baby rattles and jewelry. There was nothing that I’d hoped for—a diary of Etiennette’s or some secret, stashed letters from Reed. But then, I guessed if such things had been here, they would have been found and destroyed long ago.

Taking the key from my bodice, I slipped it inside a silver jewelry box. If I kept it in my clothing, it could too easily slip out at any time, and my journeys to the ocean would be exposed.

I turned, staring around the hollow spaces of the chambers. There was nothing else here that looked like it had belonged to Etiennette, apart from the baby cribs. Lamplight dimly lit Balthazar’s desk and chair. The chair was tall and arch-shaped, with a cut-out that resembled a four-leaf clover. The desk was mostly made of metal, with ugly faces engraved into it—it looked like a lumbering beast sitting in the shadows. I remembered Balthazar sitting at that desk writing on the first night I had been sent here. My legs trembled as I stepped over to it. I knew he would not want me touching his things. My heart leaping in my chest, I examined the items on the desk—there wasn’t much except inks and quills. A shelf of ancient, moldering books sat above the desk—scrolls and more books were piled on the desktop. Ink bled along the edge of one of the books—could that be the one he’d been writing in? I lifted the huge, heavy book down from the shelf and opened it. It seemed to be a journal, of sorts. It was difficult to read—some words were in an old kind of French or old kind of English, and many words that I did know seemed to have different spellings. I guessed that his speech had been changed somewhat over the centuries by his interaction with more modern inhabitants of the castle, as his speech was far easier to understand than this. But I could understand enough. I pulled a lamp closer, its light spilling across the yellowed pages.

My back chilled at the headings of the chapters—all girls’ names—Isabeau, Perette, Ragonde, Dauphine, Souveraine.... Girls who now stood for eternity in Balthazar’s cabinets. He had detailed the villages the girls had been stolen from and the measures used to silence their families. Some appeared to have gone willingly, seeking a better life, but most had been abducted. There were descriptions of times they had displeased him, and of the strange affliction of black spots that crept upon their flesh. Balthazar had ordered the cabinets made to use as a kind of quarantine—to keep the diseased girls away from the healthy. The cabinets were not, apparently, made in order to keep the girls as a collection. But after their deaths—whether natural or by suicide—he couldn’t bear to part with them, and had his artisan, Voulo, make identical wooden marionettes of them.

I gasped at an early entry in the book—he mentioned a woman named Jehanne d’Arc whom he had fought alongside in the Hundred Years’ War. I knew the name from history class—Joan of Arc. Balthazar spoke of her as though he had despised the very ground she walked on, mentioning her men’s clothing and exhibition of bravery in battle that was more like a man than a woman. As if bravery was only a thing that could be measured in battle and then only on men’s terms.