This Savage Song

by Victoria Schwab

  Kate looked around at the wreckage of the fight: the two Malchai corpses, the torch scorching a black line into the sidewalk, the unconscious Sunai at her feet. She was covered in drying blood and streaks of blackish gore. She swallowed.

  “Stay there,” she told the cab. “I’m on my way.”

  VERSE 3

  RUN, MONSTER, RUN

  When August woke up, everything hurt. Pain had always been a fleeting thing, something that skimmed along the surface of his senses, but this was deep, knotting around every muscle and bone. The last time he’d gone dark, it had hurt to the core, burned through him like a fever, but even that was different. Now he felt hollowed out. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to be. And for the first time in his life he wanted to crawl back into the darkness of his dreams.

  Instead, August dragged his mind to the surface where his body waited and opened his eyes.

  He was sitting on a concrete floor, propped up against an unfinished wall, a tangle of metal girding and wooden beams against his back. His vision swam, then focused, then swam again; he tried to move, but his wrists were bound to the metal framework on either side with zip ties.

  Kate Harker was sitting in the middle of the concrete floor, arms around her knees, watching him. She was wearing his Colton blazer over her blood-streaked polo. A bruise was coming out along her jaw, and she held one arm in front of her at a protective angle, her polo torn where the Malchai’s teeth had sunk in. She looked shaken, but when she saw him staring, she stiffened, her face unreadable.

  “Welcome to my new office,” she said. Her voice was cold, distant. Maybe it was shock. He’d seen FTFs go through that, after a brush with death. “I was starting to wonder if you’d ever wake up.”

  August tore his eyes away and looked around the room. They weren’t alone. A man was slumped in the corner, unconscious, hands bound, and mouth covered in duct tape. A label on his shirt read “V-City Cab.”

  She followed his gaze. “You’re heavier than you look,” she explained. “I needed his help getting you up here. And then . . . well . . . I didn’t think I should let him go. But I paid him pretty well before . . . well.”

  August tried to swallow. His throat felt like it was coated in sand. “My violin.”

  Kate rapped her nails on the case beside her. He sagged with relief, and she gave him a look he couldn’t parse. Her attention drifted to the windows, empty frames covered in plastic sheeting. Even through the plastic, he could tell it was getting dark. He should have been home by now. Where was his phone? He couldn’t feel it in his pocket. Had he dropped it?

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “My father has safe houses set up around the city.”

  A wave of panic hit him like nausea. “And you took us to one? After his Malc—”

  Kate shot him a withering look. “They weren’t my father’s anymore,” she said icily. “But I’m not stupid. We’re in a renovation project around the corner from the safe house. I have a lot of questions, Freddie.”

  He swallowed again. “August,” he said tiredly. “My name’s August.”

  “August,” she said, as if testing it out. “That does suit you better. August Flynn.”

  So she did know.

  “How long?” he asked, and she must have understood the question because she said, “Yesterday.” August nodded. He’d been right. He’d probably feel vindicated, if he weren’t in so much pain.

  “I thought your kind were supposed to be invincible.” She said kind like it was a dirty word.

  He cringed. “Nothing is invincible.”

  A dry smile flickered across her face. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Kate—”

  “No,” she cut in, “you don’t get to talk yet.”

  He fell silent. The blood pounded in his head.

  Kate scraped black gore from her metallic nails. “Why did you help me?” The question came out fast and sharp, like this was the one she’d been waiting to ask.

  He closed his eyes. “It was a trap. Those Malchai weren’t just trying to kill you. They were trying to make it look like a Sunai execution. They would have pinned the death on me—on my family—and used it to break the truce.” He dragged his eyes open again. The illness was finally, mercifully, receding. “I meant what I said in the woods. About wanting peace.”

  “I’m supposed to believe the monster’s a pacifist?”

  “I never lied to you.”

  “But you didn’t tell the truth.”

  “How could I?” he asked. “Would you?”

  Kate didn’t answer. She was staring at the floor, her face taut with pain.

  “Are you all right?” he asked softly.

  Her head snapped up. “Are you fucking with me?”

  August shrank back, confused. “I was just ask—”

  “Stop talking.” She got to her feet, revealing the iron spike she’d tucked beneath her knee. “I know what your kind can do. I’ve seen the footage, seen the way you toy with your victims, playing some sick game of cat and mouse. . . .” Footage? thought August. “I am not a mouse, August Flynn, do you understand? I know what you are.”

  She was coming toward him. The metal girding she’d bound him to ran vertically up the wall, and he dragged himself to his feet, wrists sliding up the bars until he was at full height.

  “I saved your life,” he said.

  In response, Kate brought the tip of the iron spike to his throat. It was still stained with Malchai blood, and the scent turned August’s stomach. Kate’s eyes were feverish, but her hand was steady.

  “A thank-you would suffice,” he said.

  “Why were you at Colton?” she demanded.

  “My father sent me.”

  “You mean Flynn.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he want you to kill me?”

