Page 55 of Fifth
The light moved on. The men followed the Skinners toward the cattails, fooled fornow.
Locus didn’t move for three breaths. Then he eased her out and guided her around the next curve. The creek shallowed and split. One branch ran west under a tangle of fallen trees. The other cut north toward a line of boulders.
“North,” he said.
“Why?”
“Higher ground. And rock.” He looked at her hands. “You are shaking.”
“I’m fine.” Thin-coatlie, but one he didn’t bother to call her on.
The boulders rose like sleeping giants. Deep gaps cut between them. Locus led her into a narrow throat where two stones leaned together and left a slot just wide enough for a body. He slid through sideways and pulled her after. The rock scraped her shoulder. The space opened into a pocket of shadow on the far side, adead fall of stone and brittle brush where they could crouch and see without beingseen.
Hannah set her back to stone and breathed. Her heart hammered. The world went still. She could pick the scrape of aboot from the skitter of the insects, tell the creek’s thin whisper from the hitch of a man’s breath when he paused to listen.
Locus’s thigh pressed against hers. He didn’t shift away. Heat soaked into her. She looked up. His profile cut clean as a blade. There was a smear of someone else’s blood along his cheekbone. She reached up without thinking and wiped it with her thumb. He went very still and looked at her mouth.
“Don’t,” she whispered, not sure who she meant.
“I will not,” he said, rough now. “Not here.”
She pulled her hand back and pressed it to stone. “We live first. Kiss later.”
“Affirmative.”
A whistle rose again. Different. Sharp and repeated. Then the headman’s voice carried thin on a loudspeaker. “More Skinners released,” he sang. “Bounty doubled for a clean kill.”
Her stomach turned. Locus’s hand tightened on her wrist until his knuckles went white, then eased.
“Let them come,” he said, and the chill that ran through her at his tone had nothing to do with the night.
And come, they did. The first Skinner found the north branch and took it, dragging two men with it. The creature hit the boulder field and balked at the narrow slot. One man cursed and sent it around. The second climbed, belly slung over the craggy shelf, boots scrabbling. He breathed hard. Locus waited until the man’s boot was almost in their pocket and then moved. He took the ankle, slammed the knee, and the man folded with a strangled shout. Locus dragged him in and hit him once. Silence.
The second man shouted and swung his light toward the gap. The beam found Hannah, and before fear could take rootshe surged forward, knives raised with desperate certainty. She hurled the first blade and it buried in his shoulder, tearing a raw scream from him. She lunged again, aiming for his eyes, but he jerked his arm up and the knife drove through his forearm instead. Pain staggered him. And then Locus vaulted the rock with terrifying grace, dropping him flat with a crushing forearm across the throat.
A Skinner screeched and leapt. Locus pivoted and caught it midair, his hand locked where neck met shell. Mandibles clacked inches from his face, serrations scraping. He drove it sideways into stone. It hit and reeled, momentarily stunned, then clawed back up in a frantic scramble. Hannah snatched the dropped flashlight and smashed it into the creature’s eye. The lens shattered. The Skinner reeled and collapsed in a clatter of limbs.
In the silence that followed, she saw her knives still jutting from the hunter’s shoulder and forearm. She yanked them free with a hard pull, wiped blood on his shirt, and pressed one back into Locus’s hand, keeping the other clenched tight. Armed again, they slid toward a tighter seam between stones.
“It’s too small,” she whispered.
“It is not. Go.”
She turned sideways and pushed. Stone scraped ribs and hip. Panic clawed up when rock touched both shoulders at once. She kept moving because the alternative was death. On the far side the seam widened enough to breathe. She dragged air into a chest that seemed too small forit.
Somehow, Locus followed, stone grating his entire body. Lights hit the open face of the rock outside their pocket. Abullet sparked off the edge and sang away. Someone yelled to hold fire and close in tight. The men were learning.
“Left,” Locus said. “Low. Three yards, then drop.”
She didn’t question how he knew. She dropped flat and crawled. Brush rasped her forearms. Ashallow lip opened at her palms and the ground fell. She slid on her belly into a deeper space between stones. Locus followed with almost no sound at all, adark mass into darkerair.
Men clambered above, cursing when they hit dead ends, swearing when they barked shins. Ahand groped into the seam just above Hannah’s head and slapped at air. Locus’s palm covered her mouth and nose and held her breath inside her body until the hand withdrew.
At last the men gave up and moved on, shouting orders to send the Skinners around the far side again. The rock stayed cold against Hannah’s back. She released the breath she had held too long, dizzy with relief. Locus’s hand slipped from her mouth and came to rest open on the stone beside her. Without thinking, she turned her head and brushed her lips against his palm, athank you her body gave more naturally than words.
He made that harsh sound again.”We go,” hesaid.
She nodded, sure her voice would betrayher.
