Our Dark Duet

by Victoria Schwab

with promise

  a city

  carved in two

  so many

  dark thoughts

  so many

  monstrous minds

  so much

  kindling

  just waiting

  to catch—

  Kate lurched backward, out of the vision.

  Her nose was bleeding, and her head pounded, and her hands ached from gripping the sink, but none of it mattered.

  Because Kate knew where the monster was going.

  Knew where, somehow, it already was.

  Verity.

  Six months, condensed into a single bag.

  The same one she’d first brought with her to Prosperity, the same things inside: cash, clothes, fake ID, a pair of iron spikes, a silver lighter with a hidden switchblade, a handgun.

  It should have made leaving easy, but it didn’t. She told herself it was just a mission, told herself she was coming back, even as the echoes of a city she had once called home burned against her retinas, and the cold shadow twisted through her head. Kate didn’t know how to fight this thing, didn’t know how to kill it, but she knew she had to try.

  She scooped up her tablet from the coffee table and sank onto the couch. The device booted to reveal the carnage from the restaurant, still on display where Riley had left it.

  Twelve dead. A violent thought turned into a violent deed.

  And now the monster was in Verity, a place that thrived on violence, that fed and nurtured it, and Kate couldn’t shake the idea that she had led the shadow there. That she had let it see into her mind, had shown it a place rife with potential.

  Moth, meet flame.

  But where had it come from? There had been no massive attacks, nothing on the scale she imagined necessary to create something like this. Was it the product instead of Prosperity’s slow poison? A city’s decay?

  And what would a thing like this do in a city like hers? She’d already seen what it could do—hell, she’d felt the effects herself. The darkness stirred in her even now, a want whispering through her pulse, telling her to reach for the gun in her bag.

  Instead she took a deep breath and opened a new message window. She addressed it to the Wardens and dropped every photo she had of the Heart Eaters into the file, along with a message:

  Pure metal only. Aim for heart.

  Her finger hovered over the SEND.

  It wasn’t enough, she knew that. The Wardens weren’t hunters—but they would find one. Someone stupid enough to do what she’d been doing. Maybe even someone better.

  She told herself she had to go.

  Had to warn the FTF. Warn August.

  She hit SEND, and rose to her feet, shoving the tablet into her bag. By the time she reached the door, her phone was ringing.

  Riley.

  She didn’t answer, didn’t let herself stray from the task at hand. It was just like any other hunt, she told herself, letting her limbs take over, moving with a purpose she wasn’t sure she felt. She didn’t know what she felt, but she knew how to move. She paused at the door, scribbled out a note on a pad of paper.

  She locked the door behind her, and slid the key beneath, listening to it skid away across the wooden floor, out of sight, out of reach.

  After that, she didn’t let herself look back.

  Running was just like every other habit.

  It got easier with practice.

  Riley’s building had a parking garage in the back, and as Kate scanned the rows of cars, she regretted ditching her father’s sedan when she got to the city.

  She could have kept it, but everything about the car said Verity, said money, said Callum, down to the gargoyle on the hood, so she’d left it on the side of the road twenty-five miles from Prosperity’s capital in case anyone came looking for her.

  In the end, no one did.

  And now she was stuck searching for a ride out of town. Thank God the weather was nice, she thought, stumbling across a coupe with the windows halfway down. She didn’t even have to break the glass.

  She tossed her bag into the passenger seat and climbed in, overwhelmed by sudden déjà vu. Another life, another world, August breathless and Kate wounded, her fingers shaking from the fight with the Malchai as she threw the car into gear.

  Her cell buzzed in her pocket.

  Kate didn’t answer, kept her hands busy prying off the ignition’s cover and splicing the wires. The engine sparked, sputtered, sparked, started.

  She hit the gas.

  “Please, please . . .”

  “Our father who art in . . .”

  “What do you want . . .”

  “Get off me . . .”

  “Burn in Hell . . .”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong . . .”

  “Let me go . . .”

  “Please . . .”

  Humans, thought Sloan. Always talking.

  There were eight of them, kneeling on the warehouse floor, men and women with bruised faces and hands bound behind their backs. They were filthy, half-starved, dressed in an assortment of suits and dresses and casual attire, as though they’d been snatched right off the street or out of their homes, which, of course, they had.

  Late afternoon light streamed through cracks in the windows and doors, but there was work to be done. Besides, thought Sloan, letting a hand pass into a beam of light, it was important to remind the humans that while the sun may weaken him, a weak Malchai was still more dangerous than a strong human.

  The sun turned his skin translucent and his bones dark, and for an instant, the prisoners stilled and stared, as if hoping he might burst into flame. They were quickly disappointed.

  When he did not burn, did not so much as wince, the whining started up again.

  “Please . . .”

  “Don’t hurt me . . .”

  “We haven’t done—”

  Sloan let his hand slip back into shadow. “Be quiet.”

  Behind the kneeling forms stood four more humans, unbound save for the metal collars circling their throats. The Fangs met Sloan’s gaze, hungry for approval, while those on their knees shivered in fear.

