by Meg Collett
“It’s just an expression.” He paced away from me again, and I realized he was worried. Like, really worried. “Luke,” I said softly. “He’s gone through it. It’ll take time. We can’t expect him to be cracking jokes and making everyone laugh like the old Hatter did.”
“I know that!” He whirled around, almost shouting. I didn’t flinch. “You think I don’t know that? I don’t want him doing that shit. I don’t expect him to. But this is more than him just dealing with his arm. Something’s going on in his head, and he won’t let me in. And Sunny sure as hell isn’t—”
“Watch it,” I warned, voice low. “Don’t bring her into this. It isn’t her responsibility to put Hatter’s pieces back together again. He has to do that himself.”
“She won’t even talk to him,” Luke growled.
I bristled at his tone. Nobody, not even the love of my life, spoke about my bestie like that. My feet stopped their swinging, and I went very still. Luke matched my posture, his eyes turning wary. He knew me well.
A small smile inched up my lips. “If you want to fight about this again, we can.” I cocked my head. “It’s been a long day, and I could use a good throw-down.”
Luke studied me, and for a second, I thought he would take me up on the offer. Lately, when we fought, it always started with this fight about Sunny and Hatter. But he backed down. He had his own set of dark circles beneath his eyes. I slept beside him every night, but I had no clue how much he slept.
He had his own demons to fight. He went out to his father’s grave more than I thought was normal for someone who had hated Killian Aultstriver more than anyone else, including me, which was a hard feat considering Luke’s father had murdered my mother.
“Just talk to her, okay?” he mumbled in defeat. “I hate seeing him like this.”
My shoulders sagged, and I stood off the desk. I went to him, all thoughts of fighting dissolved, and wrapped my arms around his waist. “I will. Again. But she doesn’t listen to me. I’m sorry about Hatter.”
Luke’s hands skimmed up my back, giving me chills, and cupped the back of my neck. I leaned my head back to stare up at him. Bending down from his tall height, he pressed a tender kiss to my lips, which were still swollen from last night. Even though we couldn’t get enough of each other and spent almost every night in his apartment together, his simple kiss still thrilled me.
“He’ll be okay.” Luke pulled away from our kiss and bowed his forehead to mine. “He has to be. I don’t know what I’ll do if he isn’t.”
His words scared me. It was the first time he’d said something like that, but I should have guessed. Luke and Hatter had been hunting partners and best friends since Hatter had moved in with Luke when they were teenagers in Barrow. They knew each other’s demons better than even Sunny and I did.
“Everything is going to be fine,” I said, taking Luke’s face in my hands. “We’re together. Dean is gone. We have the school. Things are settling down and returning to normal. We’re going to be fine.”
“He’ll be back, Ollie. You know that.”
I shrugged. “Maybe? Or maybe he’s gone. Stranger things have happened. We have the upper hand, and he knows it. He would never challenge me now that word has gotten back to him that I control the aswangs around here.”
Luke’s eyes turned sad, the slight wrinkles at the corners deepening. “Ollie …”
I hated that doubt in his voice, like he knew something I wasn’t seeing. But I saw everything. I just happened to be more optimistic than everyone else.
“He’s gone, Luke,” I said, stronger now. “We’re together. Everyone is safe. This is what we’ve always wanted. The war is almost over.”
He kissed me again, but it tasted like pity. I pulled away and glared at him.
“I hope you’re right,” he said.
T W O
Sunny
“Tell me that makes sense. Tell me.” I waited. Ollie blinked her round blue eyes at me as she twirled a damp lock of blonde hair around her finger. I threw my hands up in the air, flinging my pen up to the ceiling. “Exactly! You can’t! Because it doesn’t make sense!”
Ollie lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug. She reclined in my bean bag puff of a chair with her socked feet up on my bed, which was covered in a turquoise print throw and white furs. My mom and grandmother had sent me some cute things to decorate my dorm with at the start of the semester, and it had felt so normal, so natural, that I hadn’t even complained about the silly teddy bear they’d sent me from home. Truth was, I liked having a patchy, one-eyed snuggle buddy around.
