He’s right. If he takes my body, he’ll kill me. Nathaniel isn’t like Mercy. He isn’t able to slip easily in and out of bodies. He has to kill his host in order to extricate himself.
The door opens again, and a skinny kid enters. He takes one look at me and Nathaniel and starts backing away. Nathaniel, with me in tow, moves toward the kid. I know what he’s going to do, and I know I should stop him.
“Nathaniel, you can’t,” I try.
“No … Choice …”
Nathaniel plows into the kid, grabs him by the shirt, and shuffles him into the wall. The kid is terrified. His mouth is agape with horror, but no sound emanates. His head shakes back and forth. His eyes are wide and vibrating.
Nathaniel lurches back and throws himself forward as if he were about to head butt the kid, but before he connects, he shatters into a million tiny pieces. There’s a shrieking sound. I don’t know if it’s coming from the kid or the force of Nathaniel, but it doesn’t matter. Within seconds, it’s over. Nathaniel is gone, and the kid is slinking to the floor. His body gyrates, flops like a fish out of water, and then goes disturbingly still. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the kid was dead. But I do know better.
The kid stands and braces himself against a sink. “That was close,” he says.
When he turns around, it’s almost as if I can see Nathaniel glaring back at me through his eyes. They’re more determined and focus than they should be for a kid his age.
“I don’t want to stay in this body for long,” Nathaniel grumbles.
“Well, you can’t kill him in the boy’s bathroom.”
Nathaniel cocks his head slightly. “Yes, I know,” he says snidely.
“How could you let this happen? We’re at school!”
“Oh, I see. It’s not my taking bodies that irks you, it’s my timing.”
“Don’t be a dick.”
“Bite me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”
Nathaniel glowers at me. “We’ve had other things to worry about. And I thought I was charged from the last time, from that nerdy guy at the courthouse.”
“So, what happened?”
“It must’ve been Mercy,” Nathaniel says.
Eyeing him, I ask, “What do you mean?”
“We tried a little mind control experiment this morning. It must’ve taken more out of me than I thought.”
“I can’t believe you did this,” I seethe. “This is Mercy’s school. You can’t just go around leaving a trail of bodies.”
Nathaniel mumbles something unintelligible, and exits the bathroom. Trailing behind, I follow him down the hall. We’re in the clear for the most part. Only a few students linger at their lockers, but the majority have filed out for lunch.
“This kid is incredibly awkward,” Nathaniel complains. “It’s like there’s no muscle at all, just sinewy cartilage held together by pasty skin. Next time remind me to bag a football player, someone with more bulk,” Nathaniel rubs his chin, “or at least someone who’s gone through puberty.”
Sharply, I turn and latch onto Nathaniel’s shirt. Dragging him to the lockers, he bangs his head as I tighten my grip. “Listen to me, Nathaniel. You are not ever breaching another kid at this school. I realize you may not understand this, but murder is bad. And the more bodies, the more questions. We can’t have that. Do I make myself clear?”
Nathaniel loosens my grip and shoves me back. “Keep your hands off me,” he says in his most threatening voice.
“Or what?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Have you seen you? Take your best shot.”
Nathaniel looks down at his spindly arms and chicken legs, rolls his eyes, and presses on down the hall.
“Toby!” Someone is shouting behind us. “Toby! Wait up!”
In slow-motion horror, I turn and see Mercy jogging toward us. Nathaniel and I exchange quick, paranoid glances.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Mercy says as she catches up to us.
Nathaniel remains mum.
“Hey, Gage,” she says to me.
I greet her with a nod.
“What’s going on, guys?” she asks, her voice full of suspicion. “We’re just headed to lunch,” I say.
“We?” she says, disbelieving. “You two know each other?”
“We’re partners for a project,” Toby pipes in.
Mercy concentrates her dubious stare on Toby. “Really? A freshman paired with a senior?”
Again, Nathaniel and I trade knowing looks.
Mercy is not fooled. Her eyes narrow to slits. “Where’s Nathaniel?”
