Ah. August.
It was indeed hard to catch a Sunai, harder still to kill one. Sloan knew from personal experience. Ilsa had been a lucky turn, but the new Sunai, Soro, was developing a reputation. Sloan’s old friend, Leo, had driven a steel pole through his back, and August had slipped through Sloan’s grip before he had a chance to break him.
He didn’t expect Alice to succeed where he hadn’t. He had simply given her the task as a means of distraction, something to do besides feeding her bottomless appetite.
“If I catch him, can I keep him?” she’d asked.
Now her tongue rested between her sharpened teeth as she stacked a second tier. “I did lose a few Fangs.”
“How many?”
“Seven, I think? Maybe there were eight.”
He was beginning to regret her assignment. “And how, pray tell, did you lose them?”
“I’m not sure it really counts as losing.” She continued building her tower. “They did take out five soldiers and, really, isn’t that what they’re for?”
“Alice—”
“Don’t Alice me.” The mask of humor was suddenly replaced by scorn. “They’re pawns, to play with Flynn’s little toy soldiers.”
“This isn’t a game.”
“But it is.” She swung back to face him. “And games are meant to be won. Aren’t you tired yet, of playing this tug-of-war? Of keeping your pieces on only half the board? Make a move. Change the play. You are supposed to be king of the monsters, Sloan.”
She leaped down from the counter, flashing a wide smile full of teeth.
“So act like it.”
Sloan had held his ground through her whole little speech, but now he moved. In a single motion, he pinned her back against the counter. Alice’s shoulders knocked into the makeshift tower, and it collapsed with a soft sound.
She stilled as Sloan drew his fingers through her white-blond hair.
“Careful, Alice,” he murmured. “My patience is like that house, precariously balanced.” His grip tightened, forcing her head back to expose her throat. “Who knows when it might tip.”
Alice swallowed. “Careful, Sloan,” she said, eyes flaring bright. “It’s one thing to kill a nameless thug. But start killing those close to you, and the others might wonder . . .”
She let the sentence die, but the threat was clear.
“Well then,” he said, loosening his grip, “it’s a good thing we’re on the same team.”
One day, he thought, I will savor your death.
“As for your concerns”—his eyes danced over the pile of patches that had so briefly been a tower—“I can only promise that your patience will be rewarded.”
He took up the nearest patch from the pile and ran a nail across the letters on its front.
FTF.
Three letters that had come to mean a force, a wall, a war. But were, in truth, nothing but a compound, stones and mortar assembled by men.
And what goes up, thought Sloan, can always be torn down.
VERSE 2
THE MONSTER IN ME
She is
not
she is
not
she is
not
herself
she has no body
and she is falling
without falling
down
darkness
rushes past her
through her—
because she is not her
and her first thought
is how good it feels
to be not her
to be no one
to be nothing at all.
The world came back in pieces.
The pulse in Kate’s ears, the couch beneath her back, the voices somewhere overhead.
“You should have called someone.”
“I called you.”
“I’m not a doctor, Riley. I’m not even a medic yet.”
Kate dragged her eyes open and saw a ceiling streaked with daylight. Her head ached and her mouth was dry, the salt taste of blood coating the back of her throat. All she wanted was for them to shut up and let her go back to sleep.
“She should go to a hospital.”
“What am I supposed to tell them? My friend got hurt fighting monsters? I’m pretty sure she’s not even supposed to be in Prosperity.”
Riley swam in her vision. Over his shoulder, his boyfriend, Malcolm, was pacing.
“How long has she been out?”
“Six hours. Almost seven. I should have called sooner but—”
“Too loud,” she groaned, pushing herself upright. She quickly wished she hadn’t. The room swayed and her pulse slammed inside her head. “Son of a bitch.”
Riley knelt beside her, one hand tight on her shoulder. “Kate? Jesus, you scared me. Are you all right?”
Malcolm leaned in, flashing a penlight in her eyes, which did nothing for the pain in her head.
“What happened?” she asked.
Riley was pale. “You showed up here, looking like hell, locked yourself in the bathroom, and passed out. I had to break down the door.”
Kate remembered cold tile against her skin. “Sorry.”
Malcolm checked her pulse against his watch. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
She hesitated, her mind filling with fragments—the scream, a man holding knives, a body against glass, sirens and a shadow, the sense of falling, falling into what?
Instead of trying to work backward from that, she started at the beginning.
“The restaurant.”
Riley nodded. “It’s all over the news,” he said, holding out her tablet. There it was, splashed across the screen: ROMANCE RUINED: SHUNNED LOVER KILLS TWELVE
The banner photo was a shot of the restaurant’s front, a streamer of bright yellow tape caught in the air. A sheet covered the bodies.
