Dies The Fire

Chapter Seventeen

"L ord and Lady, I don't think I can stand this much longer," Judy Barstow said, her olive Mediterranean skin gray.

Juniper nodded. They were ten miles north of Salem, and:

She wiped at the flies crawling over her face, spat, and pulled the bandana up over her face again, which let her breathe through her mouth without inhaling any of them- even after many days' exposure, she hadn't gotten used to the stink. Her eyes skipped over the bodies lying by the road, and the rats that crawled bloated and insolent among them. Rags and tatters of flesh were left; the crows were at them too, but the rats were so numerous that they could drive the birds off in chittering hordes. Inside an SUV windows pullulated with heaving gray bodies:

"It's almost as bad here as it was along I-5," she said. "I don't think we should try to get any closer to Portland."

"No," Judy said. "I don't either. My grandfather got out of Lithuania in World War Two: I never really understood what he was talking about before."

Almost compulsively she opened the economy-sized bottle of sanitizer again, and handed it around. Juniper's face and hands were already raw and chapped from the desiccating effect of the alcohol-based solution, but she obediently scrubbed down all the exposed parts of her body. Steve and Vince followed suit.

None of them had much skin exposed, despite the mild heat. When you thought of where the flies had been:

"No, we shouldn't be here," the nurse-midwife went on. "We're endangering the whole clan as well as ourselves. I never thought it could be as bad as this! If someone designed an environment to spread disease, this would be it."

She swallowed and went on: "How: how can They let this happen?"

Juniper pushed her bicycle over beside her friend's and put her arm around her shoulders; that was more symbolic than anything, when the person you hugged was wearing an armored jack, but symbols counted.

"How could They let the Holocaust happen, or the Black Death, or the Burning Times? We're not People of the Book; everything's connected, but we don't have to imagine that everything happens according to a Divine Plan. It could be our fault, something humans did through carelessness or malice. It could be aliens doing the same. Or: it could be something the Otherworld did for our own good."

"Our good?" Judy asked, looking around.

"We might have killed the planet, if this hadn't happened. Killed the whole human race, and the plants and the animals too. I don't know, but it's possible."

Judy drew a breath, coughed, and nodded. "All right. Thanks. But let's get out of here!"

Juniper nodded and pulled out the map. "All right," she said. "We had to know: but oh, how I wish we didn't!" Her finger traced a road west and then south. "We'll cross here, near Wheatland, and turn south towards Corvallis, then slant across to home the way I did right after the Change."

Vince Torelli had put an arrow to his bow as soon as they stopped. He left it there as he put the weapon back in its frame across the handlebars, held by the nock's grip on the string and the angle of the arrow-shelf. Then he stepped on the pedals and darted out ahead of them, keeping a careful hundred yards in advance. The two women followed; it took them a little more time to build up speed, as their bicycles were towing little baggage carts that held their modest supplies. Steve Matucheck followed behind, looking over his shoulder regularly.

The stink died down as they moved west-away from the produce truck that had probably attracted the group of people who stayed around it and died, and into open country. They wove down the two-lane blacktop, eyes busy keeping watch on the empty fields to either side-and not ignoring the abandoned cars and trucks that sat as they had since 6:15 p.m., March 17th.

Back at her cabin, she could go hours without thinking about the Change; days, sometimes, in the scramble to get the fields planted. Out here, not a minute went by when you could forget.

Once they were out from strip-mall development the fields were eerily silent; grass tall and shaggy, but not a cow to be seen; now and then a field of beets gone tangled with weeds, or wheat beginning to head out, or an orchard with fruits or nuts starting to swell. There were still occasional bodies by the road-people had stuck to those lines of travel, mostly trudging back and forth until they dropped, as far as she could see. The sun was cruelly bright, and she swallowed as a brace of crows launched themselves off a telephone wire.

Another hour, and they stopped for a drink from their canteens; Judy restrained herself from checking the water, since she'd made sure they brought it to a rolling boil for twenty minutes that morning.

"Anyone seen those dogs?" Juniper asked; a feral pack had shadowed them.

"Not since about ten," Steve Matucheck said.

"Odd. We haven't seen a living soul since yesterday, and yet so many stayed by the roads until they died," Juniper said.

Surprisingly, Vince Torelli spoke up. "Lady Juniper, I think it's part of the same thing. The ones that stayed at home, or walked back and forth on the roads, they died. The ones with sense enough to get away, they stood a better chance-but we won't be seeing them, much. Not around here."

