by Meg Collett
Where I pretended to be every time she came looking for me after that. I slept a lot that week since Luke’s training had been called off thanks to my injuries, and he didn’t come looking for me. I’d pushed him away for good when he’d come to me in the ward after the attack.
As I lay in bed, my hand slipped under the pillow, fingers closing around the small razor blade. I pulled it out, careful not to prick my fingers. The edge of the blade was slightly dingy from use throughout the week, and, like I did every day before, I held the sharp edge to the skin on the underside of my arm and pressed until the metal bit into me.
And like it had every day before, pain washed over me until my eyes watered and my fingers trembled. I slid the blade back under my pillow and let the tears spill down my face and trickle into the corner of my mouth.
I didn’t notice when my cell door slammed shut for lockdown.
* * *
Saturday rolled around quickly. Students set aside their books and took up the heavy mantle of party preparations. I kept to my bed, face turned to the wall. Sunny stopped by once, but I ignored her again.
It wasn’t easy, trust me. Turning my back on Luke hadn’t been that hard. He’d lied to me, and it had almost gotten me killed. We lied to each other more than we told the truth. But hearing Sunny’s persistently hopeful voice calling my name from my door crushed me. Every. Time.
When the Death Dome fell silent, I told myself I wasn’t going out there. I didn’t support the stupid Halloween party and reenactment, even if it was done to honor the fallen. No way. But my eyes kept slinking to my cell door, and sleep remained impossible with the razor under my head and the pain claiming new territory in my body.
Mumbling a string of curses under my breath, I got out of bed and changed, pulling on my black jeans and knee-high, gray suede boots that hugged my calves like a dream. I layered after that to prepare for the cold outside. I pulled up the hood on my sweatshirt and slipped into my leather jacket before leaving.
The Death Dome was silent. Everyone was outside at the party, which was likely in full swing since it wasn’t long before twilight. Even the ever-present guards in the tower were gone, their presence needed elsewhere, apparently.
I seriously hoped they had every single hunter, fifth-year, and professor out there. The fools needed it.
As I walked outside, a brutally cold blast of air hit me in the face. With each day, Kodiak drew closer and closer to an Alaskan winter, and tonight was the coldest night of the year by far. I huddled deeper inside my jacket as I walked across the courtyard and down to the main gates.
Even if I didn’t know where the bay was, I could have easily found it, along with every ’swang in the country, by sound alone. The fence blocked the bay but I knew exactly where it was from the blazing halo of lights. It was lit up like a neon homing beacon flashing “eat me” over the entire western seaboard. The music pulsed a steady electronic beat that reverberated in my heart. Underneath the pumping bass, laced through the melody so subtly it was an unconscious whisper in my ears, was the tick-tocking sound.
The music faded away as I focused on the sound, and all I heard was the tell-tale ticking of a clock. My mouth went dry.
These people were crazy. Would they know if real ’swangs approached?
I walked to the gates, and a pair of guards let me through with a warning about twilight and a swipe of my student card across their hand-held reader.
Before I headed to the party, I paused and turned back to the guards. They looked at me in surprise. “What’s the security like tonight?”
They exchanged glances, clearly uncertain. “Um . . .”
I rolled my eyes. “What? You’re not allowed to talk about that either?”
These guards knew me. They’d been on the fence wall during the attack over break, and one of them had seen the bloody aftermath of the day-form’s attack in the ward. He was the one who said, “No, it’s not that. It’s just . . . no other student has asked, and we weren’t told it’s a secret.”
“Then there’s not a problem.”
“I guess not,” he said with a shrug to the second guard. “Dean calls in nearby hunters. The woods are teeming with them. They also set up a temporary, highly charged electric fence. So don’t wander too far from the party.”
Keeping ’swangs out or containing the students who got too scared during the reenactment and ran? I raised a brow. “That’s more than I expected.”
The guard nodded. “It’s a good tradition to keep up with, so we take all the precautions we can.”
I almost let out a snort. A good tradition? Traditionally scaring the shit out of teenagers? “Thanks for the information.”
With a salute, the guards hit the lever to close the gates. No going back now. I was a fool too, I guessed. Another bag of bones in the all-you-can-eat buffet.
The path was empty down to the bay. Everyone had arrived hours ago. Along the narrow path cutting through the dense birch trees hung hundreds of strings of twinkling lights wrapped through the branches to form a canopy of stars over my head. In any other circumstance, they might have been pretty. From up here, with the lapping of waves against the bay’s stony beach and the crisp night air, I imagined nothing had happened and I was still the same girl hoping for a family and a purpose when I first came here.
I emerged into the clearing and stopped dead in my tracks. Over the bay, the sun was beginning its slow slog toward the horizon, sending oranges and deep purples, like a garish bruise, spilling over the cliff faces branching out along each side of the bay, creating a little divot of land carved out of the sea. It was beautifully horrifying and reminded me I wasn’t the same girl who’d come here months ago.
Not even close.
