“He’s a true inspiration,” Sebastian continues. “I hope to achieve as much one day.”
“How can you admire him when you know what he did to my family?” I say.
Day looks at me with curiosity. I never told her the full story of why Polly was tortured and my father killed.
“He who walks on the path of sin will suffer the wrath of His Mighty,” Sebastian says, quoting the Book of Creation.
I’m too flabbergasted to speak at first. Is he insinuating Polly and my father got what they deserved?
“Who are you?” I say.
“I’ve just had my eyes opened to the corruption around me, Natalie,” he says.
We carry on with the tour. I cross my arms, silently seething at Sebastian. How can he be so callous? He cared for Polly, once upon a time. Walking nearby are Chris and Gregory. Chris looks agitated and bored as his brother stops to inspect every exhibition.
We enter a dimly lit, semicircular room filled with stuffed dead animals and fossilized skeletons. There’s a Lupine—a giant wolflike creature with beautiful soft gray fur, a winged Nordin Darkling skeleton, the skull of a catlike creature with long saber teeth, and a waxwork of a Wrath, which sends tremors down my spine.
“What’s that?” Day asks, looking at the skull of the catlike creature.
“That’s a Bastet,” Sebastian says.
I read the information placard beside the skull.
BASTET—Origin: Emerald State. Lifespan: Unknown. Diet: Darklings.
These rare creatures were once falsely worshipped as gods. They grow to six feet in height, and live in prides of up to two hundred. Bastet venom is highly toxic to Darklings and has been found to contain traces of the flesh-eating bacteria Vibrio necrosis.
“Gross,” I mutter.
“Look, this is pretty cool,” Sebastian says, pressing the cat’s saber teeth. They retract into the skull cavity. “They do that to prevent their fangs from getting damaged.”
“Its teeth are shimmering,” Day says.
“That’s what makes Bastet ivory so valuable; it’s imbued with the venom. People used to make ornaments and jewelry from them. Obviously Bastets are very rare these days; the poachers took most of them.”
I inspect the other animal exhibits as Sebastian and Day chat. The animals’ dead eyes stare at me as we walk by, making me feel uneasy. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched . . .
A flash of blue catches my eye from the display to my left. I peer into the shadows. Huh, there’s nothing there. Stop spooking yourself, Buchanan!
Sebastian stops talking. His hand curls around the hilt of his sword.
“Is everything all right?” I say to him.
He nods, although he’s clearly distracted by something.
There’s movement to my right, making me start, but it’s just Chris Thompson sneaking off to one of the other rooms when Gregory’s back is turned, followed by the drug dealer Linus.
“Stay close,” Sebastian says to me.
“What’s wrong?” Day asks.
“My V-gene is triggering. I can sense a Darkling nearby,” Sebastian replies.
Day looks at me, worried.
“Just keep moving,” Sebastian says.
We round the bend, and my heart wrenches as I spot Ash having a smoke with Beetle. Wisps of smoke spill from Ash’s parted lips, and for a fleeting moment, I wonder what it would be like to run my tongue over those lips, taste the smokiness of his mouth.
Sebastian lets out a sigh. “False alarm. I was just sensing that nipper.”
“Stop calling him that,” I say.
A sensation like molten lead suddenly leaks into my stomach and scorches my insides as darkness spills over my skin. The Sight. Ash looks in my direction, alarmed. He’s by my side in a heartbeat, Beetle soon behind.
Sebastian draws his sword, pointing it at Ash.
“A Darkling’s hunting her. I can sense him using the Sight,” Ash says to him.
“Where is it?” I ask Ash, terrified.
“I don’t know,” he says, surveying the room.
“I’ll go look for it,” Sebastian says.
“No! Don’t leave me.” Images of Truffles’s bloodied body pop into my head.
“We have to get rid of it,” Sebastian says.
“I have an idea. Do you trust me?” Ash asks me.
I look up at his beautiful, earnest face. My heart contracts.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Look into my eyes,” he says quietly.
I obey. He holds my gaze, staring at me, into me. His black eyes sparkle like stars in the dusky light . . . they’re so pretty . . . all glittery . . . they’re making me sleepy. Soon I’m lost in them, sinking, falling, until there is nothing left but him and me. Suddenly the darkness that has enveloped me starts to lift as Ash shifts the power of the Sight from the other Darkling over to him.
Mine . . . mine . . . mine, he’s telling them. Leave her, she belongs to me.
The darkness evaporates.
Ash blinks, breaking the spell.
I let out a shaky sigh. “Is it gone?”
“I can’t sense it anymore,” Ash says.
“I’m going to check the perimeter. Wait here,” Sebastian says to me, flashing Ash a bitter look. “You lay one fang on her, I’ll slice your head off. Understand?”
Ash’s fist clenches, but he says nothing as Sebastian stalks away.
Day hugs me. “Do you think that’s what—”
“Killed Truffles?” I finish for her. “Yeah. I think I’m being hunted, but why?”
“You’re a prime target for the Legion Liberation Front,” Beetle says, referring to the Darkling militia group that fought the Sentry during the war.
