Our Dark Duet

by Victoria Schwab

  Kate arched a brow, fingers drifting toward the taser at her belt. “That so?”

  He took another step toward her. “Think of all the bad things that could happen.”

  “You planning to protect me?”

  The man gave a weak chuckle and licked his lips. “No.”

  He lunged for her arm, and when Kate took a single swift step back, he stumbled, losing his balance. She caught him by the throat and slammed him into the wall. He slid down the bricks with a groan, but there was no time to celebrate.

  Because just then, someone screamed.

  The sound hit Kate in the stomach and she spun, already moving toward the source as a second voice joined in, and a third.

  She sprinted down the block and skidded around the corner, expecting to find a Heart Eater amid a crowd of people. But the street was empty, and the screams were coming from inside a restaurant. Kate slammed to a stop as a line of blood streaked across the front window. The door hung open and someone was crawling forward on hands and knees, while others slumped on tables. At the back of the room she saw a man, holding what looked like a pair of kitchen knives. The knives were slick with blood, and his eyes shone strangely, and he was smiling—not a deranged grin, but something calm, almost peaceful, which made the whole scene so much worse.

  Kate touched her ear. “Call the police.”

  “What?” asked Teo. “What’s going—”

  Her voice was shaking. “One Sixteen South Marks.”

  A body tumbled back into the glass, leaving a red streak in its wake. The man with the knives vanished into the kitchen.

  “Kate, are you—”

  “Now.”

  The air smelled like blood and panic as she forced herself toward the restaurant, toward the massacre, toward the chaos.

  And there, in the middle of it all, so still she almost didn’t see it, stood a monster.

  Not a Heart Eater, but something else, something shaped more or less like a person, at least around the edges, but made entirely of shadow. It stood, watching the scene unfold with a serenity that matched the killer’s, and as it watched, it seemed to grow more solid, more real, details etching themselves across the blank canvas of its skin.

  “Hey!” she called out.

  The monster twitched at the sound of her voice and turned toward her, revealing the edge of a silver eye just as sirens came blaring down the street. Kate spun around as the red-and-blue strobes of police cars swung around the corner, barreling past her toward the restaurant, where the screams had given way to horrible, blanketing silence.

  The monster was gone.

  Kate turned, searching the street. She’d looked away only for an instant, a breath; it couldn’t have gotten far, but it was nowhere, nowhere—

  There.

  The shadow reappeared at the mouth of an alley.

  “What’s going on?” demanded Liam as Kate took off at a sprint.

  The shadow vanished again and reappeared farther down the alley as Kate cut into the gap between buildings.

  Sirens wailed, and behind her eyes she still saw the streaks of blood, the man’s knives, but also his calm resolve, and the creature’s own expression, a mirror, an echo.

  Her mind raced. What had it done? What did it feed on? Why was it standing there just watching—

  “Kate, are you there?”

  She drew an iron spike as she ran. The alley around her was empty, empty—and then it wasn’t.

  She slid to a stop on the damp concrete, breathless from the chase and the sudden appearance of the shadow in her path. This time, the monster didn’t flee. And neither did Kate. Not because she didn’t want to—in that moment, she did—but because she couldn’t look away.

  She’d thought of the monster as a shadow, but it was more—and less. It was—wrong. It looked wrong, it felt wrong, like a hole cut in the world, like deep space. Empty and cold. Hollow and hungry.

  It drew all the heat out of the air, all the light, all the sound, plunging them both into silence, and she felt suddenly heavy, slow, her limbs weighed down as the darkness, the monster, the nothing, closed the gap between them.

  “Kate?” pleaded a voice in her ear, and she tried to speak, tried to pull free, tried to will her limbs to move, to fight, to run, but the monster’s gaze was like gravity, holding her down, and then its icy hands were on her skin.

  Riley’s voice in her ear: “Kate?”

  Somewhere, distantly, she felt the spike slip from her fingers, the far-off sound of metal hitting asphalt as the creature lifted her chin.

  Up close, it had no mouth.

  Only a pair of silver eyes set like discs into its empty face.

  Like mirrors, thought Kate, as she caught sight of herself.

  And then she was falling in.

  At first

  it thinks

  she is

  another toy

  to wind up

  and release

  another match

  to strike

  but she is

  already lit

  so full

  of grief and anger

  of guilt and fear

  Who deserves to pay?

  it asks her heart

  and her heart

  answers

  everyone,

  every one

  and it knows

  she is

  like it

  a thing

  of limitless

  potential—

  she will burn

  like a sun

  among stars

  she will make it solid

  she will make it real

  she will—

  (Kate?)

  (Kate!)

  and then

  —somehow—

  she

  pulls away

  it lets her go

  and it does not

  she tears free,

  and she does n—

  “KATE?”

  Riley’s voice screamed in her ear and she tore herself free—and it felt like tearing, clothes caught on a nail, skin on barbed wire, pieces left behind, something deep inside her ripping.

