Creatures of the Night

by Grace Collins

  “You really think you can get out of this? Stick with the deal, creature.”

  Stick with the deal. The shifters made a deal.

  “I told you, I didn’t make any damn deals! Get out of here before it’s too late.”

  The woman frowns. “You can’t kill all of us.”

  “Maybe not.” A wicked smile lights Eric’s face. “But I can sure kill you.” He moves then, and is halfway across the clearing, knife raised, when somebody steps in his path and he skids to a stop, so startled he loses his balance and topples over.

  “Eric, stop!” She stands between Eric and the hollowers. Cassia.

  Eric pushes up again, a growl reverberating through his chest.

  “Cassia, get out of the way.”

  She steps forward, hands in front of her body. Shadows wrap around her like an embrace. “I can’t.”

  I feel the knife before I see it, a sharp pain blossoming in my chest as her eyes meet mine. Connections form: Cassia went on ahead, took Flo with her. She wanted to split up. The hollowers made a deal with a shifter. My knees buckle, the tree behind me the only thing keeping me steady. But I don’t look away from her. And for the first time since meeting her, tears flow in a steady stream down her cheeks. I should feel something—the warmth of the blood against my skin, the stinging wrist. But the only thing I feel is betrayal.

  “Cassia.” Eric steps back in shock. “Cassia, what have you done?”

  “I’m sorry.” A sob echoes through her. “I’m sorry, Milena. I’m so sorry.”

  My entire body trembles. The hollowers fade into the background, the shadows of the forest crawling toward me, scratching at my brain. It’s just me and Cassia in the clearing, a knife in her hand and a stab wound in my back. “How could you?”

  Cassia flinches. “I’m sorry.”

  I want to believe her but actions have spoken louder than anything she could say. “You have to run.” Eric starts toward me, reaching out. “Milena, go—”

  His eyes roll to the back of his head before he falls over, a hollower standing over him holding a rock stained with Eric’s blood. “Stop it!” Cassia leaps in front of Eric to catch him before he hits the ground. “You agreed you wouldn’t hurt him!”

  “Relax, he’s still breathing,” the woman says. “You really think he would’ve let us take the girl?”

  Cassia falls silent and holds herself. I take small steps back, eyes on Cassia as I try to comprehend what she’s done. Eric wanted me to run, but as I look around, figures stand in a circle around me, lining the perimeter in dark shapes. There’s nowhere for me to go.

  “No point in running, wisper.” The woman notices me peering around. “You’re completely surrounded.”

  She nods at Cassia. “Grab her.”

  “But—”

  “We had a deal. You’re the only one she won’t try to kill.”

  Cassia reluctantly approaches me, hands stretched out. I hate that the woman is right, that Cassia walking toward me now is more frightening than any hollower. My hands shake uncontrollably, my dagger pointed at her chest. “Don’t, Cassia.” I move away.

  “Please. It’s not too late.” Her face scrunches up, tears cascading as she gasps for air. But she doesn’t stop moving. “Please.”

  She grabs my wrists. Her hands are cold. It takes nothing for her to disarm me; my body weakened, disorientated. With a flick of her wrist, my dagger falls to the ground and my knees buckle. Once again, the betrayal of someone close to me has stripped me of any fighting ability I thought I had. She pulls me so close our noses nearly touch. I try to pull away, refusing to look at her, but she holds me in place, glassy eyes meeting mine.

  Her breath brushes across my face, eyes rimmed red. She whispers, “Don’t forget the dagger in your boot.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I’m sorry.” Tears trickle down her cheeks. It’s only when my wrists tremble that I realize she’s shaking as much as I am. “I have to protect him.”

  With what strength I can muster, I bring my arms down toward my knees in an attempt to break from her hold. But before I can do anything, her fist flies toward my face and everything goes black.

  ~

  A dull pain throbs in the back of my head. I roll over, bones cracking against the hard floor I lie upon as I try to open my eyes. Images immediately come to mind: wandering through the forest with Eric, coming across the hollowers, Cassia stopping Eric from hurting them.

