When Stars Burn Out (Europa Book 1)

by Anna Vera

  Farther off, the big, lumbering Mute approaches.

  Another flare blazes through the sky.

  A call that won’t be answered.

  I skid to an abrupt stop, spraying snow and ice with the heel of my boot as I do so. I turn to Cyb, who’s right behind me, and nod at the big Mute.

  “Lead it away. The others will follow,” I breathe.

  “Persuade that big guy?” she asks disbelievingly, her temples glittering with a band of cold sweat. “Eos, it’s hard enough to tell the others what to do, let alone—”

  “You can do it.” I grab a fistful of her jacket, dragging her so we’re eye-to-eye, and growl, “You’ve got to do it.”

  Cyb gives me a stiff nod and darts off, dipping behind the cover of trees to get closer, leaving me to spin on my heel and drive myself deeper into the whirling chaos ahead.

  Without a skillset. Without an advantage.

  With only my steeled nerves.

  Merope drives the truck around the clearing. Jac and Silas grab the hands of members, dragging everybody aboard, sitting them in the truck bed. Okay. Easy . . . All Rion and I have to do is stay alive long enough for them to make their way over to us.

  The Muted envelope me instantly. Up ahead, Rion fires the remaining rounds he’s got in a pistol. He’s a great shot, making every mark perfectly, staying ducked beside the immobile truck to keep his back covered.

  But for every Mute he kills, another five emerge.

  There are just too damn many.

  In all the screaming—and the engine of Merope’s truck rumbling—he doesn’t hear my gun firing off rounds at less than twenty feet away, pegging all the Muted he misses, plus some.

  I keep my breathing steady. I stay focused.

  Until I hear the gut-wrenching click! of his pistol as it runs out of bullets, leaving him vulnerable. Even in all the noise, I’m able to hear him swear viciously, eyes scanning the clearing for any backup—for the truck, which is still so far off, they haven’t even noticed we’re in trouble over here.

  And then, his eyes find mine, their scanning halted almost instantly as they register who I am, trying to figure out how I’ve gotten here, why I’m here.

  Briefly, it’s as though the chaos surrounding us has faded to a dull roar, ticking by slowly—delayed.

  I give him a quiet nod and throw my rifle, which glides in total elegance over the ice-coated snow, caught perfectly under the tip of his boot.

  Just then, I hear the big Mute roaring loudly, stomping off in a direction leading away from the quarantine. I catch sight of a figure huddled in the woods, fingertip pressed avidly to her pale temple as she strains, controlling the Mute’s every stride.

  As it goes, it swipes avidly at the smaller members of the infected, knocking them aside and killing a few too.

  Way to go, Cyb.

  I feel a rush of pride and adoration for her warm the coldest parts of myself—pockets of my heart I didn’t think she’d ever have access to—and now, somehow, throughout this insane moment in our lives, she’s found her way in.

  And then, I see it.

  A group of the Muted slink up behind her, swaying slightly on their feet—unsteady, as though drugged.

  Their lips drip fresh blood. Behind them, I see a corpse of somebody I can’t identify—a corpse they’ve just feasted on to the point of leaving its face beyond recognition.

  And now they’re heading for Cyb.

  No, no, no!

  I don’t spare Rion a backward glance—he’s got a rifle, he’s got a chance. Cyb’s defenseless, and the second she lifts her focus off controlling the big Mute, it will reign supreme.

  I throw myself into a full-blown sprint, legs pedaling so fast beneath me, I almost trip over myself as I rip through the center of the clearing. My mind is absorbed by the snow hardened by ice underfoot and the red glow of lit flares lighting my way, the cold hilt of a dagger in my palm . . .

  That’s all I’ve got now—a dagger.

  I tell myself it’s all I need.

  I’m feet away when all of a sudden, I’m knocked breathless and into the air, flying high and falling hard, head whiplashed by the unexpected impact.

  Dizzily, I roll to my side, getting back to my feet.

  I’ve been targeted by my own group of the Muted—three, all with their eyeless faces lifted, sniffing through noses worn free of cartilage, set over lipless, vicious mouths.

