Our Dark Duet

by Victoria Schwab

  “When did it happen?” he asked.

  She had to think. The hours had run together. “Two nights ago. I was hunting something else when I saw it. There was a stabbing in a restaurant, and it was standing in the middle of it all, just watching, growing more solid with every scream. I chased it down an alley and then . . .” She trailed off, recalling the cold, dark, chilling fear before she saw its eyes, saw herself, and fell in.

  “I got away. For the most part.” Kate swept the hair out of her eyes to show him the streak of silver cutting through her left iris. “I said it left a trail.”

  August tensed, his face unreadable.

  “How did you get away?”

  Kate shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe I’m just resilient when it comes to having monsters in my head. I guess you were good practice.”

  She didn’t tell him the silver was spreading, didn’t want to think about what would happen if it took over the remaining blue before she killed the source.

  “It’s not just for looks,” she said. “This shard, it’s some kind of link. I can use it to see this . . .” She didn’t know what to call it. A Shadow? A Void? Liam’s voice echoed through her head. Call it what it is. Call it what it does.

  “Chaos Eater,” she said.

  “How does it work?” asked August.

  Kate chewed her lip, trying to find the words. “Have you ever stood between two mirrors? They reflect, back and forth, until you see yourself a hundred times. When I look at myself, at this”—she touched her cheek—“it’s like the opposite of that. Instead of multiplying, I disappear into the gap. Does that make sense?”

  “No,” said August. “But you saw the monster here?”

  She nodded. “It’s not always easy or clear”—understatement—“but it’s something.”

  August hesitated. “You compared it to a virus . . .”

  Kate knew what he was trying to ask, even without the words. “I’m not contagious.”

  “How do you know?”

  Kate thought of the older woman in the rest stop, tipping up her chin. “Consider the theory tested.” August paled. “Relax,” she said. “No one got hurt.”

  She let her gaze escape to the window.

  The walls in her father’s penthouse were made entirely of glass, the city laid out on display. The walls here were solid, studded with small windows, but even still, she could tell which wall faced north. The Seam was traced with light—a thin band cutting through the city—and somewhere beyond it, Callum Harker’s tower was shrouded in darkness.

  “Is it true?” she asked after a moment. “About Sloan?”

  His name tasted vile in her mouth.

  August’s eyes widened. “How did you hear?”

  “When Soro caught me, I was running from a group of humans in North City. They all had these metal collars around their necks—”

  “Fangs,” he said.

  “When they cornered me, one of them said Sloan’s name. He said, ‘She’s just his type.’” Kate wrapped her arms around herself. “What the hell did that mean? And how is Sloan even alive?”

  “We’re not sure. Things were messy after Callum’s death. Everyone knew it was Harker the monsters followed, Harker they obeyed, but without him, no one knew what they might do, if they’d rise up or scatter.” August ran a hand through his hair, a shadow of fatigue crossing his face. “A few citizens tried to step up, impose curfews, maintain some sense of order. It looked like it might work—and then Sloan came back.”

  A shiver ran through her.

  “By the time we knew what was happening . . .” August trailed off, dark lashes shadowing his eyes. “Three solid nights and three days. That’s all it took.”

  She wasn’t surprised. Sloan had always wanted to be king.

  “If I’d known,” she said, “I would have come back sooner.”

  August’s head swung up. “Then I’m glad you didn’t know.”

  “That happy to see me?”

  He fumbled—she could tell he wanted to lie and couldn’t. “Look around, Kate. Only a cruel person would be glad to see you here.”

  “You invited me to stay, once.”

  “Things have changed.”

  “So you’ve said.” She shook her head, exasperated, exhausted. “Anything else I should know?” Something flickered in his face, too fast to read. “What is it?”

  He hesitated. The pause was too long, the answer, when it came, too rushed. “Ilsa survived.”

  Kate brightened. “That’s wonderful,” she said.

  But there was something else—something he wasn’t telling her.

  “She has no voice,” he added darkly.

  “But she’s alive.”

  August’s head bobbed once, and Kate wondered why he had veered toward this particular truth, and what he’d swerved away from. What was he hiding?

  “You must be tired,” he said, the formality back in his voice, and Kate was—too tired to pry, to fight, to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until the real August, the one she remembered, came free.

  So she nodded and let him lead her down the hall to the room with the open door.

  Unlike her bedroom at Harker Hall, the sterile surfaces she tried to make hers, this place was August to a T, from the precarious stacks of philosophy and astronomy books, to the music player discarded among the tangled sheets, and the violin case propped against the footboard.

  Standing in this place, the August in front of her made even less sense. Kate had spent enough time hiding behind her own walls to know a barricade when she saw one.

  His sleeves were rolled up, and she gestured to the marks circling his forearm.

  “How many days?”

  He looked down, hesitating, as if he wasn’t sure. That uncertainty, at least, seemed to bother him. Instead of answering, he reached for the instrument case and turned to leave. “You can have the bed.”

  “Where will you sleep?”

