by Tess Adair
His response momentarily failed him. He reminded her of a wind-up toy when it runs into a wall. She felt nothing but contempt for him, though perhaps that was dangerous. Or perhaps not.
“I’ll show you.” His voice was low. She knew he would do it soon.
“I doubt it.”
The next succession of events seemed to happen in slow motion; Logan knew what he was going to do before he did it, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop him preemptively—but she could interrupt him enough to buy herself a little time.
His fingers, already hovering just over the flute, closed down on it and brought it to his lips. At the same time, she crouched low and launched herself at him, shoving him to the ground just as the first note rang through the air.
She had meant to knock him off balance and prevent him from directing an attack, even if only for a moment. But she hadn’t counted his paranoid stupidity into her calculation. If he had simply thrown his arms out to stop his fall, the flute likely would have remained connected to him by the chain on his neck. Instead, he gripped the body tightly, and the force of her hit wrenched his closed fist away from his neck so hard that the chain broke.
And then his body—and his fist—broke hard against the ground. His fingers sprang open, and the flute rolled out of his reach.
Logan felt the change in the air instantaneously. The magic on the beast had broken.
Kurt didn’t seem to notice the difference like she did. He scrambled onto his belly and grabbed the flute back in a desperate stab, bringing it immediately to his lips and turning back to see the rekal as he blew.
When he had blown his brief note from the flute just before Logan knocked him to the ground, the rekal had stood at full height, ready to bear down on her, its eyes flashing their dark red. Now it still stood, but the hard set of its intention was gone. For a moment, it stared blankly down at them both, as if it didn’t know how to proceed. Kurt blared through the flute again, but the sound reverberated through the clearing to no effect; it was emptied of its magic.
Finally, the rekal’s senses seemed to return to itself. It tossed back its head and howled. Logan didn’t mistake the sound: it was preparing for the hunt, and it would start with the nearest available prey—the two of them.
“Give me back the knife!” Logan shouted at the boy standing beside her.
He said nothing as he turned to her, terror frozen on his face—his hands empty but for the now-useless flute.
“Just go! Run, now!” She wanted to call him all manner of names, but she didn’t have time.
The monster before her still had one hilt sticking out of its side, but apart from that, it was already completely healed. Behind her, she heard Kurt finally starting to run. The beast cocked his head to watch, but stopped before following. She watched in horror as it reached down past its ribs, stuck a claw just under the hilt, and wrenched the first knife free.
Her only advantage lost, Logan saw few other options. With a deep inhale of breath, she brought her arms up across her chest, then thrust them down and out as hard as she could. She felt her spikes shoot out from her skin as she launched herself at the beast once more.
This time, she moved fast. She raked her arms across the beast’s skin over and over, aiming to shred its flesh as much as she could before it managed to fling her off. The monster roared with the pain, the sound of its anguish reverberating through the trees around them. Before he could toss her, she jumped to the ground and started running herself.
She’d figured out by now that she was faster than the beast on open ground, so she pressed her speed to her advantage as much as possible, ignoring every branch that scratched her and every twig that snapped in her face. As she ran, she breathed deep through her nose, searching for the sharply unpleasant scent of Kurt’s mortal fear. It didn’t take her long to locate it.
Either he’d injured himself, or he’d collapsed out of exhaustion. He was slumped behind a tree to her right, perhaps convinced he could hide it out. She jumped over to him.
“I don’t care how much you’re hurting,” she barked. “We have to keep running if you want to live.”
He stared up at her, his face stricken with fear.
“How—how—”
“Plant your goddamn feet and push!” she ordered.
“He didn’t tell me this—he didn’t say it would go like this!”
“Who didn’t?”
“Him! The Wolf!”
A wave of disgust came over her. With both their lives in peril, he thought now was the time to stop and complain about something as trivial as his surprise?
“Maybe he didn’t know, who cares? Just get the fuck up!”
Kurt’s eyes turned lamp-like again, fixing her with an empty stare. Almost like he’d forgotten his fear.
“You don’t understand, you stupid little girl. He knew everything else, all of it! He knew you’d come. He knew you’d show up at the school and try to talk to everyone. He told me to look for a spy—he said you’d be a woman with black hair and cold eyes. He said you would wear long dark pants, even in the summer.” Kurt barked out an insane, uncontrolled laugh. “He told me you were a good runner!”
Logan didn’t have time to react to anything he said. The beast was crashing through the trees behind them—pulling them out by the roots, by the sound of it. With a grunt of displeasure, she bent down, hoisted Kurt up, threw him over her shoulder, and ran.
She couldn’t push nearly as fast with the dead weight of a teenage boy slowing her down, but it was better than standing still at least. She streamed forward blindly, moving them away from the beast based on sound alone, ignoring Kurt’s ceaseless whining wheeze.
When she was satisfied that she’d put some distance between them, she came to a stop and let Kurt tumble to the ground.
“Will you run now?”
But he was already moving, motivated either by the still-too-close sounds of the monster approaching, or by the threat of her grabbing him again. Whichever one it was, she was glad. She ran after him.
Within moments, they came into another open field. Ten feet into the long grass, she turned to make her stand.
