by Wendy Knight
She’d never been one for pain. Self-inflicted pain was a horrendous idea. But she had no choice. She jammed the letter opener into her chest. The pain doubled her, and she fell to one knee, but she wasn’t done. She could hear them screaming from inside the store, but they were still coming. Why are they all screaming? Shouldn’t Akit be the only one I’m hurting? She dragged the sharp blade across her wrists, both wrists, because she knew they would bleed and blood would bring the Garce.
Lots of Garce.
Holy hell, what had she done?
Forcing herself to her feet, she ran through the parking lot, to the dumpster. She could hear them, screeching in the distance. Coming. Closer and closer.
Garce. Not Pys.
She could barely see as she ripped her mumu to shreds, winding it around her wrists as best she could, holding them against her chest to stop the bleeding. Had she pierced her heart, she probably wouldn’t have survived. She knew other Pys could kill her, so she assumed she could kill herself.
She wasn’t sure, though, if she could kill them too. Probably best that she hadn’t succeeded.
Gasping, vision blurry, she pumped her wings, but they were weak, angry at her for running from the aliens. Running from what she was now. Her wings belonged with them, and now they were mad at her.
Clearly, I’ve lost my mind.
Finally, her wings cooperated, getting her inside the dumpster. She pulled the lid shut; it clanged and banged loudly, but not as loudly as her hammering heart. And then she curled into the corner, her wings wrapped tight around her, and begged her alien half to heal her, and heal her quickly, because she had a fight waiting for her on the other side of the metal.
They were weaker than she was. She could hear them screeching, trying to come after her. The Pys and the Garce, they didn’t sound too different when they were all pissed off. She huddled in her corner, shaking, bloody, terrified.
She knew the second the Garce showed up. It took them an eternity. Or an hour. Or a minute. Nyx didn’t know. But she heard them come, lots of them, drawn by her blood, by Akit’s blood. Felt them as they attacked, and each bite and tear was agony, and she screamed as the Pys screamed, and she wondered if she would die if Akit died. She felt their fire as they tried to fight back. She heard it crackle and snap and hum. She heard the Garce shriek and explode, felt them hit the dumpster.
She did not feel death.
The battle drew on for hours. Hours and hours, the Pys held off the pack of Garce. They were brave and strong, and they used the Garce’s blood to heal them. They would have won, had it not been for the rising sun.
Nothing wins against the sun.
Nyx felt them burning, as if it was her own skin charring under the bright rays. She screamed as they screamed. The Garce could hear her, but couldn’t figure out how to get her. They weren’t intelligent, by any stretch of the imagination. So they clawed and hissed and growled at her dumpster while the others tore apart the Pys and Nyx felt every single attack while the sun burned.
And burned.
And burned.
Even after the Pys were dead, torn to shreds, undoubtedly mangled beyond recognition—
You’re not so beautiful now, are you?
—the Garce didn’t leave. They attacked her dumpster for hours, because the sun didn’t kill them, and they could smell the blood on her. Their claws and brute force could crash right through the walls of buildings. Glass was laughable as a defense. But the metal held. Maybe it was because Nyx was praying with everything she had. Maybe she had guardian angels holding up the walls of her defense.
Holding her hand.
Binding her wounds.
The sun, as evil as the Garce, couldn’t get her, either, try as it might, and it was just as persistent. It tried to bake her alive. She was never sure, through her feverish, half-dead delirium, if she was drenched in sweat or blood. She couldn’t summon the will to open her eyes to check. Instead, she alternated between praying for her dumpster to hold, and praying that Keven didn’t come looking for her. He was smart. Enika would tell him she’d gone to get a notebook. He would know she’d go to the closest office supply store. He would come, and the Garce would kill him.
And the compound would fall.
Everyone would die.
So she huddled in the corner, her legs pulled tight against her chest, her forehead on her knees, and her sweeping wings wrapped tight around her like a cocoon. She could feel them, their energy. Trying to heal her. Trying to cool her. Trying to save her. She’d just felt the agony of being fried by the sun and simultaneously ripped apart, but without the actual wounds.
