by Laura Legend
Until she’d looked at the reports, Cass hadn’t known how truly bleak her situation might be. And she hadn’t realized how much she had invested in Richard’s stubbornly hopeful tone.
But a third report, buried at the bottom of the stack, had been personally written by Maya. It detailed what they knew about the Heretic’s current plans and whereabouts, sketched the global threat that the Lost now posed, and concluded by raising a series of pointed questions about the danger that Cass, as a seer, personally posed both to others and to herself—especially if she were to fall into the hands of the Lost.
Reading this last report was like reading a transcription of Cass’s own worst fears. The sheaf of papers shook violently in Cass’s trembling hands. She wished she hadn’t looked at them.
As she set the papers back on the desk, Cass found something else. A syringe, already prepped, lying next to a bottle of sedative. The syringe, like the “health care professionals” in the next room, smelled like Maya. Maya had never trusted Cass, and she certainly wasn’t going to start now. Cass rubbed the spot on her arm where Maya had stabbed her with the needle. It was still sore, and an ugly bruise enclosed the pin prick at its center.
Cass rolled the syringe back and forth on the desk beneath the balls of her fingers. Then, on impulse, she pocketed it and hid the bottle in the desk drawer.
She made her way back to the door but stopped again when, against the wall, she spotted a large, open box. Cass leaned in and took a closer look, trying to read it and make sense of what she could see inside.
The box contained the components for a hospital bed.
This particular model, she saw, included leather restraints for a patient’s arms, legs, and head, immobilizing them from head to toe so that they couldn’t hurt themselves or anyone else.
Cass swallowed hard.
She knew the bed was meant for her.
7
CASS’S RETURN TRIP was uneventful. Red was still in the bathroom and the boxer was occupied at the kitchen table.
Cass took two running steps, launched herself from the second stair on the stairwell, and snagged the lip of the loft’s low wall. In two seconds, she was over the wall and back in bed. She didn’t hear anything going on below that led her to think they suspected anything.
Cass shoved a handful of pillows onto the floor, pulled one to her chest, and curled up in ball beneath her covers. Despite the fire below, the loft was still cool. The enormous banks of windows on both ends of the chalet were gorgeous, but they weren’t great for keeping things toasty.
Cass squeezed the pillow tight. Her head was spinning. She didn’t know what to do or who to trust. In the face of their collective ignorance, Richard, as far as she could tell, had acquiesced to Maya’s “precautionary” measures. It wouldn’t do any good to go to him and tell him what she’d found in his office; those were his own reports, written for him.
Cass burrowed deeper into the blankets. Her thoughts spiraled inward, going nowhere, like snakes eating their own tails. She felt time begin to subtly flicker, its dependable sense of linear stability crumbling. She curled into an even tighter ball, hugging her knees closer to her chest.
Like water bubbling up from far underground, a pool of darkness gathered in her head, spreading outward, growing deeper. Cass let herself sink into the darkness until, floating just beneath the surface of consciousness, she fell into a fitful sleep.
By degrees, a vision crept up on her.
Judas stepped out of the darkness. He was standing in the middle of a dusty, filthy street, bearded and hooded and dressed like a medieval merchant. His hood was up, but Cass could see his face clearly in the light of the lamp he was carrying. Cass, finding herself on the same street, pulled back from view into the shadows, trying not to be seen.
After Judas passed by, Cass followed him, staying close to the walls of the narrow city street. The street was dusty and filthy. The smell of animals and shit and unwashed bodies was unbearably strong, but Judas didn’t seem to mind. Cass gagged and pinched her nose shut. Why was she smelling things anyway? Wasn’t she the See-er, not the Smell-er? At what point did her visions suddenly become so authentically olfactory?
She followed Judas down the street, out past the edge of town, to a walled property. With a ring of rusty keys, Judas unlocked the gate, let himself in, and locked it again behind him. Cass, finding her body responsive in this dream-space, vaulted the wall and landed gently on the far side. Judas continued around to the back of the main house, past a series of smaller buildings, and stopped when he arrived at the ridge of rock that served as the property’s back boundary.
