site of a thousand skirmishes and stand-offs between rival clans. Soon it too was gone, and they left even the scant suburbia behind. In its place was true countryside, rugged and untraversed and eternal.
As one day became two, and two days dragged into a long tiring week, the flatlands buckled into rolling hills, then sharp valleys and exposed rocky bluffs. Mountains crawled up over the horizon, the serrated teeth of some fallen behemoth. In time the first road signs for Radden County started dotting the roadside.
CHAPTER 22
Billy’s face exploded into a slab of stinging flesh. The calloused hand striking down from above belonged to the sneering monster who had dragged her from the leaves. He had ordered the others to shepherd her through a campsite full of hot metal shafts, spluttering fires, and cowering skinny people before herding her into a large beige tent at the base of a cliff. Then he had shut them out and rounded on her, as though she were a delicious dish, the two of them finally alone.
“What do you want?” she said.
His jeering superior face darkened with sudden anger and he slapped her across the face again, harder this time. “Quiet,” he hissed. “No talking.”
Then his face was smooth and untroubled once more, and he set to walking about the edge of the tent while she cowered on the floor, holding her stinging hot face in her hands and trying to hold the tears in.
Her legs itched and her mind’s eye was full of pictures of outside—though she had never seen this place before, she knew every part of it, could feel every clot of mud and the rough outline of every pebble between her fingers.
Because it’s the place the Panda Man wanted to go. This is the place I was coming to. Why would he want me to come here? These are Bad Men. How can I do anything to stop Bad Men? I’m just … I’m just Billy.
She searched the edge of the tent for Fol’s signature smile and dark billowing coat, but he was nowhere to be seen. The one time she wanted to see him, and she couldn’t have been more alone.
“You’re not of this place,” the man said. “You speak some kind of tongue from aways.”
She didn’t say anything, just crawled up tighter in a ball and cradled her cheek. Her face was slicked and dripping with tears and snot. She had been so close to doing whatever it was she had to do, so close to going home. And now she was stuck here with this man—no, he wasn’t a man. She could see no trace of a person behind his eyes.
The way he looked at her made her feel sick. Grownups did funny things sometimes, things she didn’t like and things that seemed downright silly. But they were almost always good and clever in the end.
This man was different. He was like the medicine ladies. He wore the same sneer Sammy had smeared over her lips as she had reached for the buckle on her trousers; the hungry leer of a starving dog.
He was a monster, the monster.
“Let me go,” she whispered.
The monster tensed. From his belt he brought out a curved knife longer than Billy’s arm, and the amber glow of the fires filtering in from outside sent stars of reflected flames winking off its edge. “I said no talking.”
There was no doubting now that this was the same man who had attacked their camp and chased her and Daddy and Grandpa through the night. He was the one who had taken Grandpa away. She had listened to him attack Grandpa in the darkness, beating with his fists, stamping down from above …
It really was Him.
A bottled surge of anger filled her up and overflowed despite her shuddering throat. “I know what you are. You’re a Bad Man!”
He laughed, a ringing high-pitched chuckle that again reminded her of the kind of thing she expected from a hungry wild dog. Somehow his laughter was more chilling than any scream of fury. Her skin puckered in goosebumps and she tensed against a shudder propagating along her spine.
She remembered the little knife she had taken from the medicine ladies, tucked into her belt. She let one hand fall from her face and slither down to her side now, and her chest ached with relief when she found a slight bulge there at her hip. It was still there. But it was so small compared to his, little more than