This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1)(24)

Sloan sighed. “Would that you were.”

“Tell me where he—”

Sloan shot forward, caging her in against the counter. The sudden force of it was like a blow to the ribs, knocking the air from her lungs.

“Down, dog,” she snarled, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.

The Malchai didn’t move. His crimson eyes dragged over her. “Can’t you see,” he whispered. “Harker doesn’t want you here.”

“You don’t know that—”

“Of course I do.” A single cold finger came to rest against her cheek. The nail was filed to a point.

She swallowed, held her ground. “I am not a child anymore.”

“You will always be our little Katherine,” he murmured. “Crying herself to sleep. Begging her mother to take her away.”

“Mom wanted to leave, not me.”

“You can lie to yourself, but I can’t.”

A drop of blood welled above Sloan’s nail, but she didn’t pull away. “I am a Harker,” she said slowly. “I belong here. Now tell me where he is.”

The Malchai sighed and turned his gaze away, considered the thickening dark beyond the windows. “In the basement.” Kate swallowed, and started toward the elevator. “But you really shouldn’t go there.”

The doors opened. Kate stepped in, and turned back toward the Malchai. “Why not?”

He flashed a savage smile. “Because that,” he said, “is where the real monsters are.”

Harris and Phillip joined August on the way down.

The elevator paused at the fifteenth floor and the two brawny guys in black fatigues climbed in. Harris was eighteen, dark hair spilling out beneath his cap, and Phillip was twenty, buzz-cut, and like most of the young men in South City, they’d apparently jumped at the chance to join the FTF. They were both cheerful guys, the kind to get a bounce in their step at the first sign of trouble, to run toward it instead of away. The kind to high-five after taking out a Corsai with an HUV beam to the head or driving a metal spike through a Malchai’s heart.

“So we’re on level three, you know that corridor, the one where the cameras don’t quite reach, and—oh, hey, August!”

“Saved by the elevator,” said Phillip. He flashed August a warm grin. “You holding up?”

August nodded tightly. The anger was bleeding out of him, which wasn’t a good sign. What came after was worse.

“You look like you could use a boost,” said Harris, pulling off his FTF cap and settling it over August’s black curls. Only a few handpicked members of the FTF knew who—and, more important, what—August really was. “I was just telling Phil about this prime—”

“She’s out of your league, bro.”

“Harsh.”

“No,” said Phillip as they hit the lobby. “I mean she is literally out of your league. Second-class team captain, and you’re a what—didn’t you just get bumped back to mindless drone?”

Harris rolled his eyes. “What about you, August? Good-looking mons—” Phillip shot him a look. “—kid like you. Anyone special?”

“Believe it or not,” said August as they stepped out into the night. “My options are limited.”

“Nah, you just gotta expand your parameters. Look beyond your—”

Phillip cleared his throat. “Who’re we visiting tonight?” he asked, scanning the street. August shifted the strap on his shoulder—he’d moved the violin into a different case, one that looked like it was made for a weapon instead of a musical instrument—and unfolded the paper Leo had given him. It was a profile. A victim. August tried not to use that word—victims were innocent, and this man was not—but the term kept getting stuck in his head.

“Albert Osinger,” he read aloud. “259 Ferring Pass, 3B.”

“That’s not too far,” said Phillip. “We can walk.”

August considered the paper as he fell into step behind them. A grainy photo was printed below the words, a capture from a video feed.

Sometimes people brought cases to Henry Flynn, looking for justice, but most of the targets came from the footage. South City had its own surveillance, and Ilsa spent most days scanning the feeds, searching for shadows other people couldn’t see, ones that shouldn’t be there. The mark of someone whose violence had taken shape. A sinner.

Corsai fed on flesh and bone, Malchai on blood, and whose it was meant nothing to them. But the Sunai could feed only on sinners. That’s what set them apart. Their best-kept secret. It was the seed of Leo’s righteousness, and the reason all FTFs were required to be shadow free. It was also why, in the early days of the Phenomenon and the mounting chaos, Leo had chosen to side with Henry Flynn instead of Callum Harker, a man with too many shadows to count.

“We are the darkest acts made light,” Leo liked to say.

August supposed they were a kind of cosmic clean-up crew, created to address the source of the monstrous problem.

And Albert Osinger had officially been labeled a source.

The boots ahead of him came to a stop, and August folded the paper, and looked up. They were on the corner of a gutted street, most of the lights dead or flickering. Phillip and Harris had their HUVs out, beams slicing back and forth on the pavement. They were looking at him expectantly.