XIV: Something Wicked This Way Comes

~Clary~

"Alden's still not back," I say, not meeting my dad's eyes as I gather my gear. "I thought, you know, maybe they got caught up and would be back in the night, but they're still out there. It's been too long. I'm going out after him."

"Like hell you are!" Aaron exclaims. "Not with the skins out there!"

"Dad, I have no other choice!"

"I'm not losing you out there!"

"I'm not losing him out there!"

"Cheyenne!" Aaron shouts, cutting me off from the front door. "I am not letting you walk out that door! You'll die if you go out!"

"That's a chance I have to take!"

"It's not!"

"Dad, I have to," I plead. "It's Alden. I will do anything for him. I've slaughtered people to save him. I need him! I…" I pause, but the words roll off my tongue anyway. "I love him."

"Cheyenne, please, don't do this," Aaron tries. "Please, sweetheart, I don't want to lose you, too."

"Clary?" Gracie questions. "Daddy?"

"Gracie! Hey!" I exclaim as Aaron and I turn to look at her. He questions, "What are you doing up? You're never awake this early."

"I heard shouting," Gracie explains. "Clary, what do you mean you 'slaughtered' people?"

I kneel in front of Gracie, but my adopted sister takes a step back. I know that she knows that I can be dangerous—I'm a fighter, after all—but she's never heard of anything I've done in the past. I always made sure of that, made sure that she didn't know what I was truly capable of.

I look down. "Right. I don't blame you for not wanting to come near me, Grace." I lift my eyes to look at my younger sister. "Look, I… it was a long time ago."

That's something Gracie understands—she knows I don't talk about a lot of stuff that happened before Rick died and the events surrounding his death. She questions, "During the war?"

I shake my head. "No. After. It wasn't until the war was winding down that Alden meant something to me. And then, some Saviors went back to their old ways, took Alden. They put us in danger. He was in danger. They tried to kill us. And if it wasn't us, it was gonna be them. So I made sure it was them."

"What did you do?"

"That's grown up stuff, Gracie."

"You said you slaughtered them," Gracie counters. "I heard you. What did you do?"

"Something that wasn't human. I… I killed the first two—" I snap my fingers. "—just like that. Without a second of hesitation. Then one grabbed me, so I tore his throat out with my teeth. And the one that hurt Alden, that nearly killed him? I butchered him. I'm not proud of that person I became, Gracie, and it's because of Alden that I was able to come back, to get better. We wouldn't be here without each other. I did some bad stuff, and he was my redemption, just as I'm his.

"But those… those things out there, the things that whisper, they killed Jesus. They killed Jesus and they might have Alden. So I'm gonna need to be that person again. I need to be the Orphan again because it's the only way to keep the people that I love safe. I stopped being the Orphan for years, and I lost Jesus because of it. I can't take that risk ever again."

Gracie is still for a moment before she takes my hands, looking into my eyes. For a nine-year-old, it seems as though she knows more than she should. Gracie asks, "You love Alden, right?"

"Yeah," I say after a moment, caught off guard by the question.

"Then you should be the one to save him," Gracie says. "Like in those stories you read me. Be the knight in shining armor. Go out and save your damsel."

I nod, then stand to face Aaron. "I gotta go, Dad. You can either try to stop me or move aside, but no matter what, I am going out there for him. He's a part of this place. Glenn was right, way back when. 'We can make it together—'"

"'But we can only make it together,'" Aaron finishes. "I know I can't stop you, no matter how much I hate you going out there." He steps aside, but catches my arm before I can leave. "You might not realize it, but I do understand why you're going out. I never said I didn't care about Alden. I just care about my daughter a lot more."

"Well, that's unfortunate, 'cause I care more about Alden than I care about me."

I slow to a stop when I see Connie abruptly stop out of the corner of my eye, grabbing her binoculars. Tara questions, "What do you got?"

