Only Ashes Remain

by Rebecca Schaeffer

  “Oh, don’t be bitter! I apologized for that.” Henry spread his arms magnanimously. “I acknowledge my mistake. I never should have sent you away. You forgave me and came home.”

  Kovit didn’t respond, face shadowed.

  “But you didn’t really come home.” Henry’s voice was sad. “You were keeping secrets. You knew how important the commission from Tácunan Law was to us, and you didn’t disclose where Nita was. You never really came back, not really, not if your loyalties were torn this way.”

  Still Kovit remained silent.

  Henry shook his head. “I know it’s been hard, Kovit, but I think it’s important we leave the past behind.”

  Kovit’s voice was soft. “Important for who?”

  “For you, of course!” Henry laughed. “You’ll see. I’m doing you a favor.”

  Kovit pursed his lips. “A favor.”

  “Exactly.” Henry smiled, wide and bright.

  Kovit stared at Henry, eyes black, before his gaze swept to Nita. A sense of déjà vu swept over her. She remembered a similar situation with Boulder demanding Kovit be his pet monster, earn him prestige.

  She found it ironic that it always came down to this. Everyone wanted Kovit as their pet and Nita as their prisoner. Neither of them was anything more than the sum of the reputation they could give others.

  “What are you doing to Nita?” Kovit asked.

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. I learned my lesson with Matt, you won’t have to touch her.” Henry waved a hand. “I’m going to kill her, send a picture of her body to the Tácunan brat, and sell the body.” He sighed. “I’m sure I could sell her for more alive, but Fabricio has been insistent that she has to be dead, and I can’t risk offending his father. So she’ll be dead soon enough.”

  Kovit’s voice was flat and cold. “I will never work for you if you harm Nita. Or sell her.”

  Henry raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’ve grown a conscience or something? You’re not going on some angsty teen emo self-hate spiral, are you?”

  “Of course not.” Kovit snorted with such derisiveness that Henry relaxed. Then Kovit smiled, wide and creepy, promising a darkness only he and Henry knew. “But I won’t bend on this. Hurt Nita, and I’ll never work for you.”

  Henry’s smile fell. “Kovit—”

  “No.” His eyes were fierce, and Nita felt the fluttering in her chest grow stronger until she thought butterflies might choke her.

  It took a special kind of brave to say that, with the threat of INHUP hanging over him like the sword of Damocles. He was always doing this. Putting friends first. Henry or Nita, Matt or his internet friends. Nita always put herself first, her quest for her own safety over everything. Over her relationship with Kovit, over the lives of people in her way.

  “Kovit, Kovit.” Henry rose from the bed. “Please, enough with all these emotions. I know you get attached to people easily, but this has gotten out of hand. I admit, I made a mistake with Matt. Six years of friendship can’t be wiped out so easily. But this? You can’t have known her for more than a month! If that!”

  “She’s my friend.” Kovit’s voice was calm, composed.

  Henry threw his arms into the air. “Why couldn’t you just be satisfied with your internet ones?”

  Kovit’s eyes narrowed. Suspicion confirmed. “You knew?”

  “Of course I knew. You really think I was going to let you online without supervision?”

  “So what, you spent hours scrolling through a bunch of tweens talking about a video game?” Kovit frowned. “I find that hard to believe.”

  Henry brushed him aside. “Of course not. I don’t have time for that. The head of the Family and I found a much better solution.”

  And his eyes turned to Gold.

  Gold stiffened, and her fingers tightened on her gun. She worried at the piercing in her lip.

  Kovit turned to her, uncomprehending. “Gold? What does Gold have to do with this?”

  Henry laughed. His shoulders were back, posture radiating arrogance. “You still haven’t figured it out?”

  Kovit was frowning, but Nita’s mind had already skipped several steps ahead.

  “You’re one of the people in the chat group.” Nita’s voice was soft.

  Kovit’s eyes widened, and his mouth fell open. He turned to Gold with a soft, horribly vulnerable expression.

