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.