“What are you doing here, Edmund?” She presses the knife harder against my skin.
“Hunting deer,” I squeak. “I got lost.”
She narrows her eyes, trying to decide if she believes me or not. Finally, she sighs and lowers the knife from my throat, then slashes the wire tying me to the tree. I fall to the earth with a heavy thump. The Lupine tucks the knife into her belt and gazes down at me.
“It’s Theora,” she says. “My name’s Theora.”
16.
EDMUND
“THEORA,” I SAY QUIETLY, liking how the word sounds on my lips. “That’s a pretty name.”
She blushes slightly. “Thanks.”
Now that I’m not hanging upside down, I can get a better look at her. She’s wearing a floaty yellow dress, strapped at the waist with a chunky belt, and a hunting jacket. Her gray eyes flicker toward something on the ground. I follow her gaze. My gun! Before I can move, she quickly grabs the rifle and takes a cautious step back, keeping her eyes trained on me as I stand up. I should be afraid, but I’m not. In fact, I feel weirdly excited, like there are these little shivers of electricity rushing through my veins.
She holds my gaze, her expression an odd mixture of curiosity and anger. It’s clear she’s just as intrigued by me as I am with her. I’ve never seen anyone like Theora before. She’s obviously a Lupine, but the more I study her, the more irregularities I notice. Her nose is slimmer than a normal Lupine’s, her face is rounder, and her eyes are almond shaped. She looks . . . well, she looks a little bit like me.
“Thanks for cutting me down,” I finally say.
Her brow creases, as though she’s wondering why she did it. “I didn’t want us getting blamed if you got eaten by a Darkling,” she eventually replies.
“We wouldn’t have eaten him,” a girl says to my right.
I flinch, startled at the sound of the girl’s voice. I’d forgotten there were other people here, I was so fixated on Theora. I turn to look at the girl.
If I had a heartbeat, it would’ve stopped.
Standing a few meters away are a boy and two girls. The Lupine boy, who I presume is Kieran, is about fourteen or fifteen years old, based on his boyish features, although he’s very tall. He has a silver streak through his white mane. But it’s not the boy who’s turned my blood to ice; it’s the two girls next to him. The older of the two girls, who looks a year or so older than Kieran, is wearing a green dress, and the younger girl—who is holding Kieran’s hand—is wearing boys’ pants and a gray top. They both have pale skin, rippling black hair and glimmering eyes the color of onyx. I let out a shaky breath.
Darklings.
A dizzying mixture of emotions races through me all at once; it’s hard to grab hold of one and stick with it. It’s thrilling to finally meet some of my own kind, but I’ve been raised to not trust these demons, and rightfully so after one of their kind raped my mom.
“How long have they been back?” I growl.
Kieran steps protectively in front of the two Darkling girls. The younger of the two girls—the one wearing the pants and gray top—glares defiantly at me from behind him.
“A little over six weeks,” Theora answers.
Six weeks? That’s how long the Lupines have been snatching people from our village. It can’t be a coincidence.
“What’s going on?” I say. “Why are you trying to start a war between our species?”
“We’re not. We’re trying to keep the peace,” Theora explains. “I know it sounds like a contradiction, but you don’t understand. Icarus is back.”
Dread creeps over me. Icarus? Why does that name sound familiar? Then it comes to me. He was the Darkling who killed dozens of our people during the Misery.
“When Icarus came back, he started snatching our people to feed on,” Theora explains. “There are so few of us left, Edmund, we had to do something—”
“So you offered him our people instead?” I can imagine Icarus was delighted with this bargain—from everything Grandfather’s told me about the Darklings and what I know from my own . . . desires, they prefer human blood over all others, although they will drink Lupine blood at a push.
“We only took the weak and the sick ones, like that old woman I snatched—”
“It was you who took Mrs. Hope that night?” I say.
Theora nods. “We gave them to Icarus as a gesture of goodwill,” Theora says. “So far it’s kept him happy. He hasn’t attacked your town or ours.”
