Page 4 of The Salt-Black Tree
Dmitri exhaled sharply, cut the wheel hard left, and there was another poppingpingas the car sheared through more barbwire fence. One of the weathered, silvery support posts was torn free and bulleted away, vanishing into darkness; the car touched down on a two-lane paved road running arrow-straight. Tires bit again, a hum rising from contact with concrete, and the windshield glittered with frost-stars. Slowly melting snowflakes spattered clear, bright glass.
The flakes were growing bigger, whirling through the headlamps’ yellow cloud. It had to warm up to snow, right? But Nat was cold deep down, in a place no heater could ever reach. Not even the magical cherry-tree desert’s scorch could thaw her there.
“Well?” Dmitri’s eyes were dark again, no little red sparkles. He dug in his breast pocket, and for a moment she was utterly, deadly certain he would produce that gun once more, and point it at her this time. “Where we going now?”
He fished out a battered red cigarette pack decorated with gold foil, tapping one up with quick, practiced motions. An orange flicker bloomed, no need for his silver lighter; he held the fuming stick in one hand while rolling his window down slightly, and the sound of the wind was an old friend.
“West.” Nat’s throat was parched as the desert. “And south.” She wasn’t hungry; she hadn’t been hungry in what felt like days. Terror, like divinity, was a great appetite suppressant.
She didn’t need to pee, either. It was a miracle.
“You gonna narrow that down for Dima?” He took a drag; the smoke’s burning eye winked as if they were all in on the joke.
“Maybe.” As much as she distrusted him, Nat was still glad to be back in a situation she halfway knew something about. Funny, how all it took was a more immediate danger to make her feel almost charitable towards a bigger, but relatively further-away one. “You gonna narrow down how close they came to catching us?”
“Catchingyou,littledevotchka.” His smile didn’t change, but he touched something on the dash and the headlights were back to pure halogen brilliance. “They know to leave Konets alone.”
Great.“Because I’m not a full… not a real divinity yet.” Score one for Nat Drozdova, she was getting used to this.
Well, maybe her score was only a fraction at this point, or an infinitesimal decimal. There was no such thing as becoming fully accustomed to finding out your dying mother was a goddess who had stolen another divinity’s heart, that you could ride a shapechanging horse through a magical desert, or that hungry sharp-frigid shadows were pursuing you across the continent.
She didn’t even know whatdayit was.
“But you getting there.” Dima’s smile was once again full of lunatic good cheer. “Only a matter of time, now.”
Nat hugged her backpack. The Cup burned inside her high-school bag, a warm secret like the cats showing her the best place to hide in an abandoned house. If she took the unicorn mug out now to show the gangster, what would he do? It wasn’t a bloody, glittering gem with a cardiac muscle’s steady pulse, but he was, after all, who he was.
A god of thieves.
“Only a matter of time,” Dmitri repeated meditatively, when she didn’t speak. “Where we goin’,devotchka moya? Say the word, Dima take you there.”
I can show you shortcuts. Just whisper in my ear.
Nat shuddered, a hard wringing motion. Once she was far enough away, would Mom recover? If Drozdova’s daughter crossed an international line, would either of them… change? Or would Nat get sick, cancer striking her down? Borders and countries were largely imaginary; it wasn’t the lesson they wanted you to take from geography class, but what was taught and what was learned were very different things.
She will eat you, Drozdova.
It had to be a lie.Hadto be. “California,” Nat heard herselfsay. A tired, defeated little word, but the car’s interior warmed for a bare moment, touched with summery gold. “Where else?”
“Where else indeed.” He gave her a sly sideways glance; Nat was suddenly very sure he knew she had something valuable in her backpack, and was simply biding his time.
What else would she lose, on this feverish, fucked-up road trip? A prairie road stretched under them, snow whirling in feathery horsetails across its gray back as the wind intensified; she had no idea which direction the headlights were pointing. Sooner or later, they’d reach an interchange, a freeway, a town. A city.
Anywhere was all right, as long as those shadowy things weren’t there. How fast was enough to escape them?
Dmitri finally stirred again. “You should rest.” Resentfully, as if reading her mind or annoyed that she was dragging thosethingsbehind her, though neither was her fault. Par for the course. “Close your eyes. We drive for a while.”
“Okay.” Her toes were no longer numb, and Nat could even feel her fingers. Her teeth didn’t chatter, though it certainly felt like they wanted to, and she could still taste high brassy terror like sucking on a penny—some of the kids in high school swore that was an easy way to fool a breathalyzer test. Nat had her doubts. “Maybe we could stop for snacks? When it’s daylight?”
He turned his chin, his black gaze leaving the pavement for a long terrifying while to rest upon her. “Da.” The car chuckled; the road was so straight he could probably take his hands away and the vehicle would handle steering on its own. “Anything you like,devotchka.”
More snow clotted the windshield. The wipers started.
There were a lot of cities between here and California, maybe even hotels like the Elysium where she could find other divinities. It shouldn’t be a huge problem to slip away from the gangster, and if she traveled far enough, fast enough, she could possibly stay one step ahead of the horrible, drifting, hungry shadow-things too.
They were a terrifying unknown, and Dima Konets the devil she knew. She saw no reason to stick around foreitherof them to get what they wanted.
Nat Drozdova had taken a big black horse to the Western Well under a cherry tree, and ridden him back as well.