I turn to Ash. “Thanks for protecting me.”
“No problem. I just didn’t want to get blamed if you got attacked.”
Anger flares up in me. “Don’t put yourself out for me! Next time, just let the damn thing eat me.”
I stomp away, furious at myself for ever thinking that Ash Fisher had a heart. He catches up with me a moment later beside the Bastet skull.
“Hey, blondie, why are you mad at me?” he asks.
“Just leave me alone,” I say.
“Not until you tell me why you’re so pissed.”
I let out a frustrated scream. “By His Mighty’s Name, you are so annoying!”
“Okay, so we’ve established I annoy you. Anything else?” he asks, a small smile playing on his lips.
Yearning unfurls inside me. I remind myself I’m meant to be mad at him.
“Yes! You don’t care about anyone but yourself. You only help others if it helps you somehow,” I say.
“Ouch.” He looks genuinely offended.
“Well, it’s true.”
“No it’s not. I helped you because . . .”
“What?”
“I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“Oh. Then why did you say otherwise?”
He shrugs. “Because I shouldn’t care what happens to you.”
“But you do?”
He doesn’t say anything. Instead he turns his attention to the exhibition. I nervously look around me to make sure no one is watching us, my heart pounding a mile a minute, aware that I’m crossing over some invisible line by talking to him. Sebastian’s checking the perimeter, Day’s chatting with Beetle, and the rest of the class is in the next room. We’re alone.
Ash turns to me, a determined look in his eyes. “Natalie, there’s something I’ve wanted to talk to you about.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Really? What?”
He takes a deep bre
ath. “I don’t really know how to say it, so I’m just going to come out with it. You’ll probably think I’m insane.”
“Okay . . . ,” I say, wondering where this is going.
“The other day, when we were in our history lesson, we bumped heads and—”
“What do we have here, then?” a boy’s voice says behind us.
The boy with the purple hair—Linus—saunters by with his two goons. The tattooed girl gives me a hard look, daring me to make eye contact. I don’t.
“Since I last checked, this was still my neighborhood,” Ash says.
Linus smirks, his hand closing around a glass phial sticking out of his jacket pocket. It’s filled with a milky liquid that shimmers with a golden hue when the light catches it.
“Not anymore, nipper. This is Mr. Tubs’s ground now,” Linus drawls.
Ash grabs Linus by the collar, and the boy flinches. His goons close in.
“This is my turf,” Ash says.
“People are watching,” I warn him.
He releases Linus and indicates some nearby doors. “The exit’s that way. I suggest you use it.”
“Make me.”
Ash’s jaw tightens. He can’t do anything, not here.
“Sebastian will be really interested in hearing you were here, Linus. He might even call you in for questioning. Again,” I say.
He turns his attention to me. “What makes you think he don’t already know I’m here, sweet cheeks?”
What does he mean by that?
The tattooed girl loops an arm over Linus’s shoulder and presses herself provocatively against him.
“Let’s go test out the merchandise,” she murmurs.
Linus shrugs her off him and smooths his collar. They head down the corridor toward one of the other exhibitions.
“What was in that tube?” I ask Ash.
“Darkling venom, Haze,” he explains.
“I thought Haze was white. That stuff had a golden shimmer to it.”
“It’s probably that Golden Haze that’s been doing the rounds.”
I’m about to carry on our conversation about what happened when we bumped heads in history lesson, when Sebastian enters the room. I step away from Ash, not wanting to give Sebastian any reason to cause a scene.
“Did you find anything?” I ask him.
“No, the nipper’s long gone,” he replies, sheathing his sword.
I let out a relieved sigh.
A scream from the next room startles us all, and a moment later, the tattooed girl sprints out of the room, tears spilling down her face. She pushes past us, heading for the exit. Without thinking, I rush into the next room, wondering what all the drama’s about, and instantly wish I hadn’t. Sprawled on the floor are the bodies of Linus and the shaven-headed guy, their dead eyes staring up at the ceiling. Their faces are contorted in a mask of pain, their lips as black as coal.
Clutched in Linus’s dead hand is the open phial of Golden Haze.
16
ASH
“THE FIRST RULE of surviving a Darkling attack is to run,” Sebastian says to the group.
All the Tracker cadets sit in a circle in the center of the hall, dressed in our sparkling new uniforms. Sebastian’s second-in-command, the brawny black man with claw marks down his neck, gives me a cold, hard look from across the room. I tug at the collar of my jacket, trying to get some air between it and my skin, feeling claustrophobic in the expensive cotton. One of the other Trackers—a girl with wavy brown hair—flashes me an appreciative look. Whoa! Since I put on this uniform, everyone at school’s been treating me differently, like I’m one of them at last. It feels good to be respected, but it’s a bittersweet emotion. I shouldn’t have to go to these extremes to get respect.
Natalie’s sitting close by. She tucks a golden curl behind her ear, revealing a small freckle just above her collar. I wonder what it would be like to place my lips over that freckle, to sink my fangs into her neck . . . She turns and catches me looking. A small smile flits across her lips, and in that instant, my fate is sealed.
I want her.
Someone kicks my foot. Sebastian.