Cass watched as he followed the line of the ridge and passed through a crack in the wall. She gave him a minute, then followed him through the crack and into a series of caves. After passing through an antechamber, she found Judas lighting additional lamps in a larger cave, which appeared to function as a creepy medieval laboratory.
The room was filled with glassware, knives, saws, shelves of books, racks of quasi-medicinal ingredients, and counters covered with skulls, bones, and specimens of various kinds. In the far corner, a wooden box full of toads croaked away. The whole setup was laid out around a stone table at the center of the room. And though it was covered by a thin white sheet, it was obvious to Cass that a human body was laid out on that slab.
Judas was busy preparing whatever experiment he had in mind for the evening. His back was both to Cass and to the body.
Cass felt drawn to the figure on the stone slab. Her curiosity grew until, without making a conscious decision, she found herself moving toward it. She had to see who—or what—was beneath that sheet.
Judas was still turned away. Cass pinched the edge of the sheet between two fingers and gingerly pulled back the top, revealing the body’s face.
To her surprise, she recognized it.
The face belonged to Thomas, the first Turned vampire.
He was pale. His body was stiff and unmoving. A nasty scar ran down the side of his ribs. He was, apparently, a cadaver.
Then his eyes flickered open and his hand darted out, seizing Cass by the wrist with an iron grip. His eyes were wholly black, lacking both iris and any hint of white.
Cass couldn’t look away.
“Run!” he whispered with hoarse intensity. “Don’t trust them. They can’t help you. They’ll never be able to heal you!”
Cass yanked her wrist away. She stumbled backward, trying to process what had just happened. She didn’t know what she’d expected to find beneath that sheet, but it wasn’t that.
Off balance, she bumped into a rack of heavy glassware, knocking a beaker onto the floor. It smashed on the hard stone with a horrendous clatter.
Judas spun around and threw back his hood. His face, though, was no longer his own. When Cass met his fiery gaze, she saw her mother’s face staring back at her instead.
“Mom?” Cass breathed. Her shock was quickly overwhelmed by her need to know, to understand, the reasons behind her mother’s choice to become the Heretic. The words tumbled out of her before she could stop them: “Mom, why are you doing this? What made you choose this? Mom, please …I just“—
Rose grabbed a long knife from the counter and advanced toward Cass. Cass’s thoughts snapped across her synapses in response.
Another betrayal. Another rejection. Another damn thing I don’t understand about my own mother. Can a mother stay a mother if she’s trying to kill you?
Cass lurched toward the entrance, hoping to make an escape, her emotional confusion thickening into anger. All she wanted were some answers, and her own mother was trying to kill her. Well fine, damn her then, and damn her reasons. Cass was so tired of just not knowing things when it came to Rose.
Then the ground shook beneath their feet. The lamps blew out. Time flickered. And the vision crumbled into a rolling field of white noise.
Cass sat bolt upright in bed. Her heart was pounding.
Thomas’s words echoed in her head.<
br />
Run. Don’t trust them. They can’t heal you.
8
AS CASS’S MIND returned to her surroundings in the bedroom, she almost jumped out of bed in surprise and alarm: something heavy and hairy was crouched on her chest. Cass froze, trying not to move a muscle, hoping not to provoke it—whatever “it” was.
She held her breath for a count of three. Maybe if she stayed still, it would go away. Maybe it was a fragment of her nightmare, stalking her here in the waking world.
Maybe— Wait. The ball of fur began to purr and lick her hand with its rough tongue ... maybe it was her cat!
“Atlantis!” Cass whispered as her heart tried to simultaneously process her relief and express her joy. She hadn’t seen any sign of Atlantis since her first night here.
