This Savage Song

by Victoria Schwab

  August plucked each string, tuning it by ear. “Days.”

  He returned the violin to its case, and Kate turned the flashlight off, plunging them both into the pale red glow of the box lights on the tunnel walls. “Wouldn’t want it to burn out,” she whispered.

  August didn’t argue. He sat on the floor across from her, his back against the seat, and rubbed the tallies on his wrist. Even lost inside the song earlier, he’d felt the latest mark, a new day, a line of heat against his skin.

  “How many?” she asked.

  “Four hundred and twenty-two.”

  “Since what?”

  He swallowed. “Since I last fell.”

  “What do you mean, fell?”

  “It’s what happens if Sunai stop feeding. They . . . go dark. They lose the ability to tell the difference between good and bad, monster and human. They just kill. They kill everyone. It’s not even about feeding, when that happens. It’s just . . .” he trailed off with a shudder. He didn’t say that every time Sunai went dark, they lost a piece of their souls—if they had souls—a part of what made them feel human. That every single time they fell, something didn’t get back up.

  “What does it look like,” pressed Kate, “when you go dark?”

  “I don’t know,” he said shortly, “I can’t exactly see myself.”

  “But you said, before, that you’d rather die than let it happen again.”

  No hesitation. “Yes.”

  Kate’s eyes danced in the low light. “How many times has it happened, August?”

  Her questions were easier to bear when he couldn’t really see her. “Twice,” he said. “Once, when I was much younger, and then . . .”

  “Four hundred and twenty-two days ago,” she finished for him. “So what happened?”

  August hesitated. He didn’t talk about it. He never talked about it. There was no one to talk to. Henry and Emily didn’t understand—couldn’t understand—and Leo thought the soul was a distraction, had burned it away on purpose, and Ilsa, well, the last time she went dark, she apparently took a chunk of V-City with her.

  “I stopped eating,” he said at last. “I didn’t want to do it anymore. Didn’t want to feel like a monster. Henry and I got into a fight, and I stormed out. Spent most of the day wandering the city in a daze, stuck in my own head.” His eyes drifted shut as he remembered. “I was finally heading back when a fight broke out and I—you know when you’re hungry, and the smell of food is intoxicating? When you’re famished, and it’s all you can think of? I could smell the blood on their hands, and then . . .” His voice wavered. “I remember feeling so empty. Like there was a black hole inside, something I had to fill and couldn’t. No matter how many people I killed.” The words left his throat raw and his fingers shaking. “So yes, I’d rather die than face that again.”

  Kate had gone quiet.

  August dragged his eyes open. “What, no quip?”

  She was slumped on the bench, her eyes closed, and he thought for a second she’d just nodded off, but her arm, which had been crossed over her stomach, had fallen into her lap, and it was slick with something blackish and wet.

  Even in the dim car, he knew it was blood.

  “Kate.”

  August scrambled over, knelt in front of her, and took her face in his hands. “Kate, wake up.”

  “Where are you?” she murmured.

  “I’m right here.”

  “No . . . ,” she mumbled, “not how it works . . .” but she was already sliding back into unconsciousness.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, right before he squeezed her wounded shoulder. Her eyes flashed open as she let out a cry and kicked him in the chest. He stumbled backward, rubbing his ribs as she muttered, “I’m okay.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked, squinting to see the damage in the low light.

  Kate shook her head, and he couldn’t tell if that was an answer or if she was trying to shake off the haze.

  He grabbed the flashlight. “Let me see,” he said, snapping it on, and then wishing he hadn’t. Her stomach was slick with blood.

  “I’ll be okay . . . ,” she said, but the words were dulled, and she didn’t fight him as he guided her onto her back along the bench, only swore when he peeled the shirt up from her hip. He told himself the cussing was a good sign; it meant she was conscious, but when he saw the wound, he still cringed. Two razor-sharp gashes—claw marks—ran from the curve of her ribs to her navel. They hadn’t torn anything vital, but the cuts were deep, and she’d lost a lot of blood.