  They, too, look drunk—moving swiftly, with more agility than ever, and yet with a strange intoxication in the way they delicately approach. No longer out of need, but out of want.

  I raise my dagger but am spared the need. A figure darts out from behind me in a manic dash. The figure wields a machete in high, vicious arcs, hacking the Muted into slabs of still-twitching flesh and cracked bone, clearing my path.

  Without wasting a second, I sprint off, only sparing a brief glance over my shoulder to the figure who’s possibly, by helping me get free, saved Cyb’s life.

  And when I do, I feel my throat seize up.

  Apollo’s lips are elevated in a self-satisfied smirk—a sheen to his black eyes that is startlingly like Pavo’s.

  How did he get here? Did they . . . invite him, ask him for help?

  I turn my back on him, heading straight for Cyb, who’s now a plaything to the Muted pursuing her. They slap her around in a catlike way, and though I hear her yell in frustration, scuttling off to distance herself, she doesn’t break focus.

  “HEY,” I shout at the Muted, trying to get their attention off her and on me instead. “OVER HERE.”

  They lift their ugly faces, delighted to spot new prey.

  I skid, stopping as I did before in a spray of snow, falling to my hip as I do so. They slink closer. I get back up and dive for the closest Mute, plunging a dagger into its heart.

  The Mute folds over itself—dead.

  Suddenly it’s not a game for the Muted anymore. They hiss and spit and shriek—voices clicking, ragged—as the rest of them blitz for me simultaneously.

  I plunge my dagger into a Mute’s empty eye socket, rip it out fast, and slice it gracefully through its throat, just in time to thrust it backward, dragging it up through the guts of another behind me, eviscerating it.

  Another Mute tackles me to the snow, lowering its hideous, gaping jaws to my throat. I slash a dagger and snag the flesh of its cheek, ripping it open. The Mute shrieks, parrot-like, before trying to tear my arm off my body. It yanks wildly, its grip like a vice on my left wrist, before I hear a loud pop! and realize it’s just dislocated my shoulder.

  I loose a cry, unable to hold it back.

  A few feet away, Cyb twitches with concern.

  “I’m fine!” I assure her, freeing my right hand just in time to throw my dagger into its chest. It heaves, shrieking. I realize that despite my proximity, I haven’t hit its heart.

  The Mute flails, making it impossible to retrieve my dagger.

  It lowers its face to mine, expelling a vicious, hot-breathed shriek inches from my own, and before I can even think to be afraid—before I can realize that my life’s actually in danger—its jaws clamp down on my left shoulder.

  Its teeth sink deep, grinding against cartilage and bone.

  Pain. A wave of scalding heat, licking my insides, rolls in an unbearable upsurge through my body—so great, I can’t find any breath with which to scream, every shred of my focus snagged on one repetitive phrase: You failed, you failed, you failed.

  And then, another—emitted from a place so deep, it doesn’t sound like my own when it voices itself to me, barking the command confidently. You haven’t failed yet, Eos. Not yet. Keep going.

  In a flash, the Mute’s lowering its jaws again. My right hand glides over the ground, feeling snow—and, as though left there for me, a broken sapling.

  A spear.
>
  The Mute and I race to kill each other first—my makeshift spear lancing forward, its jaws dropping unnaturally wide as they sail closer, targeting my neck.

  Then, gunfire—loud and close.

  The thudding of flesh. The spray of hot blood.

  The Mute falls, crashing lifelessly over me, nearly crushing me to death with its weight alone.

  I hear voices. The grumble of a truck’s engine. The enfilade of additional automatic gunfire. The hiss of a final flare blasting through the sky, blinding my eyes in its luster.

  The Mute is heaved off me, tossed aside where it flops into the snow like a boneless heap of flesh. I can breathe. The spear is still in my hand. I roll sideways, plunging it into the Mute’s gut for no reason aside from my own blatant hostility.

  Rion emerges—covered in blood, clothes torn, dirt smudged over his face like war paint—holding the rifle I left him, which he’d just used to kill my assailant. He lowers a hand to help me up. I give him my good arm, and like earlier, he pulls me so close we’re nearly chest-to-chest.