Wait.
Why did she not have their wounds? She felt their pain. They’d bled when she bled. Why, then, was she not torn apart, as they were? Why had she not bled when they bled and burned when they burned?
Unwillingly, her feverish mind traveled back. Back where she told it she couldn’t go. But her mind didn’t care.
“You can’t run from me, little one. I can stop you.” Selenia had a wicked, terrifying grin. Selenia thrust her hand through the window, into the sun. She screamed, and Nyx screamed, as Nyx’s own arm blackened and burned, even though she was in the shadows. But Selenia’s hand was worse when she pulled it inside. It was nothing but bone and blood, and Selenia screamed and cradled her arm to her chest, wrapping her wings around her. “See what happens when we go in the sun, little one? You’re mine now. You’re ours. When we hurt, you hurt. When we burn, you burn.” Selenia’s pain didn’t hurt Nyx the way Nyx’s pain hurt Selenia.
“I’m stronger than the Pys,” Nyx murmured aloud, huddling tighter into her wings. And I can beat them.
CHAPTER TEN
ENIKA HAD SOBBED HERSELF TO SLEEP hours ago, about the time the sun was up and Nyx hadn’t come back yet. Keven and Cole had started out after their missing half-breed once, but the entire area was swarming with Garce. They’d been forced back underground before they’d even made it to the end of the street.
Now Cole sat on the rug in Nyx’s room, his back against Enika’s bed, stroking her hair away from her tear-soaked face.
“It’s my fault, Cole. I wanted a notebook. She went to get me a notebook. It’s my fault.”
Keven paced, sometimes muttering to himself, sometimes muttering to Cole. They both kept their voices down, because waking Enika was the last thing they needed. “We’ve got to find a way over there. There are still tunnels we haven’t explored. They’re not safe—”
“Let’s go.” Cole was on his feet before Keven could finish his sentence. “RayAnna, stay with Enika.” When RayAnna, who was nearly asleep on Nyx’s bed, started to protest, her face instantly paling, he held up his hand. “She needs you.”
RayAnna sucked in a breath like she could pull courage from the air, and nodded, sliding off the bed to curl on the ground next to Enika. He could see the hurt in her eyes; he knew that going on what could very well be a suicide mission after the girl they all knew he still loved — it hurt her. A lot.
He would give anything to stop her pain. Almost. Almost anything, except the one thing he could give up that would stop the pain — Nyx.
His heart tore a little more.
He knelt in front of her, sliding the coarse strands of her short, wild hair through his fingers. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. You’re safe in here. You have a key, and we’ll keep the door locked.”
She nodded, fighting the tears, swallowing hard. He knew she would sob when he left.
And he was leaving anyway.
Keven was already at the top of the old rock-slab stairs. Once, this had maybe been an opium den or a speak-easy. Now it housed a half-breed alien. Bet the prohibitionists never planned on that one.
With one backward glance, Cole joined him, taking the stairs two at a time as he slung his AR15 over his shoulder. They locked the door behind them and jogged silently through the tunnels. Someone, between the time Cole had arrived and now, had started writing directions, like street
signs, at the intersections of the tunnels in bright orange chalk. With those helpful little directions and all his time wandering the tunnels for work, he was starting to get the layout.
Until Keven turned down a tunnel Cole hadn’t seen before. It was dark; there were no solar lights here. Keven had a Coleman lantern that illuminated the area enough to see the brick walls and arches crumbling, the support beams rotted. Awesome. It would be just my luck to get crushed in a two-hundred year old tunnel after surviving two alien invasions.
Wordlessly, Keven picked up a shovel and tossed it to Cole before grabbing another one for himself. Cole followed him, their footsteps and heavy breathing the only sound in the dark. Apparently, the Garce had eaten even the rats, because there were none stalking the shadows. It didn’t seem like the safest move to raise his voice, attempting to talk to Keven — not when the tunnels looked like they would collapse on a whim. But it was even worse to be stuck with his thoughts.
She didn’t come home. Last time she didn’t come home, she was hurt. Where is she? Is she even alive?
