Our Dark Duet (Monsters of Verity #2)(76)

And there, in their midst, stood the shadow.

It smudged the air, just as it had in the footage. It had no face, no mouth, nothing but a pair of silver eyes, round as mirrors. The sight of it left Sloan cold. And hungry. As if he hadn’t eaten in nights.

A few Fangs noticed it too, turning on the monster with raised fists and bloodshot eyes, only to stop, to still. Something passed between them, a flicker of motion, the flash of silver, and it was like watching dominoes tip. The Fangs turned away from the shadow, and toward one another—

And the killing began.

Sloan stood on the stage, mesmerized by the frenzy, by the way the Fangs began tearing at one another, their motions vicious but deliberate, moving with a strange mixture of urgency and calm, but what unnerved him most was the quiet. There should have been screams, pleas, terror and pain echoing through the concrete chamber, but the humans slaughtered one other in such perfect silence, while the shadow began to drift through the mass, growing more solid with every step.

Alice was across the stage, a cable in her hand, and when the creature reached the center of the floor, she let go.

The cage came whistling down, the gold veil billowing before it landed with a crash atop the shadow. That crash was so much louder than the killing, and yet the humans didn’t waver from their slaughter, not even when Sloan leaped down from the stage and made his way toward the shrouded cell.

The sheet had slipped in the fall, a slice of darkness visible through the gap in the gold, and when Sloan peered through, he half expected the cage to be empty, the shadow gone. But there it was, a solid black shape in the center of the cell, and as he stopped before it, the shadow’s silver eyes drifted up until Sloan saw himself reflected in them.

“Hello, my pet.”

The soldier was on the ground, clutching his knee.

The other two hurried to his side as Kate stepped around his moaning form and started back toward the Compound.

She was halfway there when it happened.

Between one step and the next, her vision doubled and the world plunged away and she was falling. Not down—she was still on her feet, still on the light strip, but she was also somewhere else, somewhere cold and dark, damp and concrete—





—senses filling with the acrid taste of blood and ash a gold cage that burns like smoke and there beyond the cage a pair of red eyes float in the dark a skeleton in a black suit and the world narrows

to the point of a single shape the name rising like smoke— Sloan.





Sloan studied the shadow while the remaining Fangs grappled and strangled and fought among the bodies on the floor. Movement stirred at the edge of his sight as a man covered in blood started toward the stairs, his motions steady, purposeful.

“No one leaves,” ordered Sloan, the words directed at Alice, who beamed before launching herself in a blur, snapping one man’s neck before tearing out another’s heart. She could be efficient when given the right task.

Sloan turned his attention back to the creature in the cage.

The footage had not done it justice.

It had shown Sloan the shadow’s appearance, yes, revealed the way its influence spread from victim to victim, the violence like a disease, contagious. But on the tablet screen, the creature had been merely a shape, flat and featureless.

Now, standing in its presence, Sloan felt hollow, cold. His skin prickled and his teeth ached, and something as simple and primal as fear began to well inside him, until it met with something stronger.

Victory.

Here was a thing of darkness, like the Corsai; a lone hunter, like a Malchai; a creature that bristled Sloan’s edges like a Sunai; but it was none of those things. It was a weapon, a thing of absolute destruction.

And now it belonged to him.





VERSE 4


A MONSTER UNLEASHED





Kate didn’t remember falling, but she was on her hands and knees, blood dripping from her nose onto the glaring white light of the strip beneath her. Somewhere, beyond the ringing in her head, she heard the sound of steps, brisk and even, and she knew she had to get up, but the pain was tearing through her skull, and her thoughts were rattling around inside her head, shaken loose by the sudden change in who, in what, in where.

Sloan.

Sloan had the Chaos Eater.

Her vision doubled again, and for a flickering instant the Malchai was there, hovering in front of her on the strip, his sallow skin stretched over dark bones, and his red eyes looking right at her, through her—but Kate forced herself to her feet as he dissolved, replaced by cold gray eyes and short silver hair.

Soro.

Kate staggered back, or tried to, but the Sunai caught her by the collar.

“What happened just now?”

Kate’s head was still spinning, but she managed to find a truth. “Your soldiers jumped me.”

Soro wasn’t having it. Their grip tightened, hauling Kate closer. “I saw you go down. What happened?”

Kate fought the pull of Soro’s question, but the truth slid between clenched teeth. “The Chaos Eater,” she said. “Sloan has it.”

The Sunai’s expression darkened. “How do you know?”

The words spilled out. “I saw it.”

Soro’s other hand grabbed Kate’s hair and forced her head up. Her bangs fell to the side, revealing the silver in her eyes.