Chapter 3
The sun is cresting over the high-rises as I plummet into a mound of snow. Pain sings in all my limbs—but nothing compares to the fire that rips through my back. I nearly bite clean through my lip trying to hold in a scream.
But there’s no time to scan myself for injuries.
I shove chunks of frost and garbage out of the way, hoist myself up, and take off.
Only as I run do I feel every inch of my body, aching and victorious and downright awed that despite the pain, I am in one piece.
I just fell nine stories. They should be giving vampire blood to NFL players and stunt doubles in action movies.
Streaks of honey gold slant through the sky and limn the speeding taxis and morning commuters all around me.
I’m grateful for the early hour. All the bakers, gym nuts, and finance bros who crowd the streets serve as cover while I whip around corners and duck down alleys.
I need to make it to Babylon—to Penny—before I’m spotted by Deacon or Finn or the Brood.
I don’t allow myself a single glance back up at the building I jumped from, but in my gut, I don’t think Deacon’s hot on my tail.
From the few interactions I’ve had with him, I get the sense he only cares about something that directly affects him, as narcissists so often do.
I can just hear him telling Ward, Looks like Vivienne’s not our problem anymore.
I hope it’s the last time I ever imagine his rumbly voice inside my head.
In a mere eighteen blocks, I’ve come up with the only plan that makes sense, which is saying something because it is batshit insane.
And this is coming from someone who just leapt out a god damn window.
But I can’t go on the run without Penny.
Yesterday, the police station was the best way to keep her safe.
Today, I need to take more drastic measures before Finn uses her to get to me again.
And even though I don’t know who Driscoll was working with at Harker (if anyone), I don’t have any other options.
Outside of him, and the wraiths he let in, the school’s wards make it impenetrable by deviants. It’s my best bet right now.
I need to get to Pen, tell her everything, and bring her to Harker.
When I reach my apartment, there’s a swarm of Astera PD outside the building. The entry is blocked off with cones, caution tape is strung around the entrance to Cobwebs, and cop cars flash their blue and red lights…
Penny—
“Hey!” I shout, sprinting over. “What happened? This is my apartment—”
“Relax, miss,” one cop says. He’s got tired eyes and a moustache that’s thicker on one side than the other. “Everything’s fine. We’re here as protection only.”
Fiona’s words from the other night blare in my mind.
Half of Astera’s police are deviants on the payroll of the Brood.
Was it a mistake to send Penny to the police station?
I try to calm my aeon emotions. Swallow my fear.
I can’t look suspicious in case any of these men work for Finn.
“Protection from what? Did something happen?”
“A tenant in this building was abducted yesterday. We’re here asking questions of the neighbors. Gathering evidence.”
Phew. “That tenant was my roommate. I have to get through.”
“I’m going to need to see some identification. We’ve been instructed not to let anyone in or out of the building without proof of…”
But I stop listening. My entire body tingles like static on a rug. There’s a deviant nearby.
I spin around in a circle, the cop barking at me for my attention, but I’m already grasping at my thigh and waist for my daggers.
“When I ask you to look at me, miss, I—”
“Shh,” I tell him. I’m still recovering from about sixteen concussions, and I can’t hear my own senses with him droning on. Is it the man rummaging through the trash down the block? The teenager on the stoop across the street?
“Did you just tell me to shh? I could have you fined for…”
But then I spot him. Walking into my apartment building, cap tilted down to shield his face. A cop. A deviant. And on his neck—
A brand. A Brood demon, headed for Penny.
“Sorry, sir,” I say before I push past him and sprint inside.
The demon must hear me coming because he bolts up the six story walk-up. Moustache Cop chases after me, but the demon and I are both quicker and we leave him in our dust.
I hurtle up the stairwell, knees driving, elbows pumping, breath funneling out my lungs.
The wound down my back aches with every step.
I spy red flashing in the demon’s eyes and move faster, but I’m weak, out of vampire blood, and already ran halfway across the city this morning.
He’s going to beat me to her. He’s going to hurt her.
My daggers shriek in my grasp. I have to kill him.
I need to see his blood outside his body.
I’m finally feeling like myself again, and it’s both welcome and abhorrent.
