“It’s about time,” a blunt voice said from the direction of the flames. “Your friends should be here any minute.” Gabi turned back toward the heat, noticing that she was wrapped in some kind of shaggy pelt. The chanting stopped, followed by sounds of shuffling in the dirt. On the other side of the fire, three or four shadowy figures knelt, all facing the same direction, except for one. This woman was staring straight at Gabi with her wide, tilted eyes. Gabi gasped as she blinked to clear her vision. The face harboring those high-beam cat eyes belonged to none other than Apostle Cleo Walker. Lines bracketed her mouth, and Walker’s woolly salt-and-pepper hair was shorn close rather than braided to her scalp the way it was in the images that memorialized her. A swirled mass of pink scar tissue webbed from her right jaw down into the collar of her uniform, but there was no mistaking Unitas’s greatest legend.
“Damn if you aren’t the spitting image,” Apostle Walker said, rising to a towering height and gliding toward Gabi. Dozens of other dark figures crouched around the clearing, faces blackened and eyes gleaming back at Gabi like wet river stones. As Apostle Walker crouched down before Gabi, Gabi realized that this couldn’t be hell. If anyone had earned their place in heaven, it was Cleo Walker. But who were those dark demons beyond the light?
“Here,” Walker said, extending a canteen toward Gabi. “You’ve been cooking by that fire long enough.” She leaned in close, cradling Gabi under her shoulders and lifting her to a seated position before helping her work her arms free of the animal skin. Cleo’s touch was gentle, though supple black leather molded to a body that looked as deadly as any of the weapons strapped across her torso and hips.
Gabi accepted the canteen and glugged down sweet water unlike any she had ever tasted. It was like drinking pure sunlight. After slaking her thirst, Gabi felt better as her throat cooled. Smells bombarded her as she revived, telling her without a doubt that she was still very much alive. The pain in Gabi’s neck as she moved her head to look around made her eyes water. There were even more dark figures than she’d originally thought, also heavily armed. The glint of scoped rifles, knives, extra ammunition, and handguns pierced the murk of the forest, suggesting that for every crouched figure she saw, there were ten more she didn’t. Gabi looked Cleo Walker in the eyes for the first time, struck by their butterscotch hue.
“Bradley?” Gabi croaked.
Cleo settled back on her heels and braced her hands on her muscled thighs. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “It was already too late when we pulled the two of you out.” Gabi was bombarded with the image of how young and terrified Bradley had looked in those last moments.
“It’s my fault,” Gabi said, tears rolling down her cheeks as aftershocks of hypothermia shook her.
“No, it’s not,” Cleo countered. “You were wrapped around that boy like a life jacket. We had to pry you off, even though you were unconscious. If you hadn’t hung on to him, there wouldn’t have even been a body to recover. No one but you could have survived for that long under the ice, so don’t waste another minute agonizing about it.”
Dead. Dead dead dead. The word wouldn’t let her go. Gabi had never known someone her own age who had died, though the bulletins reported such things happening frequently along the frontier. It was only a matter of time before death came for her too. But what was it that Apostle Walker had said? No one but she could have survived?
“What do you mean?” Gabi asked. “What do you mean no one else could have survived?”
Cleo placed a hand on Gabi’s shoulder and opened her mouth to speak just as one of the dark figures separated from the trees and cleared his throat.
“General Walker? They’ve been spotted in the fifth quadrant.”
Gabi looked up at the man, whose face was obscured by black paint from hairline to the collar of his uniform. Unlike Walker’s, his body didn’t strain against the supple material. His weapons hung on him like ornaments on a straggly tree. And those eyes. There was something about his eyes.
“Okay,” Cleo said, her voice steady with command. “Deploy the troops to their posts.”
“Yes, General,” the man said with a stiff salute, then turned back toward the woods. As he disappeared into the trees, the other figures rose and followed him without stirring so much as a pine needle. When they were alone, Cleo gripped Gabi’s shoulders, giving her a gentle shake.
“Listen to me. I need you to trust me. Ames is on his way with the other Witnesses, and in order for us to manage the situation without casualties, I need you to trust me. We’ve been tracking you all since you left Spruce, so I know that your brother and friends are on those teams. We weren’t in time to help Spruce, or your friend Bradley, but no one else needs to die. You don’t want anything else bad to happen, do you?”
“Why would anyone get hurt?” Gabi said, her head in a muddle. “Apostle Ames is on your side. He can rescue both of us!”
Cleo’s upper lip curled as though someone had wafted a dirty diaper beneath her nose. “No, Burton Ames is definitely not on my side. He is a power-hungry murderer who would stab his own
