Our Dark Duet

by Victoria Schwab

  He’d wanted her to be right.

  “Alpha?” Phillip’s voice came over the comm.

  August straightened. “Present.”

  “We’ve got an SOS. Delta team requesting backup.”

  “North or South?” asked August, rising to his feet.

  The slight pause told him the answer before Phillip spoke. “North.”

  August looked out past the Seam, the north half of the city reduced to sharp edges and shadows. He felt his sister’s gaze but he didn’t look back as his boot brushed the lip of the roof.

  “I’m on my way,” he said.

  And then he stepped off the edge.

  The buildings reminded Sloan of jagged teeth, a broken mouth biting into wounded sky. It was dusk, that time when day collapsed into something darker, when even human minds gave way to primal things.

  He stood before the tower windows looking out, just the way Callum Harker had done so many times. He could appreciate the elegance, the poetry of made replacing maker, shadow outlasting source.

  The office occupied a corner of the building once called Harker Hall, and two of its walls were comprised of solid glass. Against the darkening backdrop, the floor-to-ceiling windows caught shards of his reflection and swallowed others. His black suit blended with the twilight, while the sharp planes of his face shone white as bone, and his eyes burned twin red holes in the skyline.

  As night swept through, his reflection grew solid in the glass.

  But as the sun set, artificial light seeped in from the south, streaking the picture, fogging the image like a haze, a pollution, the lit spine of the Seam, and the Flynn Compound beyond, rising up against the dark.

  He rapped a pointed nail thoughtfully against the glass, tapping out a steady rhythm, the pace of a ticking clock.

  It had been six months since he’d risen to his rightful place. Six months since he’d brought half the city to heel. Six months, and the Compound was still standing, the FTF was still resisting, as if they couldn’t see that it was a doomed endeavor, that predators were made to conquer prey. He would show them, of course, that they would not win, could not win, that the end was inevitable—the only question was whether they would submit, whether they would die fast or slow.

  Sloan’s attention drifted to his own half of the city, cast more in darkness than in light. What light there was served a purpose—it kept their food alive. The Corsai had never been creatures of temperance—they would feed on anything in reach; if it fell into the shadows, it was theirs. But the Corsai were bound to those shadows, and so the Malchai caged their meals in well-lit buildings and cut high-wattage paths through the dark.

  Yet there were other lights dotting the city.

  The lights of the hiding.

  Thin ribbons that escaped beneath doors and boarded windows, bulbs of safety turned to beacons, as steady and luring as a heartbeat.

  Here I am, they said. Here I am, here I am, come and get me.

  And he would.

  Voices sounded through the open office door, the broken mutterings of a struggle, a body being dragged kicking, screaming against a gag.

  Sloan smiled and turned from the glass. He rounded the broad oak desk, his eyes drawn as always to the stain on the hardwood floor, the place where blood had cast a permanent shadow. The last remains of Callum Harker.

  Unless, of course, you counted him.

  He opened the door wide, and a second later a pair of Malchai came crashing in, dragging the girl between them. She had everything he wanted: blond hair, blue eyes, a fighter’s spirit.

  Katherine, he thought.

  The girl, of course, was not Katherine Harker, but there was a moment—there was always a moment—before his senses caught up and he registered the dozen differences between Callum’s daughter and this imposter.

  But in the end, those differences didn’t matter. The most important feature wasn’t in the face or the shape or the scent. It was in the way they fought.

  And she was fighting. Even with her mouth taped shut and her hands roped together. Tears had drawn tracks down her face, but her eyes blazed and she kicked out at one of the Malchai but missed as he forced her to her knees.

  Sloan’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the Malchai’s grip on the girl’s bare arm, the places where his pointed nails had drawn blood.

  “I told you not to hurt her,” he said flatly.

  “I tried,” said the first Malchai. Sloan didn’t learn their names. He didn’t see the point. “She wasn’t an easy catch.”

  “We did our best,” said the second, adjusting his grip.

  “You’re lucky we didn’t eat her ourselves,” added the first.

  Sloan cocked his head at that.

  And then he ripped out the creature’s throat.

  There was a misconception about Malchai. Most humans seemed to think the only way to kill them was to destroy their hearts. It was certainly the fastest way, but severing the muscles in the neck worked, too, if your nails were sharp enough.

  The monster clawed uselessly at his ruined throat as black blood spilled down his front, his jaw flapping open and closed. He wouldn’t die from the wound, but he’d be too weak to hunt, and Malchai were not a generous lot when it came to blood.

  Sloan watched the Malchai thrash. Useless. They were all useless.

  He kept waiting for a challenger, someone to rise up and attempt a coup, but no one ever did. They knew, as well as he, that all monsters were not created equal. They knew they were lesser, down to the black hearts beating in their core. Knew it the way any predator knew its betters.

  Sloan had always been . . . unique.

  All Malchai rose from murder, it was true, but he had risen from a massacre. The first night of the territory wars, when Callum Harker claimed North City as his own, he did so by eliminating the competition. An image flickered in Sloan’s mind, more dream than memory, of a long table, a dozen bodies in a dozen chairs, blood pooling on the floor beneath them.