I can’t help myself. I sneak a quick peek at Toby, hoping Mercy doesn’t notice, but it’s too late. She knows.
“No!” She gasps and shakes her head back and forth. “You didn’t.”
Our cover blown, there is no use denying the truth. “Mercy, he had to.”
Furious, she turns on Nathaniel. “What do you mean you had to?”
“Please calm down,” Nathaniel says.
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Mercy shouts. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“I know this situation isn’t ideal,” Nathaniel tries to explain, “but—”
“Stop. I can’t even look at you right now.” Facing me, she says, “You have to fix this. Fix this now.”
“We are in the process of doing just that,” I assure her. “But we can’t have any bodies here—”
“No. You don’t understand. You can’t kill Toby!” Mercy’s voice borders on panic.
“You can’t expect me to stay like this,” Nathaniel says.
Mercy addresses Nathaniel. “You cannot under any circumstances kill Toby. I won’t let you.”
Nathaniel, taken aback, asks, “Why the hell not?”
“Because Toby is Jay’s little brother!”
Ka-boom.
I close my eyes to shut out her words. I don’t want to hear what she just said. It’s too horrible.
“You never mentioned Jay’s brother.” Nathaniel stands to his full Toby height. It isn’t much, but it has the desired effect. We all know he’s livid.
“I didn’t know you were going to go around breaching people at school,” Mercy snaps. “He’s Jay’s half-brother. He’s only been living here for a few weeks.”
“This is unbelievable!” Nathaniel punches the nearest locker. “Son of a bitch!” He rubs his hand. “That actually hurt.”
Mercy holds her head in her hands. “What are we going to do?”
“You know what I have to do,” Nathaniel answers.
“No.” Mercy leers at Nathaniel. “You can’t.”
“So you want me to live as this kid forever? That’s your solution?” Nathaniel speaks as if this is the most ludicrous idea ever.
“Mercy, we can’t,” I say. “We have to get him out.”
She’s not swayed. “Why did you do this in the first place?”
“I had to.” Nathaniel says, exasperated.
“Explain that to me, Nathaniel. Explain to me why you just had to breach!”
The leftover kids, the ones linger at their lockers, are starting to gawk at us.
“We should move this discussion somewhere else,” I say to them.
Mercy and Nathaniel survey the hall. They see what I see—that we’re drawing too much attention to ourselves. It is definitely time to go.
We make our way out to the unsuspecting quad. Students mill about in groups of varying sizes. We barely turn a head as we cross the lawn and near the parking lot. We are almost home free.
“Mercy!”
“Shit,” Mercy mutters. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Jay strides toward us. “We’ve been waiting for you. Aren’t you coming to lunch?” Jay plants a jab on Toby’s shoulder. “What up, Freshman? Shouldn’t you be in class? Your lunch isn’t until next period.”
“Um, yeah,” Mercy stammers. “We were just, um …”
“I was just going,” Nath
aniel says quickly.
“Good. Wouldn’t want you to get busted on day one.” Jay shoves him. “Save that for at least day two.”
Nathaniel turns and leaves.
“You guys coming?” Jay asks.
“Actually, I need to meet up with my brother,” I say.
“Yeah, um …” Apparently Mercy is still at a loss for words. “I’ll be right there,” she says to Jay.
“Okay.” Jay lopes toward the cafeteria, leaving Mercy and I alone.
“What do we do now?” Mercy asks, her voice urgent.
“I’ll go find Nathaniel. You go to lunch with your friends.” She nods along, but I can tell she’s hesitant.
“It’ll be okay, Mercy. We’ll figure something out.”
Her glare on full, she says, “You better.”
I watch her walk away, her gait tight and purposeful. She’s beyond agitated, which makes me worry about her. Even though she doesn’t want to admit it, we all know Mercy is unpredictable. We’ve learned to control her breaching by injecting her with binding agent, but that doesn’t mean she’s stable. There’s nothing we can do about her ability to breach minds. There’s no binding agent for that. Who knows if she’ll go off half-cocked and hurt someone while angry.
