A moment ago, her body had been full of so much pain it threatened to overwhelm her. Now she was alert. Her heartbeat quickened, energy surged through her, and suddenly all that pain was a faded memory.
She twisted beneath the boy’s hands and leapt to her feet. He stumbled back with a look of keen irritation. He was bigger than she was, and his muscles left no doubt in Caledonia’s mind that he would best her with barely a thought. So she wouldn’t give him time to think.
While he climbed to his feet again, she was through the tent flap and running. She found herself in a ring of tents beyond which tall trees stretched toward the sky. The air was fresh and cold, tinged with woodsmoke and pine. And everywhere she looked there were more of them.
Bullets.
Even if she couldn’t see their bandoliers, she could sense it in their walk, their gaze, their sudden focus on her. There were dozens of them. She was in a camp of Bullets.
She quashed her instinct to head toward the horizon and instead turned toward the woods. The trees would be harder to navigate in her current state, but they would provide cover. The Bullet from inside the tent emerged with a scowl, his eyes finding her immediately. Now that they were in daylight, she could see that his skin was a pale, smoky brown, and stubble darkened the strong line of his jaw. He was not quite as large as she’d thought at first. Still, he was uninjured and unimpressed.
Caledonia broke for the woods, running as hard as her legs allowed. She spotted a narrow trail that slipped between the tall trees and avoided it. Her only hope was to become invisible as quickly as possible.
The woods were a combination of lofted evergreens, waist-high ferns, and tangled undergrowth. Her steps were uncertain and her balance worse. Behind her, the confident stride of her pursuer pounded steadily. She pushed to beat it, to be faster and lighter on her bare feet, but her body was slower than her will. The trees blotted out all sense of direction, and the undergrowth obliterated the ground beneath. Where she was unsteady on this terrain, her pursuer was at home. With each step, the muscles in her back twisted harder, screamed louder, and warmth began to seep toward her waist.
She pushed faster, trusting that the ground that supported this endless sea of ferns might also support her. For a short while, her luck held, then her foot landed in a small rut and she rolled over a twisted ankle. Her pursuer was on her in a second.
She tumbled and he pounced, grabbing her around the shoulders. Caledonia slipped his grip and spun to face him, lashing out with her fist. She caught him squarely across the jaw. The hit took more from her than it did from him, and she landed firmly on her knees. Spent.
“That was never going to work.” The boy’s hands landed heav-ily on her shoulders, applying enough pressure to hold her in place. “I suggest you return to bed before I have to do it for you.”
Now that she’d stopped moving, pain surged through her back. Her head spun, her lungs twisted, nausea left her mouth viciously hot, and her ankle throbbed with the fresh injury. It wasn’t going to be long before her legs gave out completely.
“I can carry you,” he said, sweeping his eyes along her body. “Though I’d prefer not to.”
“That makes two of us,” Caledonia sneered, still breathing hard as she climbed slowly to her feet. She had no option but to do as he said and he knew it.
The boy crossed his arms and waited for Caledonia to precede him back to camp. The trip seemed to take so much longer than her haphazard flight through the unfamiliar wood. Each step sent a fresh wave of pain singing through her bones, and exhaustion caused her to tremble constantly. She desperately wanted to stop and rest, but if she stopped, that Bullet would make good on his threat to carry her. She willed her legs to hold her up until they reached the tent again and the cot within.
The Bullet stopped just inside the open tent flap as Caledonia settled against the thin mattress. The move cost her in both pain and dignity. She cried out, shivering as the wound in her back wept fresh blood.
“Stupid ideas. Stupid rewards.” The Bullet’s voice was unconcerned and still surprisingly judgmental.
“It’s never a stupid idea to run from a Bullet.” The words came out rough, pressed through the sieve of her pain.
The Bullet grunted. “Don’t run again.”
It was a command, but he didn’t move forward to bind her, and for the first time she marked how strange it was that she hadn’t been bound to begin with. Either they thought she wasn’t capable of escape on her own or they were confident she wouldn’t want to. Though she’d certainly proved the first to be true, it was the latter that left her unnerved. Where was she?
“You’d be dead if it wasn’t for us,” the Bullet offered, still watching her with that mixture of indifference and judgment. “You’d be one more carcass for the birds to finish off. Maybe that’s what you’d prefer? Wouldn’t break my heart.”
He was a dark outline in a bright doorway. It made him difficult to see clearly. Caledonia didn’t want to look at him anyway. She closed her eyes and turned her face away.
“That’s what I thought,” he said gruffly.
And then he left. For several long moments, it was just Caledonia and the stuffy dark air of the tent. She drew careful breaths, counting to four on each until her heartbeat began to slow. She couldn’t move again if her life depended on it. And it might; she wasn’t entirely sure. She focused instead on the things she did know. She was in danger. She was in the custody of Bullets far from her crew. And she was alive.
She let the pain remind her of all she’d done to get here and that this was not the end of Caledonia Styx. Where there was pain, there was promise.
Tomorrow, she would be stronger.
CHAPTER TWO
When Caledonia next woke, there was someone else watching her.
He stood in the center of the tent, but he occupied the entire space. His figure was towering, and each of his limbs was reminiscent of a ship’s mast. Broad was the only word that could possibly describe him: broad shoulders, broad chest, broad stance, even the frown he wore seemed broad. He was dressed in layers of old-world fabrics—a shiny black shirt with short sleeves peeking out beneath a sturdy green vest and black pants tucked into boots. On his back was a single sword, and sheathed against his thigh was a smaller blade. He studied Caledonia from his great height, as though he’d come across a fallen tree in his path and was deciding how best to cut through it.
“You’re bigger than the other guy,” she said, giving her fingers a test squeeze.
The boy smiled, and nothing could have surprised Caledonia more. He crouched down so that he was as close to her eye level as his hulking form allowed, giving Caledonia a clear look at his face. Rusty-brown eyes shone against the faint bronze blush of his skin, and a few tendrils from the long brown braid down his back curled around wide cheekbones. Like the other boy, a single orange scar bisected the tan skin of his upper arm.