It was on her in a moment, barreling out of the trees, teeth barred. She threw her right arm across her face in her usual defensive posture, and felt the beast’s head connect with it. Its jaw bit down, crushing into her arm.
Almost immediately, it let her go again. Black blood dripped from its mouth and onto her jacket. Her bone-like spikes had ripped into the flesh of its gaping mouth. Good.
She knew she had to inflict as much damage as possible, so before it recovered from that shock, she leapt onto it again, repeating her method of fast, incisive slashing—shredding all the flesh within her reach.
The beast, still reeling, took longer to buck her this time. But when it finally tossed her to the ground, it did so with wrathful power. She fell hard, her head glancing off the ground as the force of her landing seemed to collapse her chest inward. For a few terrifying moments, she could neither breathe nor see.
Her sight returned to her just in time to see the beast about to pounce—only to change direction at the last moment, its attention diverted by something else. Ever so faintly, she could hear a funny scratching sound.
Slowly, she craned her neck backward to see what she was missing. She was still incapable of forcing her body to move any more than that.
The sound was coming from Kurt. He hadn’t kept running, like she’d assumed he would. Instead, he’d reached the end of the clearing…and decided to climb up a tree. He had barely reached the lowest branch.
Why hadn’t he run? Dread crept through her body as she lay temporarily paralyzed, unable to affect the scene unfolding before her in any way. Why hadn’t he run?
The beast advanced on him. Now standing on the first branch, trying to reach up to the second, Kurt scrambled for the flute again, forcing loud, tuneless screams from the pitiful instrument. Far too late, he dropped it entirely and used both
hands to grab for the next branch as he jumped for it.
Miraculously, he took hold of the branch above him, but it didn’t matter. The beast had already reached him, and with a monstrous claw it grabbed one of his ankles and lifted him clean away from the tree. Logan knew what was coming, but she didn’t let herself look away.
For a moment, it held Kurt up high in the air, like it only wanted to listen to him as he screamed. Then it raised him a little higher, swung him violently, and swiped forward with its other claw. A massive torrent of blood sprang from Kurt’s chest as the demon claimed his heart. His screams fell silent.
Unbidden, Alexei’s voice floated through her thoughts.
Think of it as pest control.
With a strength she wasn’t sure she still possessed, Logan leapt to her feet. The rekal seemed to be relishing its kill—after messily consuming his heart, it let Kurt’s body drop to the ground before pouncing on top of it. The night around them was completely silent except for the sounds of the demon making its meal. Apparently an unchained rekal didn’t limit its feast to the heart only.
Grisly as the scene was, she couldn’t have asked for an easier end to her hunt. As the demon gloried in its feed, she slid her axe out of its holster and closed the short distance between them. In one fell swoop, she raised her weapon up high and brought it down with all her strength.
After everything, the end came without a struggle. The rekal was dead.
She felt no triumph in this, though she did feel a certain amount of relief. As she shook her axe free of the corpse, she could feel the natural anesthetic effects of adrenaline beginning to wear off. A sharp bolt of pain shot up her right arm where the rekal had bitten it. Still, the beast was gone; it could kill no one else. If only she’d prevented a second victim…
What would she have done then? Would she have turned him over to the Order? She didn’t trust the Order, of course—not the body as a whole nor any individual within it. But it wasn’t exactly like she could call the police. And she wasn’t inclined to make herself a prison guard any time soon. So what other choice would she have had?
And what other choice did she have now?
After wiping the black blood from her axe on the grass around her, she sheathed it once more and pulled her phone out of a back pocket. This time she didn’t dial Knatt.
After exactly one ring, a cold voice spoke on the other end.
“Pass code please.”
“Marionberry.”
“Proceed.”
“This is Henrietta Logan. I have a message for Mr. Atherton.”
A brief pause.
“Proceed.”
“He can call off his dogs—the job is complete. And I’ll need a cleanup at my current coordinates. I’ll be sending out a pulse beacon as soon as I end this call.”
Another pause.
“Recorded. Please hold.”
“Just transmit the message. My job here is done.”
With that, she hung up the phone and slipped it back into her pocket. Reaching into her jacket, she tugged open a hidden zipper and pulled out a small pouch.
Inside the pouch were several small round balls of solid stone. She pulled one out and placed it in her palm, then held it up in front of her face.
“Proiectum,” she whispered.
The stone lifted up off her palm, hovered for just a moment, then shot straight up into the air, disappearing into the night sky. She knew its course long after she couldn’t see it anymore. It would fly halfway across the country, eventually coming to land in an old mansion somewhere in Brooklyn—headquarters of the Order of Shadows. Someone there would get it, and they would dispatch a team to follow it back to precisely where she was standing at that very moment.
By which time, she’d be gone. She didn’t need to stay here any longer. The Order would clean her mess. She didn’t trust them, but she was perfectly willing to use them shamelessly.
As she started walking back in the general direction of town, she remembered the next thing she meant to do. She pulled out her phone again and dialed the number she’d programmed in that morning.
After a moment, Judith Li’s puzzled voice sounded in her ear.
