Our Dark Duet (Monsters of Verity #2)(83)

Alice’s red eyes widened. “But she’s mine.”

“She was mine first.”

“You can have whoever you want—”

“I know.”

Alice let out a low snarl before his fingers wrapped around her narrow throat. Pain flared across his ruined palms, and Alice bared her teeth and drove her nails into his arm, but he didn’t let go.

Alice had obviously forgotten. Forgotten what she was, what he was, forgotten that she was not predator to him, but prey.

Drops of black blood slid down her neck where his fingers cut in. He lifted her thin body off the ground.

“Listen to me,” he said smoothly, “and listen well. We are not equals, you and I. We are not family. We are not blood. You are a whelp. A shadow. Your strength is the barest echo of my strength. You continue to exist because I let you. But the scales of my favor are delicate, and if you tip them any more, I will rip your fangs out with my bare hands one by one, and leave you to starve. Do you understand?”

Alice let out a low feral sound before answering.

“Yes—”

He saw her start to form the word Father and tightened his grip.

And then he let go, and Alice slumped to her knees, breathing heavily. When she brought her hand to her throat, Sloan was pleased to see her fingers tremble.

He knelt before her. “Now, now,” he cooed, drawing his gloves back on. “Katherine belongs to me, but if you’re useful, I will share.”

Slowly Alice looked up, her red eyes blazing and her voice hoarse.

“What do you want me to do?”





“How are you feeling?”

Kate peeled her head up from August’s shoulder. She knew from his tone—so cautious, so careful—that he wasn’t talking about Alice anymore.

“I’m still me,” she said, because that was as close to the truth as she could get.

“If Sloan has the Chaos Eater—”

“He does.”

“Then we know where to find it. We’ll get a team together and—”

August’s comm went off in a short shower of static. Kate pulled away as Henry’s voice came over the line.

“I could use some steady hands down here.”

She took a step toward the edge of the roof. Months ago, the city had blazed with light. Now it sprawled in varying degrees of shadow, dotted by patches of solid black.

“I’m on my way,” August said into the comm, starting toward the rooftop door.

“I thought you hated blood,” said Kate.

“I do,” said August. “But life can’t always be pleasant.” He hesitated by the door, obviously waiting for her to follow, but Kate couldn’t bear the claustrophobic Compound. Not yet.

“If it’s all right, I’ll stay up here a little longer.”

August looked uncertain, but she waved her hand at the vast expanse of nothing. “Where am I going to go?” she teased. “Besides”—she cracked a tired smile—“Soro’s less likely to find me up here.”

And I’m less likely to hurt someone.

August relented. “Okay,” he said. “Just—don’t get too close to the edge.”

The door swung shut, and Kate was alone. She didn’t realize she was fraying until she began to unravel.

She sank into a crouch on the rooftop and wrapped her arms around her knees, the image of the monster—of Alice—ghosted behind her eyes. The casualty report, its gruesome murders all marked with an A.

What had she done?

She’d spent the last six months trying to save another city while hers burned, six months hunting monsters while her own hunted here.

Something chimed in the pocket of her gear.

Kate dragged her head up. She’d grabbed the vest off the sublevel wall, and never had a chance to check the pockets. Rooting around, she came up with a palm-sized tablet, standard issue for all the FTFs. Someone must have left theirs in the gear and— Kate’s thoughts broke apart when she saw the message on the screen.

It was titled KOH, the kind of acronym you wouldn’t know, unless it belonged to you.

Katherine Olivia Harker.

And when she tapped the screen, she saw that the message hadn’t been sent to this one tablet. It had been sent to all of them. A blanket broadcast across the FTF feed.

The message was only one line.

Are you afraid of your own shadow?

A.

Kate forgot to breathe.

She was back in the tunnel, watching her shadow escape into the dark and wanting to follow, and this time there was no Soro, no August, nothing to distract her, and she was already on her feet, heading for the door, the stairs, the way down, out. The need burned through her veins like fever, and even without the voiceless presence in her skull pushing her on, she knew that Alice was her making, her monster.

And it was her job to kill it.

Before it killed anyone else.

It turned out Henry didn’t want August to scrub in.

He wanted him to play.

“To the wounded,” he explained, gesturing at the infirmary and the FTFs who’d been caught in the power station blasts, two dozen men and women laid out on cots. The Compound was running low on sedatives. Injuries had grown fairly rare in the FTF—when it came to missions, most either got out in one piece or didn’t get out at all.