Sloan sighed. “Would that you were.”
“Tell me where he—”
Sloan shot forward, caging her in against the counter. The sudden force of it was like a blow to the ribs, knocking the air from her lungs.
“Down, dog,” she snarled, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.
The Malchai didn’t move. His crimson eyes dragged over her. “Can’t you see,” he whispered. “Harker doesn’t want you here.”
“You don’t know that—”
“Of course I do.” A single cold finger came to rest against her cheek. The nail was filed to a point.
She swallowed, held her ground. “I am not a child anymore.”
“You will always be our little Katherine,” he murmured. “Crying herself to sleep. Begging her mother to take her away.”
“Mom wanted to leave, not me.”
“You can lie to yourself, but I can’t.”
A drop of blood welled above Sloan’s nail, but she didn’t pull away. “I am a Harker,” she said slowly. “I belong here. Now tell me where he is.”
The Malchai sighed and turned his gaze away, considered the thickening dark beyond the windows. “In the basement.” Kate swallowed, and started toward the elevator. “But you really shouldn’t go there.”
The doors opened. Kate stepped in, and turned back toward the Malchai. “Why not?”
He flashed a savage smile. “Because that,” he said, “is where the real monsters are.”
Harris and Phillip joined August on the way down.
The elevator paused at the fifteenth floor and the two brawny guys in black fatigues climbed in. Harris was eighteen, dark hair spilling out beneath his cap, and Phillip was twenty, buzz-cut, and like most of the young men in South City, they’d apparently jumped at the chance to join the FTF. They were both cheerful guys, the kind to get a bounce in their step at the first sign of trouble, to run toward it instead of away. The kind to high-five after taking out a Corsai with an HUV beam to the head or driving a metal spike through a Malchai’s heart.
“So we’re on level three, you know that corridor, the one where the cameras don’t quite reach, and—oh, hey, August!”
“Saved by the elevator,” said Phillip. He flashed August a warm grin. “You holding up?”
August nodded tightly. The anger was bleeding out of him, which wasn’t a good sign. What came after was worse.
“You look like you could use a boost,” said Harris, pulling off his FTF cap and settling it over August’s black curls. Only a few handpicked members of the FTF knew who—and, more important, what—August really was. “I was just telling Phil about this prime—”
“She’s out of your league, bro.”
“Harsh.”
“No,” said Phillip as they hit the lobby. “I mean she is literally out of your league. Second-class team captain, and you’re a what—didn’t you just get bumped back to mindless drone?”
Harris rolled his eyes. “What about you, August? Good-looking mons—” Phillip shot him a look. “—kid like you. Anyone special?”
“Believe it or not,” said August as they stepped out into the night. “My options are limited.”
“Nah, you just gotta expand your parameters. Look beyond your—”
Phillip cleared his throat. “Who’re we visiting tonight?” he asked, scanning the street. August shifted the strap on his shoulder—he’d moved the violin into a different case, one that looked like it was made for a weapon instead of a musical instrument—and unfolded the paper Leo had given him. It was a profile. A victim. August tried not to use that word—victims were innocent, and this man was not—but the term kept getting stuck in his head.
“Albert Osinger,” he read aloud. “259 Ferring Pass, 3B.”
“That’s not too far,” said Phillip. “We can walk.”
August considered the paper as he fell into step behind them. A grainy photo was printed below the words, a capture from a video feed.
Sometimes people brought cases to Henry Flynn, looking for justice, but most of the targets came from the footage. South City had its own surveillance, and Ilsa spent most days scanning the feeds, searching for shadows other people couldn’t see, ones that shouldn’t be there. The mark of someone whose violence had taken shape. A sinner.
Corsai fed on flesh and bone, Malchai on blood, and whose it was meant nothing to them. But the Sunai could feed only on sinners. That’s what set them apart. Their best-kept secret. It was the seed of Leo’s righteousness, and the reason all FTFs were required to be shadow free. It was also why, in the early days of the Phenomenon and the mounting chaos, Leo had chosen to side with Henry Flynn instead of Callum Harker, a man with too many shadows to count.
