But loss—that was a thing that scared him.
The loss of those he cared for.
The loss of himself.
The absence left by both.
Leo would have scorned such a thing, Soro wouldn’t understand the point, and Ilsa was never one to dwell on the inevitable. But to August, that fear was the shadow in his life, the monster he could fight but never kill, the reason he had wanted so badly not to feel.
And as he stood there, surrounded by his family, his team, his friends, the fear took hold, because Ilsa was alone and Henry was dying and so much of what he loved could fit within a metal box.
And it could all be lost.
Kate gave his hand a single squeeze before the elevator stopped and the doors slid open.
The penthouse stretched before them, quiet and dark, and the first thing August heard was the sound of stifled breath. He barreled forward without thinking, down the hall and into the living room, and there he was.
Henry.
Bound to the chair, dazed and pale, but alive.
The red numbers flashed on the collar at his throat.
24:52
24:51
24:50
“Ani,” ordered Emily, but the tech was already there at Henry’s side, and Jackson, too, checking his vitals as Harris and Soro moved through the apartment.
Em knelt before her husband. “I’m here,” she said. “We’re here. You’re an absolute fool, and I’m going to kill you after we save you, but we’re here.”
Henry tried to speak, but his mouth was taped shut, and when Em reached to pull the tape free, Ani stopped her. “Don’t touch anything,” she warned, “not until I defuse this.”
Henry’s head lolled forward as the comm crackled at August’s collar. “Second floor: we’ve got nothing.”
“There are two dead bodies over here,” said Kate. “Both human.”
Harris reappeared. “Rooms are clear.”
“There’s no one else here,” said Soro.
It didn’t make sense.
“Third floor: empty,” said another voice on the comm.
August looked around. Where were the Malchai? Where were the Fangs? Where were all the monsters? He saw the same questions written on Kate’s face as she drew a tablet out from beneath one of the corpses.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” said Ani, tugging at the device.
“Wait—” started Em, but Ani was already pulling the collar away from Henry’s throat, prying the pieces apart with a force that no one should use when handling a live bomb.
But then August realized, it wasn’t live.
It wasn’t a bomb at all. Just a collar, like the ones worn by the Fangs, with a few added pieces of colored wire, a timer.
“What the hell?” said Harris.
“Fourth floor: nothing here.”
With the collar free, Ani eased the tape from Henry’s mouth. He was hoarse, his breath rasping, but his words echoed through the penthouse. “It’s a—trap.”
Everyone stiffened as the reports continued on the comms.
“Fifth floor: we haven’t found a thing.”
“If it’s a trap,” said Em, “then why haven’t we been attacked?”
“Because,” said Kate, holding up the tablet, “we’re not the target.”
Through a streak of blood on the screen, August saw a map of the city, a too-familiar building drawn over a grid. The Compound.
Kate was already moving back toward the elevator. “We need to go. Now.”
Soro issued a string of orders on their comm as Jackson and Ani got Henry on his feet. His legs nearly buckled, the air wheezing in his chest. His skin was gray.
“Stay with me,” said Em.
Kate called the elevator, and August thought of Ilsa, standing at the Compound doors, of Colin in the lobby, of ten thousand innocent people crammed into a building meant for fifteen hundred.
The elevator chimed, but when doors opened, it wasn’t empty.
Alice stood in the pool of light.
“Going somewhere?”
The truck jerked and jarred over the uneven ground as it barreled through the tunnels beneath the city, its twin beams of light carving a path through the solid black. Beyond the vehicle the Corsai hissed, but Sloan would make it up to them. After all, there would be plenty of corpses soon.
At last the hole came into sight.
Alice had done her job well—a large crater had been opened between the new tunnel and the old, the debris cleared away to make a kind of road. The truck crawled through, and emerged into an abandoned subway station. A broad set of stairs had once dead-ended in a section of ceiling where the subway had been closed up, built over, but a blast had opened that, too.
The Malchai unloaded the cage from the truck as Sloan made his way up the stairs and stepped into the space above. He spread his arms in triumph.
He was standing inside the Compound.
It was a simple concrete hall, S3 stenciled on the walls, a set of open steel doors leading on to cell-like rooms. They would be perfect, he thought, for the Sunai, Soro in this one and August in that. It would be simple enough, starving them until they went dark.
The Malchai hoisted the shrouded cage into the hall and Sloan’s gloved hands came to rest above the golden sheet. His skin prickled with pain but also delicious anticipation. It was like the moment before a hunt, those precious seconds after his prey had been released, when he let the tension build inside him, let his senses heighten, until everything went sharp, went clear.
“Can you feel them, up above?” he murmured. “They are my offering to you.”
Sloan wrapped his fingers in the gold sheet, savoring the scorching heat as he pulled it free. He imagined himself a magician performing a trick, only instead of hoping to render the cage empty, he hoped it was still full.
And it was.
Silver eyes hung in a cloud of shadow, meeting his gaze just before a siren began to blare.
Sloan looked up and saw the single red eye of a security camera and smiled, because the alarms were far, far too late.
The cage was empty.
The shadow was gone.
