“He’s right,” Henry said.
God, he pissed her off. “No.” She shook her head, trying to keep a lid on her anger. “We go to the stairs together and fight our way down. Together.”
Lucas grabbed her, jerking her close. “You will do as you’re told.”
“No,” she said into his snarl. “I won’t. We go together.”
The pressure inside her built.
“This isn’t a democracy!”
“Lucas, I can’t carry Emily and shoot at the same time. I can barely hold this stupid gun with two hands. Do you think I’m Rambo? It’s suicide for me, Emily, and you.”
“She has a point,” Henry said.
“See? They will kill me and your grand sacrifice will be wasted. I don’t want you to die for nothing. I don’t want you to die at all.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I care if you live or die! My God, you are a moron! We fight our way to the stairs together. We have a better chance that way.”
He shook her. “I’m trying to save your daughter, you idiot! I’ve been doing this a long time and I am telling you, if we go out there, we’ll all die.”
“He also has a point,” Henry said.
Karina exhaled. Emily’s life was all that mattered. “Then drink my blood and get her out of here.”
“I would have to drain you dry. I’m barely conscious!”
“Do it.” Karina told him, furious. “You have the best chance of getting out of here with Emily alive. Drain me.”
“No!” he snarled.
“Do it, Lucas!”
“That’s nice,” Henry said. “But the Ordinators are coming.”
“Drain me or we go to the stairs,” Karina said.
“No, we’ll do this my way.”
“Your way, I die, you die, Emily dies!”
“There is no time,” Henry said calmly. “You missed your opportunity. We are all about to die. Don’t let them take you alive. You will regret it.”
The back wall of the conference room shuddered. Cracks crisscrossed the wood. It shattered and rained down in a waterfall of tiny splinters. People stood behind it, people with automatic weapons and dark helmets shielding their faces. In front of them a tall man with pale hair down to his waist slowly lowered his hand, smiling. She looked into his face and saw her own death there.
It hit her like a punch. Emily, she, Lucas, and Henry—the four of them really were about to die.
For nothing. They would die for nothing.
Lucas surged to his feet, trying to shield her.
No. No, this was not happening. She was tired and scared and pissed off and she was done with this shit.
Fuck them all.
The coiled spring inside her snapped free. Fiery power surged through her in a glorious cascade. It was time to set things right.
The smile slid off the blond Ordinator’s face. He opened his mouth.
The power surged from her, up and over her shoulders in twin streams.
She looked right into his eyes and said, “Die!”
His face turned green, as if dusted with emerald powder. He crumpled and fell to the floor. She stared at the men behind him and they collapsed like rag dolls.
Two others burst into her view from the left. She turned and looked at them and watched them die in midstep.
“Anybody else?” she called out. Her voice rang through the building. “Does anybody else want some? Because I’ve got plenty!”
Nobody answered. She marched out into the hallway, turned the corner, and saw a hallway full of people.
Die.
They collapsed as one.
They wanted to exterminate humanity. They had declared a war. Fine. If the Ordinators wanted a war, she would introduce them to one.
Karina turned. Lucas was staring at her, his mouth hanging open. Next to him Henry stood, blinking as if he hoped that one of the times when he reopened his eyes he would see something different.
Karina looked above them and saw her own reflection in the mirror wall. Twin streams of green lightning spread out from her shoulders in two radiant green wings. Like Arthur’s red ones.
“A Wither,” Henry said in a small voice, still blinking. “She’s a Wither.”
The memory of burning faces flashed before her and she brushed it aside. Fine. She was a Wither and nobody would ever push her around again.
Lucas closed his mouth. His gaze met hers and she saw pride and defiance in his eyes. “Do it quick,” he said.
He expected her to kill him.
After everything she’d said to him, he expected her to kill him.
Karina stepped to him. Her lightning wings burned around them. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’m the biggest and the strongest and I’ll protect you. We are walking out of here.”
Henry stopped blinking.
It took them forty-five minutes to get down the stairs. Karina inhaled the night air. It smelled of acrid smoke and rotting garbage, but she didn’t care.
Behind her the building rose like a grim tower. It now belonged to the dead. She had walked through every hallway and checked every room, while Henry and Lucas sat waiting and bleeding on the stairs. She had no idea how many people she killed, but it had to be dozens. She checked their faces to make sure they were dead. They all looked the same: features sunken in, emerald green tint painting their skin.
And now, finally, she was done.
Her lightning wings had vanished, her power exhausted. Reality returned slowly, in bits and pieces.
Next to her Lucas stirred. “If you want to disappear, now is the time. You killed them because they were caught unaware. The House of Daryon won’t be. I don’t know what your plan is but I know that once Arthur realizes what you are, he’ll do everything he can to keep you within the House. You are too powerful to cut loose. He’ll kill you if you refuse, and I don’t know if I can stop him.”
“He’s right,” Henry said. “It’s alarming how often I keep repeating that. Withers, Subspecies 21, have several types. You’re type 4. Arthur is type 7. He is more powerful and he has a lot more experience. At your best you can’t take him, and it will take you a long time to build your reserves back up to do anything on a massive scale again. Sometimes it takes years. Not to mention that we will have to fight you if you try to kill Arthur.”
