“What was that?” I ask.
Charles turns. “This is an important day.”
“I know.” I step over a fallen log. It’s picturesque but a sinister feeling tickles my spine as the distant hum of chatter wafts toward us. “People are talking. Can you hear that?”
“Close your eyes.”
“What? Why?” We’re the only two there among the trees. “Is this how everyone’s first hunt goes?”
He steps toward me. “My people have been waiting a long time for this day. Close your eyes.”
He stares at me, fingers fidgeting restlessly at his sides, and I ignore the nagging voice in my head. This is Charles. The man who took me in when my parents died, who has always kept me safe. So I shut my eyes, my other senses tuned, suddenly, to what’s around me. Charles wraps a hand around my wrist and guides me forward, trees brushing against my skin as I clamber through the bush, struggling not to stumble over loose rocks and roots that get in my way.
Despite the frigid air, a bead of sweat travels the line of my spine. Charles instructs me to lift my feet to avoid fallen branches, hand tightening around my wrist as a reminder to keep my eyes closed. And then we stop. “Can I open my eyes?”
Silence. A chill caresses the bare skin of my arms. Charles’s grip loosens until he isn’t touching me anymore and, for a brief moment, I think he’s left me alone as some sort of test. I open my eyes. The trees have thinned around a pond-like body of water, shrubs and dirt surrounding the edge. People linger at the edge of the trees. We are not alone.
“Charles?” My foot catches on a root and I fall backward, elbow stinging as it grazes the ground. Charles stands over me, the large machete in his hand raised to his shoulders. “What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, Milena.”
Peering past him, I see Cynthia standing at the front of the pack with a blank expression, a scowling Darius by her side. My stomach plummets as I scan the rest of my village standing by and watching. Something isn’t right. “What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry,” he says again, stepping forward. “But this must be done.”
“What must be done?”
He moves closer still. I try to push up but my foot gets caught and my head smacks against the dirt. I look at Darius, the memory of his cruel words and cold eyes jolting me. The ostracism, the judgmental looks, the isolation—it all clicks.
“Is this what you do to everyone on their first hunt?” I get up, ignoring the pounding in my head. “Is this why they come back so different? So stuck up? Do you torture them?”
“Our first hunt is when we learn the truth about you,” Darius says, spitting at the ground.
“Quiet, Darius,” Cynthia hisses.
“The truth?” I repeat. “What truth?”
“Enough talk.” Charles takes another threatening step toward me. “We’ve waited twenty years for this—I don’t want to waste another second.”
He lifts his arm and the machete shimmers like glass. I leap back. Nobody moves; everybody just stands and watches.
“What’ve you been waiting for? I don’t understand!”
“This moment.”
“What moment?”
His breath is ragged as he lifts his chin and rolls his shoulders back. Terror grips an iron fist around my heart and wrenches it out of my chest. I’ve known him all my life, but this side of Charles—uncontrolled and wild—I do not recognize.
“The moment you die.”
The trees spin. My legs are frozen, hands paralyzed at my sides as I wait for him to laugh, for the look on his face to turn less twisted, to hear the punch line to his joke. But it never comes.
He takes another step toward me, machete raised, and I leap sideways. Death strokes my arm as the blade breezes past. A scream escapes—strangled and hollow. There’s no time to think, no time to feel betrayed. I turn on my heel to get away but the villagers surround me on one side, and the pond circles me on the other, blocking my escape.
“Let me out!” I cry and shove against them. “Please! Let me out! He’s trying to kill me!”
Thump. Thump. Thump. Footsteps. One after the other. I turn just in time, the machete coming down a whisper from my left leg. Charles scowls in annoyance when I dart away. Over his shoulder, a ribbon of red—curls billowing in the wind, wide green eyes. Relief floods through me.
“Flo!” My voice is hoarse. Cynthia pushes me back when I try to reach her. “Flo! Help me!”
