Creatures of the Night

by Grace Collins

  “Let him go or I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” He laughs because he can see right through me.

  “I don’t need anything from you anymore. You should leave.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Cynthia will be here soon with the others.” He steps over to the table, turning so his back faces me. “If you want to live, you need to go.”

  The dagger in my hand feels like a block of concrete, the cold hilt like ice against my skin. It would be so easy for me to put it into his back, to push the sharp end beneath his ribs and angle it toward his heart as Eric taught me. But I feel a wave of shame.

  He’s watched me cry over a squashed snail. Charles only stands that way because he knows I won’t hurt him. “I’m not leaving without Elias.”

  “What?” He spins to face me. “Go. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

  “You’re hurting me if you take him.”

  With his lips in a twisted scowl, he stares at me in disgust.

  “You care about him?”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “He has creature blood.”

  “They’re not the monsters you make them out to be.”

  “They’re animals.”

  “And you’re a murderer,” I say. “I think it’s time you took a look in the mirror, Charles.”

  He lifts his chin. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know exactly what it means.”

  He takes slow and calculated steps forward. I hold my breath, the table digging into my lower back when he stops in front of me. He’s so close I have to crane my neck up to look at him.

  There’s a dark shadow on his jaw and a mixture of sweat and dirt across his brow. He looks so familiar but, at the same time, like someone I never knew.

  A small dagger dangles from his fingers, similar to the one I have clutched behind my back. But even as I gaze deep into his eyes, I don’t see the monster that visits me in my nightmares. I don’t see the man who shouted at me when I disobeyed him or the one who’s spent the last few weeks trying to kill me. I see the man who once pinned my drawings in his office, and my chest aches. It’s so hard to see the bad in someone when you so desperately want to see the good.

  “Leave. Now.”

  I shake my head, refusing to break eye contact. “No.”

  The door swings open. “I can’t find her, she got too—” Cynthia stops. “You found her.”

  Charles doesn’t look at the doorway, his eyes remain on me.

  I don’t know what to do. My head screams at me to run but my heart keeps my feet in place. Elias didn’t care why they wanted me; he didn’t care that he didn’t know me. He promised he wouldn’t let them have me and now I have to do the same. I grip the dagger tighter behind me, the muscles in my back aching from tension.

  “What are you doing?” Cynthia yells at Charles when he doesn’t move. “Grab her!”

  He steps forward, his hand wrapping around my wrist. He presses his mouth against my ear. “Go. Run and don’t turn back.”

  His eyes are desperate. “Please go, Milena. Get out of here.”

  I falter, for a second actually considering it. But I shake the thought from my mind, twist my arm from his grip, and press my dagger against his throat instead. “I said no. I’m not leaving without Elias.”

  “Cynthia, do it,” Charles says.

  “What?”

  “The potio somnum.” Charles doesn’t take his eyes off me, his hands raised high in the air while he talks. “Do it. Now.”

  “Now?” The air between them is thick with tension; Cynthia looks nervous. “But if we—”

  “I said do it!” he yells.

  The what?

  “We can’t!”

  “She won’t leave while his heart is still beating!”

  “What are you talking about?” I shout, pressing the dagger tighter against his throat. “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t give a damn if she doesn’t leave,” Cynthia snarls. “I want her dead!”

  Charles scowls. “I’ll do it myself.”

  Before I can even take a breath, he spins around and breaks away from my grip. I stumble forward in his absence as he picks up the syringe on the table and launches himself at Elias. “Don’t touch him!”

  “Get out of my way, Milena.”

  “No—”

  He whacks my stomach and sends me flying backward. I hit the wall with a thump, the world spinning around me as I try to regain my breath and push myself to my feet. An agonizing roar resonates through the walls, and Elias’s back arches off the table as Charles stabs the syringe into his arm. I fly forward, thrusting my knife into Charles’s back. He staggers backward, the now-empty syringe clattering to the floor feet away from where he falls. My scream chokes as he turns to face me, his eyes wide and mouth agape.