  “Are you insane?” he asks, releasing me.

  “I am, actually,” I wheeze, thinking of my Psych Eval.

  Rion’s eyes dance off mine analytically, as though I’m a face he recognizes but can’t pin a name to. The truck roars as it skids up to us, ready to be boarded—the Muted still a churning force, despite trickling off steadily away from the compound, following the large Mute controlled by Cyb.

  “Come on.” Rion swallows, taking my right arm and tossing it over his shoulder to support me. “Let’s go home.”

  16

  “This is going to hurt.”

  Mia traces her cold fingertips over my arm, finding the best place to forge a grip. We’re in Mabel’s cabin—a burgeoning mass of others waiting noisily in the living room, bruised and bloody, for their turn in the examination dock.

  Which really is more like a glorified closet.

  No—not a closet, a refrigerator.

  It’s freezing in here.

  “By all means, take your time,” I say, shivering against the steel table I’m lying on. It doesn’t help that my shirt’s halfway off so she can gain access to my dislocated shoulder.

  Mia eyes me irritably. Behind her, Merope and Cyb bounce on their toes, shivering just as fiercely as I am. They, somehow, came out of tonight’s mayhem unscathed.

  Cyb hasn’t been able to shake the sickly sheen she’s adopted since Persuading the large Mute earlier, though. Her face is more pallid than ever before, lips milky.

  “Go to bed,” I tell her, glaring. “At this glacial pace, my arm won’t be fixed before—”

  Mia yanks my arm. Hard.

  I feel the tendons strain painfully, hear cartilage crunch as my shoulder is pulled straight then replaced, snapped back into the socket it shouldn’t have ever left.

  I don’t yell.

  I flail, seizing like I’m possessed. A few excruciating seconds pass before I can even breathe—and to my chagrin, before I’ve had a chance to compose myself fully, the door swings open.

  Rion walks in with Jac and Silas, the three of them looking startlingly disheveled in the fluorescent lighting.

  “Finished?” he asks, addressing me. I look away, averting my eyes to hide the fact that they’re still burning with tears. “What about that cut on her shoulder, Mia?”

  That bite, you mean.

  I reach up hesitantly and dab a fingertip along the ridges of the puncture marks. It stings, still bleeding.

  Mia digs through a drawer and pulls out a clean cloth and a jug of clear liquid. Vodka.

  Rion squints with disbelief. “No hydrogen peroxide?”

  “Nope.” Mia shrugs innocently, a truly evil glint to those slate-colored eyes. “This will hurt like the devil, but it’ll get the job done in terms of disinfecting the wound.”

  I’m off the table before she can lay another finger on me.

  “Passing on that one, Mia,” I grunt angrily.

  “Passing?” she asks as I traipse by, making a beeline for the exit across the room. When she speaks again, her tone is rich in barely concealed, mock-worry. “But you’ll get an infection, which, if left without treatment, can kill you, Elizabeth. Surely you don’t want that?”

  “Oh, I don’t, but I’m sure you’d love it.” I sniff, casting her a glower as promising as a verbally spoken threat.

  Mia opens her mouth to retaliate, but she’s distracted when the jug of vodka is stolen swiftly from her custody.

  “I’ll take care of it later,” Rion says, eying her critically.

  Mia’s brows lift, but ultimately she stays quiet—leaving me to give crippled side-hugs to Merope and Cyb, vowing to see them in a few hours at breakfast, and go.

  Merope follows Jac, and Cyb follows Silas, the four bravely facing the hordes of people awaiting Mia’s medical help, taking the primary exit from Mabel’s cabin.

  Rion takes me elsewhere. We navigate the cabin’s twisted innards and end up in a distant back room, left as a large storage space. Rows of locked cabinets linked along the far wall contain paperwork with origins that are difficult to fathom.

  After a good shove on Rion’s end, we break through a door concealed by supplies and are back outside, spat out into the smear of endless snow flurries, shivering, and dark.

