16. Chapter sixteen
Chapter sixteen
Max
“ D o you really think we can find something up north? In the research facility? Someone willing to go against Joyeus and whoever is involved?” my best friend asks as we pick our way up the main road the next day, rucksacks packed with supplies that’ll hold us for a couple of days.
Kieran’s safe in my apartment. He bitched about it, sure, but I just can’t risk it. There’s not only danger from stray Walkers or whatever shit we find up there, but also the red rain. If it would fall right here? The trees can only stop so much.
“I don’t know. I just—fuck, Tass, I know something’s happening up there. That guy said so. I have to believe they know something about the illegal tags, or any of the other shit Joyeus keeps buried. Anything I can use to throw her in the damn Pit, to get her off her throne, and tear her lair down.”
So those people she hoards can choose a life of their own.
So Kee can be free.
So Kee can be with me for real.
I meant what I said to him. I’d fucking obliterate that bitch before he has to serve her five fucking years. He will not be her fucking property. I’m making sure of that.
Even if it means my own death in the Pit, at least he’d be free of her leash.
Shit, he doesn’t know it, but I tried to buy his freedom. I have money. Plenty, even. Roe tried to barter on my behalf, but to no avail. Our council is crooked, at least part of it, and things have to change around here. Joyeus is rotten to the core; her resort is the worst of it.
And Noura too.
My gut screams she’s tangled up in this. The way that loser’s eyes bulged when he slipped and said they. The way she watched me in the Pit last time…
I know she hates me after I quit whatever we had.
But this wasn’t hate, this was something else.
It was calculated, like I was an obstacle she wanted removed.
Like I’m standing in her way and she wants to get rid of me, get rid of this investigation we’re doing without being too obvious.
Like she’s waiting for the right moment to do it.
I don’t know what we’ll find up at the research facility, but that pig’s whining made it loud enough to hear: something big is happening up there.
Fucking pity I can’t kill him all over again and make sure it’ll last longer that time…
The thought makes my fingers itch against the pack strap, those shadows crawling back. I’m so caught up in it that I don’t notice when Tass suddenly halts, and I walk right past her.
I stop and turn, frowning. She’s balanced on a log, head tilted like she’s catching a sound I can’t hear. “What? Is there red rain coming?” I squint up, trying to find the sky through the thick canopy.
Out here we don’t get the sirens, we can’t watch the ocean for the streak of clouds, so we trust the Touched. They feel it coming, almost like a static under the skin, a sour pull in their bones, and Tass’s nose twitches like she’s feeling something.
“No… it’s not that.” Her gaze is miles away, sharp and glassy, then she shakes it off and steps light across the log again, arms out steady as if she’s practiced this a thousand times, her long braid trailing between her shoulder blades.
“Do you ever think about staying up here?” she asks suddenly.
“Not going back down south, just… vanishing into the trees?”
I snort. “What, you and me living like fucking squirrels? We’d last maybe a week before you got bored.”
“Please. You have an entire damn house. We could just leave. Take Kieran and go, leave all that council shit.”
“You’re right,” I answer. “It would be so much fun having you along when me and Kieran take the only bed and you lurk like a creep on some flimsy mattress in the corner.”
She laughs. It’s a quick sound, but thin, brittle, gone before it should be. Halfway across the log she almost slips: a twitch runs down her arm like a live wire, her boots skidding on wet bark.
I halt, heart kicking. For a blink she looks off-balance, human .
Tass doesn’t falter. She doesn’t . She’s quick, agile, light as a cat. The only one better at scaling and slipping through gaps than me.
Fuck, she’s the only one who could keep up as kids, darting through the city, scaling the wall, running from the Watchers trying to catch us. That manic cackle of hers used to follow us like thunder when we ran, beating me at every turn, being my better half.
Not that I’d ever admit that to her out loud.
She shakes her head too hard; the braid whipping around like she’s trying to rattle something loose. She then forces her arms out again, fists clenched tight. Balancing. Brow furrowed in concentration, focus, almost like if she pretends nothing’s wrong, maybe it won’t actually fucking happen.
“Tass?” My voice drops low, my chest hollowing out, heart falling like a fucking stone. Refusing to believe what I’m seeing. Refusing to name it.
She glances back at me, a grin tugging too slow at the corner of her mouth. But it’s her eyes—her godsdamn eyes—that gut me, ruin me.
There’s something that shouldn’t be there, something eating at the edges of the color.
No . No, no, no .
“Yeah…” she says softly, hopping down from the log, brushing bark dust off her palms. “We could live in your house. You’ve already got the zombie gator to keep us safe and the sea view. Beats squirrels.”
I huff a laugh that tastes like ash, sounds brittle and broken. “You wouldn’t last two days in my place,” I croak. “You’d steal our bed and kick us to the floor.”
“Damn right.” She smirks up at me, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
And something inside of me just withers and dies right then and there.
She tries. She tries to hold it together for me, to pretend this isn’t happening. We both fucking know it’s happening, but she banters along anyway, because that’s what we do. We throw words at the gap so we don’t fall in.
Then she twitches again. Harder this time.
Like her muscles are trying to tear themselves free of the bone.
Her whole frame spasms, sharp as a wire pulled tight.
The sound that rips out of her throat isn’t human.
It’s a wail, a scream, a death cry that never ends, as she folds in on herself, drops to her knees and clutches her head.
“Max! Max, shit, it hurts. ” The plea is jagged and raw.
I’m already moving, blade half-drawn without thinking, lungs burning like I’ve been sprinting. The forest goes small, the rustle of leaves, the slap of my boots, the crack of a twig, all of it muffled under the pounding in my ears.
