Chapter 9 Solar Radiation
CHAPTER NINE
SOLAR RADIATION
All Feeding Grounds must provide Feeders with food, water, clean bedding, clothing, and medical care to ensure they are healthy enough to donate blood.
— Serun’s Law
“Done.”
I roll down my sleeve, covering the cotton secured by tape in the bend of my arm. A wave of nausea crashes against me, pressing into my thoughts like fingers into dough, and everything blurs.
I glare at the painting on the wall defiantly. A Feeder kneeling to our “gods” in shadows.
With a deep breath, I take a step, wobble, and crash into the chair next to me. Wooden legs scrape against the tiles as my hands tighten on the seat to keep myself from falling. I grip it tightly and somehow awkwardly manage not to make a bigger fool of myself.
Get a grip, Saya. If you fall, they will take you away from Cole. The Bleeders will send you to the private room, and you will meet your fate in the fangs of a nightwalker. You’re still human. Your heart still beats.
A deep breath fills my lungs while the sterile-tasting air congeals and thickens with acidic bile. I push on, making my way towards the exit. To keep my mind from spinning, I focus on counting my steps.
The bloodbank painting, intended to motivate us to bleed, warps and melds together.
Hair fuses with four eyes, and with every forceful, heavy-lidded blink, those four eyes transform into two impenetrable crimson stones.
The nightwalker depicted in the painting, with its dark reds and deep blacks, glares at me as though alive.
I reach the doorway. Without looking back, I lean against the wall outside and close my eyes. My head pounds like claps of thunder. My arms ache, pulsing like a blood vessel ready to burst. My stomach grumbles loudly, warning me that I need to eat to survive.
I open my eyes to find the Bleeder from inside the bloodbank watching me. “Follow me to the mess hall.”
This is new.
Curious about the expression hidden beneath the mask, I examine her critically. She appears to be doing the same. Are they trialling a new protocol?
The doors to the mess hall swing open down the corridor. As I walk in, she remains with the other Bleeders. Intense gazes focus on me as I make my way to the empty line. The Bleeder serving the food places bread, a boiled egg, and a cup of water on my tray. As usual.
This is far from enough. I pick it up anyway because without it, I have nothing.
I sit beside Cole, then Emily joins us. Her smile tightens around the edges as I struggle to grip my cup and take a sip.
Cole doesn’t look my way when I give him my boiled egg. I snatch the bread and tear into it, making sure not a single crumb is missed.
“Where’s Manni?” I ask after taking a sip of water to wash down the lump of stale bread lodged in my throat.
“Over there,” says Jax, his voice steady but laced with irritation. I look at him, noting the serious expression on his face, before I find Manni chatting with Julien a few tables away from us.
Shit.
I meet Jax’s stern gaze. “Sorry,” I whisper.
He sets his bread and hard-boiled egg on my tray. “We’ll talk about it later.”
I shake my head, yet my hands seem to act on their own and reach for the bread.
Jax leans in, kisses my temple, and says, “They’re watching. Eat.”
Nearby, two Bleeders have moved away from the doors of the mess hall. The woman who brought me in stares at me quite obviously—at least, as obviously as possible behind a mask.
Prickling tension moves up my back like spiders on a web, itching at the roots of my hair.
Shit. If I faint, they will take me to the private room.
I take another bite, nibbling at the crumbs when the Bleeders announce it’s time to head to the courtyard for some sun.
“Welp,” Emily whispers as we make our way towards the doors. “Time to see if I’ll burn.”
Emily suspects they want to make sure we are still alive and haven’t turned into nightwalkers overnight. I think it’s silly, but Emily will be Emily.
We step into the sunlight. Beams of light slice across us, and with only six hours of daylight and little opportunity for exposure, the sun can quickly scorch our skin. The half of me I hate most becomes irritated by the heat, but thankfully not enough to die like a nightwalker would.
“Do they burst in the sun?” I muse.
We sit under one of three willow trees, close to the sandpit Cole used to play in when he was younger.
The flat grass stretches until it meets the high stone walls—tall enough for anyone to climb if they had the guts, but with Bleeders guarding the perimeter on the other side, anyone who tries wouldn’t get far.
As I lean against the trunk, I note our differences from the other groups.
Cole is always the first out the door, claiming a tree.
Because my brother isn’t well-liked—not able to give as much blood as the rest of us—most groups choose to sit in the sun rather than be near him.
But our group is slowly expanding. Julien joins us, although he looks more like a zombie than a companion.
And to make matters worse, Jax stares at him like a hawk eyeing dinner.
“Do what burst?” Cole asks as he picks at the grass, his words reminding me that I’d wondered that out loud.