  Cassia. I sit up so fast my head spins. Pain flourishes in my wrists as I try to pull them apart, but both my ankles and my hands are restrained by thick rope. I groan, bones aching as I roll over. But opening my eyes does nothing. The room is dark, the ground beneath me like ice, and somewhere down the hall water drips methodically against an iron pipe. There’s only one place this could be. The tunnels where I grew up.

  I cough into the silence and struggle frantically against the restraints.

  “Hello? Is someone there?”

  I hesitate, peering around in the darkness, trying to locate the voice. My vision is blurred, head still spinning as I adjust to the deep abyss. “I’m here.”

  “You’ve got to help me,” they say, “I’m stuck, and the chains are silver and I’m so tired.”

  “Are you a shifter?” I try to sit up properly but my hands and ankles are tied together, which makes it difficult. “Did the hollowers bring you here?”

  “Yes.”

  The ache in my head worsens as I try to sort through my thoughts. Fear and paranoia sit at the forefront, but betrayal lurks closely behind. Cassia gave me to the hollowers. And the worst part is that I understand why she did it.

  “Where are you? I can’t see you.”

  A body presses against mine. I blink, my eyes wide as he blurs into view—a scrawny body littered with blood and raw skin.

  Chains weave around his limbs, the skin beneath angry with blood. My stomach flops; he can’t be older than thirteen.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask, awkwardly maneuvering myself across the floor without using my hands or feet.

  “I don’t remember. Are you the one they keep talking about?

  The wisper?”

  I’m not a wisper. I’m just a regular human mistaken for someone more important—mistaken for Elias. But I keep my lips pressed tightly together. Cassia betrayed me to protect the one she cares for, and I’m not about to out Elias to anyone else. I want to protect him too. The longer I look around the more I can make out. We’re where Eric was held, deep in the tunnels.

  But being locked away here isn’t all bad; I know how to get out.

  I try to roll myself over to get closer to the boy, but my elbows clank painfully against the floor.

  “We have to get out of here.”

  “If you’re a wisper, can’t you use your gift to save us?”

  We’re both tied up. I’m too weak to escape and he’s wrapped in silver. “Can you shift?”

  “What?”

  “I need you to shift. I’m tied with ropes, maybe you can tear them with your teeth.”

  “I can’t,” he stammers. “These chains are wrapped around me.”

  “I know it hurts,” I say, trying to sound more sympathetic.

  “But if you can somehow shift enough to tear these, I can help get those chains off you. It’s our only chance of getting out of here.”

  His sob echoes around us. “I’m only fifteen. I haven’t shifted before.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing the throbbing in my head would subside. There’s so much going on it’s hard to think. I was shaken up enough from Flo’s arrival, and the knowledge that Eric and Elias kept hidden, but Cassia’s betrayal put a greater spin on things. Flo and Cassia, the two people I’d known to be my friends both betrayed me. Aside from Elias, Cassia was the only one I could trust, the only one who didn’t make me feel like a burden.

  If the hollowers sacrifice me, nothing will happen because I’m not who they think I am. The hollowers w
on’t become immortal, the sacrifice won’t work, and they won’t know why. Everyone will be safe from this, I’ll be dead, and the hollowers won’t have any incentive to keep targeting the shifters. It makes sense, but I know that isn’t why she did it. Cassia doesn’t want me to die. But when it came down to it, it was a choice between me and Elias.

  Cassia chose Elias, and I can’t blame her because I would’ve done the same. But that doesn’t make it easier.

  “What was that?” The shifter’s low voice brings me from my thoughts. “Hey, did you hear that? Someone’s coming.”

  The pattering of footsteps makes me freeze. They tap against the floor like clockwork, echoing louder and louder in the tunnels. Anticipation crawls through me, and I drag myself across the ground, toward the shifter. Up close, he looks even worse: dark circles linger beneath his eyes and his black hair is clumped with grease. He’s shirtless, the chains wrapped around him surrounded by red, and his ribs poking through his skin.

