AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Which is exactly why he couldn’t fight back a smile when Grey stood face-to-face with him and uttered two simple words: “Thank you.”
11
GREY
When the fog rolled in as they rode further north, Grey had to shove away the echoing taunts of the fair folk from his dream. Not even the false sense of safety from the field helped soothe him with its winding paths. He tensed when a tall structure emerged from the mist—too tall to be a tree with how thin it was, standing parallel to its identical, slanted twin before it gave way to other beams. A bridge.
“The map didn’t show a river, did it?” Grey asked, his skin jumping at every sputter of the bike.
“No, but it looks like there was one here at some point.” Noel pointed them toward it, guiding the wheels over the bumps of metal rails and wooden slats covered in wildflowers and moss. “Old train tracks too…”
“You think the fair folk got rid of it?” His arms tightened around Noel as they drew closer to the bridge, trying to lift himself up some and glimpse the shallow ravine up ahead.
“Maybe. I bet they dammed it up from the mountains or one of the lakes. Anything to try to spite us, I’d guess…”
Each thunk of the tires against the slats sent a shiver through Grey, almost expecting that voice to whisper more honey-coated threats in his ear. The bike rolled over the rail again, and sped up alongside it, putting distance between them and the dried riverbed. Every distant tree through the fog put him on high alert, like it stood as a totem or a banner of enemy territory.
He shrank down, tensing when he thought something tugged on his hood. Noel hit the breaks. “What? What’s wrong?”
“N-nothing,” Grey said in a near-squeak. “I think the fog is playing tricks on me.”
Noel twisted around, and Grey shivered, holding on tighter, as if that’d somehow protect him from getting torn off the bike and dragged away. The putter of the motorcycle drowned out the ambient noises around them while Noel surveyed their little pocket in the mist. And with an exhale, he tugged his knife a little further up in his boot before starting forward again.
The mist eventually gave way to a converted rail hub, surrounded by wrought-iron lattices. Box cars sat on parallel tracks through the fence, people jogging up and down the steps into and out of each one—dull greens and reds decorated with signs.
“Marks.”
A stern-looking woman stood on the other side of the gate, a prominent scowl on her face with a polearm at her side. Noel began to push up his sleeve, and Grey tried not to tremble as he mimicked the motion. Her eyes narrowed on Grey.
“Hemomancers require gloves and tagging.”
“Tagging?” Noel asked, digging around in his pockets for what Grey assumed were his gloves.
“If you want to enter, bring the hemomancer to the gate. Gloves on. Back to me.”
He stopped, glancing back at Grey with concern creasing his features. “Are you okay with this?”
No, but it’s not like I’ve ever had much of a choice. Grey nodded, his teeth chattering as he held out a hand for the gloves. He tugged them on and stumbled off the bike before making his way toward the bars separating them from their destination. Rubbing his arms, he turned his back to her, his bag thumping against the barrier.
“Hands on the bars. If you take your hands off the bars, you’ll forfeit admission.”
Grey fumbled to grab onto the iron, jolting as the woman grabbed his wrists and guided them. The flicker of metal passed in front of him, and then cold rested against his neck with a sickening, heavy click.
“Padlock and collar will be removed upon exiting. Do not tamper with the collar while you’re here, and if you take off your gloves in public, you will be escorted out. Understood?”
“Understood,” he whispered.
She tapped his gloved hands. “You’re free to step away.”
The itch to reach up and feel around the collar lost to Grey’s urge to climb back on the bike for safety, hating how Noel watched him with pity in those green eyes. He fumbled to grasp Noel’s jacket again as the gate screeched open, and they continued rolling parallel to the tracks.
“I’m sorry,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s temporary.”
“I know,” Grey mumbled. He swallowed as stray sets of eyes followed them with deep, disapproving frowns.
Noel shot them dirty looks and revved the bike past them, straight into the center of the rail yard city. Grey’s heart sank the further they went as he read each sign that denied hemomancers from entry. He guessed that he shouldn’t have expected anything different here. Gravel crunched under the tires as they stopped in front of the monolithic monstrosity in the heart of it all, and Noel kicked down the stand.
Grey stared up at the concrete building with its iron bars and his hands sweating in Noel’s gloves. Straight out of one prison-like basement and into another. He hurried after Noel, sticking close on his way through the heavy, metal double doors. The lobby was a ghost town with dust motes twirling in the shreds of sunlight filtering through the windows high above. Grey supposed that was to be expected when a place filled with books was practically one bad day away from turning into a kindling reserve when people’s priorities were firmly set on survival. Not that Grey and Noel’s blight was all that different, though their needs for survival pushed them down a vastly different path.