  “You—” His words choke halfway in his throat. “—you stabbed me.”

  I watch in horror, my knife in his back and his blood on my hands. Charles gurgles, his hands reaching to his back and scratching at his skin. I stabbed him. I stabbed him. He doesn’t look away from me and it’s paralyzing, the only part of my body capable of movement are my eyes, and when they shift to the figure on the table, my heart stops. Elias isn’t struggling anymore. I stumble over and press against his chest. His skin feels cold, his arms limp.

  “What did you do?” I look at Cynthia. “What did you do?”

  “You’re too late.”

  “No.” I press my fingers to his neck, trying to find a pulse.

  “No, no, no, no, no. You need him. You wouldn’t kill him, you wouldn’t.”

  “I didn’t. But I’ll kill you.”

  She soars toward me and wraps her arms around me with a crushing pressure. I cry out. She grabs my arm and thrusts her dagger into my upper shoulder. White blurs my vision. Cynthia twists me so I’m pressed against her chest and her mouth is against my ear. Charles lies on the floor, his body twitching as he chokes on his own blood, and Elias’s arms hang limply off the table. Her mouth presses against my ear. “For Darius.”

  Her blade presses against my throat, ice cold. I sink my teeth into the hand covering my mouth so hard blood fills my mouth, the bitter taste making me gag. Cynthia gasps, her grip loosening on me. I duck beneath her arms and stumble backward, blood trailing from the wound on my shoulder down to my wrist. Looking around for something to defend myself, I come up empty. My dagger is in Charles’s back and the table filled with needles is behind Cynthia. I reach out and wrap my hand around the pot hanging on the wall instead, then hold it toward her.

  “Don’t come any closer.”

  She scowls at me. Before she can take another step, the front door bursts open. “Milena!” It’s Bastian. Panic flashes through Cynthia’s eyes. She looks at me before noticing Bastian in the doorway. Before Bastian can get any closer, she steps toward the back door.

  “This isn’t over, Milena.” She kicks the back door open and escapes the room.

  “Go after her!” Bastian yells as I sink to the floor. Movement flashes around me like a light, but I can’t focus. Cassia limps through the doorway, her arm thrown over Aliyah’s shoulder.

  Her eyes fill with relief when they land on me, but then they shift to Elias, and the look in her eyes makes me choke on air.

  “Elias?” She limps over to him and shakes his shoulder, but he doesn’t move. “Elias!” She presses her head against his chest.

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he’s unconscious. Cassia lets out an agonizing howl and the hope is extinguished. “No! ” She pounds against his chest with her fist. “Dammit, wake up!” Aliyah steps forward and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Wake up! Wake up!”

  I lie discarded against the wall, Charles’s blood pooling at my feet and staining the bottom of my pants. Everything is fuzzy but Elias is clear. His arms hang limply off the table. His skin doesn’t look so golden anymore. A shadow looms over me as Bastian steps closer, kneeling down so he’s at my eye level.
But I can’t look at him; all I see is Cassia, relentlessly hammering against Elias’s chest. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down.

  “Milena?” Bastian shakes me by my shoulders. “What happened?”

  I open my mouth but no words come out. Bastian has already forgotten me, moving over to Cassia to grab her arms. She screams when he tries to drag her away from Elias. I stare at Charles on the floor. He’s dead now, but his eyes are open, his expression vacant as he looks toward me, and a hollowness takes over my chest. Al his life, he saw the shifters as the monsters when he was the one who was wrong all along, and he died never knowing his mistake.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When somebody died in my village, the hunters would take the body into the forest at sunrise and return before sunset.

  We would sometimes have memorial services to commemorate multiple of the fallen, but we never gathered around the bodies like some sort of shrine. That idea is so confronting. Maybe that’s why I can’t bring myself to attend Elias’s funeral.

  The cool stone of the windowsill presses against my back as I peer out the window. I hug my legs tightly against my chest and press my forehead against the glass, staring at the scene below. I’m several hundred feet away, but I don’t feel far enough.