  “They’re coming,” he whispers. “They’re going to kill us!”

  I want to be brave. I want to reach out and touch him, as if I could somehow make him feel safer through an embrace, but my arms are still bound, and I can’t move. So I press myself against him, relieved that his skin still burns hot. We’re so close I can feel him shaking. “I’m scared,” the boy whispers.

  He’s just a kid, an innocent thrown into this mess because of me. I want to tell him that it’ll be okay, that we’ll make it out of this, but I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep.

  The footsteps stop, and from where I lie, I can see two pairs of feet standing before us. I swallow, refusing to lift my eyes.

  “I see you’ve made friends. How nice.” The voice makes my stomach curl. Any bravery I’d bundled up inside dwindles away.

  It’s the voice that’s haunted my nightmares since the day he stood over me with a machete. And even though I knew this day was inevitable, I’m entirely unprepared.

  “You’re not even going to look at your guardian?”

  I do. Though it hasn’t been that long, I expected him to look different now. In my nightmares, his eyes are red, and his smile twisted; he looks more sinister. Now, he looks the way he did when he stood over me that day in the forest. Like Charles. It would’ve been easier if he looked like the monster he’d become in my head.

  “You’re not my guardian. You made that perfectly clear when you tried to drain me of blood.”

  “And here I was thinking you’d be happy to see me.”

  The shifter presses closer to me. That’s when I realize I’m the one who’s shaking, not him. “How could you?” I ask. “How could you do this?”

  “You know.”

  “Because you’re selfish. You want to be powerful and you were willing to ruin my life to do that.”

  “I’m not selfish.”

  “Maybe you’re delusional, then.”

  “Watch your mouth,” he snaps. “I thought I taught you to be more obedient than this.”

  “I should’ve stopped listening to you a long time ago. You were never kind to me.”

  “Would you have preferred that?” he demands, taking a threatening step closer. “Would it have made it better if I’d treated you like my own daughter? Would that have made this easier for you?” I know he’s right, and it hurts. The only kindness Charles ever gave me was not pretending to love me. “Exactly,” he says when I don’t answer. “I made a choice. It was better for both of us that you didn’t get at ached to me.”

  My chest aches for something I never had, a family I always wanted. He’s wrong about that. I was attached to him, too much so—his lack of love made me strive for his approval. Now, all that’s left are fragments of a broken, one-sided relationship.

  “You chose yourself over me.”

  “No,” he says. “I chose between you and the fate of my people.

  Hollowers are dying out, Milena. Without the sacrifice, soon we’d be just like your species—extinct.”

  And the worst thing is, it doesn’t make it right, but it makes sense. Betrayal hurts. It burns deeper, though, when you start to wonder if you would’ve done the same thing. “I hate you.”

  “No, you don’t.” He kneels so that we’re eye level. “You still love me. You never stopped.”

  He stares at me, his eyes empty of emotion while I fall apart right in front of him. I hate that he’s right, I despise that I spent my entire life looking up to him, loving him, wishing he would notice me. That my emotions can’t be flicked off like a switch.

  I hate that, deep down, there’s still a part of me that wishes he would untie my hands, scoop me up in his arms, and brush my hair from my face like a good father would do. I squeeze my eyes shut, sending tears down my cheeks. “All I ever wanted was for you to love me.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t give that to you.”

  Charles always called me weak, and I’m proving him right.

  “Did you just come down here to antagonize me then?”

  “No, I came to apologize.” He rises to his feet so that I can only see his knees. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry this is what it has come to.”

  “If you were sorry, you wouldn’t do this.”

  “Being a leader means making hard decisions, Milena.

  Sometimes, you have to choose the majority over an individual.

  I’m sorry you had to be that individual, but I don’t regret anything that I’ve done. I’m doing the right thing by my people, and I won’t apologize for that.”