  “I didn’t know.” Gold couldn’t meet his eyes. “I didn’t know it was you. I was just told to keep an eye on one of the younger members of the Family.” She shuddered, and when her eyes came up, they were full of rage. “I never knew I was supposed to be keeping an eye on a zannie.” She practically spat the word.

  “You . . .” Kovit’s voice was soft and hurt. “When I logged back in, you turned me in?”

  “That she did!” Henry laughed. “And my, was I surprised to hear about it. It took me days to even believe it.”

  When Kovit and Nita had met up days ago, it had already been far too late. Henry already knew. Kovit was already doomed. He’d unwittingly dug his own grave.

  Kovit closed his eyes, and she could see him coming to the same conclusion.

  He took a deep breath and turned to Gold. “Who are you? In the chatroom, who are you?”

  “May.” Her gun shook in her hand. “I’m May.”

  Hadn’t Kovit said he was closest to May?

  Kovit was shaking all over. “And it was all lies? Everything?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Gold’s face twisted in a snarl. “You’re asking me that? You pretended to be human, you pretended you were a real person with real feelings and emotions!” Her voice caught, choked. “I thought you were my friend.”

  Kovit’s voice was sad. “We were friends.”

  “Don’t lie to me!” Gold snarled, but it looked like she was close to tears. “Zannies don’t have friends. You’re monsters, all of you. You can’t feel anything except joy at hurting others.”

  Kovit jerked his head away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at Gold for one more moment.

  Nita closed her eyes, heart breaking for Kovit. She’d seen how much his friends meant to him. To be betrayed that way, to not even be thought of as a real person, was the worst kind of crime.

  “Oh, Kovit, don’t be so hard on her.” Henry smiled. “You know she thought Matt had risen from the dead when she first saw you back online. She’d thought it was Matt all this time.”

  Kovit stared at Henry, face slowly breaking apart, one muscle at a time. “Matt is dead?”

  Gold’s face crumpled, and Henry snorted. “We caught Matt. A week or so after you were sent away. In Toronto, actually! He’d tried to cross the border, he’d enlisted some local to try and get him new papers.”

  Nita’s mind flitted back to the conversation Adair and Gold had in the shop, and more and more pieces began to slide together. That was how Gold and Adair had met—trying to smuggle Matt out. And failing. Adair had known Matt was dead from the start. He just had kept that information from Kovit. Probably waiting for the right price.

  Nita replayed more of the conversation with her new knowledge and wondered if he’d also known about Gold and Kovit and the chatroom. What other secrets had he kept to himself?

  “Of course,” Henry continued, “whoever tried to get him his new identity hadn’t realized we’d tagged him with a tracker.”

  “No.” Kovit was shaking all over. “No. What did you do to Matt?”

  Henry smiled softly. “Well, let’s just say I put your old tools to good use.”

  Nita leaned away from the scene, horrified. There was something obscene about a human talking about torture in such a casual way. She hadn’t realized she’d been desensitized to Kovit, but she had. He ate the pain. He needed the pain. He didn’t need to get the pain the way he did, but in a twisted way, she could understand him.

  This was different. Henry’s clear obsession with torture was wrong on so many levels.

  Kovit fell to his knees on the ground and clutched at th
e ugly green rug. “No. No, please, you didn’t . . .”

  “He’s quite dead now, not to worry.” Henry smiled, smooth and clean and predatory as he leaned in to the wounded and battered Kovit for the killing blow. “And I thought, as punishment for hiding from the family and hiding the lovely Nita here from us, I could do the same things to one of your little internet friends.”

  Kovit’s head snapped up and Gold gasped.

  Henry waved dismissively at Gold. “Obviously not you.”

  “You . . .” Kovit couldn’t seem to finish his sentence.

  Henry leaned over him, a peregrine falcon over a kestrel, one predator dominating another. “You’ve been very bad, Kovit, keeping Nita a secret. And going to her in the night, when you thought we were all asleep. No, this is exactly the kind of behavior that led to the whole mess with Matt.”

  Henry smiled. “So how about every time you screw up, I murder one of your friends?”

  Kovit just kept shaking his head, as if by continuing to deny what was happening, it would make Henry stop talking, his words lose their meaning.

