The canyon was no longer a church; it was an anthill kicked open.

  Below, torches flared to life, casting long, jerky shadows against the raw rock walls. The Preacher's voice had shifted from a melodic drone to a series of sharp, barked commands. Dorn could hear the heavy clank of the winch being forced—not for digging, but as a makeshift elevator for the coyote scouts. The seized belt had been cut away, replaced with something temporary, something that would hold just long enough to get armed pursuers up the cliff face.

  "They're coming up," Kestrel hissed, her claws digging into a seam of quartz. "We don't have time for the box, Vex."

  Vex didn't look back. She was already halfway into the dark mouth of the bunker entrance at the cliff's mid-point, a rusted steel throat that led down into places the sun never touched. "We don't leave without it. Flint, get the harness!"

  Flint scrambled after her, the missing claw on his left paw making his grip uncertain on the slick metal. The box—the real box, the lead-lined one—was still down there. Dorn realized with a cold shock that what Flint had been carrying during the climb was a decoy. A wrapped bundle of rags and scrap, shaped to look like the real thing.

  Clever. Desperate. Probably suicidal.

  Bullets sparked off the rock near Dorn's head. He dove into the bunker mouth after them, the darkness swallowing him whole.

  The tunnel was not a cave.

  It was Old World concrete—cold, smooth in some places, spalled and rough in others, ribbed with rusted rebar that reached out like grasping fingers. The air was thick with ozone and ancient damp, the kind of wet that never dried, that seeped into fur and lungs and stayed there. Every breath tasted of metal—iron and copper and something else, something that made Dorn's Lead-Sight eye pulse with feedback.

  He blinked, tried to focus the thermal filter. The image that came back was wrong—distorted, fractured, the lead lining of the bunker reflecting his own pings back into his skull. A spike of pain drove through his eye socket, down his jaw, into the base of his brain.

  He gasped. Clutched his face. The world went white, then black, then white again.

  "Dorn!" Vex's voice, somewhere ahead.

  "Keep moving," he snarled. "I'll catch up."

  He couldn't see. Not with the eye. He forced it closed, forced himself to rely on what his mother had given him—his whiskers, his ears, the feel of air moving over his fur. The tunnel stretched ahead, a concrete throat leading down into darkness.

  He followed the sound of badgers breathing.

  They found the box in a side chamber, half-buried under rubble that had fallen from the ceiling. Flint was already working at it, his harness hooked to the lead-lined casing, his muscles screaming with the effort of moving something that didn't want to be moved.

  "It's heavier than before," he gasped. "The lock... it's doing something."

  Dorn didn't ask what. He grabbed the harness beside Flint and pulled.

  The box shifted. Scraped across the concrete. Shifted again.

  Behind them, at the tunnel entrance, shadows moved.

  "They're here," Vex breathed.

  Dorn turned. The Lead-Sight was useless—the feedback too intense, the migraine blinding. But he didn't need it. He could hear them. The scrabble of claws on concrete. The whisper of breath. The soft clink of metal—shivs, pipes, the weapons of tunnel-rats.

  "Get the box out," he said. "I'll hold them."

  Vex started to argue. He didn't wait.

  He moved into the tunnel, into the dark, into the narrow space where a wildcat couldn't dodge and couldn't run and could only fight.

  They came from the ventilation shafts.

  Small things—weasels mostly, their bodies built for tight spaces, their eyes gleaming with the reflected light of distant torches. They carried short blades, rusted iron, pipes wrapped in scavenged tape. They moved like water, like shadows, like things that had been born in the dark.

  The first one died without a sound. Dorn's claws found its throat, tore it out, dropped the body at his feet. The second came at his flank—a slash across his ribs, shallow but hot. He pivoted, brought his weight down, felt bone snap under his paw.

  Three more. Four. They kept coming.

  The tunnel was too narrow for grace. Dorn fought like an animal—because he was an animal, because that was all that was left. Teeth and claws and the wet spray of blood. A shiv opened his arm. A pipe caught him across the shoulder—the same shoulder, the bullet wound screaming back to life. He went down on one knee, and they swarmed him.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Weight. Teeth. The smell of weasel musk and his own blood. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Could only fight in the small spaces between their bodies, killing one while three more bit into his fur.

  Then the weight lifted.

  Vex stood over him, the box in her paws—not carrying it, swinging it. The lead-lined mass caught a weasel full in the chest, lifted him off his feet, slammed him into the concrete wall with a sound like wet meat hitting stone. He didn't get up.

  Flint was beside her, his missing claw forgotten, his teeth buried in a weasel's leg. The animal screamed—a high, thin sound that cut off when Vex swung the box again.

  The remaining tunnel-rats fled. Scrabbling back into the vents, back into the dark, back to wherever they'd come from.

  Dorn lay on the concrete, bleeding into the cracks, and tried to remember how to breathe.

  Vex dropped the box. It hit the floor with a sound like a thunderclap, the lead lining ringing against the stone. She knelt beside him, her scarred face inches from his.

  "You're hit."

  "Know."

  "Bad."

  "Know that too."

  She pressed something to his shoulder—a wad of fabric, pressure, the only thing she had. Dorn hissed, but didn't pull away.

  "The box," he said.

