This Savage Song (28 page)

She found a T-shirt for August and slung it over her shoulder.

The bathroom was still quiet in that heavy way, so she hung the shirt on the door and went outside, padding across the tangled grass and ruined garden toward the small garage. The sun was already starting to sink, but the light caught on something in the distance, beyond the line of trees and back in the direction of the Waste.

Kate squinted.

It looked like some kind of warehouse, or an industrial barn. It was new—at least, it hadn't been there six years ago—but the whole thing was still, no smoke rising from the chimneys, no trucks coming and going, no perimeter. Either it had been abandoned or raided.

Inside the garage, she found the car. It had gone unused, even when they lived here, but her mom had insisted on having one, in case of emergencies. The day they returned to V-City, Harker had sent a small entourage to pick them up, so there'd been no reason to take it. She disconnected the battery from the generator and closed the hood. She tipped a gallon of gas into the tank and tried the door. It creaked, but came open, and Kate
lowered herself into the driver's seat, and found the key tucked against the visor. She slid it into the ignition, held her breath, and turned. On the first try the motor shuddered. On the second, it started.

A victorious sound escaped her throat.

And then, as she turned the car off, she heard the rumble of a second engine. A distant truck. She held her breath and reminded herself that the main road lay on the other side of an incline and beyond the line of trees. She reminded herself that no one could see the house from there, but she still stayed in the car, gripping the wheel, until all she could hear was her heart.

August knew he was losing his mind.

The worst part was he could
feel
it happening.

The sickness had taken over his body, infecting his thoughts, and now he was trapped inside himself, caught in the haze like a dreamer trapped at the edge of sleep. He could feel the corner of the dream but he couldn't reach it, couldn't pull himself out.

He couldn't hold on to his words, either. They slid through his thoughts and out of his mouth and then they were gone before he could grasp their meaning.

The pain had faded for a while, smothered by madness and joy, but now the tallies seared across his skin again, pulsing hotly, and the gunshots rang through his head in a barrage of white noise. He pressed his burning forehead against the cold tiles, his skin hissing like doused fire as the cold fought against the fever.

His body finally cooled and he slumped back against the wall of the tub, letting the cold water rise over his shins, up his spine, closing over his ribs.

Kate came and went, her dark eyes floating in the steam, here and gone and here again.

She was here now.

“Listen to me,” he said, trying to hold on to the words before they got away. “You need . . . to go.”

“No.”

“You can't . . . be here . . . when I fall.”

Her hand on his again, one of them cold and the other hot and he didn't know which was which. Lines were blurring. “I'm not going to let you fall, August.”

Again, the fear, the wrenching sadness. “I . . . can't . . .”

“You can't hurt me,” she cut in. “Not as long as you're you, right? So I'm going to stay.”

He clenched his teeth, closed his eyes, and tried to focus on his heart, his bones, his muscles, his nerves. Picked himself apart piece by piece, cell by cell, tried to feel every little atom that added up to him.

Every one of those atoms begged him to let go, to give in, to let the darkness wash over him. He felt himself sliding toward unconsciousness and forced himself awake, scared that if he went under now, something else would surface.

Kate perched on the edge of the couch, a cigarette between her teeth.

She'd scavenged and come up with half a pack, her mother's old stash.

Those things can kill you
, he'd said that first day.

Kate's lips quirked around the cigarette. She clicked the silver lighter, watched the flame dance in front of the tip, then put the fire out, and tossed the cigarette aside, unlit.

Plenty of other ways to die.

She clicked the television on, cringing at the sight of her face on the screen.

“. . . the hours since Harker's press conference,” the news anchor was saying, “there has been a rise in unrest along the Seam, and FTF and Harker forces have reportedly come to blows. We go now to Henry Flynn . . .”

The screen cut to a press conference. A slim man stood behind a podium, back straight.

A dark-skinned woman stood at his left, her hand on his shoulder—his wife, Emily. On his other side, an FTF with his arm in a sling. Thousands of task force members, and Flynn had picked a wounded one. Clever, thought Kate grudgingly, casting himself as the victim. Then again, he was: His son was missing, framed for a crime he didn't commit. Because of her father. Because of her.

“My family had
nothing
to do with the attack on Katherine Harker.”

“Is it true you planted a spy at her school?”

“Is it true one of your Sunai is missing?”

“Is it true—”

Kate clicked the television back off, dug the cell from her pocket, and was halfway through a message to her father when a sound cut through her thoughts.