  He rapped a nail thoughtfully against his teeth. “This is all of them?”

  “Yes, sir,” said one of the Fangs, quick as a dog. “Engineers from the fridges, just like you asked.”

  Sloan nodded, turning his attention to the quivering shapes on the concrete floor.

  “The brightest minds . . . ,” he mused. A man began to sob. Sloan brought the tip of his boot to the man’s knee. “You. What did you do before?”

  When the man didn’t answer, a Fang kicked him in the side. One of the other prisoners let out a short, terrified sound that only made Sloan hungry.

  “S-software,” stammered the man. “Opendrive, internal access . . .”

  Sloan clicked his tongue and moved on. “What about you? Come now, don’t be shy.”

  “E-electrical,” answered the second.

  “Plumbing,” said the third.

  One by one they shared their expertise. Technical. Biological. Mechanics. Computers.

  Sloan paced, his agitation growing.

  And then the final captive answered, “Civil.”

  Sloan slowed, coming to a stop before her. “What does that mean?”

  She hesitated. “I . . . worked on buildings, construction, demolition . . .” Sloan’s mouth drew into a smile. He brought a sharpened nail to her chin.

  “You,” he said. “And you,” he added to the one who knew mechanics. “And you,” he said, to the electrician. “Congratulations. You’ve all found new employment.”

  The Fangs hauled the three engineers to their feet, and Sloan turned his attention to the rest of the captives, who clearly didn’t know whether to be distraught or relieved.

  “The rest of you,” he said with a sweep of his hand, “are free to go.”

  They looked at him, wide-eyed. He pointed at the warehouse door, fifty feet away. “Go on. Before I change my mind.”

&n
bsp; That was enough to jog them loose. All five scrambled to their feet, hands still bound before them. Sloan rolled his head on his shoulders and watched them rise, stumble, run, racing for the door.

  Three of them made it.

  But then Sloan was moving, letting that simple, animal self take over as he slipped between shadows. He caught the fourth by her throat and snapped it cleanly before spinning to grab the fifth, catching the man just as his fingers skimmed the warehouse door.

  So close, thought Sloan, sinking his fangs deep into the man’s throat. Somewhere, someone screamed, but for a beautiful moment, Sloan’s world was nothing but a dying heartbeat and a wave of red.

  He let the body fall with a thud to the concrete.

  “Changed my mind,” he said, drawing a square from his pocket and wiping his mouth.

  The surviving engineers were sobbing into their hands or holding their heads. Even the Fangs had the good sense to go pale.

  “Clean this place up,” he ordered the Fangs, turning away, “and bring my new pets to the tower. And if anything happens to them in your care, I will pull the teeth from your skulls and make you swallow them.”

  He threw open the doors and stepped outside.

  The Crossroads was a massive center, part shopping mall, part truck stop, part cafeteria, a palace of polished white linoleum. It was the first place you hit on your way into Prosperity, and the last place on your way out, and Kate hadn’t been there since the day she left Verity.

  She found a pair of sunglasses in the car’s center console and put them on, hiding the silver crack as she went inside. She bypassed the food halls for a line of vending machines, and caught her reflection in a dispenser’s steel surface, her face distorted by the warp of the metal. She looked away and punched in the code for a cup of coffee.

  When the machine jammed, Kate took a few slow breaths.

  She hadn’t lost her temper at any of the drivers, hadn’t so much as sworn when someone cut her off, despite the whisper in her head, the longing—stealing over her like a blanket—to speed up and up and up until someone crashed.

  She punched in her order again, and when the coffee finally came out, she downed the drink in a single long gulp, ignoring the way it burned her throat. Two hallways down she found the vast wall of rentable square lockers. The hall was empty, and she knelt in front of a cubby on the bottom row and reached into the narrow gap between the bottom of the locker and the linoleum floor.

  Six months earlier Kate had stopped at the Crossroads, not knowing when or if she’d ever come back. But her father had been a strategist as well as a dictator, and one of his few bloodless sayings was this: only fools get cornered.

  In Callum Harker’s decade-long rise to the top, he always had a way out. Cars across the city, safe houses and stashed weapons, the home beyond the Waste and the box under the floor filled with fake papers.

  The only kind of trail you were supposed to leave was one you yourself could follow home. After several maddening seconds, Kate’s fingers snagged the corner of the packet, and she drew out a single padded envelope.

  Inside were the last remnants of another life. A few folded bills and a bundle of IDs—school card, driver’s license, two credit cards—all under the name Katherine Olivia Harker. A whole life reduced to the contents of an envelope.

  Kate emptied it into her bag, then began shedding the last six months of her identity, shoving papers and ID into the envelope, until all that was left of her time in Prosperity was her cell phone. Kate weighed it in her palm. It was still off, and she knew she should leave it that way, put it in the envelope with the rest, and walk away, but some traitorous thing inside her—not the monster, but something all too human—held down the power button.

