This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1)(20)
Kate had read a sci-fi novel once about a shimmering future city where everything was glamorous on the outside but rotten to the core. Like a bad apple. She sometimes wondered if her dad had read it, too (if so, he’d obviously never read to the end).
A dark suit fell in step behind her as she crossed the lobby, which was brimming with men and women in lush attire, many obviously hoping for an audience with Harker. One—a gorgeous woman in a cream-colored coat, tried to slip an envelope of cash into Kate’s hand, but she never made it past the suit. (Which was too bad. Kate might have taken the bribe. Not that it would have made it to her father.) Instead she kept her eyes ahead until she reached the golden elevator. Only then did she turn, survey the room, and offer the edge of a smile.
“People are users. It’s a universal truth. Use them, or they’ll use you.”
Another line from Callum Harker’s manual for staying on top.
And Callum Harker had been on top, or at least on his way up, for a very long time. He was a man good at making three things: friends, enemies, and money (most of it illegal). Long before the Phenomenon and the chaos, before the territory wars and the truce, he was already becoming a kind of king. Not on the surface, no, that title belonged to the Flynns, but all cities were icebergs, the real power underneath, and even in those days Harker had half of V-City in his pocket. So when the shadows started growing teeth, when the neighboring territories shut the borders, when panic drove people out of the city and then the people outside the city drove them back, when everyone was terrified, Harker was there.
He had the vision—had always had the vision—and then suddenly he had the monsters, too. And it seemed so simple: go with Flynn and live in fear, or go with Harker and pay for safety.
And it turned out, people were willing to pay a lot.
The Harker penthouse was minimalist and sleek: more marble and glass, interrupted by dark wood and steel. There were no servants up here. No suits. Everything about the apartment was cold, full of sharp edges, no place for a family. And yet, they had been one here. They’d lived in the penthouse, all three of them, in those short months after the truce and before the accident. But when she dragged through her memories, searching for home, the images were all mixed up, open fields and distant trees, broken glass and buckling metal.
It didn’t matter.
She was here now. She would make it hers.
“Hello?” Kate called out.
No one answered. She hadn’t expected a welcoming party, a how-was-your-day-sweetheart. They’d never been that kind of family. Her father’s private office was attached to the penthouse, but it might as well be its own apartment, its own world. The massive doors were shut, and when she brought her good ear to the wood, she heard only a low and steady hum. Soundproofing. Kate pushed off the doors and turned back toward the rest of the loft.
Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the sun was just starting to sink behind the taller buildings. She tapped a panel on the wall, and the lights came on, flooding the space with artificial white. Another tap, and the heavy silence was broken by music pouring out of speakers across the apartment. She kept her eyes on her father’s office and held her finger down; the volume rose and rose until the sound vibrated in her chest and made the empty space feel full. Her steps were lost under the beat as she made her way to the kitchen, climbed onto a stool at the counter, and unpacked her bag. The Colton workload was daunting, but she’d spent years at boarding schools that seemed to have nothing better to do than assign homework. In among her papers was a handout on university preparations titled, “Life after Colton” filled with options, most inside Verity, but a few beyond. The borders had reopened two years ago on a heavily restricted basis—the territory was still a closed zone, under Quarantine Code 53: Other—but Kate imagined a few of the Colton kids had enough connections to get transport papers to go with a university invite.
After all, the other territories wanted Verity’s brightest minds.
They just didn’t want their monsters.
She tossed the booklet aside.
A stack of fresh medallions sat on the marble counter, heavy iron disks with the ornate V branded onto the front. Kate spun a pendant absently between her fingers. Iron. It was true that monsters loathed the stuff, but it wasn’t the metal that bought safety. It was Harker. Anyone could hang a piece of metal around their neck and hope for the best, but these were special.
The back of every medallion was engraved with a number, and every number was—or would be—assigned to a person; a ledger in her father’s office kept track of every soul who purchased his protection from the things that waited in the dark. Not because the monsters feared the metal. Because the monsters feared him.
She snapped her fingers, spinning the medallion again, watching the two sides flash past over and over.
No pendant, no protection. That was Harker’s law.
As the disc wobbled, she felt something move behind her. She couldn’t hear it, not over the pounding beat of the stereo system, but she knew, instantly, in that hairs-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck way, that she wasn’t alone anymore.
Her hand drifted under the lip of the counter, and closed around the handgun strapped against the granite. By the time the medallion fell, she was on her feet, the safety off, and the gun raised. She looked down the sight, and found a pair of bloodred eyes staring back.
Sloan.
Six years ago, she’d come home to V-City, to her father, and found Sloan at his side. Dressed in a tailored black suit, her father’s favorite Malchai looked almost human. He had Callum Harker’s height, if not his build, and Harker’s deep-set eyes, though Sloan’s burned crimson where Harker’s shone blue. But if her father was an ox, Sloan was a wraith, the dark bones of his skeleton just visible through the thin vellum of his skin. With his pallor, Sloan looked sick. No, thought Kate. He looked dead. Like a corpse on a cold day.