  Charles being here hurts more than I imagined. It would have been easier if he’d been hateful, if he’d spat on me and laughed in my face. But he apologized. He said he wished it wasn’t me. For some reason, that makes it sting so much more.

  Charles has known me my entire life, sort of adopted me, and still chose them over me. Elias, who’s barely known me for weeks, has treated me as an equal, like one of his own. And even in the face of death, he continues to protect me. Does that make him a bad leader or a good one? “I don’t want to see you anymore.”

  Charles doesn’t leave right away; the tunnel falls into silence as he stands there staring at me. “You control fire, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Fire, it’s your gift.” He takes a step back, eyes narrowing. “We came across the remains of fire just outside the village the other day, and other hunters we’ve come across in the forest are nothing but ash. You burned them, didn’t you?”

  They know. They know. And when he asks me this, for a brief moment I understand what Cassia did. If they find out the truth, not only will they have the opportunity to actually become immortal, but Elias will die.

  “Yes.” I meet his stare. “It was me.”

  “I’ll see you at the ceremony, Milena.” He turns on his heel and thumps down the tunnel, whistling as he walks. The machete Charles used to nearly kill me has nothing on the dagger he just twisted into me. In another world, I might’ve been on their side—in another world, I might’ve wanted me dead too.

  “Milena?” The shifter reaches for me. “Is that true? What he said, about the fire?”

  No one can know about Elias. “Yes.”

  “Can’t you free us? Can’t you burn something?”

  “No.” My voice is flat and hopeless.

  He’s silent for a few moments. Then: “What if we made a dagger from the—”

  A dagger. Keep a dagger in your boot.

  “What’s your name?”

  “What?”

  “What’s your name?” I repeat.

  “George.”

  “George, I’m going to twist my body around. I need you to reach into my boot.”

  “What? Why?”

  “There’s a dagger in there. Once you pull it out, cut my hands free and I can do the rest.”

  He doesn’t need to be told twice. As soon as I’ve maneuvered myself along the ground with my feet toward him, he slips his fingers into my boot and brushes against my ankle
, retrieving the dagger from its cover and holding the glinting metal in front of himself. And then he slices the ropes binding my hands and I’m free.

  My bones ache in protest when I leap to my feet, but I push the pain away. Maybe we’re going to die; maybe we’ll be drained of blood and sacrificed to the hollowers. But it isn’t going to be today, not if I have anything to do with it.

  ~

  George is too slow. Even after I’ve untangled the chains from his body, he moves so slowly I could crawl and still beat him. I wrap his arm over my shoulder and put mine around his waist, ignoring the moaning of my own bones.

  His ribs are so close to his skin they stab at my hands. Nausea rises in me at the way his bones move beneath his skin, like the smallest wrong move and they’ll break through to the surface.

  “How do you know where to go?” George asks as I pull him forward.

  We move slowly through the dark halls, listening carefully for any footsteps or chatter that might alert us to people coming toward us. But so far, it’s only me, George, and the distant echo of water dripping from pipes onto stone. “I used to live here,” I say as we creep around a corner.

  “You lived here? With the hollowers?”

  I pause when something clatters down the hall. “Did you hear that?”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  I should trust him; he’s a shifter, he has better senses than I do, but doubt swirls in me. I was so sure I heard a bang, a movement of some sort around the corner. What if the silver dulled his senses? What if he’s too weak to hear things as he normally would?

  “Are you sure? I could’ve sworn I heard—”

  We skid around the corner. We’re not alone. Flo stands frozen in the hall, her mouth half open, red hair tangled in knots atop her head and a tray of food in her hands.

  “You’re supposed to be chained up,” she says.

  “Does that disappoint you? Were you coming down there to laugh in my face about how you tricked me again?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You really expect me to believe you had nothing to do with Cassia making that deal? You must think I’m stupid.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it, I swear.” She shakes her head and steps forward. “She took me from the cell and told me she was taking me home.”