That explains why Mrs. Hope was left out on a rock like a sacrificial lamb, because that’s exactly what she was.
“Why was Ulrika’s sister found with Mrs. Hope’s body?” I think about the Lupine girl we drowned.
Theora lowers her pale lashes. “She was guarding it, until Icarus turned up.”
I glance at the two Darklings, feeling a surge of anger. The older of the two girls, the one in the green dress, shrinks back, clearly frightened of me. Her angular face has an almost impish quality to it, with a small mouth and narrow chin.
I look back at Theora. “Why didn’t you just come to us and tell us all this?”
“We did,” she says. “The minister gave us permission to take the victims, as long as we kept Icarus’s return a secret from the villagers; he thought it would cause unnecessary panic. That’s why he made us snatch the victims at night; he wanted to make sure the villagers blamed us for the kidnappings, so they didn’t suspect Icarus had returned.” Theora sighs a little. “We thought the rest of the Guild was aware of this arrangement. But they killed Naomi, so I guess not.”
I rake a hand through my hair. My grandfather was behind the kidnappings? He’s been lying to me, to everyone, including the Guild! Why keep Icarus’s return a secret from them? I ball my hands into fists. This is all Grandfather’s fault! If he hadn’t gone behind the Guild’s back, they wouldn’t have gone in search of Mrs. Hope’s body, and the Howler girl, Naomi, wouldn’t have been captured and executed. Alaric wouldn’t have entered the town to retrieve her body, and Eric and Catherine would still be alive. And now Mr. Langdon, Patrick, Harriet and Drew are down at the waterfall, on their way to kill Alaric Bane to avenge Catherine’s and Eric’s deaths, and I’ve been sent on a mission to murder Ulrika. There’s been so much bloodshed. How could he let this happen? Why didn’t he just tell the Guild the truth?
I’m so caught up in my thoughts that I don’t immediately notice that the birds have stopped chirping. In fact the whole forest has become deathly silent. Theora gazes up at the trees, clearly noticing the silence too.
“What’s going on?” she says. “Why’s it so qui—”
She doesn’t have time to complete her sentence as the ground begins to quake, knocking us to our knees. Thunder roars beneath the earth, like a Titan awakening. The Darkling girls huddle together with Kieran as pebbles and small rocks bounce down the forest slopes, striking our arms and backs. Around us the Carrow trees start to shake, the vibrations making their leaves scream like banshees, and I’m terrified they’re going to crash down on top of us.
“What’s happening?” Kieran cries out.
“Earthquake!” I yell over the roar of the ground shaking beneath us.
I duck as more rocks and forest debris bounce over my head, nearly taking it clean off. I’ve never known anything like this. The whole world is shaking, threatening to tear us apart, swallow us whole. Kieran yelps in pain and the air fills with the scent of blood.
“Kieran!”
I lift my eyes in time to see Theora struggle to her feet. She attempts to run over to the wounded boy, but her feet keep slipping out from under her. She’s so focused on reaching him, she hasn’t noticed the boulder crashing through the trees, heading straight toward her.
“Theora! Watch out!” I lunge at her, pushing her out of the way just as the rock thunders past, missing us by inches. We both hit the ground hard and I cry out in agony, unable to breathe, unable to do anything but dig my fingers into the dirt as my body rips apart with pain. All I can think is I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying, the sensation is so intense. I roll off Theora, gasping for air as shivers of electricity pulse through my veins, rushing toward a single point in my chest. I think the pain is never going to end, and I pray to His Mighty to take me, to let the shaking earth swallow me, anything to end this. Then—
It’s over. The forest is still once more.
And through the silence, one sound drums in my ears.
Ba-boom. Ba-boom. Ba-boom.
17.
ASH
“WHAT DO THEY NEED with so many Night Whispers?” Acelot says, tapping the cage filled with the large butterflies. Their silvery-blue wings flutter, agitated.
“Night Whispers?” Natalie says, looking at me. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“Giselle was grinding them up in her kitchen, back in Thrace,” Elijah answers. “She was putting it in her tea. If you drink it, apparently it makes you really relaxed.”
