Our Dark Duet (Monsters of Verity #2)(41)

The engineers stilled.

It was the woman who spoke. “No.”

“No?” echoed Sloan softly.

“We won’t do it,” said the other man.

“We can’t,” amended the woman. “It’s not possible. A building of that size, it’s not as if you could ever destroy it from a distance, and even if you had the materials—”

“Ah.” Sloan took the small cube from his pocket, set the explosive on the table. The engineers drew back.

“My predecessor believed in preparation. He cached his arsenals in various places around the city, stored all manner of things, from guns to precious metals to a fair quantity of this. Do not worry about materials,” he said, returning the cube to his pocket. “Just find a way to plant them.”

He started to walk away and heard the rattle of chains, the sound of the book rustling. He turned back in time to see the second man, tome raised, as if to strike Sloan with it. What a pain, he thought, catching the man by the throat. The book tumbled uselessly from his hands.

Sloan sighed, and tightened his grip, lifting the man off the floor. That’s what he got for giving these new pets a measure of freedom. He looked past the struggling, gasping form to the other two engineers.

“Perhaps I wasn’t clear . . . ,” he said, snapping the man’s neck.

The woman gasped. The other man shuddered. But neither rose from their seats. That was progress, he thought, letting the body fall to the floor beside the book.

Just then Alice came storming in, her hands clenched and her eyes blazing, no sign of her mutilated Malchai or August Flynn.

“Another failed attempt?” cooed Sloan, picking up the book as she barreled past toward her room.

“Practice makes perfect,” she growled, slamming the bedroom door.





She is alone in a place with no light no space

no sound

and then

the darkness asks who deserves to pay and a voice —her voice— answers

everyone and the word echoes

over and over and over

and over

and the nothing fills with bodies packed in as tightly as the crowd in the basement of Harker Hall when Callum stood on stage and passed his judgment every human is her father every monster is his shadow and there is a knife in her hand and all she wants is to cut them down one by one all she wants all she wants— but if she starts she will never stop so she lets go and the knife falls from her fingers and the monsters tear her

apart.





Kate lurched forward out of sleep, heart racing.

For one terrible, disorienting moment she didn’t know where she was—and then it came rushing back.

The house in the green, the man with the shotgun, the Corsai in the street.

She was lying on the couch beside the altar of batteries and bulbs, dawn slicing through the makeshift metal curtains. The ghost of the nightmare lingered as she got to her feet. She’d slept in her boots, unable to shake the fear that something would come, that she’d have to be ready to fight, to run. Her music player had died in the night, but the Corsai, they had never stopped.

No wonder Rick had gone mad.

She washed her face with the last of the water, ate numbly, then spread her weapons on the table, drawn to, and repulsed by, them in equal measure. She strapped an iron spike to her calf, returned the switchblade to her back pocket. The click of the clip sliding into the handgun sent an almost pleasant shiver through her. She thumbed the safety on and tucked the weapon into the back of her jeans. Out of sight, out of mind, she told herself, even as the metal kissed her spine. She hauled her bag back onto her shoulder, then threw the bolt and stepped out into the early morning light.

In daylight, the quiet was even worse, the green’s emptiness more unnerving than any number of people.

Rick’s shotgun lay on the sidewalk near the street, the only sign of the man save for a thin line of dried blood on the pavement. If there were any others in the neighborhood, they didn’t show themselves, and Kate didn’t go looking.

She needed to keep moving.

There were plenty of cars on the street, but cars made noise, and the last thing she wanted to do was let all of V-City know she was coming. Especially since she had no idea who—or what—would be there to greet her. Instead she trudged across several dew-wet lawns until she found a bicycle lying on its side in the grass, abandoned like everything else in the green.

Kate righted the bike, trying not to think about whoever it belonged to, or what had happened to the owner, as she swung her leg over the seat and pushed off, toward the yellow, and the red, and the waiting city.

The violin was a mess.

August sat on the edge of his bed, his fingers moving deftly over the steel as he loosened the pegs and pried the strings free. Next came the neck, the fingerboard, the tailpiece, the bridge.

Piece by piece, he dismantled the instrument, the way FTF soldiers dismantled their guns, scrubbing the blood and gore from every curve and crevice, cleaning and drying every piece before putting the violin back together.

He worked in silence, unable to shake the feeling he was rubbing the blood in, instead of getting it out, but when he was done, the weapon was whole again, ready for its next fight.

Like you, little brother.

He tucked the gleaming instrument back into its case beside the bow, and rose, stepping out into the hall.