Someone bumped into me, and I shot him a glare. Only then did I get a good look at who’d run into me, and I had to stop myself from gasping. The guy wore a mask of fur and a startlingly realistic gaping mouth with fangs, his eyes glowing through round holes beneath a sloping, hair-covered forehead. A headdress of thick, black fur covered his neck and back, trailing out behind him on the ground like a tail. He growled at me, making a claws with his hands before laughing and scampering off into the herd of bodies.
All around me, people wore ’swang masks. Others were dressed in the standard Halloween costumes: salt and pepper shakers, slutty cop, vampire, zombie, the guy from Scream, the guy from that other scary movie. But every costume, save for the ones who wore the tasteless masks, had wounds artfully painted on their face, throats, and arms. Blood splattered across their clothes, claw marks over their throats, intestines spilling from torn vests.
To watch them make a mockery out of their fear was almost too much for me to handle. They danced like idiots, grinding against each other on a raised wooden deck over the beach’s rocks like their lives weren’t on the line right this very moment. A table with a large fountain dispensed punch, where students kept returning for refills so often I wondered if it was spiked. I got my answer a second later.
“Hey! You’re not in costume,” a voice slurred in my ear. “No entry allowed without costume,” he said, wagging his finger in my face. His breath reeked of rum.
I considered it great restraint on my part when I only told him what he could do with himself and gave him a look so mean that he held up his hands and backed away, as if I had a gun pointed at him.
I huffed a frustrated breath and turned to leave, having had my fill, when someone said, “I take it you don’t approve of our sweet little traditions?”
Thad took a spot next to me. He had a scary monster mask resting on the top of his head and wore normal clothes. He’d scribbled a lopsided frowny face in red marker across the thick bandage around his neck. He took a long sip from his red cup.
“Nice costume.”
“At least I tried. Where’s your holiday spirit?” His grin stretched past the sides of his cup as he kept drinking. I rolled my eyes at him.
“Shouldn’t you be patrolling the woods?”
More lights wove around the trunks and limbs, making it impossible to see into the deeper, darker, possibly dangerous shadows. I felt like we were being watched. Hopefully we were. Hopefully we weren’t.
He waved to his throat. “Still unfit for duty.”
“You look fine to me.” And he was; I knew for a fact because I’d sparred with him for weeks and hit his throat on more than one occasion, not all of them accidents. He’d never flinched.
Thad lifted a shoulder in resigned disinterest. “Dean’s rules.”
I bit back a particularly nasty remark to that, and said, “I thought the whole point here was to not scare the younger students?”
He took another long sip from his cup. “They need some fear to help them transition into all they’ll learn in the coming years, and if you dress up that fear with stupid costumes and alcohol and call it a party, then it’s easier to swallow, I guess.”
“Is that what you did the first time you came to this? Swallowed it like a good little boy?”
“If you want to talk about swallowing—”
“Cut the douchebag routine. I know you’re not like that.”
Thad raised his eyebrows in surprise but smiled. His eyes remained on the bodies swarming in front of the water. He scanned the party left to right and back again, on high alert. “I wasn’t here for any of the parties.”
“You didn’t come to Fear University? I thought this was the only college that trained hunters?” I knew families were stationed all over the world, but there was only one Fear University.
Thad shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, his eyes on the dancing bodies across from us. “My parents taught me.”
“I thought they were dead?”
“I didn’t say they got to teach me for long.”
“Is that allowed?” I asked, pressing him. “For hunters to not learn here?”
“It’s not exactly suggested.”
I studied his face in profile. He was a hard guy to get a handle on. Sometimes he was an immature idiot, other times he was serious and brooding. In between, he was quiet and observant. It was odd. So were his non-answers. “So then why participate in this?” I waved to the party around us.
“Harmless fun?”
“You and I both know that’s not the case at all. Do they bring in an electric fence for shits and giggles?”
“This is a rite of passage for these kids. They’ve been waiting for it since the day they started grade school and heard the ghost tales of Tick Tock Bay. They know they’re going to be scared, but it’s like a roller coaster clicking up the hill, you can’t get off now. You gotta ride it till the end.”
“The end being . . .” I gestured to my neck, eyes on his bandage.
“You got it.”
“If they knew the truth, they wouldn’t be out here.”
“If they knew the truth, they wouldn’t be here at all, and the ’swangs would’ve won the war.”
“You sound like Dean.”
The music faded away and the lights around us flickered once, twice, then went out. Someone screamed. From the tense silence that followed, a tick tick tock rose from the woods, quiet at first then building until my heart echoed each sound with a stuttering, hammered beat. The lights came back slowly, but they’d turned red, like a tidal wave of blood spilling across the ground and into the bay. Along the cliff, red spotlights illuminated hunched figures, their shadows slipping over the rock face. A drumming began, a war song.
I prayed this was the show and not an attack.
I don’t know when I’d gripped Thad’s arm, but he peeled my fingers back with a grimace. “No wonder you skipped college,” I said under my breath, watching the red light play off the water and looking eerily similar to blood as the small rollers broke on the beach.
To the beat of the drums, the people atop the cliffs’ edges began to writhe, dancing almost, as others on four legs joined them. In the night, against the red light, I only saw their silhouettes: the shape of a dog’s head, a person falling to the ground, the dog jumping on them and tearing into them as their body flailed. Attacks happened all around the cliffs, the beats and ticking too loud for anything else.