Juniper nodded, trying not to let the young man see how much being called Lady Juniper annoyed her. Yes, you called a High Priestess Lady in the Circle, but it didn't apply in day-to-day life and Vince wasn't even a member of the coven. Dennis had started doing it, and she suspected it was as much to irritate her as anything else; his sense of humor had been easier to take when she only had to do it occasionally, instead of 24/7.

But I'll be glad to get back to it; and Eilir; and the others: even Cuchulain.

A little of that eagerness was sheer hunger. There hadn't been much to spare for them to take along on this trip; the Eternal Soup was a fond memory.

Judy nodded. "Just being away from a big city is the biggest survival factor," she said. "But a close second would be sense enough to realize that the Change was here to stay, and not sit around waiting for rescue or go wandering aimlessly. Chuck and I managed to talk our people into getting right out. You made for the hills right away too."

Some truth in that, Juniper thought, bending to massage a kink out of one calf. Judy had a core of hard common sense, probably from her years as a nurse.

On the other hand, how could anyone know that the Change was here to stay, or that it was everywhere?

For that matter, she still didn't know that the Change was worldwide. She was morally certain, but that wasn't proof. If you were a garden-variety common-sense sort of person, staying put probably looked better: until it was too late.

"Plus we're just too close to Salem," she said, looking back a little east of south. "The requisitioning parties probably got everything around here."

They could still see the black columns of smoke around the city as a smudge on the horizon; luckily the wind was from the west, and bent them towards the distant line of the Cascades-she could still see the peaks of the Three Sisters from here.

"Are you sure?" she asked Judy.

The other woman nodded. "I'd never seen it before, but the black patches of skin and the swellings in the armpits and groin are unmistakable."

A long breath. "It's been three days now. We'd be showing symptoms, if we'd caught it, but my skin still crawls."

And mine, at the memory, Juniper thought. Those pits, where the bodies still smouldered:

The truck stop a little way up the road had a gas station with attached convenience store, and a long low-slung board building advertising the fact that Bill's BBQ had the best dry ribs in the Willamette; a graveled country lane crossed the blacktop there, and the parking lot was dirt. They swerved in, coming to rest in a rough line and looking the windows over.

Quite often there was something useful in places like that. Not food, of course, but aspirin, sterile bandages, condoms, toilet paper-newspaper left stains, they'd-discovered, and twists of grass could leave you itching for days. Sometimes there was even instant coffee or diet sweetener, occasionally salt. Nothing with any calories, but it made bland boring food taste better, and they were all worth the effort of lugging along. Sometimes they spotted something useful enough and bulky enough that it was worth marking down for a foraging party to come fetch with a wagon and escort, although they were getting too far from home for that.

"Wait a second," Juniper said, as she heeled down the kickstand of her bicycle. "I smell something cooking!"

It's meat, too. Her mouth watered and her swallow was painful. Meat and a trace of woodsmoke, or charcoal. Could someone have found a last strayed cow in this wilderness of death? Could they be talked or traded out of some?

Something moved behind a Subaru a few yards away. Juniper tensed slightly, then relaxed as she saw it was a girl in a stained white dress; about twelve, she thought, with stringy brown hair.

The girl waved and walked over towards them, smiling; a couple of her teeth were missing. As she got closer, Juniper wrinkled her nose.

I'm not a blooming rose myself, but that's awful, she thought.

The girl looked bad, too. Not emaciated like so many they'd seen; if anything, a little overweight, which was something she hadn't seen much lately. But her hair was thin on top, showing patches of scalp, and there were odd-looking lumps on her arms; she walked like someone much younger, holding her hands behind her back and half skipping. There was a small sore beside her left eye, trailing yellow matter.

"You're sick!" Juniper said, and looked over at her friend.

"Not the plague," Judy muttered. "Where have I seen- must have been a textbook-"

"It's all right!" Juniper called. "We don't want any of your food. Maybe we can help, if you're ill."

The girl giggled, coming closer. "It's all right," she said back, her tone singsong. "We've got plenty to eat. You can come for dinner!"

We? Juniper thought.

Perhaps that was what made Juniper start to jerk backward as the hand came out from behind the girl's back with a glint of steel. The long kitchen knife missed her throat; it would still have killed her as it stabbed into her chest, but the plates of her jack turned it, breaking the point.

"Oooof!" Juniper said, struggling for wind.