Karina looked at Lucas. “If I leave, how will you feed?”
“Synthetics,” he said. “They take the edge off.”
His entire body was tense, like a string pulled too tight. He didn’t want her to go. “Why?” she asked.
“That’s what you want,” he said. “Freedom. One more day or maybe many. It’s yours. Take it.”
Henry cleared his throat. “The Ordinators . . .”
Lucas looked at him. Henry closed his mouth with a click.
Karina peered at Lucas’s face. “Didn’t you promise me you would find me if I escaped?”
“I did. I promise you it will take me a really long time to find you. Go now.”
She hesitated. Emily stirred in Lucas’s arms, waking up.
Lucas could find her—she saw the certainty of it in his eyes. If he could find her, the Ordinators could find her as well, and they would be much more motivated. And even if she did escape, she would always be living on the run, hiding from everyone and afraid of every shadow. She had no doubt that Emily was a donor. She had a responsibility to her child—she had to teach Emily how to protect herself or when they would be found, Emily would be caught unaware, just like she was.
Karina looked out into the city. That way lay freedom. Even twelve hours before, Karina Tucker would’ve taken it in a blink. But she was no longer that Karina Tucker. Nothing would ever be the same. There was a chasm between her old self and her new self, and it was filled with Ordinator bodies. Too much had happened. It changed her and there was no going back.
The woman who only days before had driven four children on a school trip was dead. She had been a nice girl, kind
and a little naive, because she thought she knew what tragedy was. That woman had a small, secure, cozy life. Karina missed her and she took a moment to mourn her. It hurt to let go of that life. She shed it anyway, but not like a butterfly breaking free of the cocoon. More like a snake leaving its old skin. And this new Karina took risks. She was stronger, harder, and more powerful. There was a war going on and she would take part in it.
And even if she chickened out and tried to walk away, the memory of Lucas would keep her from going too far. She had more in common with a man who turned into a monster than she did with Jill and her endless worry over seat belts. She couldn’t leave him behind now, back in the place where everyone was scared of him, where Arthur used him with no regard for Lucas’s life, where his brother continuously bickered and fought with him. She had Emily. Lucas had no one and he wanted her so badly. And she wanted him. Right or wrong, she no longer cared. It was her decision and she made it.
“Decide,” Lucas told her. “We can’t stay out in the open.”
Only one question remained. Karina took a deep breath and closed the distance between her and Lucas. She lifted her face and looked into his green eyes and kissed him.
For a moment he stood still and then he kissed her back, his mouth eager and hungry for her. When they broke apart, Henry was staring at them.
“I am confused,” Henry said.
“Well, I can’t let you go back on your own,” Karina said. “All beat up and sad. Arthur might kill you somehow, or Daniel will bring the house down, or Henry, you might poison everyone with your cooking.”
Emily opened her eyes. “Mommy!”
“Hi, baby.”
“Where are we?”
“In Detroit. We had to make a stop here for a little while, but Lucas and Henry are taking us home with them now.”
There had to be words to describe the look on Lucas’s face, but she didn’t know them. He probably didn’t know them, either. He looked like he wasn’t sure if he were surprised, relieved, happy, or mad.
“I believe there is a fast-food place three blocks north,” Henry said. “We could go there, use their phone, and drink coffee while we wait to get picked up. I could use some coffee.”
“Can you make it?” Lucas asked.
“If I faint, just leave me in the street.”
Lucas slid his shoulder under Henry’s arm.
“Thank you.”
They started down the street.
“You don’t own me anymore,” Karina said quietly.
“Fine,” Lucas said.
“And I will have my own room.”
“Fine.”
“And if you need to feed, you will ask me. Nicely.”
He stopped and glared at her.
“Nicely,” she told him.
“Fine.”
“But all kidding aside, you will still cook, right?” Henry asked. “You said—”
“Yes, I will definitely cook.”
“Oh, good,” Henry said. “I was afraid you would quit and we would have to eat Lucas’s cooking.”
“My cooking is fine,” Lucas said.
Ahead, the familiar yellow-on-red sign rose on the corner.
“Are we going there, Mommy?” Emily pointed at the sign.
“Yes.”
“Do we have money to get ice cream?”
“I have twenty dollars,” Henry said. “It’s a little bloody, but they will take it.”
“They’ll take it,” Lucas said grimly.
Karina pictured Lucas, a little bloody and a little pissed off, breaking the McDonald’s counter in half. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
“Don’t worry, baby. We’ll get you all the ice cream you want.” Karina glanced back at the husk of the skyscraper. For a second she thought she saw her own self waving good-bye. Her new self smiled back. People who knew the old Karina would judge her, if they knew, but that didn’t matter. She made her own choices now.
She put her hand on Lucas’s arm. He bent it at his elbow, letting her fingers rest on his muscled forearm, and they walked side by side into the night.