  Everything is over. Cynthia got away, Charles is dead, and we’re back at the castle. But the hollowness in my chest is stronger than the relief; an ocean of regret and grief surrounds me. And nobody ever taught me how to swim.

  Crowds gather around the wooden casket below. It’s a cluster of dark clothes and hanging heads, a stark contrast to the euphoria and joy of the last village event in that clearing. Music wafts through the thin glass like a haunting melody. My breath fogs the icy edges of the glass. But even in my thin camisole, I don’t feel cold. It’s been two days since I killed Charles. Two days since Cynthia got away. Two days since Elias’s heart stopped beating. Two days since Elias died.

  I barely remember the journey back. I don’t know how I got back—how any of us did. The last thing I remember is lying on the floor of the kitchen shack with Charles’s blood on my hands and Cassia’s screams rattling inside my head. I woke up to an unfamiliar woman with an unfamiliar voice and, for a moment, it was all a bad dream. I didn’t kill the man who raised me.

  Cynthia didn’t get away. Elias wasn’t dead. But the nightmare didn’t end when I woke up.

  There’s a knock on the door, two firm raps that make me twist my head sideways. Eric leans against the door frame, red eyes finding mine. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” He shuffles closer, moving to stand behind me. “How’s your chest?” I ask.

  “It’s healing.”

  “That’s good.” Cassia’s at the funeral, her head in her hands as she kneels in front of the casket. My eyes sting and I force myself to look away, noting the red rims around Eric’s eyes. “You’re not going to the funeral?”

  “I already said my good-byes. And you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You haven’t left your room since we got back,” he says. “You don’t want to say anything?”

  “I don’t have anything to say.” The lie tastes like acid in my mouth, burning all the way down to my stomach. I was there in his last moments. I was there when Charles injected that liquid into his bloodstream and when his hands hung limply from the table. And yet, I didn’t get to say good-bye. I lay on the floor and watched as Cassia pounded against his chest, rocked him in her arms, begged for him to open his eyes. “How’s Cassia?”

  “How do you think?”

  There’s still a part of me that wants to hate her, to blame her for this entire mess, but I know that isn’t fair. I can’t hate her for what she did. Hate is an ugly emotion, and it exhausts me. If I’d forgiven Flo for what she did, maybe she wouldn’t have died.

  Maybe her blood wouldn’t be on my hands and maybe my chest wouldn’t feel as twisted as it does.

  The streets outside have been just as dead as the castle, until now. The casket sat alone in the village, flowers scattered around it and handwritten notes from children tucked safely within the foliage. “Are they going to bury him?”

  He nods. “In the mountains, with Ana.”

  “Will you go with them?”

  “I won’t leave him to be buried by people who barely knew him. Even if he is dead.”

  I flinch, pulling my legs tighter to my chest. “You don’t have to say it like that.”

  “Say what? That he’s dead?”

  I shrug and stare out the window. The man by the casket is lifting the bolts, the crowd gathering closer.

  “Well, he is dead, Milena.”

  “I know, you just, you don’t have to be so blunt about it.”

  “What? So you can pretend that he’s not?”

  “I’m not pretending.”

  “Yeah, you are, and you have to get over it. Elias is dead and he’s not coming back. You can sit there feeling sorry for yourself or you can get up, put a brave face on, and get ready. Because even though you killed Charles, this isn’t over. The hollowers got his blood—this is only just the beginning.”

  “What is wrong with you? Look, you can go talk to a stupid casket and Cassia can mope like a child and I won’t judge you, so you have no place to talk to me like that.”

  “You can scoff at Cassia all you like. But at least she’s not pretending it didn’t happen.”

  “I said I’m not pretending.”

  “Say it then. Elias is dead.”

  “This is stupid.”

  “If it’s stupid then it should be easy. Say it. Elias is dead.”

  I unwind my arms from my legs and walk to the door, opening it for him. The quick movement sends a rush of dizziness to my head. “Just leave me alone.”