“Good thing you didn’t go inside,” said Riley. And then, “You didn’t go inside, right?”
No, she’d stopped in the street, caught by the sudden, unexpected horror of the scene.
“We called it in as soon as you told us, but by the time the police got there—it was over. Did you see anything?”
See anything. Fragments drifted together in her head.
“Apparently the guy just showed up, went into the kitchen, and took the knives.”
That man, so calm, like he wasn’t even there.
“They’re not releasing names yet,” said Riley, “but someone leaked it to the press that his ex-wife was inside.”
“So he had motive,” said Malcolm.
Motive, thought Kate. It could have been an ordinary crime—a gruesome one, yes, but something human—except for the fact it wasn’t.
“You were right, about the explosion,” she said, “the string of murder-suicides. There’s nothing normal about this.”
“Are you sure?”
She remembered the wrongness in the killer’s eyes. A pair of silver discs shining in the dark. She’d seen the shadow, followed it . . .
But there the memory faltered, dissolving into darkness and the press of cold.
“Any survivors?” she asked.
“One,” said Malcolm. “She was rushed to the hospital in critical condition.”
Kate stilled. “Why do I sense a but coming?”
“They got her stabilized, but the moment she woke up—well, she snapped. Killed a doctor. Attacked two nurses, too. If she hadn’t been as bad off as she was, it would have been worse for everyone. They ended up quarantining the wing. Put the nurses under observation, in case whatever she had was contagious.”
Kate pressed her palms to her eyes, trying to quell the headache, trying to smother the feeling that rose in her throat at the word contagious. She’d been there. She’d seen . . .
“Kate?” pressed Riley in a too-even tone. “How are you feeling?”
Like hell, she thought. Like hell, but like myself.
“She should to go to a doctor,” said Malcolm.<
br />
“She is fine,” snapped Kate. Her phone chirped. “And she has to go to work.”
She got to her feet, steadied herself a moment, and turned toward the hall.
“Is that such a good idea?” asked Riley.
Her temper flared. “I said I’m fine.”
“And I’m just supposed to believe you?”
Kate spun. “I don’t care if you believe me. You’re not my parent and I’m not your pet project.”
“That’s uncalled for!”
“Hey, hey,” cut in Malcolm. “Everyone calm down.”
Kate scrubbed at her face. “Look,” she said slowly, “you’re right, I don’t feel great. But I’ve got to go to work. I’ll bail if I have to. Promise.”
Riley opened his mouth, but in the end said nothing.
If there was one sound Kate hated, it was the bell above the café door.
What was the point, when the counter faced the door and she could see the people coming in? At this time of day, the line stretched all the way back to the door itself, the constant open and close eliciting a near-continuous chime.
“Next!” she called impatiently.
To take her mind off the bell, she tried to focus on the customers themselves and play a game called “guess the secret.” The woman in the purple dress two sizes too small? Sleeping with her handyman. The man on the cell? Embezzling. The one in front of her right now? Addicted to sleeping pills. That was the only thing that explained how long it was taking for him to order.
A vein in Kate’s temple twitched.
“Next.”
A man shuffled forward without looking up from his phone.
“Sir?”
He was talking softly, and she realized he was taking a call.
“Sir?”
He held up a finger and kept talking.
“Sir.”
Annoyance rose inside her, taking a sudden sharp turn into anger, and before Kate realized what she was doing, her hand shot across the counter.
She snatched the cell phone and hurled it against the exposed brick wall installed to give the Coffee Bean that extra homey charm. It smashed, and when the man’s head finally came up, veins bulging as he stared, not at her, but at the pieces of his cell raining down the wall, Kate’s first thought was of reaching out and snapping his neck. Of how nice that would feel.
The urge stole through her, so simple and quick, she almost didn’t notice.
She could see it, clear as glass, could feel his flesh beneath her hands, hear the clean snap of bone. And the very idea was like a cold compress on a fevered head, a balm on a burn, so sudden and soothing that her fingers actually started curling—that little voice in her head, the one that said don’t, suddenly replaced by one that said do—before she thought no, stop, and came jarringly back to her senses.
It was like being thrown out of a pleasant dream and into a nightmare, the wonderful, certain calm replaced by a wave of sickness and a lancing pain behind her eyes.
What had she just done?
What had she almost done?
Kate forced herself backward—away from the counter, away from the stunned line and the man who’d now begun to shout—tore the apron over her head, and fled.
She dropped her bag beside the door.
Riley and Malcolm were no longer there—thank God for small mercies.
