Chapter 31 #3
“I don’t hunt just to save people, though,” I admit quietly as we begin the walk back toward the club.
“Even before the syrabraxa…I like killing, Deacon. I’m a killer.
” I think of the beetle I crushed as a child.
How its death at my hand brought me a sick thrill.
That beetle wasn’t attacking an innocent snail.
It was alive, and I snuffed it out. With pleasure.
“You’re so caught up in black and whites. I’m bloodthirsty. I’m a killer,” he mocks. “Yeah, you are. But you’re a killer who harnesses those instincts to protect people nine times out of ten. It’s not about bad or good. What you do is plenty. It’s good enough.”
All this time I’d longed to be good. Like all the other hunters at Harker. But what if Deacon is right? What if his there-are-no-good-guys philosophy isn’t depressing, it’s…freeing? Perhaps being a killer who uses that love for the hunt to help people actually is good enough.
I’m shocked by how healing it is to talk to someone—to hunt with someone—who doesn’t judge or critique or make me feel less than for what I am. I can’t help but look up at him, moonlight drifting across his cheekbones and sharp jaw, and feel something like appreciation.
“I personally don’t get the do-gooder angle quite as much,” he continues, unaware of my small epiphany. “But”—he shrugs—“to each their own.”
“Bullshit. What do you call what you just did for Piper?”
“I can always use more staff. I don’t know if you know this, Vivienne, but my club is very popular.”
A begrudging laugh bubbles out of me.
A few feet above us, an old woman is hanging wet sheets on a clothesline that’s strung between her apartment and her neighbor’s.
She folds the linens with care, some lattice edged, others small and well-worn, perhaps for a grandchild.
The steam from the building’s heater is curling into the night like a fog machine.
“I wish I had my camera.”
“You’re like a Peeping Tom,” Deacon says. But then he adds, “You want my phone?”
I’d lambast him for even thinking a phone camera and my 35mm—even my half-frame—are comparable, especially at this hour, but I’m too touched by the offer. “No thanks.”
Only then do I notice the street signs. We’ve walked past Fever Dream. Past the Fens. Past my apartment. We’re nearly at the Chasm.
“We should turn around,” Deacon says, as if reading my thoughts.
“Look at this,” I tell him, rounding a corner and walking up to the railing at the edge of the Chasm. “It’s never this empty.”
“I’m surprised nobody’s capitalized on that,” Deacon drawls. “Two-thirty a.m. tours. Half price, no crowds.”
“Can you be serious for one second?” I take a deep breath of crisp night air and allow my eyes to scan the vastness of the expanse between North and South Astera.
The miles and miles of craggy, jagged rock.
The dramatic cliffs, the steep valley below, the punishing blackness at the very bottom, far as the eye can see.
And the lone Erebos Bridge, the only way across.
Support beams and thick cord, a feat of modern architecture, suspending everyone in Astera over the underworld.
“You ever take photos of this?” Deacon asks.
I shake my head.
He nods, as if he understands. “Yeah. Not your good side, is it?”
My heart thuds with his words. Not just how well he knows me—that I only really like photographing humanity, the side of me I always want to be more in touch with, rather than anything that reminds me of my baser huntress half—but how disappointed he sounds.
We turn and wander back down to Fever Dream in comfortable silence, the rare cab whizzing by or drunken partygoer stumbling past. Now that the fog of bloodlust has lifted and I can remember why I woke so riled up, I feel the need to come clean about something.
“I’ve started dreaming of demons,” I admit.
“Finn, and Reid…” and you. “But nothing of Odette. Maybe you could tell me more about her?” Like who she is to you?
“It’ll come with time,” Deacon says with the patience of a man who has been waiting to free her for many, many years.
“I don’t know how much of that I have left.
” After tonight, I can’t imagine I’ve got much sanity left.
A chilling thought—I might only be me for another few weeks.
“And Reid…” I never told him about how Reid is trolling the streets of the city, hunting something down.
I didn’t think Deacon would care anyway.
It’s what he’d been saying all along. “You were right. He’s—”
Deacon stops short. Past his regal yet rugged beauty is something new.
Warm and heavy and sparkling. Something I can’t name and I wonder if he can’t, either.
Whatever it is, I’m aware of the feeling in every inch of my body.
His broad hand reaches for me and then, for whatever reason, pulls back.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Viv. ”
If I needed a week, a month, a lifetime to process what he’s just said to me—and why he’s just said it—I am given less than a second.
Both of our heads snap toward the sound of many footsteps—the thudding, horrible noise that accompanies images of dark, oily hair and a smile stained with blood.
The sound of razor-sharp enamel clicking together echoes through the night.
Not in my head.
Here. Outside Fever Dream.
Where Finn stands with his Brood.