Chapter 1 - Alexei #5
“So the freak finally found somewhere to hide,” he called, swaggering closer. “What is the matter, Morozov? The party too much for your cold dead heart?”
I said nothing.
“You gonna say something now, you mute freak?” he sneered, stepping closer. “Or are you just gonna stand there like a—”
I grabbed him by the throat and slammed him back against the stone parapet.
His head cracked against it. Blood welled from his scalp instantly and ran into his blond hair, turning it dark and wet.
It was so boring. God, this was why I wasn’t paying attention to him. Now I had to deal with the effort of killing him.
He had forced this by following me, by opening his mouth one time too many. This wasn’t the art I preferred. It was physical, unsatisfying, but Matt had chosen the physical route by thinking he could intimidate me.
So be it.
“You are so annoying,” I said flatly.
He clawed at my wrist, his manicured nails scraping uselessly against my skin. I squeezed harder, feeling the cartilage of his throat give under my fingers.
I started hitting him.
Left fist. The first punch split his lip and sprayed warm blood across my cold knuckles.
Right fist. The second broke his nose with a wet crunch that traveled up my arm.
I kept going.
Third punch. Fourth. Fifth. His cheekbone gave with a dull pop.
I let him drop to his knees, choking, sobbing, blood bubbling from his ruined face.
Then I wrapped both hands around his throat and squeezed.
His legs kicked against the stone. His fingers scrabbled at my wrists, nails tearing skin that would heal by morning. I watched his eyes bulge, watched the capillaries burst like tiny red dots across the whites.
I watched and felt nothing.
I leaned in close, my face inches from his.
“Why are you all so useless?”
His struggles weakened. Legs twitched, then slowed. I kept squeezing long after he stopped moving, long after the life left his body, waiting for the exact second the light vanished from his eyes.
When it did, pupils fixed, body going slack, last reflexive twitch fading, I held on another ten seconds just to be sure.
Then I let go.
The body slumped against the parapet, one arm dangling over the edge, head lolling at an unnatural angle.
I stood up and looked at my hands. Blood cooled on my skin, drying in the night air, turning tacky between my fingers. Fuck, I didn’t like to get dirty, especially with other creatures’ fluid.
I was still looking down at the corpse, considering the mess and how to handle it - roll it over the edge into the streets below where it would be found in the morning, or leave it and let the academy’s security deal with the questions - when the rooftop door creaked open behind me.
I turned.
He stood in the doorway like he had stepped out of a different world. Out of a memory.
Small, five-foot-one at most, dark curls whipped across his forehead in the wind. And there, tied into the curls like tiny flags of something fragile and utterly out of place, were two ribbons.
He was wearing a department-store suit that didn’t quite fit, the sleeves a little too long, the shoulders a little too narrow. His skin was olive, catching the starlight the same way it had caught the moonlight years ago. His mouth was full, slightly parted, frozen in shock. His eyes were hazel.
Terrified.
They took in the body.
Me standing over it with red hands.
Then they lifted and locked onto mine.
Marco.
Older. Taller, though not by much. Thinner in the face, but not the sickly thin of a boy who was dying.
The void didn’t flicker this time.
It fucking tore.
A crack splintered through the emptiness inside me, spreading outward like lightning across a black sky. The pressure I had felt that night in Italy returned all at once, magnified a thousandfold.
He was here.
He was real.
He had become not a star but a person standing ten feet away from me, staring at the corpse I had made, and everything I hadn’t felt since that night, every fragment of warmth came rushing back.
Darker.
Hungrier.
The ribbon in my pocket burned against my ribs like a brand.
I looked at Marco, at the boy who had given me his brave thing, and I felt everything. Every year I had carried him without knowing it.
He was so beautiful.
I didn’t know what I felt. I didn’t have words for it, didn’t have categories, but he shone brighter than every star in the sky. Brighter than the hope star. Brighter than all the light behind all the darkness in the universe.
I wanted to cross the distance and never let him leave again.
I wanted to know every year he had lived without me.
I wanted to open every part of him and fill it with myself so the spark could never go out, so he could never be lost to me again.
I wanted to keep him where the void could not reach him.
And where I could reach him always.
He made a broken sound - something between a gasp and a sob - and then he turned and ran.
I heard his footsteps pounding down the stairs, growing fainter until the night swallowed them the same way it had swallowed him years ago.
But this time I didn’t want to let him disappear.
I had never wanted anything in my life, but right then I wished for something.
I wanted, wished, needed to keep him.