  "Still there. Still heavy." Her voice cracked. "Still worth dying for, apparently."

  He looked at her. In the dim light filtering from the tunnel mouth, her eyes were wet.

  "We're not dead yet," he said.

  "No thanks to you."

  "Thanks to the box. You swung it like a weapon."

  She almost smiled. "It's good for something, then."

  Behind them, Flint was already hooking back into the harness, ready to pull. The tunnel entrance was still dark, still waiting, still full of things that wanted them dead.

  Dorn forced himself up. His body screamed. He ignored it.

  "Move," he said. "Before they find better friends."

  They moved.

  The box scraped against concrete, a sound that set Dorn's teeth on edge. The tunnel sloped upward, toward the entrance, toward the distant gleam of torchlight. Flint pulled, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Vex pushed, her shoulder against the lead lining, her paws slipping on the blood-slick floor.

  Dorn brought up the rear, watching the darkness behind them. Waiting for the next wave.

  It didn't come. Not yet.

  The tunnel mouth grew closer. The torchlight brighter. The sound of shouting louder.

  They were almost out when the magnet pulse hit.

  It wasn't a sound. It was a presence—a wave of force that passed through the concrete, through the rock, through Dorn's body like a blade made of vibration. His Lead-Sight eye erupted in white fire. The box jerked in Flint's harness, dragging him sideways, slamming against the tunnel wall.

  And beneath it, someone screamed.

  A Purist—a coyote, one of the tunnel-rats who hadn't fled—had been crawling up behind them, hidden in the shadows. The pulse had caught the iron pipe in his grip, ripped it from his paws, sent it spinning into the dark. And when the box lurched, it had pinned his leg against the wall.

  He screamed. The box pressed down. Bone snapped.

  Flint stared, his eyes wide. Vex grabbed his arm.

  "Leave him."

  "But the box—"

  "Is still moving. Move."

  They pulled. The box scraped off the coyote's leg—the leg that bent at a wrong angle, that left a smear of red on the concrete—and continued its slow crawl toward the entrance.

  Dorn looked at the coyote. At his eyes, wide with pain, with terror, with the knowledge that he'd been left behind.

  He didn't have time for mercy. He turned and followed the box.

  Behind him, the coyote's screams faded into the dark.

  They burst from the tunnel mouth into chaos.

  The canyon was alive with movement—torches, rifles, the shadows of armed coyotes climbing toward them from below. Kestrel was on the ledge above, hurling rocks down at the pursuers, her lizard's body a silhouette against the flames. Cricket was there too, dragging the wounded toward the rockslide, toward the only path up.

  "The box!" Vex shouted. "We need to get it up the slide!"

  Dorn looked at the rockslide. Loose stone, steep slope, no cover. A hundred feet of open ground between them and the rim.

  Below, the Purists were climbing fast.

  "We'll never make it," Flint gasped.

  "We'll make it," Dorn said. "Or we won't. Either way, we're going."

  He grabbed the harness. Pulled.

  The box moved. Scraped against stone, caught, pulled free. Flint pulled beside him. Vex pushed from behind. Together, they dragged the lead-lined weight up the slope while bullets sang past and rocks rained down and the Preacher's voice echoed off the stone.

  Kestrel covered them. A rifle shot—she'd found one somewhere, was firing blind into the dark. Another shot. A coyote screamed.

  They climbed.

  The rim was close now. So close. Dorn's shoulder was a furnace of pain. His vision swam. His paws kept finding holds, kept slipping, kept finding holds again.

  Vex was beside him, her breath coming in sobs. Flint was behind, pushing the box with the last of his strength.

  The rim. The edge. The dark beyond.

  They crested it together—wildcat, badgers, box—and collapsed into the dirt.

  For a long moment, no one moved.

  Dorn lay on his back, staring at the stars. They were the same stars he'd always known. Cold. Bright. Indifferent. But tonight, they felt like witnesses.

  Beside him, Vex was crying. Not loudly—just tears cutting tracks through the dust on her face. Flint had his arms around the box, his missing claw pressed against the lock, his eyes closed.

  Kestrel appeared at the rim, her scales shifting back to something approximating normal. She looked at them. At the box. At the canyon below, where the fires spread and the hunt was just beginning.

  "We need to move," she said. "They'll find this trail."

  Dorn didn't answer. He was watching the canyon. Watching the flames. Watching the tiny shapes of coyotes swarming like ants whose nest had been kicked open.

  The Preacher stood at the center of it all, his silver eyes fixed on the rim. On them.

  Even at this distance, Dorn felt that gaze. Cold. Patient. Certain.

  "You killed a dozen of his men," Kestrel said quietly. "Maybe more. He won't forget that."

  Dorn forced himself up. His body screamed. He ignored it.

  "Let him remember," he said. "We'll be running."

  He looked at the box. At the survivors scattered across the rim. At Vex, who had stopped crying and was watching him with something like hope.

  "Where?" she asked.

  Dorn looked north, toward the high country, toward the places even the Purists feared to go.

  "Away," he said. "As far away as we can get."

  He started walking. Behind him, one by one, the others followed.

  The box hummed softly in the darkness, carrying its secret toward the mountains.

  And below, the Preacher watched them go.

  "Run," he murmured. "Run fast. The box will call you home."