“We are the darkest acts made light,” Leo liked to say.
August supposed they were a kind of cosmic clean-up crew, created to address the source of the monstrous problem.
And Albert Osinger had officially been labeled a source.
The boots ahead of him came to a stop, and August folded the paper, and looked up. They were on the corner of a gutted street, most of the lights dead or flickering. Phillip and Harris had their HUVs out, beams slicing back and forth on the pavement. They were looking at him expectantly.
“What?”
Phillip cocked his head. Harris jabbed a finger at a building. “I said we’re here.”
The apartment building looked run-down, five stories of chipping paint and cracked brick. Broken window glass littered the curb where it had been bashed out and boarded over using iron nails. A nest, that’s what they called places like this, where people burrowed down as if waiting out a storm.
There was no telling how many people were holed up inside.
“You want us to come in?” asked Harris.
They always offered, but August could tell they’d rather keep their distance. The music couldn’t hurt them, but it would still take its toll.
August shook his head. “Watch the front.” He turned to Phillip. “And the fire escapes.”
They nodded, and split up, and August made his way up the front steps. A metal X had been fashioned across the door, but it wasn’t pure, and even if it had been, it wouldn’t have stopped him. He pulled an access card from his coat pocket. An FTF tool, skeleton-coded. He swiped it, and inside the door, a lock shifted, but when he turned the handle, the door barely moved. Stiff or barricaded, he didn’t know. He put his shoulder into the metal, and shoved, felt the bottom lip scrape the floor for several grating inches before finally—suddenly—giving way.
Inside, the stairwell itself was a mess of boxes and crates, anything that could be used to help hold back the night if it found a way in. UVR lights glared down from the ceiling, giving the hall an eerie glow, and a single red dot flickered in the corner. The security cameras in South City were all wired into the same closed grid, but August still pulled the FTF hat down over his eyes as he climbed to the third floor, the violin slung over his shoulder.
Sunai, Sunai, eyes like coal,
Sing you a song and steal your soul.
He could hear voices through the walls, some low and others loud, some distorted—television or radio noise—and others simple and real.
When he reached 3B, he pressed his ear to the door. The hungrier he got, the sharper his senses tuned. He could hear the low murmur of the TV, the floor creaking under the weight of steps, the bubble of something cooking on the stove, the inhale-exhale of a single body. Osinger was home, and he was alone. August pulled back; there was no peephole on the door. He took a deep breath, straightened, and knocked.
The sounds in 3B stopped abruptly. The footsteps stilled. The TV went dead. And then, a bolt slid free, the door opened, and a man peered out into the hall, too thin in a half-buttoned shirt. Behind his back, his shadow coiled. Behind his shadow, the room was a maze of towering paper and books, half-collapsed boxes, bags of trash, clothing, food—some of it rotten.
“Mr. Osinger,” said August. “May I come i
n?”
When Albert Osinger met August’s eyes, he knew. Somehow, they always knew. The man paled, then slammed the door in August’s face. Or tried. August caught the wood with his hand, forcing it inward, and Osinger, in a panic, turned and ran, toppling a stack of books, pulling over a shelf of canned food as he scrambled to get away. As if there were anywhere to run.
August sighed and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.
The elevator doors slid open, and the veneer of wealth fell away. Up above, Harker Hall might be all veined marble and gold trim, but down here in the basement there were no polished floors, no glittering chandeliers, no soothing Bach. Those were just layers, the waxy skin of the apple. This was the rotting core.
The basement of the Allsway Building housed an “event space.” A decade earlier, a bomb had stripped the paint and taken the lives of seventeen people but left the steel and concrete bones intact, and it was here, the echoes of terror still ghosted on the walls and soaked into the bare floor, that Callum Harker held court. Not with his citizens—his subjects—but with his monsters.