Mercy will never be able to forgive herself if that happens. Of course she’s not going to forgive Nathaniel or me if we don’t find a way to get Nathaniel out of Toby’s body. I know she wants me to find a solution to the problem, but I don’t know of one. Even with all of Rae’s fancy extraction equipment, the end result is always the same: the host body dies.
This is bad. This is so very, very bad.
As I hunt for Nathaniel, I rack my brain. This is an impossible task. In all my time as a Hunter, I’ve never known of any Breacher other than Mercy who can vacate a body without killing it. If I still had my team, we might be able to put our heads together and come up with something, but they’re gone. I’m on my own.
An idea strikes me, but it’s a long shot for sure. There might be something at the warehouse, or what’s left of the warehouse. Rae was always doing research. Maybe she came up with something. Of course, if she had, she would have told me, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth having a look.
It doesn’t take long to find Nathaniel, and when I do, I fill him in on my idea. He’s up for it, but he’s unhappy about having to remain inside Toby.
“We only have a few hours of school left,” I remind him. “We can go then.”
“Fine,” Nathaniel reluctantly agrees. “But if we don’t find anything, you know what I’m going to do. I can’t stay like this.”
“You shouldn’t have done it in the first place,” I say.
“The alternative is death, Gage.”
I don’t need the reminder. I know very well what happens to Nathaniel if he’s not attached to a body. And as angry as I am that he got us into this mess, I don’t want him to die.
Chapter Fourteen
Nathaniel
There was a trial of sorts, and Nathaniel was sentenced for his crimes: banishment, forced to live as a human.
“You won’t get away with this!” he screamed when the verdict was read. He shouted to Isadora, “How can you just sit there! Do something!”
Isadora refused to look at Nathaniel. She appeared bereaved, as if she was the victim.
“You made your choice, Nathaniel,” said Lucas Church, leader of The Assembled. “There is nothing left to be done.”
Broken, desperate, all signs of arrogance vanished, Nathaniel momentarily slipped out of the guard’s grasp. He rushed to Isadora and threw himself at her feet. “Please, Isadora. Please. I’m begging you. Don’t let them do this to me.”
Isadora refused to look at Nathaniel. A single tear dribbled along her cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Nathaniel arched back, struck by her words. Was she sincere? She certainly appeared pained, but why would she feel sorrow when she set this all in motion?
The guards grabbed Nathaniel and hauled him from the room. He didn’t look back at Isadora. He never wanted to see her face again.
They dumped Nathaniel in his cell, and there he rotted for a very long time. One day, the guards came for him. They led him to the bridge. The entirety of The Assembled gathered to watch his march into oblivion. Isadora was there, dressed in white, looking regal, beautiful, as if she were made of marble. Ariana stood at Isadora’s side, the look on her face making it evident that she was forced to be there.
“Nathaniel Black,” Lucas Church bellowed. “Once you cross the bridge, you will never again be allowed back. You will live as a human and die as a human. Do you have any final words?”
“Yeah.” Nathaniel broke free from the guard’s handle. “Fuck you.”
Nathaniel stared into the distance, into the unknown, unsure of what he would find. He marched proudly, never once glancing back. He didn’t want to see all that he was leaving behind. He tried not to think of what brought him to this fate, but it couldn’t be helped. He thought of Ellie and her kind, warm smile. He thought of her eyes, her lips. He tried to hold onto those thoughts, but then as if being slammed into a brick wall, he saw her being swallowed into Purgatory, and his throat tightened. A tear dribbled and swam the length of his cheek.
Though he’d made this walk countless times before, he’d never done so knowing he wouldn’t return. When he crossed the threshold, the world darkened as the path behind him closed.
He landed on a dirt road with nothing, not a penny to his name. Almost instantly, he was bombarded with humanity. It was Winter, something that had never been anything to him before except the name of a season. Nathaniel hadn’t known what it meant to be chilled, but he knew then. He shivered and drew his jacket around him.