The power around him flickered, dimmed, and seconds later, from somewhere above, Sloan was rewarded by the sound of screams.
It finds
death
waiting
in ten thousand
beating hearts
ten thousand
restless bodies
tuned like
instruments
ready
to be played
and together
they will
make
such
wonderful
music.
Alice stepped out of the elevator.
Kate’s stomach turned at the sight of her. The Malchai was dressed in Kate’s old clothes, the sleeves stained with dried blood. She’d even pulled her white hair back into a ponytail, her red eyes glowing beneath pale bangs.
August was already raising his violin and Soro’s flute was halfway to their mouth, but before either of them could play, Alice opened her hand, revealing a detonator.
“Uh-uh,” she said. “You may be fast, but I’ll be faster.”
Soro glared and August clenched his teeth as he lowered the instrument a fraction. It could be a bluff, thought Kate, but the gleam in Alice’s red eyes said it wasn’t.
“Leaving so soon? You just got here.” The words could have been meant for everyone, but Kate knew they were directed at her.
And she understood.
This wasn’t about North and South, or the war between Sloan and Flynn.
This was between them.
“Alice,” started August, but Kate cut him off.
“If I stay,” she asked the Malchai, “will you let them go?”
Alice’s smiled widened. “I won’t even try to stop them.” She stepped to the side and gestured toward the elevator. “Freedom, all yours for the low, lo
w price of a single sinner.”
“No,” snarled August, but Kate kept her eyes on Alice.
“I’ve got this,” she said. “Take Henry and get back to the Compound. They need you.”
“We go together.”
She glanced his way and saw pain in his eyes, and fear, and it gave her hope. That he hadn’t given up. That he was still in there.
“August,” she said. “People are going to die if you don’t leave.”
“Oh,” said Alice cheerfully, “I imagine they’re already dying.”
As if on cue, static tore through the comms, followed by a distress signal, not from the Night Squads, but from the Compound.
“Mayday . . . mayday . . . we’re under attack . . .”
“Tick-tock,” mused Alice.
Flynn tried to straighten, to speak, but nothing came out, the air whistling through his lungs as he fought for breath.
“Oh dear,” said Alice. “He doesn’t sound so good.”
“Go,” snapped Kate.
Soro was the first to move, casting an unreadable look her way as they stepped into the elevator, followed by Jackson and Ani supporting Flynn, Emily providing cover in case the Malchai changed her mind. August was the last one to go, his jaw clenched, and Kate forced herself to look at him. Even managed a grim smile, suddenly grateful that a hope didn’t count as a lie.
“I’ll meet you back there,” she said, before the doors shut.
The jeep tore through the night.
The distress signals kept coming in, filling the channel with panicked reports of a shadow and FTFs gone mad. August knew what it meant—the Chaos Eater was inside the Compound.
Soro sped up as the voices on the comms gave way to static, or gunfire; in the backseat Henry lay sprawled out, and Em said “stay with me” over and over while Jackson monitored Henry’s vitals and August put his head in his hands and closed his eyes and saw Kate, and the look on her face as he left her behind, and he told himself he didn’t have a choice—but it was a lie. He always had a choice. Wasn’t the point of being alive that you could choose?
“Kate chose.” The words came from Soro. The look on their face told him he’d been talking out loud. “She chose to stay and fight. Now,” said the Sunai, “what are we going to do?”
August straightened, because Soro was right. Kate was fighting. Henry was fighting. It was their turn. His grip tightened on the violin. He didn’t know how to stop the Chaos Eater, but he knew how to keep the FTFs from killing one another.
They just had to get inside.
“When we get back to the Compound,” he said, “you and I will go in through the back. The Night Squads will stay on the strip.”
“Like hell,” muttered Harris from the backseat.
“That’s an order,” said August. “The Compound is now a quarantine zone. Send it out on the comms—no one goes past the light grid. Use the jeeps to make a barrier, and stop anything that comes out. Soro and I will handle the rest.”
Sloan couldn’t help himself.
He wanted to enjoy the view. The alarms had cut off, but the power continued to flicker and dim as he ascended the stairs, the sounds of slaughter drawing nearer with every step. A body came crashing down the steps, its uniform torn as if by nails.
Humans could be truly monstrous, he mused, stepping over the corpse.
As he reached the Compound’s main level, he was struck by the sweet scent of fresh blood. It streaked the pale lobby floor, and brushed the walls, rose from the bodies; everywhere he looked, the living were at each other’s throats.
A man thrust a blade into another’s gut, and a woman wrapped her hands around a young boy’s neck, and Sloan moved among them like a ghost, unnoticed, their eyes fogged silver by the monster’s hold.
The shadow itself stood in the center of the lobby, growing solid as it fed on so much violence, and the Sunai, the FTF’s only hope, were across the Seam, attacking an empty tower. By the time they got here, it would be over. By the time they—
The whistle of steel sang through the air, and Sloan turned just in time to dodge a blade as it slashed upward, slicing his shirt and grazing the skin beneath.
He found himself face to face with a ghost.
A ghost with a cloud of red curls and a ragged scar across her throat.
“Ilsa.”