  “There’s a couch in the living room.”

  “So why don’t I sleep there?”

  It was a challenge. She knew the answer—she just wanted to see if he would say it. Her eyes went to the doorknob under his hand, the locking mechanism on the other side.

  August didn’t take the bait. “Get some rest, Kate.”

  She still had a dozen questions—about the FTF, about him, about her own uncertain future—but fatigue was wrapping itself around her, dragging her down. She sank onto the bed. It was softer than she’d expected and smelled of cool linen. August started to close the door.

  “One hundred and eighty-four,” she said.

  He paused. “What?”

  “That’s how many days since I left Verity. The same number since you fell. In case you couldn’t remember.”

  August didn’t say anything, only pulled the door shut behind him.

  And Kate was left wondering if she was wrong, if August had gone dark since she left.

  It would explain the coldness.

  But the August she’d known had fought so hard to hold on.

  Kate heard the lock click and rolled her eyes but didn’t get up. If she’d traded one cell for another, at least this one had a bed. There were no mirrors, and for that small mercy, she was thankful.

  Her bag was sitting at the foot of the bed, and Kate rummaged through it, turning out its contents on the bed. She knew what she would find—her weapons were gone. Confiscated. So was her tablet.

  Frustration prickled through her—but it wasn’t like she would get a signal, and even if she could write to the Wardens, to Riley, what would she say?

  Alive for now. Hope you are, too?

  Kate fell back on the bed and tried to find calm, surrounded by the familiar scent of August and the unfamiliar room, by the strange bed and the light beneath the door and the thoughts spinning through her head.

  Where are you? she asked herself, and the answer came rushing up: She was on Riley’s couch, splitting a pizza, while the TV droned on and she told him about
the shadow in her head, about Rick and the green, about the Fangs, and Soro, the race through the red, and the concrete room, and Riley listened and nodded; but before he could answer, he dissolved, giving way to August, his cold gaze and his voice echoing through her head:

  You should never have come back.

  And Kate lay there in the dark, wondering, for the first time, if maybe he was right.

  August stared down at the tallies on his skin.

  One hundred and eighty-four.

  All this time, Kate had been counting.

  When had he stopped?

  Things change.

  He returned to the kitchen, trying to clear his head.

  I’ve changed with them.

  He tapped his comm. “Command, this is Alpha.”

  Three short beats of silence. “Alpha.” Phillip’s voice was uncertain. “Logs show you’re off tonight.”

  “Since when do monsters take nights off?” said August. “Find me a job.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been grounded.”

  Henry.

  The tension in his chest grew. “Let me speak to him.”

  “He’s overseeing a convoy from the southern Waste.”

  “Patch me through.”

  There was a short sequence of beeps, and then Henry’s voice. “August?”

  “Since when am I grounded?”

  “You already have a task. When I get back, you can tell me what you learned. In the meantime, Kate Harker is in your custody.”

  “Kate is asleep,” countered August, temper rising.

  “And when is the last time you slept?”

  August took a deep breath. “I’m not—”

  “Consider it an order.”

  “Henry—”

  But he could tell by the static, the man was gone.

  August slammed his fist on the counter, igniting a brief spark of pain, there and then gone. He slid his hands through his hair. Maybe Henry was right. He was tired, in a bone-deep way. He shoved off the counter and crossed into the living room, leaving the lights off as he sank onto the couch. If he listened, he could hear Kate moving beyond the bedroom door, rolling over on his bed. Six months, and she was still made of restless limbs and shallow breaths.

  Why did you come back?

  He tried to focus instead on the patter of Allegro’s steps somewhere in Ilsa’s room, the distant sound of movement from the floors below. He closed his eyes and felt his body sinking deeper into the cushions, but the quieter the room became, the louder Kate’s voice in his head.

  What happened to you?

  The look on her face when he forced the truth from her, that horrible mixture of betrayal and disgust.

  That isn’t me, he wanted to say.

  Yes it is, insisted Leo.

  What happened to you? demanded Kate.

  You were weak, said his brother.

  What happened to you?

  Now you are strong.

  What happened to you?

  He forced himself up, slinging the violin case over his shoulder. He didn’t need a mission. There was plenty of trouble waiting in the dark.

  The doors to the private elevator stood open, and he stepped in, punching the button for the lobby. The doors slid shut, and he was met with a rippling reflection, distorted steel twisting his features, erasing everything but the broadest planes of his face.

  He waited for the feeling of slow descent, but the elevator didn’t move. He punched the lobby again. Still nothing. He hit the button to make the doors open. They didn’t.

  August sighed and looked up, straight into the surveillance lens mounted in the corner, even though he knew looking straight at it would blur the feed.

  “Ilsa,” he said evenly. “Let me go.”

  The elevator didn’t move.

  “I have a job to do.”

  Nothing.

  He’d never thought of himself as claustrophobic, but the elevator walls were starting to feel close.

