by Meg Collett
While the others worked, Nyny and I sat by ourselves, scarfing down our first meal of the day. Our research felt endless, but earlier today, we’d had some luck with mixing a liquid hypertension drug with the powdered bane. The rat lived for almost five minutes after we’d injected it with saliva and then the subsequent antidote. It was a new record, and we were both anxious to get back to the lab.
The cafeteria doors banged open, startling everyone.
“We’re closed for the evening,” Luke called over his shoulder.
Everyone turned to the doors.
My mouth fell open.
Bloody Eve, Haze, and a slew of Barrow base hunters streamed into the cafeteria. Eve’s boots thumped over the tiles, the metal chains around her waist chiming against each other. Her tattoos looked stark beneath the fluorescent lights, but not as stark as the scarring around Haze’s mouth, where he’d been bitten years ago. The bite had taken away his ability to speak. They moved toward us like a swarm.
A smirk contorted Eve’s face. “That’s not what I heard.”
Ollie straightened beside the map. “Good to see you, Eve. Haze,” she said with a nod to the Hussar brother.
“What are you guys doing here?” Luke asked.
“Ask your girl.” Eve lifted her chin toward Ollie.
Ollie lifted a shoulder. “I invited them. Seemed like we could use the help.”
She must have been desperate to ask for Eve’s help. Otherwise, I doubted she would have ever brought the Barrow hunters within such close proximity of Tully, even though he and the aswangs who’d followed us here remained outside the walls. He would get word soon enough.
Behind the Barrow hunters, the door opened again.
On a breeze of gauzy skirts and silver hair, Luke’s mother glided in. Abigail Aultstriver in the flesh, though she looked out of place without her gothic Barrow base surroundings, where her presence had been in such contrast to the constant darkness around her that she’d seemed more than human, more than normal. But here at Fear University, her slight form and pale skin didn’t quite meet the grandness around her, or the flesh of amped-up fighters, or the pulse of a campus hyped for her husband’s trial.
Luke went to her and wrapped her in a tight hug. She leaned into him as if she’d only had the strength to make it this far.
“I told you not to come,” he said into her ear, but the cafeteria was so hushed we all heard.
She eased back and touched his face. “I had to. You understand.”
He kissed her cheek. With that, he pulled back and glanced at the others, meeting Ollie’s eye in particular. “I’m going to take her to my room. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Take your time,” Ollie said. Then, to Abigail, she added, “Good to see you, Abby.”
Abigail leaned her head against Luke’s shoulder and smiled at Ollie. A familiar glazed quality covered her eyes like a film. I recognized it from my stay at the base when Ollie was missing and the hunters had been out searching for her. It had been just me, Abigail, and Nyny at the base. I knew Abigail’s penchant for pills. I wondered how many she’d taken today to numb herself enough to handle what she was doing.
“Why don’t we all take a break?” Ollie said to the others after Luke and his mother had left.
As the group of hunters Dean had specifically chosen to be in on the inner details got up to leave, Ollie motioned Eve and her band of hunters over. The group closed in around her, and I lost sight of her.
I looked at Nyny, who was nursing another coffee. “Ready to go back?”
“I was thinking about the hypertension drug. It makes sense to lower the blood pressure in a situation where you don’t want the blood to circulate a poison through the body faster . . .”
She went on, talking about our latest advancements as we headed out. While it was the closest we’d come to not instantly murdering our rat subjects, the hypertension drug was also our last option. If our current solution didn’t work, we were out of ideas as to what the halflings were using so freely in their mini-triage medical operations. If I could have grabbed a syringe, or a pill bottle, we would have had this figured out by now.
“Hey,” Nyny said as we passed the restrooms. “I’ll meet you down there. I’ve got to hit the john.”
“Okay?”
She headed off before I could ask what a “john” was. I turned toward the stairs that wound down to the labs. At the last second, I changed my mind. I wanted a quick breath of fresh air to clear my head before we buried ourselves in hours and hours of work and failed tests.
The defeat of it all weighed on me, and I just needed a moment. It was probably a good thing Hatter had been so busy setting up the electric fences that I hadn’t had much time to see him. Also, I thought he was avoiding me. But right now, I didn’t mind. If I had to see his face every day and see my failures manifest in him, I would curl up in a ball and not move for days.
I started back toward the front entrance on autopilot. The lack of sleep had caught up with me, making my body feel like weights were dragging at my ankles. I could have lain down in the hallway and taken a nap.
The hall was dark with the overhead lights switched to their power-saving mode. As I walked, they flashed on above me with low, humming clicks. My flats whispered across the stone floors. A chill swept down the hall, where someone had opened the front door, and rustled through my hoodie. I shivered.
Ahead of me, in the entry, the front door banged closed. Footsteps rang off the floor. They turned down my hall. Another student, possibly, or a family member unfamiliar with the school’s layout. I’d given more directions in the past few days than I had my entire life. Worst of all was the excitement the families exuded for tomorrow. Today, I’d felt it vibrating off them in waves, a tangible electricity that hurt my skin. I had reasons to hate Killian Aultstriver as much as anyone, but I couldn’t stop myself from feeling a touch bad for him. He didn’t stand a chance against these people. Not that he deserved a chance, but still.