  She was on her knees—when had she fallen?—hands scraping pavement and her head a riot of pain, everything blurred as if she’d taken a blow. But she didn’t remember—she couldn’t remember—

  The voices were shouting in her skull, and she wrenched the earpiece from her ear and cast it into the dark as the alley slid in and out of focus, a second image ghosting her vision in a sickening overlay.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, counted to five.

  And then she blinked, and saw the red-and-blue lights dancing on the alley wall. Remembered the restaurant, the screams, the man—then the monster, that void with its mirror eyes and a voice that wasn’t a voice inside her head.

  Who deserves to pay?

  She remembered, distantly, a swell of anger, a longing to hurt something, someone. But it was like a dream, quickly fading. The monster was gone, and Kate lurched to her feet, the world rocking violently. She caught herself against the wall. One step at a time, she made her way back toward the flashing lights, stopping at the mouth of the alley as an ambulance sped away.

  A crowd had gathered, morbidly curious, but the attack was over. Whatever it was, it had moved from an active scene to a passive one. A row of body bags lined the curb, and police moved in and out, the sirens off, and the scene already growing still, like a corpse.

  A cold fear crept through her. She didn’t understand what had happened, what she’d seen, but the longer she stared, the less she could remember, and the harder she thought, the worse the pain in her head. Something dripped from her chin, and she tasted copper in the back of her throat and realized her nose was bleeding.

  She pushed off the wall and nearly fell again, but forced herself to keep moving and didn’t stop until she was home.

  When she finally stumbled into the apartment, she nearly missed the person on the couch.

  Rile
y was already on his feet, moving as if to catch her.

  “Jesus, Kate, what happened?”

  At least, that’s what she thought he said. The words themselves were muffled by a ringing in her ears, a white noise like being underwater, pain lancing through her head, a strobe behind her eyes.

  “Kate?”

  Her vision blurred, focused, blurred again, and she could feel the bile rising in her throat. She beelined for the bathroom and felt more than heard Riley on her heels but didn’t look back.

  Why was he here?

  Why was he always getting in the way?

  Anger rose in her, sudden and irrational. Anger at the look on his face, the worry in his eyes, the fact he was trying so hard to be someone she didn’t want, didn’t need.

  He caught her by the arm. “Talk to me.” Kate spun, shoving him forcefully back into a spindly table in the hall.

  Riley let out a yelp as both he and the table went crashing to the floor, and for an instant, looking at him on the ground, so open, so pathetic, Kate wanted to hurt him, wanted it with such simple clarity that she knew it wasn’t real.

  What was happening to her?

  She turned and stumbled into the bathroom, locked the door, and retched until her stomach was empty and her throat was raw, brought her forehead to rest against the cold porcelain as the pounding on the door was drowned out by the pounding in her skull.

  Something was wrong; she had to get up, had to open the door, had to let Riley in. But then she closed her eyes, and the darkness felt so good.

  Somewhere, far away, her body hit the floor, but she kept falling down, down, down into black.

  It moves

  in the cold

  nothing

  a shadow

  of itself

  folded

  between

  what is

  and what could be

  the girl’s mind

  a shard

  of heat

  within

  its own—

  in her head

  it saw a city

  carved in two

  a hundred

  faceless faces

  defined only

  by the red

  of their eyes

  the flash

  of their teeth

  a place

  of blood

  and death

  vice

  and violence

  and

  such wondrous

  potential

  it saw

  and it knew

  it knows—

  this is

  the way

  together

  the girl

  and the city

  the city

  and the girl

  and the heat

  will be

  enough

  to burn

  enough to be

  made

  real.

  They were on the wrong side of the Seam when the call came in.

  There was no right and wrong side, according to Henry, no North and South, not anymore, but the fact was that one side of the city was being run by monsters. One side was a field of land mines, a place of shadows and teeth. On the south side of the Seam, running into trouble was a risk.

  On the north, it was a certainty, especially after dark.

  August’s squad had crossed the Seam to offer backup to another team securing a depot. It had gone off without a hitch, and they were almost done loading the trucks with supplies when the comm on August’s collar crackled to life.

  “Night Squad One, we’ve got a problem. Squad Six has gone offline midmission.”

  A bad feeling brushed his ribs. It wasn’t a good sign when whole squads went dark.

  “How many soldiers?”

  “Four.”

  “Location?”

  “The Falstead Building on Mathis.”

  He met Rez’s gaze over the hood of the truck. “X code?”

  The “X code” referred to the the FTF maps in the Compound’s control room, the ones covered in small colored crosses. Black marked locations actively held by the enemy. Blue marked ones held by the FTF. Gray was for places cleared or abandoned.

  “Gray,” said the dispatcher, “but it hasn’t been rechecked in more than a month. Patrol on the Seam caught a light signal from the third floor. Squad Six went to investigate.”

  August was already peeling away.

  He would have gone alone, but there were no solo missions—that was the rule in the FTF, even for Sunai—so Rez came with him.

