This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1)(81)

“Don’t move,” she growled, heart racing, but hands steady. His hat had fallen off, and his hair fell into his eyes, but not before she saw the ruined H on his cheek. Not FTF, then. One of Sloan’s. “Put your hands up.”

“Miss Harker,” he said smoothly, half raising one hand, the other still behind his back. “I’m not here to kill you.”

She cocked the gun. “Hands. Up.”

“There’s no need for this,” said the man, but his eyes were hard, calculating. “Your father sent me.”

Her eyes flicked from the hat on the floor to the scar on his forehead. “Bullshit.”

“It was just a disguise,” he said evenly. “In case the monster came to the door.” An almost arrogant smile. “How else would I know your location, Miss Harker?”

“Why would he send you?”

“He was worried.”

“And the scar?”

He tilted his head, hair falling aside to reveal the mark. “Quick, aren’t you? Now put that down and—”

“Show me your other hand.”

Slowly, smoothly, his hand emerged, holding a cell phone. “See?” he said smoothly.

“Put it on the—”

More tires on gravel. Kate glanced away for an instant, but that was all it took. The man lunged for her weapon, and she swung back toward him as his fingers brushed the barrel, and she fired.

The blast recoiled up her arms, and the sound tore through the room, turning the sound in her good ear to static. It wasn’t a clean shot—the bullet took the man in the neck, burrowed a hole straight through into the wall behind him. The cell phone tumbled from his fingers, skidding across the floor as he clutched his throat, but blood was already spilling between his fingers and down his front, dripping to the wood.

Red.

Not the black blood of monsters, but the vivid red of human life.

His lips moved, but Kate couldn’t hear, and by the time she could, it was too late. He took a single, staggering step back into the wall, and then the life went out of his eyes and he fell, a body before he hit the floor.

Kate couldn’t tear her eyes from the spreading pool of blood.

It should have been like killing a monster.

It wasn’t.

A shiver went through her, and then she heard a ragged breath, and looked up to see August standing at the mouth of the hall, soaking wet and doubled over in pain.

No, not pain.

Hunger.

“Kate,” he gasped. When he dragged his head up, the light was gone. His eyes were wide and black. “What have you done?”





August’s vision tunneled.

The shadows in the room were bending, peeling away from the walls and the floor and tangling together around Kate. Her own shadow writhed around her as she moved toward him.

“I didn’t—he came at me—I thought—”

She reached for his arm, soul pulsing like red light beneath her skin, and he staggered back. Away, away, away.

He tried to make the words but they were stuck in his throat.

It felt like the gravity in the room was tipping, like any second the wall behind Kate would become the ground and he’d fall forward into her. But she just stood there, waiting, and all he had to do was reach out and grab her, dig his nails into her wounded shoulder and drag her soul to the surface and the pain would stop everything would stop and—

“Run,” he pleaded as his flesh burned and his bones sang.

“August, I—”

“Run.”

This time she listened. She staggered backward into the door and sprinted out into the dusk just as a second car pulled up.

Kate skidded to a stop on the gravel drive as a black sedan blocked her way.

A Malchai she didn’t know climbed out of one side.

And Sloan stepped out of the other.

His gaze tracked over her, his mouth drawing into a smile. “Hello, Kate.”

The crashing car. That rictus grin. Those bloodred eyes.

She raised the gun. “What are you doing here?”

He spread his arms, as thin as wire. “I’ve come to take you home.”

“My father didn’t send you.”

“But he did, Kate. Despite all the bad things you’ve been whispering in his ear.”

Her fingers tightened on the gun. “I’m not going anywhere with you. You sent those monsters to kill me, didn’t you?”

Sloan considered her. “And?”

“You said you didn’t do it—”

His smile was vicious. “I never said that.”

Her father’s words. I questioned him myself. We both know he cannot lie.

It hit her like a blow. Sloan couldn’t lie, but Harker could.

“Oslo,” said Sloan, addressing the other monster. “Go get the Sunai. I’ll handle this.”

The Malchai started toward the house, and Kate swung the gun and fired. The silver-tipped bullet buried itself in the monster’s shoulder, and he snarled as black blood stained his shirt. Kate turned the gun back on Sloan, but he was already there, cold fingers vising around her wrist and wrenching the barrel up. “This game again?” he said dryly. “Did you really think you could turn my master against me?” An edge of disdain on the word master. He pulled her toward him, and her free hand went for the lighter in her pocket just before his fingers closed around her throat.