“Are you kidding—” It was Desmond’s voice, outraged, but it was cut off with a grunt. Something had collided with his body, and he was heard staggering back from impact. Piper crawled over the floor, feeling out her hands for April. Her fingers touched warm pools of blood before she reached her.
“April,” whispered Piper, her hands moving around her stomach. “It’s all right. You’re safe now, we’ll get you help.”
April’s belly rose and fell with shaky breaths.
Wet warmth spread over her body, and Piper followed the trails to the wounds. She clasped her hands and applied pressure to stop the bleeding.
Piper tried to block out the sounds—the sickening crunches of bones, the grunts, slicing of flesh—and focus on April.
The cloud began to dissipate. Piper squeezed her eyes shut before she blinked to clarity. The dust sparkled and vanished, particle by particle.
When it had cleared enough, she looked over her shoulder and saw Nigel stumbling around in circles, his eyes covered in a black glittering paste. His clothes were torn and lacerations gleamed in the gaps. Once he could see, Ash yanked a rifle from his shoulder and aimed it at Nigel.
“No!” screamed Piper, but it was too late. Nigel had heard her. He whirled around to face her, but the paste blinded him.
He lunged forward, almost reaching her, but the blast of the rifle threw him off course. He landed, motionless, on the ground beside Piper. A tranquiliser dart stuck out from between his shoulder blades.
Desmond appeared next to Piper. He whacked her hands away from the wounds and peeled April’s clothes apart to check them.
“The gem was touched,” said Ash. Piper looked over at him. He stood at the buffet table, his fingers plucking an emerald stone from a black box. “But Nigel wasn’t the one to touch it, and neither was she.” He jerked his head toward April.
Piper frowned. She glanced from Nigel to April twice, and then she realised. It was the reason she’d gone home in the first place. Her mother.
Piper looked at the door above the staircase. It was open, and blood was smeared on the frame in handprints. She sprung to her feet and raced up the stairs to the second floor.
She checked her mother’s study and bedroom first. They were clear. Ash arrived in the corridor as she ran back down, headed for her own bedroom. He followed her, but his gun was tucked away—he wasn’t expecting a fight, she realised. He knew what they would find, and it wasn’t a living, moving creature. It was a corpse.
Piper stumbled to a stop at her bedroom.
The door was ajar, and she pushed it open with a light nudge of her blood-soaked fingertips. Rosemary’s face was the first thing she saw. Then, her body, just as motionless, on the floor.
Rosemary Reed was dead.
CHAPTER 19
Desmond used his teeth to tear scraps from a sheet.
He grabbed a long make-shift bandage and wound it around April’s thigh. The blood was already clotting, he noted, which was a good sign. He’d already called for the clean-up team to be dispatched.
The second bandage he coiled around the gaping hole in her bicep. Part of the muscle had been removed by the aswang.
The creature preferred muscles and bone marrow to regular flesh. Once her injuries were covered by Egyptian Cotton sheets, Desmond bowed over her and assessed her eyes.
She was awake, he realised, as her pupils followed him in sluggish movements. Awake, but paralyzed by the aswang venom, but she would’ve felt every bit of it…
A part of him, however slight, itched to comfort her. That was when he knew he was in trouble.
Desmond had been trained all his life to feel indifference toward dullborns, and had even grown—like so many others—to loathe them. His training as an enforcer meant that he could shield his emotions, and not the slightest flicker of feeling could touch his face.
But then, in that moment as he looked down at her pained eyes, Desmond reached out his hand. His fingertips touched, ever so gently, her bloodied chin. Beneath the layer of blood, he felt the warmth of her skin.
Desmond pulled away as if burned.
He turned to the other dullborn. The last scraps of the linen made for a decent rope alternative. He tied them around Nigel’s legs, and strapped his arms to his sides.
Once finished, he hoisted April over his shoulder, not gently, snatched the string of linen that extended from Nigel’s bound wrists and waited in the foyer. Then, as he waited, a wretched cry roped through the apartment to the foyer.
*
Piper’s legs wobbled.
A strangled shout caught in her throat as she stumbled into a warm wall—Ash’s chest. He wrapped his arms around her, caging her in, just as her legs gave out.
Piper screamed.
She cried and she screamed. Her anguished eyes flooded tears as she gazed down at her mother’s pale face; her brown eyes glassy and lips tinted blue. Ash let her lean toward the body, and lowered them both to the carpet.
“Don’t touch her,” he whispered. “The curse is still on her.”
Piper whined, tears and saliva mixing at her lips. “Bring her back,” she choked out. “Bring her back to me.”
Ash knelt behind her shivering back and stared over her bowed head
“I can’t.” His voice was soft, a hushed sound of sorrow. “No one can perform necromancy. No one, Piper. She’s gone.”
“There has to be a way,” she whimpered. “Something we can do—anything.”
“All that we can do right now,” he said, “is help your friends. There is a chance for them, but for your mother—I’m sorry.” Ash scooped his arm around her waist and lifted her up. Her body was limp in his hold. “The clean-up team will bring her back to the Academy. For now, we have to get your friends there. The longer we wait, the lower their chances of survival are.”
