She dodged back, quick on her feet.
Five years’ and six private schools’ worth of self-defense had given her a head start, but the last six months hunting down things that went bump in Prosperity—that had been the real education.
She danced between blows, trying to avoid the monster’s claws and get under its guard.
Nails raked the air above Kate’s head as she ducked and slashed the iron spike across the creature’s outstretched hand.
It snarled and swung at her, recoiling only after its claws bit into her sleeve and hit copper mesh beneath. The armor absorbed most of the damage, but Kate still hissed as somewhere on her arm the skin parted and blood welled up.
She let out a curse and drove her boot into the creature’s chest.
It was twice her size, made of hunger and gore and God knew what else, but the sole of her shoe was plated with iron, and the creature went staggering backward, clawing at itself as the pure metal burned away a stretch of mottled flesh, exposing the thick membrane that shielded its heart.
Bull’s-eye.
Kate launched herself forward, aiming for the still-sizzling mark. The spike punched through cartilage and muscle before sinking easily into that vital core.
Funny, she thought, that even monsters had fragile hearts.
Her momentum carried her forward, and the monster fell back, and they went down together, its body collapsing beneath her into a mound of gore and rot. Kate staggered to her feet, holding her breath against the noxious fumes until she reached the warehouse door. She slumped against it, pressing a palm to the gash on her arm.
The song was ending in her ear, and she switched the feed back to Control.
“How long has it been?”
“We have to do something.”
“Shut up,” she said. “I’m here.”
A string of profanity.
A few stock lines of relief.
“Status?” asked Bea.
Kate pulled the cell from her pocket, snapped a photo of the gory slick on the concrete, and hit SEND.
“Jesus,” answered Bea.
“Wicked,” said Liam.
“Looks fake,” offered Teo.
Riley sounded queasy. “Do they always . . . fall apart?”
The litany in her ear was just another reminder that these people had no business being on this end of the fight. They had their purpose, but they weren’t like her. Weren’t hunters.
“How about you, Kate?” asked Riley. “You okay?”
Blood soaked her calf and dripped from her fingers, and truth be told, she felt a little dizzy, but Riley was human—she didn’t have to tell him the truth.
“Peachy,” she said, killing the call before any of them could hear the catch in her breath. The glow stick flickered and faded, plunging her back into the dark.
But she didn’t mind.
It was empty now.
Kate climbed the stairs, leaving drops of gray water in her wake. The rain had started up again halfway back to the apartment, and she’d relished the soaking despite the cold, letting it wash away the worst of the black blood and gore.
Even so, she still looked like she’d gotten in a fight with a jar of ink—and lost.
She reached the third-floor landing and let herself in.
“Honey, I’m home.”
No answer, of course. She was crashing in Riley’s apartment—an apartment his parents paid for—while he was off “living in sin” with his boyfriend, Malcolm. She remembered seeing the place for the first time—the exposed brick, the art, the overstuffed furniture designed for comfort—and thinking Riley’s parents clearly shopped in a different catalog than Callum Harker.
She’d never lived alone before.
The school dorms had always been two-to-a-room, and back at Harker Hall, she’d had her father, at least in theory. And his shadow, Sloan. She’d always assumed she’d relish the eventual privacy, the freedom, but it turned out that being alone lost some of its charm when you didn’t have a choice.
She smothered the wave of self-pity before it could crest and headed for the bathroom, peeling off her armor as she went. Armor was a pretty fancy word for the copper mesh stretched over paintball gear, but Liam’s combined interests in costume design and war games did the job . . . 90 percent of the time. The other 10, well, that was just sharp claws and bad luck.
She caught her reflection in the bathroom mirror—damp blond hair slicked back, black gore freckling pale cheeks—and met her own gaze.
“Where are you?” she murmured, wondering how other Kates in other lives were spending their night. She’d always liked the idea that there was a different you for every choice you made and every choice you didn’t, and somewhere out there were Kates who had never returned to Verity and never begged to leave.
Ones who could still hear out of both ears and had two parents instead of none.
Ones who hadn’t run, hadn’t killed, hadn’t lost everything.
Where are you?
Once upon a time, the first image in her head would have been the house beyond the Waste, with its high grass and its wide-open sky. Now it was the woods behind Colton, an apple in her hand and birdsong overhead, and a boy who wasn’t a boy with his back against a tree.
She turned the shower on, wincing as she peeled away the last of the fabric.
Steam bloomed across the glass, and she bit back a groan as hot water struck raw skin. She leaned against the tiles and thought of another city, another house, another shower.
A monster slumped in the bath.
A boy burning from the inside out.
Her hand wrapped around his.
I’m not going to let you fall.
As the scalding water ran gray and rust red and then finally clear, she considered her skin. She was becoming a patchwork of scars. From the teardrop in the corner of her eye and the pale line that ran from temple to jaw—marks of the car crash that had killed her mother—to the curve of a Malchai’s teeth along her shoulder and the silvery gash of a Corsai’s claws across her ribs.
And then there was the mark she couldn’t see.
The one she’d made herself when she raised her father’s gun and pulled the trigger and killed a stranger, staining her soul red.
Kate snapped the water off.
As she taped up her latest cuts, she wondered if, somewhere, there was a version of herself having fun. Feet up on the back of a theater seat while movie monsters slunk out of the shadows, and people in the audience screamed because it was fun to be afraid when you knew you were safe.
It shouldn’t make her feel better, imagining those other lives, but it did. One of those paths led to happiness, even while Kate’s own had led her here.
But here, she told herself, was exactly where she was supposed to be.
She’d spent five years trying to become the daughter her father wanted—strong, hard, monstrous—only to learn that her father didn’t want her at all.
But he was dead, and Kate wasn’t, and she’d had to find something to do, someone to be, some way to put all those skills to use.