This Savage Song (21 page)

They ran.

As fast as they could, the last tendrils of music and light trailing behind them like streamers, dissolving too quickly into the dark. The music had kept the Corsai at bay, but they were patient, they were waiting, and as soon as the song gave way, they were on them, surging forward in a mass of claws and teeth.

August kept his eyes ahead, and Kate slashed with the flashlight, trying to keep them back as they raced for the subway car. They reached the door hand in hand moments before the first monsters reached them.

August leaped up the steps, but Kate stumbled beside him, letting out a cry before he could haul her up. He threw his arms around her, shielding her body with his own as the Corsai hit the train car in a wave of
breakruinbone
. They hissed and tore at the air, claws raking the steel, but they wouldn't touch August, so they couldn't reach Kate.

“The door!” he shouted as a creature tried to tear the violin from his hands. “Hurry!”

Kate was shaking and pale, but she twisted in his arms, curled her fingers around the door, and pulled.

The metal slid sideways with a resistant groan. They tumbled in and tried to force it closed. A Corsai's clawed arm stretched through, but when August pressed his hand against the shadowed flesh the thing recoiled as if burned, and the door ground shut.

Kate and August stood in the darkened car, gasping for breath as the shadows swarmed outside, gnashing and throwing themselves against the Plexiglas, but the walls were striped with iron, and soon the monsters shrank back into the tunneled dark. Their scent lingered, a mix of ash and damp decay.

Kate collapsed onto a bench seat. “You were right,” she said. “Worst plan ever.”

“Told you,” said August, sinking onto his knees. He examined the violin, wincing at the sight of the large scratch running down the wood. He dug around in the case until he found the pouch of new strings,and set to work by the light of Kate's HUV beam.

“Why the violin?” she asked, her voice shaking.

August didn't look up. “Sunai use music to bring a soul to surface,” he said, freeing the broken strings.

“I get that,” she said. “But why a violin? Can you use
anything?” She drummed fingers on the subway seat. “If you made a beat, would that count as music?”

August shook his head. “Hold the light a little higher.” He hooked the first string and threaded it through the peg.

“We each have a song,” he explained. “A piece of music that belongs only to us, something we're born with, like a fingerprint.” He tightened the string. “Leo can use almost anything to play his song—guitar, piano, flute—but Ilsa's doesn't work with anything except her voice. And my song only comes out right when I use this.” He plucked at the one taut string. “My sister thinks it's about beauty. That our music correlates to the first beautiful sound we heard. I heard a violin. She heard someone singing.”

“And Leo?”

August hesitated. By Ilsa's logic, Leo must have found beauty in everything. But he couldn't imagine his brother seeing the world as anything but broken. Something to be fixed.

“Who knows . . .”

He worked in silence for a few moments, replacing the second and third strings.

“There's a big difference, you know,” said Kate, “between can't and won't.”

“What?” He glanced over. Even in the near-black car, she looked pale.

“When you took my hand, you told me not to worry. You didn't say you
wouldn't
hurt me. You said you
couldn't
.” August turned his attention back to the violin. This wasn't the time.

“I've seen footage,” she continued, a strange tremor in her voice, “of Leo reaping. He touches people and takes their souls. But when you touched me, nothing happened. Why?”

August hesitated, tightening the final string. “We can only take the souls of those who've harmed others.”

“I've harmed people,” said Kate defensively, as if it were some kind of badge.

“Not like that.”

“How do you know?”

“Because your shadow doesn't have a life of its own, and your soul doesn't glow red.”

Kate went quiet for a few moments, then said, “What do your tallies really stand for?”

August plucked each string, tuning it by ear. “Days.”

He returned the violin to its case, and Kate turned the flashlight off, plunging them both into the pale red glow of the box lights on the tunnel walls. “Wouldn't want it to burn out,” she whispered.

August didn't argue. He sat on the floor across from her, his back against the seat, and rubbed the tallies on his wrist. Even lost inside the song earlier,
he'd felt the latest mark, a new day, a line of heat against his skin.

“How many?” she asked.

“Four hundred and twenty-two.”

“Since what?”

He swallowed. “Since I last fell.”

“What do you mean,
fell
?”

“It's what happens if Sunai stop feeding. They . . . go dark. They lose the ability to tell the difference between good and bad, monster and human. They just kill. They kill everyone. It's not even about feeding, when that happens. It's just . . .” he trailed off with a shudder. He didn't say that every time Sunai went dark, they lost a piece of their souls—if they
had
souls—a part of what made them feel human. That every single time they fell, something didn't get back up.