The girl screeched, puffing the smell of rotten meat in Juniper's face, stabbing again and again with the sharp broken stump of the knife. She'd probably never met body armor before. Long detested hours of instruction from Chuck and Aylward took over; made Juniper duck a shoulder forward to body-check and knock the enemy back on her heels, reach down and grab the hilt with the right hand, rip it out and swing with the same motion.

The point scored across the girl's body, and the cloth parted-skin beneath, too, blood leaking as she turned and fled clutching at herself and screaming in shrill squeals.

Juniper fought shock. I just cut at a child! she thought.

More figures popped up from among the cars and trucks and poured out of the buildings. One burst right out of the rear doors of a van not fifteen feet away, roaring and holding an ax above his head in both hands. He was naked to the waist, his torso covered in boils. Vince drew to the ear and waited until the axman was five feet away before shooting; the arrow struck full in the throat, splitting the neckbone with an audible crack. The shouting cut off with knife finality, and the man toppled backward like a cut-through tree.

A woman with a butcher's cleaver ran at Matucheck. "Night of the fucking living dead!" he screamed, eyes wild.

He punched the blow aside with his buckler in an iron clang of metal on metal and stabbed, as much in revulsion as anger. The point slid home.

Judy was grappling with a teenage boy who tried to gnaw at her face as they danced in clumsy circles. Juniper bared her own teeth and struck with her buckler, using it like a two-pound set of brass knuckles. The crumbling feeling as the steel disk struck just below the base of his skull made the hair bristle up along her spine even then.

"It's a nest of Eaters!" Juniper shouted.

Most people would rather die than turn cannibal, but when you were talking about millions, a small minority was far too large. And they were starting to get hungry, as their food became scarce in turn.

"Get back in here!" she called. "Stand them off!"

Three cars made a loose triangle; too loose, but the Eaters were all around them. The Mackenzies retreated, Vince shooting as fast as he could knock and draw, then turned at bay. But the gaps between the cars were too big, and the Eaters swarmed over the hoods and trunks as well. For a minute the four of them pushed and shoved, hit and stabbed and chopped; their jacks were a huge advantage, and health and sanity and real weapons they had some idea of how to use.

But there were too many; it was like trying to fight in a nightmare where nothing worked and more and more came at you. Juniper knew with some dim distant part of her mind that the horror would come back to her if she lived, but most of her was a reflex that shouted and swung and struck.

Then something hit her across the shoulders, sending her reeling forward into the press. Two Eaters grabbed at her buckler and dragged it down. Another hugged her sword arm, and a third raised a baseball bat in both hands Thock!

A broad arrowhead stuck out from the Eater's chest, barely to the left of the breastbone. Blood gouted from his mouth, and he had just enough time to took surprised before he collapsed, kicking.

Behind him was a mounted giant with the head of a bear.

Juniper had only the blurred glimpse; then she was too busy getting her right arm free from the momentarily slackened grip. She hadn't lost her sword-the sword Dennie's gentle brother had made for show and play and the beauty of it, before the Change.

It was still the weapon of Rome 's legions, the most dreadfully efficient tool of slaughter humankind had invented until Hiram Maxim's time. A short punching stab in the throat sent the Eater backward gobbling and clutching his throat.

"Let me go!" she shouted, chopping at the other two as if she were jointing a chicken. "Let me go!"

They did, running in squalling panic, grabbing at terrible slash-wounds, and then there were no more of their kind left within the space marked out with the three cars; none living, at least. Juniper gasped and leaned her fists on her knees as she tried to suck air in through a mouth gone paper-dry.

All the rest of her people seemed to be on their feet too, with nothing worse than cuts and scrapes and bruises; she squeezed out a brief, heartfelt wordless thanks. Outside the Eaters were running about the graveled parking lot, squealing and screaming. Three mounted men loped their horses after them, shooting methodically at close range with short powerful recurve bows, turning their mounts as nimbly as rodeo cowboys.

It's a headdress on top of a helmet, not a bear's head, Juniper thought. Gave me a start there!

Animal-headed god-men were very much a part of her faith, but she hadn't expected to run into one in the light of common day. It was almost as frightening as the prospect he'd rescued her from, of grisly death and dreadful feasting.

After a moment the cannibals gathered, clustering around a leader-one with a louder voice, at least. The three armored men dismounted, tied their horses to the chain-link fence, drew long swords. The round shields on their left arms bore a uniform mark, the stylized outline of a snarling bear's head, red on dark brown.

