She nodded. “Alone.”
“How did you survive?” asked Nix.
Lilah turned cold eyes on her. “What I see,” she said, “I kill.”
“God,” said Nix.
Benny said, “What about the way-station monks? Do they help you at all?”
“Monks… We don’t talk. They have their, um, things. I have mine.”
“Tom said he saw you twice.”
“Tom,” she said, and shook her head.
“He looked like me. But he was older. Darker hair, darker skin. Tall. Carried a sword.”
The Lost Girl brightened and smiled in a way that Benny thought it showed she not only knew who Tom was but maybe betrayed something more than simple recognition.
“Sword man,” Lilah said. “Very, um, pretty.” She looked at Nix for approval. “Pretty?”
“Handsome,” Nix said. “Hot.”
Lilah liked that word. “Hot.” She turned to Benny. “But… dead?”
He nodded. “The Hammer shot him, and he fell into a bunch of zoms.”
Her smiled vanished. “Then he’s a walker.”
Benny couldn’t bear to think about that and changed the subject. “Lilah, Tom said that you could tell people where the new Gameland is.”
“What people?”
“People in our town. In Mountainside.”
She shrugged. “Why?”
“I think he was hoping to have Charlie arrested. Do you understand what that means? Arrested?”
“Read about. Old world stuff. Not our world.”
“No,” said Nix bitterly. She touched Lilah’s arm. “Tell us, though. What happened after they took you and Annie away from George?”
“George,” she said in a small, sad voice that was an echo of the child she had once been and would never be again. She sorted through her conflicted emotions and jumbled thoughts. “They hit George. Killed him, I thought. But… not?”
“No,” said Benny. “He was hurt, but he lived. As soon as he woke up, he started looking for you and your sister. He met Tom, and they looked together. They couldn’t find you. I guess George didn’t know where to look. How far is Gameland from here?”
“Far. Three days fast walk. Two mountains from here,” said Lilah. “Have to know how to, um…
“George never found it. All he heard were rumors of what goes on there. It tore him up.”
It took Lilah a second to understand that last comment, then she nodded. “George loved us. Loved him. He is… dead?”
“I think so. A monk told Tom that George hung himself.”
Lilah barked out a harsh laugh and shook her head. “No,” she said decisively.
“Tom didn’t believe it, either.”
They sat for a minute in silence.
“He was murdered,” Nix said eventually. “Do think it was Charlie?”
“Or one of his creeps,” said Benny. Lilah’s lip curled, but she said nothing.
“Lilah… tell us about Annie.”
“Annie.” Lilah’s eyes were as hard as knife steel, but they glistened wetly. “They took us. Lots of girls at Gameland. Boys too. They… make us
“Did they make
But Lilah shook her head. “Tried. Many times they tried. Fought them instead. Bit. Kicked. Thumbs to eyes. George taught me. Taught Annie.” She made a fist so tight, her knuckles creaked, and the lights in her eyes looked both dangerous and a little crazy. “Be tough, George said. Be tough and live. George always said that.”
“George was right,” Benny said. “I wish I’d met him. He sounds like a pretty great guy.”
Lilah gave Benny a slow up-and-down appraisal, perhaps re-evaluating him. Or maybe seeing him for the first time and
“So you fought?” Nix said, perhaps a little more sharply than was absolutely necessary.
Lilah’s eyes lingered on Benny as she said, “Yes.”
“What did
“They beat me.” Lilah shrugged as if that was nothing, as if measured against all that she had endured, it was a small thing. Nix paled and Benny shivered. “Beat me a lot. No food.”
Nix cursed.
Lilah gave another shrug. “Made me tougher. Made me mad. Mad enough.”
“And Annie?”
“She… ran.”
They looked at her and saw a tear break from the corner of one hazel eye and roll down her tanned cheek. It glistened like a diamond in the lantern light.
“Ran?”
“Fought and ran. Stormy night, lots of rain. Annie ran, the ugly man chased her. Hammer. He chased. Annie tripped. Slipped on mud. She fell. Badly. Hit her head on a stone.”
“No…”
“I couldn’t do… anything.” Lilah shook her head in denial of the memory. “They left her there. Like trash out in the rain. Like she was nothing. I was already out of there, escaped two days before, but came back. Sneaky, quiet. To get Annie. But… when I found her, Annie was gone. Already gone. Then she… came back.”
“Oh God, no…”
“Tried to bite.”
More tears fell from Lilah’s eyes. It was all that Lilah would say on the subject. Nix asked her what she’d done with her sister, but Lilah just shook her head. Benny matched this against what Tom had told him, of the man Lilah has been trying to kill over and over again. The Motor City Hammer. All these long, frustrating years, Lilah had been killing the image of the Hammer in the hopes that one day she’d get him within range to take revenge for what had been done to her and her little sister.
“I’m sorry,” said Nix.
Lilah turned to her, eyes cold, voice frosty. “Sorry? Does that bring Annie back?”
“Well, no, but I-”
“Save words like ‘sorry.’ Save for the dead. Living don’t need them.”
She snatched up her spoon and forcefully stirred the stew, slopping some bits into the fire. Benny reached out and took Nix’s hand.
“How can the world be this cruel?” Nix asked quietly.
There was no chance that Benny could answer that question, but there was something about the warmth and reality of the hand he held in his that made an argument that cruelty wasn’t the only force at work in their world.
Nix said, “Lilah, will you come back to town with us?”
The Lost Girl looked up. “Why?”
“So you’ll be safe,” said Nix.
“Safe now.”
“It’s safer in town,” Nix said, but Lilah laughed.
“Charlie and the Hammer killed your mother in your town.” She pointed to Benny. “Killed his brother out here. Nowhere is safe.”
Before Benny or Nix could reply to that, Lilah added, “Out here-