For a second, I considered ducking into a classroom just to avoid the thrill coming off whoever was approaching me, but then I felt it: a warning. My steps slowed and my spine jammed straight. My collarbone ached with fear.
The light between me and the other person flicked on.
Her black hair gleamed beneath the lighting, the bruises on her face only just fading. She wore regular clothes, like she was a student, but when she recognized me, her smile looked far too old and too wicked.
Lauren.
T W E N T Y - O N E
Sunny
“Well,” Lauren said, “this is fortunate. I’d hoped to run into you before the sun set.”
My face went numb and my scalp prickled with fear. “H-how did you get in here?”
Security had been Ollie’s biggest emphasis. Day-forms sneaking inside the school could crumble us, but how could we protect against halflings, who could slip through at any time, tricking the guards into thinking they were part of the hunter families around them? How could we tell the guards to watch out for traitors who looked nothing like the monsters they were trained to fear?
“Easily enough. Caught a ride with a nice little family.” She smiled. “They’re dead now, of course.”
I wished I hadn’t just eaten. I wished the rat smell would leave my nose. I wished I didn’t feel so close to puking.
I reached my hand toward my hoodie’s pocket.
“What are you doing there, Sunny?”
I didn’t see any weapons on her, none that she could get to quick enough. She wouldn’t have gotten through the gates armed without a hunter’s permit to carry on school grounds.
It was a gamble.
I pulled my SIG out and raised it, clicking the safety off. It was already cocked and ready.
Lauren raised her hands. “You’re too much of a pussy to pull the trigger.”
I’d only shot one person in my life: Killian, in the knee. Though now I wished I’d aimed a little higher. It would have saved
us all a lot of trouble.
Right then, an alarm blared through the school. A breach. Lauren met my eyes and shrugged. “Looks like you’re about to have a fight on your hands. Might want to save your bullets.”
“Go to hell.” I pulled the trigger.
Her head snapped back with a hole in her forehead, and she slumped to the ground.
I turned and ran.
* * *
Ollie
We didn’t know anything was wrong until it came.
Tick tock
Not just one, but too many to count. And they were loud.
Then the lights went out, and the emergency generator didn’t fire up.
“Go!” I shouted at the hunters who’d remained in the cafeteria. “Go, go, go!”
Weapons came out, cocking all at once with one great clang that I almost couldn’t hear over the relentless ticking.
I took off, my whip out, my knuckles atop my clenched fist. My burnt hand still felt tight and awkward, but it was manageable. If this alarm was real and not some accident, then I could fight. But we weren’t ready. This wasn’t supposed to happen tonight, but I should have known better.
We raced down the main hall, back toward the entrance and the dorms. The people inside were panicking. With the power out and without the generator, the dorm rooms wouldn’t lock properly. They were sitting ducks in there.
“Calm them down,” I shouted over the mess, gesturing toward the dorms. “Gather them up and keep them inside.”
The hunters who’d ran with me peeled off and tore inside.
Someone had gotten in here. Someone had messed with the generator.
I didn’t dwell on the how. I just ran outside, across the courtyard, which was slammed with panicked people running back toward the main building. They were yelling; some were screaming. Shoving past them, I headed straight toward the fence and the closest rook’s nest. Guards and hunters flocked to the fence’s walls to hold them against the coming attack. We all heard them out there, the aswangs, waiting in the woods beyond the walls. They must have already breached the electric fence. We hadn’t expected it to hold for long, but we had expected a warning.
I hadn’t thought about the generator. If the aswangs got inside, it would be a bloody free-for-all. There was nothing protecting those who couldn’t defend themselves besides the tall fences and a few hundred hunters.
As I had the thought, a series of blasts went off by the western fence line. I looked back in time to see part of the fence crumble and fall in on itself as a patch of the foundation was blown to bits. A second later, the guard tower next to it tilted. In it, the hunters scrambled, clinging to beams and railings. In slow motion, the tower leaned too far and the hunters started to fall out. The wooden beams holding it up cracked apart. It toppled over as if a giant finger had softly pushed it.
“Over there!” I shouted to the nearest rook’s nest. The guards heard me and looked down, and then they turned to where I was pointing. “Fill in that gap! Don’t let them through!”
The guards set off, some racing down the ladder and others running across the wall’s gangway. There were too few of us. We couldn’t hold the walls or keep the aswangs from blowing them apart.
I stopped at the foot of the fence and looked up as another part of it blew up.
The sun was almost set, streaking the horizon a garish orange and red. We had minutes until the aswangs waiting to stream inside went night-form. When that happened, we wouldn’t stand a chance against them. As though they were warning us, the ticking coming from beyond the walls was almost louder than the explosions happening all over the school. The occasional word slipped through the cacophony: Kill. Eat. Tasty. Barracks. Towers.
I pushed it all away until I heard what I was listening for, so quiet I almost didn’t catch it:
Ollie.
He was close. The word was too quiet.
