Children Without Faces, page 9
“Not being alone didn’t help your brother,” Glen said.
“You watch your mouth,” Toby snarled, then yelped when Dani smacked the back of his head.
“Cut it out, both of you. If they won’t gather, then we’ll go to them.” She looked at Glen, her brown eyes narrowing. “You’ll show us the way?”
“Can’t. Don’t know where they hide.” He shrugged, the movement knocking a leaf out of his tangled hair. “If I did, I’d’ve already taken their stuff. It’s our way.”
“It’s a stupid way,” Toby grumbled angrily. “And it’s stupid that none of you will go to the Hall, let Hand Travis get you families again, livin’ here in this pile of rot.”
Glen’s laugh stopped him short — it was hard and sharp, completely devoid of amusement. “Families,” he said scornfully. “That what they told you? They don’t wanna give us families, they wanna make sure we work. Some do that, ’n some get beat or starve. No one wants us. You think they couldn’t find us if they wanted to? We’re here, all here, alone cause it’s easier than dealing with us. Here, they don’t gotta listen to us scream or whine, see?”
It wasn’t right, Toby thought with a scowl. It just wasn’t. All his life, he’d never known kids were here, starving. And he should’ve. Somehow, he should’ve.
“Well, we’re here now,” Dani said, her voice softening. “We don’t want the Rider to take any one else. Isn’t that worth working for?”
Sighing, Glen didn’t meet her eyes, but his shoulders slumped. “Yeah, reckon it is. Maybe I know where a few are. Kale and Leaf might know others.”
“These kids you’ve beaten ’n stolen from?” Toby demanded.
“Yeah,” Glen said, meeting his gaze and his chin lifting. “Now that they know I know where they are, they’ll be movin’, too. I’m givin’ up my emergency supplies for you.”
“You mean their supplies.”
“Same thing. You wanna see ’em or not?”
“We do,” Dani said, giving Toby a sharp look, and he scowled right back. “Go on, Glen. Lead the way.”
He did. A stale breeze swept through the dirty alleyway, wafting up the stench of human waste and rotting meat. Probably a part of the foul looking muck that lined the walls and floor. There weren’t streets here, not really, but Glen led them through it all the same. It was a tangle of buildings without doors, alleys without end, and piles of rubble and debris.
Dani kept up, cursing underneath her breath as she had to hold her heavy skirts up. Shouldn’t have wasted the effort though — muck already clung to the edges. Under his breath, so she couldn’t hear, Toby thanked the gods for pants.
The first nest Glen showed them was empty. They’d climbed high up one of the buildings to get to it, going slow so they wouldn’t fall down the steep edges. It was just a sheltered nook lined with rags and leaves, with a bit of twine tied to the board tried to keep it shut and hidden; Glen broke it open.
From here, Toby could see the sea, and the tall spire of Iustyn’s Hall, both to the south. Nothing but the Thicket was to the north, that and the forest over the wall. What the difference was between them, he couldn’t quite say.
Wild creatures, it seemed, lived in both.
They tried the next one — this time located in what might have been a cellar, but was half full of leaves, bottles, crates, and mud. Carefully, Glen pried the slatted door open, just a crack, so they could peer into it.
Leaning forward, Toby strained to make out any sign of a human down below. A sharp yelp at his ear made him jerk back, the board clipping the top of his head.
“Who did that?” Glen bellowed, clutching his hand against his chest, his face red with rage.
“Go on then, get outta here!” Leaf’s voice called scornfully, bouncing off the walls.
Another rock pinged off the wall near Dani’s shoulder, and she swore again.
“Stoppit!” Toby yelled, struggling to get his pack off his back. “I got your food, see? Just here to pay you, is all.”
“Liar,” Kale said, and this time Toby spotted him down the alley, his dark eyes angry. “You showed him our den.”
“How’d I know where it was, dummy? He already did — do you want your food or not?”
“Leave it there, ’n go,” Kale said, waving them off. “I don’t trust him.”
“I wasn’t gonna hurt you,” Glen said, still angry. “Look, you know where others are. We need to talk to them.”