  What was it Callum said?

  The road to the top is paved with bodies.

  Sloan often marveled that he could have been a Sunai—that whatever invisible hand cast their shapes had given him this instead. Perhaps because there were no innocents in the room that night.

  Or perhaps fate simply had a sense of humor.

  The wounded Malchai was losing steam. A rasping sound escaped his throat, followed by a wet gurgle as the creature collapsed to his knees. His blood dripped in thick clots, staining the floor, and Sloan kicked the Malchai back, out of the path of Callum’s mark.

  The girl was still on her knees, pinned down by the second monster, who stared at the black blood pulsing from the other Malchai’s throat, his skeletal face a mask of shock.

  Sloan tugged a dark swatch of cloth from his shirt pocket.

  “Go,” he said, wiping the gore from his fingers. “And take him with you.”

  The Malchai obeyed, releasing the girl so he could haul the other monster toward the door.

  But the moment her captor’s grip was gone, the girl was up, ready to flee.

  Sloan smiled and dug the heel of his shoe into the rug, jerking it toward him. She staggered, fighting for balance, and in that beautiful moment before the girl could either fall or find her feet, he was on her, forcing her back against the floor. She fought beneath him, the way Kate had fought in the grass and the gravel. She clawed at him with bound hands, raking too-short nails across too-hard skin, and for a moment he let her fight, as if she hadn’t already lost. And then his fingers tangled in her straw-blond hair, forcing her head back, exposing the line of her throat, and Sloan pressed his mouth to the curve of her neck, relishing her rising scream.

  “Katherine,” he whispered into her skin right before he bit down, pointed teeth sinking easily through flesh and muscle. Blood spilled over his tongue, surging with power, with life, and the scream died in the girl’s throat. Some part of her was still trying to fight, but every blow was weaker, her limbs growing sluggi
sh as her body slowly, haltingly surrendered.

  She shuddered beneath him, and Sloan savored the perfect seconds when her limbs stopped but her heart struggled on, the blissful stillness when it finally gave up.

  His jaw unclenched, teeth releasing with a wet slick. He drew his fingers from her hair. Gold strands clung like cobwebs until he shook them free. They settled over her face, as thin and fine as old scars.

  “What will you do,” said a dry voice in the doorway, “when you run out of blonds?”

  Sloan’s teeth clicked together. The intruder’s shape hovered at the edge of his vision, a ghost of the girl beneath him, a shadow, familiar but distorted.

  Alice.

  He dragged his gaze toward her.

  She was dressed in Katherine’s old clothes, scraps Katherine had left behind, black jeans and a fraying shirt. Her hair was more white than blond, chopped at a violent angle along her jaw, and blood—dark arterial sprays—coated her arms from elbows to pointed nails. From those bloody fingers hung a handful of patches, each printed with three letters: FTF.

  “We each have our tastes,” said Sloan, rising from his crouch.

  Alice tilted her head, the motion slow, deliberate. Her eyes were ember red, like Sloan’s, like all Malchais’, but every time he looked at her, he expected to find them blue, like her—he almost thought father, but that wasn’t right. Callum Harker was Katherine’s father, not Alice’s. No, if Alice was born of anyone, it was of Katherine herself, of her crimes, just as Sloan was born of Callum’s.

  “Did you succeed?” he asked. “Or simply make a mess?”

  Alice drew something from her pocket and tossed it toward him. Sloan plucked the object from the air.

  “Four caches down,” she said. “Three to go.”

  Sloan considered the soft cube in his palm. A small quantity of plastic explosive. A very small quantity.

  “Where is the rest?”

  Alice shot him a mischievous grin. “Somewhere safe.”

  Sloan sighed and straightened, the blood settling in his stomach, the high of the kill so woefully brief. In death, the girl at his feet looked nothing like Katherine, which was terribly unsatisfying. As for the body itself, he’d have someone throw it to the Corsai. They weren’t picky when it came to a pulse.

  Alice followed his gaze down to the corpse, its appearance a vague echo of her own. Her eyes shone, not with anger or disgust, but with fascination.

  “Why do you hate her?”

  Sloan ran his tongue thoughtfully over his teeth. He didn’t hate Katherine, he simply loved the thought of killing her. And he resented her for taking the one life that should have been his: her father’s. He’d never know what Callum’s blood tasted like. But as long as Katherine was out there, somewhere, he could imagine hers.

  “Does a predator hate its prey?” he asked, dabbing a stray drop of blood from the corner of his mouth. “Or is it simply hungry?”

  Alice’s attention remained fixed on the girl. “She’s out there, somewhere.” Her red eyes flicked up. “I can feel it, in my bones.”

  Sloan understood. Every day of their shared existence, he had felt the threads of Callum’s life, thin, invisible, impossible to be rid of. And he’d felt his maker’s death like a sharp pair of scissors cutting him free.

  Alice flexed her fingers, and the last clinging beads of blood dripped to the floor.

  “One day, I’m going to find her and—”

  “Clean yourself up,” he cut in, flicking the pocket square toward her. “You’re making a mess.” What he didn’t say was that Katherine was his prey, and when she returned home—and she would return home, was always drawn home—her death would be his.

