Deception

Chapter Twenty-Nine RACHEL

People roll up blankets, fasten travel packs, and jostle each other as they maneuver into the hallway and instantly add their voices to the tumult when they see the Xs on the doors. We push our way toward the stairwell while people fling frantic questions at our backs.

What happened?

Who did this?

Is anyone hurt?

I don’t have any answers for them, but since Logan looks like he’s about to pass out, and Quinn would rather eat dirt than speak up when a crowd is watching him, it’s up to me to respond.

Quinn dabs his finger in the blood of an X marking the door closest to the end of the hall and then rubs his finger and thumb together.

“Is it human blood?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I can’t tell.” He gazes down the long corridor. “But this took a lot of blood. Unless whoever did this bled someone dry, my guess is he caught a few rabbits in the Wasteland and drained them.”

The people around us keep calling out questions and dire predictions. I have to put a stop to it so we can check on the guards and then get out of the city before the army arrives. Raising my voice to be heard above the commotion around me, I say, “We aren’t sure what happened, yet, but—”

Is this some kind of sick joke?

Is it the Commander?

A woman with her graying dark hair pulled back in a bun bumps into Quinn as she hoists her travel pack over her shoulders, and he almost loses his grip on Logan. Two young boys race down the hall and nearly knock me over as they try to slide past me to get to the stairs. Their faces are full of fear—wide eyes and pale skin.

“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” I ask, but they aren’t listening. No one is listening. They’re too busy shouting, moving around, and panicking. Irritation surges through me, and I grit my teeth as yet another person yells a question in our direction but won’t stop talking long enough to hear the answer. Lifting my thumb and pointer finger to my lips, I give a piercing whistle, just the way Dad taught me.

A sudden silence falls over the hallway, and I raise my voice to fill it as Drake hurries to my side. “We don’t have time to panic over this. Get your bags and go line up downstairs the way you were told to last night.”

“But who did—”

“Quiet.” I glare at a thin man with knobby shoulders who stops midquestion when he sees my expression. “We will figure out who did this and what it all means, but right now we have to light our fire and get out of here before the Commander and his army kill us where we stand. So get your things, get downstairs, and don’t lag behind, because the fire goes up in ten minutes, no matter what.”

Turning on my heel, I shove the stairwell door open and help Logan through it. Behind us, people scurry to obey me. Drake follows Quinn, Logan, and me downstairs. None of us say a word. I don’t know what they’re thinking, but I’m busy swallowing past the oily sickness that rises up the back of my throat when I imagine what we’ll find at the building’s entrance.

The stairs are slick where patches of moss cling to the steps, and I keep a tight grip on Logan’s tunic as we descend. The door leading to the first floor is covered with coppery rust that flakes off on my cloak when I slam my shoulder into the door to get it open. The room beyond is a large square with an impossibly high ceiling, more panes of glass in one wall than in my entire house in Baalboden, and thick curtains of bright green kudzu clinging to everything in sight.

The wagons and livestock take up the middle of the room. I can’t see beyond them to the front door to check on our guards, and the dread that tightens around my throat won’t let me yell out their names.

I can’t bear to find them dead. Cassie. Sam. Derreck. Pauline. I can’t bear to move around the wagons and see them lying cold and silent. I can’t, but in the last two months, I’ve done a lot of things I didn’t think I could bear. I can make myself do one more.

“I’m going to check on the guards,” I say, and my voice sounds too thin. “You two help Logan.”

Drake takes over supporting Logan’s left side, and I hurry forward, crushing kudzu and thorny weeds into the moldy remains of the rug that once covered the floor. The goats are tied to the back of the wagon closest to the stairwell. They flock to me as I make my way around the edge of the wagon. I nudge their heads away from me with trembling fingers, and clear the wagon.

The faint light of dawn seeps through the wall of windows in shades of green and gray. There’s a hush inside the building, as if the outside world couldn’t possibly penetrate its thick walls.

I know better. Someone got in. Marked our doors. Left us a message. And probably murdered our guards.

My eyes sweep the entrance slowly, expecting to see bodies lying on the floor. Instead, I see Cassie and Pauline standing side by side inside the doorway while Derreck and Sam pace the length of the windowed wall, their eyes trained outside to catch sight of any approaching threats.

They’re alive.

The relief that makes my limbs feel like they’re filled with water quickly gives way to anxiety as the implications hit me. If they’re alive, and this is the only entrance to the building, then whoever marked our doors last night was already inside. The only people inside the building are the Baalboden survivors.

Which means we might have a traitor in our midst.

My heart slams against my rib cage, and my hand closes over my knife hilt before I’ve even finished the thought. Skidding on mold and rubbery vines, I close the distance between the wagons and the door.

“Did you leave your post any time after I took Logan upstairs last night?” I ask. All four turn to stare at me. My voices rises. “Did you leave your post? Fall asleep? Hear a noise and leave the door unattended for a few seconds while you investigated?”

Sam raises his hands as if to calm me down and says, “We’ve been in front of this door for the past four hours. No one fell asleep or left the post. Why?”

Drake, Logan, and Quinn catch up to us, and I turn to them.

“They’ve been here all night. No one fell asleep.”

“We checked the building thoroughly yesterday,” Drake says, and the creases in his face seem to deepen. “No one was here.”

“And we know the tracker Willow and I followed was outside last night, because he attacked Logan,” Quinn says.

Logan’s face is white as he says, “Then it’s one of us. Whoever marked the doors and left me that message had to be one of us.”

“If the message matched the others you found, then either someone in our camp is working with Rowansmark, or the fact that a tracker is following us is a coincidence and has nothing to do with the messages or the killings.” Quinn’s voice is calm, but he grips Logan’s arm tightly, and his dark eyes sweep the room with careful precision.