The noon sun blazed on the edged metal of their swords, and the man with the bear helmet shouted: "You in there! The party's not over and the mosh pit is sort of crowded. Pitch in if you can!"

The shout carried easily across the twenty yards, through the brabble of the Eaters' lunatic malice; a voice trained to carry, but not a musician's like hers-more of a crashing bark. Juniper looked with disgust at the blood on her blade and arm and side.

"Let's go," she said. "Come on, Mackenzies!"

The three strangers formed up with their leader as the point of a blunt wedge and charged in a pounding rush with the skirts of their mail hauberks flapping around their knees, armored from shin to helmet. Their great straight-bladed sabers went up in glittering menace.

"Haakkaa paalle!" they shouted in unison; the words weren't English or any language she knew, but they prompted a flicker of memory. "Haakkaa paalle!"

Then they struck the loose crowd of their foemen, and the mass seemed to explode in a spray of blood and screams and swords swinging in arcs that slung trails of red droplets yards into the air. Juniper gritted her teeth and made herself move forward with blade and buckler.

The Eaters stood and fought-mostly, just died-for a brief moment, then spattered screaming across the parking lot and out into the fields around, running for the shelter of the woods. Steve and Vince retrieved their longbows and shot while any targets were still in range; Juniper stood shuddering and blinking as the tall strangers made sure of the enemy dead.

Then there was no sound except their own panting and a series of quick are you all right queries. And the sickening knowledge that a single minute's delay would have seen them all dead and dismembered.

"Oh, Goddess gentle and strong, I want to go home," Judy whispered, then straightened. "We ought to check out the buildings. There might be things that: need doing."

"Damn right," one of the strangers said.

Juniper looked around. She had been controlling the churning in her stomach by main force of will; the movement distracted her, and she swayed backward against a car, sliding sideways. The world swam, narrowing and graying at the edges, and her mouth filled with spit.

Judy reached for her, but the stranger was quicker, holding her upright until she recovered a little. His grip was firm but not painful, although she could feel the remorseless strength in it, but she swallowed again at the sight and smell of the blood and matter that clotted the mail on the back of his leather gauntlet.

"Easy," he said. "Your first sight of combat?"

He held a water bottle to her lips. She filled her mouth and turned her head to spit, then drank.

"Not: not quite," she said, looking around at the bodies.

And every one of these a child of the Goddess and the God. Hard to remember that, but she must. May they find rest and peace in the Summerlands, and come to forgive themselves!

Aloud she continued: "But nothing before the Change, and nothing since like: like this."

He nodded and stepped back as he felt her strengthen; his friends came up behind him and followed his lead as he took off his helmet.

Their eyes met. For an instant that stretched green gaze locked with gray; Juniper felt a sudden shock, like a bucket of cold water and a jolt of electricity and all the chakras- power points-of her body flaring at once. She could see very clearly; clearly enough to notice the sudden widening of his pupils as he stared at her with the same fierce focus.

Then the moment passed, so quickly she wasn't sure if it had been more than her wooziness; it did blow the horror out of her for a while. Instead she was chiefly conscious of another reaction: My, but he's pretty.

Almost beautiful, in a hard masculine way: square-chinned, with high cheekbones and short straight nose and slanted gray eyes, the long chiseled line of his jaw emphasized by the close-cropped black beard. Only a scar running across his forehead and up into the bowl-cut raven hair marred it.

Oh, my, yes, Juniper thought, surprised she could notice at a moment like this; and even then she thought she caught a flicker of kindred interest on his face.

Then: They're not giants, either.

She'd had a confused impression that they were all huge men; but on second glance the leader, the one with the bear's head: let's mentally subtract all that gear: was tall but not towering, and not even thick-built; broad-shouldered and long-limbed, rather, narrow in the waist and hips. He moved easily under the weight of cloth and leather and metal, light and graceful as a leopard.

The youngest was an inch or two over six feet, a fresh-faced freckled blond no more than twenty at the most, already heavy in the shoulders- and thick-armed. The other was about halfway between his two companions in build.

"No disgrace to feel a bit woozy after something like this," the gray-eyed leader said. "I was, first time. You get used to it."

"Goddess, I hope not," she said.

He raised a brow at that- observant of him -and looked at the four Mackenzies, quickly taking note of their gear and the antlers-and-moon blazon on the breast of their jacks.

"Well, your Goddess must have been looking after you; we've met bunches like this before and decided to pile in and help on general principles. Ah: I'm-"

The blond boy grinned. "Lord Bear, war chief of the Bearkillers! At least according to my sister, Princess Astrid Legolamb."

