The Killing Season (15 page)

Coldcrow scratched the skin beneath his beard. “Killian keeps some records in his office, but I doubt he would let you borrow them. But throughout the years, I’ve collected some old books. You’re more than welcome to look through them anytime you like.”

“What about tonight?” I asked, not wanting to waste any more time. “After dinner maybe.”

“Works for me, I guess.”

I decided to take a leap of faith. “Do you know anything about Vol—”

“Hey, girls!” a voice from down the hall called.

I glanced up. Nyny headed toward us at a brisk pace, her purple braid bouncing against her back. She wore hightop neon-pink sneakers and a green plaid dress. A large black smudge mark stood out between her brows, like her fingers had been covered in ink when she’d rubbed her face. “Nyny,” I said, trying not to sound too annoyed at the interruption.

“I better be off.” Coldcrow cuffed Sunny’s shoulder, sending her rocking dangerously, and nodded at me. “Remember what I said, and anytime you want to look at those books, let me know.”

I watched his back until he disappeared around a corner, my thoughts lost in what he’d said. He clearly meant not to trust anyone with close ties to the administration at Fear University, which definitely implicated Killian. But I already knew that. He could suspect someone higher up at the university was responsible for the death of Peg’s family. Or maybe he knew someone was leaking university secrets. If he was so willing to help me, I doubted he’d left the note in my room last night.

“Ollie?”

I glanced up. Sunny and Nyny stared at me, waiting for a response. “Sorry. Zoned out for a second. What?”

“Nyny wants us to go outside the base with her tomorrow. She asked if we would be available.”

“I just need help picking up some supplies from Barrow’s post office and resetting a few cameras before the snowstorm moves in.”

“A snowstorm is coming?” I asked, frowning. A feeling of claustrophobia crept up my spine.

“Yeah, gonna be a total whiteout in a couple days. We’re keeping an eye on it.”

Sunny shifted beside me, her voice quiet as she asked, “Is it safe to go outside?”

Nyny lifted a shoulder, her face etched with boredom. “A hunter will go with us to make sure everything stays safe, but seriously, nothing exciting ever happens so don’t get your hopes up. I know I don’t.”

Clearly, that relieved Sunny. She finally cracked a smile. “That sounds like fun. And I would love to get outside. What do you say, Ollie?”

I glanced down the hall where Coldcrow had vanished. I needed to figure out what the hell was going on, and I’d come to Barrow specifically for answers. Part of those answers had to come from Hex or someone in his pack who could get a message to him. Only he knew the truth about who or what I was. Tomorrow would give me a chance to figure some of those answers out if we ran into aswangs or I managed to slip away long enough to get a message to Hex.

A headache flared behind my right eye. Getting a message to him was easier said than done. Technically, I could walk up to any ’swang and say hello, but not everyone was in Hex’s pack or would even want to help me. I’d learned that lesson at Fields. But I had to try. Opportunities to go outside the base were scarce.

I nodded. “Yeah. Sure. Sounds good.”

“Great!” Nyny hurried away, calling over her shoulder as she went, “Meet me at my lab first thing tomorrow morning. Don’t be late.”

After she’d gone, Sunny asked, “Do you think it’s actually safe?”

“I think,” I said, turning to look at Sunny, our wary expressions matching, “when anyone says something is safe, it’s good to assume just the opposite. Especially here.”

T E N

Ollie

L
ater that evening, I worked out the tangles in my wet hair with quick brutal jerks that made my eyes water. If I hurried, I might be able to find Abigail before dinner to check on her. Even Killian had to let her out to eat. At least, I hoped so.

Sunny and I planned on going to Coldcrow after dinner to look through his books for anything on the Volkova family. Including Peg’s uncle in my search for answers was a calculated risk, but spending time with him would give me a chance to feel him out since he currently sat on the top of my list for the university’s leak.

He was the only one who even made sense, especially if he blamed the university for the attack on Peg and her family’s death. From his comments to me, I guessed he wasn’t the most loyal hunter to Dean and the school.