  Nothing needed to be said. This was the order of the rank and file—Harris, Jackson, and Ani would stay with the other squad, help them back to the Compound with their supplies.

  Rez was his second, had been since the squad was formed.

  They moved at a brisk pace, August with his violin out, his bow ready, and Rez cradling her gun. The Falstead Building was two blocks north and three east, and they kept to the streetlights, wherever they weren’t broken, trading exposure for a modicum of safety from the night.

  When they rounded the last corner, August’s steps slowed, then stopped. There was no sign of the Falstead, no sign of anything; the city just ended, replaced by a wall of black.

  Rez let out a curse, fingers tightening on her gun.

  They were standing at the edge of a blackout zone. Someone—or something—had killed a section of the power grid, plunging several square blocks into solid darkness. There was another name for these blackout zones, among the FTF: boneyards.

  “Wait here,” said August.

  It was an empty order, one Rez always disobeyed, but he had to say it.

  She snorted, shouldering the gun. “And let you have all the fun?”

  They both drew light batons from their pockets. Unlike the HUVs, which issued a single beam, the batons threw light to every side. The result was a diffuse glow, better than shadow, but not as safe as focused light. The techs hadn’t found a way to make them brighter.

  Together, they crossed the line into the dark. It parted around them like a fog, thrown back a few feet in each direction by the light of their batons, but just beyond, the Corsai’s wet white eyes blinked, their voices hissing out like steam.

  beatbreakruinfleshbone

  August could hear Rez’s heart thudding in her chest, but her steps were steady, her breathing even. When they were first paired up, he’d asked her if she was afraid.

  “Not anymore,” she’d said, and she’d showed him a scar, running down her front.

  “Monsters?” he’d asked, and she’d shaken her head and said her own heart had tried to kill her, long before the monsters had, so she’d decided not to be afraid.

  “Doesn’t do much good,” she’d said, “to fear one kind of death and not another.”

  Their lights caught broken glass on the Falstead’s front steps. The doors hung askew, and the place had the eerie feeling of the recently abandoned.

  Someone had already set a baton in the center of the lobby floor. The pool of light didn’t reach the corners of the room, but it carved a path. Another waited at the base of the stairs.

  Bread crumbs, thought August absently. A relic from another one of Ilsa’s stories.

  As they started up the stairs, a bad feeling began to spread like cold through August’s chest.

  Feelings again, little brother?

  He pushed Leo’s voice aside as they climbed.

  Around them, the Falstead began to change.

  The lobby below had retained its air of luxury, but the second floor was starting to show the rot. By the time they reached the third, wallpaper was peeling back, boards crumbling underfoot. The walls were riddled with bullet holes and flaking drywall, whole sections staved in, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to them. Through open doors he saw furniture overturned, glass shattered, dark stains coating every surface, stale smoke and old blood, all of it human.

  “What the hell is this place?” murmured Rez.

&nbs
p; August didn’t have an answer.

  They found the first body on the stairs. A baton sat in his lap, casting an eerie pool of light around his corpse, shining on the blood spilling down the steps. His combat vest was gone, his head hung at an impossible angle, and the FTF patch had been torn from his sleeve.

  “Shit,” muttered Rez, her voice laced not with panic, but anger. “Shit, shit . . .”

  Beyond the steady beat of her swearing, August caught the far-off sound of something dripping, the faint creak of boards somewhere overhead.

  He held a finger to his lips, and she went silent, crouched beside the body. Nothing happened, and after several long seconds, they both started moving again.

  Up ahead, a mass coiled and writhed in the middle of the hall.

  August caught a glint of silvery talons, a razor jaw, but Rez was a step ahead, lobbing a small light grenade across the floor. August squeezed his eyes shut as it detonated, throwing out a silent blast of UV light. The Corsai scattered with a hiss, fleeing into deeper shadow. Most of the creatures escaped, but one went up in smoke, its teeth and claws raining to the floor like chips of ice.

  Two more corpses lay in the hall, their bodies twisted.

  But by the looks of it, the Corsai hadn’t killed them. Their bodies were still mostly intact, their patches taken like trophies.

  What had the voice on the comm said?

  Patrol on the Seam caught a light signal . . . went to investigate.

  Where was the fourth soldier?

  Light danced in a doorway at the other end of the hall, not the steady glow of a dropped baton but the fickle stutter of a candle. August pocketed his light, and gripped the neck of his violin with one hand and the steel bow with the other. He left Rez with the bodies and moved toward the room, drawn by the light and the soft sound of a weight on floorboards, the drip of something against wood.

  A single candle burned upright in the middle of the room—it was more like a cage, slats missing from the ceiling and floor—and against the far wall, beneath a cracked window, sat the last member of Squad Six, gagged and bound. The soldier’s head lolled. His vest was gone, and his shirtfront was soaked through with blood.

  Dead weight, warned Leo, and real or not, he was right. August could hear the man’s heart fighting, losing, but it didn’t stop him from calling for Rez or picking his way through the room.