Nevermor (58 page)

Wren kept her
head lowered, refusing to look him in the eye. 
His gaze can stop your heart
. 
Surely he didn’t want to hear about her romantic troubles.  He had no stock in
that.  She didn’t respond, feeling only that there was a black hole inside her.

“Things aren’t
what you thought, are they?” he asked.  “I’m not surprised at that.  You want
more than he can give you.  That’s the difference.”

Difference?
  She chanced to
look at his face, but she couldn’t find any feeling there.

“This is about
love, isn’t it?” he assumed.  “Do you love him?”

“Yes,” she
said.  She didn’t doubt that about herself.

“But he doesn’t
love you?”

“No.”  Of this,
she was also sure.

The Scourge
examined her carefully, and then he smiled, pitying her.

“So now that
you’ve decided this, you’re aiming to leave, I suppose.  You want to go home?  I’ll
take you home.”

Wren lifted her
eyes.  She may have been young, but she was not completely naïve.

“You know I
don’t believe you.”

“
Pretend
,”
he urged her.  “Besides, I happen to know you’re wrong about him.  He does love
you – in a child’s way.  The idea of first love forever is such a juvenile
notion.”

She was
surprised to hear him say that.  How could he claim to know what Rifter felt? 
She wanted to tell him that he didn’t know anything – a man as black and
terrible as he was couldn’t hope to understand those delicate feelings,
especially since it was Rifter who felt them.

“I know him
well, and without even knowing you, I can tell you exactly how he thinks.  He
loves you as much as anything he possesses, and he doesn’t like to give up his
things.  He would let you leave him though – for his own pride.”

“Why are you
telling me this?”  She would have thought he’d get more benefit from lying,
telling her that Rifter didn’t care about her at all.

“I can’t lie to
you,” he confessed.  “There’s something about you.  It’s uncanny…”

He stopped,
looking up over her head.  She dared to look herself, and saw that someone was
standing not far away, staring at them with wild eyes.

“Wren!  Get away
from him!”  It was Henry.  He had come after her.  She knew she wasn’t dreaming
now.

No…

Before she could
tell him to run, the Scourge had shot around her and snatched Henry up by the
neck quicker than she could open her mouth.  He lifted the boy off the ground
as if he weighed nothing, and Henry had no choice but to hold the man’s arms to
keep himself pulled upward, or else his neck might have snapped.

Though he might
have killed the boy faster than she could protest, Wren threw herself on it
immediately.

“No!  Please!”
she screamed.  “He’s my brother!  Please!”  Wren went to her knees
instinctively, ready to beg like she never had before, praying that she had
enough time.  “I’ll come with you!  Anything, just don’t hurt him!”

He continued to
hold Henry there for another moment, and though she was gasping with grief, she
feared the worst.  She couldn’t watch – but the wicked man had been touched by
her words somehow, or had at least decided that Henry could have another use if
left alive.

The Scourge
dropped him onto the ground, letting him hit hard and then pressed his heavy
foot against the boy’s chest to pin him.  Wren only felt a small bit of relief,
but at least her brother had been spared.

“I don’t care
much for children, but I can’t refuse a lady.”  He ground his boot a little
harder into Henry’s ribs.  The boy winced.  “Since I know that you’re just
going to run back to that pathetic bastard whelp and tell him exactly what
happened here, I want you to give him a message from me.  Tell him to meet me
at the high mountain.  Tell him to take his time, make his plans.  I’ll be
waiting.  He can bring as many of his friends as he likes, but they aren’t
going to be any good to him there.  Just him, and just me.  And we’ll see who
the better man is.”

The Scourge
lifted his foot and left Henry there to sputter and writhe on the ground, but
he was forgotten.  The man stepped back toward Wren who was still on her knees.

“I do believe
you made me a promise,” he reminded her, giving her his hand to pull her to her
feet.  She only looked at his open palm, recalling the oldest rule of the
children’s code:
don’t trust strangers.

Perhaps those
rules no longer apply to me.

He wanted to
take her with him?  He was going to use her as bait to draw Rifter in?

“He won’t fall
for it, you know,” she said, allowing him to help her up.  “He’s smart enough
to know it’s a trap.”

“I’m sorry, my
dear, but you’re wrong.  He won’t be able to resist my invitation – with or
without you, I’m afraid.  But you’ll sweeten the deal.  Aside from that, you
need to
see it
.”

The Scourge
offered her his arm – as if he was a gentleman requesting a dance.

“Shall we?” he
asked.

She looked down
at his arm, and a thought struck her.

Didn’t Rifter
cut off his arm? 
Yet
here it was intact.
 
The Scourge had spared Henry.  She had no choice
but to accept.  Still, that didn’t keep her from wondering how he could have
made himself whole again.

She took his
arm, surprised by how it felt strangely solid beneath her hand.  The Scourge
led her off through the trees, into the darkness.

1

By the time
Henry had gotten his breath, Wren and the evil man who had taken her were
nowhere in sight.  His body was still aching, but he managed to get to his feet
and follow the dark trail through the woods, but it ended abruptly and he could
not explain it.  They were gone.

No… 
This was just
like before when she had been taken by Rifter.  Henry had gotten her back that
time, but this was different.  He might not be so lucky again.

His ribs were
aching, but he ran back to the camp as quickly as he could and began to yell as
soon as he saw the gleam of the fire.

“
He took her
!”
he shouted.  “It was him!  He was just there!”

The others stood
up when they heard him.  Whether or not they understood what he said, they came
to attention because of his yelling and flailing.

“Who?  What are
you saying?” Finn called.

“The Scourge! 
He took Wren!”