Kate hung back, watching from the bank of elevators. The basement lights had all been directed away from the walls and toward the center of the massive room, spotlighting the raised platform in the middle. In the darkened corners, dozens of Corsai gathered. All around the basement’s edges the monsters rustled like leaves, or debris, a death rattle in the shadows, a hoarse chorus of whispers, their voices coalescing from many into one.
beat break ruin flesh blood bone beat break
They were nightmare creatures, the stuff of bedtime stories gone wrong, the things that lurked under the mattress and in the closet, given life and teeth and claws. Be careful, parents told their children, be good, or the Corsai will come, but the truth was the Corsai didn’t care if you were careful or good. They swam in darkness and fed on fear, their bodies sick, distended shapes that looked human only if you caught them out of the corner of your eye. And by then, it was usually too late to run.
Kate looked straight at the nearest one, focusing until her eyes adjusted and she could make out its milky pupils, its shadowed edges and sharpened teeth. Almost impossible to kill. A blast of sunlight to the head—anything less just dispelled them—but you had to find the head for that to work, which was harder than it seemed when their edges ran together, blurring in the dark.
The Corsai had a hive-mind—you ruled them all, or none—and somehow, Harker had bent them to his will. Apparently he’d lured them down into the underground, and cut the lights, but what happened next was story made legend. Some said it was his fearlessness that had cowed them. Some said he’d rigged the sprinklers with liquid metal, and when the Corsai had finally recovered days—weeks—later, they bowed to him.
Harker’s Malchai stood closer to the action, skeletal arms crossed over their dark clothes and eyes burning like embers in their gaunt faces. Most looked male, a few vaguely female, but none of them remotely human. They seemed to radiate cold, leeching all the heat from the air (Kate shivered, remembering Sloan’s icy grip), and each and every one of them bore the same brand—an H on their left cheekbone. Nearby, a Corsai got too close to one and it hissed, flashing row after row of jagged teeth. Men and women dotted the crowd, thugs with hardened bodies and scarred cheeks, their very presence a show of strength—but next to them, the Malchai looked far more monster than human.
The only things missing from Harker’s collection were Sunai. Those rare creatures—the darkest things to crawl out of the Phenomenon—had aligned themselves with Flynn down in South City. Some said the Sunai refused to be controlled; while others said they refused only to be controlled by Harker. Either way, Harker’s were many and Flynn’s were few, and their absence didn’t make a dent. Everywhere Kate looked, the basement was brimming with monsters, every set of eyes—white, red, or ordinary—focused on the platform, and the pool of light, and the man standing at its center.
Callum Harker had the kind of face that cast shadows.
His eyes were deep-set and blue—not light blue or sky blue or gray blue, but dark, cobalt blue, the kind that looked black at night—paired with an aquiline nose and a severe jaw. Tattoos—bold tribal patterns—snaked out from under his collar and cuffs, black ink trailing onto the backs of his hands and tracing up his neck, the sweep and curl ending just below his hairline. Harker’s hair was the only part of him that didn’t fit. It was fair, a warm, sun-kissed blond, like Kate’s, that swept across his forehead and trailed along his cheeks. That one feature made him look like a “Cal.” But only Kate’s mother, Alice, had called him that. To everyone else, he was Sir. Governor. Boss. Even Kate thought of him as Harker, though she made an effort to call him Dad. The way his face twisted—discomfort? disdain? dismay?—was its own kind of victory.
Harker wasn’t alone up on the platform; a man was on his hands and knees before him, begging for his life.
“Please, please,” he said in a shuddering voice. “I’ll find the money. I swear.”
Two Malchai hovered at the man’s back, and when Harker motioned, they wrenched the man to his feet. Their nails sunk into his skin and he let out a stifled cry as Harker reached forward, and took hold of the metal pendant that hung from the man’s neck.
“You can’t,” he pleaded. “I’ll find the money.”
“Too late.” Harker tore the pendant free.
“No!” cried the man as one of the Malchai holding him yawned wide, revealing rows of jagged teeth. He was about to sink those teeth into the man’s throat when Harker shook his head.
