53. Empirical Observation
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
EMPIRICAL OBSERVATION
Saya Claymore
Death lingers in the air. Bodies sprawl on the ground, the remains of a group of humans who risked the night on the highway rather than wait for daylight. But maybe they had already been exposed? Perhaps they didn’t have a choice.
Olivia says it wasn’t her. Still, my mind drifts to my vivid nightmare of finding the body in the woods, of how it became vervain, and of the creature attached to Serun.
“A cult is in the area,” Serun says, stepping over a body as if it’s a hindrance—an obstacle in the way, not a human being. I swallow the lump in my throat and vow never to grow so cold as to accept death instead of anger and defiance.
Pushing through the disgust writhing in my stomach, I step over a stiff body sprawled near the cars that cluster the highway. Turned-over, burnt cars lie open, as if the humans inside had no time to park and had to leave.
“What was it like when Mother left?” I ask him to distract myself from stepping over another lifeless body.
“Silent.” Serun dissolves into smoky shadows and stands on the other side of the railing. “Without her voice in prayer, the world grew silent and afraid. That was until more and more nightwalkers appeared.”
“By you.”
“In the beginning, but I didn’t like the concept of creation,” he says, offering me his hand. I take hold and shuffle onto the other side of the railing. His clawed hand tightens on mine as he says, “But I would do it to have you for eternity.”
I release my grip on his hand and scan the woods by the river to distract me from my racing thoughts. “Are we crossing or going around it?”
“Crossing.”
With a nod, I make my way down the pebble-strewn slope. In the blink of an eye, Serun’s ahead of me by the riverbank. Olivia falls into step beside me, her gaze flicking from one thing to another, as if she’s worried someone might spring out to attack us.
“So, you’re telling me the slayers created more of you?” I say as I greet him by the tall grass that whistles in the soft breeze. “And they created more of themselves.”
“I wasn’t a liked creation.” He pinches the fabric of my clothes, and before I can protest, I’m in his arms. The air stirs, and my stomach tightens with a thousand butterflies. In the blink of an eye, we appear on the other side of the river. “They wanted something they could control.”
Once I am on my feet, I notice Olivia staring at us in disbelief. “Oh, what the fuck?” she whines as she makes her way through the water.
My ear twitches, and I lift my gaze to the cars on the highway. “How many did they make for it to get that bad that human… people were escaping their cars?”
“Oh, was that what you were insinuating?” Once Olivia steps out of the water, drenched from the waist down, Serun turns away, his shadows skimming his shoulders and pooling on the ground like a cloak.
“That was because of the nightwalkers. The white coats came in when the infestation began, blocking the highways and stealing humans from the streets who had the DNA type they needed.” Fiery eyes narrow.
“They experimented on them as if they were fragile little playthings.”
I lick my cracked lips, my hands at my sides clenching into trembling fists. There’s so much I don’t know about the world—things hidden or rumoured, and I wasn’t the only one. Everyone in the Darkovish Feeding Ground regarded slayers as legends, mythological creatures.
“Why don’t humans…people know more about slayers? No one I came across believed in them except Jax, but I now realise the reason he did…”
Serun glances in my direction but doesn’t answer.
We move through the thick oak trees again, the moon shying away, drenching us in night.
Before we left the cabin, he told me we might need to travel through a cavern to avoid the main roads to the cities and towns.
Slayers will be among humans, and he doesn’t want to deal with them while I am around.
And the only slayer I want to deal with is Jax.
Anger flares inside me, blistered black and blue as I remember Jax dropping Cole to the ground and dragging me away—saving me instead. The one lie I’d never forgive. I want him to choke on his tongue and swallow it whole so he cannot plead for mercy when I carve him bit by—
Serun’s frigid-tipped fingers graze my arm, his gaze flickering between the surroundings and me.
Light radiates from my freckles, and as I tear my gaze from my brooding thoughts, silver graces the old trees with crumbling bark.
Nearby creatures creep towards the moving light, like deer caught in headlights.
I take a breath in, and when I exhale, the radiant light dims to a tingling throb. Olivia steps out of the nearby shadows, eyes dilated, brows raised to her hairline. This is her first time seeing my magik and how it burns before Serun’s shadows suffocate it.
“Your not lover?” Serun asks.
A hint of a smile reaches the corners of my eyes, softening the heated emotions within me. “You need to stop saying that. He’s just a slayer in my way, and you are…someone I enjoy the company of.”
Love? It took me an entire year to hold that emotion for Jax. Even now, as I curl my fingers through brain matter, I realise it was only infatuation. Love built on skin and lust. There wasn’t anything else to it—nothing solid enough to build a foundation on.
With Serun…I like the idea of him, but I still can’t trust him. He’s hiding something from me. He still hasn’t told me what kamai means, and when I gaze into those violent eyes, there’s a wall.
“Will there be more of those creatures in the cavern we are going to?” Olivia asks, falling into step with us.
“No. Nightwalkers have claimed it. My family often travels through it to reach Raynel, Mire, or to cross the State to Darkovish without risking Padbury and their Prayer Sanctuary.”
“Padbury…that’s where they took Bianca when the Bleeders found out she was pregnant.
” Serun’s shadows pool down his shoulders, splashing onto the ground like thick, running water.
I tilt my head, my steps falling behind him until I stop at the break in the trees that overlooks the clear opening to a darkened cavern.
Serun notices and turns to face me. “Whenever I mention it or bring it up, your anger shows through your shadows. It bothers me.” Sweat coats my hands, and I wipe them down my clothes.
“You know why they’re taking them. Are you the reason?
Do the Bleeders lure pregnant women there to—”
“Don’t think so lowly of me, Saya Claymore,” he says, my name on his tongue a hiss of disdain, which makes me straighten my back, arch my chin a little higher, and stare deathly at him. “We do not steal children. We do not do what you’re thinking.”
Folding my arms across my chest, I say, “Then talk before we enter that cavern, and I leave it without you, Serun.”
He looks away, his clawed hand scratching at his chest.
I sigh, step towards him, and close the gap. “You want me to learn for myself, but I am tired of being left in the dark about these things. Bianca, even though we weren’t close friends, is the only human—person who has survived Darkovish Feeding Ground…that I know of.”
Warm eyes settle on me, and as he reaches for me, I picture his ears bending back, meek and vulnerable. “I’m not sure what they do, but they take them to the Prayer Sanctuary, and they are never seen again. There was never a chance for my family to question them using a nightwalker’s lure.”
I nod and bite the corner of my lip, tasting blood. Are they just protecting them? But if they are, why barcode them?
An unsettled feeling sinks into the pit of my stomach.
“Kamai,” Serun murmurs, his voice low enough for only me to hear. His clawed hands rest against my cheeks, guiding my gaze back to him. My ears bend as his thumbs brush them. “Forgive my temper. With anyone else, I’d have killed them for assuming I’d do such a thing—but not with you.”
“Romantic,” Olivia mutters under her breath.
Serun’s eyes glaze over, as if imagining her death, only to shimmer again when he focuses on me.
I raise my hands and grab his arms. Jagged shadows protrude from them, skimming my skin.
“I’m just on edge,” I admit. “We are getting close, and the more I learn about slayers and now about these white coats who experiment on humans, the more scared I am for Cole. I’m so fucking scared… ”
His thumb moves down, touching the tender spot beneath my chin and tilting my head up high enough to reveal the tears slipping down my cheeks. “We will find him, and then we will go home.”
“As well as your brother and his wife,” I whisper.
He smiles with his eyes, but like me, he holds on to the hope that they are okay.
This world is a tragedy.