Piper’s feet dragged over the carpet as he tried to guide her out of the room. She didn’t—couldn’t—cooperate.
She sagged as her shoulders jerked, and sobs wracked her body. Ash sighed, a quiet sound, and hoisted her up in his arms. He carried her downstairs, where Desmond stood with the dullborn over his shoulder, and the aswang bound at his feet.
Ash followed Desmond out of the apartment and to the van on the street.
By the time Ash put Piper in the passenger seat, her wet eyelashes had drooped and a lifelessness had overcome her.
He wouldn’t have been surprised if she passed out. But she didn’t, and, somehow, that stirred a sense of pride deep within his stomach.
CHAPTER 20
Piper stood beside the hospital bed, looking down at the patient.
Her complexion had bleached into a pasty white, and a thin gloss of sweat sprinkled her forehead. April, she thought, had never looked worse in her life.
Black bandages, administered by the healer, were twisted around her body like a tattered Halloween dress.
They were on her arm, thigh, wrist, shoulder-blade, and in three places on her torso. The healer finished up the final touches on the dressing curled around April’s left ankle, and muttered something about dullborns in the Academy.
Piper stepped away until the back of her knees touched the other hospital bed. She perched herself on the edge and watched the healer pour a murky brown sludge into April’s mouth.
The bed dipped to the side. The scent of coffee and blood reached her nostrils. Ash had joined her.
“How is he?” she asked. Though her voice seemed to come from someone else. She didn’t feel the words she spoke, she heard them like the voices on a television murmuring through the wall.
“Do you want the honest answer?” he said. “Or the lie I’m supposed to give you that everyone will be ok.”
“The second one,” she said, her fingers curled against the edge of the mattress.
“Well,” said Ash, “Nigel will be just fine. He’s living a luxurious lifestyle in a very accommodating dungeon cell—not as gloomy as it sounds—and once he’s healed, he’ll be allowed to
go home and live happily ever after in Soho.” His brows knitted together. “He does live in Soho, right? He looks the type.”
Piper didn’t have the energy to force a smile.
Besides, the sight of her mother’s corpse was seared into her eyes. It was all she could think about. She heaved a sigh and flickered her stare from April’s comatose body to her own feet. The gladiator sandals she wore were ruined—the sole had separated from the shoe, the golden threads had come undone, and patches were stained red.
How had that happened, she wondered. The blood, she could explain, but the rest? It wasn’t as if she’d been hiking through a forest.
Ash traced her gaze to her dirty feet. “If you want to shower, I can show you to a guest bedroom. They have private bathrooms and views of the London Eye.”
“The first,” she said.
“What?”
“The first option. What’s the honest answer to my question?”
Ash clasped his hands between his spread thighs and hunched over. “April will make it,” he said. “She’s expected to wake up tomorrow. Most of her skin might even grow back, but she’ll be scarred for life. In more ways than one, I’d bet.”
“And Nigel?”
“Nigel,” he repeated in a sigh. “He really is in the dungeons, but his cell is built for protection—for any of us who enter, and himself. We have had to request a visit from an Elder Healer to tend to him. Whether or not that Healer comes…” He shrugged and his eyes washed over her blank face. “If he isn’t treated in time, he’ll die. But, right now, he’s under sedation and he’s being closely monitored.”
“Why would an Elder Healer come to treat a human?” She looked at him. “The way I understand it—and correct me if I’m wrong, here—Daywalkers have a lot of prejudice toward humans.”
“You’re not wrong. Daywalkers loathe dullborns on a good day. But that’s a story for another time.” Ash handed her a phial of blue grime. “You should rest. Drink this. It will help you sleep, restore some of your energy. You’ll feel better.”
“But when I wake up,” she said and took the phial, “it’ll all be the same.”
“Yes.” He hopped off the bed and slapped her pillow. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t at least try and get some sleep.”
Piper placed the phial on the pillow before she untied her sandals.
Ash cocked his head to the side. “You might want to keep those on until you get to the guest bedroom. The floors aren’t dirty, but your feet are. The cleaners will hunt you down if you drag dirt and blood all over the Academy.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” The croakiness in her own voice surprised her. “I’m staying here with April until she wakes up.”
The sandals hit the floor with soft thuds, and she tucked herself under the scratchy blanket. She uncorked the phial and threw back the grimy liquid like a tequila shot—a skill she had mastered over time. As she placed her head on the pillow and curled up beneath the blanket, Ash stepped toward the bed.
Her hooded eyes found him. “Wh—What happened to Kieran?”
Ash jerked his head to the sterile white door. “He’s in the boy’s treatment room.”
“Tell me when he wakes up.”
Ash nodded and stuffed his hands into his pockets.
“One more thing,” she said, her vision fogging over. “Why did Desmond kill the little girl if she could be saved?”
Ash sighed and flickered his stare to the window. The dark sky, trickled with stars and pollution, hovered above the city lights.
“I told you,” he said. “We’re not in the business of saving dullborns.”
Piper, her face slackened in a lazy blankness, closed her eyes. Her lips twitched to respond, but all that came out was a whisper of unanswered questions before sleep washed over her and dragged her down into the pits of darkness.
end of book 1
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