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Bone gives.

Something soft caves in beneath the stone, and the sound is awful. Wet. Final. My stomach rolls, but my arm keeps moving because he’s still twitching, because the world has taught me twitching is not dead enough, because Poppy is behind me, and I will not leave anything breathing that tried to touch her.

Blood and gray matter smear across the rock.

His body goes slack.

All I can hear is my own breathing. And Poppy’s.

Too loud. Too fast.

I turn toward her.

She’s staring at the man she shot, bow still raised, lips parted around a silent sound. Blood drips from the arrow wound in his throat, soaking into the collar of his shirt.

“Poppy,” I say, forcing my voice steady. “Look at me.”

Her eyes flick to mine.

“There you go. Just me. Breathe.”

She sucks in one ragged breath. Then another.

I push myself to my feet, pull the walkie from my belt, but a metallic click freezes the air.

I stop halfway up, one knee in the dirt, bloody rock still clutched in my hand.

Cold metal presses against my temple.

Every muscle locks.

“Drop everything and get up slowly.”

The voice is male. Calm in a way that makes my skin crawl.

I let the rock and the walkie fall. The walkie hits leaves. The rock lands beside the ruined skull with a dull, wet thud.

Slowly, I rise.

The gun stays against my skin until I’m standing, then shifts back a few inches. Not far enough to miss. Just far enough to let me turn.

Poppy is twenty feet away, held tight against another man’s chest. His arm is locked around her middle, lifting her almost off the ground while she kicks at his shins like she’s trying to break bone through sheer fury. His other hand is clamped on her mouth, muffling her screams. Her bow and arrows lie scattered in the leaves near her feet.

Rage wipes the fear clean out of me.

The man holding the gun follows my gaze and smiles.

There are six of them. Five men and one woman. All dirty. All armed. All watching us with the bright, hungry amusement of people who stopped being human a while ago and decided they liked it better that way.

The woman stands near the body I destroyed, her hair hacked short, face streaked with soot. She looks down at his crushed skull, and something ugly twists her mouth.

A problem for later, if we live long enough to have later.

“Stop kicking,” the gunman hisses toward Poppy, “or I’ll put a bullet in mommy dearest here.”

Poppy goes still.

Her eyes find mine, wide and wet and furious. She’s trying so hard not to cry that I nearly split open.