Chapter 13
Thirteen
NOW | JAX
Idon’t know what the fuck is happening or what I’m feeling, only that it’s all too much. Too real and somehow not real enough.
“Put her over here!” someone shouts beside me.
A gurney slams into my hip. They pull her from my arms before I'm ready to let go. My hands come away with her blood. My fucking fault. Her head lolls with the movement, but her eyes don't open.
The doors burst open and my father blows in, looking like he’s been carved from exhaustion. I don’t remember the last time we saw each other, but I push the anger away because if anyone can put her back together, it’s him. He doesn’t give me a second glance, his focus a laser on her leg.
“Pressure dressing, now! Someone start an IV. I want her typed and screened—prep an OR.” he orders immediately.
A nurse presses gauze to the wound and blood soaks through instantly.
The smell of her blood hits me and my fucking stomach clenches.
I’m starving for it, my mouth watering, and at the exact same time I feel like I’m going to throw up all over the floor.
It’s the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever felt.
My father’s gaze moves from the wound, up her body, and finally lands on her face. The clinical mask doesn’t just crack; it evaporates. His eyes snap from her straight to me. The question in them isn’t professional anymore. It’s a condemnation.
He rounds on me like I’m a threat, not a witness. “What did you do?” The nurses freeze. They look at him, then at me. He doesn’t talk to people like this. I know that much. But I haven’t been people to him in a long time. I’m the case he can’t solve, the problem he can’t fix.
“Tell me you can help her,” I rasp, and the magic claws up like it wants to rip itself out of me and finish the job.
He stares—reading me like he already decided the answer.
“She needs surgery,” another doctor says, her voice cutting through my horror. “Right now. If this cut is deep in the muscle wall, she could lose function. If it nicked an artery—”
“She’s a dancer,” I choke out. “She needs her leg.”
A muscle in my father’s jaw jumps. “You better hope I’m good at my job,” he says, lowering his voice. “Whatever happened here wasn’t an accident, you and I both know it.”
Two nurses push the gurney toward a pair of double doors and I move to follow—instinct, reflex, gravity. My father steps in front of me, blocking the way with his whole body. “You don’t go past this door.”
He waits for me to argue, but I don’t, I can’t, and when my knees go weak, the magic uses—no, abuses—the opening, hitting me full force.
I can’t fight it, I don’t even try, because not even on my best days could I stop this urge, let alone tonight.
I close my eyes and let it in, and it doesn’t feel like losing control, it feels like finally admitting I never had any.
My senses fracture open as my nostrils flare, catching scents that don’t belong here—rust, rain, sweat, fear—and my vision sharpens until I can see every pore in the tile.
My muscles twitch and every cell in my body prepares for what comes next: the hunt.
The Markings stop burning—like accepting the mission numbed the fire. Or maybe there’s nothing human left to feel pain at all.
I walk out of the hospital without a sound. My feet move without thought and without choice. I look like someone wandering aimlessly—but I know exactly where I’m going. The train would get me there faster, but I don’t deserve fast. If I have to do this, I’ll feel every step.
Streetlights flicker as I pass, a trash can collapses inward, denting like a fist punched it but no one touched it. A stop sign twists as its metal bends like wet paper while storefront glass shivers as I walk by. I don’t reach out or gesture, because this is how I scream, by breaking things.
Tar City breathes like a sleeping animal, and I move through it like a predator. I'm aware of everything, from the water dripping from a busted gutter and the scrape of a shoe on concrete two alleys over, to the goddamn grease trap from the restaurant next door and everything in between.
I walk for miles until the city’s all a blur and I don’t even feel my legs anymore.
My feet stop on their own when I reach the building.
I see how the window is cracked but taped together with hope someone can’t afford to replace.
First floor, too easy, too bad. The scent is everywhere—salt, milk, the faint sweetness of laundry detergent, and underneath it, life, new life.
I step closer, peering through the warped glass, and she’s there, the woman, my target, asleep in a rocking chair.
The room tells me everything: an old crib with mismatched legs, a stack of baby clothes folded like treasure, and a mobile made by hand.
There are paper stars swaying above a pillow someone probably saved for weeks to buy.
Poor, yes, but nothing here is neglected, love is everywhere, and it hits me harder than the hunger: I am the monster who breaks into places like this, I am the thing that comes for innocence.
I press my palm to the window, and the glass trembles as part of me wants to apologize, part of me just wants to get it over with, and part of me knows I should end myself right here.
Unfortunately for everyone, even that choice isn’t mine anymore.
The tar doesn’t let me choose death—I tried—it needs me alive, it needs me moving, it needs me useful.
I can still feel myself in here, trapped behind bone and muscle and tar, watching my body prepare to end a life that never deserved to cross my path.
The rocking chair creaks and the woman moves her hand to rest protectively over the swell of her stomach. I take a breath I don’t want. My pulse syncs with the magic’s rhythm on a countdown I didn’t start and can’t stop.
A woman’s scream cuts through the frenzy and my head snaps toward it. Across the street, some asshole shoves a woman against the alley wall, her voice fracturing into pleading and panicked sounds while he hits her. By the time he thinks about shoving her again I’m already running.
He turns, seeing me coming. “What's it to you, motherfuck—” The word dies in his throat as my hand closes around it.
I don't squeeze right away, I let him feel the weight of my grip and his eyes widen.
He kicks out, his feet scraping uselessly against the ground as I begin to lift, his struggles becoming more desperate.
I can feel the frantic pulse beating against my palm, the fear.
As his air runs out, the kicking slows. His struggles cease as his eyes go wide and bulging, veins popping in his neck.
The woman behind me chokes as she cries, clutching her ripped bag, frozen somewhere between terror and awe.
I drop him, and he hits the pavement with a thud, not breathing. I wait for it—the sickness, the oh-shit-what-did-I-do feeling—but there’s nothing. I didn’t save him, I didn’t save her, I didn’t save anyone. All I can do is hope I’ll satisfy a need that was never mine.
My hands shake—not from the kill, but from how fucking easy it was. The hunger is still there, agitated and pissed off. He wasn’t the one I was after, and the tar knows it. But flesh is flesh, bone is bone—it should be enough to shut the thing up for a while.
I look back at the apartment window where the rocking chair shifts, the woman inside still asleep.
I don’t let myself think past that as I hook my fingers under the man’s arm and drag him into the alley.
The tunnel entrance is three blocks over.
I’ve been here before. Years ago, when Sisk and I were just figuring out what this place was.
I can almost feel her hand in mine—small, trembling, hopeful.
She didn't deserve any of this. I should have been better, I should have done more, I should have seen it coming and stopped it.
I wedge my fingers under the grate and shove the body through the gap.
He bounces down the stairs, one loud thud after another.
I drag him the last fifty yards and by the time we reach The Pit, sweat is stinging my eye.
Tar City’s rotten heart. I can feel it, how fucking happy it is to see me.
I don’t look at his face, just shove him in, and the Pit swallows him whole, leaving nothing behind but a few bubbles bursting on the surface.
I stand there, breathing hard, waiting for the consequences but they never come. So I do the only thing I’ve ever done here that mattered. I make my wish. The same one I made the night everything went to shit. “Save her.”