Cass pulled him tight and gave him a squeeze. He didn’t really like it, but Cass didn’t care. Then, remembering that she was still in “enemy territory,” Cass shushed the cat and scrunched them both down into the pillows.
Atlantis looked at her with skeptical eyes: he wasn’t the one making all the noise, so why was she shushing him?
Thomas’s words were still ringing in Cass’s ears. Her wrist was still sore from his iron grip.
Run. Don’t trust them. They can’t heal you.
After the trauma she’d been through recently, Cass didn’t know if she had the strength or the stomach to follow through on that advice. How could she possibly run? She didn’t have any faith in her body. She didn’t even trust her grip on the present.
Run. Don’t trust them. They can’t heal you.
But Cass knew that this wasn’t just about her. And in the end, it was the thought that Zach might still need her, whole and healed, that made the decision for her.
By his own account, Richard didn’t know how to help her, and Maya, Cass knew, wasn’t going to listen.
She had to roll the dice. What did she have left to lose?
“Atlantis,” Cass whispered to the cat, her voice quivering as she pulled the blankets over their heads, “we have to run. We can’t trust them. They won’t be able to heal me.”
Atlantis rubbed his head against Cass’s arm. He, apparently, already knew that much. Why else would he be here?
Cass drew an additional bit of strength from his presence.
She weighed her options. Should she wait until tomorrow night or make a run for it now?
She still had two hours before dawn.
Atlantis reached out and batted her face with his paw.
Right, she thought, reluctantly agreeing with the cat. No time like the present.
Cass poked her head out from under the blankets and took a look outside. The sky was still dark, though a heavy snow had begun to fall. That would make it harder to travel, but it would also make it harder for them to track her.
She put her bare feet on the floor and stood up. Her knees wobbled, and she sat back down. Gripping the nightstand, she stood again, teetering, then found her balance.
Her thin silk pajamas weren’t going to cut it. She was going to need some gear. And she was definitely going to need some boots.
Cass leaned out over the wall of the loft. She could hear one of her “health care professionals” in the kitchen, occasionally flipping a playing card. She didn’t hear anything else, though. They must be working in shifts.
Cass took a deep breath and tried to convince herself that she was, in fact, strong. Then she hopped over the side of the loft, verified that the hallway was clear, and swung herself to the floor. She recalled the rack of Richard’s clothes she’d seen when she was snooping around his study.
Cass cracked the door and peeked inside. The lights were still turned off, but the glow from the remaining coals in the fireplace was enough for her to see basic shapes. She could make out the box with the hospital bed, the desk, the rack of clothes, the couch ... and a giant Amazon warrior sleeping on the couch.
As Cass clicked the door shut behind her, Red turned onto her side and began to gently snore. The sofa wasn’t nearly big enough to contain her. One arm had flopped onto the floor and her combat boots hung off the far end of the couch.
Cass tiptoed behind the couch to the rack in the corner and took inventory. Most of Richard’s clothes were way too big, but she found a couple of pieces that would work well enough, and the size of the winter gear wouldn’t be a deal breaker. She pulled the syringe from her pocket and set it on the desk, then stripped out of her pajamas and stuffed them into the trash can.
In the glow of the fire, she paused to examine her slender, frequently battered body. Her bruises were mostly gone. Her cuts were mostly healed. But she’d lost a lot muscle over the past few weeks as she’d lain in bed, drifting in and out of consciousness. Cass tried to flex her arm. Nothing happened. She used two fingers to prop up her bicep. That looked better. But when she let go, it drooped back toward the ground. She groaned inside. She ran her fingers along the side her abdomen. She’d lost weight, too. Her ribs were sharply pronounced beneath her pale skin.
Cass shook her head at this, pulled on a t-shirt, and slipped into a pair of Richard’s jogging pants. She tied them tight at the waist and cuffed the ends. They were designed to be tight on him, so they didn’t look completely ridiculous on her.