She averts her gaze to the ground and I almost drop and succumb to the threat of the machete. My very best friend, the only one who ever showed me kindness. The only person in this entire world who truly loved me. Or so I thought. I race in the other direction but Cynthia grips my arm and twists it back, her iron grip holding me tight, forcing me to stare at Charles who stands inches away with his machete. My cheeks are damp, a mixture of dirt and tears. There’s nowhere for me to go, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I’m trapped.
“Please. Why? I—I don’t—please, I—don’t let me—”
“You’re making this harder on yourself, girl,” Cynthia hisses.
Charles stands in front of me now, mossy eyes narrowed as he raises the machete. A sob rolls through my body in waves, rendering me incapable of forming coherent words. Cynthia lets me fall to my knees, drained. The sun bathes Charles in a bar of shimmering gold, like some sort of angel—a cruel contrast to reality. And despite my disorientation, my fear, my ultimate desire to simply lie back and stare at the sky, I don’t break from him, as if I can somehow change his mind, as if we can go back to the village and act like nothing has happened.
“I’m sorry, Milena.”
“Why are you doing this?”
His jaw tenses and he closes his eyes, lifts the machete.
Bang.
The weapon flies from Charles’s hands and clatters to the ground a few feet away. Flo screams. Charles reaches for the machete but the blade is yanked from his grasp. A figure stands in front of him, clothed in black, a hood pulled over their head so only their smile and a bit of white hair spilling out are revealed.
They raise the machete at Charles. In the shadow created by the hood, the figure’s eyes shimmer silver.
A creature of the night.
“Beast,” Charles hisses.
“Beast?” The voice is sweet and high-pitched, an enchanting laugh following. “Well, that’s ironic.”
Cynthia moves forward, toward the girl, but she’s too fast—in the blink of an eye, I’m yanked from the ground and across to the other side of the clearing, by the pond. She stands over me, swinging around and slashing the hunter coming for her with the machete before facing me.
“Run,” she says. “And don’t turn back.”
I don’t need to be told twice. Spinning directionless through the trees, my elbows scrape against bark and low branches tear strands of hair from my head. Adrenaline propels me, faster and faster, until the sounds of screaming and shouting are nothing but a distant echo between treetops. And when I can’t run anymore, I walk, stumble, crawl. But I don’t stop. Time passes in a blur.
Seconds, minutes, hours. I can’t think clearly; I can barely see.
Charles tried to kill me. Flo didn’t stop him. I have nowhere to go.
Warmth seeps from the forest as the sun dips lower. My legs should ache and the grazes on my knees and elbows should sting, but the excruciating pain of betrayal is overpowering.
Noises ring out—the howls. The wind carries them toward me until they come to a halt. I’m no longer alone.
The only announcement of their arrival is the slight drop in temperature. My fingers quiver as I half turn. The forest alights blue, brown, green, red, and silver. Shadows surround me, closing in. I sink to my knees in defeat. Someone steps through the group of wolves, a human. His black hair is shaved close to his head, muscles flexing beneath his skin—skin marked with burns. But it’s his eyes that are familiar—glowing a bright red.
This is the creature Charles tried
to torture, and he stands before me unrestrained. “Stand up,” he orders. He watches me wobble to my feet, mouth in a straight line. “Now walk.”
“What?”
“Move.”
I open my mouth to scream but he slaps a hand over my mouth, the other going around my neck. I am choking; his hand cuts off my airway. We’re the same height but I feel so small.
“You can do as I say and walk silently, or I can force you to listen to me.” His mouth presses to my ear. “Your choice.”
I do exactly as he says, my knees knocking together and my throat aching as I join the group of wolves traveling through the dead-quiet forest. I ran from my village right into the hands of monsters, but I’m alive.
Chapter Five
We walk for what feels like an eternity, each hour longer than the last. A thick blanket of cloud conceals any light from the moon, but my eyes adjusted to the darkness long ago. It’s the glacial air that stuns me, leaving me quivering in nothing but my thin clothes.