  “No. He wanted me close to you in case the truce broke. There aren’t many things in this world Callum Harker cares about, and Leo thought you might prove valuable as leverage in the fight.” August leaned forward against the metal tip. “And for the record, it’s going to take more than this to hurt me.” As if rising to the challenge, Kate pressed down, but the point didn’t break the skin.

  Just then, a cell phone buzzed on the concrete floor beside the violin case. Kate turned toward it, and horror washed over August. “You left it on?”

  “I took out the GPS,” she said, crouching to retrieve the cell. She frowned at the screen.

  “Kate,” he said, tugging against the zip ties. He swore. They were threaded with metal. “Who is it?”

  She straightened. “Home.”

  “Don’t answer,” he said, wishing for the first time he could change a person’s mind instead of just loosening their thoughts. Her thumb hovered over the screen. “Kate, someone sent those Malchai to kill you.”

  Kate stared down at the cell. It stopped buzzing. And then started again. “They broke their oaths,” she said. “Just like Olivier.”

  “Who’s Olivier?”

  “They’re hungry and restless,” she went on, voice half lost beneath the phone’s ringing. “And sick of following orders.”

  August twisted against the ties. “That wasn’t some random attack back there. It was calculated. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure you died and I was there to take the fall.”

  Kate hissed a single word under her breath. The phone was still going but instead of answering, she turned it over, and slid the battery out. The buzzing died. She said the word again, and August realized it was a name.

  “Sloan.”

  He’d heard that name before. Leo spoke of him the way he spoke of most monsters, only worse.

  My father keeps a Malchai as a pet.

  “Would this Sloan start a war?”

  Kate shot him a look. “Death and violence, isn’t that what all monsters want?” August didn’t rise to the bait. “Look, I don’t know,” she said, pacing, “but I’m pretty sure he wants me gone, and if he could frame Flynn in th
e process—I don’t know anyone else who’d think that many steps ahead. Most of the Malchai are single-minded killers. Sloan’s . . . different.”

  “Do they listen to him, the other Malchai?”

  “I’ve been home for nine days, August. I haven’t really noticed. So far his favorite hobby seems to be tormenting me.”

  “If he’s involved, then you can’t go home. You . . .”

  He trailed off as he heard the sound of cars coming to a stop, an engine cutting off. The sounds were low, muted, and Kate hadn’t heard them yet. She was still pacing.

  “Kate.”

  Car doors opened and closed.

  “Kate.”

  Footsteps.

  “Kate.”

  She turned toward him. “What?”

  “You have to untie me,” he said, trying to get his hands free. The zip ties were too tight, and even though the metal didn’t hurt, it made the bonds hard to break.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because someone’s coming.”

  A door slid open somewhere below, the sound loud enough, finally, for her to hear.

  “They must have tracked you here.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I took the GPS out of the phone.”

  In the corner, the cab driver stirred. A cell jutted out of his pocket.

  “Shit.”

  Footsteps echoed on stairs. Kate hurried to the window, shouldering her backpack. She drew a lighter from her pocket, a small silver knife snicking open from one end, and sliced through the plastic sheeting with the small but vicious blade, revealing a bruised sky beyond. For a second he thought she was going to leave him there, pinned to the wall for Harker’s men to find, but then she came back.

  “I was going to turn you in to my father,” she said. “When you got in the car this morning.” She slid the knife between the zip tie and his skin. “It would have been so easy.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  She looked up. Swallowed. “You didn’t look like a monster.”

  August held her gaze. He wanted to say I’m not, but the words got stuck. “And now?”

  Kate only shook her head and gave the knife a swift pull.

  But the zip tie didn’t break.

  She frowned and tried again. Nothing.

  August paled. “Please tell me you have a way of getting these off.”

  “I didn’t plan on getting them off,” she snapped. August began to fidget with panic, but Kate simply raised her shoe and slammed it into one of the metal bars. The noise was loud—too loud—but the bar buckled and gave, and August managed to weave his zip-tied wrists free. Kate kicked the second bar, but it was stronger, or the angle was wrong. It bent but didn’t break. The footsteps were getting louder. August wrapped his hands around the bar and so did Kate, and together they pulled with all their weight until it finally came free, and the two went crashing to the concrete floor.

  Kate landed on her injured side and gasped in pain, but when August went to help her up, she pulled back as if his touch were poison, and managed on her own. August caught up the violin case as she was reaching the torn plastic on the window, and he climbed through after her, expecting a fire escape of some sort and finding only a six-inch lip before a three-story fall.

  The air caught in his throat.

  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights,” she said, shimmying along the edge.

  “Not heights,” he murmured. “Just falling.”

  He looked around, trying to figure out how they were supposed to get down, when Kate took a breath and jumped.

  Kate launched herself forward, off the wall and across a six-foot gap between the construction project and the roof of a low building. She landed, stumbled a few steps, and took off, not even looking back. The message was clear: keep up or get lost. August took a breath, gripped the violin case, and leaped. He cleared the roof’s edge and slid, scrambling upright as Kate disappeared behind a rooftop structure. August followed, and when he rounded the corner, she caught his shoulder, pressing him back against the wall beside her, out of the line of sight.