Connie passes the binoculars to Yumiko, pointing in the direction she was looking. Yumiko slowly lowers them, reporting, "Maybe the dead, maybe not. Keep your distance and watch their hands. They could go for knives."

"Don't get too close," I warn. "Use your distance weapons."

We move forward, nearing the two groups of walkers that kneel on the ground, feeding. Yumiko fires an arrow into one of their heads, and they turn, noticing us now. I swallow upon seeing the blood around their mouths, fearing the worst. But I take the fact that they were feeding on raw flesh as a sign that they're the "original recipe" rather than the skins.

I draw one of my knives, throwing it. It impales itself in the head of a walker as a second knife sinks into the head of the walker to the left. I glance towards Magna, complimenting, "Not bad."

"Compare technique sometime?" she responds.

"I'd like that," I tell her. "Oh, incoming."

Magna throws a second knife at a walker as it stumbles closer, and I take down the one that was right behind it. Tara leads Kal and Marco closer, their spears in hand. Tara comments, "Funky walk, check. No weapons, check. Okay."

We take out the rest of the walkers with ease, and I accompany Magna and Yumiko forward to retrieve our weapons. I turn on my heel, kneeling next to the partially devoured bodies below me. "Horses," I announce, resting my hand against one's nose. "They were feeding on horses."

"They're none of the masked ones," Magna reports.

"The horses," Marco says. "These were Alden's and Luke's."

"But no Alden and Luke."

"Maybe they had to bail," Tara theorizes. She turns to Kal. "Check the area. Look for tracks. Stay close."

"Get me if you need me," I tell Kal, and he nods once before taking off. I turn back towards one of the horses as Connie leans down over it, examining it. She looks up, signing something to Kelly. "What is it?"

"Connie says the horses were cut open," Kelly says after a moment. "They were skinned with knives. This wasn't just the dead."

I spin, aiming my crossbow, when a branch cracks behind me. Kal raises a hand in surrender, and I lower my crossbow, but still keep the butt of it near my shoulder. Kal reports, "Plenty of walker tracks, but nothing else."

"No," I say. "They were here. They walk the same as the dead. It's how they blend in."

He offers, "The horses could've been wandering for a while."

"Then we split up," Yumiko decides. "We break in different directions."

"No, no, we stay here," Tara argues. "It's not safe out here anymore. Walkers aren't just walkers. That girl told us it was just her mother, but this? She's a liar."

"I didn't need this to know that Leatherface was a liar," I say, then glance between Yumiko and Magna. "We should've killed her on that bridge. We don't know any more than we did before Daryl took her. The one thing that we know is that there's more."

"Exactly! It's why we can't break off!" Tara excalims. "We don't know how many are out there. There could be three more, or there could be three hundred of them out there. We head back, we stay behind the walls, and we make a plan. Until we find out what this is."

Connie signs a question, and Kelly turns to Tara, questioning, "'And what if we don't?'"

"We will," Tara says. "Let's go."

"Y'all go," I say, putting my crossbow on my shoulder. "I ain't going nowhere without Alden."

"No. No, Clary, you're coming with us."

"Tara, do not make me go through you," I warn, standing toe to toe with Hilltop's new leader. "You know what I've done to get him back before, and that was to people I didn't hate with every part of me. You saw me after, you know what I did to those Saviors that took Alden the day Rick died. What I did will look like child's play compared to what I'll do to these… these skins if I run into them, and that's not even if have Alden."

"Clary, I know you're angry, and I know you're scared," Tara says, keeping her voice soft. "But running around out here—no plan, just vengeance—won't do Alden any good. So come back and help us figure out a plan."

"I can't. I need to find him."

"Tara, let me," Marco says. Tara steps aside, and Marco takes my hand, leading me to the edge of the clearing so we can speak privately. "Clary, I know how you feel right now—"

"You don't."

"—'cause Alden's my friend, too. He's my best friend. I want to find him, just as much as you."

"Marco, you don't understand. Alden's not my friend."