Tires. On gravel.

Her head snapped up. The sound had been muffled by the TV and the hiss of the shower, and by the time she got off the couch and looked out the window, the car was pulling to a stop out front. A man climbed out of the driver's side, young and lean in a black FTF cap. Kate tensed. A member of Flynn's task force? She tugged the gun from her back, and switched off the safety as the man climbed the steps, and knocked.

Her stomach dropped as she saw the handle. She hadn't locked the door.

“August Flynn?” called the man, and then, “Are you in there?”

Kate held her breath.

What was he doing here?

She hesitated. Maybe it was safe. Maybe he didn't mean them any harm. Maybe she could go with August to South City. . . .

The man started knocking again, and she began to creep across the living room, unsure of whether she was going toward the door or the hall. Maybe . . . but how had he found them?

The knocking stopped.

“Katherine Harker?” called the voice.

Her chest tightened.

“I know you're in there.”

Her eyes were trained on the front door, so she didn't see the side table, the one she
always
used to catch her knee on. Her shin caught the wooden leg, and the framed photo on top fell facedown with a hard snap.

The handle began to turn, and Kate took off toward the hall.

She was halfway there when the door burst open.

August heard a sound beyond the shower.

A heavy beat. He thought it could be one of Kate's songs but there were no words, only the repetitive
Thud. Thud. Thud.

August dragged himself into a sitting position. It hurt to breathe, hurt to move, but he was still here, still him.

He got to his feet, pants plastered to his skin with water, and swayed, then steadied himself against the tile wall as he turned the shower off, straining to hear over the pulse of the gunfire in his head. But beyond the
harsh staccato, he heard his name, and then the sound again, and he realized it had the steady cadence of a fist against wood.

Thud. Thud. Thud
.

He stepped out of the tub, feeling like his body was made of glass—one wrong move and it would simply shatter. He braced himself a moment on the edge.

“Kate?” he called.

And then he heard the crash.

The door burst open as Kate crossed the entryway. The man caught her around the waist, and the two went down struggling. He landed on top of her hard, wrenching her wrists over her head, but she got her knee up into his stomach, and then her foot, sending him back into the wall as she rolled over and up, and leveled the gun.

“Don't move,” she growled, heart racing, but hands steady. His hat had fallen off, and his hair fell into his eyes, but not before she saw the ruined
H
on his cheek. Not FTF, then. One of Sloan's. “Put your hands up.”

“Miss Harker,” he said smoothly, half raising one hand, the other still behind his back. “I'm not here to kill you.”

She cocked the gun. “Hands. Up.”

“There's no need for this,” said the man, but his eyes were hard, calculating. “Your father sent me.”

Her eyes flicked from the hat on the floor to the scar on his forehead. “Bullshit.”

“It was just a disguise,” he said evenly. “In case the monster came to the door.” An almost arrogant smile. “How else would I know your location, Miss Harker?”

“Why would he send you?”

“He was worried.”

“And the scar?”

He tilted his head, hair falling aside to reveal the mark. “Quick, aren't you? Now put that down and—”

“Show me your other hand.”

Slowly, smoothly, his hand emerged, holding a cell phone. “See?” he said smoothly.

“Put it on the—”

More tires on gravel. Kate glanced away for an instant, but that was all it took. The man lunged for her weapon, and she swung back toward him as his fingers brushed the barrel, and she fired.

The blast recoiled up her arms, and the sound tore through the room, turning the sound in her good ear to static. It wasn't a clean shot—the bullet took the man in the neck, burrowed a hole straight through into the wall behind him. The cell phone tumbled from his fingers, skidding across the floor as he clutched his throat, but blood was already spilling between his fingers and down his front, dripping to the wood.

Red.

Not the black blood of monsters, but the vivid red of human life.

His lips moved, but Kate couldn't hear, and by the time she could, it was too late. He took a single, staggering step back into the wall, and then the life went out of his eyes and he fell, a body before he hit the floor.

Kate couldn't tear her eyes from the spreading pool of blood.

It should have been like killing a monster.

It wasn't.

A shiver went through her, and then she heard a ragged breath, and looked up to see August standing at the mouth of the hall, soaking wet and doubled over in pain.

No, not pain.

Hunger
.

“Kate,” he gasped. When he dragged his head up, the light was gone. His eyes were wide and black. “What have you done?”

August's vision tunneled.

The shadows in the room were bending, peeling away from the walls and the floor and tangling together around Kate. Her own shadow writhed around her as she moved toward him.

