I shake my head, hating how vulnerable the memory makes me feel.
“I don’t know,” my sister says, almost a whisper. “It’s just … What’s the point of having fought this long if it all comes down to this? To being trapped here waiting for the horde to find some way across the river? What if this is all there is?”
There’s a little more rustling and then Elias’s voice is clearer, as if he’s pulled away, as if he’s looking at my sister’s face. I imagine him resting a thumb against the perfectly smooth skin of her cheek. “Sometimes life isn’t about the end,” he finally says. “It’s not always about tomorrow and the day after that—what we achieve over the years and how we leave the world. Sometimes it’s about today.”
I hear my sister start to interrupt him but he pushes on. “Any of us could die tomorrow regardless of the horde. We could get sick or be injured or anything else. That’s the risk we take waking up each morning and stepping outside.”
Another pause. Another soft rustle and his voice drops. I close my eyes, recognizing the tone. Hearing the smooth huskiness of his words. “Life can be about you and me and right now. If you want to build something together, we still can. And we can worry about tomorrow when it comes.”
I wait to hear what my sister will say in response, but there’s only silence. And then the soft sigh of a kiss that causes me to jerk my head back and slip quietly out of bed. I tiptoe down the shadows of the hallway, stopping just shy of the main room and peering at them around the corner.
For a moment I stand there staring at the edges of them that blur together. Inside wells a want so fierce that it threatens to consume me. But it’s not because she’s in his arms—it’s because she can be so peaceful. As if she’s not worried she’ll wake up one day and he’ll be gone.
I realize that’s how it always would have been with Elias and me if he’d come home alone. I’d always be waiting for him to leave me again, just as we left my sister in the Forest that day.
In the pale reflection of the morning sun, I watch the small rise and fall of Elias’s chest pressed against my sister’s shoulder. Watch the light trace over her smooth face.
I wonder if she’s ever been cast aside. I wonder what it takes to believe in someone else’s promises.
Clearing my throat, I push myself into the main living area where they’ve been standing. They jolt apart, my sister blushing prettily as Elias stammers good morning.
“We were worried about you,” Elias says, and then my sister gasps, “Your cheek!” Her voice high-pitched, breathy. “What happened?”
I twitch my head, covering my face with my hair. “It’s nothing,” I mumble, moving toward a high table where a loaf of bread’s been cut and laid out. I shove a piece in my mouth, thankful that it means I can’t talk.
Elias comes over, spins me around to face him. Tilting my chin, he lets the light from the window wash over the bruise. “Who hit you?” He grinds the words out between clenched teeth.
I stare at him, astonished he doesn’t know. “Some Recruiter.” It should be obvious, but I can tell he doesn’t want to believe it. I’m furious he didn’t realize this would happen—two women on an island full of brutal Recruiters was bound to lead to trouble.
Finally he turns away, grips the back of a chair so tightly that his knuckles burn a bright white. There’s a woodstove in the corner of the room and a log inside shifts with a thump, sending sparks through the narrow grate.
“Ox promised you’d both be safe,” Elias says. “Do you know the Recruiter’s name? I’ll have to go tell him about this.”
I laugh, tiny bread crumbs lodging in my throat so that I end up coughing. “Ox was there,” I wheeze. “He could have stopped it but he let it happen.” A cruel part of me revels in the way Elias’s face drains of color as he realizes how ill-formed his treachery of Catcher has become.
“I’ll talk to him,” he says.
I shrug. “Ask him about the death cage while you’re at it.”
My sister’s pouring a mug of hot water but freezes when I say this. “Death cage?”
I nod, letting any humor fall from my face. “We’re not safe here. They’re killing people for sport. I saw it happen last night.”
“We’re safer here than in the Dark City,” Elias counters, starting to pace around the room. My sister finishes pouring the tea and with shaking hands pushes it toward me.
I step in front of him, blocking his way. “Did you know about it?” I ask. His expression closes down, turns flat. Astonishment crowds my thoughts.
“You knew,” I whisper. I press my fingers to my temples, not wanting to believe it. Wanting him to deny it. But he merely clenches his jaw and stays silent.
“All the Soulers they’ve been rounding up—that’s what they’re doing to them. It’s wrong. It’s cruel.”
I glance at my sister but she’s just staring at the floor, not saying anything. “And you’re okay with this?”
“No,” Elias growls. My sister winces at his voice. “I’m ashamed. But you have to understand that some of those are good men. I fought with many of them—they’re not all sick like that.”
“They throw people in cages and then cheer when they’re too tired to run! They chant for death!” I scream at him, then catch my breath. Try to calm the spinning anger. “We can’t stay here,” I say, my tone more under control.
“And where do we go?” Elias shouts back, exasperated. He grabs the back of his neck. “You’ve seen the maps. There’s nowhere else.”
“What about the town Abigail grew up in by the ocean?” I ask.
Elias appears confused for a moment before my sister corrects me. “Gabry,” she says. “My name is Gabry.”
My cheeks warm and I stammer, “S-sorry.” She shrugs, looking out the window.
“How would we even get there?” Elias asks. “Do you happen to have some sort of airplane or something? If you haven’t noticed, we’re on an island and it’s surrounded by walls staffed with armed men. Beyond that’s water teeming with the dead. We don’t have a lot of options.”His voice boils with the same frustration that I feel. I throw up my hands. “Look, I don’t know. I don’t know how we get out of here, I just know that we have to. We’re not as safe as we think we are.”
