This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1)(37)

“I didn’t think I’d left the room unlocked.”

“You didn’t,” said Kate coolly, pushing off the desk and walking out. She was relieved when he didn’t follow.

Back in her room, she sank into her chair, Freddie’s student profile still up on her screen. It made even less sense now, a blurred photo beside a name that, according to her father’s records, didn’t exist. Could he be using an alias? But why?

The only people who hid were the ones with something to hide.

So what was Frederick Gallagher hiding?





August hated blood—hated the sight, hated the smell, hated the slimy, too-thick feel—which was unfortunate, since he was currently covered in it.

It wasn’t his, of course.

It was Phillip’s. The FTF with the warm smile and the buzz cut, the one who treated August like a friend, and glared at Harris whenever he used the word monster.

“Hold him still,” ordered Henry. “I need to tourniquet the wound.”

Phillip’s shoulder had been torn from the socket. Visibly. His FTF gear had been shredded, and August could have reached out and traced his fingers over the Corsai’s claw marks—teeth marks? It was always hard to tell—if Phillip hadn’t been writhing around so much on the steel medical table.

August had been sitting at the counter doing homework, Allegro playing with his laces, when they got the call. Another attack. But this one wasn’t at the Seam. And it wasn’t random. It was an ambush. Harker’s monsters knew exactly where the FTF would be patrolling, and when. Someone had told them. And now four FTFs were dead and Phillip seemed hell-bent on going down in a blaze of obscenities and blood.

“For God’s sake, hold him still.”

Leo and August pinned Phillip down while Henry moved with careful, decisive motions over the vicious wound. His partner, Harris, stood to the side, blood streaked across his face, looking numb from shock while Emily stitched up a gash on his bicep. She didn’t have Henry’s surgical grace, but her hands were just as steady.

Henry drew a syringe full of morphine and sank the needle into Phillip’s functioning arm. His cursing trailed off and his head lolled to the side, the pain and tension finally going out of him.

“This cannot stand, Henry,” said Leo, a smudge of Phillip’s blood along his jaw. “We have suffered enough insult. It is time to—”

“Not now,” snapped Henry as he pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and set to work. August looked down at the wreckage of Phillip’s shoulder, the slick red pool spreading across the metal table, and felt ill. Under the glare of the lights, Phillip looked suddenly young, delicate. Humans were too fragile for this fight, but the Sunai were too few to do it alone, and even if three could wage a war on thousands, the Malchai and Corsai weren’t foolish enough to get close, opting instead for prey they could catch, and kill. And so the Sunai focused on hunting sinners in order to stem the flow of violence, and the slaying of the monsters fell to the humans, and the humans, invariably, fell to them. It was a cycle of whimpers and bangs, gruesome beginnings and bloody ends.

August’s gaze traced the claw marks. Messy. Brutal. This was a monster’s work. The lingering scent of the Corsai—fetid air, stale smoke, and death, always death—still clung to the torn flesh and turned his stomach. Leo was right. August was nothing like the thing that did this. He couldn’t be.

“August,” said Henry a minute later. “You can let go now.”

He looked down and realized he was still pinning Phillip’s limp body to the table. His hands slid off, and he went to wash them in a nearby sink while Henry worked.

Blood ran into the sink, and August looked away, trying to find something—anything—else to focus on, but it was everywhere, on the wall, and the counter, and the floor, a trail leading back through the doors to the steel elevators marked with a 19.

The nineteenth floor of the Flynn compound had been nicknamed the Morgue by some of the more morbid members of the FTF. Even though it was the second highest floor in the building, directly below the Flynns’ own apartment, there was no view. The windows had all been bricked up, the furniture removed in favor of sterile space. The nineteenth floor housed two essential things: a private interrogation chamber (the rest being on the sublevels with the cells) and an emergency medical suite.

“Where is he?” asked Henry, looking up from the wreckage of Phillip’s shoulder. He was referring to the traitor. The man who’d sold the information to Harker. He was a cousin of someone in the FTF, and after he’d sold them out, he’d tried to escape across the Seam and claim some kind of sanctuary in North City. But Harker didn’t keep rats, so he’d thrown him back. A squad had hunted him down and hauled him in, but not before he put two bullets in their captain. Two minutes with Leo, and he’d confessed to everything.

Leo stood before a mirror, wiping the bloodstains from his face. His black eyes went to the scar through his brow and glanced off, the way August’s had around the blood, as if disgusted by the sight.

“Cell A,” answered Harris dully, all trace of his boyish humor gone. Taken.

“He’s guilty,” added Leo evenly, and they all knew what he meant. A red soul. A reaping.

“All right.” Henry nodded to his wife. “Go get Ilsa.”

The man in Cell A looked rough.