  “You do this often?” he whispered. “Jumping between buildings, running over rooftops?”

  Kate raised a blond brow. “You don’t?” She almost smiled, though it could have been a grimace; when she leaned forward, he could see the jagged line the Malchai’s teeth had cut into her shoulder.

  August scanned the buildings. “Where are we?”

  “Outer edge of the red.”

  “I have an access point near the Seam. If we can get to South City—”

  “We?” She pushed open the rooftop door and started down the stairs. “You saved me. I saved you. The way I see it, we’re even.”

  August frowned. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “And I’m not going to Flynn.”

  “We could protect you.”

  She let out a sound like a laugh but colder. “Oh, I’m sure.”

  He followed her down the stairs. “Fine, don’t believe me, but it isn’t safe here.”

  “It isn’t safe anywhere,” she snapped, the truth welling up. “I can’t go home. Harker Hall is in the center of the red, and whether or not my father’s there, Sloan will be, and—”

  August caught the scent of blood and pressed his hand over her mouth, tilting his head toward the street. Kate started to protest, but must have seen the answer in his eyes, because she went silent. He strained, trying to make out the voices.

  “. . . not in the building . . .”

  “. . . call it in . . .”

  “. . . check the cameras . . .”

  “. . . signal . . .”

  August and Kate stood in the stairwell, perfectly still, until the voices trailed away, blending with the hum of engines and the other city sounds. When he lowered his hand, Kate wiped her face with the back of her sleeve. “What did they say?” she asked.

  “Give me your phone.”

  She dragged the cell from her pocket and handed it over. August set it on the stairs and crushed it underfoot. Kate scowled. “Necessary?” she whispered.

  “Couldn’t hurt,” he whispered back. “Is all of North City wired?”

  Kate nodded. “Cameras on almost every block.”

  “Almost?”

  Kate considered him. “There are some exceptions.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve memorized them all?”

  Kate raised a brow. “I’ve only had a week.”

  August’s spirits sank. And then her lips twitched, the barest edge of a smile, tired but knife-sharp. “I got through the ones in the red.”

  August straightened. “If you want to run, I won’t stop you, but first, help me find another phone.”

  The sun had dipped below the skyline, and the city was beginning to fold in on itself. Not like in South City, where everything was boarded up and everyone shrank inside their armored shells, but even here the streets were emptying, as anyone without Harker’s protection headed home and even those with medallions went inside. The restaurants and bars were filled with people brave enough to venture out but not linger on the sidewalks, which meant that, even avoiding cameras, every moment they were in the street, they were standing out.

  August followed Kate through a network of streets and into a nearby café.

  She beelined for the bathroom, and came out a few minutes later wearing someone else’s clothes and holding someone else’s cell phone. She handed him back the Colton jacket. “Hope you don’t mind, I got a little blood on it.”

  August wrinkled his nose. “Thanks,” he said, shrugging it on over his polo. She passed him the cell, and they hovered in the dark hall between the kitchen and the tables and out of the line of the restaurant’s camera as he dialed.

  After two rings, someone answered. “FTF.”

  It caught him off guard. He was so used to calling from his own cell, which went directly to the family line. But they’d gone over this, along with every other fallback and safety net, bef
ore he started at Colton.

  “Flynn,” said August.

  “Code?”

  “Seven eighteen three.”

  “Status.”

  “Red.”

  “Hold.”

  The line went silent, and August was starting to worry they’d dropped the call when he heard a click and then Henry’s voice, sharp with worry.

  “August? August, is that you?”

  His chest tightened. “It’s me, Dad.”

  Something crossed Kate’s face at the use of the word.

  “Where are you? What’s going on? Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay, but something’s happened and I need to—”

  “August,” cut in another voice. Leo.

  “Leo, I need to talk to Henry right now. Put him back on.”

  “Are you alone?” His brother’s voice was low and steady, his will as solid as a wall.

  The answer tumbled out before August could stop it. “No.”

  “Who is with you?”

  “Kate,” he answered, trying to focus. “Leo, listen, someone tried to kill her at Colton today. They killed others, too. It was two Malchai, but they tried to make it look like us. We both managed to get away, but they’re still looking for her and I think—”

  “Leave her.”

  The rest of August’s words snagged in his throat. “What?”

  “Leave her and come home.”

  “No. I’m not doing that.”

  He could hear Henry say something in the background, and he desperately wanted Leo to put his father back on the line, but the other Sunai kept talking. “You’ve acted beyond your orders and compromised your position. Your identity is now clearly forfeit, so our priority has to be protecting you.”

  “And what about her?” he snapped. He could feel Kate’s attention trained on him.

  “You are more important,” said Leo smoothly. “Now, where are you?”

  The question hit August like a punch. He had to hold the phone away from his face to keep from answering. He forced air into his lungs. He didn’t want to tell him that, and he wasn’t entirely sure why.

  “Where. Are. You?” repeated his brother, the patience evaporating from his voice.