Her pulse was still a raging beat inside her skull, but whatever had come over her back in the coffee shop was gone, leaving only a headache and a pressure behind her eyes.
A migraine? But Kate had never gotten migraines, and she was pretty sure their side effects didn’t include the sudden desire for violence.
Violence—her mind snagged on that word, and the night before came back again: the man and the shadow, both so steady, so calm. The emptiness in the man’s face as the monster’s own seemed to fill out. And then—the alley. Kate standing face-to-face with the monster, the nothing of it, all cold and hollow hunger and those silver discs, like mirrors—
Her vision doubled and she had to close her eyes for a second to keep from losing her balance. She went to the bathroom and ran the tap, splashing handful after handful of cool water on her face and neck. She dragged her gaze to the mirror, surveying her pallid complexion, the scar that traced her jaw, the flat blue of her—
Kate froze.
There was something in her left eye. When she raised her chin, it caught the light, shining like a lens flare, the kind of thing that belonged in a photograph, not a human face. It was a trick of the light, it had to be, but no matter how she turned her head, it stayed. She leaned in, close enough to fog the mirror with her breath, close enough to see the interruption in the dark blue circle of her iris.
It looked like a silver crack. A sliver of light.
A mirror shard.
It was so small and yet the longer she stared, the more it seemed to stretch across her vision, blotting out the room and swallowing her sight. Kate squeezed her eyes shut, trying to pull her mind free, to hold herself in the here and now, but she was already falling forward into—
A memory—
the window is open
the fields outside
waving in the breeze
she sits on the floor
with a pile of necklaces
trying to pick apart
the tangled chains
while her mother
hums by the window
her small fingers dance
over the metal links
but the harder
she tries
the more
tangled
everything gets
annoyance
rises like a tide
turning to anger
with
each
failed
attempt
every
worsening
knot
the anger spreads
from the tangled chains
to her mother
at the window—
her mother
who doesn’t seem to care
what a mess she made
her mother
who isn’t even there
to make it right
her mother
who left her alone
with monsters—
“Get out of my head,” snarled Kate, slamming a soap dish into the mirror.
It struck the glass with a splintering crash as she lurched back to her senses, to herself.
She dropped the dish and retreated a few steps, sinking onto the edge of the tub. Her hands were shaking. A cobweb crack fractured the image in the glass. She’d broken the monster’s hold.
But it was still there, inside her head.
And she remembered now, its face from the alley, seeing herself in its eyes and falling down into that dark, violent place, remembered Riley’s voice calling her name, pulling her back. But she’d left something behind, or it had, this sliver of itself, this crack in her head.
How was she supposed to get it out?
How did you hunt something that had no shape, a shadow that made puppets out of people?
How could you destroy a void?
Kate’s head spun, but as her pulse steadied and the panic and confusion cooled, her focus sharpened, the way it always did at the beginning of a hunt.
It was a monster. No matter what form it took. And monsters could always be hunted. Killed. You just had to find them first.
Kate’s head came up. They were connected, somehow, she and this thing. And connections usually went two ways. She cut a look at the mirror. From this angle she couldn’t see her reflection, couldn’t see anything but the cracks running down the mirror’s surface.
But if the monster could get into her head, could she do the same?
Kate rose to her feet and approached the mirror. She curled her fingers around the sink’s edge, anchoring herself, and tried to steady her breathing. She’d never been one for meditation—she would rather h
it something than try to find stillness—but she went looking for it now as her gaze drifted up.
The instant the shard caught her eye, she felt the pull, but Kate resisted, charting a course from her chin, along the line of her scar up her jaw, before shifting over lips, up nose—
Show me, she thought, as her gaze finally reached the shard.
The silver blossomed, and then she was falling forward, but not as fast as before—it was more like a slow and steady slide, the ground tipping away beneath her. She gripped the counter hard as the silver spread across her senses, tangled through her head, and something that wasn’t a voice whispered a humming cloud of want and hurt and change and fight and make and kill and the ground began to fall away faster and faster until—
She is
trapped
in another memory
the night is black
and she is
in her mother’s car
white noise
blaring
through her head
her mother’s cheek
against the wheel
Where are you?
she wonders
as red eyes
multiply
beyond
the broken glass
and there
again
is the anger
the pain
the burning
need to—
Stop, she thought, dragging her mind, not back, not out, but through.
Pressure in her head, against her palms as—
—back in the car
her mother’s eyes
open wide
marred
by a single
silver
crack
—Where are you?—
she asks
and the car
the night
the vision
shudder
and give way
to cold
to nothing
and—
It moves
in and out
of shape
of shadows
through a place
singing
Our Dark Duet Page 9
