Our Dark Duet (Monsters of Verity #2)(75)

She knew it was a bad idea.

But it was the only one she had.

“You want your cigarettes?” Kate crushed the pack in her hand. “Go fetch,” she said, lobbing it into the dark.

And just like that, the soldier lunged, not for the cigarettes but for her, and they went down on the strip.

Kate rolled, landing on top of him, but before she could get any leverage, an arm hooked around her neck and wrenched her off.

“You don’t deserve to wear that badge,” snarled the woman.

Kate glanced at the FTF stitched onto her sleeve. “It came with the clothes,” she said, dropping her knee and rolling the soldier over her shoulder. But the moment she was free, someone hit her sidelong and she went down hard, the monster surging up within her.

No, she thought, forcing it back even as she straightened. She fought to keep her breathing even, her pulse steady, as she stared past the soldiers into the shadows of the city.

Where are you?

Kate licked a drop of blood from her lip as the soldiers circled. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“I’ll show you!” called a Fang, forcing his way toward the stage.

He tried to climb up, but Alice slammed her shoe into his face and he went toppling backward, nose gushing blood.

The taste of copper stained the air and Sloan felt his own hunger stir as laughter rustled through the crowd, low and cruel.

“I didn’t say go!” said Alice. “If you want to play, there are rules. When I say go, bring me a piece of—” She waved a sharp nail back and forth through the air before pointing at a man: “him.”

The Fang’s eyes widened. He was broad-shouldered and covered in ink, but in that moment, Sloan saw the bravado falter, fall away.

Alice did have a way with people.

She flashed a vicious smile. “The largest piece wins!”

The crowd’s unfocused energy shifted, narrowing to a point.

“Ready?”

“Wait,” begged the man, but it was too late.

“Go.”

The Fangs turned, and in a single wave, they surged toward him. The first scream left his throat just as the lights overhead flickered and went out.

Kate collapsed to her hands and knees on the light strip, her vision blurring white.

“Not so cocky now, are you?”

The pain kept her grounded, even as the monster in head told her to fight back.

Make me, she thought, forcing herself to her feet.

They weren’t the best fighters, these three, but it was taking half Kate’s strength just to keep the dark at bay, to keep that horrible, wonderful calm from stealing through her head, to keep her hands from freeing a soldier’s knife and—

She threw an elbow back and up, a dirty move, but the FTFs had trained to fight Fangs, who fought dirty, too, and suddenly her arm was trapped behind her back.

Kate struggled for balance, and for a second, as they grappled, she had a glimpse of the light strip, and the Compound, and a shadow leaning back against the wall.

Not the Chaos Eater, but Soro, polishing their flute.

Soro, watching, as if it were a sport, and then Kate’s arm was twisted up, viciously, and she was being hauled toward the place where the light strip met the spreading dark.

“Stop.” The word came out a whisper. A plea. She refused to shout, refused to scream, but she could see the shadows moving beyond the safety of the Compound’s light, the telltale glint of Corsai’s eyes and teeth, and panic rippled through her as they forced her toward the edge.

“What’s the matter?” sneered the soldier. “I thought Harkers weren’t afraid of the dark.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to reach across whatever thread bound her mind to the monster’s, as if she could summon it to her.

“This is the part where you beg,” said the soldier as Kate’s boots skidded over the last few feet of the light strip, and she felt herself starting to slip. Her vision narrowed and her heart slowed. The urge was there, so simple, so clear.

“Taylor,” warned the second soldier.

“Enough,” called the third.

But Taylor’s mouth was close, his breath hot on her skin. “Beg,” he snarled, “the way my uncle did when your father—”

Kate drove her boot back into his knee, and heard the satisfying crack of bone right before he screamed, and in that moment of pain, his grip failed and she was behind him, forcing him to his knees, his face inches from the dark.

It would be so easy to pitch him forward across the line of light, into that place where real monsters waited.

“Stay back,” she warned as the other two soldiers started toward her.

Kate bowed her head. “This is the part,” she said, “where you beg.”

Her vision slid in and out of focus, as if she were in a dream, and the soldier began to whimper softly, and everything in her wanted to just—let go. But the Chaos Eater hadn’t come—it was still out there, still free.

Kate sighed, and hauled the soldier back into the safety of the light.

For an instant, the tower basement went dark.

A dark unlike Sloan had ever seen. True black—a total, unnatural absence of light—and then, just as quickly, the lights were back, flickering and only half as bright.

The Fangs looked around in confusion.