Then the men got to work. On the dead boy first. They shucked him out of the body with dry-bone fingers and hooks, then strung him up. He hung by his wrists as they used loops of rough, hemp ropes that scraped his skin dry and raw, a slough of wet ectoplasm dropped into a reed basket they kicked under him.
Hill, left in the corpse, screamed against the bridle as he tried to work out how to claw or chew or just squirm out of the cold meat. One of the men glanced his way, the moonlight catching on a scrawny jaw and dirty cheek under the stained burlap. Then they stepped away and looked again.
He wiped his brown, bony fingers on his leather apron and limped over to the body. Whatever passed for joints popped andcrackled as he knelt down. A dry, rough finger that felt like jerky touched Hill’s jaw, and then the man pushed his hood back.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Albie said. His eyes were hazel. Hill had remembered that right. “I didn’t want you to see me until this was gone.”
Hill didn’t know what that meant. He tried to grab for Albie’s hands, to beg for help. Nothing came out. Albie pulled one of the hooked knives from his belt and tested the point on his finger.
“I never planned to let them hurt you,” he promised, his voice cracked and broken like ribs. “But you have to get home….Home by midnight, you understand.”
Hill wasn’t sure, but he nodded desperately anyhow.
Albie’s dry mouth folded into a smile that cracked his lips. He reached down and grabbed Hill by the hair. A yank pulled him halfway out of the dead man, his feet still—somehow—caught in the bony arch of his ribs. Another yank made him scream and dropped him, wet and sobbing, on the ground.
The rest of the hooded men, there for the harvest, turned with the rustle of heavy burlap. One of them dropped something they’d winkled from the dead man with a wet slop of noise.
“What are you doing?”
“You can’t do that?”
“It’s forbidden. How do they know you?”
“It’s forbidden?”
Their voices, smashed against each other, felt like an abbatoir. On the sidelines, the Hounds yelped and covered their eyes, muzzles screwed up in distress. Seb grabbed one by the ruff and shoved him out of the way as he stepped forward.
“What’s going on?” he yelled. “What are you doing?”
Albie looked down at Hill. His face softened and it was just Dad again, under the dirt and the filthy clothes.
“Let it go,” he said. “Let me go. Now. RUN!”
He snapped the instruction as he lunged forward to block the first of the hooded men who tried to swarm them. A short, brutal swing of that hooked blade caught under the man’s dirty coat and pared out a white, half-bone arm. The sleeve flapped, suddenly empty, as the arm dropped to the ground and melted like dew into the dirt.
Hill tore at the muzzle and managed to rip it off. He spat the bit out, bloodied and clotted with tongue. Then he scrambled to his feet and hesitated.
It was his dad. Hisdad.The reason that he’d done all of this, the big gap in his life. He couldn’t just leave him here to fight whatever the hooded men were.
“I said, run,” Albie roared at him. One of the other men threw a noose around him, the rough rope sparking against burlap. He managed to get his fingers between the knot and his neck as he reached over his shoulder and dug the hook of his blade into one of the other hooded men as they swarmed him. “It’s nearly midnight! Gohome.Go!”
Hill made a desperate,hurtsound in his throat, threw the bridle into the darkness, and the dirt bike hung up on the old tree exploded. Chunks of metal and burning gobs of rubber rained down as the Hooded Men yelped in surprise and shied away. It was all Hill could do.
He took one last look at his Dad and ran. As he vaulted over the old, dead wood trees, he heard Seb roar behind him as he tried to rally the cowed Hounds to pursuit.
How close to midnight was it? Hill didn’t know. He glanced up through the tree branches at the sky. Even if he’d known how to tell the time by the moon, it was obscured by clouds.
He wasn’t even sure, he realized as he blocked the swipe of a low-hanging branch with his forearm, that he was going the right way.
Panic threatened briefly as he stopped to try and orient himself and heard the low sound of the Hounds coughed howls behind him. What would they do to him if they found him this time? He had the creeping feeling there would be no second chances.
Somewhere, in the dark, there was the brittle sound of a tree cracking and he felt the polter-white glaze of nothing eat the sides of his mind. He cursed under his breath and thumped the heel of his hand against his forehead. Not now. It wouldn’t help, and he didn’t know if he’d have time to make it back from where it dragged him down to.
Or what would happen if what the polter made him into got back into his skin.
No, Hill took an unnecessary breath and let it out. All he had to do was find Davy. He could do that. It had worked before.
He closed his eyes and tried tofeelwhat way to go. It might just have been wishful thinking, but…that way.
