Until she saw the open land, the sprawling nothing, and remembered dragging August’s fevered body through the fields to the house, remembered her mother’s room, the man at the door, and the gun in her hand. A single bang, the division between before and after. Innocence and guilt. Human and monster.
She didn’t like to think about that.
Didn’t like to remember that somewhere, out there, was the monster she’d made.
With any luck it had starved to death in the Waste.
With any luck—
The car shuddered, spluttered, and began to smoke. She swore and guided the dying vehicle onto the empty shoulder.
She was eight miles from the outskirts of V-City.
Eight miles, and less than two hours until dark.
Kate got out, and rounded the car. The gun sat on the passenger-side floor where she’d dropped it as soon as the barricade was out of sight. She took it up, savoring the weight in her hand, remembering the sweet recoil and—
She ejected the clip from the gun and put both pieces in her bag, hitched it up on her shoulder, and began to run. Her own shadow stretched out in front of her, cast by the sinking sun at her back, and her shoes beat out a steady rhythm on the asphalt.
Track had been a mandatory activity back at Leighton, and Kate had quickly discovered two things:
She loved running.
And she hated running in circles.
She tried to remember that love now, with nothing but an open road, a straight line ahead, but two miles in, she was pretty sure she’d made it all up.
Four miles in, she wished she had a cigarette.
Five miles in, she regretted ever smoking.
Seven miles in, she staggered to a jog and then a walk, a limp and then a stop, retching on the side of the road. Her head had started aching again, and she wanted to lie down, to close her eyes, but the sun was hovering over the horizon, and the last thing she needed was to be caught out in the Waste after dark.
She had to keep moving, so she did.
Funny, how simple things became when you didn’t have a choice.
Her legs and lungs were on fire by the time she finally reached the green zone.
Once upon a time it had been the richest section of the capital, a place reserved for those who could afford not only to purchase Harker’s protection but to carry on with their lives as if nothing was wrong. Once upon a time—but now it was empty.
It would have been easy to assume that everyone in the green had up and left, some kind of mass exodus.
It would have been . . . except for the number of cars in the driveways. And the blood.
Long-dry brown stains worn thin by weather and sun. But it was everywhere. Splashed like rust against car doors and curbs, garages and steps. An echo of violence.
“What happened here?” she murmured to the empty streets, even though she knew the answer.
Corsai, Corsai, tooth and claw,
Shadow and bone will eat you raw.
The sun dipped below the horizon and Kate perched her sunglasses on her head. The light was quickly thinning—soon it would be gone. She had to get inside.
She unzipped her bag and forced her fingers to gloss over the gun and take up the switchblade and an iron spike instead before starting down the street. She made her way to house after house, but the doors were all bolted. At the third one, she stood on her toes, peered into a window, and stilled.
It looked like a crime-scene photo, minus the bodies, dark stains streaking the walls and floor and toppled furniture. She imagined the people in the green locking themselves inside, waiting, until the power went out and the shadows slipped under their doors.
A low hiss sounded on the air, and Kate tensed, fingers tightening on her weapons before she realized the sound was human.
“Psst,” came the voice. “Over here.”
Kate turned and caught a flash of light on metal. No, not metal. A mirror. One of the front doors across the street was cracked open and a man was twisting a compact back and forth to signal her.
“Hello?” she called out, moving toward him.
“Shh,” he hissed, eyes darting nervously around the street. He had a flashlight in one hand, even though it wasn’t yet dark, and over his shoulder she could see the glow of more lights inside the hall.
“Get in, get in,” he said, opening the door just enough to let her through.
She crossed the yard, but hesitated at the base of the stairs. Her shadow had vanished, swallowed up by the dusk, and she could feel something twitch behind her, but every other house was quiet, empty, except for his. It set her nerves on edge.
“Well?” pressed the man. He didn’t look very dangerous—beanpole thin, with a receding hairline and the constant twitch of frayed nerves—but Kate knew from experience that men could be monsters, too, especially in Verity. “Those other houses, they got nothing, and we got maybe ten minutes until the light’s all gone,” he huffed, “so get in or get left out.”
“I’m armed,” she said. “And I intend to stay that way.”
His head bobbed, as if he understood, or didn’t care, and Kate blew out a breath and ducked inside. The moment she was through, he shut the door and threw the deadbolt into place. Her stomach clenched at the sound of it, sharp and final as a gunshot.
He brushed past her, turning on more lights and angling them toward the door. As her eyes adjusted, she realized that underneath his coat, the man was draped in metal, had fashioned a kind of chain mail from discs of patterned iron. Medallions. The same ones Callum Harker used to sell his citizens as protection from the monsters who hunted at his whim.
But Kate’s father had never given anyone more than a single disk. She thought of the blood in the street, the missing bodies. She didn’t have to ask where the rest of the medals had come from.
“What were you doing out there?”
“Just passing through,” she said. “Seemed like a nice day for a stroll.” He stared at her blankly. No ear for sarcasm, then. Up close, his eyes were bloodshot, as if he hadn’t slept in days. “Is this your house?”
He looked around nervously. “Is now,” he said, still bustling, as if unable to stop. “Living room’s through there.” He nodded across the hall, then ducked into a kitchen. Kate heard the clank of a pot, the crack of a match as she made her way through a pair of open doors into a sitting room.
A narrow sliver between the curtains showed the dusk quickly giving way to dark. The curtains themselves were made of copper wire threaded together into a delicate version of the same chain mail the man was wearing. In the center of a coffee table was a display of batteries, flashlights, and light bulbs.
An altarpiece to artificial light.
“You got a name?”
Kate jumped. He’d come up on her bad side, and she hadn’t heard him, not until he was too close. He was holding two cups.
“Jenny,” she lied. “You?”