Nocturne
Sharon Shinn
CHAPTER 1
Because I was the newest cook at the school, they had given me the least desirable shift, the one from midnight until dawn. It was my job to wash any of the pots that had been left to soak after dinner, to sweep up the kitchen, to mix the ingredients for bread and let the dough go through its first rising. Rhesa, the young woman who had held this position before me, had gladly given up these tasks; she now came in with three other women to make the evening meal for the hundred and fifty souls who lived at the school. I could tell she both pitied me for being stuck with the night duties and felt a certain smug satisfaction at finally having someone below her in the staff hierarchy. She was the kind of person who—if she lasted long enough to be named head cook—would treat everyone below her with snobbery and contempt.
But the truth was, I liked the night hours. I liked the solitude, the quiet, and the autonomy. And I relished the chance to explore.
The Gabriel School was an odd place, no question about it. It was one of a dozen such institutions established sixty or seventy years ago by the former Archangel and his wife as places for abandoned street children to get an education. While a few of these schools could be found in major cities like Semorrah and Luminaux, ours was located on the very edge of the desert that snugged up against the Caitana Mountains. Not only was it situated between sands to the south, mountains to the west, and ocean to the east, it was served by a single infrequently traveled road. In other words, it offered little chance for anyone who lived there to escape somewhere else.
That choice had been deliberate, I assumed, since most of our students had some experience with crime, and many had not come here of their own free will. The theory was that, if they were forced to stay at the Gabriel School long enough to learn a trade, they would eventually become skilled craftspeople who could be gainfully employed, and everyone would benefit.
The problem was, a small school in an inaccessible location wasn’t an easy place for teachers and cooks and housekeepers to leave, either, if they got tired of the hard work, the cramped accommodations, or the lack of excitement. But I didn’t mind. I didn’t feel trapped. I planned on staying at the Gabriel School for a good long time. For one thing, I was tired of running. For another, I had nowhere else to go.
By the time I had been at the Gabriel School for a month, I had pretty well established a routine. I would go to bed in the morning and rise early in the afternoon to enjoy a few daylight hours to myself. I joined the cooks in the kitchen just as they finished serving dinner, and I completed the cleaning by myself after they drifted back to their rooms. Then I had a couple hours of freedom before it was time to begin assembling ingredients for the morning bread.
I spent those hours exploring the school. The first few weeks were chilly enough to keep me indoors, investigating locked storerooms (easy enough to break into), musty closets, and stairwells that led to underground rooms that everyone else had forgotten. I found a hidden cache of fine wine, a strongbox of gold, and historical documents about the school that were more interesting than you would have supposed. More than once I happened upon romantic liaisons between workers or a pair of students, though I was stealthy enough that none of these trysting couples ever realized I was there. I only watched long enough to be sure that no one was unwilling, and then I quietly backed away.
The fourth week I was there, the weather decidedly improved, and I ventured outside to look around. The Gabriel School owned about ten acres enclosed by a high wrought-iron fence whose narrow metal bars were so rusted through in spots that they would hardly keep an intruder out or a fugitive in. Of the six main buildings, one housed the workers, two housed the students, and two served as classrooms, kitchen, dining hall, library, and other public spaces. The last one was a barn/stable/storage facility where we kept barrels of dried fruit, shelves of canned vegetables, th
ree cows, five horses, and two ancient carts. There were all sorts of interesting cubbyholes and bins and haylofts in the barn, and I planned to investigate them all.
But the very first night I spent ghosting around the grounds, it wasn’t the barn that captured my attention. It was the tall, narrow building at the top of a small hill on the other side of the fence. The house where the headmistress lived. By day it appeared drab and dispirited, with lugubrious gray drapes visible in the ground-floor windows, black ones on the second story, and weathered old boards covering up the openings on the attic level. By night—especially a night such as this one, with a full moon intermittently obscured by flat, listless clouds—it had a sort of wild, sinister allure. I found myself standing with my back to the workers’ dorm, my hands wrapped around two of those iron bars, staring up at its eerie silhouette.
It appeared as if everyone in the place was asleep, for no lights showed on any level. Not that too many people inhabited the Great House, as it was called. The headmistress lived there alone except for a housekeeper and a footman, who rarely mingled with staff at the school. And none of us—not student, not teacher, not cook—was permitted to enter the Great House. If an emergency arose and we needed to summon the headmistress, we would ring a brass bell that hung inside the compound. No such emergency had occurred since I had been on the campus.
The instant I had been told of the prohibition against entering the Great House, I had been seized with a desire to do just that. I knew that the day would come when the headmistress fell sick or had to travel, when her servants were off on errands that could only be entrusted to them. There would come a day when that odd, offputting, off-limits structure would be safe to roam.
Not tonight, however. I stood there another few moments, tracing the outlines of the house with my gaze. A last ragged wisp of cloud shredded away from the moon, and the whole house was lit with a faint phosphorescence. I stayed another moment just to admire the interaction of moonlight and shadow, wishing I was a skilled enough artist to capture the slant of the roof, the narrow structure of the building, the pool of darkness against the front door.
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