  “I’ll make sure it takes a while too.” Henry leaned forward. “I know how much you appreciate pain.”

  Kovit closed his eyes. “I’d rather have INHUP catch me and just die.”

  “I’ll still kill them.” Henry rose and twirled a pen from the sideboard in his hand. “Even if you’re dead.”

  Kovit stared at him for a long time, the only sound in the room his harsh breathing. Finally, he asked, “Didn’t you tell me earlier you liked my morals? That it was better having a zannie with lines they wouldn’t cross?”

  “Oh, I do! It’s much better.” Henry nodded for emphasis. “So much easier to control them. It’s hard to control people who aren’t attached to anything.” He shrugged. “I mean, obviously, I’d much rather you didn’t have any of those weird rules about friends and attachments. They’re so inconvenient, always getting in the way. But if I can’t get rid of them, I’ll use them.”

  Guilt sank deep into Nita’s bones at Henry’s words. Kovit had accused her of trying to control him too, to make his morals fit her needs.

  She closed her eyes as understanding fell over her. She always knew trying to change someone was a fool’s errand. People who fell for bad boys hoping to reform them were idiots.

  No one fell for Kovit hoping to reform him. He was too evil for those people to want, and too good for the people in the market.

  What would it be like, everyone despising you for being a monster, but also wanting you to be more of a monster? Wanting you more ruthless on one thing, less on another. They wanted to mold him into the person most convenient for them at the time. And that was impossible.

  No one is perfect. No one is exactly who you want them to be. There is something in every person, even your closest friend, that you don’t like.

  Kovit was loyal.

  Kovit tortured random people.

  Kovit went above and beyond to help his friends.

  Nita had befriended him for his good side, and hated herself for caring for a monster. But when it came time for the true acts of monstrosity—luring strangers into buildings to kill them, demanding that Kovit murder the man who raised him—it was Nita, not Kovit, who pushed for it.

  Her throat closed. The monster in the room right now wasn’t Kovit. It was everyone else. Including Nita.

  “Henry,” Kovit whispered, rising shakily to his feet. His legs trembled slightly, but he stood tall. His eyes were focused and glazed at the same time, like he was intent on something far in the distance only he could see.

  “Yes?” Henry looked bored.

  Kovit was mere inches from him. “Are you afraid of me?”

  Henry laughed. “Hardly. You never hurt people you know. I’ve been safe for years.”

  “Yes.” Kovit agreed, voice distant. “I never hurt people I know.” Then he met Henry’s eyes, and his voice was a promise. “This won’t hurt.”

  He reached out and snapped Henry’s neck in a single swift motion.

  Forty-Six

  NITA DIDN’T WAIT. Before Henry’s body was on the ground, she head butted the person closest to her. His gun tumbled to the ground.

  She ripped her ankles free from her zip ties, and leapt at him before he could pick his weapon up, dragging the chair still attached to her wrists with her. She slammed sideways into him, bashing his skull into the wall. It shattered like a fragile egg, spraying her with blood.

  Just like Kovit had killed Reyes.

  You can dissect it later too.

  A bright, crazy grin crossed her face. She could. She could move the body somewhere else, somewhere private, take a scalpel, let it sink into its flesh . . .

  She shivered, body rippling like Kovit on pain for a moment. Then she pushed it down.

  Not now.

  There was still another enemy.

  Gold was staring at Kovit and Henry, her eyes wide. Her gun was raised, but she just stared. “You killed him.”

  Kovit turned to her with that same glazed and focused look in his eyes. Then he moved, darting forward and twisting the gun out of her grip and pinning her to a wall.

  Gold shrieked. “Let me go!”

  “Why?” he snarled. “Because you pretended to be my friend for years?”

  “I didn’t pretend! You pretended!”

  “Liar!” Kovit pressed forward, and Gold’s shoulder popped with a squelch and she shrieked, high and harsh.

  Nita wrestled with her wrist zip ties but quickly gave up, popping her thumbs out and shedding the flesh from her wrists so they were nothing but bone. She yanked her hands free, then reattached the skin.