When my door burst open with a crash, I merely glanced back, expecting Sunny since we’d planned on walking down to dinner together.

Eve stood in my door, her chest heaving as she struggled to catch her breath. Blood covered her shirt front and dripped down her arms from ragged claw marks. Deep puncture wounds encircled her wrist from a bite. She was lucky to still have her hand.

“We have a problem,” she said, her voice hitching as a tremble wracked through her body. She grabbed onto the door frame to keep from slumping to the floor.

I crossed the room in one stride, ready to grab her in case she fell. “What happened?”

“It’s Luke and Killian. They were both bitten,” she said, her eyes full of tears. I couldn’t tell if her fear was left over from the hunt or if Killian and Luke’s bites were bad enough to cause her present terror. “They’re going to kill each other.”

I swallowed my own panic and told myself to stay calm. This had to have happened a few times in the past, but a voice in the back of my head whispered tensions between Luke and his father hadn’t been as high as they were now. And I was the cause. “Take me to him.”

We ran. Eve moved fast even with her injuries, likely fueled by the sheer amount of adrenaline and ’swang saliva pumping through her body. We barreled around hall corners and down the stairs to the entry. Not running every day had me out of shape, but gasping for breath didn’t keep me from noticing all the staff had disappeared. The base echoed with a trembling sort of silence.

The quiet didn’t last long before I heard the roars.

Eve jerked me to a stop at the top of the stairs, her eyes wild. To be heard over the yelling down in the entry, she shouted into my ear, “Don’t get close to Killian. And no matter what, do
not
get in between them, okay?”

“What’s the plan?” I yelled back.

“We have to separate them. Lock Killian up down in the infirmary. You get Luke back to his room.” I gave a sharp nod and went to hurry down the last flight of stairs, but Eve tightened her grip on my arm. “Be careful, Ollie,” she warned. “I don’t know what will happen once you go down there, but we can’t separate them without you.”

I gave myself a quick breath to gather myself, to stab down the fear punching holes through my gut. To get my game face on. Luke was down there and he needed me. I could do this. I would do this. Eve released her grip on me and we launched ourselves down the stairs, practically stumbling over one another. At the entry, I jerked to a stop, my mouth falling open.

The scene in front of me came in fits and stops. Too much to process. To understand.

I saw the blood first. On the people. The floor. The vase full of bane. The walls and paintings. Like a Pollock wet dream.

The screaming filled my ears. The yelling and shouting. But Luke’s hoarse roar ricocheted above them. The sound went straight through my head and into my heart like a jackhammer, crippling in the agonizing terror it filled me with. I’d never heard such a sound.

It was rage manifest. He could build worlds with that noise. Destroy them faster.

All the hunters in the base gathered in the entry, split on opposite sides. Half of them worked to contain Killian, who thrashed and yelled across the entry at Luke. Haze worked to snap Killian into chains to restrain his arms and legs. My head snapped to the other side of the entry, where more hunters worked at holding Luke back. Hatter jerked on a noose around Luke’s neck, hauling his best friend back a few steps.

Father and son. Beasts. Screaming at each other. Clawing at their friends to get one inch closer to each other. To kill. To rip apart. To end it.

Only then did I notice the raw, open bite marks on Luke’s arms and shoulders, too numerous to count. A quick glance confirmed Killian had just as many. With that many bites, it would be fortunate if the base still stood in the morning.

I took one more step down the stairs. The step squeaked beneath my weight.

Luke stiffened and his head jerked toward me, his hair falling over his face and shielding his eyes. “No!” he shouted, doubling his efforts at getting the hunters off him. Hatter lurched forward and scrambled to keep his grip on the rope around Luke’s neck.

“Come here, Ollie,” Killian called from across the entry, the words a scratchy, hitching sound from all his yelling.

Luke growled. “You won’t fucking touch her.”