  “No.”

  “No? Are you kidding me?”

  He steps toward me. “If you don’t say good-bye, you’re going to regret it.”

  “You don’t know anything, Eric.” If he’s not going to leave, I will.

  “I know you care about him. Maybe love him, even.” I pause in the doorway, my pulse racing. “And I think he loved you, too, you know.” He touches my shoulder, the warmth a stark contrast to the ice in my veins. “He would’ve wanted you to know that.”

  All I ever wanted was to be loved unconditionally. But now, I’m not sure I truly understood it at all. I thought I loved Charles, but I was running a marathon that never ended, striving for an approval that I would never get. How can I know what love feels like when the version in my head is twisted? All I know is that after a lifetime of choking on smoke, Elias made me feel like I could take a breath of air. So maybe I do love him, but that doesn’t change anything. Love never did me any good.

  “If you don’t say good-bye, you’ll never forgive yourself.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. The door to the staircase bursts open and Cassia flies out. Her swollen eyes are on us, hair scattered with leaves. “Eric! Milena! You’ve got to come down.”

  Eric tenses behind me. “I told you I wasn’t coming to the funeral.”

  “They opened the casket, everyone is—”

  “I’m going back to my room.” I turn away.

  “Wait!” She grabs my arm to spin me around.

  “Let me go, Cassia.”

  “The body—”

  “I said I don’t want to see it. What is wrong with you two? I just want to be alone!”

  “Milena!” She grabs my shoulders and shakes me. “Listen to me!”

  Her eyes burn into mine. When I look at her, I see the cabin.

  I see his limp body and hear her shrill screams, and it makes my heart ache. But there’s something buried within the silver, something that keeps me from slapping her across the face and turning around.

  “Cassia?” Eric steps forward. “What’s going on?”

  “It isn’t him.”

  My blood goes cold. “What?”

  “They opened the casket so that we could leave our notes to bury with him
and he . . . it’s not him.”

  Eric disappears down the hallway in a blur, and after a few moments, I follow, my head spinning as I stumble down the staircase and burst outside. The icy air hits the back of my throat but I push forward to the clearing where the funeral is, pulling to a stop inches away from the crowd. Eric’s already at the front, standing over the open casket with his back to me. Fear and doubt crawl in and I can’t seem to move forward. The crowd murmurs among themselves, parting for me. The walk is painstakingly slow, mere feet feeling like miles, my gaze glued to the coffin.

  I reach the pedestal, staring at Eric’s back. He turns his head to face me, his once dull eyes glowing like a lamp. He nods. My teeth pierce my lip as I lean over the casket. I expect dark hair, tanned skin, golden eyes. I expect to feel a punch to the gut, a twisting in my chest. But I get green, gray, and white. My stomach tightens with recognition as I take in the blood staining the bare chest—a painful reminder of what I did. Charles.

  Something else swirls at my chest. Hope. A ray of light in a world that was beginning to feel so dark. “He’s not there.” But how?

  “The casket has been in the village since we got here,” Eric says. “Nobody has been guarding it, nobody has been guarding the village. They could’ve . . .”

  I know what he’s thinking—it’s what we’re all thinking. The hollowers switched the bodies. And even though the thought makes my stomach twist, it means something else too. Why would the hollowers come back for a dead body? They wouldn’t.

  “That means . . .”

  Eric’s bottom lip wavers. “He’s alive.”

  I turn to face the crowd, my disbelief reflected in the faces that stare back at me. “What do we do?”

  “What Elias would do for us.” He nods, a breath of air escaping his chest. “We go and find him.”

  His eyes fall shut as he faces the sky. I do the same, following his gaze to the flock of birds dipping through the pomegranate sky like drops of black paint.

  In such a short time, so much has changed. Twenty years old.

  I thought by the time I reached this age I’d have been on my first hunt. I thought that I’d fit in with the hunters, be best friends with Flo, finally be accepted by Charles. I couldn’t have been more wrong.