"What?" Marco questions, completely bewildered.

"I'm in love with Alden, Marco. I have been for years, but I never let myself feel it because I didn't want to go through losing the person I love again. And now I'm in danger of losing him without ever telling him I love him. I need to find him, Marc."

"Look, I understand you wanting to go off and look for him on your own. I do. But the reality is that there's nothing around here for you to go off of. So come back with us. You might find something on the way back, and if we don't, we'll plan."

"Okay," I agree. "And Marco? Please don't repeat what I said to anyone."

"You got it," Marco says.

"C'mere," I tell him, knowing how worried he gets when his friends are in danger. Marco leans down, resting his chin against my shoulder as I wrap my arms around him. I press a kiss to his cheek, assuring him, "We'll find him, Marc, okay? We will. I promise you, I'll do whatever it takes to get him back."

"Whatever it takes," Marco repeats as he pulls back. "We'll get him back."

We return to the others, and I mount my horse as Marco gives Tara a nod. Tara nods once in response, declaring, "Alright, let's get back to Hilltop. Especially in case there's more out here."

~Daryl~

Enid kneels beside me, careful to keep her shadow from falling over the window and alerting Henry and Lydia of our presence. She hastily scribbles in a notebook before passing it over to me.

They're back. Clary doesn't look happy.

I give Enid a quick nod of thanks for letting me know, and she stays at the window while I get up to meet those that went searching for Alden and Luke this morning. The gate is being closed behind them as I approach. Marco taps Clary's arm, then gestures in my direction. Clary slides off of Slick, passing the reins to Marco. At the same time, we ask, "Anything?"

"Uh, we found their horses," Clary tells me when I gesture for her to go first. "Connie said they were cut open and skinned."

"No Alden and Luke?"

Clary shakes her head. "No. Anything here?"

"Nothing." I jerk my head towards the cellar. "C'mon, let's go see what we can get."

~Henry~

"'Every day's Halloween, baby.' That's what he kept saying, my dad," Lydia says, continuing with her story. "And then… then he just cut his hair. And my mom, she kept playing checkers with me, trying to keep me distracted from it all, I guess. I jumped one of her checkers, and she said, 'Checkmate.' I always responded that was chess." Lydia lets out a small laugh. "He always… she always said that."

"Your mom sounds nice," I tell her.

"Yeah," Lydia agrees after a moment of silence. "Is your, uh, your second mom the person who found you?"

"No, it was my dad, Ezekiel. Second dad."

"Why isn't he here with your mom?"

"They're the leaders of another community. Where I'm from."

"Is it far?" Lydia inquires, curious. "What's it called?"

"It's called the Kingdom. It's probably like a day's ride from here, a little less if you take the Kingsroad." I snap my head towards the doors that lead to the outside as they're ripped open. Keys rattle on a belt as footsteps echo down the stone stairway, and I look towards the cell door as Daryl appears. "Hey, what's going on?"

"Shut up," Daryl growls, unlocking my cell. "You're getting out. C'mon."

Daryl urges me ahead of him, back up the steps where Clary's waiting at the top. Daryl shuts the cellar doors behind us, and Clary grabs my arm, dragging me towards the wall. When she does release me, it's only to shove me away. I stumble, turning back to face the siblings. Clary demands, "What the fuck's wrong with you?"

"What the hell were you doing?" Daryl adds, further explaining when I can only look at them in confusion. "Telling her about the Kingdom? What if there's more of her people out there? You got family at the Kingdom!"

"I'm sorry, okay?" I tell him. "I didn't think that it would… wait. You were listening?"

"Of course we were," Clary replies. "Daryl, Enid, me, a few of the others, we've been switching off, seeing what she'd say to your dumb ass. It's a good thing we were listening, too. The hell were you gonna tell her next, huh? How to get into the armory?"

"You two were using me?!"

"Yeah, and it was working, too," Daryl shoots back.

I can't believe them.