“What does it look like,” pressed Kate, “when you go dark?”

“I don't know,” he said shortly, “I can't exactly see myself.”

“But you said, before, that you'd rather die than let it happen again.”

No hesitation. “Yes.”

Kate's eyes danced in the low light. “How many times has it happened, August?”

Her questions were easier to bear when he couldn't
really see her. “Twice,” he said. “Once, when I was much younger, and then . . .”

“Four hundred and twenty-two days ago,” she finished for him. “So what happened?”

August hesitated. He didn't talk about it. He never talked about it. There was no one to talk
to
. Henry and Emily didn't understand—couldn't understand—and Leo thought the soul was a distraction, had burned it away on purpose, and Ilsa, well, the last time she went dark, she apparently took a chunk of V-City with her.

“I stopped eating,” he said at last. “I didn't want to do it anymore. Didn't want to feel like a monster. Henry and I got into a fight, and I stormed out. Spent most of the day wandering the city in a daze, stuck in my own head.” His eyes drifted shut as he remembered. “I was finally heading back when a fight broke out and I—you know when you're hungry, and the smell of food is intoxicating? When you're famished, and it's all you can think of? I could smell the blood on their hands, and then . . .” His voice wavered. “I remember feeling so empty. Like there was a black hole inside, something I had to fill and couldn't. No matter how many people I killed.” The words left his throat raw and his fingers shaking. “So yes, I'd rather die than face that again.”

Kate had gone quiet.

August dragged his eyes open. “What, no quip?”

She was slumped on the bench, her eyes closed, and he thought for a second she'd just nodded off, but her arm, which had been crossed over her stomach, had fallen into her lap, and it was slick with something blackish and wet.

Even in the dim car, he knew it was blood.

“Kate.”

August scrambled over, knelt in front of her, and took her face in his hands. “Kate, wake up.”

“Where are you?” she murmured.

“I'm right here.”

“No . . . ,” she mumbled, “not how it works . . .” but she was already sliding back into unconsciousness.

“I'm sorry,” he said, right before he squeezed her wounded shoulder. Her eyes flashed open as she let out a cry and kicked him in the chest. He stumbled backward, rubbing his ribs as she muttered, “I'm
okay
.”

“Why didn't you say anything?” he asked, squinting to see the damage in the low light.

Kate shook her head, and he couldn't tell if that was an answer or if she was trying to shake off the haze.

He grabbed the flashlight. “Let me see,” he said,
snapping it on, and then wishing he hadn't. Her stomach was slick with blood.

“I'll be okay . . . ,” she said, but the words were dulled, and she didn't fight him as he guided her onto her back along the bench, only swore when he peeled the shirt up from her hip. He told himself the cussing was a good sign; it meant she was conscious, but when he saw the wound, he still cringed. Two razor-sharp gashes—claw marks—ran from the curve of her ribs to her navel. They hadn't torn anything vital, but the cuts were deep, and she'd lost a lot of blood.

“Listen to me,” he said, pulling off his coat. “You need to stay awake.”

She almost laughed, a shallow chuckle cut short by pain.

He tore the lining from the Colton jacket. “What's so funny?”

“You're a really shitty monster, August Flynn.”

He pressed the lining against Kate's stomach, eliciting another string of curses. Then he got up and scoured the car for an emergency kit.

“Talk to me, Kate,” he said, searching. “Where are you?”

She swallowed, then said, “On a lake.”

“I've never been to a lake.” He found a first-aid box mounted behind a set of benches on the back wall and,
returning with some disinfectant spray and some gauze, knelt beside her. “Tell me what it's like.”

“Sunny,” she said sleepily. “The boat is rocking and the water's warm and blue and full of”—she hissed at the disinfectant— “fish.”

“You need stitches,” he said, cinching the gauze around the wound.

“No problem,” she said, a fresh edge in her voice. “We can just pop up to street level and over to the nearest hospital. I'm sure no one will notice that Kate Harker and a Sunai
—owwww,
” she cut off as August put pressure on her stomach.

“We don't need a hospital,” he said calmly. “But we do need a suture kit.”

“If you think I'm letting you near me with a needle and thread—”

“My father is a surgeon.”

“Stop calling him that,” she snapped, leveraging herself up to a sitting position with a hiss. “He's not your father. He's a human, and you're a monster working for him.”

August went still.

“What? Nothing to say now? Oh that's right, you can't tell lies.”

“Henry Flynn is my family,” he snarled. “And I'm willing to bet he's been a better father than yours.”

“Fuck off.” Kate slumped back, breathing through gritted teeth. “Why would you even
want
to be human? We're fragile. We die.”