High laughter drifted down from the roof — Leaf, no doubt. “Rob them blind, you mean. Or turn them into the Watchers for this ’n that.”
Just like that, Toby lost it. How dare they go on and on about stupid things while Dem and the others were lost out there, crying out to be found, but no one was looking, not anymore, no one but Toby and he couldn’t do anything because everyone was just so stupid and dumb.
“Shut it!” he screamed, and he threw the pack at Kale’s head. “You wanna fight all damn day, go ahead. Fight loud and long, that way when the Rider comes to get you, he won’t have to search for long. I saw what grabbed Shay and the others. It’s a demon, and it wants to make you a prisoner in your own flesh. It’ll eat your soul.”
Glen opened his mouth, but Dani leaned toward him. “Laugh and I’ll break your jaw,” she said softly, but not so much that the others couldn’t hear.
He shut his mouth again.
It made Toby grin, and the way Kale stared at him made him keep going. “You think you’re safe here, but you’re not. The Watchers might not get you, and the Bigs might not find you, but the Rider and his Grim will. They’ll come in the night, and you won’t even get to scream. You’ll just be picked off, all alone for always.
“It don’t gotta be that way, though. We can work together, stand together.”
A shape dropped from the roof off to Toby’s left, and he turned to see Leaf stand up, brushing off her knees. “The Bigs don’t work together,” she said, her slingshot still held loosely in one hand.
“They’re Bigs,” he said, waving her objection away dismissively. “We ain’t, least not yet. They’re cats, ’n we’re rats, which means we gotta be a lot more than them if we wanna keep up. Besides, I’ll bet any of ’em would run if they saw the Rider ’n his demon.”
“And we won’t?” Glen asked, looking unsure.
“Nah, we won’t. Cause if we do, he’ll just come after us later. He’s already taken Shay; he’s already taken Dem. I won’t let him take any more without a fight, will you?”
“No,” Glen said, and then louder. “No, I won’t.”
Kale snorted, clutching the bag close to his chest. “This is stupid. We’re a bunch of kids — what chance do we stand against someone who has a demon? We should just run.”
“Run where?” Dani asked, her voice calm, though Toby couldn’t see how. “The forest? There’s more out there than just demons; the acid’ll eat you alive, and leave your bones for the rats. You’re already in the Thicket. Where else do you have?”
“We just have to find proof,” Toby said before Kale or Leaf could fight more. “I have a friend in the Watchers. He’ll listen to me, if I find something for him to look into.”
The two siblings shared a look, then Leaf let out a long breath. “Fine, we’re in. We know where a few of the younger kids are. I ain’t showin’ you where they are,” she glanced at Glen, who smirked back, “but they’ll help us get the word out. But don’t hold your breath. I doubt any’ll show up if we ask them to meet.”
“Just ask them,” Toby said.
“We’ll meet you where we first met at noon,” Kale said, scampering off.
“Great,” Toby said, then frowned. “Now we’ve just gotta get lost again in the same way I did last time.”
Dani sighed and cuffed the back of his head lightly. “Idiot,” she said, but she was smiling at him as she said it.
12
Glen hadn’t stopped muttering for the last span of time. His broad shoulders hunched, as if expecting a blow at any time, but he led them forward regardless. Nothing looked familiar to Toby, nothing at all. It should, too. He’d been here before — or had he?
This could be a mistake, a big damn trap that would snap closed and drag Dani and him down into the hells.
As if sensing his thoughts, Dani put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it gently. “He has a reason to help us,” she said, glancing up at Glen even as they scrambled over a broken piece of wall.
“Guess so.” The thought wasn’t comforting. It just made him think of all the reasons Leaf and Kale had to betray them.
“What are we gonna do if Glen is telling the truth, Toby?”
The question caught him by surprise, and he glanced up at Dani curiously. A frown twisted her lips, pressed them into a firm line he recognized. She was worried — scared, even. That, more than anything else, frightened him. Very little did that to Dani.
