Chapter 18
Every point of contact with the Wall sends faint echoes of pain through my body.
But I don’t slow. Don’t stop, as I pull myself up and up and up, knowing that it’s only Lucan’s blood in my system, reacting to the vampire venom in the Wall. I’m sure his pain is usually a hundred times worse, so I can’t reveal so much as a flicker of discomfort.
Or I have no doubt he’ll leap up and drag me away.
Finally, I break through the mist above my head, higher than the treetops now. I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but being a vampire is fun—everything almost easy. As if I’m as nimble as a spider.
Besides, it’s funny how the Guardians never anticipated that any of their cattle would actually become one. Arad doesn’t know it, but he gave me the power to do this.
Within minutes, I pull myself up onto the top of the Wall between spikes. With my newly sharpened sight, I’m still able to make out Lucan’s dark shadow as it shifts beneath the mist down below, his presence swelling in my veins.
See you when you get back, he tells me. And remember, I love you.
Then he throws up the mental block around my mind, leaving me alone with myself in order for me to focus.
Instantly, regret slams through me at the echoing silence. I should have said it back—in case I do die. In case I don’t ever get the chance to say it at all. But I don’t want the first time I tell him to be mind-to-mind.
Swallowing down my stupidity, I turn and crouch, analyzing the twisting of streets down below, calculating how far I’ll have to jump to land in the shadows.
With a deep breath, I spring upward and fly.
It feels like flying, at least. Because when I land stealthily on my feet, the impact barely reverberates through my body. But I have no time to process the exhilaration of freefall without fear.
Dozens of sentries line the nearest street, more than I’ve ever seen out all at once, their heads all cranked in the opposite direction as Lucan’s pack howls and howls until even my own ears are ringing.
I creep along the shadows at their backs, listening to their low mutters of confusion and shock with a smirk twisting my lips.
“What’s that?”
“The Monster, obviously.”
“More like a hundred Monsters.”
Fifteen, I correct silently. Fifteen werewolves decided to form a distraction for me tonight, including Gabriel and some of the older ones. But I’m glad the fear of the unknown is already making these sentries exaggerate the threat in their minds.
Then one of them whispers something that wipes the smirk right off my face.
“Maybe it’s a bad omen for what we did.”
What did they do? I peer around at what I thought would be bedlam judging by what Lucan and I saw from the top of Eversnow Peak, but the streets are empty except for the sentries. No rioting citizens. No unrest. Just a ghostly stillness.
Mapping out the quickest way to the Healing Center in my mind, I choose the third alleyway to my left and zigzag through Xantera.
The more I walk, the more my worry builds.
Signs of a dead riot stain the city. Boarded windows, glass littering the ground beneath them.
Splatters of blood that I have to avoid every handful of steps.
Some buildings are nothing but a pile of ash.
And the usual flags and statues of the Guardians that adorn major points throughout our society are either torn or crumbled.
Fuck. Malcolm, Walter, Gaia, Eleni, Claudia… Did they leave anyone alive? Or is this the beginning of another ghost town? My chest constricts, my slow heartbeat thudding like a drum against my ribcage.
Just as I reach the main street, I poke my head around the corner to see a Guardian, the Ninth, stalking through the night back and forth across the Blood Moon Palace courtyard.
The actual Guardians patrolling along with the sentries? Unheard of.
Breathing heavily, I time his steps and the sentries’ flanking him, watching their routine. But just when I think I’ve got it down, the Ninth Guardian snaps his neck in my direction.
I suck in a breath as I fly back into the alleyway, hoping like hell it was too dark to have seen me. But now I know just how sharp their eyesight truly is.
Turning on a heel, I choose a new path, eager to get off the street as soon as possible in case anyone chooses to investigate. Twisting through the night with a little extra speed, I’m finally here.
Not the Healing Center, but my old housing unit. I’m hoping against hope the detour won’t take more than a couple minutes. I just need to make sure Malcolm is still alive.
Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead, I pray, and I turn the unlocked knob.
The door squeaks open. Everything still sits in its usual place, only darker than I remember. No moonlight cuts through the shuttered window.
I search for the dim red light of the camera along the back wall but find nothing.
Squinting, I see wires hanging from a rough hole in the wall where the camera used to sit.
What happened here? Did Malcolm do that, or did a sentry?