  We make our way back to the eastern perimeter, turning by the large bonfire. My arm aches tremendously. I keep it clutched across my chest as we walk, my sole focus occupied on keeping my breathing steady until I hear something.

  Wailing. Sobbing. Weeping.

  The echoed cries draw my attention like a sharp tap on the shoulder, and I can’t help but look.

  Bodies. Everywhere.

  Draped in dingy, white sheets. A feathery layer of snow has settled overtop, softening the severity of it.

  Though there are places of blood blossoming through the white fabric, like scarlet flowers budding, the scene strikes me as strangely peaceful: the slow falling of spiraling snow, and the dim wash of golden firelight—songs sang, issued in voices burdened by gravel, by a ring of grievers encircling the dead.

  A mother sits beside her adult daughter, invited to mourn at the center of the circle while the others sing beautifully, pitched plangently in expression of the gravity of their loss.

  Of our loss.

  The daughter is a corpse, her tanned fingers scaled with dry blood, stiff with rigor mortis, and blackening at the tips. Her hair is a mop of black tightly-coiled spirals, eyes big and dark, just like her mother’s.

  Rion’s hand finds the small of my back. “Let’s go.”

  Just as he speaks, the singers—the mother, kneeling beside her dead daughter—notice I’m watching. My breath catches like a shard of glass in my throat as I search frantically for something to say, something to convey, to express how . . .

  How, what?

  Sorry I am for her loss—a loss I can’t fathom?

  I gasp, feeling ill, and look to Rion. “How did this happen?”

  “A breach,” he relays quietly.

  “Where—how many?”

  “The only perimeter that held was the eastern.” Rion’s push on my back strengthens, but instead of pushing me away, he’s pulling me in. “Thanks to you.”

  I feel the hardest part of myself shatter—like my spine, my every vertebrae, crumbling to dust.

  “I should’ve stayed,” I say, sick over my culpability, resting my hands flush over his chest—and without realizing why or how or when, I’ve rested my cheek along with them.

  Physical touch isn’t something most specimens are prone to engaging in. It has nothing to do with survival, and so we aren’t taught how to do it properly. We aren’t ever shown.

  But that doesn’t stop it from feeling natural, feeling like a bit of home in a foreign place.

 
; And so I press myself up against Rion, even though he’s a total stranger, and let myself feel comforted by it—by his fresh cedar, campfire smell, and by the way he finally gives in and falls into me in return.

  After a while, it’s not me leaning on him, but us leaning on each other.

  When he speaks again, I feel his lips brush my temple.

  “This isn’t your fault, it’s mine,” he says, speaking in a rush that carries his guilt. “They are my people, my responsibility, and still I didn’t—”

  “We did everything we could,” I interject.

  “We,” he echoes. “When did we become a team?”

  “When you decided to save Lucas’s life.” I pat his chest, my mouth dry, pulling away. Lies, Eos. You’re lying. You helped to help yourself—to fulfill this despicable Purpose, to support a Project you’ve begun to lose faith in . . .

  I turn my back on Rion, trying to quiet the voice roaring on the inside, but it only shrieks louder. Don’t forget about me. Don’t forget about what I told you.

  Run away, as fast as you can, and never look back.

  The next week passes in a fog.

  We learn, later, that Tex was one of the many who died in the breach, even after Cyb and I saved his life. Lucia was at the opposite perimeter—the western—and was killed after a leak of the Muted scaled the fence.

  The final body count was fifty people, even. We piled their corpses together on a wooden platform built three miles away from the quarantine’s compound and burned their remains.

  I’ll never forget it—the column of black smoke rising into the pale sky, the way it made my gut churn. I’ll never forget the pungent odor of burning flesh or the way ash got whisked up in the breeze, settling in my hair, a dry wisp of somebody else.

  I had stood by myself, absorbing that moment, every shred of its hideousness, when Jac arrived. With a lit cigarette bouncing between his chapped lips, he told me about the Muted. There are different kinds, different “classes.”

  “Not a lot of people know about the Haunt,” he’d said with his jaw set grimly, a band of sweat collecting on his lip, despite the cold weather. “Don’t tell anyone.”