  “Please,” he said tightly. “Let me go. I won’t stay out long but I need . . .” He faltered. What was the truth? What did he need? To move? To think? To hunt? To reap? To kill? How was he supposed to find the words to tell his sister that he couldn’t stand to sit still, to be alone with the voices in his head, with himself.

  “I need this,” he said at last, voice tight with frustration.

  Nothing.

  “Ilsa?”

  After a few long seconds, the elevator started down.

  The first time Sloan heard that humans feared the dark, he laughed.

  What passed for dark was, to him, simply layers of shadow, a hundred varying degrees of gray. Dim, perhaps, but Sloan’s eyes were sharp. He could see by the light of the streetlight four blocks over, by the glow of the moon behind clouds.

  As for the things that lurked in that dark, that lived and hunted and fed in that dark—well.

  That was another matter.

  As he reached the warehouse on Tenth, he could smell the traces of blood, but the space itself was empty, at least of corpses. Which was fine—Sloan wasn’t there to speak to the dead. He stepped into the hollow drum of a building, the floor littered with bullet casings and shreds of cloth. Light poured in from a streetlight outside, casting a triangle of safety near the open doors and there, where it gave way to shadow, were the Fangs’ steel collars, stacked like bones after a meal.

  Sloan stared into the shadows. “Did you see it?”

  The shadows rippled, shifted, and after a moment, they stared back, white eyes flickering against the dark.

  wesawwesawwesaw

  The words echoed around him, taken up by countless mouths. The Corsai were bottom-feeders, half-formed things with no vision, no ambition, only the simple desire to eat. But they could be useful, when they chose.

  “What did you see?”

  The darkness shifted, snickered.

  beatbreakruinfleshbonebeatbreak

  Sloan tried again.

  “What did the creature look like?”

  The Corsai chittered, uncertain, their voices dissipating, but then, as if reaching a consensus, they began to draw themselves together. A hundred shadowy forms became one, their eyes crowding into two circles and their claws gathering into hands and their teeth tracing an outline of something vaguely human. A grotesque mockery of a monster.

  “Can you bring it to me?”

  The Corsai shook its collective head.

  nonono no not real

  “What do you mean it’s not real?”

  The Corsai shivered and fell apart, one form scattering back into many. They went silent then, and Sloan began to wonder if the conversation was over—the Corsai were fickle things, distracted by a scent, a passing whim—but after a few moments they came shuddering back to life, drawing themselves once more into a single form.

  Like that, they hissed over and over, like that likethatlikethat . . .

  Sloan let out a low, exasperated sigh. “What does it eat?” he demanded.

  But the Corsai had lost interest.

  beatbreakruinfleshbonebeatbreak

  Their voices rose louder and louder until the walls of the warehouse shook. Sloan turned to go, their violent chorus following him out.

  VERSE 3

  A MONSTER AT HEART

  She is standing

  in her father’s office

  alone

  the gun

  in her hand

  when cold air

  kisses her neck

  and a voice

  whispers

  Katherine

  red eyes

  reflected

  in the window

  she turns

  lifts the gun

  but she is not

  fast enough

  the monster

  in the black suit

  forces her

  back

  against the glass

  the gun is gone

&nb
sp; her hands are empty

  she tears at him

  but her fingers

  go right through

  as the window

  cracks

  splinters

  breaks

  and she begins

  to fall.

  Kate jolted forward, fingers knotted in her shirt. Her heart was pounding, but she couldn’t remember why. The nightmare was already gone, leaving only a sick feeling and a racing pulse in its wake.

  The room was empty, the world beyond August’s window still dark, save for the muted glow of the light strip at the Compound’s base and the first touches of dawn. She got up, padding barefoot to the door, turning the handle before she remembered it was locked.

  Kate sighed and dug around in her bag until she found a couple of hairpins. She knelt before the lock, then paused, running her fingers over the plate that held the doorknob to the door. She fetched her silver lighter instead, thumbing the hidden catch. The switchblade snicked out, and she fit the narrow tip into the first screw and began to turn.

  When she was done, the door whispered open.

  A faint noise issued from the room to her right. August’s violin case was propped against the wall, and when she pressed her ear to the wood, she heard the steady hum of a shower.

  The smell of coffee wafted from the kitchen. The lights were on, but the room was empty, and she poured herself a cup, stifling a yawn. Sleep had come quick, but it had been thin, restless.

  And the dream . . .

  Her gaze drifted absently across the kitchen and landed on a knife block. Five wooden handles jutted from the block, while a sixth knife lay on the counter, blade shining. There was something lovely about knives—the gleam of light on polished metal, the satin smoothness of the handle, the razor-sharp edge. Her fingers drifted toward it, a strange ache in her palm at the thought of—

  Something brushed against Kate’s leg, and she recoiled, jarred from the pull of the shadow in her head. It had stolen over her so smoothly, and she swore at herself as a dark shape vanished around the corner of the island.

  She frowned and peered over, but the other side was empty. And then, out of nowhere, a small black-and-white thing leaped onto the counter.