Or a Guardian? My blood runs cold when I realize that Arad might have come straight here to take his frustration out on my old partner immediately after I jumped off that Wall.
Curling my fingers into fists, I sneak across the room and open Malcolm’s bedroom door. It creaks slowly, echoing in the tiny space.
“Malcolm?” I whisper into the dark. The lump under the covers doesn’t move.
I tiptoe forward, dread filling my gut, knowing without a doubt that whatever lies under those covers isn’t alive. There’s no breathing, no heartbeat, no subtle movement.
“Malcolm,” I nearly cry, ripping the covers off, knowing I’ll find a dead body.
Instead, I’m blinking at a configuration of pillows—
Just as a large, grunting shadow charges at me from the dark corner with raised fists.
I shriek, my first instinct to cower starting to take over before I realize I don’t need to do that anymore. At the last second, I stand up straight, rooted to the floor.
“Malcolm, it’s me,” I say after he lands a punch to the side of my head that feels surprisingly like a subtle bump—and makes me feel incredibly stupid for thinking a vase would make any impact against Arad’s head.
I scrabble behind me and flip on the light.
“Saskia?” Malcolm splutters when his eyes land on my face and widen.
I release a breath. “I thought you were dead.”
He rubs his eyes, as if convinced I’m a ghost. “I thought you were dead. Is it really you? How are you here? When’s the last time you slept?”
“Slept?” I repeat, frowning at the odd question. The last time I slept was during that nightmare where I found out I’m a damned vampire, but I’m not about to tell Malcolm that. Maybe one day, but right now…
“Your eyes,” he says. “They’re bloodshot. Really, really bloodshot.”
Oh. Right. Maybe he’ll figure out I’m not a human sooner rather than later.
Malcolm’s face pinkens at my silence, and he mutters, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pointed that out. It was rude of me.”
“No, no.” I wave a hand in the air. “It’s fine. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a while.” Do my eyes really look that bad, though?
No, a rich, deep voice answers, making me jolt.
Are you eavesdropping on me, Monster? I try to tease.
Only because you sounded distressed.
I swallow a sudden lump in my throat. I only got to look at the true color of my eyes a handful of times in my life before it was ripped away from me forever.
They’re still the same eyes, Lucan says gently. Just like the sky is the same sky even when the sun begins to set. Still just as beautiful. Just a different shade.
I give a watery laugh, which makes Malcolm cock his head at me, confused. I clear my throat. “Look at us,” I say, attempting to cover it up with a quick joke. “Both still alive and well, back in our old housing unit together. Who would’ve guessed?”
At the sight of his face, though, my happiness drains away.
Malcolm might be alive, but he’s not well.
Both of his eyes are swollen, the purple bruises surrounding them only a few days old.
Above his left eyebrow, a deep cut splits his skin, still red and inflamed and ready to bleed again at the slightest touch.
And his crooked nose… definitely broken, by the looks of it.
“What happened to you?” I whisper.
Malcolm’s shoulders slump, and he backpedals to sit on the edge of his bed, massaging his bruised temples. “The sentries, of course. I swear, as soon as we started questioning the Guardians or breaking any of the other Cardinal Rules, they just seemed to multiply.”
I press my lips together, knowing time is ticking and that I really need to get to the Healing Center for that centrifuge. But Malcolm looks so broken—both physically and spiritually—that I can’t just leave him here to break apart even more.
“That requires stitches,” I say, reaching out to brush his hair back. He winces in pain. “Why didn’t you go to the Healing Center? Gaia could have helped you.”
“I don’t trust anyone. Not anymore.”
I motion to the bed, hoping that ‘anyone’ doesn’t include me. “Lie down. Let me see if I still have some extra supplies in my old room.”
When he does, I hurry across the hall to my old box of a room, the plain bed and lamp still sitting in their exact same spots as the morning of the last Choosing.
My wardrobe door hangs ajar, my old uniforms and cloaks still hung up in neat rows.
And when I jerk open the bottommost drawer, my few belongings rattle against each other.
I breathe out a sigh of relief. Alcohol pads, bandages, the embroidery needle from our standard-issue sewing kit, a half-used spool of thread.
Grabbing them all, I sneak back to Malcolm’s room and pull over the chair in the corner to sit beside him. “It’s going to hurt,” I tell him, not bothering to lie. He knows there’s nothing here to dull the pain.