Black City (33 page)

He tilts my face up to look into his.

“I’m so sorry I hurt you, Natalie. I made a mistake, a really stupid, terrible mistake, and I don’t expect you to ever forgive me. I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

“Then why did you bring me here?”

“I just wanted to tell you something.”

“What?” I whisper.

He runs a light finger over my lips, leaving a tingling trail across my skin.

“I love you,” he says. “I love the way you bite your bottom lip when you’re nervous. I love the annoying way you rattle mints against your teeth when you eat them. I love how brave you are. Those are the reasons I love you, Natalie, not because you have a Darkling heart.”

“You really hurt me,” I say.

“I know,” he replies.

“If you really loved me, then why did you kiss her?” I challenge.

He sits on the dewy earth, and I kneel down next to him. He doesn’t look at me.

“I kissed her because she’s my Blood Mate, and that means I’m drawn to her. I’m not going to lie. There’s an attraction—not as strong as I feel for you, but it’s there, and I was confused by what it meant,” he says. “I needed to know how I felt about her. I wanted to know if what you and I had was real.”

“And is it?” I ask in a whisper, my heart racing.

He tentatively touches my knee with his fingertips, and it sends tingles of pleasure through my skin. I don’t move his hand away.

“Yes. It’s real to me.” He looks at me and in that moment he seems so broken, so vulnerable. “Was it ever real for you?”

I pluck a few strands of grass from the earth. “I don’t know,” I finally say, and he frowns. “Face it, Ash, we barely know anything about each other. I don’t even know what your favorite color is!”

“Green,” he says.

I let out a soft laugh. “See? I would’ve guessed black.”

“How about you?”

“Silver,” I reply.

“What else do you want to know?” he asks.

“What’s your favorite book?”

“Easy.
The Wooden Boy.
”

I raise my eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. He wanted to be a real boy—I could relate to that. All I ever wanted was to be a normal kid, to have a heartbeat like everyone else.” He looks at me with eyes that glimmer like stars, a half smile on his lips, and my heart fumbles.

“It must have been really hard for you,” I say.

He nods. “Ask me something else. Anything you want to know, I’ll tell you.”

“Tell me a secret,” I say.

He studies me for a second, then looks at the ground, uncertain. I’m not sure he’s going to tell me anything. “My dad’s hiding my mom in the crypt of our church,” he says quickly.

I inhale sharply. Harboring a Darkling is a capital offense. To tell me—the Emissary’s daughter—something like that proves he really trusts me. I lace my fingers through his.

“I won’t tell a soul, I promise,” I say.

He lightly squeezes my hand.

“Tell me one of your secrets,” he says softly.

I bite my lip. Now is the perfect time to tell him about the Haze.
Trust him.

“Ash, I found out something about the Haze. The Sentry—”

“What the fragg is going on here?” a furious voice booms behind us, making the crows in the rafters scatter.

Sebastian stands in the entranceway of the ruins, his face contorted with rage.

I snatch my hand away from Ash.

“Go away, Seb. This is none of your business,” I say.

He stares daggers at Ash, then turns his eyes to me. There’s nothing in them except hate.

“Why do you continue to humiliate me like this?” Sebastian says to me. “I loved you, I promised you the world, and yet you still choose that
thing
over me.”

“Stop saying you love me. You don’t!” I say.

“She who lies with the beast will be cast into the pits of hell,” Sebastian says, quoting the Book of Creation. “For she who has tasted Sin will be forever drunk on its poison.”

“Give the Purity crap a rest,” I say. “If I’m a sinner, then so are you! You got that Darkling girl pregnant, or did you fail to mention that to Purian Rose?”

Ash looks at me, startled. “He has a twin-blood child?”

“He made her have an abortion,” I reply.

Ash sucks in a breath.

“The creature was an abomination,” Sebastian says.

“It was a baby, and you killed it to save your own skin,” I say.

Sebastian’s hand curls around the hilt of his sword. Ash steps protectively in front of me.