  She stepped forward and put her hand, gory with her own blood, on his shoulder. “Kovit, stop.”

  “Why?” His eyes turned to her, dark and dangerous and utterly shattered. “You don’t like the sound of her screams? Or is it just any screams you didn’t cause yourself?”

  “That’s not—”

  “You stand there and judge me, but you’ve killed more people in the last week than I’ve killed in my life!”

  Nita flinched.

  Gold tried to kick Kovit’s leg out, but he twisted his leg around hers, eliciting another horrible pop as her knee dislocated and her body slumped, only supported by the pressure of Kovit’s hand on her throat, pinning her to the wall.

  “You’re nothing but a monster, no matter what you tell yourself.” Gold choked, gasping in pain and tears soaking into the bandages on the side of her face. “A real person could never do this to someone they thought of as a friend.”

  Nita swallowed. “She’s not wrong, Kovit. You don’t hurt your friends. Remember? It’s a rule.”

  “What rules?” His voice was bitter, and tearstains carved paths down his cheeks. “I’ve broken my rules. I just murdered Henry. What does any of it matter anymore?”

  He was crying full out now, sticky wet tears coating his face, chest heaving in sobs as he twisted Gold so she screamed and his whole body shivered in pleasure.

  Nita grabbed his arm and ripped him away from Gold, who crumpled to the ground. She spun Kovit to face her. “Kovit, look at me.”

  He couldn’t, and Nita grabbed his cheeks and forced him to look her in the eyes.

  “You’re hurting,” she whispered. “I get that. And if you need pain, if you need comfort food, I promise you, I can give myself more pain than any other human in the world if that will make you feel better.”

  Sudden, naked hunger spread across his face, and his fingers curled at his side.

  Nita swallowed the rising terror inside and plowed ahead, voice thick. “But I want to know that you’ll be able to look me in the eye afterward.” She leaned closer. “I will do anything for you, Kovit, but you have to promise me it won’t break us.”

  And just like that, the hunger was gone, and Nita forced herself not to let out the sigh of relief that he hadn’t called her bluff.

  He looked away, and her hands fell from his fa
ce. “I wouldn’t. Be able to look you in the eye, I mean.”

  “I thought so.” Nita took a deep breath.

  On the other side of the room, Gold crawled to the door and into the stairwell, whimpering. Kovit continued shivering like he had goose bumps from her pain, but he ignored her as she dragged herself away.

  Nita leaned close. “No matter how broken you think you are, Kovit, you still care about your friends. Hurting Gold will just make you feel awful.”

  He swallowed and looked at the floor.

  He turned away from Nita abruptly, and slowly walked back to Henry. Each step looked like it took a monumental effort, and when he finally reached his old mentor, he stood there, staring silently at the body for a solid minute.

  Finally, his hand reached out and brushed a gray strand of hair from Henry’s eye. His fingers trailed along the skin before reaching the eyelids and gently closing them.

  Nita took a step toward Kovit, reaching a hand out, not knowing what to say, only knowing she needed to stay near him.

  He didn’t look at her, hands still lingering on the corpse. He blinked wet lashes. The light caught on his tears so they sparkled against his cheeks.

  “I tried so hard,” he whispered. “To let myself enjoy who and what I was, to let myself revel in the pain while still keeping myself sane. I drew lines, I made small sand castle walls to keep out the darkness, to make sure I never became like other zannies I’d met. Like the woman Henry hired.”

  He blinked up at her. “But it never mattered. Henry didn’t want that kind of person. Gold was lying the whole time. Matt is dead. And you . . .” Tears matted his lashes together. “You can’t stand me. You freak whenever even a hint of what I am surfaces. You can only stand to be near me by ignoring the parts of me you don’t like.”

  His head dipped, and his hair fell across his eyes, masking his tears. “I suppose Henry won. He always wins. I’ve broken my own rules. I’ve become exactly what Henry wanted me to be.”

  “No.” Nita took a step forward. “That’s not true.”

  His gaze snapped to hers. “Don’t tell me you’re not happy that he’s dead. That this is over, that he’s out of the way.”