"She's a good person who got messed up out there," I declare. "And you know what? She was right about you two. You are assholes. You want answers? Get 'em yourself."

~Daryl~

"You finally come to kill me?" Lydia questions as she turns her head just enough to look at me as I take a seat in the chair outside her cell, Clary at my side.

"Don't tempt me," Clary mutters.

"Stop it," I scold. I dig inside my pocket, producing the pill bottle Enid provided. "It's for your ear. You keep pulling on it like it hurts." I raise the bottle to offer it, but Lydia won't look at me. "No? Alright, I don't give a shit. It's up to you." I lean forward, and the movement causes Lydia to glance towards me. "Two of ours went missing."

"We found their horses, though," Clary chimes in. "Half skinned, half eaten. You know anything about that, Leatherface?"

"How could I?" Lydia retorts. "I've been here."

I sigh softly. "What would your mom do if she crossed some of our people? Would she kill them?"

Lydia shrugs. "She would if she had to. It wouldn't be the first that she's killed 'cause she had to. When we were still in that shelter, in the early days, the one guy we were with started freaking out. He was desperate to get out, banging on windows, yelling and drawing all sorts of attention to us. I remember Mama grabbing him and throwing him on the ground. She choked him to death."

"Did y'all know that we all turn then?" Clary questions.

Lydia shakes her head. "No, but it was how we found out. There were a lot of gunshots outside, too. Daddy tried to keep me from seeing it, hearing it, but I already saw it all. I remember being so scared, and Daddy just held me. He sang me that old song—the one that went, 'Lydia, oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia?' He used to sing that to me when I was scared, which was a lot back then."

I question, "How old were you?"

"Five, six. Who knows?"

"Your mom…" I look down, sighing softly. I once threw someone off of a rooftop because they said terrible things were probably happening to Clary, if she wasn't already dead, in those weeks that we were separated right at the start. "Your mom did what she had to do."

Lydia won't look at me, but she nods, tugging on her ear again. I whistle to get her attention, tossing the pill bottle to her. She picks it up, and I tell her, "It doesn't have to be like that, though. There's a lot of good people here. They'll help you if you help them."

For a moment, she doesn't respond. Then, she questions, "Can I have some water?" Lydia steps to the cell door as I get her a ladle-full of water. She reaches for it, but I hold onto it. "What, you think I'm gonna hit you with it?"

When I don't budge, Lydia sighs. For a moment, I think she's starting to reach for the ladle, but I keep a close eye on her, waiting for her to make a move. When her hand darts out to try to grab my wrist, Clary and I move at the same time. As I start to jump back, Clary pushes me back even further, grabbing Lydia's arm. I push her sleeve up, revealing cuts and scars left by a switch along her entire forearm. She wretches her arm free, slinking back into the far corner of her cell.

I take Clary's arm, tugging her with me as we leave the basement. Once we're far enough that Lydia won't be able to hear us, I turn to my sister. "I don't buy a word she's saying."

"Her story doesn't make sense, I agree," Clary says with a nod. "For the most part, at least. Anyone that wears the dead's skins would definitely kill someone like that, no doubt."

"What doesn't make sense is how she was talking earlier, with Henry. Her dad was the one losing it and her mom was the sane one."

"And now she's saying it's the other way around. I think this might be the only time she's told the truth so far."

"Yeah… I think I have an idea. I'll be right back."

Clary watches me in curiosity, taking a few steps to trail after me as I break a thin branch off a nearby tree. "A switch?" she questions.

"The marks on her arm. I'd know them anywhere." I rejoin Clary, and together, we descend back into the cellar once more. Lydia watches us carefully, her eyes darting to the switch as I pull the extra twigs and leaves off. "You know, some dads would come up with any excuse just to beat the shit out of their kids. Maybe they're drunk. Maybe they can't get drunk. Belts are good."

"They like belts," Clary adds, nodding.

"They do like belts," I agree. "But these assholes, they ain't picky. They'll use whatever's laying around. But a good switch from a birch tree… that'll work."