“Tass—” My voice cracks in half. “Fuck no. Fuck no! Not you. Not yet! ”
She jerks her head up, and I know. Godsdammit, I know .
Her eyes shine with that shimmer I’ve seen a thousand times before, only this time it’s hers.
For a second, everything detaches, everything is unreal.
The smell of bark and wet earth, the way my friend—my best friend—crawls in on herself, the stupid bright memory of her laughing as we ran from the Watchers.
A tear cuts down her cheek, carving a line through the dirt.
“It’s happening…” She gasps, her whole body seizing like she’s drowning in her own skin. “Max—end me. Please . End me before—” Her teeth clack shut, jaw grinding as if the words are being stolen from her. “ I don’t want to be a fucking monster!”
I drop to my knees in front of her, blade slipping from my grip. “Don’t. Don’t you fucking ask me that. I can’t—”
“You promised. You promised! Please.” Her voice is shredded, torn from the inside, but the words still land. A memory. A night on our roof, stars hidden by red clouds, her hand on my shoulder as she made me fucking swear.
She made me fucking swear.
“Godsdamn it, Tass…” My throat closes around the rest. I can’t breathe, can’t think. The air tastes wrong. The only thing I see are her beautiful green eyes, big and scared, pleading through the shimmer, fighting like hell against the animal that’s clawing its way out of her.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, before she drops her head, arms clutching her skull as if she can press the thing back inside.
And that’s the last time it’s really her.
Another inhuman sound tears up her throat, half gurgle, half growl, like she can’t even swallow her own damn spit anymore.
“Tass?” I ask, my voice fucking broken, because I know. I know what this is, what’s happening, but my head refuses to believe what my heart already knows.
I’ve seen this before. The switch from Touched to Turned. The inevitable snap of the thread you’ve been clinging to.
She held on for so long. Longer than most. Longer than the others who cracked in a week. Longer than any of the rumors said was possible.
“Tass?” I try again, like if I keep saying her name, it’ll pin her here with me. Hold her in place, keep her from falling. My hand hovers stupidly in the air, wanting to touch her, shake her, drag her back from the edge.
Her head jerks up. Eyes not hers anymore.
All it takes is one horrible second, and then—
She lunges .
I stagger back, fall on my ass, too fucking numb to do anything else as she comes for me. Everything moves slow and wrong, the slap of my palm on the dirt, the wet sound of her boots, the metallic tang in the air.
I don’t grab my cleaver where it fell in the grass.
I don’t grab Whisper.
I don’t even fucking defend myself. I don’t hold my hands up when she slams into me, throwing us both down on the forest floor.
The crack when we hit is as loud as the crack of the remnants of my heart as it splits right the fuck apart.
No… No. No. No. No !
Not yet, not now. It’s too soon. Too soon, too soon, too soon!
She can’t change, she can’t turn. She’s mine.
She’s Tass. My fucking Tass. Loyal, fierce, as stubborn as they fucking come.
Survived against all odds, the longest-living carrier on this godsdamn island.
The one who threw stones at Watchers when we were kids, who threw herself at fights she had no business winning, who laughed like the world owed her everything.
Not anymore.
A sound between a sob and a scream rips out of me when she claws at my arms, nails sinking deep, shredding skin. The same nails she used to paint stupid colors whenever she dug up some crusty old bottle of polish that somehow survived decades of ruin.
And I let her claw. I fucking let her bite.
It’s not courage. It’s not mercy. It’s a stupid, savage hole where denial lives. I don’t push her off because pushing her off would be admitting the thing I promised never to admit.
That she’s lost.
I hold her because holding her is the last honest thing I can do: keep her close, feel that she is still warm, still cursed with the shape of us.
My arms are locked around her, crushing her to me. She thrashes, Walker-strong, but I hold tighter. She’s under my palms, braid coming loose in places; the weight of her body, the animal panic, presses against my ribs like a living thing trying to get out.
She can’t claw anymore, only bite. And she does. She fucking does.
Teeth sink into my neck, tearing, ripping, but the pain there is nothing compared to the cavern in my chest.
Tears burn hot down my face. I can’t remember the last time I cried. Maybe I never did. But now I can’t stop. My body shakes with it as I cling to her, as if I can chain her here by sheer force, as if my arms can keep her mine.
I weep for the orphans we once were.
I weep for the stupid dares, for the nights we spent laughing on roofs while the red clouds hid the stars.
I weep for every promise I ever made and the one I am about to keep.
Have to keep.
“I promised,” I rasp into her hair, voice shredded, choking on blood and smoke. “I fucking promised not to let you live like this.”
She still feels like Tass. She still fucking smells like Tass.
But she isn’t. Not anymore.
“I love you, my friend,” I whisper into her hair. Words I’ve never said out loud because I knew they’d burn if I did.
And burn, they fucking do.
“See you on the other side. Wait for me there, okay? We’ll haunt the afterlife together.”
The request tastes like ash.
My hand finds the dagger at my belt like it’s always meant to. The motion is automatic, muscle memory carved from too many times doing this to strangers. I know exactly where to place it, the spot that ends it quick, clean, merciful.
Only, it’s not a stranger in my arms.
She thrashes, teeth tearing at my neck, but I ignore the pain, hold her tighter, press my cheek against hers one last time. Her breath is a wet rasp; my tears streak across her skin, mixing with hers… or maybe it’s my fucking blood, I can’t fucking tell anymore.
The world narrows to the handle in my palm, the ragged sound she makes, the beat of my own heart like a drum in my ears.
My blade finds the soft spot against her skull.
My knuckles lock.
My whole body shakes in anguish.
And I push.