I realized I could use another weapon, too, so when I slammed the butt of the dagger’s handle onto the clock on the side of the clockbeast’s neck, I moved back. It fell on the floor, motionless. Dead.
But I only had another second to reach the boxes, to stick my hand in and grab anything I could reach, before another came at me from the side, jaws wideopen.
A knife as big as my hand—that’s what I got. It was more than enough when I twisted to the left and swung my arm back with all my strength. The short, thin blade stabbed the clockbeast on the side of its head, and it wailed in pain. I didn’t hesitate, slammed my elbow into its neck next, then jammed the back of the dagger onto the clock ticking right over its chest, at the base of its long neck.
The clockbeast collapsed into a wet, broken rattle. I waswet, too—with blood. Black blood that had come from the three I’d fought so far, two of them already dead.
No time to feel any kind of relief, though. The next moment, I heard movement from the side but I turned too late. Pain sliced a clean line across my thigh where something had grazed me—the sharp claws of a clockbeast that March had just slammed to the ground. He didn’t hesitate before swinging his axe onto the beast’s face, breaking both its jaw and the clock on the top of its head at once, and?—
“STOP!”
Bright blue-green light shot into the air, the kind I’d never seen before.
It was coming from Silas’s hands, shooting toward the canopy.
We all stopped. We all watched in shock, shaking, weapons in hands covered in black blood…
“Stop it—they’reanimals!They were programmed. They’re being used—juststop killing! They don’t deserve to die!”
Except it was a bit too late for that. The carcasses of the clockbeasts were everywhere around us. None remained alive.
The scent of blood in the air brought bile up my throat. I looked down at my body, completely covered, and my boots, and the blades of grass that looked almost oiled up but weren’t. This wasrealgrass, and real blood, and real darkness that was wrapped around us.
“But Sy, they were going to eat us,” Mimi whispered—and she was looking about herself as well. At the clockbeasts and their teeth. Their broken clocks. The blood-coated grass blades…
“They wereprogrammed,they were…they were…” A little farther to the side, Silas fell on his knees on the ground.
That strange light was gone, though. His hands were darkagain, and leaves, small and big, some with burned edges, fell slowly all around him from the canopy.
I went closer absentmindedly—why is your magic that color, Silas? What kind of magic did you just do?
“They’re beingused, just like all of us,” Silas said, shaking his head at himself, looking down at his lap.
Reggie went closer, fell on one knee in front of him, and the others followed.
“Silas, it’s okay,” they said, but Silas kept shaking his head over and over.
“I should have never-ever-reven come here,” he whispered. “Time’s Truth, I should have never set foot in this place. I should have never—I should have never—I should have never…”
Something spread inside me, something bad. Something worse than all this black blood.
Pure, rawdread.
March stopped near me, and I instinctively dropped that small knife and grabbed his hand. I needed an anchor. I just needed an anchor before I floated all the way out of this world and got lost in an abyss.
“It’s over,” Reggie was saying. “We…wewon. It’s over!”
But Silas wouldn’t hear it. “Nothing’s over, Reg. Nothing.” And he reached for the zipper of his suit pocket, sitting there on the ground still.
From it, he pulled out a silver chain attached to a clock. A verybigclock.
At first I thought it was his Life Clock, as if I hadn’t seen that thing a hundred times already. As if I didn’t know that it wasgolden,not silver.
Then Silas stood up and he began to back away from us, his eyes locked on it.
Something smells like rotten seconds,I kept thinking, and squeezed March’s hand as he squeezed mine, too.
“Sy, buddy—let it go. It’s just the trial,” he said, but even he didn’t sound convinced of his own words, because he knew Silas wasn’t going to listen.