She also found a heavy coat, hat, and snow pants on the rack. She put the snow pants on first. She pulled the suspenders as short as they would go. The pants were still a few inches too long, but with a little help from a pair of boots they would work.
The trouble, though, was the boots.
Nice work, Jones, Cass thought. You’ll be warm from top to bottom—except for your perfectly frostbitten toes.
In widening circles, Cass searched the study. But, as far as she could see, there were no boots.
Cass leaned against the couch, trying to formulate a plan. Red was spread across the cushions. She was still snoring, her arm still flopped on the floor and feet poking out beyond the edge of the couch.
Cass’s eyes settled on Red’s feet.
She was wrong. There were, in fact, boots in this room.
Cass circled around to the end of the couch to take a closer look at the Amazon’s feet. Her insulated, Gore-Tex combat boots where just what Cass needed. They even seemed like they might fit. Not trusting her eyes—a 6’6” warrior princess surely would have to wear shoes twice as large as Cass’s own size—Cass sat on the floor and measured the boot against the size of her own foot. Unless she was delusional, those boots were a perfect fit.
How the hell does she stay standing on those tiny feet!? Cass wondered. She’s basically a Barbie! The wind would blow her over!
Cass made a mental note that, if she ever got into a fight with this woman, she would either go for her feet or, at the very least, verbally taunt her about them.
Now that she’d located some boots, the trick would be to get them off the woman’s feet without waking her up. The fact that they were tightly laced all the way up to her mid-calf wasn’t going to make things any easier.
Cass knelt next to Red’s feet and took a closer look in the dim light. She gave the end of one lace a gentle tug. Nothing happened. She pulled again, harder. Still nothing. She took an even closer look. Of course the woman had double knotted the laces.
Cass stifled a string of profanities.
She carefully worked the laces until the knot came free, loosened the laces all the way down, and then gingerly pulled the boot free of her foot. The smell was powerful and awful. Cass gagged and held the boot at arm’s length.
One down, one to go.
Red, though, was stirring. She rolled over onto her back, wrinkled her nose at the smell, and muttered something under her breath. Cass wasn’t sure what she’d said, but it might have been something about harming small animals.
Cass began work on the other boot, following the same procedure. Red, however, was not cooperating now. She was growing more and more restless, rocking from side to side and continuing to mutter something under
her breath. Cass almost had the boot free when Red rolled back onto her side and trapped Cass’s hand beneath her leg.
Cass froze, afraid to remove the boot or her hand.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Red mumbled. “I’m sorry I didn’t win the pageant. The judges were too intimidated.”
A tear formed in the corner of the Amazon’s eye.
“Sorry ... so sorry.”
If Red woke up, Cass knew there was no way she could take her in a fight—not in this condition, not today. Cass was barely standing. It wouldn’t matter how small her opponent’s feet were.
Cass only had one chance.
She leaned in closer and whispered into Red’s ear.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. I’m not mad. You’re a winner in my book.”
Red rolled onto her back, freeing Cass’s hand, and wiped the tears from her eyes. A small, grateful smile flitted across her face. Then she began snoring again.
Cass pulled the second boot free and sat down on the floor with a grateful smile of her own.
Mothers, she imagined herself saying to Red over coffee. Am I right?
Cass laced up the boots, pulled on the coat, and re-pocketed the syringe. She was almost ready to go. She stepped back into the hall and peeped around the corner into the kitchen. The boxer was playing Solitaire at the table, turned away from Cass. Cass was about to sneak out the side door and into the night when she spotted an old friend on the kitchen counter.
Her katana.
She remembered the last time she’d held it, fighting off Miranda as her aunt—who had chosen to join the Lost, and leave Cass—teetered on the edge of full ferality. Cass’s mind stuttered, caught against an image that evoked a rage and a sorrow so powerful that she almost turned away, unsure she’d even be able to hold her katana again, enmeshed as it in complex emotions she didn’t understand and didn’t want to process.