My fingers no longer tremble as I grip my Switch and turn to survey the survivors who are climbing over the vines and circling the wagons in our wake. The fierce anger that wells up in me spills over into my voice. “It’s no coincidence. The only people outside of the building when the rock was thrown last night were you, Willow, Thom, and Ian. It was a man’s voice I heard. Thom and Ian were heading back to the shelter together, and we know it wasn’t you. That leaves the tracker. And the words he said match the stupid messages we’ve been getting, so I think Logan’s right.” I have to swallow hard to get the next words out. “One of our group is working with Rowansmark.”

I’m already striding toward the group milling around the wagons before I finish my sentence. One of the people we’ve protected is a wolf prowling among the sheep. I’m not about to let that go unaddressed.

Giving another piercing whistle, I grab the handle on the side of the supply wagon and vault into the driver’s seat. Planting my boots firmly on the seat, I rap my Switch sharply against the wood beneath me and glare at the few who dare to continue speaking until they fall quiet.

“We have a problem.” I draw the words out, filling them with every shred of the anger and betrayal that rushes through me.

“Yeah, someone got into the building and marked some of our doors last night,” the knobby-shouldered man who questioned me in the hall speaks up. One hand is wrapped around a donkey’s bridle, and the other is clenched around the strap of his travel pack.

“Yes, someone marked the doors.” I slowly scan the crowd, making eye contact and daring one of them to look away. To fidget. To give me any reason to doubt. “But the real problem is that no one breached the entrance last night. We’re the only people inside this building.”

Murmured conversation instantly explodes across the room, and I yell, “Quiet! We don’t have time to debate this. One of you is working with the Rowansmark tracker who showed up outside our camp when our guards were murdered.” I slam the end of my Switch onto the wagon seat, and the people nearby jump. “If you’ve betrayed us, if you’ve taken part in the atrocity that cost those boys their lives, do yourself a favor and stay behind. Or better yet, crawl off and die, because when we figure out who you are, there will be no mercy.”

My voice shakes, a too-frail vessel for the fury that blisters through me. I raise my Switch like the formidable weapon it is. “There will be no mercy. You will pay for your crimes with your life. It won’t be quick. It won’t be easy.” My breath rasps against my throat, tearing its way to freedom in sharp gasps while the memory of eight boys with bloody necks rises up to choke me.

“You’re a coward.” My voice fills the room. “A spineless dog who does his dirty work under the cover of night because you’re too scared to show your true face. Well, I’m not afraid of you.” I lean toward the crowd, and my teeth peel back from my lips in a snarl as I spit the words at them. “I’m not afraid of you, but you should be very afraid of me. You should look over your shoulder every minute of every day and wonder when I’m coming for you. You should tremble when you close your eyes because one of these nights, you’ll awaken with my blade against your throat, and there will be nothing you can do to stop me.”

Someone climbs into the wagon beside me, but I don’t turn. I don’t look away from the wide-eyed, terrified expressions facing me. “I know what you’re capable of, you filthy coward. But you have no idea what I can do. What I’ve already done.”

Melkin’s eyes haunt my memory, and I clamp my lips shut before my truth pours out into the green-gray air and condemns me.

“Good job,” Logan says for my ears only as he wraps an arm around me. When his warmth presses against me, I realize I’m shaking. “You made them understand.”

I look at the silent crowd who faces us and realize he’s right. They know they’re prey, and that someone close to them might betray them. They’ll be on their guard. And the one who marked the doors last night knows his days are numbered. I meet Logan’s eyes and find the same furious sense of betrayal in him that exists within me.

“We’re going to find whoever marked those doors,” he says.

“Yes, we are. But first, we need to light that fire and get out of the city before the army reaches us.”

He nods, and sways sharply to the left. I grab his tunic and face the crowd again.

“Frankie and Thom will light the fire. They have horses and can catch up to us once the blaze is burning. Jodi, Eric, and Lila will oversee getting the wagons and livestock out of the building. The rest of you get into your assigned positions. We’re leaving this city, and the Commander’s army, behind.”

I raise my Switch into the air again. “And if you’re the one who betrayed us, find a dark hole to hide in and stay behind. Because I promise you, if you leave this city with us, you’re as good as dead.”

The crowd moves quickly, casting furtive glances at each other and talking in hushed bursts. In five minutes, we have the wagons lined up on the main road leading out of the city. The survivors flank the wagons in their assigned positions, though Willow and Adam will be leading us until Logan’s had medical treatment and can once again walk in front.

In the dim light of dawn, we can see movement on the distant bluff. The army is coming for us, but they won’t reach us. Not today. Thom and Frankie mount their horses and head toward the fuel lines we built last night. The rest of us start walking north through the ruins. Minutes later, a shout goes up from behind us, and I turn to see a sheet of brilliant orange and red flames devouring the row of houses at the edge of the city. Black smoke gushes into the air and spreads across the sky as the fire eats through the dry tinder we left for it, greedily devouring the fuel lines, and then explodes into terrifying life in the Wasteland itself.

The fire is a voracious beast consuming everything in front of it. Trees flicker gold and orange against the dawn sky as flames slide over trunks, race across branches, and then leap for the next tree. Suddenly the bluff is alive with frantic motion as hundreds of soldiers realize death is coming for them unless they get out of the way.

We’re free of the Commander and his army, at least for the moment. But we’ve exchanged one threat for another, and as we make our way out of the city, I slowly study the expressions of those around me. Looking for secrets. Searching for guilt.

Hunting for a killer.