“H-hello?”
“Hello, Miss Li.”
“How-how are you calling me right now? What phone is this?” She paused for a beat. “Did you plant a phone on me?”
Logan sidestepped the question.
“Are you safe? Did you and Bianca get inside somewhere?”
“Yeah, we’re at her house. Having a hilariously awkward sleepover. You wanna talk to her?”
“Probably best I don’t. You’ll be safe now. Danger’s passed.”
“Really? You killed it?”
“Yeah, killed it. It’s dead.” She sighed. Her exhaustion would be catching up to her any minute; every step she took revealed a new pain. Her leg was no longer openly bleeding, but it still throbbed when she moved. “Okay, I’m gonna leave you for now. Try to get some sleep.”
“Wait! That’s not it, is it? I still have so many questions for you.”
“I promise I’ll find you before I leave town. But I need to go now.”
“Okay. Just…please do. Find me. Good night.”
“Good night.”
She put the phone away just as her right knee gave out momentarily. She righted herself immediately, glad she’d ended the call with Judith before her collapse. Closing her eyes in concentration, she willed her pain to recede to the back again. As she steadied herself, she felt a curious sensation settle over her—it felt, once again, like she was being watched. She turned around slowly, examining the scene around her. But she saw nothing—nothing but the after-effects of violence.
The hour was late by now, and she had miles to go before she slept. She could take the safer route and walk her way back, but she wasn’t sure she could stay awake long enough. So instead, she ran.
Looking back on it, she wouldn’t be able to say how she managed to run so far after all of that. But somehow she did. She made it back to her motel, and she collapsed into sleep on the bed, never even managing to get her jacket all the way off.
Her sleep that night was completely dreamless. For now, at least, the Key had finished with her.
Chapter 9: After the Storm
When Logan woke up, everything hurt. The Key buzzed with warmth along her spine. Her clothes felt like they’d melted to her skin, and her body was stiff as cement. With a struggle, she sat up and peeled her jacket off, then let it drop on top of her still-sheathed axe, which had ended up near the foot of the bed. Perhaps she should have been grateful she hadn’t rolled over onto it in the night. Based on the cold resistance of her muscles, she would guess she’d barely moved at all since she hit the bed.
Eventually, she managed to push herself all the way to standing. Her right elbow was so stiff and painful, she found it better to avoid using that arm entirely. On her way to the bathroom, she pulled the rest of her clothing from her body, dropping it unceremoniously as she went. She turned the shower on as hot as it would go, then stepped delicately inside.
Her calf was caked in dried blood, but the wound itself had mostly healed. A jagged scar had already formed in its place. She stuck her leg under the water first and watched the red-brown stains chip away.
Already yellowing bruises blanketed most of her torso, marking all the places where she’d slammed hard into the ground—or hard into the beast. Slowly, she pushed the rest of her body under the steady stream of water. Her neck cracked loudly as she rolled it from one side to the other. Sleep had likely healed the worst of her pain, but it had left her with so many other aches she could barely tell the difference. It still hurt too much to move her right elbow at all, so she did all washing with her left arm.
Eventually she felt clean enough of blood and sweat to shut the shower off, however reluctantly. With that done, she had little else to do but start her day.
She toweled herself down loosely before pulling on a new pair of p
ants and one of the work-ready bras from the clothes rack. Before she could force herself into a work-ready shirt, however, she needed to circulate a little more air into the room, so she went over to throw the window wide.
Now it was time to call Knatt. For once, she had good news for him. She dug her phone out of her jacket and dialed him.
He answered on the second ring.
“You’re calling early,” he said, by way of greeting.
“Funny—doesn’t feel early. Oh, wait, is that why everything sucks right now?” With a slight breeze coming in from the window, she felt just comfortable enough to pull a lightweight blouse on, though she didn’t button it up all the way yet. Then she fell heavily back onto the bed, her mending muscles momentarily depleted.
“You have bad news,” he guessed.
“Not at all,” said Logan. “Well, uh, I guess it depends on your take. But the case is closed. And as a bonus, we don’t have to worry about cleanup because I already called the Order. They can make themselves useful for once.”
Knatt was silent for a moment. She imagined him standing in the kitchen, drinking tea and giving the coffee machine a judgmental stare.
“Were there further casualties?”
“Yes.” An image of Kurt’s face flashed before her eyes. “The summoner, a teenage boy who went to school with the victim. The beast was a rekal; the boy was using a flute to control it. I tried to tackle him, and he dropped the flute.”
“Ah,” said Knatt, drawing out the syllable. “And, control lost, the beast could not be made to heel again. So the boy did not survive?”
She hadn’t meant for it to end that way. A sense of shame started to creep its way up Logan’s esophagus.
“No, he didn’t. I…I tried, but…he didn’t run. I told him, but he didn’t run.”
Knatt gave a heavy sigh. For a moment, Logan braced for his admonition, but when he spoke, his tone was gentle.
“I wouldn’t blame yourself for that,” he said carefully. “I don’t know many who could take on a fully grown rekal and live. Not once it’s been unchained.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded pained and heavy. “Are you decent?”