  “Listen to me,” he said, pulling off his coat. “You need to stay awake.”

  She almost laughed, a shallow chuckle cut short by pain.

  He tore the lining from the Colton jacket. “What’s so funny?”

  “You’re a really shitty monster, August Flynn.”

  He pressed the lining against Kate’s stomach, eliciting another string of curses. Then he got up and scoured the car for an emergency kit.

  “Talk to me, Kate,” he said, searching. “Where are you?”

  She swallowed, then said, “On a lake.”

  “I’ve never been to a lake.” He found a first-aid box mounted behind a set of benches on the back wall and, returning with some disinfectant spray and some gauze, knelt beside her. “Tell me what it’s like.”

  “Sunny,” she said sleepily. “The boat is rocking and the water’s warm and blue and full of”—she hissed at the disinfectant— “fish.”

  “You need stitches,” he said, cinching the gauze around the wound.

  “No problem,” she said, a fresh edge in her voice. “We can just pop up to street level and over to the nearest hospital. I’m sure no one will notice that Kate Harker and a Sunai—owwww,” she cut off as August put pressure on her stomach.

  “We don’t need a hospital,” he said calmly. “But we do need a suture kit.”

  “If you think I’m letting you near me with a needle and thread—”

  “My father is a surgeon.”

  “Stop calling him that,” she snapped, leveraging herself up to a sitting position with a hiss. “He’s not your father. He’s a human, and you’re a monster working for him.”

  August went still.

  “What? Nothing to say now? Oh that’s right, you can’t tell lies.”

  “Henry Flynn is my family,” he snarled. “And I’m willing to bet he’s been a better father than yours.”

  “Fuck off.” Kate slumped back, breathing through gritted teeth. “Why would you even want to be human? We’re fragile. We die.”

  “You also live. You don’t spend every day wondering why you exist, but don’t feel real, why you look human, but can’t be. You don’t do everything you can to be a good person only to have it constantly thrown in your face that you’re not a person at all.”

  He stopped, breathless.

  Kate looked at him hard. He waited, gave her a chance to speak, but she didn’t. He shook his head, turned away.

  “August,” she started.

  And then a loud hum filled the air.

  Electricity crackled through the tunnels and Kate and August both looked up sharply as the power was reconnected, and the lights in the subway car flickered and came on.

  “Oh no,” said August at the same time Kate said, “Finally.”

  She looked paler in the full light of the car, the blood a violent red where it dotted the metal floor and streaked the bench.

  “We have to go,” said August, getting to his feet. “Now.” He pointed up when he said it, and Kate looked at the ceiling and noticed the series of small red dots. Surveillance cameras.

  “Shit,” she muttered, hauling herself to her feet with the help of a pole. She let out a hiss of pain, and August started back toward her but she cut him off. “Just get the door.”

  He slung the violin onto his shoulder, and pried the train door open. The tunnel beyond wasn’t fully lit, but bands of UVR light now ran like tracery down the length of the wall
s, and the Corsai were gone.

  August offered Kate a hand down from the train car but she didn’t take it, and he had to catch her arm when she landed and nearly fell. She shook him off and started down the tunnel toward the nearest station, careful to keep her feet on the wood between the rails. August picked his way behind her, ears tuned for the sound of moving trains, but the service clearly hadn’t started yet, or if it had, it hadn’t reached them. Where were they? How far had they made it in the night? Not to the end of the line, that much was clear, but he could hear the pulse of the city fading with every step.

  They reached the nearest station and climbed off the tracks and onto the platform—Kate finally let him help—as the grates across the subway doors above began to grind open, and people spilled in.

  They were the only ones moving up the stairs instead of down, and August looped his arm gingerly around her, remembering the way they’d knitted together the night before, turning themselves from two people into a couple. But it felt different now, with Kate leaning into him a little too hard, his jacket pulled tight around her, and his bloodstained hand shoved in the pocket, and he felt the eyes lingering instead of sliding off.