“What do you mean? If they have information about other kids that Rider’s taken —”
“Then we gotta ask ourselves, what’s changed?” She shoved some hair out of her face, and swore at the skirts that that tangled around her boots. “Look. Rider takes five children from the Thicket. Who misses them? A bunch of kids that no one listens to — hell, that no one cares about or even knows exists. How many would you have said lived in this place, before today?”
Toby scowled at her, largely because she was right. He’d never imagined this kind of community living at the fringes of Cold Harbor, a place that seemed so very small just last week - nine days was a short amount of time to change everything. “Yeah, so what?”
“So then, after successfully getting away with five, he targets Dem, a boy with a family, a boy that gets noticed missing right away. Look at Glen, Toby. He’s a mess, he looks like a mess, he smells like a mess. His clothes are filthy and too small, his hair hasn’t been cut in forever — no one would ever think he lived in town.
“Dem didn’t look like that. He looked like us, recognizable as Cold Harbor folk from the moment you lay eyes on him. No way the Rider mistook Dem for one of them, which means that if five have really gone missing, then something’s changed to make Rider target one of us.”
Toby stopped suddenly, short enough to make Dani clip his shoulder and knock him into a leaf pile. Something squished in it, and his hand came away with slugs sticking to it. Shuddering, he peeled the slimy puke-colored creatures off his flesh — this was the feeling that the Rider gave him, slugs clinging to skin, wet and cold and hungry.
Dani had a point, though. A good one.
“Maybe,” he said, slowly as he tossed the last slug away, “maybe Dem saw the Rider. Look, we saw him and he tried to kill us.”
She nodded impatiently, like he was missing something. “Right, so Dem sees Rider walk through the wall in the warehouse — but that doesn’t make any sense, either. The Rider was a man, solid as you and I. So was Grim, Toby. He was on me, remember? He was solid, I swear it to you. So, how does that match up with the bloody-faced ghost Dem saw?”
“We don’t know that they can’t go squishy,” Toby said, frustrated that she insisted on tearing apart his ideas. “We don’t know that they don’t have the power to walk through walls. We don’t know anything, not really. No matter how he did it, Dem saw him that day, ’n then he followed Dem back and grabbed him. I know it was him, Dani. Who else would it be?” It was his turn to glare at her, and Dani looked away first.
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I just don’t know.”
“We’ll get proof,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze. “You’ll see. We’ll get proof, and give it to the Watchers, and then they’ll hunt down the Rider and burn him like they do to anyone who deals with demons.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sure.”
Toby grunted and pushed on ahead; Glen hadn’t slowed down, after all, and they were getting behind. No reason to stand around worrying about pointless things. What was her deal, anyway? There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that the Rider had Dem, and they didn’t have much longer to get his brother away before he was lost.
Certainly not enough time to dither like Dani wanted.
Her words nagged at him anyway, so much that he nearly smacked into Glen’s back when the older boy stopped short. “We’re here,” he said, giving Toby a pointed look.
Toby glared right back, then glanced around. It looked familiar enough. Yeah, there was the leaf pile that Leaf had landed in — or come out of? The walls seemed more crowded than before. He was just as hungry, too. Breakfast seemed to stick to him less and less these days.
“You came here alone?” Dani asked, frowning as she looked around.
“Yeah, what of it?”
She shrugged in answer, her fingers tugging down on the long sleeves of her shirt. “Think they’ll come?”
“Maybe,” Glen said, rolling his shoulders and slouching against a wall. “Bringing me along might’ve scared a lot away. I ain’t popular.”
“Then why’d Leaf ’n Kale bring me to you in the first place?”
“Cause I know things, ’n they know it. That’s why I ain’t popular.”
“Why —” Toby started to ask, but Dani elbowed him sharply in the ribs.
“He means he steals their stuff, dummy.”
Toby scowled at Glen who met his eyes evenly. “Some of these kids are tiny.”
“So? They’ll grow, if they’re able. We all gotta survive, Harbor boy, and not everyone has a grown-up supplyin’ them food all winter. When’s the last time you were so hungry that ya tried to scrape mold off a building’s side?” He grunted, jerking his head. “That’s what I thought. Until then, don’t you go judgin’ us, hear?”
