She hugged them, hard, and died ever so slightly when they did not hug her back. She left the house at a speed somewhere between fleeing and needing not to be detected. A dry sob escaped her when she entered the arundo grass again, her mind such a whirlwind that she did not recall the journey back to the thicket before she reached for Yemi’s hand to help her down the slope.
“We move. Now,” Nova grunted, unable to look her in the eye.
Yemi frowned. “What happened?” she asked.
“Later,” Nova replied with some finality.
They slid down the hill together, careful to avoid large rocks and exposed roots that threatened to trip them. They emerged in the valley between tall rows of hemp and arundo grass, ideal for cutting across the fields amid some semblance of cover. The world beneath the fog was dark and humid, the sun cutting in from the east painting the tops of the plants in red light as if they were on fire. They moved quickly and cautiously, sticking to the lanes between the crops.
A horn sounded, loud and bone-tremblingly deep. A breeze rippledthrough the crops and piqued Nova’s nerves, as it became impossible to tell if workers were nearby.
Without warning, she shoved Yemi into the hemp stalks and hoped she had the sense to stay there.
Nova froze on the path and locked eyes with a dark, looming figure some fifty yards ahead of them, their face obscured by the feathering leaves.
“Morning, friend. Oh.Friends.”
What she’d thought was one person had turned out to be three. “I’m just passing through. Not here to cause any trouble,” Nova called. She stuck her spear standing in the dirt beside her and showed her empty palms.
They crept forward out of the arundo grass across the way with shambling steps and strangely twitching limbs. Farmers, from what she could tell. Their boots were caked in mud, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow and stained with sweat. They gripped spears and short blades in massive hands laced with violent black veins.
Nova clenched her jaw. This was bad.
A twig snapped somewhere in the hemp off to the right, and Nova took up her spear again at a twitch. A fourth farmer emerged, burly and barrel-chested and impossibly tall in a way that threatened Cutter’s standing as the largest man she’d ever seen. He stood still and, with a series of audible popping noises, turned his head to where Nova knew Yemi was hiding. He didn’t move toward her position, though. He set his gaze forward on Nova, and the little hairs on the back of her neck stood as she peered into dark, empty eyes for a moment before he continued out onto the path.
“I would truly rather not fight. We all deserve an easy day here,” Nova called, drawing one of her iron fans and flicking it open. It was a trigger, and the standoff ended as the farmers stalked toward her.
Shit.
Yemi leaped onto the path and gave chase, but Nova was surrounded. Two more farmers had closed in behind her and engagedher first. It was as if they didn’t see Yemi at all. Nova was now a flurry of iron fans slinging streaks of black blood in long arcs in every direction, pushing them away from Yemi. But none of them were going down easily. For the listlessness in their gait and their dead-eyed expressions, they were deft with their weapons, swinging them with powerful, deadly intent in combinations Nova was having trouble parrying.
She launched herself into the air and punched the giant in the throat with the leading edge of a fan, sending his head flying into the long grass.
Yemi tried whistling to distract the nearest one to her and plunged her spear into the soft flesh of his belly when he turned around.
Only, it didn’t do much.
He growled, a slack, writhing mouth dripping with black blood as he taunted her, leaning into the spear as he tried to reach her face. The pressure drove Yemi backward, her boots grinding into the dirt as she pressed forward to run him through. She ratcheted the spear’s core to its activated position and immediately the odors of burning blood and singed flesh filled the morning air. She roared forward, yanking the spear to the left with unsettling ease, and then to the right, severing the top of the farmer’s body cleanly from its bottom.
“Holy shit,” she panted as the two halves thudded into the dirt. It was a bloodless split, the cut having cauterized on contact. The spear still crackled a glowing orange in her fist.
At once, all was quiet, the mangled bodies lying still and paling gradually in pieces around them. They each turned in circles, looking for new threats, but none came.
Nova doubled over to catch her breath. “Black eyes and black blood. Is that what you saw with Dahlia?” she asked.
“Yes. She knows we’re here.” Yemi nodded, scanning the area for any new threats ahead of them.
“I told you: trap,” Nova said, spitting blood into the dirt. She stood upright, fully intending to read her further, but her eyes went wide as she gazed past Yemi instead.
“Van?” she called, the name sticking in her throat.
Van stood over the body of the puppet Yemi had slain. They appeared either unfazed by death or blind to it, and their movements were stammered just like the farmers’, as if being driven by someone unfamiliar with their specific body. Their eyes were black.
No. No, no, no.
“Van, what are you doing?”
Yemi twitched the core of her spear in her hand, and it crackled to life.
