Then all at once she threw her weight upward, tightened her stomach muscles, stretched with her shoulder and back, and braced for the screaming pain. The branches under her creaked and cracked as she lunged.

The pain was . . . immense.

But her hand closed on the branch.

She took everything the pain could throw at her. She bit down on it, snarled at it, opened her mouth and howled it out of her as she pulled on that branch. Broken twigs slashed at her side and legs and arms, but she took that pain too.

Pain had never owned Lilah, and it did not own her now.

Screaming with agony and rage, she whipped her other hand up, pulling now with both arms, with the muscles of her shoulders and chest and back.

Suddenly she heard a sharp crack beneath her, and the main branch on which she lay collapsed away from her, leaving her hanging. The pain, clever and deceitful as it always was, revealed that it had so much more to give.

She screamed, but she took it.

The muscles all along her tanned arms stood taut against her skin. Hot wetness ran down from her torn side, and fat drops of blood fell down into the shadows. Below her the infected hogs sent up a squeal of hellish hunger.

“Damn you,” she growled as she pulled herself up.

The whole tree swayed, tilting outward as if trying to shake her off.

Lilah pulled.

The pigs were in a frenzy, smashing themselves against the trunk.

Lilah pulled.

Pinecones rained down on her. Blood roared in her ears.

Lilah pulled.

She forced her knees up, forced her feet out to explore, forced them to find something solid.

And there it was. The stump of the branch that had just broken. Twenty inches of solid wood. Lilah stretched one foot out and shifted her weight onto it. The branch held.

With the last of her strength, she swung her body above the branch and settled her other foot on it.

Safe.

Gasping, bleeding, sweating, dizzy, and sick. But safe.

When she dared open her eyes, she looked down at the boars below her. Six of them. Dead pig eyes stared back up at her. They wanted her flesh. They had the patience of eternity to wait her out. Even with her pistol and spear she could never hope to defeat two of them, let alone a half dozen.

Nevertheless Lilah bent over so they could see her face.

And she smiled at them.

Chapter 36

36

SAINT JOHN OF THE KNIFE RAN LIKE A GHOST, MAKING ONLY THOSE sounds he chose to make.

The children—the false Nyx and her knight—were clever, and they had some woodcraft, but they were not a tenth as silent as the man who followed them.