Especially since my real-life one couldn’t stand to be in my presence anymore.
All around us, the Death Dome hummed with other students doing the same thing we were: studying and hanging out. Threads of music drifted between the levels of the dome. Dorm rooms, the old prison cells, lined the curved walls of each level. A tall watchtower stood in the center of the dome. Before Dean took most of the students whose families supported his reign, the dome had been a veritable hive of activity in the evenings. It buzzed now, but not like before.
But buzzing meant we were alive. Buzzing meant some of us were left. That was what mattered.
“I guess it makes sense,” Ollie said, pulling my attention back. “I mean, if you think about it.”
After retrieving my pen from the floor—it was my favorite pen—I narrowed my eyes at her. I sat at my desk with my Advanced Tracking text in front of me, opened to the section on aquatic migration patterns, a theory pioneered by one of Fear University’s more famous professors, Mamie Bogrov, a great, great something aunt of Dean’s.
By association, I didn’t like her.
“Fine. Then explain how a tracker can use the direction of moss growth to track a ’swang around large bodies of water.”
Ollie smirked as she made a blonde mustache with her lock of hair. “You’re in a bad mood this evening.”
I gritted my teeth. That was the understatement of the century, but I thought I’d been doing a good job of hiding my mood. But then, best friends always saw through ruses like that. “I’m just stressed out. I didn’t think Mr. Clint would advance us to fourth-year classes.”
“He’s just putting on a good show.” Ollie rolled her eyes. “No one cares what grade we get in these classes.”
“No, Dean was putting on a show. Mr. Clint is serious. Ollie, look at me.” When she did, frowning at my tone, I pressed my point. “When things settle down and go back to normal—”
“They are normal.”
I choked down a sigh of frustration. Luke had warned me about Ollie’s “normal” delusion weeks ago, and he’d been right. “Sure, that’s what I meant, which means it’s not a show. Our grades in these classes matter. Graduating with high marks matters again. If you want to be a hunter, you have to earn it. Otherwise, it won’t matter to anyone who follows behind us. We have to uphold that precedent set before us. That’s what Mr. Clint means when he says you have to be a student first, not a hunter.”
Ollie barked out a laugh. “Says the girl who drags me out on hunts almost every night.”
She had me there. “You like hunting too. And they need us out there. With fewer hunters in our area, we have to pitch in to keep the ’swang population on Kodiak manageable.”
At least, that was what I told myself. Truth was, I freaking loved it. Who would have thought the Cowardly Lyon would be out fighting shoulder to shoulder with her hunting partner, one of the greatest hunters Fear University would ever know? Take that, bullies. Suck a toe.
“Besides,” I started again, “who needs tracking when you can—”
But Ollie wasn’t listening. She dropped her feet off the edge of the bed and jerked upright on my puff. Her hand pressed against her stomach. The sheen of sweat on her brow caught the light. When had she gotten so pale?
I swiveled my chair around to face her fully. “Are you okay?”
“I think …” She swallowed thickly like she was pushing somet
hing down. “I think I’m gonna …”
Her hand went from her belly to her mouth.
“Oh.” My eyes widened as her body heaved. She was serious. “Oh!”
I jumped to my feet and rushed around her to swing open the tiny bathroom door. She rushed past me and threw herself at the toilet. She barely made it in time.
The water in the toilet splashed as she threw up her dinner. I quickly ran a hand towel under cold water in the sink before crouching beside her. Pulling her long hair out of the way, I settled the towel against the back of her neck while she heaved and groaned.
When she finished, she leaned back against the wall and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Holy shit,” she moaned.
“Where did that come from?” I sat beside her in the cramped bathroom. “I ate the poppy seed chicken too, and it didn’t make me sick.”
“I think I have a stomach bug. I’ve felt queasy all day.”
