Page 8
“You’re cute.” She giggles yet again, painting a clearer picture inside my head that this girl is not completely sound.
The trickle of running water accompanies the wet slosh of vegetation beneath my boots, and a few more yards ahead, we reach the edge of a stagnant creek. Tessa kneels down to the water and purses her lips, bending forward to slurp up the fluids, while I submerge one of our canteens below the surface.
“Do you, or your father, weave, at all?”
“No, why?” she asks between sips of water.
“You don’t can fruits, or anything?”
Her brows pinch together, and she falls onto her bottom, grunting, as she holds her stomach. “Do you mean the jars by the tent? The ladies gave us those.”
“What ladies?”
Rolling her shoulders back, she diverts her eyes from mine and sighs. “Daddy says we keep to ourselves, but that’s not all the way true. Sometimes, the Ceniza ladies come to visit and bring us gifts.”
“Ceniza?”
“That’s what Daddy calls them.”
I cap the first canteen and dunk the second, trying not to look too eager for information. “These ladies … do they travel with anyone?”
“Yeah. Sometimes, there’s men who wear masks on their faces.”
“What kind of masks?”
“Scary ones. They look like bones.”
The Skulls. They apparently got the name from the leader, rumored to be an Alpha from Calico, who collects the skulls of his kills.
Clearing my throat is a poor effort to keep from bursting with happy laughter at the first hint of a clue we’ve had in months. Beside me, I catch Brandon’s smile, the glimmer of hope that he might find out what happened to his brother inside that hospital. So long as they managed to survive the mutations and Alphas, I happen to know the kitchen is stocked with enough food to last them a number of weeks, so the idea of them perishing isn’t etched in stone.
“We should get back to camp. It’s pretty dark out.” I slide the full canteens over my head and push to my feet. With an outstretched hand, I offer to help her up.
Instead, Tessa scratches at her arm, a look of worry dancing across her face. “I don’t like the nighttime so much.”
“Are you afraid of something?”
She nods, and her scratching turns more pronounced, to the extent that the harsh scrape of her nails draws lines of red into her flesh.
“Ragers?”
The answering shake of her head sends my stomach sinking.
“What are you afraid of?”
Panic dances across her face, and her scratching has to have torn at her skin. “Will you take me with you?”
Brandon and I exchange a quick glance, and I kneel down in front of her. “What about your sister? Wouldn’t you miss her?”
“She isn’t my sister.”
As I suspected.
“She’s your daughter, isn’t she?”
When she nods, I screw my eyes shut and exhale a long breath. “The baby in your stomach. Did your father put it there?”
Arms crossed, she rubs her fingers over her skin, fidgeting. “He said … not to tell no one. He said it’s our secret.” Her eyes shine with tears, and I reach down to take her hand in mine. For a moment, I’m holding Bryani’s hand, a thought that springs tears to my eyes, too. “It hurts, though. It hurts real bad. And he doesn’t stop. Not even when I scream. It scares Hannah, and he yells at her, but he doesn’t stop.”