Nobody speaks. Nobody touches me. Nobody looks at me.
Three wolves lead the way, setting an almost impossible pace, and the creature we tortured lingers behind. I can’t see him but I know he’s there, a terrifying energy warning me not to turn around. The terrain is no longer flat, leaving me gasping for air as we climb hills and stumble down the other sides. My body threatens to shut down but fear keeps me moving toward the looming landscape ahead. I’ve stared at these mountains from my village every single day of my life. They were far away, distant shadows that rose like jagged teeth from the ground. But we head toward them and they grow in size until I can’t see anything beyond them anymore.
The wolves ahead come to a stop, turning their heads to look behind me. I tense in the silence as the man steps forward, eyes locked with one of the wolves. They stare for a while longer before he turns to me. “We’re here.” He takes my arm, grip a lot gentler than before, and ushers me forward. “Don’t make a sound.”
We step past the wolves and through the trees. It’s only when they begin to thin that I understand what he’s talking about.
Warm light stretches through the trees, the hum of life—laughter and music—vibrates toward us.
“Where have you taken me?”
“I told you to be quiet.”
We don’t move toward the light—the man directs me around it until we reach a vast stone wall that cuts us off from it. Thick vines crawl upward, towering far above the treetops where the stone reaches. It’s some sort of castle—like the ones in the picture books Flo and I would try to read when we were children.
The man pulls me to a wooden door. He releases my arm to shoulder the door but it only budges. I’m so entranced by the castle I forget my terror, trying to twist my head to catch the sights at a better angle. The man captures my attention by cracking the wooden door when he shoves it open, turning back to look at me.
He takes my arm again and pulls me behind him. It isn’t dark like I thought; lanterns are strung up along the plain stone walls, illuminating the towering arched ceilings and narrow halls leading off the sides. If it wasn’t such a large space with high ceilings,
I could almost believe I was back home in the tunnels.
“Took you guys long enough, I’ve been here for hours.”
The man, unalarmed, strolls toward a staircase and leans against the banister. “We didn’t all have the luxury of running, Cassia.”
She—Cassia—sits sideways on the banister of the stair, picking at her nails. She notices me looking and swings her legs to hop to the ground to walk closer. Her face is angular, sharp cheekbones and jawline framed by her sleek, collarbone-length hair. Her hooded, wide eyes flash silver. “You were there,” I say.
“You were there and you . . . they . . .”
“I saved your life.”
I want to disagree with her, to deny that my own people tried to kill me, but I can’t. “You’re one of—you’re—you’re—”
“A beast? A monster?” she suggests. “What else did they tell you about us, huh?”
Though she looks and talks like me, the way her eyes flashed when she stood over me with the machete reminds me that she isn’t human.
“What am I doing here?” I ask. “Are you going to hurt me, punish me for what we’ve done to you?”
“You’re safe, Milena.”
“How do you know my name?” No answer. The idea that I’m even sitting here in front of one of them is terrifying—the only thing that keeps me from running is the knowledge of what they might do to me if I tried to escape. “I—let me go. I don’t understand what’s happened but I . . . please let me go.”
“I saved your life.”
“You’ve killed so many of my people. You’ve murdered in cold blood.”
“You mean the very people who just tried to murder you?” the man says, pushing off the banister. “I’m the one your people tortured in cold blood, the one your leader impaled multiple times, who was tortured while you stood there and watched like it was all some sick game.”
“Eric,” Cassia hisses.
Eric lifts his lip in a snarl. “Doesn’t matter if she’s not one of them, she was raised with them.”
“She didn’t— doesn’t— know.”
“That’s no excuse,” he says, starting toward me. “She should be treated like we treat the rest of those hollowers.”
“Eric! ” Cassia grips his arm and yanks him back.
“Let me go!”