Dramatics. Interpretive freaking dance. Seriously?
I blew a piece of hair out of my face and glanced around the party. Everyone was hushed, some with hands pressed against their mouths, others with their faces buried in their hands. Some trembled. I shook my head. These people were seriously out of their minds.
I turned to leave. “You’re going to miss the grand finale,” Thad said, looking very unexcited for said finale.
“What is it? A virgin sacrifice?”
Thad’s mouth twitched in the corner, his light eyes dancing as he looked at me. In the night, violet flecks dotted his irises. I almost leaned closer to get a better look before I caught myself.
“Close. They pour blood over the first-years. A baptism before Fields.”
“You’re joking.”
“Yeah. But that would be pretty cool if they did. Could you imagine their faces?” He snorted into his cup as he took another long drink.
“That’s sick. You need help.”
He grabbed my arm as I tried to pass and leaned into my ear, his breath hot against my neck. “You’re one to talk.”
I didn’t bother to dignify that with an answer. When I tried to leave this time, Thad let me. I went back up the trail beneath the canopy of lights, which had also turned red, casting a haunting shadow across the almost-dark trail. Drums thrummed behind me. My mind ticked in time with every tock. The skin beneath my eye began to twitch, and I regretted not pouring myself any of that punch before I left.
As I made my way up the path, an itch climbed up my spine, like I was being watched. Without being obvious, I searched deep into the woods’ shadows, examining their dark folds for glowing eyes with upside-down reflections. My ears strained for the huffing and chuffing the ’swangs made. From my right, a twig snapped. I jerked to a stop.
Hello? I thought in my head, casting out the word like a fishing line. Hex?
No one answered, which somehow felt worse. I hadn’t considered the fact that a ’swang other than Hex might be hunting me. One who might not want to save me, if “save” could be used to describe Hex’s goals. I spun in a circle, heart hammering and ready to fight, when I hit something solid.
Instantly I thought ’swang.
My hands were up a split second later, my mind assessing possible weapons. Only then did I truly consider what I’d run into. Dean.
Honestly, I would have preferred a ’swang.
I dropped my hands, feeling stupid, but grateful the red twinkling lights didn’t cast enough light for him to see my embarrassed flush. “Shouldn’t you be at the party?”
Dean’s smile glinted. “Just returning. Shall I walk you back?”
“Just leaving.”
“Didn’t find our little reenactment to your liking?” He cocked his head, mocking me, amusement dancing in his black eyes. I wanted to disembowel him. Somehow I’d liked this man weeks ago. I’d felt safe and comfortable with him, which was an idiotic error on my part.
“I think it’s interesting how hard you work to hide the truth from the students only to terrorize them with tricks of light and creepy drums.”
“Maybe I’m conditioning them with tricks of light and creepy drums.”
I blinked in surprise. This was all some test? Anger thickened my throat. “This is the perfect time for a ’swang attack. Everyone is out after curfew. Not locked up in our little prison cells like good little hunters. It would be a blood bath, and they don’t know to be afraid or cautious. You stole that right from them. They’re blind to their own massacre.”
Dean’s smile slipped away, and something dangerously interested snapped in his eyes. He leaned down to stare into my face; I cringed back, disgusted. “Fascinating,” he murmured. “How does that brave mind of yours work?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I snapped.
“Oh, I would. Dearly. Maybe you will show me some time?”
“Screw off,” I growled. I shoved around him, stomping up the path. The food from dinner curdled in my stomach.
“Be careful, Ollie,” Dean called quietly after me. I didn’t pause or turn around, but his words reached me nevertheless. “Remember our bargain. Remember how easy it would be to give Max a call.” I hurried along faster. “That grave might still be waiting for you.”
I whirled around. The words had been so faint, so barely there, that I didn’t know if I’d heard him right. He couldn’t know about the graves. “What did you say?”
“You’re walking a dangerous tightrope,” he said instead. “I would hate to see you fall off it.”
With that, he slipped down the path, disappearing into the party. My fingertips began to tremble, then my hands, then my entire body. I told myself not to run back to the main building, but I sure as hell walked fast.
The same guards let me back through the gates, but this time I didn’t stop to talk because I didn’t trust my voice not to crack. I hurried to the main entrance, card ready and clutched in my hand. After practically breaking the scanner in half to get it to read my card, the door unlocked with a beep and I threw it open. My footsteps echoed across the silent entry, the air in the prison damp and cold. I shuddered. I wanted my bed. Maybe tonight, the pain would be gone when I tried with the razor.
As I passed the stairwell down to the ward, someone reached out and grabbed me, ripping me into the shadows. I shrieked into a hand clamped over my mouth, the sound muffled. Kicking and thrashing, I was dragged deeper into the shadows. Only when I took a deep breath, readying to fight like a banshee, did I smell Luke. My nose twitched around his particular spice: caramel and cottonwood.
When I stilled, he released me. “You better have a—”
“Listen to me,” he snapped. From his pocket, he pulled out a key card and waved it in my face. “I can get us into the west wing lab.”
I squinted at the card and finally recognized Mr. Abbot’s face. “How did you get that?” I whispered.