Suddenly, he felt another new and strange sensation—hunger. His stomach protested and whined like a petulant child. He needed food, but he had no way to get it. As soon as that realization hit him, he was flooded with other human emotions: fear, worry, anger, regret. They swarmed and overwhelmed him and nearly brought him to his knees.
Nathaniel sought refuge on a park bench. It seemed the perfect place to wallow in self-pity. He sat staring off into the distance and contemplating his life choices. Nathaniel knew his situation was dire, and as night fell, he began to give himself over to despair.
From behind, he felt an abrupt shove. He was flung forward onto the ground. He’d never fallen or been in pain before, and at first, he couldn’t even register what was happening to him. So many parts of his body pinged and burned.
“Gimme your money,” his attacker commanded.
Nathaniel rolled onto his back just as a shoe met his rib cage. He cried out, but the cry was quickly stifled as he was mounted and frisked. Coming up empty, his attacker, angry and cruel, pummeled him. Fists, feet, it was all a blur of black spots and bright flashes as Nathaniel clung to consciousness. The only thing that kept the blackness at bay was the pain; pain that flared from everywhere, impossible to ignore, impossible to shut out.
The assault didn’t last long, but the repercussions stuck around for weeks, even months after. Days passed before Nathaniel could take a solid, deep breath without wincing. The bruises on his face healed after a few weeks, but the body bruises took much longer to fade. In that time, Nathaniel wandered and learned.
He learned which areas to stick to and which to avoid. He found a fascinating establishment known as a soup kitchen where he could occasionally feast on semi-edible food. What Nathaniel observed quickly was that humans ignored other humans for the most part. No one stopped to bother him, to ask him why he slept on the street or why his clothes were torn. No one cared.
It was this ambivalence to their own kind that Nathaniel zeroed in on, even relied upon. He quickly went from prey to predator. When he wanted new clothes, he stole them. When he needed money, he mugged someone. He was clever, cunning, and quick. And, fairly quickly, he was able to amass a savings.
The savings earned him a room at a
boarding house. Finally, a real bed. True, it was lumpy, dirty, and bug-ridden, but it was his. With an address to go with his name, gaining employment was much easier. Of course Nathaniel had no work experience, but he knew how to pay attention and use people to his own advantage. He landed a job was washing dishes at the fanciest restaurant in town.
At the start, the job merely fueled his rage. He saw patrons in fine clothes with wads of money come and go from the restaurant, and the jealousy he felt toward them was all-consuming. He was so much better than them! He knew about the universe, about what lay beyond, and he knew that none of this—the money, the clothes, the cars—meant anything in the end. He laughed at their futile efforts to stockpile wealth and rolled his eyes at their idle chatter.
But then he decided to beat them at their game. He’d come so far already, pulled himself up from nothing, why not see how far he could go? After all, he only had this one lifetime. Why not make the most of it?
With even more money saved, Nathaniel upgraded from the boarding house to an apartment. He worked his way from dishwasher to line cook. There he honed his skills, learning to chop and simmer, sauté and poach. And soon, he was promoted to sous chef.
Food, the basic human necessity, became Nathaniel’s mistress, his only love. He adored everything about food: the smells, the flavors, the textures, the colors. He immersed himself in all its glory.
After a few years as a human, Nathaniel opened his very own restaurant, one he overhauled and completely restored. The restaurant was a huge success with a line around the block almost every night. He catered to the finest of people, city officials, bankers—people whom, only a short while before, never noticed his existence.
Nathaniel had done it. He’d made something of himself. He’d even purchased a grand home on the wealthiest avenue and decorated it lavishly. He had a staff of twenty, and he never wanted for anything.
One day, while surveying his accomplishments, something dawned on him.
He was happy.
The sentence leveled against him was meant to punish, to torture, but that was not what had happened. Nathaniel appreciated what he had, having lost his anger and resentment somewhere along the way. He had made a life for himself, and it brought him joy, something he never expected to experience. Yes, he was mortal, and yes, he still often thought of Ellie and it would set his heart to pang, but for the most part, he was sincerely happy.
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