“Maybe they’re using it as an anesthetic for the patients here?” Day suggests.
“I don’t think they care about hurting their patients,” I say flatly, thinking about my dad. My heart pinches and Natalie lets out a small gasp, feeling my pain. That’s the only problem with being Blood Mates—when my heart aches, hers does too. She turns her blue eyes on me. They’re filled with concern. I look away, trying to hold myself together, but I feel like cracked glass ready to shatter at any moment.
“Purian Rose has been forcing his men to take a new drug, called Wings,” Natalie says, gazing up the insects. “I doubt it’s a coincidence that the men who’ve taken it are all wearing silver butterfly medals, which look just like the Night Whisper.”
“Do you think that’s what they’ve been developing here?” Day asks, glancing at me.
“I don’t fragging know!” I snap, and she flinches. “We’re wasting time.”
I turn on my heel and storm toward the door. The others hurry after me. Natalie gives me a worried look and I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. I check to see if the coast is clear before we enter the corridor again. There’s a bloodstain on the floor where Natalie shot the scientist. She gazes at the mark, her face pale. Beetle wipes the stain away with his sleeve before we continue up the next flight of stairs. We approach a single set of glass doors, and it’s immediately obvious this floor is what we’re looking for as in front of us is a large ward filled with hospital beds. Natalie swipes the keycard down the scanner and we enter the room.
The stench hits us first and we all suck in a startled breath. The long ward is painted white, like the labs downstairs, and is lit only by the misty dawn light streaming through the high windows. Hanging from the ceiling are UV lights, designed to burn a Darkling’s skin as a form of torture—we’re severely allergic to UV rays. I shudder, even though the lights aren’t currently on, remembering the holding cell I was kept in when Natalie’s mom questioned me about Chris Thompson’s Haze death a few months ago, back in Black City.
There must be more than two hundred beds in the ward. Shackled to each one is a naked human, Darkling or Bastet. There are even a few unfortunate Lupines who must have gotten on the wrong side of the Sentry guards. They’re all emaciated and stink of urine or worse, their skin covered in seeping bedsores. The humans look the sickest, their skin sallow and sweating, like they’ve got a fever. I wince at the sight of the Darklings, who have had their mouths clamped open and tubes attached to their fangs.
“What are they doing to the Darklings?” Acelot whispers.
“Milking them,” Elijah replies. “They did the same thing to me back in Black City, to extract my venom to use in the Golden Haze.”
Natalie lowers her lashes, ashamed.
“What do they need with so much Darkling venom?” Day says.
No one has an answer for this.
“Come on, we need to hurry. Beetle, Day, you take this side with me,” I say, gesturing to the beds on the right. “The rest of you check the others.”
We split up into our groups and quickly search the faces of the people on the beds.
“Over here!” Elijah exclaims a moment later.
We hurry over to him. A beautiful Bastet woman is chained uncomfortably to the bed by her skinny arms and ankles. There’s only a scratchy-looking blanket separating her gaunt, naked body from the bedsprings and a hard-looking pillow for her head. Asleep on the bed beside her is a middle-aged Lupine with a speckled mane. The word TRAITOR has been carved into his chest. I’m guessing this is Kieran. He stirs, his eyes opening. He looks at me, blinks with surprise, and then gives a lopsided smile.
“You know, you look just like your mom, kid,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say, removing his shackles and helping him up. Acelot drapes a blanket over Kieran’s shoulders, which isn’t easy, given that the Lupine is more than two feet taller than he is.
Elijah kneels beside his mother’s bed. “Mom, it’s me.”
Yolanda turns her honey-colored eyes toward Elijah. A look of confusion and then panic enters them. “Eli?” she rasps, her voice hoarse. “What are you doing here?”
“We’ve come to rescue you.” He unties her binds, and Natalie places her jacket around the woman’s body.
“Is Lucinda here?” I ask Kieran.
“Over there,” he grunts, nodding toward a bed at the end of the room.