He’d had that thought more often than anyone should ever have in the course of a year.
Please, Nyx. Be okay.
If it were RayAnna missing, he’d be pretty sure she was dead. She wasn’t a fighter, his little RayAnna. But Nyx? Nyx was. She was a warrior. And she would be alive. She had to be alive.
He wasn’t sure he could lose her again and survive.
She’s not yours to lose.
He gritted his teeth, his hand tightening around the shovel’s handle. Nyx would always be his. She would always hold his heart in her hand, whether it was pale white with tinges of blue or the creamy flesh of a human. And I can’t lose her again.
“This is as far as I’ve gotten. From what I know of the tunnels, they don’t go clear to Riverdale, which is where the closest store is that sells notebooks and pens.” Keven finally stopped, holding his lantern up so Cole could see the rubble in front of him.
“Looks like the tunnel collapsed. And… we’re going to dig it out.” This would take days. Nyx didn’t have days. They had to find her now.
Keven started shoveling. “It’s not going to get us to Riverdale. But it might get us out farther away from 25th street.”
Cole jabbed the shovel viciously into the dirt, pissed off that it was in his way, that it was stopping him from finding Nyx. They worked for an eternity, an hour, a minute. When they finally had enough of the rock and debris cleared from the top, Keven squeezed himself through. “We’ve got a ways to go on this side.” His voice sounded as excited as Keven’s voice ever sounded, so Cole slithered in behind him. They jogged through the darkness — the floors here were dirt, not brick, and the walls too. “These tunnels look older than the ones on 25th street,” Cole said as he gasped for breath. The air smelled like mold, and it was hard to breathe.
“They must be. And there’s not enough oxygen. We’ve gotta go back.” Keven had slowed, and the lantern shook in his hand.
Cole swore under his breath, trying to suck in air where there wasn’t any. He tipped his head back, praying for strength or divine intervention or a guardian angel or something. “If we go back, do you have a plan to get out?”
Keven shook his head. “This was my backup plan. I don’t have a backup backup plan.”
Cole swallowed. “I’m not going back. Take care of my sis—”
“Don’t be stupid.” Keven swung his shovel over his shoulder and continued on, like he hadn’t just said he was running out of oxygen. “Take slow breaths.”
Cole followed him, fear making his heart hammer, and making the slow breath thing extremely difficult. He had no idea how long they’d walked when Keven abruptly stopped and Cole, who had been staring at his feet, ran into the back of him. “I think I see light.” He took a breath. “And there’s more air here. It’s fresher.” He took another breath and jogged forward.
Cole, never one to stand suffocating when there was fresh air right around the corner, went after him. The sun sinking low in the sky was one of the most beautiful things he could remember seeing. “Where are we?”
Keven turned in a slow circle. They were standing in the mouth of an old drainage pipe. Cole recognized it before Keven had to tell him. When the reservoir in the canyon got too full, it drained into the Weber River. This was one of its outlets. Some ingenious person a long time ago had built a small water park at the mouth, and he and Keven stood at the top. Weeds and vines and trees had wound their way around the dilapidated slides. The pool was dry and cracked, weeds overtaking it. It was beautiful and horrifying all at once. Nyx would have loved it.
“If we’re here, and she’s at the store I think she’s at, it’s only a mile or so this way.” Keven handed his lantern to Cole and turned to jump, when suddenly the shadows around them elongated and took a nightmarish form.
The Garce had found a way in to the tunnels, and only Cole and Keven stood in their way.
NYX WASN’T SURE WHEN the desperate attempts to get into her dumpster quit. Somewhere along the way she’d passed out. She wasn’t sure if it was from the extreme heat — Utah was a desert, despite the green plants overtaking everything. The summers got to over one-hundred degrees, and even though it was September, as far as she knew, it was still nearly that hot. And being stuck in a dumpster for a thousand years… or hours… felt like she was in an oven.
Like a turkey. At Thanksgiving.
It was the wrong thought.
“Well, we all have something to be super grateful for.” Her mom held up her wine glass — that was full of sparkling cider because her mom would never think of putting wine, or even caffeine, into her body.
