poison, but powerful.”
Gabriel talks some more about the poison but I can’t concentrate. He goes quiet and then says, “You should sleep now.”
But I don’t want to sleep, I don’t want to go back to the cell. I tell him, “Bad dreams.”
I close my eyes and feel him stroke the hair from my forehead. He says, “I’ll stay with you.”
I want to thank him and I open my eyes to see him looking at me. His eyes are full of tears.
I Want It to Be True
I have three more scars, though typical of Celia they’re straight and neat. The wounds are almost healed but it’s another four days before I’ve got the energy to get up and move slowly around camp. And we are in a camp now. One that has grown around me, it seems. There are some people I recognize and some I don’t.
I sit and watch the trainees train. I’m cold and stuff my hands in my jacket pockets. I feel a bullet in each. The original Hunter bullet that Marcus took out of my back in Switzerland is a greeny copper color and the magic bullet that Celia dug out of my chest is a browny red. They are the same size and weight. I expected the magic bullet to have a life about it, a buzz, like the Fairborn does, but it feels like any other bullet: just a dead piece of metal. Maybe it only comes to life when it’s inside someone, when it tastes blood. And I know the man who made the Fairborn must have been evil; Wallend made the magic bullet and his magic is evil too.
Nesbitt comes to sit with me. He’s healed too now—at least his arm has. He’s different: quiet, subdued.
After a few minutes he says, “I’m leaving.”
“Leaving?”
“Leaving here, the Alliance. Leaving it all.”
It doesn’t surprise me as I think he was only ever here because of Van. But I’ll miss him and so will the Alliance; he’s a great fighter and the best tracker. “Where will you go?”
“Back home. Australia, I mean. Haven’t been back there for years.” He laughs to himself. “Shit, last time I was there was before you were born.”
As usual I don’t know what to say. Nesbitt adds, “I won’t miss you.”
I smile and nudge his shoulder. “Me neither.”
We sit quietly for a minute and then I ask, “When are you going?”
“Soon. Can’t stand it here now. Need a change of scene.” Then quietly he adds, “I want Soul dead and all his evil cronies, but . . . I can’t do it, not without Van. I’m . . .”
He shakes his head and rubs his eyes and doesn’t finish what he was saying.
* * *
The next morning I’m feeling better at last. My healing is finally getting back to its normal strength and by the afternoon I heal myself and get a buzz from it. I actually feel good.
I tell Gabriel, “My healing’s working. Back to like it was.”
“Good.”
“I’ve been thinking. About the amulet and stuff. I’m going to go for it.”
Gabriel frowns.
“I didn’t think you’d be pleased, but you must agree it’s sensible. If the amulet works I’ll be protected. I want to avoid dying. I thought you’d want that too.”
“There are other ways of avoiding dying.”
“You still want to leave. Like Nesbitt? Go to Australia?”
“I think you should at least consider it. I mean properly consider it. We could go anywhere. It doesn’t matter where, but somewhere away from this war.”
“I have a feeling that wherever I go the war will follow me.”
“You always say that but you never try it. You say they’ll follow you. Track you down. Well, maybe they won’t.”
“My father had to move every few months.”
“That was him, not you.”
“It would be the same, I know it.” And I remember Marcus and his den, the peace of it, and I loved being with him there. But he could never relax, not truly. He was always on the run. Even so, I know he would have continued to evade them. It was me that brought him to the Alliance. It’s because of me that Marcus is dead. Annalise shot him but I brought him to the Alliance. I asked for his help. And he asked me for something too.
I tell Gabriel, “My father said I should kill them all.”
“It’s for you to decide what to do. He shouldn’t have said that.”
“Part of me is him, Gabriel. Part of me is so like him and that part of