The pockets of dead demons and the zombies that ringed him offered mute testimony that such thinking was wrong. He possessed more power than anyone Naomi knew.
She gazed at his silver hand and watched the slow rise and fall of his chest. If he died, she wondered if she could remove that hand and use it herself.
“Miss?”
Startled, not happy with the fact that someone slipped up on her from behind and feeling especially vulnerable because of it, Naomi looked up at the thin old man behind her. He carried a steaming metal bowl in his hands.
“I’ve brought soup, I ’ave,” the old man said in a Cockney accent. “Me missus insisted. Allowed as ’ow it was the Christian thing to do. It’s not so much, p’rhaps, but me missus always puts ’er ’eart into it, she does. It’ll warm ye some’at.”
Naomi reached for the bowl. Despite the distance back to the village—or the nearness, when she thought about how close the imps had come to finding it, the bowl and its contents were still warm. She used a small spell to check for poisons or hallucinogens but didn’t detect any. More at ease, she dipped her nose near the bowl and inhaled the soup’s aroma.
“Chicken soup, miss.” The old man stood uncertainly. “The old bird what gave ’is life to make that was gamy an’ toff, an’ there weren’t much to ’im, but ’e makes a fair soup when the missus was through with ’im.”
“Thank your wife for me.”
“I will, I will.”
Most of the survivors had left to take the wounded and bad news home. But they’d left guards with weapons to watch over Warren and the zombies. During the past few hours, they’d rotated out. None of them spoke to her. Not a one of them trusted her. She was fairly certain they were convinced that she somehow kept the zombies in one place.
“’E’s still alive, innit ’e?” the old man asked.
“Yes.” Naomi sipped the soup, relishing the fluids as much as the mushy vegetables and noodles, and the stringy chicken bits. She’d found clean snow to slake her thirst, but she hadn’t gotten hungry enough yet to eat the rations they’d brought with them.
“Is ’e gonna be wakin’ up anytime soon?”
“I don’t know.” Naomi scanned the blanket of white snow that hugged the terrain. Except for the trail they’d followed, and the tracks left by the imps that had pursued them, the snowcapped landscape appeared pristine. London remained a dark smudge in the distance, but the sun hung in a blue sky and the snow glittered.
“‘As ’e done this before?”
“No.”
The old man wrapped his arms around himself and hugged fiercely. “Don’t seem normal, does it?”
Looking at the dead demons and the zombies that stood guard, Naomi couldn’t help thinking that “normal” somehow didn’t apply to the world anymore. But she agreed with the old man’s assessment.
“No.”
The old man stood there awkwardly.
“What is it?” Naomi asked.
Hesitating, the old man wouldn’t look at her. “It’s just that some of the people back to the village, well, they were wonderin’ when the two of you might be movin’ on.” He hurried on. “Not that anybody’s in a rush or anythin’.”
Naomi quelled her immediate anger. Getting angry wouldn’t help them, and might even tilt the delicate balance the villagers had about merely watching them instead of trying to kill them.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Not until he’s on his feet, at the least.”
The old man scratched his head. Gray wisps of hair stood out under the edges of his cap. His nose and cheeks burned red with the cold.
“I guess, then, that they’ll be ’opin’ ’e’s on his feet before evenin’ then.”
Naomi didn’t say anything. She supposed they were lucky the villagers didn’t try to kill them. Concentrating on the soup, she savored the flavor and the warmth and drank it more quickly when she got down to the dregs because they cooled so much more quickly. When she was finished, she handed the bowl back to the old man.
“Thank you,” she said. She’d been taught to always be polite. Even when around imperfect company.
The old man took the bowl, nodded, wished her well, and departed. His footsteps crunched through the icy crust over the snow. Somewhere in the distance, a branch cracked as it finally surrendered to the burden of snow and split from the trunk.
Naomi watched Warren’s chest rise and fall. Wake up, she thought angrily. Wake up. But she wondered if Warren was going to recover. She’d never seen anyone harness that much raw power.
Imp bodies lay in pieces for a hundred yards. Many others were twisted into improbable shapes, or burned almost beyond recognition—other than being demonic.
What did it take for a man to do what Warren had done? And what had it cost him?
Naomi glared out at the bleak countryside. More than that, what were they doing out here? He’d been keeping to himself lately, not telling her anything she wanted to know about his new hand.
Frustrated, she laid her head back against the tree she sat next to, pulled the thick wool blanket one of the villagers had given her more tightly around her, and slept.
Without warning, Warren woke. Bright light lanced into his eyes before he opened them. Day, he told himself, then immediately wondered if that were any better than it still being night.
He felt unaccustomed weight over his body. He shifted, terrified for a moment that he’d been buried alive, then quickly reminded himself that he couldn’t very well be buried if he could see the sun.
Senses alert but so weak he didn’t know if he could defend himself if he had to, Warren opened his eyes. Quietly, he took in the destruction all around him. The zombies stood tirelessly over him. They didn’t look at him, but he knew they