The older man- about my age, give or take a year – grimaced at him, and the other one smiled.

"I'm Mike Havel." He jerked a thumb at the youngster. "This is Eric Larsson, and his family are all humorists-in their own opinion, if nobody else's. The sensible one here is named Josh Sanders."

The other man had brown hair and blue eyes and a narrow planes-and-angles Scots-Irish face that reminded Juniper of her own father; he pulled off a gauntlet and extended his hand.

"Pleased to meet you, ma'am," he said. "Mike is the bossman of our outfit, right enough."

Eric went on: "The rest of us are a long ways east of here; we're scouting," and the other two scowled at him.

She noticed with amusement how Vince and Steve bristled just a little as she made her own introductions; and her trained ears pricked up at the strangers' accents. The mix was odd, and she could usually tag someone within a hundred miles of their birthplace.

The blond boy, Eric, he's a native Oregonian, she thought. From west of the Cascades, at that, like me, but probably raised in metro Portland rather than the valley. Hmmm. is that just a wee tinge of New England? Mr. Sanders. Midwestern flat vowels for sure; but there's something harsher there too, hill-country Southern; born not far north of the Ohio and on a farm, or some little crossroads town. Our Lord Bear is interesting; Midwestern too, I'd say, but from a lot farther north. And there's just a hint underneath of something else, not English. Singsong, but very faint.

"Your friend was right," Havel said. "We should check out those buildings-together, and cautiously."

"You think there might be more Eaters?" she said.

"Eaters? That's what you call them around here? Possibly, or more likely prisoners, alive so they'd stay fresh. Like I said, we've done this before."

He looked down at one of the dead; his expression was clinical, and the other two looked matter-of-fact as well; the youngest was a little green around the gills, but only slightly.

Havel and Sanders were calmer still; not exhilarated or excited either, their breath slowing gradually from the brutal exertion of fighting in armor far heavier than hers, but calm. The bodies seemed to disturb them no more than the blood that clotted on their mail, the way a farmer would ignore muck-covered boots when he shoveled out a stall.

Hard men, she thought, with a tinge of distaste and then a rush of shame; they'd saved her life and that of her friends at the risk of their own, doing the deeds for nothing but the deeds' own sake.

Not wicked, I don't think they're bad, but hard. This Havel, he probably was that way before the Change, too.

She'd always trusted her first impressions of people, and had rarely been disappointed. Havel would make an excellent friend and a very bad enemy; provoke or threaten him or his and you could look for a sudden frightful blow, without warning, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky.

"A lot of this bunch look sick, too," he said. "I've noticed that before as well."

Judy spoke: "They were probably undercooking their: food," she said. "You can safely eat fish or even beef rare, most times. Pork you have to cook thoroughly. Human flesh: "

"Right. Josh, cover us. You two"-he nodded to Vince and Steve-"keep an arrow on the string and an eye out behind us. One of you stay at the entrance when we go in, and watch the horses. Don't want them creeping back to corncob us. Ms. Mackenzie, if you and Ms. Barstow could back me and Eric up directly?"

They all moved towards the BBQ place; that was where the smoke came from, trickling out of a sheet-metal chimney. The big picture window was unbroken; the lower half was frosted as well. Nobody felt like trapping themselves in the revolving door.

Havel looked at Eric; they nodded without words, laid their swords down carefully, and picked up a big motorcycle between them; then they pivoted and threw it-six feet and through the glass. The crash and tinkle sounded loud across the corpse-littered parking lot.

Juniper noted that the two young Mackenzies looked impressed; she snorted slightly to herself.

A horse is even stronger, but those two don't get that me-am-awestruck-junior-dog look when one hauls a ton of logs out of the woods. Men!

Havel looked through the shattered glass, blade and shield up. Then he turned his head aside, grimacing slightly.

"Christ Jesus!" he said, spat, then turned back to whatever was within.

Judy looked as well, then turned and began vomiting. When Juniper stepped forward in alarm, Judy waved her back as she spat to clear her mouth. Mike Havel held up a palm to stop his own men likewise.

"No point in letting this inside your heads unless you have to."

"They were: cooking," Judy said. "They had a-" Another heave took her. "I wish I hadn't seen it."

Havel nodded, sheathed his sword and drew the long broad-bladed knife he wore across the small of his back.

"I'll handle this," he said with calm, flat authority.

