This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1)(72)

Kate nodded. “Works for us,” she said, casting a glance at August. But she couldn’t see his face. It was lost in shadow.





August felt the semi slow, and dragged his head up off the backseat.

The truck was pulling off the UVR strip and onto a second, smaller road. For an instant the road light faded, then it redoubled as a building came into sight.

It was more a fortress than a truck stop. High metal fences topped with razor wire circled the structure, and massive UVRs cut a swathe through the darkness, a moat of light that stretched across the tarmac, erasing every shadow. A sign over the building—which really looked like several buildings stacked together—announced that this place was the Horizon.

The driver stopped in front of the fence and honked once, then waited. Two men stood on either side, weapons in hand. One held an HUV and some kind of machete, the other a machine gun. One weapon for the monsters, August realized, and one for the raiders.

The gates hissed open and the semi rumbled forward into the lot. August heard the metallic grind of gates closing again, and his chest tightened at the thought of being penned in.

“This is as far as we go,” said the driver as he parked. “Plenty of guys here’ll give you a ride back. You got any cash?”

“A little,” said Kate, even though August was pretty sure they were down to spare change. The man chewed his lip, then held out the medallion she’d given him. “Give ’em this, then.”

Kate hesitated. “We had a deal.”

“I was going this way,” said the driver. “Go on. Take it.”

Kate took the pendant and tucked it into her pocket with a quiet thanks. Outside, the night had gotten crisper, the cool air washing over August like a salve. Around them, a dozen trucks were parked in even rows, like black tallies, shadowless against the pavement. His eyes floated closed, his mind sliding into four hundred and twenty-three lines, into echoes ghosted on barren ground, into gunshots and screams and blazing hunger.

And then he was being pulled, and he opened his eyes to see Kate dragging him toward the fluorescent haze of the rest stop.

“Come on,” she said, “I’m starving,” and he tried to laugh but the sound stuck in his throat like glass.

The Horizon was apparently the place to be at 4 A.M. It was like its own small, self-contained city, with a cafeteria and bathrooms with showers and supply stores, the whole space so well lit that it hurt Kate’s eyes.

August had gone to the bathroom, mumbling something about freshening up, and Kate wandered the aisles, trying to pretend she had more than five dollars in her wallet as she perused the shelves. Credit cards she had in abundance, but cards were traceable, and she’d used most of her cash to pay for the motel.

She was thinking about palming a granola bar when she saw the watch. It was hanging on a low display with a few maps and other travel supplies, an ordinary digital watch except for the fact it showed not only time and temperature but coordinates. She didn’t have an address for where she was going. But she had the numbers, latitude and longitude.

38° 29.45

–86° 32.56

Kate pulled the watch from the display as casually as possible, examining it for several long moments before slipping it into the pocket of her coat. Only it wasn’t her coat, but August’s. And when she shoved the watch into the pocket, her fingers came up against something metal and smooth: the stolen cell phone. Her eyes flicked up, but there was no sign of August, and the rest of the patrons were busy pouring too much sugar in their coffee or looking glassy-eyed at the row of television screens mounted along the wall.

Kate drew the cell phone from her pocket. It was off, to save power, and she held the button down until it booted, hoping for a message. Nothing.

She looked around. Maybe they didn’t need to keep going. Maybe they could stay here, in the Horizon. It was warded six ways against monsters. No Malchai would ever get in, and the place was big enough to keep them from looking too conspicuous. Maybe—

And then she heard her name, not coming from August or anyone in the store, but from the television on the wall.

She looked up and saw a picture filling the screen.

A picture of her.

August clutched the sink, his vision sliding in and out of focus.

It was getting worse.

He stared at the mirror, and his reflection stared back, eyes wide and cheeks hollow. His bones were on fire; when he looked down at his hands, he thought he could see them through the skin, not dark like a Malchai’s but glowing white, alive with heat. The fever was burning out the anger, leaving something else in its wake.

He fumbled with the tap and ran his hands under the cold water. Tendrils of steam rose from where the moisture met his skin.

They were so far from the city, and the absence—of people, of monsters, of energy—was making him woozy.

Pack a snack, Leo had said.

August groaned inwardly.

Mind over body.

Mind over body.

Mind over body over bodies on the floor over tallies seared day by day by day into skin until it cracked and broke and bled into the beat of gunfire and the melody of pain and the world was made of savage music, made and was made of, and that was the cycle, the big bang into the whimper and on and on and none of it was real except for August or all of it was real except for him. . . .

He surfaced with a gasp—it was getting harder and harder to stay afloat—and clenched his hands into fists on the rim of the sink. He could feel his nails denting his palms, threatening to break the skin.