“Sebastian, are we hunting, or what?” Kurt calls out from the cemetery.

A cruel smile plays on Sebastian’s lips. “Yes, we’re hunting.”

He draws his sword and points it threateningly at us. “You’re coming with me.”

29

ASH

SEBASTIAN MARCHES US OUT
of the ruins, his sword at our backs. I slide a look at Natalie and try and get as much meaning into my eyes as possible, letting her know we’ll be okay. She nods.

Claw Neck raises a dark brow at us as we join the other cadets, who are all dressed in their Tracker uniforms. We stand out like sore thumbs in our civilian clothes.

“I found a few strays,” Sebastian explains, sheathing his sword.

Claw Neck doesn’t push the matter. He addresses the cadets.

“Today will be a simple search-and-collect mission,” he says. “We’ve had a tip-off that a Darkling is being hidden in a house on City End. We’ll check the house and hopefully capture us a nipper.”

One of the cadets makes a disgruntled sound.

“It may not be an exciting mission, but this type of hunt is a typical day’s work, and you need to learn how to do it,” Claw Neck continues. “And trust me when I say none of you maggots are ready to take on a nest of Wraths.”

They usher us through the cemetery toward City End, which is brimming with people heading home from work. Sebastian stands behind me and Natalie, to be sure we can’t make a run for it. We reach the house, an unassuming Cinderstone building with a yellow-painted door. Claw Neck kicks it down.

“Tracker inspection!” he says, then turns to us. “Never knock. It gives them time to run.”

Sebastian points his sword at me.

“Go inside,” he says.

I hesitate.

“Just do what he says,” Natalie whispers.

We enter the house. It’s small and shabby, with paint peeling off the walls and threadbare rugs. I try and think of a way to get out of this, but I can’t. The cadets move to surround a husband and wife, who are huddled on the floor in the tiny living room. They look up in fright when they see Claw Neck and Sebastian.

“You have no right to be here!” the husband says, his voice breaking. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”

“We’ve had a tip-off that you’re harboring a Darkling, so shut it,” Claw Neck says. “Search the property,” he orders two of the cadets.

They break off from the group and start tearing the house apart, knocking over furniture, checking cupboards. One of the cadets tries opening the utility closet. The door is locked. The husband and wife flash a panicked look at each other.

“Open it,” Sebastian orders the wife.

“No . . .”

He draws his sword.

“Just do it,” the husband urges her.

The woman scrambles to her feet, gets the keys and opens the door. Perched on the washing machine is a box of Synth-O-Blood.

“It fell off the back of a Sentry truck. We were going to sell it on Chantilly Lane,” the husband says quickly. “I was laid off. We have bills to pay.”

“Just take it,” the wife says, sitting down beside her husband. “Please, that’s everything. We have nothing else to hide.”

The husband subconsciously glances at the rug by his feet.

The gesture doesn’t go unnoticed by Claw Neck. He kicks the rug away to reveal a trapdoor.

A collective hush descends on the room.

“It’s just an old storage room,” the wife says.

Claw Neck opens the trapdoor and sticks his arm inside.

“There’s nothing down there, I swear,” she stammers.

Claw Neck grins.

The wife grasps her husband’s hand. “It’s empty, I promise!”

“Then what’s this?” Claw Neck lifts a young boy from the hole like a rabbit from a magician’s hat.

My heart stops.

The boy’s a twin-blood, like me.

He’s pale and skinny as a worm, with shoulder-length rippling hair. He stares at me, and for a fraction of a second, he smiles, and I know what he’s thinking:
I’m not alone anymore.
Then that brief look of solidarity is replaced with betrayal. I want to tell him that I’m not really a Tracker, but that would be a lie. For the first time, I have to admit it to myself; I’m a traitor.

He’s thrown on the wooden floor.

“What have we here?” Sebastian says, nudging the boy with his foot.

“Leave him alone!” I growl.

Sebastian looks at the husband and wife. “So which one of you is the cheating race traitor?”