Lydia only stares at the switch now, and I see it in her eyes. It's the same look Clary or I always got whenever Will had a belt in his hand, even if he was just putting it on. She's waiting for the beating, knowing that it's coming.

"Your dad, he sounds a lot like one of those dads," I continue.

"Except," Clary interjects, "the part where he sang to you when you were scared. Those dads… they like it when you're scared. Thing is, that's the only part of your story that didn't sound like all the other bullshit you've been telling us."

"You knew exactly what this was when we walked down here. And those bruises on your arm, they come from a beating. So let me ask you, if you're dad's dead…"

"Then who gave 'em to you?" Clary finishes.

Lydia closes her eyes for a moment before admitting, "My mom."

I question, "Where is she?"

"Be glad you don't know."

"Is that a threat?" Clary demands.

"Where is she?" I repeat. "Where's your camp?" Lydia doesn't answer, and I take a step closer. "Why are you protecting her? Huh? You're safer here."

"With all those people up there that want me dead?" Lydia retorts, then nods towards me. "With her ready to string me up? This place isn't real. The world changed, and you're all acting like it's gonna change back. My mom walks 'cause that's what the dead do. It's their world, and we have to live in it. And what my mom does, she does for a reason."

"Your mom beats you because she loves you? That's bullshit. I love my sister, but I don't beat the shit out of her."

"It's not bullshit," Lydia protests. "When you stay soft, people die. My dad, he got soft. That night that Mama killed that man, he kept holding on to me, trying not to think of it. Every time they moved the sheet that gave us what little privacy we had in that building, I saw that man's body. Later that night, after everyone else was asleep, I got up. It was the first I had really been close to death, seen it—Daddy covered my eyes when the dead would kill someone before we holed up.

"I went up to him, looked under the sheet they covered him with. He didn't look like he was sleeping, the way they always say they do. He just looked dead, so I covered him back up and started to go back to bed. That was when he got up, when my back was turned. I heard the growling, saw him and screamed right as he was reaching for me. Daddy was there, pulled me away, but the man… he grabbed onto Daddy. I can still hear it sometimes, Daddy screaming while the man bit him. I saw it all before Mama grabbed me."

"You were just a little girl," I tell her. "It wasn't your fault."

"I was stupid. I deserved to die. But my dad was soft, and now he's the one that's dead."

"What was he supposed to do? Just watch his little girl get bit?"

Clary grabs onto my arm, and I glance back at her. "Sorry," I whisper to her.

Bites have always been a sensitive spot for Clary—they are for anyone, really. But Clary, she's seen too many people die from bites in front of her. Sam, Sophia, Jesse, Carl—and those are just the ones that I can immediately think of.

"When you can't bend, you break," Lydia says, eyeing Clary now, catching on that she doesn't bend as much as we think she does. "He broke. And you… you're cracking, starting to break."

"That's not true," Clary hisses.

"We're making the world better," I add. "We're building it back up again, changing it back."

"Yeah? You don't belong with these people, Daryl. Maybe you used to, but not anymore. You're hard, they're soft. She's soft. Just look at her! She's starting to break just 'cause my dad got bit!"

If there's one thing that Clary's not, it's soft. She's a survivor, we both are. And these people, I'll always belong with them, no matter how much time I spend outside the walls. "You don't know shit about us."

"So tell me."

"Go to hell," Clary snaps, following right beside me as we walk away from Lydia's cell.

"Hey! I told you what happened to me. Tell me what happened to you!"

We leave Lydia still calling after us as we reenter Hilltop, ignoring her and ignoring Henry sitting by the cellar door, waiting for us.

"You could've just asked me to help," Henry tells us. He gets up, running after us when we keep walking. "Hey! Daryl! Where are you going?"

"Girl's too messed up," I respond as Clary and I climb the stairs of Barrington. "She's a waste of time. She's Tara's problem now."