He went inside; they could hear wood scraping and crunching, and then his voice, speaking loudly as if to someone deaf or ill:

"Do: you: want: to: die?"

A rasping mumble, suddenly cut off; Juniper made the Invoking sign, as did Judy-and to her surprise, so did the two young men. Then Havel called an all-clear, and they stepped cautiously into the big dining area; the stench was stunning, even to hoses grown far less squeamish since the Change. Even with the front window smashed in it was dim, which she was thankful for, and she let her eyes slide a little out of focus as well. Havel had spread some of the filthy crusted tablecloths over: things: lying beside the big fireplace hearth that stood in the center of the room, radiating heat from a bed of coals.

That had a copper hood, and firewood heaped nearby; the Eaters had been burning bits of planking and broken-up furniture: complete with the varnishes and stains in the wood.

No wonder they were all mad! From the chemicals, as well as guilt and horror.

The table beside it was scored with cuts, soaked with old blood and littered with knives, saws and choppers, a moving coat of flies buzzing around them.

"I: don't think there's anything here," Juniper said, lifting her eyes and focusing on the please wait to be seated sign still standing near the door. "If they're holding prisoners, it'll be out back. We ought to shout and then listen first; it might save poking around."

They did; in the ringing silence that followed she heard a muffled calling and pounding. She led the way back through the kitchen-empty, save for a few boxes of spices and salt and a severed blackened hand kicked into a corner and lying with its fingers clawed up as if reaching for something.

She moved on grimly, down a near-lightless corridor, to a metal door that had probably been a cold-store for meats. Even in the dimness she could see long scratches in the paint on the walls, as if someone had tried to cling to the smooth surface while being dragged. Voices and thumping came from behind the metal door, muffled by the insulation.

"We've come to get you out safe!" she called."Hold on!"

The voices redoubled, but the door looked strong, and the padlock was a heavy model with a stainless-steel loop as thick as her middle finger. Her heart revolted at the thought of rooting through the clothes of the dead Eaters outside, or among the grotesque filth in the room around the hearth of abominations; both would be dangerous. And the one with the key might have been among those who fled, anyway. She began to look around for a tool.

"Just a second," Mike Havel spoke, surprising her. "Josh, check the packtrain. I don't think any of those maniacs would stop running that close, but no need to take a chance. And get some torches ready, we'll want to burn the place down when we've checked things over. Ms. Mackenzie, I'll be right back."

They squeezed past the knot of people in the corridor; Havel was back in a few seconds. Oddly, he was carrying a rifle.

"Thought I saw this on a rack in the main room," he said. "Over by the cash register."

"But: that won't work," Juniper said.

Havel grinned, a flash of white teeth in the darkness. "It won't shoot, but it'll work fine as a pry bar," he said. "An ax or a sledge would be awkward, the way the door jamb is right against the end wall. This is a Schultz amp; Larsen 68DL hunting rifle, of all unlikely things, always wanted one myself. Hell of a thing to do with a fine piece of gunsmith's work: Stand back, please."

He slid the barrel through the padlock between hasp and body, tested the position once or twice, set his hands on the underside of the stock and put a booted foot against the further wall. That made the skirt of his hauberk and gambeson fall back; he wore copper-riveted Levi's beneath, and the incongruity of it made her blink for a second. Then he took a deep breath, emptied his lungs, filled them again:

"Issssaaaaa!" he shouted, teeth bared in a rictus of effort.

The lock parted and flew apart with a sharp ping of steel striking concrete. Havel threw the gun aside too, panting; the barrel had a perceptible kink in it now.

"Show-off," the blond youth said, but he smiled as he did.

Juniper ignored them, pulling the latch open and then working the handle of the door; she had to dodge as the heavy portal swung open.

A woman with matted hair and a face covered in bruises and crusted scabs ran out, bounced off Havel 's armored form with a shriek, then stopped and stared at Juniper's face. The dim light in the corridor must seem bright to her; the inside of the cold-storage locker would have been stygian-black. And Juniper's molten-copper hair was hard to miss.

"Juney?" the prisoner said. "Juney?"

"You know me- Carmen?" Her eyes went to the other captives. "Muriel? Jack?"

The slight dark woman threw her arms around the High Priestess of the Coven of the Singing Moon; then the others were around her as well.

"Juney, they wuh, wuh, were going to-"

"Shhh, I know. You're safe now. We cast the Circle and made the rite, and She brought us to you."