He gives me a warning look.
“What do you mean, we’re supposed to run?” Gregory whines, referring to Sebastian’s earlier comment. “I thought we were here to learn to fight.”
Sebastian nods at Claw Neck, who unbuttons the top two buttons of his jacket, revealing his upper body. The claw marks go all the way down his chest, and there’s a huge chunk of flesh missing where a Darkling’s taken a bite out of him. It has the desired effect—everyone’s paying attention now.
“Darklings are taller, stronger and faster than us. If you take one on without the odds being in your favor, which they rarely are, then they’ll kill you before you can blink,” Sebastian says. “If you want to survive, run. There’s no shame in coming back to HQ alive.”
“We hunt in packs,” Claw Neck continues. “That’s how we put the odds in our favor. Your unit is your family now. Your life is in their hands. It’s vital that you learn to move as one, anticipate one another’s movements and protect one another. This way, we’re unstoppable.”
“We have an added benefit, of course. The V-gene,” Sebastian says. “With training, it allows you to sense Darklings, giving you an edge over the enemy. Learning to hone this sense can mean the difference between life and death. But first, the essentials. Sword fighting. Get into pairs.”
I grab a sword from the rack and turn it over in my hand. It doesn’t feel right. There’s no way I’m going to risk stabbing another Darkling. I put the blade back.
“What are you doing?” Claw Neck growls at me.
“I don’t need a sword. I have my own weapons,” I say, flashing my fangs.
Natalie takes one of the smaller swords, giving me a shy smile. My heart pounds inside my chest, ba-boom ba-boom ba-boom. I can’t believe I nearly told her about my heart when we were in the museum. What was I thinking? She’ll say I’m crazy, a freak; she’ll never want to talk to me again. I can’t risk that, when I still don’t know how or why she’s doing this to me.
Gregory bumps into me.
“Get out of the way, mongrel,” he says.
“Sorry,” I say sarcastically. “I didn’t see you down there.”
Gregory’s nostrils flare. He takes the biggest sword on the rack.
“You know what they say about boys with big toys?” I say.
Natalie giggles, and Gregory narrows his eyes at me. Everyone pairs up, leaving just me and Natalie.
“I’ll try not to hurt you too much,” she says
Sebastian strolls over to Natalie, lightly touching her shoulder. Just that small familiar gesture makes my fangs hurt.
“Maybe you should sit this one out. I don’t want you putting too much strain on your heart,” he says.
Her cheeks flush crimson. “I need to practice, don’t I? Otherwise what’s the point of being here?”
“I’m just looking out for you—”
She lifts her sword threateningly at him. “I’m perfectly fine. My heart’s fine. Stop treating me like I’m a child!”
I stifle a grin.
Sebastian squares up to me, giving me attitude. “You hurt her, I’ll hurt you, got it?”
“Loud and clear,” I growl back.
“Sorry about Sebastian,” Natalie says when he’s gone.
“Your boyfriend’s a dick,” I say.
“Seb’s not my boyfriend.” She laughs. “I only told Chris that so he’d stop hitting on me.”
Hope flickers like a flame inside me, making me glow.
We run through a few basic strikes and parries, and it’s pretty clear Natalie’s done this be
fore. Her movements are swift and precise, but even so, she doesn’t manage to strike me once.
“No fair. You keep moving!” she teases as I dart out of the way of another one of her attacks.
“That’s sort of the idea, isn’t it? A Darkling isn’t going to just stand there and take it.”
She beams that beautiful startling smile of hers, and I falter. She thrusts again and this time catches me on the arm, making a small rip in my jacket. I rub my arm dramatically.
“Wimp,” she says.
“You’ve done this before.”
“My father taught me,” she says. A shadow briefly crosses her features, and I wonder what dark memory she’s revisiting.
“How have you been since we found Linus?” I ask gently. It’s been two days since we discovered his dead body in the museum.
She shrugs. “I keep having nightmares about it. There was a short article about it in the paper. Did you see it?”
I nod. It was just a paragraph lost in the sea of news stories. They’d chalked his death up to a Haze overdose—and that was that. A whole life summed up in a few short lines. It’s not much. Would I get even that much coverage if someone found me dead?
“You’ve got your frowny face on,” Natalie says.
“Huh?”
She pulls a very serious face, mimicking me.
“Sorry, I was just thinking about Linus. That was a tough way to go,” I say.
“I can think of worse,” she mutters. “What do you think was in that Golden Haze? It must’ve been strong to kill Linus and his friend so quickly.”
“I’m not sure. Dealers often mix it with naturally occurring hallucinogens, so maybe something like that?” I reply.
We continue to sword fight, although her mind isn’t on it anymore.
“Ash, what were you going to talk to me about at the museum? Something about us bumping heads . . . ?” she says.
My stomach flips. Damn. I’d hoped she’d forgotten about that.
“I just wanted to make sure you weren’t hurt. I’ve got a pretty thick skull,” I say, tapping my head.
She narrows her eyes suspiciously at me. “I lost a few brain cells, but there’s no permanent damage. Is that really what you wanted to ask me?”