"What's gonna happen to her?"

"C'mon, Henry, put two and two together," Clary tells him, pausing on one of the steps below me. "Jesus is dead, her people killed Jesus. What do you think's gonna happen?"

"Did someone used to beat you up, too? You and Daryl both?" Finally, I turn to face him. "Once, I heard my dad ask my mom why she kept her hair so short. She said when it was long, her first husband would grab it when she tried to get away. He would pull it and slam her against the wall. So, one day… she just cut it all off so he couldn't. And I guess it took her this long to feel safe again.

Henry steps around Clary, climbing the stairs to face me head on. "Sometimes, you act like the type of guy that slams people against walls, but I don't think that's it."

Clary opens her mouth to protest, and I already know what's going to come out of it. How fucking dare you even think for one second that he beats the shit out of people after everything we've gone through? I hold up a hand, gesturing for her to be quiet for a moment as I look down at Henry.

"You shouldn't listen to people when they talk," I warn.

"Look, I know Lydia's people are bad, but that doesn't mean she's bad at all," Henry protests. "She's just scared. You can show her that there's nothing to be afraid of. You can do that. You both can."

"No," I say with a shake of my head.

Henry sighs, turning to Clary. "You know I'm right," he tries. "During the war, I remember you talking about promising people safety. I remember you defending people everyone else wanted dead. What I'm doing, you did it, too! You defended Alden the same way!"

"Don't you dare compare Alden to Lydia," Clary hisses. "It is not the same thing! It's not even close."

~Clary~

"Tara," I say as I spot Magna and Yumiko at the edge of the woods. "They're back. Ten o'clock."

Tara grabs the binoculars, looking in the direction I said they were. After looking for a moment, she says, "Connie and Kelly aren't there."

"What?"

"Take a look."

I take the binoculars Tara offers, finding that she's right. "Maybe they got hung up out there?"

"I hope that's all it is."

I nod in agreement, passing Tara's binoculars back to her as I go back to watching the road for signs of Alden and Luke. The guards allow Yumiko and Magna back in, and I glance towards Tara as Yumiko joins us on the watch platform. "So… what'd you find?" Tara questions.

"Nothing," Yumiko reports. "Look, it was wrong of us to leave. I just wished we'd realized that sooner. I should've—"

Yumiko cuts herself off as one of the guards calls for the others to open the gate, and Yumiko takes the binoculars, using them to look down the road. I can see Kelly walking between two of the guys that are on patrol, Connie lagging behind.

"My guard saw you sneak out last night," Tara tells her. "Wasn't taking any chances."

"Yumiko, we don't blame you," I add.

"We get why you did it. But the next time you want to challenge one of my decisions, just do me a favor and come talk to me about it, okay? I don't know if I'm doing the right thing here. But I do know I don't want any more people to die, and that includes you guys, too."

"So you really didn't find anything?" I question, turning towards Yumiko.

She shakes her head. "It was too dark, too dangerous. Only tracks we found were the ones from earlier."

"Did you run into any skins?"

"No, none, luckily."

"I think you might've spoken too soon on that," Tara says, lowering the binoculars before pointing. "Look."

At the far end of the cornfields, a group of walkers approaches. At first glance, they seem to be walkers complete with the rotting flesh. They don't have the stumbling gait, though. It's the skins.

Kelly turns back for Connie, but the two men that escort her grab her, dragging her inside the gates as everyone else scrambles for safety. Connie takes off into the cornfields, and she disappears from sight.

Tara turns, giving the signal for everyone to go on high alert. She shouts, "Daryl!"

Daryl runs to join us on the watch platform, Magna right behind him. The group of skins spread out as they approach, allowing an unmasked bald woman to take the lead.

"'By the pricking of my thumbs," I murmur, my heart beating faster with every step closer to our fence the bald woman takes, "something wicked this way comes.'"

"I am Alpha," she calls when she stops. "And we only want one thing from you. My daughter."