I wrinkled my nose and stood to wash my hands under a stream of scorching water. “Great. That’s just great. Now I’ll get it. Then I’ll miss a week of classes and fall further behind.”
I tidied up the bathroom, spraying disinfectant until my eyes watered. Ollie crawled on all fours back into the room. I backed out of the bathroom, spraying Lysol as I went.
Ollie coughed. “You’re gonna kill me. Stop spraying that stuff.”
“I’m killing germs, thank you very much.”
“If someone lights a match, we’re all going up in flames—”
A wail filled the air.
I froze.
It took a moment to register that the fence alarm was going off. It meant an aswang was trying to breach the walls. Ollie was already on her feet and racing to my dorm door, which was beeping and sliding shut. As my spine flash-froze into a column of ice and my stomach dropped to my feet, she shouted at me, “Knives. Get your knives!”
Our kits sat ready at the door. She grabbed them and jumped through the door. It was shutting fast.
She glanced back at me. “Sunny! Let’s go!”
I leaped forward. The dorm door had a foot left before it would slam shut and lock me inside. Less and less of Ollie showed on the other side of the thick, impenetrable plastic door. I hit the wall and twisted sideways, sliding through with barely an inch to spare. It locked into place a second later.
Ollie threw my bag at me. Together, we raced for the stairs. As fourth-years, we had almost five flights to crash down. As we banged and clanged down the stairs, we pulled on our boots, jackets, and weapons. When we hit the dorm’s main door, which the guards in the tower unlocked for us with grim faces, we were fully kitted out.
Ollie swiped her student card on the front door’s scanner, and it unlocked with a bang. She heaved the heavy door open just enough for us to squeeze through before it automatically shut and locked, sealing the precious few students and professors we had left inside.
Outside was chaos.
Hunters streamed from the barracks. They raced across the courtyard to rook’s nests spaced along the fence. Farther down the fence’s towering concrete wall, gunshots peppered the darkness. A full moon hung low in the sky, casting light everywhere.
“Come on!” Ollie shouted. She raced toward the front gate, where pairs of hunters were accumulating, checking their weapons and tightening their throat guards.
I fastened mine as I sprinted after Ollie.
“Hatter! Wait!”
The name stopped me cold. I spun around.
I saw him a second later. Hatter had his kit on, his throat guard already lashed tightly around his neck. His rifle was slung across his chest, the dangerous end pointed at the ground as he ran toward the gate. The empty sleeve of his jacket flapped in the wind behind him.
Luke ran after him. He wore nothing of his kit, and even his feet were bare. “Hatter!” he shouted again.
But Hatter’s eyes were blank. He would have run right by me if I hadn’t grabbed his arm and used all my weight to haul him to a stop. He swung toward me like he might shove me back, but then he blinked, the fog clearing from his eyes. “Sunny?”
Luke caught up with us. Ollie doubled back to stand beside me, bouncing on her toes. Breathlessly, she asked, “What’s going on? We have to go. They’re only opening the gate once.”
I ignored her and Luke, whose hand hovered uncertainly near Hatter’s shoulder. “What do you think you’re doing?” I shouted at him over the wailing alarm. “You can’t go out there!”
Hatter blinked again. I doubted he even knew what was going on. He’d just reacted to the alarm.
Confirming my thoughts, he glanced down at the gun held lopsided in his one hand. He looked back up at me, and I nearly lost my resolve. His face was a raw nerve ending, his two-tone eyes wide with agony. His mouth fell open as all the breath left him in one whoosh. He swayed, and Luke’s hand clamped down on his friend’s shoulder to steady him.
“Stay inside,” I commanded, forcing the steely resolve back into my voice. “Let’s go,” I told Ollie.
I raced off toward the closing gate. The other hunters were already gone.
Before Ollie and I slipped between the massive wrought-iron gates, I glanced back.
I wished I hadn’t.
Hatter had turned to Luke like a dying flower seeking a sliver of sunlight. He curled toward his friend, his shoulders hunched forward, his head bowed. Red hair twisted in the breeze, his loose sleeve billowing limply at his side.