“Family?” Phoenyx asked with a smile. What family they had. Phoenyx, her mom, and her older sister, Cherish. Most of the time, they weren’t particularly grateful for one another, but this year, they had survived the Garce attacks and were still together. That, in Phoenyx’s mind, meant more than harmony or family peace.
“No, silly girl.” Her mom rolled her eyes, winking at Cherish. “I’ve signed us all up for the Empyreans’ program. We’re going to be beautiful and we’re going to live forever!” She beamed at them both.
Phoenyx’s glass clattered to the table and sparkling cider spilled everywhere. She jumped up to get a rag, moving with automatic purpose while her mind refused to process what could possibly be going on around her.
“But they’ve got wings. I don’t want wings.” Cherish whined.
Mom shrugged, watching Phoenyx with a frown. “I’m sure we can get them removed.”
“I don’t know. Is it like plastic surgery and I’m going to look hideous for a few weeks? Because I can’t do that.” Cherish was talking, but it seemed like a completely foreign language.
Phoenyx mopped up her spilled drink, her mind trying to explode through her mouth. Finally, she found her voice. “No.”
Mom paused, raising an eyebrow. “No?”
“Of course not. Because the princess already thinks she’s beautiful.” Cherish leaned back in her chair, watching Phoenyx with a wicked smile.
“That’s not why!”
“It is too! You have the hottest boyfriend in school, and you think because he picked you over everyone else, you’re better than the rest of us.” Cherish wanted Cole. She had since the day she’d met him. And Cole wanted nothing to do with her.
“That’s not why. And I don’t think you should do it either!” Phoenyx resisted the urge to stamp her foot or pound the table or maybe throw her empty glass at her sister’s head. “We haven’t talked to anyone who has actually done it and survived. Lots of women go and go, but they don’t come back—”
“That’s because the Empyreans want to make sure we’re completely ready to face the world before they discharge us from their medical facility. It says right here in the brochure.” Mom flipped the shiny paper open and pointed at lines blurred through Phoenyx’s tears.
“Please. Please don’t do this. Not yet.”
>
“You’ve always been ungrateful, Phoenyx. Always. I’m not going to let you ruin this. If you don’t want to do it with us, fine. I thought we could bond. It would give us something to do together.” Mom pouted, but there were no tears in her brown eyes. The one thing Phoenyx had gotten from her.
Her argument almost won because Phoenyx was desperate for her mom’s attention, and they all knew it. But she shook her head. “No.”
Maybe it was the silence that woke her. Rising slowly, stretching her aching wings, readying a blood ball in her hand, she pushed open the dumpster lid just a bit and peered through. There were shadows, but no glowing eyes. The sun was just setting, which meant she could be free soon. There were torn and burned remains of Garce. Lots of them. And the blue blood of the Pys — of Akit’s blood, baked to the asphalt and still smoking. Sighing, she settled down to wait, checking her injuries. Luckily, her alien half had heard her and had healed the wounds. She gave up trying to occupy her mind and leaned her head against the metal wall, noticing vaguely that it was dented in from Garce claws. She hadn’t let herself think about her family in almost two years. When they’d chosen beauty and immortality over her. When they had given themselves to the beautiful demons even after she begged and pleaded… and then they’d never come home.
And she’d never cried for them.
The world was silent, waiting. Waiting for night, waiting for the monsters to come out to play. That was why she could hear the gun shots, several right in a row. They were frantic. Desperate. She’d been praying it wouldn’t happen. If Keven came after her, they would all die. But in her world, gunshots meant Keven. He’d come after her. She pushed open the lid, glaring at the sun that seemed to take forever to set. One or two stubborn rays still reached their fiery fingers toward her.
More gunshots, and yelling this time.
She knew that voice. Keven wasn’t alone.
She paced in the small space of her dumpster. Hurry, hurry, hurry. If she tried to go before the sun was down, she’d be dead before she got to them, and no help to anyone. She knew that. They knew that. The evil aliens knew that. So she kept her eyes on the skyline and counted, over and over, the gunshots.