  A few seconds later, the screen filled with missed calls and messages. She should never have hesitated, should never have turned the phone on, but she had, and she couldn’t unsee the latest text.

  Riley: Not like this.

  Kate swore softly to herself, and called him.

  Riley picked up on the second ring.

  “Where are you?” He sounded breathless. She’d spent half the drive planning what she’d say, but now nothing came out. “I mean what the hell, Kate? First Bea hears you lost your shit at work and then you just up and leave? No word?”

  Kate ran a hand through her hair, swallowed. “I left a note.”

  “Oh, you mean, sorry, duty calls? That’s your definition of a note? What the fuck is going on?” Kate winced. Riley never swore. “Is this about what you saw? At the restaurant? What are we dealing with here?”

  “We aren’t dealing with anything,” she said. “I’m working this one myself.”

  “Why?” He cracked his shin audibly against something and swore again under his breath. “What’s going on?”

  Kate leaned back against the cold metal of the lockers, and tried to keep her voice light. “It’s complicated. I’ve got a lead, but it’s not in Prosperity, and I don’t know how long it will take; that’s why I sent the files, just in case . . .” She couldn’t finish that sentence, so she changed course. “I’ll be back. As soon as it’s done. Tell the Wardens.”

  “Will I be lying?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home.” The word scraped her throat. And then, because Riley had given her so much, and she had given him so little, she added, “To Verity.”

  Riley let out a long, shaky breath, but there was no surprise in his silence, as if he’d known all along. When he spoke, his voice was urgent.

  “Listen to me, whatever’s going on, whatever you’re running away from, or toward, I just want you to know—”

  Kate swiped a tear from her cheek and killed the call.

  Before he could call back, she switched the phone off and dropped it in the envelope, sliding the contents beneath the lockers for safekeeping.

  The bathrooms were as clean as the rest of the Crossroads, pristine in an industrial sort of way. A mirror ran the length of one wall above a bank of sinks, and Kate set her sunglasses on the counter and washed her face, wishing she could scrub away the call with Riley, the doubt he’d kicked up like dust inside her head.

  She was doing the right thing—wasn’t she?

  She knew the city in the vision, knew she was headed in the right direction.

  Unless she was wrong. The shadow was in her head, weaving through her memories, her darkest thoughts and fears. What if she was only seeing what it wanted? What if she’d left Prosperity for nothing? What if what if what if—

  Enough.

  She knew the difference between truth and lie, between vision and dream, between her mind and the monster’s. Didn’t she?

  She looked up and found her gaze in the mirror.

  Her stomach turned. The crack in her left eye was larger, stealing across the blue. Was it spreading on its own, or was she worrying it like a wound? She hesitated, weighing the potential damage against the need for certainty, all the while losing ground against the shard’s strange pull.

  The need won out—Kate held her gaze.

  “Where are you?” she whispered. It was the same question she’d asked herself a thousand times over the years, whenever she wanted to imagine herself somewhere else, someone else, but the darkness answered by pulling her forward, down into—

  The hallway

  of the house

  beyond the Waste

  dead flowers

  on the sill

  a broken picture

  on the floor

  a coat of dust

  as thick as paint

  on everything

  and she has

  never felt

  so alone

  it buries her

  that sadness

  swallows her

  whole

  the only sound

  a voice

  her voice

  echoing

  through

  an empty house

>   —Where are you?—

  she goes looking

  for a pair

  of silver eyes

  but the rooms

  are all empty

  and then

  she sees it

  the body in the hall

  the bullet hole

  a singed circle

  in its throat

  she crouches

  as his eyes

  drift open

  wide as moons

  holds

  its gaze

  as the house

  shudders

  shatters

  into—

  —blood

  everywhere

  splashed like paint

  over the ground

  up the walls

  the bodies

  strewn

  like shadows

  their fire

  all burned out

  nothing now

  but shells

  in gray and green

  and letters stamped

  on bloody sleeves

  F

  T

  F.

  Kate pulled free.

  She was back at the counter, gasping for air. The harsh white light blurred her vision, and blood dripped from her nose, and she could almost hear the shard throwing out fresh cracks, like the sound of splitting ice inside her skull.

  It took her an instant to realize she wasn’t alone.

  An older woman was at her side, one hand tight on her sleeve and a wet wad of paper towels in the other. Her lips were moving, but Kate’s good ear was ringing and the words came through broken and studded with static.

  “I’m fine,” she said, painfully aware of the sunglasses sitting on the sink and the splinter of silver in her eye.

  The white noise died just as the woman put a hand on Kate’s cheek. “Let me see, darling. I used to be a nurse—”

  “No,” she gasped, jerking her head away.

  Contagious. That was the word Malcolm had used. Kate was already sick—the last thing she needed was to infect anyone else, but when she tried to pull free, the woman caught her face in both hands and angled her chin up, tutting as if Kate were some disobedient child.

  And then the woman stilled, her eyes going wide, and Kate’s chest lurched, because she’d obviously seen the silver.