He was defeat incarnate. He was a lost boy in our special Fear University nightmare.
Something clenched in my belly, but I shoved it aside. I had a task to focus on.
The gates clanged shut behind us, sealing with a kiss of death. In the moonlit shadows, Ollie ran straight toward our preassigned emergency grid to clear.
I fell into step behind her. My belt of throwing knives hung low on my hips, their weight reassuring as I ran. Last year, the knives would have terrified me. Last year, stepping foot outside the fences and into the darkness would have debilitated me with fear. But now I felt naked without my knives strapped to my body. Now I relished the surge of adrenaline in my blood.
And beneath that pumping hum came a little whisper. A little craving.
I would always yearn for a hit of aswang saliva during a fight.
In rare times like this, when a rogue aswang got past Ollie’s pack, I’d let it bite me during the fight so I could feel the rush of fearlessness. I’d accumulated a sweeping map of black scars across my body because of my addiction.
But Ollie kept quiet about it because at least I wasn’t secretly injecting myself anymore.
She didn’t know I carried a syringe in my knife belt, ready with a double dose of saliva just in case.
A single serving didn’t cut it for me anymore.
We ran headlong into the woods, parallel to the cliffs of Tick Tock Bay. Over the pounding of our boots and breathing, I could almost hear the waves smashing over the rocky shore.
Ollie ran on instinct. Between the few attacks we had and the frequent practice drills, we knew our emergency grid like the back of our hands. These trees were all familiar, as were the stumps and rocks and frozen tributaries we leaped over. We kept this area of the forest clear throughout the week. This was our turf, and any ’swang found on it was considered rogue and shot on sight.
Unless they were one of Ollie’s pack.
I still couldn’t fathom that she was their queen.
Her pack protected our borders from rogues. Of the few attacks that had happened in the months since she’d taken control, a member of her pack would take down the rogue before we could even engage. Other times, they would wait in the shadows, unseen, while we practiced our combat in a real-life situation. They were never far away.
So, what was happening tonight?
A shudder shook my spine. Fear washed over me like an ice bath. It turned my mouth metallic and had my jaw clenching. It was my only warning that a ’swang was about to attack. But my response
was dialed in thanks to countless hours in the sim with Mr. Clint.
“Ollie,” I snapped, swinging around to face the oncoming ’swang. Her inability to feel pain made her immune to the aswangs’ ability to make their prey feel fear.
I acted as our ’swang divining rod. And I was chiming with a find.
It strolled between the trees a moment later. It must have been following us because it approached from the direction of the school. Never a good sign. It meant some hunters hadn’t cleared their grids well enough. I held back a growl. We’d have to have a meeting about that.
I had a knife in my hand before I even knew I’d reached for one.
“That one is yours. We got two more at three o’clock, coming fast.” Ollie’s back pressed against mine as I stared down enemy number one.
Before I could lift my knife, the darkness above the creature shuttered. Through it, a body appeared, stepping forward like the darkness was a doorway. I saw a flash of shimmering black skin, tight leather pants, braided dark hair, and sinister gray eyes.
Zero dropped on top of the aswang and rammed a curved machete through its spine, nearly severing its head right off.
“That one was mine, Z,” I shouted as I turned to help Ollie fend off the next two.
In the corner of my eye, I saw Zero disappear. She didn’t bother responding. She never did.
She reappeared at my back, the three of us forming a triangle, our shoulders almost touching as we waited for the next attack. Three other ’swangs had joined the first two. I felt their presence in my mind like a headache.
They stepped forward from the shadows of the trees, and I instantly felt their wrongness.
They lurched instead of prowled, nearly stumbling onto their snouts. Saliva, thick and foaming, streamed from their mouths. Their ears and tails twitched like they were being electrocuted.
And their eyes were white. No pupils. No irises. Just searing bright white.
“What the—” Ollie hissed. Her whip lashed at one, sending it skittering and twitching into a tree. It fell and rolled back onto its paws.