And suddenly, for reasons I cannot possibly explain, I think of Deacon.
I think of the wooden clock sailing through that vampire’s heart.
I stop running. Take one breath. And throw my dagger with the kind of clean precision only a hunter can.
It lands square in the back of the demon’s head mere feet from our apartment door. Bull’s-eye.
A sigh sails from me as he falls to the ground, dead.
By the time I reach his body, it’s ash, which I kick away before the moustache brigade makes it to our floor.
I shove my way into our apartment and slam the door behind me just as I hear a deep voice shouting for me to come out with my hands raised.
Inside, Penny is wielding a trembling hairbrush. Her large, green eyes are ringed in red, her so often pink cheeks completely pale. It looks like she hasn’t slept all night. Hound, our Doberman, is growling protectively in front of her.
And I almost break down.
Not yet, I tell myself. I have to get them both to safety. I have to talk to Fiona. Then I will mourn how everything has changed. What I’ve put Penny through. Where Reid might be. Only then.
“Viv,” Penny exhales. Tears bead in her eyes. “Thank god.”
She and Hound reach me at the same time, and I hold her close as Hound snuggles our legs. My little family, together again. I swallow hard, still catching my breath.
“Let us in or we will knock down this—”
Penny squeezes my shoulders once before hurrying to the front door and opening it just as the moustached cop is about to pound his fist through it.
“Hi, officer,” she squeaks. “Thank you so much for returning my roommate. She’s been out looking for me all night. Didn’t realize I made it safely back home.”
The moustached cop glowers at me and I offer a weak smile. Penny’s so good with people. So kind and honest and bubbling with warmth even when she’s as wrecked as she is right now.
All the fight deflates from Moustache. “This woman really is your roommate?” The cop scratches his head. “I swore I saw her chase after a man in uniform.”
Penny exchanges a confused look with me. “I didn’t see any other cops up here. Do you mind if we get some rest? It’s been a long night.”
Penny doesn’t even know the half of it. When the cop nods, sheepish, and the door closes, I sag against our couch. “That was impressive.”
“What is going on, Viv?”
The exhausted, heartbroken look on her usually cheery face sours my stomach. My gaze drops to my fingers. “It’s such an enormously long story.”
“I think…” She clears her throat, folding her arms across her chest. My heart crumples further thinking of how hard it is for her to stand up for herself, even against me.
“I think I deserve to know who kidnapped me. And what those things with the claws were. And…” She dabs a tear from the corner of her eye. “And what you are.”
Here it is. The moment I have feared for more than a decade. If I ever thought there might be relief in telling Penny the truth, I can’t access that feeling right now. Maybe it’s because by keeping everything from her, I almost got her killed.
“I’m…a deviant hunter. Which means I hunt and kill…deviants. Monsters.”
Penny takes an agonizingly slow seat on the other end of the couch. Hound curls up right between us.
“Monsters?” she repeats.
“Vampires, demons, werewolves. They’re all real. We call them deviants. I’ve been fighting them since I was a kid. My dad was a hunter too, and he taught me everything I know. The people who took you are called the Brood. They’re like the mafia but for things that go bump in the night.”
“You kept this from me for…our entire friendship?”
I swallow thickly as I nod. “If it makes you feel any better, I never told James. That was part of why we broke up. Nora and my mom don’t know, either. Nobody does.”
Her emerald eyes widen. “Just me?”
I wince. “And Fiona.”
“Fiona? But not Nora?”
“There’s a college I attend where I’m taught how to save people from…all those things. It’s called Harker, and it’s actually inside the Windsor. And Fiona works there. At the Windsor, of course, but also at the school.”
Penny nods, but I can see it’s all starting to take a bit of a toll on her.
She leans back into the couch. “Wow…What about all your new intern friends? That guy who was with you at the club…Do they know?” I open my mouth, an ache spreading through me at the thought of telling her about Reid, but she catches herself.
“Never mind. I heard it as soon as I said it. Not interns, are they?”
“No.”
“They’re like you?”
“Correct.”
She nods to herself. I realize it’s probably sinking in for her that I am a killing machine. A killing machine and a liar.