Manni sits next to him, gazing into the distance through the twisted, vine-like leaves hanging down like stringy ribbons. A warm breeze brushes against them and sunlight cracks through, striking my face. I wince, and Jax guides my head to his shoulder and back into the shade of the branches.
“What? The nightwalkers?” Emily asks, peeking out of one eye.
She lies on the ground, half in the sun and half in the shadows.
Her skin burns, and the reddening, tomato-like hue is already in stark contrast to her usual pasty complexion.
“Dan reckons he saw one melt into the ground after a wooden stake to the heart.”
“Dan is full of shit,” Jax mutters. “They don’t burst or melt. Nightwalkers just age until they turn to ash.”
Julien looks up, suddenly appearing more human than zombie, and says, “You’ve seen one die?”
Manni snaps a look at Jax as we all wait for his answer. I have never even seen a nightwalker aside from the one in the mirror. No one here has.
“Nah.” Jax’s shoulder tenses beneath me. “But I came from a settlement near a Prayer Sanctuary, and a slayer there told me.”
A Prayer Sanctuary. I’ve heard about them from others in here. It’s a place where slayers guard a statue of Mother. There’s one in most cities, and it radiates light. Nightwalkers can’t enter the light without burning, so the only people able to destroy the statues at the centre would be humans.
“A slayer?” Emily shoots up into a seated position, energy radiating from her. “A real slayer?”
Jax nods, a ripple of confidence seeming to surge through him. “Yeah, he’s the one who’s gonna help us get out of here. That’s how I know this run will work.”
Manni keeps her brown eyes steady on him, as does Julien. I suspect Manni has given him hope about Bianca. But as we are about to press Jax for more information, Cole storms off.
I press my hands into the soil. Blades of grass slip through my parted fingers, and I push myself up to follow until Jax grabs my shoulder and says, “I’ll go,” before following Cole. I don’t argue. With every small movement, my head spins, tingling with dizziness.
Jax catches up to Cole near Dan’s group by the sandpit. Jax talks fast, but I can tell by my brother’s face that he is brushing off every single word. He stares blankly at him. Round hazel eyes inherited from our mum glaze over, and he nods blandly as if somewhere else entirely.
“That seems to be going well…” Emily says, as if to reassure me.
“No,” I sigh. “Cole isn’t listening to a word Jax says.”
“Well…” Emily faces me. “Jax thinks it’s going well.”
Jax confidently rests a hand on Cole’s shoulder. In reality, my brother is likely spinning in mental circles, calculating how much he despises Jax.
“I had the strangest dream last night,” Manni interjects, diverting our attention.
Emily leans back on her elbows, sinking them into the mulch. “Oh, yeah? About what?”
Manni claws at the grass. Her dark eyes waver like she’s being pulled back into her dream. “The ground cracked open like an egg, and all these monsters crawled out.”
Time seems to slow to a complete stop. The wind, once a warm breeze, turns frigid. The only sound is the rustling of leaves.
We all have nightmares here. Most are about the nightwalkers, while some linger on how they got here.
Mine is a recurring dream of dancing on stage, entertaining an audience with countless red eyes.
However, the way Manni shares her dream sounds both detached and yet somehow profound.
A chill skitters up my spine like spiders on a disturbed web.
“What sort of monsters?” Julien says.
She shrugs, stiff and awkward. “They looked like shadows with heaps of eyes—it was weird…but so real. I was in the darkness, and torn apart by one of them.”
Emily runs her fingers through her golden-brown hair. “Hellsgate.”
Hellsgate?
“My grandma was a storyteller in Sahie, to the south of here. She used to tell me that the moon turns red once every decade, but it’s only visible from the Hellsgate. And when it opens, demons spill out.”
Manni kicks Emily in the leg. “Shut up! Why do you have to say shit like that?”
Emily sits up. “I’m being serious! Well…it was a story my grandma told me, so I can’t be sure it’s true…”
“You aren’t the only one who has vivid dreams,” I say, and heads turn my way. “I’d be on stage, and when the curtain parts, a crowd of nightwalkers would be watching me. They don’t clap. No hint of a smile. They just watch.”
Manni shudders. “Creepy. Our dreams are messing with us.”
“Yeah,” I say as I look up to see Cole and Jax approaching.
The Bleeder stationed at the doors announces that we have to return to our rooms until dinner.
Cole gives me a strained smile, but as I rise and move to follow him, Jax steps into my path.
He squeezes my hand firmly with a confident smile before walking off with Dan, a gloomy Julien trailing behind them.
I want to ask my brother what Jax said to him, but I know he will only give me the worst possible version.