“You also
live
. You don't spend every day wondering why you exist, but don't feel real, why you look human, but can't be. You don't do everything you can to be a good person only to have it constantly thrown in your face that you're not a person at all.”

He stopped, breathless.

Kate looked at him hard. He waited, gave her a chance to speak, but she didn't. He shook his head, turned away.

“August,” she started.

And then a loud hum filled the air.

Electricity crackled through the tunnels and Kate and August both looked up sharply as the power was reconnected, and the lights in the subway car flickered and came on.

“Oh no,” said August at the same time Kate said, “Finally.”

She looked paler in the full light of the car, the blood a violent red where it dotted the metal floor and streaked the bench.

“We have to go,” said August, getting to his feet. “Now.” He pointed up when he said it, and Kate looked at the ceiling and noticed the series of small red dots. Surveillance cameras.

“Shit,”
she muttered, hauling herself to her feet with the help of a pole. She let out a hiss of pain, and August started back toward her but she cut him off. “Just get the door.”

He slung the violin onto his shoulder, and pried the train door open. The tunnel beyond wasn't fully lit, but bands of UVR light now ran like tracery down the length of the walls, and the Corsai were gone.

August offered Kate a hand down from the train car but she didn't take it, and he had to catch her arm when she landed and nearly fell. She shook him off and started down the tunnel toward the nearest station, careful to keep her feet on the wood between the rails. August picked his way behind her, ears tuned for the sound of moving trains, but the service clearly hadn't started yet, or if it had, it hadn't reached them. Where were they? How far had they made it in the night? Not to the end of the line, that much was clear, but he could hear the pulse of the city fading with every step.

They reached the nearest station and climbed off the tracks and onto the platform—Kate finally let him help—as the grates across the subway doors above began to grind open, and people spilled in.

They were the only ones moving up the stairs instead of down, and August looped his arm gingerly around her, remembering the way they'd knitted together the
night before, turning themselves from two people into a couple. But it felt different now, with Kate leaning into him a little too hard, his jacket pulled tight around her, and his bloodstained hand shoved in the pocket, and he felt the eyes lingering instead of sliding off.

People shook rain from their coats and folded their umbrellas as they descended from the street, and August nicked one from a newsstand near the base of the steps, opening it over them as they climbed the stairs toward the promise of morning light.

As soon as they reached the surface, August stopped.

Buildings rose around them, but they weren't the massive skyscrapers that filled the red. These were shorter, shoulder to shoulder, but squat enough that they could see the sky over the rooftops. There were even trees here and there. Not massive stretches, like at Colton, but a row along the street, each with its own little fence. The city center carved its outline in the distance, and from here, North and South didn't look so different; he couldn't see the Seam.

Kate shivered against him, and August dragged his attention back, eyes lighting on a pharmacy across the street.

“Stay here,” he said, passing her the umbrella. She offered a weak nod, but said nothing.

He held his hands out in the rain, rinsing off as much
of the blood as he could before he went inside. He dug a handful of folded bills from his pocket—he didn't carry much, only what Henry made him keep on hand in case of emergency—and made his way up and down the aisles, avoiding the gaze of the security cameras as he grabbed a suture kit, antiseptic, painkillers, adhesive strips.

His fingers itched to call his father, to let Henry know he was all right, that he was trying to
help
. But what if Leo answered? Or worse, what if his brother was on his way? What would he do if he found Kate?

“There's a clinic down the road,” said the woman behind the counter.

August looked up. “What?”

She nodded at the supplies, and he realized how obvious they were. He should have added other things, to make it all look less suspicious, but he didn't have much cash. He fumbled for a version of the truth. “Friend took a fall,” he said. “Doesn't want her family to find out.”

The woman nodded absently and bagged the supplies. “Overprotective?”

“Something like that.” August paid, and pulled up his collar as he headed back out into the rain. He looked up, expecting to see Kate waiting beside the subway entrance where he'd left her.

But she wasn't there.

“No, no, no,” murmured August as he jogged across the street, holding his breath until he reached the exact place she'd been, as if that would somehow make her reappear. The puddle at his feet was stained red. Rain soaked into his hair and dripped from his case as he spun in a circle, resisting the urge to call out her name. Umbrellas swirled around him as people came and went.

And then, at last, he saw her, standing beneath an awning down the block. Relief washed over him. The force of it caught him off guard.

“I thought you'd left,” he said, jogging over.

Kate gave him a long look and said, “I thought about it,” before her eyes went to the bag of supplies in his hand. “But this sounds like
so
much fun.”