This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1)(2)

She drew out her lighter—a beautiful silver thing Mother Alice had confiscated the first week—and turned it over and over in her hands to keep them steady. When that failed, she drew a cigarette from her shirt pocket—another bounty from the confiscation box—and lit it, watching the small blue flame dance before the massive orange blaze.

She took a drag and closed her eyes.

Where are you, Kate? she asked herself.

It was a game she sometimes played, ever since she learned about the theory of infinite parallels, the idea that a person’s path through life wasn’t really a line, but a tree, every decision a divergent branch, resulting in a divergent you. She liked the idea that there were a hundred different Kates, living a hundred different lives.

Maybe in one of them, there were no monsters.

Maybe her family was still whole.

Maybe she and her mother had never left home.

Maybe they’d never come back.

Maybe, maybe, maybe—and if there were a hundred lives, a hundred Kates, then she was only one of them, and that one was exactly who she was supposed to be. And in the end, it was easier to do what she had to if she could believe that somewhere else, another version of her got to make another choice. Got to live a better—or at least simpler—life. Maybe she was even sparing them. Allowing another Kate to stay sane and safe.

Where are you? she wondered.

Lying in a field. Staring up at stars.

The night is warm. The air is clean.

The grass is cool beneath my back.

There are no monsters in the dark.

How nice, thought Kate as, in front of her, the chapel caved in, sending up a wave of embers.

Sirens wailed in the distance, and she straightened up on the bench.

Here we go.

Within minutes girls came pouring out of the dormitories, and Mother Alice appeared in a robe, pale face painted red by the light of the still-burning church. Kate had the pleasure of hearing the prestigious old nun let out a string of colorful words before the fire trucks pulled up and the sirens drowned out everything.

Even Catholic schools had their limits.

An hour later, Kate was sitting in the rear seat of a local patrol car, courtesy of Des Moines, hands cuffed in her lap. The vehicle barreled through the night, across the dark expanse of land that formed the northeast corner of Verity, away from the safety of the periphery, and toward the capital.

Kate shifted in the seat, trying to get more comfortable as the cruiser sped on. Verity was three days across by car, and she figured they were still a good four hours outside the capital, an hour from the edge of the Waste—but there was no way this local officer was taking a vehicle like this through a place like that. The car didn’t have much in the way of reinforcement, only its iron trim and the UVR—ultraviolet-reinforced—high beams tearing crisp lines through the darkness.

The man’s knuckles were white on the wheel.

She thought of telling him not to worry, not yet—they were far enough out; the edges of Verity were still relatively safe, because none of the things that went bump in the capital wanted to cross the Waste to get to them, not when there were still plenty of people to eat closer to V-City. But then he shot her a nasty look and she decided to let him stew.

She rolled her head, good ear against the leather seat as she stared out into the dark.

The road ahead looked empty, the night thick, and she studied her reflection in the window. It was strange, how only the obvious parts showed up against the darkened glass—light hair, sharp jaw, dark eyes—not the scar like a drying tear in the corner of her eye, or the one that traced her hairline from temple to jaw.

Back at St. Agnes, the Chapel of the Cross was probably a charred husk by now.

The growing crowd of girls in their pajamas had crossed themselves at the sight of it (Nicole Teak, whose nose Kate had recently broken, flashed a smug grin, as if Kate was getting what she deserved, as if she hadn’t wanted to get caught), and Mother Alice had said a prayer for her soul as she was escorted off the premises.

Good riddance, St. Agnes.

The cop said something, but the words broke down before they reached her, leaving nothing but muffled sounds.

“What?” she asked, feigning disinterest as she turned her head.

“Almost there,” he muttered, still obviously bitter that someone had forced him to drive her this far instead of dropping her in a cell for the night.

They passed a sign—235 miles to V-City. They were getting closer to the Waste, the buffer that ran between the capital and the rest of Verity. A moat, thought Kate, one with its own monsters. There was no clear border, but you could feel the shift, like a shoreline, the ground sloping away, even though it stayed flat. The last towns gave way to barren fields, and the world went from quiet to empty.

A few more painfully silent miles—the cop refused to turn on the radio—and then a side road broke the monotony of the main stretch, and the patrol car veered onto it, wheels slipping from asphalt to gravel before grumbling to a stop.

Anticipation flickered dully in Kate’s chest as the cop switched on his surrounds, UVR brights that cast an arc of light around the car. They weren’t alone; a black transport vehicle idled on the side of the narrow road, the only signs of life its UVR undercarriage, the red of its brake lights, and the low rumble of its engine. The cop’s circle of light glanced off the transport’s tinted windows and landed on the metal tracery capable of running one hundred thousand volts into anything that got too close. This was a vehicle designed to cross the Waste—and whatever waited in it.