The husband glances at his wife.

The boy whimpers.

Claw Neck grins maliciously at me, offering his sword. “Show us whose side you’re really on, Fisher. Kill the nipper.”

“No!” I say.

“Don’t hurt him. He’s just a little boy,” the wife says.

The twin-blood boy peers up at me with sparkling eyes.

I step back. “I won’t do it.”

Claw Neck raises his sword.

“Mama!” the twin-blood boy cries.

“Please don’t!” the wife begs.

With a swift movement, Claw Neck slices the woman’s throat.

Several of the cadets scream. Natalie buries her head in my chest.

“Just take the damn nipper!” the husband says, his face stained with his wife’s blood.

Claw Neck drags the boy outside, and we race after them.

“Let him go!” I lunge for Claw Neck.

Sebastian blocks me off and throws me to the ground. I hit the cobbles beside the boy.

“Leave them alone!” Natalie yells.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” I say to the boy, taking his hand.

Sebastian presses his sword into the back of my neck.

Panic surges in me.

“Who should die?” he says to me.

He lifts his sword and points it at the twin-blood boy instead.

“Seb, don’t!” Natalie cries out.

“Who’s it going to be, Fisher? You or him?” he says.

The boy’s hand tightens around mine. Sweat trickles down his brow, dripping into his sparkling black eyes. Eyes just like mine.

“Me,” I say.

“No!” Natalie shouts.

Sebastian raises his sword and swings. I shut my eyes, waiting for the pain. There’s the gruesome squelch of metal on flesh. Something hot and sticky splashes over my face and hair.

I open my eyes. The twin-blood boy’s lifeless eyes stare back at me, asking just one question: Why me?

I smash my fists against the cobbles as grief rips through me. Sebastian never intended to let the boy live. Natalie rushes over and helps me to my feet.

“Why did you do it?” she says to Sebastian.

He gives her a cold, frightening smile. “Because I can.”

I flash my fangs at Sebastian, wanting nothing more than to rip his fragging head off.

“Don’t,” she whispers to me.

“That’s what happens to race traitors,” he says to Natalie, then waves his men on.

One of the female cadets turns to her friend, her voice shaking. “Do you think the other cadets are doing this?”

The other cadets . . .

My heart stops beating.

My mind flashes back to Sebastian’s conversation with Gregory at Mr. Tubs’s and how he was being sent on a hunt in the Rise.

“Mom!” I say, terror rushing through me.

I grab Natalie’s hand and break out into a sprint, dragging her along with me. She struggles to keep up, stumbling more than once.

“Stop! Please . . . ,” Natalie pants.

I don’t have time to wait. I scoop her up in my arms and keep running. I don’t stop until we reach my house.

“Dad!” I yell, running down to the crypt.

But Gregory is already standing in the center of the room, his sword drawn. Even in the dim light, I can see the line of blood oozing down the metal blade. Next to him is Dad, hunched over a skeletal figure on the floor. I don’t move. I can’t.

Dad stands up and walks toward me.

“Son,” he whispers.

That’s when I see her face, partially covered by a few limp strands of dark hair. I see past the rotting flesh, the thin black lips, and picture the woman she used to be. Her head is tilted to one side as if she’s asleep.

Mom.

“How
could
you?” Natalie says to Gregory. “You monster!”

I charge at Gregory, slamming him against the wall. His feet kick at thin air as my hand clenches his skinny throat.

“Ash, let him go. You’re not a killer. Your mother wouldn’t want this,” Dad says.

Gregory’s fingers claw at my hands.

“You’re killing him,” Natalie says, trying to pull me off him.

“Why?” I scream at him.

“It’s . . . your fault . . . Chris is dead,” Gregory gasps.

“I didn’t give him that Golden Haze, Linus did,” I snarl.

“But he . . . asked you first, and you said no. If you’d given him the Haze . . . he wouldn’t have . . . he wouldn’t have gone to Linus. It’s your fault he’s dead,” Gregory says, his eyes filled with pain.