The jeep rounded the Compound and skidded to a halt, the rest of the convoy close behind. August and Soro lunged from the vehicle and onto the light strip.
A back door stood ajar, propped open by the corpse of a soldier who’d obviously tried to escape and failed, a pattern of gunfire dappling his back. There was no time to tend the dead. August closed his eyes for an instant as he stepped over the body, and Soro’s fingers tightened on their flute-knife as they followed.
Inside, the Compound was in chaos. The power flickered, and in the unsteady light, August saw the corpses littering the hall, most of them in green-and-gray fatigues.
An FTF was slumped on the ground, his back against the training-hall doors, and August’s chest lurched when he recognized warm brown eyes in an open face. Colin was bleeding, he couldn’t tell where, but when he stepped closer, the boy’s head drifted up, and he actually smiled.
“They’re safe,” he said. “I got the doors closed before”—he coughed—“before it saw—before they saw . . .”
He trailed off, eyes drifting shut, and August went to check for a pulse, but Soro’s hand was already on his shoulder, urging him up. They had to keep moving. Every second was a life, and he straightened just as a voice reached him from the lobby.
A voice that reminded him of fevers and cold steel and falling.
But it wasn’t just the Malchai’s voice. It was the single word he said.
“Ilsa.”
August turned to Soro. “Get to the command center,” he said, “hit the intercom and start playing.”
Understanding lit the Sunai’s eyes, and they took off toward the stairs as August sprinted for the lobby, and his sister, and Sloan.
“You got blood on my clothes,” said Kate as she took in the room, trying to carve a mental path.
The Malchai looked down at her shirt. “Hmm, I wonder who that was.” She smiled, flashing teeth. “You know what I keep asking myself?”
Kate cheated a step to the side, within reach of the sofa. “Why your hair isn’t as good as mine?”
Alice’s red eyes narrowed. “What it will feel like to take your life.” The Malchai crouched, setting the detonator upright on the floor. “There’s a beauty in it, don’t you think? A kind of poetry. What happens when the effect kills the cause?” She straightened. “I’ve spent the last six months watching Sloan kill you. Wondering if I would enjoy it half as much. I think I will.”
Kate’s grip tightened on the spike as the shadow in her head longed to be let in, to be let out. “Are you done?”
Alice pouted. “Not one for talking, are you? All right, then.”
She lunged, so fast she seemed to blur, to disappear, but Kate was already moving, too, cutting sideways. She got one foot up on the couch and pushed off, driving her spike down into the blurring shape beneath her.
An instant too late.
The weapon scraped against the floor and Kate rolled and came up, twisting just in time to block Alice’s shoe as it slammed into her front. Pain exploded down her arm as the blow connected, and the spike went skidding across the floor.
Kate gasped and drew the second spike as she tried to swerve out of the Malchai’s path, but Alice was already there. Nails raked across Kate’s face, fine lines of blood welling on her cheek.
Alice smiled at the red on her fingers. “You don’t honestly think you’re a match for me,” she said, flicking the blood away. “I am you but better, Kate. You don’t stand a chance.”
Kate shifted her grip on the spike. “You’re probably right.”
She ran a hand through her hair, pushing the bangs out of her face, the silver cracks on full display. Alice
’s eyes flickered with surprise, then suspicion, and it was Kate’s turn to smile.
“So it’s a good thing,” she said, “that I’m not entirely myself anymore.”
Ever since that moment in Prosperity, she’d wanted to fight, to hurt, to kill, and she’d resisted, and resisted, and resisted, had run from the shadow, knowing it was only a matter of time before it caught her.
And now, at last, she could stop running.
All she had to do was let the darkness in.
All she had to do was let the monster out.
And so she did.
Kate’s resistance crumbled, and the world went quiet as the shadow stole over her.
There was no fear here.
There was nothing but this room.
This moment.
The iron singing in her hands.
The monster in her way.
Alice’s eyes narrowed, as if she could see the change in Kate.
“What are you?” she snarled.
And Kate laughed. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Let’s find out.”
August reached the lobby just in time to see Sloan slam Ilsa back into the far wall, a knife tumbling from her fingers. Her hair was matted with sweat, the collar of her shirt torn, exposing a swathe of stars along her shoulder.
Sloan kicked the knife away and leaned in close.
“What’s that?” he hissed. “I can’t hear you.”
“Sloan!” shouted August, and the monster sighed and let Ilsa drop to the ground.
“August,” crooned the Malchai. “It’s been so long.”
The last time he’d faced Sloan, August had been starving, feverish—edging toward mortal. Strung up in a warehouse and beaten to the point of turning.
But he had changed.
He was still changing.
Sloan swept a hand over the chaos. “Have you met my pet?”
The Compound was a battlefield. Soldiers wrestled on the blood-slick floor, trapped in their violent spell.
Hurry, Soro, he thought.
Many of the soldiers were still alive, but they were killing one another, and there, in the center of the lobby, still as the eye of a storm, stood the Chaos Eater, its head tipped back and its arms wide, as if to receive them all.
As August watched, he felt it again, that horrible, hollow space, like hunger, in his chest. He forced his gaze back to Sloan.
Our Dark Duet Page 28