“Is this the kind of underhanded bullshit you been feeding Evangeline for months? You got into her head, sowing doubt about me?” Just past the line of exposed bodies, he slowed to a stop.
Aric intoned, “I’ve told her a great many truths.” He stopped as well, both turning to wait for me.
“So after you mentally tortured her for the better part of a year, you abducted her. Then I’ll bet you tortured her some more.”
Over the last couple of months, I’d blocked out how traumatic my capture had been. My gloved hands tightened on the reins. Or they would have—right now, they were numb. Yes, I’d wronged Aric. But that wasn’t me anymore. Which meant I hadn’t deserved to be tormented.
Jack gazed from Aric to me and back. “On the heels of all that, you fill her head with your truths?” His eyes met mine and lingered. His brows drew together—as if with realization. “Now I understand what’s goan on, me. Couldn’t figure it out before.” I thought a flash of pity crossed his expression—then came a hint of raw, blistering emotion.
“Thrall us, mortal.”
Ignoring him, Jack addressed me, “I’ll be scouting for a shelter to stop at for a spell, bébé. We’ll ease our pace. Just hang in there a while longer.”
Huh? Jack’s attitude had done a one-eighty. If I weren’t so exhausted and freezing, I could make sense of this situation.
The bodies roiled. No mistaking it now. “Uh, things might be shifting under me,” I called. “And it feels—I don’t know—kind of deeper in this spot.” Like I was on a pile of them.
“You’re likely over a clogged culvert of some sort,” Aric said. “Where the corpses circled a drain. Continue forward, Empress.”
“Yeah. Got it.”
The pile heaved upward, lifting me and my horse! “What’s happening??”
A more forceful heave. The spooked mare reared; my numb legs, hands . . . I couldn’t keep my seat!
I tumbled out of the saddle. Landed on my back. Atop gunky corpses. Oh God, oh God.
The mare trotted a retreat, abandoning me in the carnage. No name for you!
The mat of bodies kept roiling like a bounce house.
“I’ve determined where the threat lies,” Aric called. “Empress, it’s beneath you.”
“What?”
A hand shot up, snatching my ponytail.
Just past my boots, two Bagger heads popped up.
24
“Bagmen!” I screamed.
In a carefree tone, Aric answered, “Use your powers.”
I still hadn’t recharged them! I gripped my ponytail and jerked back from the clenched hand. Caught fast. “Any time you two feel like helping me!”
“The fuck you doing, Reaper?”
Aric had intercepted Jack, riding in front of him. “As soon as she needs assistance, I’ll be first into the fray.”
The pair of Baggers struggled to the surface, wedging their arms upward for leverage, their seeping, cream-colored eyes locked on my throat. They wriggled their slime-covered bodies free to their waists, like worms from a rotted apple.
How much longer before more emerged?
The skies chose that moment to open up, dumping buckets of rain. Blinking against water, spitting it, I cried, “Are you shitting me?”
The trapped Baggers lunged for me with so much force, their torsos shot back in recoil. Another lunge freed them to their upper thighs, extending their reach—just as the pile heaved, sending my body rolling toward the pair.
One caught my boot!
“Your powers,” Aric called.
“I can’t . . . seed anything in corpses!” I kicked against the creature’s hold. “And poison doesn’t . . . work on Bagmen!”
But my claws were as sharp as razors.
When Death returned, magnificent in his rain-slicked armor, he lifted his visor to narrow his eyes at Jack. The grueling tension between them only mounted. “It felt good to ride in and save her, didn’t it? Imagine how good she feels whenever she vanquishes her enemies—on her own.”
“Like a shadow, Evie,” Jack muttered as we approached our potential pit stop. The rain had turned to fog, painting the small cinder-block house in an eerie light.
He was tense, bow ready—because this might be a slavers’ den.
After three hours of passing one burned-out structure after another, I was so done in I’d rather face slavers than keep riding. The downpour earlier had soaked me through, and my teeth had chattered for miles.
At least it’d rinsed Bagger funk and corpse gore off me, like a car wash.