“Wait.”
The man let out a sob of relief, but Kate held her breath. She knew her father, watched as he considered the medal and then the man.
“Give him a head start,” he said, tossing the medal aside. “Five minutes.”
The monsters let go, and the man crumpled to the floor, clutched at Harker’s legs. “Please,” he cried. “Please. You can’t do this!”
Harker looked down coldly. “You’d better start running, Peter.”
The man paled. And then he scrambled to his feet, and stumbled down off the platform, and ran. The crowd of men and monsters, held quiet by Harker’s command, now burst into noise, laughing and hissing and jeering as they parted to let the dead man through. A few peeled away from the group and followed him toward the concrete steps that led up to the street, into the dark.
Back onstage—that’s what it really was: a stage, a performance—Harker held up an iron walking stick, its grip shaped into a gargoyle like the one on the front of their car (cult leaders, Kate had read in that same book, had a flare for the dramatic, the pomp and show). Now rather than raise his voice to quiet the crowd, Harker drove the pointed end of the walking stick down against the concrete platform. The sound reverberated through the basement, and the crowd fell to whispers, the murmurs sinking from a wave into an undercurrent.
“Next,” he said.
Kate’s eyes widened as a Malchai was dragged up onto the platform. The monster twisted and writhed, strength dampened by the iron chains circling his wrists and throat. Where his brand should have been, there was a patch of ruined skin, as if he’d clawed the mark away.
“Olivier,” said Harker, his voice carrying across the event space, “you’ve disappointed me.”
“Have I?” snarled the monster, his voice a rasp. “It is we who are disappointed.” A ripple went through the basement hall. We. The Corsai rattled and the Malchai began to whisper. “Why should we starve because of deals you make, human? We did not make such deals ourselves. The Corsai may speak as one, but the Malchai are not yours.”
“You’re wrong,” said Harker, bringing the iron gargoyle up beneath the Malchai’s chin, smiling as the monster recoiled at the metal’s kiss. “I give each and every one of you a choice. Stay in North City, under my command, or go south, and be slaughtered by Flynn’s. You chose to stay in my city, you chose to take my mark, and then you chose to bleed a family dry. A family under my p
rotection.” The Malchai’s eyes burned angrily, but Harker’s calm smile never faltered. He looked up, and addressed the cavernous space. “I have a system. You all know what happens to those who disrupt it. Those who follow me reap the rewards. And those who defy me”—Harker looked down at the Malchai—“die.”
The crowd began to rile again, nervous energy and violent excitement, while the Malchai strained against his bonds. Even monsters feared death. At least the Malchai didn’t beg. Didn’t plead. He only looked up at Harker, flashed his sharp teeth, and said, “Come near me, and I will rip your throat out.”
Harker took a casual step back, and turned away. A table stood near the edge of the platform, littered with a variety of weapons, and Harker ran his fingers over them, considering his choices.
“Hear me!” growled the Malchai behind him, his voice echoing through the hall even as his throat burned beneath the iron. “We are not servants. We are not slaves. We are wolves among sheep. Monsters among men. And we will rise. Your time is ending, Harker!” roared the Malchai. “Our time is coming.”
“Well,” said Harker, selecting a blade. “Yours is already here.”
He drew the knife from its sheath, and Kate saw her chance.
“I’ll do it,” she called out, loud enough for her father to hear. The crowd stilled, searching for the source of the words. An elevated strip ran like a catwalk between the elevators at the back of the hall and the platform in the center, and Kate stepped out of the shelter and into the light.
She kept her head up, focused on her father instead of the crowd, and caught the vanishing shadow of his surprise as it crossed his face—she’d been hoping for pride, but she’d settle for that.
He considered her for a moment, clearly dissecting her move—ostentatious, public, brash to the point of brazen—and they both knew he’d either have to welcome her involvement or punish her insolence. A dangerous play, and one she might pay for later, but to her immediate relief, he smiled and gestured to the table of tools as if it were a banquet.