“I told you,” Ewan said. He reached up and grabbed the back of Nick’s neck, his fingers slippery and warm. There was something desperately hungry in his eyes. “Save the world. Save you.”
“Fuck off,” Nick spat out the coarse Glasgow retort of his childhood as he pushed Ewan away. “Whatever Gran’s done, it was never for me.Tome, sure. Next time you want to lie to me, run it past her first. She’ll tell you what ones she’s worn out.”
Ewan frowned. “What do you mean? She loves you.”
“Yeah,” Nick admitted. It would have been easier if she hadn’t. “That’s never stopped her.”
Gregor took his arm and pulled him away.
“We need to go,” he said. “Can you drive the bike?”
Nick hesitated, all that pent-up anger and pain caught in his throat like a knot. He couldn’t get past it.
“He hasn’t told us anything,” he protested. “Nothing true, anyhow.”
Gregor gave him a shove toward one of the quad bikes. “Not yet,” he said as he grabbed the shoulder of Ewan’s coat. “Don’t worry. This isn’t over. The prophet’s coming with us.”
He dragged Ewan with him back to the bloodstained quad and shoved him into the saddle. Of course, Nick remembered as he grabbed the dead soldier by the shoulders, Gregor couldn’t drive. The dead weight was a familiar strain against Nick’s shoulders as he lifted the corpse off the saddle and dragged him out of the way. The dead didn’t usually bother him—he’d have picked the wrong job if they did—but the slack red slit in the man’s throat made Nick’s skin crawl.
He thought that maybe it was some sense of guilt, that his family had done this. Then he realized that, while he couldn’t see them, he could feel the thread snakes of the potion slither dry and cold between his knuckles and the prickle-bite as they tried to hang on to him.
The cold, he thought as he pulled away with a shudder. It wasn’t the weather for snakes. He wiped his hands on his coat and scrambled onto the saddle. The wind had already cooled the blood. It was sticky and wet under his backside.
“Where are we going?” Nick asked as he shook his hands again and fumbled with the ignition.
“Just follow us,” Gregor said. He took the slim knife from Ewan’s sleeve and pressed it under his ear. “Head home, Prophet. The Numitor wants to speak to you.”
Ewan laughed. The sound scraped the blade against the side of his throat, and a drop of blood dripped down into his collar.
“The Numitor is gone,” he said with grim, unapologetic satisfaction as he started the bike. “He’s the god’s dog now. Maybe it will teach him humility.”
Nick hesitated, his hands clumsy as he struggled with the handle of the bike. He’d never really driven one before this winter, and only had a single, short lesson when they landed on the coast. It hadn’t been enough to make the controls second nature. Something Ewan had just said was important, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. Maybe that part of his brain was blacked out along with the bird.
“Death comes to us all,” Gregor said. “The Old Man knew that as well as anyone.”
“He wishes,” Ewan said.
That was it. Before Nick could chase the thread back down into his head, Ewan gunned the engine and headed down the slope toward the lake. Nick started after them and then hesitated when he heard Boyd groan. He cast a glance over to the door and realized Boyd wasn’t dead. Not quite yet. The soldier lifted his head woozily off the door and tried to pull his hands free.
“What about him?” Nick stood up on the bike to yell after Gregor and Ewan, his hands cupped around his mouth. “He’s alive. We can’t just leave him.”
Ahead of him Gregor looked around and yelled something back. The wind snatched the words from his lips and spun them away before Nick could catch them. It didn’t matter. He knew what Gregor would have said.
Leave him.
Nick exhaled, a ribbon of white steam caught around his lips, and he gave Boyd a guilty look. The prophets’ monsters had no reason to be interested in Boyd, and the prophets wanted him for… for whatever they had planned.
He couldn’t help Boyd. Doctor or not, he had no supplies, and the monsters were on his heels. The vibration of the engine between his knees underlined the urgency. Nick still didn’t move.
Leave him.
That was good advice, but Nick couldn’t do it. He cursed under his breath and reached to turn the quad off.
Something made of shadows and splinters of ice came together out of the storm and flung itself into Nick’s face. The cold sank into his bones, locked his jaw, and glazed his eyes with frost. He tried to suck in a breath to scream, but his throat was choked up with wet slush. Hard, thorn-sharp fingers dug into his ears, and a wet-mulch tongue licked at his eyes and poked up his nose.
It smelled of graveyard dirt and death. Some dark part of Nick, lodged in the crack of his breastbone, breathed it in with delight. The dankness of it refreshed him somehow.
LEAVE HIM.