“Listen to me, dammit. Don’t touch her. You’re not thinking straight.”
He stares at me, hatred in his eyes. “You don’t belong here.
You’ll never belong here.” And then he turns around and disappears down the hall, accelerating my pounding heart.
“Sorry about him.” Cassia offers a sheepish smile. “He hasn’t exactly forgiven your people for . . . well, you know. I don’t blame him.”
Nothing makes sense. I don’t know where I am, why I’m here, why I’m not dead. “I don’t trust you.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“I know you don’t.” She sighs. “Look, I’m not going to hurt you, okay? Do you believe that?”
I want to trust her, and something tells me that I should. But I feel so disoriented—my reality is so distorted I can’t pick what’s real and what isn’t anymore. “All I know is that I’ve been taught my entire life that your kind are hell-bent on murdering anything that gets in their path, and now you stand in front of me looking just as human as me and I don’t understand.”
Cassia steps closer, holding her hands in front of her in surrender. “Will you follow me? I want to show you something.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Of course.” She nods up the stairs. “Come on, I won’t touch you, I swear.”
With nowhere else to go, I tentatively follow her up the staircase, legs aching in protest. At this point, I’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours, and the only thing keeping me conscious is the fear. The staircase is narrow, the stone walls maintaining their height the entire way up. We reach the next floor, and Cassia simply steps through the first wooden door.
This room is brighter, lit by lanterns, but also by the light filtering through the large window on the far wall. A large bed divides the room, taking up much more room than a bed should. High arches tumble to the floor. Cassia moves to touch my arm.
“Stay back,” I warn, as if I could hurt her. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Turn around, look out the window.”
Cautiously, I angle myself to peer out the window, squinting to adjust to the brightness. The view is breathtaking. I’ve never seen anything like it. We’re one floor above the ground, but it’s enough to see the village stretched out below. Unlike the place where I come from, this is entirely aboveground, the clearing home to vast open spaces. Wooden shacks, like our kitchen, litter the landscape, lined up to create narrow
streets with people bustling through them, wearing colorful clothes, and ducking in and out of their homes. And the trees at the edge of town stretch on for miles, only thinning once they reach the base of the mountain.
Putting my hand on the window ledge and leaning out, I momentarily forget my current situation. I want to store everything in my memory. “Many of those people, they’re like you,”
Cassia says.
“Imprisoned?”
“No, and you’re not either. They’re human. They’re safe here, we coexist.
“But you kill humans.”
“No, we don’t.”
“I’ve seen it. Fifteen of my people were murdered.”
“I’m not denying that. I’m saying we don’t kill humans.”
I turn and face her. “That can’t be true.”
“It is.” I turn at the sound of a familiar intruder. He stands in the doorway, an inch ahead of Eric, arms by his side. I tremble in his presence—the one who rules the night. This man makes Eric seem amicable. I have so many questions to ask—why he didn’t kill me, why they don’t look like beasts, if it’s by his order that I’m kept here. But only one question comes out.
“What’re you saying?”
“I’m saying”—he enters the room, eyes flashing amber—“the people you grew up with are not human.”
My chest aches like I’ve been struck. “What?”
“They’re hollowers,” he says. “Your entire life you’ve been led to believe that we kill humans, but it’s them. They’re the ones killing. We’re trying to protect humans.”
“No. You’re crazy.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“You can’t be. I would’ve known because they would’ve said—”
“They lied to you,” Eric says. “Get over it.”
“Why should I believe anything you say?” I ask.
“It wouldn’t be the first thing they lied to you about, would it?” he says in reply.
I know he’s right, and deep down, I believe him. My entire life, I’ve been led to believe that the creatures of the night were nothing but animals, but here three of them stand, looking as human as me. But I don’t want to believe him. Because if I do, that means accepting that my entire life has been a lie, that I’ve been groomed and raised only to be killed by the very person I trusted more than anyone else.
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