  But Alice made no motion to grab the swatch of fabric, and it fluttered to the floor, landing like a sheet over the dead girl’s face. Alice held Sloan’s gaze, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Sure thing, Dad.”

  Sloan’s teeth clicked together in disgust.

  The first time she had called him that, Sloan had hit her so hard that her body cracked the wall. Alice for her part had only straightened and given a little goading laugh and walked out, out of the penthouse, out of the building, and into the night.

  When she returned just after dawn, her limbs were slick with blood, but there were no FTF patches in her hands. She’d said hello and gone to her room. It wasn’t until he left the penthouse that he discovered what she’d done: Alice had gone out and killed every blond-haired, blue-eyed girl she could find. Left the bodies in a row on the steps of Harker Hall.

  He’d thought of killing her, then, had thought of it a hundred times since, but some urges were made sweeter by the waiting. Perhaps when he ran out of Katherines . . . yes, thought Sloan, returning the smile

  He would save her for last.

  Back at her third boarding school, Kate had read a book about serial killers.

  According to the first chapter, most isolated acts were crimes of passion, but those who killed repeatedly did it because they were addicted to the high. Kate had always wondered if there was more to it than that—if those people were also trying to escape the low, some hollow, unfulfilling aspect of their lives.

  It made her wonder what kind of job those people must have had, to need such violent hobbies.

  Now she knew.

  “Welcome to the Coffee Bean,” she said with all the false cheer she could muster. “What can I get started for you?”

  The woman on the other side of the counter didn’t smile. “Do you have coffee?”

  Kate looked from the wall of grinders and machines, to the patrons clutching cups, to the sign above the door. “Yes.”

  “Well?” said the woman impatiently. “What kind of coffee do you have?”

  “There’s a board on the wall over there—”

  “Isn’t it your job? To know?”

  Kate took a steadying breath and looked down at her nails, studying the faint stains of black from the blood of the monster she’d slayed the night before, as she reminded herself that this was just a job.

  Her fifth job in six months.

  “Tell you what,” she said with a smile. “Why don’t I get you our best-selling blend.”

  It wasn’t a question. Deep down, most people didn’t want to make decisions. They liked the illusion of control, without the consequences. She’d learned that from her father.

  The woman nodded brusquely and trudged over to stand with the huddled mass waiting for their orders. Kate wondered who was more addicted to their high, serial killers or coffee addicts.

  “Next!” she called.

  Teo appeared, his blue hair spiked like a flame above his head. “You’ve got to see this,” he said, pushing his tablet across the counter. And where there was Teo . . . her gaze flicked past him to the corner booth and saw Bea’s curly brown hair, Liam’s purple beanie.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “Do you want to place an order? Since I’m at work,” she added, as if the apron and the spot behind the counter and the line of customers didn’t make it obvious.

  Teo flashed a mischievous grin. “Triple half-sweet, nonfat caramel macchiato—”

  “Now you’re just being obnoxious—”

  “—with sugar-free whipped cream. Put it on my tab.”

  “You don’t have a tab.”

  “Aw.” Teo gave an exaggerated sigh as he withdrew a crumpled bill. “I asked you to start one for me.”

  “And in the interest of not getting fired—again—I didn’t.” As she took the cash, her gaze flicked down to the tablet. She caught the edge of a headline—A NEW CRIME SCENE—and her pulse ticked up. This, this was the high that killers and coffee-addicts hunted for. “Go sit down.”

  Teo obediently withdrew and as soon as the line was clear, she made his damn drink and ducked out from behind the counter.

  “I’m going on break,” she said, tearing off the apron and heading to the corner booth where the motley crew of Wardens had taken up residence.

 
She slammed down the macchiato and dropped into an open chair. “What are you doing here?”

  “Manners,” said Bea, who’d gotten her the job.

  “Macchiato!” said Teo cheerfully.

  Liam was busy counting out chocolate-covered espresso beans and popping them into his mouth one by one. “Relax,” he said, “it’s not like anyone’s gonna figure out you have an alter ego.”

  “Please stop talking.”

  “Bad barista by day,” said Teo in a stage whisper, “badass monster hunter by night.”

  This was why Kate worked alone. Because the only thing worse than having a secret was letting other people in on it. But the Wardens were like quicksand: the harder she fought, the deeper she sank. They took her standoffishness and rolled with it, even seemed to find it endearing. Which only made her prickle more.

  Once, just to mix things up, she’d been obnoxiously sweet, called them nicknames, and thrown an arm around Liam’s shoulders, returning all that affection.

  They’d looked at her in horror, as if someone else was wearing her face.

  “I only have ten minutes,” she said. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  Teo offered up his tablet. “Check it out.”

  A photo of a smiling businessman was printed below the headline: OWNER FOUND MAULED BEHIND EATERY.

  Kate scanned the text.

  Police are still trying to determine the cause . . . speculating whether . . . intentional or foul play . . . no witnesses . . . animal attack . . .

  “Animal attack—who buys that?” said Bea. “We’re in the middle of P-City.”

  Kate looked to Teo. “Morgue file?”