This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1)(52)

Multiple Sunai on the grounds, circling like sharks. Her chest tightened, but she couldn’t panic. Panic served no purpose. It clouded your head, led to fatal mistakes. She was a Harker, she thought, clutching the iron spike. She would find another way out. She set off, fighting the urge to run as she rounded the corner of the school, heading for the back gate, digging out her cell with her free hand and—

Something hit her, hard.

The phone went skittering away as she stumbled, a steel grip vising around her shoulders from behind. She didn’t hesitate, but drove the iron spike back and down into the creature’s thigh. It let out a wet hiss, its arms loosening enough for her to drop to one knee and fling it over her shoulder. The body hit the ground, rolled up, and spun with a strange grace, the spike still buried in its leg.

Kate froze.

It wasn’t a Sunai.

It was a Malchai.

A skeletal shape, red eyes swiveling in a skull that looked black beneath his slick dead skin. Half the Malchai’s face was a mass of angry lines—the H on his sunken cheek had been clawed off, just like the one on the monster she’d killed in the basement. His lips dragged into a crooked grin, his voice a wet rattle.

“Hello, little Harker.”

She opened her mouth to say that her father would have his head but never got the chance. A second shape hurtled forward, too fast to dodge, a blur that caught her in the chest and slammed her back into the brick side of the school. Something inside her cracked, and a scream tore free before the second Malchai’s grip tightened around her throat, cutting off the air.

The monster’s mouth split into a smile full of sharp teeth.

“This is going to be fun.”

No service.

Of course there was no service. August shoved the cell back in his pocket, took a deep breath, and then threw his shoulder against the door. He was rewarded with nothing but an echo of pain. Just because he didn’t bleed and break like a human didn’t mean he could out-muscle reinforced steel. He wasn’t a battering ram.

He looked down at his hands and thought of Leo the night before, the way the darkness had licked up his fingers, the doorknob crumbling in his grip, but August didn’t have that kind of control. It was all or nothing.

He rubbed his hand over the tallies on his wrist.

Four hundred and twenty-one days.

But it wasn’t the marks he was afraid of losing.

There had to be another way. He retreated into the center of the room, scanned the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Smooth. Smooth. Tiled. Standing on the stool, he was just tall enough to reach the insulated squares overhead; they were heavy, but when he pressed against one hard enough, it lifted, and he was able to slide it up, and over.

August sniffed, recoiling faintly at the stale air, then retrieved his violin and hoisted himself up into the grimy dark.

The fingers were icy steel around Kate’s throat, and before she could twist free, she was being thrown down against the sidewalk. She hit hard, the wind knocked out of her lungs and her palms burning where they scraped against concrete. She scrambled to her hands and knees, but the Malchai were too fast, and one of them was on her, forcing her down onto her back.

Her shoulder flared with white-hot pain as the monster pinned her to the sidewalk.

“Feisty thing,” he murmured as the other Malchai freed the spike from his leg with a wet sound and tossed it aside. The monster on top of her had those same deep scratches running down his cheek, ruining the H and cutting all the way to bone. The marks looked fresh.

“She killed Olivier,” said the other, shaking the burn of iron from his bony fingers.

“Indeed she did,” whispered the first, bringing his lips to her cheek. She wrenched her head away and felt cold breath on her face as he whispered something in her bad ear, too low for her to hear. She drove her knee into his groin, but the monster only chuckled. So much for SING.

They were strong, but it was still light out, and if she could just get to her feet, put her back to the wall—

“I can hear your blood pulsing,” said the Malchai on top of her as her fingers scrambled for the second spike shoved in her sock. “I bet you taste sweet.” The monster’s mouth yawned wide, flashing jagged, silvery fangs.

“No teeth,” warned the second, and the Malchai pinning her frowned but closed his mouth with a click. The other one produced a small, handheld torch, snapped it to life. The flame hissed, and Kate thrashed beneath the monster’s grip, until his nails dug into her skin, drawing blood.

“I’m going . . . to kill you,” she snarled.

“Humans, humans, full of lies,” sang the one on top of her, red eyes dancing with delight. “Should we kill her first, like the others?”

The Malchai with the torch seemed to consider. “No. There’s no one to hear. We should take our time, like he would.”

This was wrong.

This was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Her hand clawed at the grass, trying to reach the second spike. The monster on top of her smiled, and the one with the torch turned the dial, focusing the heat into a white-hot knife.

“She has her father’s eyes,” he said, and Kate shuddered, remembering the teacher on the ground, his sockets scorched black. “Hold her still.”

August dropped out of a ventilation duct and into the hallway, his uniform smudged with dust and cobwebs. His shoes hit the polished Colton floor, and as he straightened, his relief at being free quickly reverted to fear. This hadn’t been some random prank. Someone had wanted to keep him in that room. But who? And why?