“Leave off,” Dani said. “This isn’t helping us.”
“Besides, not all of us steal ’n scrape from the others,” Kale said, rounding the building and glaring at the trio. Behind him came an even younger boy — he looked around Dem’s age — with curly black hair on top of an angular and unfriendly face. He looked half-starved, his fingernails jagged and dirty.
Behind him, Toby spotted a tiny girl in what might have once been a dress. She was covered head-to-toe in dirt, with black streaks of charcoal running over her plump cheeks. Her black hair had been cropped short, uneven or just missing in places.
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Glen said with a snort.
“Where’s Leaf?” Toby asked, not wanting to hear this fight again.
“Around,” Kale said, smirking. “This here is Trip, and his kid sister Pip. They’re the only ones that wanted to see you with Glen around.”
“Yeah?” Glen asked, looking at Trip. “Why’s that?”
“Because you killed my brother,” Trip said, a knife suddenly in his hand. He threw himself at Glen, dirty short blade stretched out for his gut. Glen stumbled back with a startled squawk, the tip narrowly missing his belly.
“Get ’im off!” Glen bellowed, tripping over a loose stone and going down.
Kale just stood there, and Toby blinked at him — Dani moved fast, pushing past Toby and slamming into Trip’s side. The two went down together. Her fist clipped his chin; his boot slammed against her hip.
“Stop stop stop!” Pip screamed, her little face red enough that it showed through the black, and she stamped her foot. At the sound, Trip froze — Dani kicked him away for good measure, then scrambled up to her feet, breathing hard.
“I never touched your worthless brother, I don’t even know who he is,” Glen snarled, edging toward the fallen knife.
Toby stepped over and grabbed it, glaring at the older boy. “Back off.”
“Tad - he was gonna talk to you,” Trip wheezed, favoring the side where Dani had kicked him. “He was on his way weeks ago. Never came back, never saw him again.”
“Doesn’t mean I killed him.”
“Who else?”
Pip ran to his side, threw her arms around him, burying her face in his neck. “No fighting, you promised,” she whispered.
“You’re still paying me for bringing ya here,” Kale said cheerfully, and not even Toby’s withering look could make him look repentant.
“Others have gone missing,” Toby said. “My brother’s one of them, about your age."
Trip spat at Toby’s feet, glaring with undisguised malice. “You ain’t from here. Got a lotta nerve, pretendin’ your problems are ours.”
“It’s not pretend,” Toby snapped back. “Look, five kids from the Thicket, your brother included, and mine from the town. Someone’s takin’ kids, and no one notices or cares. No one but us. Now, you can help us get him back, or you can get out of our way.”
A sharp elbow jabbed his ribs, and Toby glared up at Dani. Her face looked stricken, and she gestured over at Trip, her movement small and hidden from the others. Frowning, Toby tried to figure out what her problem was. Looking, past the mud and anger, Toby saw Trip and knew what had been bothering him.
As much as Dem ever looked like Toby, Trip looked like Grim.
“Some of them might still be alive,” Toby said, shaken. Should he tell Trip that his brother wasn’t, that he’d already been eaten alive by a demon and stuffed full with evil?
“Ya think?” Trip asked, warily. “Truly?”
“Yeah,” Dani said, not looking at him.
Pip tugged on Trip’s shirt, looking up at him with eyes bigger than plates. “Bring him back?”
Trip swallowed hard, then hung his head. “Yeah, sure.” With that, everyone in the small circle relaxed just a little. “Look, thing was, Tad didn’t go around the Thicket like normal, see? Too dangerous. He went under.”
“What do ya mean, under?” Kale asked, but Toby noticed that his sister had gone white.
“You don’t mean —”
“Yeah,” Trip said, looking tired all of a sudden.
“We don’t go under, we don’t use those,” Leaf snapped.
“Will someone tell me what’s going on?” Glen asked, his fingers tapping against his leg. “What are you two talkin’ about?”