  People shook rain from their coats and folded their umbrellas as they descended from the street, and August nicked one from a newsstand near the base of the steps, opening it over them as they climbed the stairs toward the promise of morning light.

  As soon as they reached the surface, August stopped.

  Buildings rose around them, but they weren’t the massive skyscrapers that filled the red. These were shorter, shoulder to shoulder, but squat enough that they could see the sky over the rooftops. There were even trees here and there. Not massive stretches, like at Colton, but a row along the street, each with its own little fence. The city center carved its outline in the distance, and from here, North and South didn’t look so different; he couldn’t see the Seam.

  Kate shivered against him, and August dragged his attention back, eyes lighting on a pharmacy across the street.

  “Stay here,” he said, passing her the umbrella. She offered a weak nod, but said nothing.

  He held his hands out in the rain, rinsing off as much of the blood as he could before he went inside. He dug a handful of folded bills from his pocket—he didn’t carry much, only what Henry made him keep on hand in case of emergency—and made his way up and down the aisles, avoiding the gaze of the security cameras as he grabbed a suture kit, antiseptic, painkillers, adhesive strips.

  His fingers itched to call his father, to let Henry know he was all right, that he was trying to help. But what if Leo answered? Or worse, what if his brother was on his way? What would he do if he found Kate?

  “There’s a clinic down the road,” said the woman behind the counter.

  August looked up. “What?”

  She nodded at the supplies, and he realized how obvious they were. He should have added other things, to make it all look less suspicious, but he didn’t have much cash. He fumbled for a version of the truth. “Friend took a fall,” he said. “Doesn’t want her family to find out.”

  The woman nodded absently and bagged the supplies. “Overprotective?”

  “Something like that.” August paid, and pulled up his collar as he headed back out into the rain. He looked up, expecting to see Kate waiting beside the subway entrance where he’d left her.

  But she wasn’t there.

  “No, no, no,” murmured August as he jogged across the street, holding his breath until he reached the exact place she’d been, as if that would somehow make her reappear. The puddle at his feet was stained red. Rain soaked into his hair and dripped from his case as he spun in a circle, resisting the urge to call out her name. Umbrellas swirled around him as people came and went.

  And then, at last, he saw her, standing beneath an awning down the block. Relief washed over him. The force of it caught him off guard.

  “I thought you’d left,” he said, jogging over.

  Kate gave him a long look and said, “I thought about it,” before her eyes went to the bag of supplies in his hand. “But this sounds like so much fun.”

  They walked three blocks to a motel—the kind you paid for by the hour—and used the majority of Kate’s cash to pay for a room. The place claimed it wasn’t linked to Harker’s feeds—only a closed loop, for security purposes—and the man at the front desk gave her a seedy smile as he handed her two keys.

  “This place is dirtier than the subway,” said Kate, lowering herself onto the edge of the bed while August laid out the medical supplies. She thought of yesterday morning before school, the way she’d laid out the zip ties and duct tape and iron spikes. How had it only been a day? “Do you really know what you’re doing?” she asked when he tore open the suture kit. And then when he started to answer, she held up her hand. “Flynn. Surgeon. Got it.”

  He tossed her a bottle of painkillers and she swallowed three dry, then peeled off the jacket and shirt. August didn’t even try to sneak a glance as he pulled on a pair of plastic gloves. She should have known he wasn’t human.

  The tooth marks on her shoulder weren’t deep, but the gashes across her stomach were angry and red. Kate lay back, wincing as August cleaned the cuts and sprayed the area with a numbing agent. She drew a steadying breath as he took up the needle.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I’ll try to be quick.”

  “Wait.” She dug the pack of cigarettes out of her bag. The package was a little soggy, but they still lit.