Ollie. Again. I pivoted and ran toward the field beyond the barracks.
Ollie. Ollie. Ollie.
On my way, Father, I sent back through my mind.
He laughed.
I found him, soon enough, at the base of a destroyed part of the wall. Chunks of concrete and stone dotted the ground around him. He was reclining on one, waiting, his foot doing a little jig.
I slowed to a walk and stopped on the other side of the rubble. Guards hadn’t made it to this hole yet. No one was here to hold the line against the incoming aswangs, besides me. I would have to do.
“I’m disappointed in you,” he said.
“You’re early.”
Hex stood and started to circle me. Without looking, he avoided the juts of stone that might have caused him to stumble. Onyx eyes tracked me, flicking from my face to the pulse in my throat. Beneath the quickly diminishing light, he appeared every inch the aswang warrior my friends had warned me about. I watched the strain on his face; he was barely clinging to his human form. The shadows were reaching for him.
I wondered how in the hell I’d ever considered him fatherly.
“Why are you here, Ollie?” he asked, and I heard it in his voice—the clicking, like his words were half formed in his mouth.
I had to finish him before he changed. “You know why.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
I eased around and away from him to keep some distance between us—enough so he couldn’t lunge at me, but not so much that he would think I was retreating. Dipping my hand in my coat pocket, I adjusted my fingers in the silver knuckles.
“Say it, Ollie,” he growled. “Say you chose them over me. Say you betrayed me. Say you’re here to kill your father.”
I tightened my fist. In my other hand, I dropped my whip’s coil. “I’m here to kill my father.”
“Did he get to you? Turn you against me yet again?”
“Dean has nothing to do with this. I made this decision, no one else. Just me.”
He stepped around the shadows slanting across the rocky rubble and rolled out the tension in his shoulders, making the rugged fabric of his coat crinkle. He’d just fought off a change. “I guess this makes you feel less like a weapon then, to do his dirty work without being told.”
“I’m no one’s weapon.” The words ripped from me, from deep inside the dark place where Max had carved out a gaping hole, but with those words, I felt a little lighter. A little better for it. And more like the old Ollie.
Hex had heard it too. I saw the recognition on his face when he knew I’d changed and was no longer someone’s little errand girl, much less his.
He dipped his chin in barely a semblance of a nod. He tightened his fists and looked at me in a new way, like I was his opponent, not his daughter. “This is it then. You’re here to do what your mother couldn’t, I guess. Something noble like that.”
“Something like that.”
“You think you’re good enough to take me?”
Enough talking.
I slashed forward. He backed into a thick part of the shadows where the wall still stood and only a bit of light from the vanishing sun made its way over the top. The surprise would work to my advantage, but only for this first strike. My whip cracked out, metal tip flashing, and lashed across his face.
The muscles in his cheek tugged against the length, and he howled. I jerked back with my weight braced against the handle, just like he’d taught me. Ripping free, the tip slunk back, slinging blood across the stones.
Hex released a sound from deep within his chest that was purely instinctual, purely predatory.
He hadn’t come prepared to kill me, but he was now.
The fight was on.
I registered his movement a fraction of a second before it happened. He rocked his weight back, his feet anchoring for balance, his line of sight focused slightly above my head. He sprang forward. His momentum carried him across the space of the whip’s length that I’d carefully kept between us.
The sheer heat of his body descended on me faster than a blink, but I was already twisting away.
As he landed inches from where I stood, I was ducking and striking upward. My thumb switched the blade free right as my arm passed his side. I cut deep.
More warmth spilled from him.
I slid free and danced backward to put the space I needed between us.
Hex’s head snaked around as he flinched away from the cut, right as the pain hit. His eyes flickered with something deeper than pain, like the hurt wasn’t just coming from his side but from his heart, as if I’d broken it.
But I reminded myself that Hex—my father—couldn’t have a heart after all the awful things he’d done to my mother and me. I’d been willing to forgive him for waiting to save me from Max. But I’d never forgive him for what he’d done to my mother.
I bared my teeth as he rounded on me. When he pulled his hand away from his side, it was covered in dripping, thick blood, nearly black in the darkness.
“Apparently, I taught you too well.” He hissed a breath out between his teeth.
“You underestimated me,” I said, relishing the look on his face as he wiped his hand clean. “You thought I would cower when you told me what had happened to my mother. You thought I’d lick my wounds and come back to you to be your weapon,” I said, spitting out the word. “You were wrong.”
“So it would seem.”
He launched into a spinning kick. His legs scissored through the air as his torso spun around, almost horizontal with the ground. By the time my whip sang through the space, I was too late. The tip met nothing but air, and Hex’s combat boot demolished the side of my face.
White stars exploded in spasms across my vision. I was free-falling for a short second, my thoughts muddled behind the fog of blackness overcoming me. A burst of fire spread out from my jaw and up into my temple.
I fell to my knees. The silver knuckles nearly clacked loose from my fist. I tried to stand too quickly and fell right back down. Hex danced back as I recovered, even though he could’ve landed another blow. The fact I hadn’t heard a thick crack in my head told me my jaw wasn’t broken.