He shivered.
“Stay with me.”
“Okay…”
I grabbed the giant’s head, shoved it into the saddlebag, ran to get my spear, and patted Tulip’s cheek. “Smooth.”
Tulip started off. Most people were aware of four horse gaits, walk, trot, canter, and gallop. Those more familiar with horses knew about pace and amble, a four-beat intermediate gait between a walk and a canter. Tulip had her own amble, fast and smooth as silk. I had ridden dozens of horses, and none of them could match her.
“Stay with me, Douglas.”
I ran next to her, trying to block out the pain and failing. The jolts of pain became a tortured cadence to my run. I sank into it, into a weird place where the hurt was background to the thing I had to do. Getting back to St. Luke’s was the only thing that mattered, and when the church finally loomed in front of me, I was almost surprised.
I pulled Dougie off the saddle and carried him up the steps to the doors. People came running out. Someone waved me to the right. “This way.”
I followed them thought the church, through the garden, to the hospital, where people in scrubs took the boy out of my arms and carried him off.
I waited on the bench by the reception area. Minutes ticked by.
Bishop Chao came rushing through the doors past me and down the hall. A woman in scrubs came out to talk to her. A moment later a door opened and a tall black man in scrubs walked out into the hallway. He and the bishop approached me.
“He’s alive,” the doctor said. “A broken leg, two broken arms, internal injuries. We will know more once we run the scans.”
“Will he survive?”
“There are no guarantees. If we get a magic wave in the next few hours, his chances will improve.”
“I will pay all the charges, whatever he needs.”
“No need,” the bishop said.
The doctor turned and hurried away.
Bishop Chao sat next to me. “What happened?”
“A crew out of the Honeycomb.” Only Honeycombers had iron hounds. “They were after me specifically. Yesterday I talked to some street kids that witnessed Pastor Haywood leaving his church in a car to identify the artifact. The boy was one of them. Kind of their leader. They beat him, chained him, and dragged him around the city, trying to find me.”
They must’ve used the hound to track me to the church and then either made a good guess as to which road I’d take out of it or saw me leave and got ahead of me.
Bishop Chao closed her eyes for a long moment. “We will do everything we can.”
“Thank you. And if anyone comes asking, call the Order. Please.”
“You look like you might need to be checked out.”
I rose. “Thank you again, but I have somewhere to be.”
I started toward the doors. He didn’t tell them about Marten, but that didn’t mean they were the only people looking for her. I had to find her.
“Ms. Ryder,” she called after me. “Do be careful.”
7
I walked into the Order’s chapter carrying my saddlebag.
The female knight who had originally escorted me walked out of the nearest office. A slow smile stretched her lips.
“What truck ran you over?”
“Did a child come here looking for me?”
The female knight nodded. “Follow me.”
I followed her into her office. Marten sat in a chair, munching away on chocolate chip cookies and drinking from a large mug. She saw me and grinned, presenting me with chocolate-stained teeth.
I slumped against the doorway. It had taken me almost thirty minutes to get to the chapter, and the entire time I was picturing Marten’s broken body discarded like garbage in some ruin.
“Your bag is dripping,” the female knight observed.
I held the bloody bag up. She reached to the side, pulled a metal pan from a drawer, and placed it on her desk. I set the bloody bag into it. She sat behind the desk. The plaque on it said “Stella Davis.”
I leaned against the wall and looked at Marten. “What happened?”
She swallowed. “I went to get cookies.” She gave Stella a suspicious side-eye. “In that place you told me about.”
Clearly the knight of the Order couldn’t be trusted with sensitive information like the location of the cookie stash. Stella rolled her eyes.
“I ate a cookie, and I hid the rest. Then I went back to the Mouse House. There were two scary guys there and a taker there. They had a dog with iron fur.”
The taker meant the highest level of danger, someone to run away from, someone who took the kids and they would never be seen again.
“What were the scary people doing?”
“Talking to Dougie.” Marten took another small bite from her cookie.
Talking to this kid was like pulling teeth. “Could you hear what they were saying?”
She nodded.
Stella growled. “What did you hear?”
“They were asking about the Order woman. Dougie lied and said he would show them where you went. And then he went the wrong way and they followed him.”
“What did you do next?”
“I went to the secret place, got the cookies, and came here. Like you told me to.”
Stella glanced at me. “She showed up here about two hours ago. She’s eaten three giant cookies and drank almost a quart of milk.” She looked at Marten. “Where is it all going?”
“In my tummy.” Marten rubbed her bloated stomach and smiled. Then her smile fell. “Is Dougie okay?”
“Dougie got hurt,” I told her. “He is in the hospital now.”
“Can I see him?”
I shook my head. “I will take you later, when he is feeling better.”
Nick Feldman loomed in the doorway. “What’s going on here? Who is this child?”
“She’s a material witness,” I said.
Nick pointed at my bag. “And what is this?”
“Evidence.”
He squinted at the bag. “Well now I feel bad. I didn’t get you anything. Why is your evidence bleeding all over Knight Davis’ desk?”
I stepped to the desk, opened the bag, and pulled it down. The two knights and Marten stared at the Honeycomber’s head.
“The taker!” Marten said.
All humor evaporated from Nick’s face. “Pick that up and bring it into my office.”
He turned and marched down the hallway.
Stella leaned forward and whispered, “Oooh, you’re in trouble.”
Marten made big eyes. “Oooh.”
I picked up the tray and followed the Knight-Protector.
“Close the door,” Nick ordered, sitting down behind his desk.
I shut the door and put the tray in front of him.
“Explain.”
I brought him up to speed.
Nick pondered the head, thinking.
I tapped the greasy head in front of me. “Who is he?”
“Jasper. No last name. Rapist, kidnapper, slaver. Do you know about Honeycomb?”
“I know they don’t like outsiders.”
“It used to be a trailer park for retirees. Now it’s a place that scrambles reality.”
Honeycomb sat deep inside Honeycomb Gap, a fissure that cleaved the southeast of Atlanta. According to the city archives, before the Shift, it was a nice place with pretty, white mobile homes and manicured landscaping. I had only seen it after the Shift when it turned into a nightmare. Magic warped the trailer homes and splintered reality into pieces. The double- and single-wides multiplied, growing on top of each other like grapes in a bunch. Outsiders never went into the Honeycomb without a guide. It was a place where people accidentally walked through walls and never came out. One wrong step, and you were gone forever.