  August shook his head. “Of all the ways to die—”

  “I’ll be lucky if I live long enough for these to be a problem.” She put the cigarette between her lips and took a drag. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  The whole thing hurt like hell, but Kate had to hand it to August: He was careful. Gentle. As gentle as someone could be when they were stabbing you with a needle and thread. But he obviously wasn’t trying to hurt her—if anything, he seemed put off by the whole thing. Great. A squeamish monster. Go figure.

  But halfway through, Kate felt her resolve failing. The room was too quiet and the pain too sharp, and before she knew it, she was talking. She didn’t know why, but the words just started coming, and she didn’t stop them.

  “I grew up with stories of my father,” she said, trying to keep still. “That’s all he was really, for years, a good story. But I wanted him to be real. Mom made him sound so strong, invincible, and I could barely remember him myself—I was so young when we left the city—so over time, all I wanted was to see him again. To be a family again.” She winced, continued. “And then we finally came back to V-City, and it was all wrong. None of it was like the stories. Dad was never around, and when he was, it was like he was a stranger. Like we were strangers in his house. Mom couldn’t take it.”

  “The night she died,” continued Kate, “she dragged me out of bed. Her mouth was too red, and she’d been crying.”

  Get up, Kate. We have to go.

  Where are we going?

  Home.

  “She kept looking back. But no one stopped us. Not when we snuck through the penthouse. Not when she took the car. Not when the city blurred past.”

  He’s going to be mad, Mom.

  Don’t worry, Kate. It’s going to be okay. Sit back. Close your eyes. Tell me where you are.

  It was her favorite game, a way to turn where you were into where you wanted to be.

  Go on, Kate. Close your eyes.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, but before she could come up with a place, she heard the skritch of claws on metal, saw the sudden flash of headlights. The horrible shift of gravity before the crash. The deafening screech of metal and tires and breaking glass and then . . . silence. Her mother’s face, cheek against the wheel, and in the glass behind her mother’s head, the fractured light of two red eyes.

  Kate gasped, and tried to sit up.

  “I’m sorry,” said August, a hand against her good shoulder. “It’s over. I’m done.”
<
br />   No, no, what had . . . Kate scrambled for the memory, but it was already falling apart. It was like waking up too fast, the dream crumbling before you could grab the threads. She’d seen something, something . . . but she couldn’t catch it. The pieces were broken again. Her bad ear was ringing.

  “What was I saying?” she asked, trying to shake off the strange panic.

  August looked down, embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”

  Her head spun. “For what?”

  “I can’t control it,” he said. “Trust me, if I could . . .”

  “What are you talking about?”

  August ran a hand through his black hair. “It’s just something that happens around me. Around us. People open up. They tell the truth. Whether they realize it’s happening or not.”

  Kate blanched. “What did I say?”

  He hesitated. “I tried to tune most of it out.”

  “How considerate,” she growled. “You really should have told me about this up front.”

  One dark brow twitched up. “Well, it’s only fair. I can’t lie to anyone.”

  He turned his attention back to her stomach. “You’re going to have scars,” he said, pressing an adhesive over the stitches.

  “Not my first,” said Kate. She looked down at the lines of white tape tracing lines across her stomach. “Your father would be proud.”

  August winced a little.

  “How does a surgeon end up running South City?”

  “His whole family dies.”

  An uncomfortable silence, and then August said, “What about your father? Any word?”

  Kate looked at the cell. There were a handful of messages, all for someone named Tess, who was probably the girl she’d stolen the phone from back in the restaurant bathroom. She hadn’t stopped to get her name.

  “Not yet,” said Kate, deleting the texts.

  They both knew that was a bad sign. Harker should have seen the message. Should have known it was her. Should have called by now. She’d tried a second time while August was in the pharmacy. Now she tried a third.

  She tried to draw a deep breath, and winced; she was still waiting for the pain to blur into a blanket, something she could ignore, or for the comforting numbness of adrenaline and shock. So far, no luck.