“Fucking will be involved, son. I can show you how to fuck her right. Fuck her good. Fuck her dead. That’s what I’ll fucking do, son.”

Luke screamed and I froze, my heart trying to squeeze its way up my throat. From the hallway, Nyny and Thad raced into the entry holding fistfuls of syringes. Sedatives. But Nyny stopped too close to Killian and he swiped a long arm out toward her, laughing as he sent the hunters around him scrambling to hold onto his chains.

“Not too close!” Eve shouted from beside me.

Sensing the danger, Nyny scampered back, her face a mask of calm and order. She deftly started handing syringes to Thad, who put a couple in his mouth and started toward Killian once the hunters had him back in hand.

Blood smeared across his teeth, but Killian kept laughing at Thad. When he had a needle ready, Thad stabbed it into Killian’s arm, quickly followed by two more. Before he stepped back, Thad reared back and punched Killian square in the face.

“Ollie!” Hatter rasped, wrenching back on the rope and sending Luke to his knees. “Do something!”

“No!” Luke hauled on the rope. Hatter crashed onto the floor, his chin skidding across the bloodied tile. “Get back!”

Without Hatter holding him in place, Luke tore through the other hunters, sending them crashing back into the table and walls. The vase of wolf’s bane tittered on the table and fell off, shattering and sending poisonous flowers dancing across the floor. Luke ripped the rope off his neck and bounded toward me, long legs crossing the entry in two huge steps. He shoved me back up the stairs before I could breathe, before I could react.

All those lingering, lecherous gazes had put me squarely in Killian’s cross-hairs. He wanted me. And Luke was practically tearing his face off to keep it from happening.

Luke rounded back, ready to go at Killian without anyone to stop him, and I was no match for him in a state like this. Over his shoulder, I saw Hatter sag against the ground, counting out loud so quickly I barely understood the numbers. He stared at the floor, unblinking and shivering, with enough blood coating his body that I knew he’d been bitten too and now his mania was taking over. Haze and the other hunters had gotten Killian’s chains locked into place, but not without injury. Broken noses gushed fresh blood onto the floor; hunters snapped broken fingers back into place. Killian had done it all. And now he had the chains pulled taut, his chest stripped bare to reveal a swath of dark hair mingled with gray and hard, ripping muscles.

He smiled at me, eyes barely dulled from the sedative, though Thad was already injecting him with another. “You need a real man, Ollie! Let me show you how hard I can—” Thad backhanded him again, splitting his lip wide open.

Luke lunged, but I grabbed his hand and held on, refusing to let Killian’s words register in my head. I had to get Luke out of here, though a part of me said to let him finish the job with Killian. No one would question it too much. And our biggest problem would be gone. We would live to fight another round with Dean at Fear University. Abigail would be safe. Luke could breathe easier.

“Get him out of here,” Thad barked. The hunters hauled on Killian’s chains but only managed to move him a few feet. Thad turned and saw me behind Luke. His face went pale. “Ollie, get back,” he said, inching forward a step toward us.

Luke growled, jerking us down a step. I stumbled after him. “Luke,” I said, my voice quiet.

His head whipped around at the sound of my voice, his eyes dark, lips twisted into a snarl. His neck corded with the effort. His dark hair stuck up with clumps of matted blood, the stubble on his jaw made darker by gore and sinew. Blood spatters dotted beneath his eyes like tears.

He looked so much like an animal right then that I wondered if we were the primal monsters and not the aswangs.

“Ollie!” Thad shouted. “Don’t touch him!”

“Luke,” I whispered, forcing him to focus on me and not look back at Thad, though I saw the strain in his eyes. “Come with me. Let me help you.” He blinked at me. I tugged on his hand. I wouldn’t win against the blood lust, but I could offer more.

That got me a step back up the stairs. Killian screamed and railed against his chains. He was shouting something that threatened to pull Luke away from me once again, but I ignored him.

“Ollie, no!” Thad shouted, taking two bounding strides across the entry.