“Feisty thing,” he murmured as the other Malchai freed the spike from his leg with a wet sound and tossed it aside. The monster on top of her had those same deep scratches running down his cheek, ruining the H and cutting all the way to bone. The marks looked fresh.
“She killed Olivier,” said the other, shaking the burn of iron from his bony fingers.
“Indeed she did,” whispered the first, bringing his lips to her cheek. She wrenched her head away and felt cold breath on her face as he whispered something in her bad ear, too low for her to hear. She drove her knee into his groin, but the monster only chuckled. So much for SING.
They were strong, but it was still light out, and if she could just get to her feet, put her back to the wall—
“I can hear your blood pulsing,” said the Malchai on top of her as her fingers scrambled for the second spike shoved in her sock. “I bet you taste sweet.” The monster’s mouth yawned wide, flashing jagged, silvery fangs.
“No teeth,” warned the second, and the Malchai pinning her frowned but closed his mouth with a click. The other one produced a small, handheld torch, snapped it to life. The flame hissed, and Kate thrashed beneath the monster’s grip, until his nails dug into her skin, drawing blood.
“I’m going . . . to kill you,” she snarled.
“Humans, humans, full of lies,” sang the one on top of her, red eyes dancing with delight. “Should we kill her first, like the others?”
The Malchai with the torch seemed to consider. “No. There’s no one to hear. We should take our time, like he would.”
This was wrong.
This was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Her hand clawed at the grass, trying to reach the second spike. The monster on top of her smiled, and the one with the torch turned the dial, focusing the heat into a white-hot knife.
“She has her father’s eyes,” he said, and Kate shuddered, remembering the teacher on the ground, his sockets scorched black. “Hold her still.”
August dropped out of a ventilation duct and into the hallway, his uniform smudged with dust and cobwebs. His shoes hit the polished Colton floor, and as he straightened, his relief at being free quickly reverted to fear. This hadn’t been some random prank. Someone had wanted to keep him in that room. But who? And why?
Right now, that didn’t matter as much as getting out. He headed for the nearest exit, pulling the phone from his pocket, but staggered to a stop when he saw the girl’s body. She was young, a freshman, her head twisted at an awkward angle, but it was her face that made him gasp. She had no eyes. They’d been burned out.
He dialed Henry as he hit the emergency door override and burst out of the building.
“Come on,” he muttered as the phone began to ring. He let it ring three times, four, then hung up, and was about to dial Leo when he heard the strangled scream.
It wasn’t a high-pitched cry, more a muffled shout. August rounded the corner and slammed to a stop. Two creatures huddled over a girl, their lines too long and lean, their skin too pale and bones too dark. He’d never seen a Malchai before. Not face-to-face. They cast no shadows, but the air around their bodies shivered in his vision, their teeth jagged silver points.
They looked . . . monstrous.
And the girl beneath them—the one who’d cried out—was Kate.
For an instant, the world went still, and time slowed, the way it did between chords, the moment drawn out like a note.
He had to help her.
He shouldn’t help her.
If he did, she would know what he was.
If he didn’t, she would die.
They were killing her.
They were framing him.
She was an innocent.
She was a Harker.
And then, too fast, the moment collapsed, and he dropped to his knees and opened the violin case.
The torch burned the air above Kate’s face.
The Malchai’s nails were digging into her jaw, and a sound like a whimper escaped her throat. The noise, so foreign, so pitiful, was enough to shock her back to her senses.
Her fingers brushed the edge of the spike. And then she heard it.
Music.
A single note that rang out across the grounds and filled the air, a note that seemed to take up more space than it should. And then another, and another, weaving together into a song. The music was strange and haunting and beautiful, and it took all of Kate’s focus to cover her good ear, but somehow, she could still hear it, crystal clear. The Malchai dropped the torch and staggered as if hit, and the one on top of her froze, and clutched his skull in pain as something began to blossom like a bruise across his skin.
Her fingers finally found the spike in her boot, and she drove the iron up into the Malchai’s chest, past the blackish substance breaking out on his skin like sweat, and under the bone plate, and into his heart. The monster screamed, clawing at himself, but it was too late. The spike was buried all the way to the blunted grip, her fingers slick as black blood spilled from his lips and he slumped onto her. Kate shoved him off and staggered to her feet, swaying from pain, her thoughts clouded by the threads of music.