“I didn't—he came at me—I thought—”

She reached for his arm, soul pulsing like red light beneath her skin, and he staggered back. Away, away, away.

He tried to make the words but they were stuck in his throat.

It felt like the gravity in the room was tipping, like any second the wall behind Kate would become the ground and he'd fall forward into her. But she just stood there, waiting, and all he had to do was reach out and grab her, dig his nails into her wounded shoulder and drag her soul to the surface and the pain would stop everything would stop and—

“Run,” he pleaded as his flesh burned and his bones sang.

“August, I—”

“
Run
.”

This time she listened. She staggered backward into the door and sprinted out into the dusk just as a second car pulled up.

Kate skidded to a stop on the gravel drive as a black sedan blocked her way.

A Malchai she didn't know climbed out of one side.

And Sloan stepped out of the other.

His gaze tracked over her, his mouth drawing into a smile. “Hello, Kate.”

The crashing car. That rictus grin. Those bloodred eyes.

She raised the gun. “What are you doing here?”

He spread his arms, as thin as wire. “I've come to take you home.”

“My father didn't send you.”

“But he
did
, Kate. Despite all the bad things you've been whispering in his ear.”

Her fingers tightened on the gun. “I'm not going anywhere with
you
. You sent those monsters to kill me, didn't you?”

Sloan considered her. “And?”

“You said you didn't do it—”

His smile was vicious. “
I
never said that.”

Her father's words.
I questioned him myself. We both know he cannot lie.

It hit her like a blow. Sloan couldn't lie, but Harker could.

“Oslo
,
” said Sloan, addressing the other monster. “Go get the Sunai. I'll handle this.”

The Malchai started toward the house, and Kate swung the gun and fired. The silver-tipped bullet buried itself in the monster's shoulder, and he snarled as black blood stained his shirt. Kate turned the gun back on Sloan, but he was already there, cold fingers vising around her wrist and wrenching the barrel up. “This game again?” he said dryly. “Did you really think you could turn my master against me?” An edge of disdain on the word
master
. He pulled her toward him, and her free hand went for the lighter in her pocket just before his fingers closed around her throat.

The moment they did, she drove the switchblade up into his wrist. Sloan recoiled at the silver, and she drew the knife free and tried to slash at his throat, but he was too fast, and before she could get in another shot, his fist connected with her jaw, and she went down hard, spitting blood into the gravel.

The lighter skidded out of reach, and cold fingers curled around her wounded shoulder as he forced her
onto her back and wrapped both hands around her throat.

“Our little Katherine, all grown up.”

She clawed at his wrist, but it was like fighting stone.

“You think you deserve a chance to rule the city? It doesn't belong to you, or Callum Harker—not anymore. Soon the monsters will rise, and when they do . . .” he leaned close, “the city will be
mine
.”

He knelt on her wounded ribs and she tried to cry out, but there was no air. Her lungs screamed.

“You've made a mess of things,” he went on. “Can't even die when you're supposed to. Even
your mother
could do that much.”

She kicked and squirmed, trying to gain purchase, to get a leg up as her vision swam, tunneled. “I should kill you now,” he said wistfully. “It would be a kindness. But—”

He slammed her head back into the ground, and everything went dark.

August stumbled into the bathroom. He fell to his knees on the tile, and pulled the violin case onto the floor in front of him, fumbling with the clasps as a shadow appeared in the doorway, its red eyes reflected in the mirror.

August wasn't fast enough—his fingers barely brushed the strings of the violin before a boot connected
with his ribs and sent him hard into the base of the sink.

Porcelain cracked against his spine, knocked the air from his lungs.

“Well, well,” came the Malchai's wet rasp, “not so scary now, are you?”

August struggled up onto his hands and knees, and crawled back toward the case, but the creature's boot came down on his wrist, grinding it into the tile floor. Pain flared through him, too bright, too human. Sharp nails hauled him up, and then he was flying backward into the wall so hard the tiles cracked, and rained down around him when he fell.

August tasted blood, staggering upright as the Malchai's hand closed around the neck of his violin.

No
.

“
Sunai, Sunai, eyes like coal,”
sang the monster, running a nail along the string.
“Sing you a song and steal your soul.
”

August lunged forward, but at the same moment the Malchai wound up and swung the violin at August's head.

He tried to get his hand up to stop the blow, or at least save the instrument, but he was too late, and the violin shattered against his skull, turning the world to splintered wood and broken strings and silence.