Henry doubled
over to catch his breath when he had reached them.  When he looked back up, he
saw that they were all just standing there, looking toward the trees.  Rifter
wasn’t among them, but none of the others made a move.  Wasn’t there something
they could do?

“Aren’t we going
to go after them?” Henry asked accusingly.

“No,” Nix said,
and the rest of them stayed rooted.

“What?” Henry
asked, aghast.  “Why?”

“When dealing
with the Scourge, we don’t go after one if it will put the rest of us in
danger,” Nix explained.  “That’s the rule.”

“Rifter will
want to go after her,” Sly said, but he didn’t make a move either.

“Rifter’s a
fool,” Nix sneered.  “He’ll get us all killed this time – mark my words.”

“But it’s Wren,
Nix,” Toss reasoned, sounding genuinely worried.  “She needs us.”

“I don’t owe her
anything,” he said sharply.  “Neither do you.”

“You can’t say
that she hasn’t grown on you,” Finn accused.  “She’s one of us.”

Nix stood there,
looking at the ground, chewing his tongue absently.

“She’s as good
as dead,” he said finally.

Henry couldn’t
believe that he was talking this way.

“She’s not
dead!” he cried.  “He just took her away!  He’s using her to lure Rifter in!  I
heard what he said to her!  We can save her!”

“What did you
hear?” Sly asked him seriously.

“It was just the
way he was talking to her.  He acted like she was special or something.  Then
she asked him not to kill me and he didn’t.”

“He saw you and
let you live?” Nix asked, surprised.  “Did you try to confront him?”

Henry ignored
that.  He didn’t have time to explain his thoughts during that moment.

“He told me to
give Rifter a message.  He said to meet him at the high mountain, and—”  He
paused, trying to remember the rest.  The excitement had nearly made him forget
it.  “He said that it didn’t matter who he brought with him, it would just be
the two of them to fight in the end.”

“The high
mountain…  That’s different,” Sly said thoughtfully, looking at Nix.  “I wonder
why.  No one can scale to the top of that peak.  There’s nothing up there but
ice.”

“Something’s
different this time, isn’t it?” Toss asked.  “Do you think that
he
knows
it?  Do you think he remembers the last time?”

Henry knew what
that meant, even if he didn’t fully understand the gravity of it.  All he cared
about was getting Wren back.

“We need to tell
Rifter,” Sly decided.  None of them argued.

2

Rifter had been
off on his own, unaware that his enemy had been so close to the others. When he
returned, he could tell just by their expressions that something was wrong, and
once they had told him what had happened just beneath his nose, he was fully
agitated.

He didn’t say
anything at first, as if in shock, but he was visibly tense as his mind wrapped
around it, proceeding to choke it out.  Rifter had all but banished the girl
from his presence.  She had told him she wanted to leave.  She had broken the
Vow, yet he wasn’t quite able to believe that he was free of her yet.

Wren.  He took
her from me.  He shouldn’t have brought her into this.

Didn’t the
Scourge know that he would have come to meet him anyway?  How could he refuse,
since all he’d been doing for the last several days was look for the one who
had tried to take everything from him?

He can’t have
her.
 
This was a low blow.  This was against the rules.

“It’s an obvious
trap,” Nix said as they were all gathered around the fire to discuss it.  “He
knows something we don’t.”

“I don’t care
what he knows,” Rifter said.  “I’m going.  She has nothing to do with this
fight.  He had no right to take her!”

“I’m just asking
you not to go in there half-cocked,” Nix said angrily.  “You need to forget
about her.  Don’t let it cloud your mind.  Wait a few days…”

“No,” Rifter
said firmly.  “We leave now.  Get ready.”

They began to
move as their leader had instructed – all except one.  Nix stared at Rifter in
disbelief.  The confrontation that had been brewing between them for weeks was
twitching at his fingertips and building pressure behind his teeth.

“You really are
blind to this, aren’t you?” Nix accused.  “You would risk our lives for this? 
For her?  It’s like she comes along and then
we
don’t matter at all, as
long as
she’s
safe – and as long as you get your revenge!”

“I won’t listen
to this,” Rifter said dismissively, turning away from Nix’s hostility.

“Of course not,”
Nix said with a laugh.  “I could count, on one hand, the number of times you’ve
ever listened to me, and that would still be true if I had no fingers!”

Nix wanted a
response, but Rifter had been true to his word.  He had stopped listening.  He
stepped forward to make sure the others were preparing as he’d ordered them to,
but Nix was quickly in his path, blocking his way.  Nix took him on with a hard
stare, and Rifter’s hand went to his sword hilt on instinct.

“Don’t test me,
Nix,” he warned.

“I’ve never had
a problem following you before all this,” Nix told him honestly.  “And you’ve
made some pretty reckless decisions, let me tell you.  But it’s been getting
harder.  You treat us like
shit
.  You just scrape us off your shoe!  Are
we your brothers, or are we your
dogs
!”

This didn’t fail
to make Rifter angry, and Nix’s shouting didn’t help it.

“I shouldn’t
have to ask for your loyalty, Nix!” he yelled.

“You don’t!  I
just need to hear that you know what you’re doing – that you know you’re
willing to die for her before you ask
us
to die for
you
!”

Around them, the
others had grown quiet, watching with bated breath.  As Rifter stared into
Nix’s unyielding glare, he wondered if that was what it had come down to this
time, but he refused to entertain the idea that he might have to die in order
to save Wren.  He chose to ignore it.

“I said get
yourself ready, or we leave without you,” Rifter told him firmly.  Nix stared
at him in amazement, as if he truly hadn’t expected this response.  He stepped
back, shaking his head.