My sister finally speaks up. “She’s right,” she says quietly. I glance at her, at the stubborn set of her jaw, which I know mirrors my own. I could hug her right now, but instead I flash her a small smile, which she returns.
Elias snorts and paces away from us both. “I’ll talk to Ox about the man who hit you and about the death cage. If he wants Catcher to keep supplying the Sanctuary he has to keep us safe—all of us. In the meantime, I don’t want either of you going near the headquarters alone, and preferably not without me. Now isn’t the time to take stupid risks.”
I bristle under the orders as if I haven’t been taking care of myself for the last three years. I’m about to argue when my sister gives me a look and a tiny shake of her head. “We’ll be careful,” she says to Elias, placing her hand over his. At her touch he instantly relaxes, his expression softening.
“I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to you,” he tells my sister. His words are so infused with need and adoration that I cross my arms over my chest at the naked vulnerability of it.
And then he turns to me. “Either of you,” he adds, and I bite the inside of my cheek, uncomfortable being loved so easily.
Chapter XXII
As soon as Elias leaves to go find Ox my sister turns to me and says, “So where do we start looking for a way out of here?”
I almost choke on my tea, I’m so surprised. She’d said she supported the need for us to leave, but I didn’t expect her to be willing to go against Elias without my prompting.
She’s got such a mischievous grin on her face that I can’t help smiling back. “I have no idea,” I admit. “It seems the only real way off the island is by that cable car, but it’s guarded and leads to a platform crawling with Unconsecrated.”
Her forehead wrinkles as she thinks. “No boat and no way to fly, so …” She wraps the leftover bread in a scrap of cloth, combing crumbs off the table into her hand and then tossing them in her mouth.
“That leaves the possibility of tunnels,” I finish.
Her eyes grow wide and she covers her mouth as she coughs. “Dig a tunnel under the river?”
I laugh. “There are already tunnels under the Dark City and the Neverlands—part of the old subway system. There’s a chance they extended them out to this island back before the Return. The only issue is trying to find the entrance, which could be anywhere but is probably in one of the buildings.”
She leans back on the edge of the table, fingers drumming her lips. “So what you’re saying is that we need to scour the island for something that might not exist?”
I nod. Put like that, the task seems impossible.
She sighs. “I’ll get my coat.”
As promised we avoid the headquarters, which is easy since it’s right in the center of the island. Instead we walk side by side as if out for a casual stroll. She tells me stories about growing up with a mother in Vista and I tell her anecdotes about Elias. For a few brief moments, life seems almost normal.
I can feel the eyes of the Recruiters stationed along the walls following us, though. They shout warnings to the boats bobbing in the river, evacuees from the Dark City on board begging for help. Unconsecrated that have washed ashore moan and scratch at the thick barrier. One of the Recruiters nicks his finger with the barb of an arrow and taunts the plague rat with it before putting the creature out of its misery.
I keep my fists in my pockets, wishing I had the comforting weight of a machete against my hip. Instead I have to make do with a small switchblade Elias found in our flat. Better than nothing.
Most of the buildings on this end of the island are abandoned, the Recruiters relegated to the barracks tightly clumped around the headquarters. We slip inside the first empty high-rise unnoticed and circle the main floor until we find stairs leading down to the darkened basement.
We stare at each other until finally I volunteer to go first. I trail my fingers along the cold wall as I carefully make my way down the steps one at a time, my surroundings gradually swallowed by darkness until I’m squinting for the barest hint of light.
“Maybe I should go find a lantern. I’m sure there’s one left in one of the flats upstairs,” my sister says, and she leaves me alone, stomping back up to the main floor.
I sit on the step, press my forehead to my knees and enjoy the chilled silence. A small gust of wind blows through the open door and over my back, rustling the ends of my hair. My toes tap a rhythm on the inside of my shoe, thumping in tempo with my heart.
It’s difficult to tell how much time has passed. I count my breaths slow and sure, weaving them into the beat of my toes and urging my body to relax.
And then something shuffles below me where the light doesn’t reach. A low rustle and slide like something being dragged across the floor. I jump up, jamming my shoulder against the railing, which throws me off balance.
My arms pinwheel the air for something to hold on to and just as I start to fall I finally grasp the railing, feeling it slide through my hands as my feet slip out from underneath me.
The metal-rimmed edge of the concrete steps slams into me as I tumble, pain digging into my hip and shins until I’m able to get a grip on the railing and stop my fall. I gasp for breath, trying to get my feet back under my body in the darkness, when I feel something brush my ankle.
I scream and kick out, hoping it’s some sort of animal but knowing that it’s not worth taking the chance. I drag myself up the stairs by the railing with one hand, and pull the knife from my pocket with the other, all the while screaming “Abigail!” hoping she’s close enough to hear.
Something pulls me back to the darkness, yanking at my pants, and I kick again, twisting back and swiping the knife through the air even though I have no idea where to aim.
Just then a bright light appears at the top of the stairs and my sister comes sprinting toward me. She takes the steps two at a time, the circle of her lantern’s gleam widening until I can see what I’m fighting: the torso of an Unconsecrated man, nothing left below his waist and a long gash across his neck as if someone tried to decapitate him but was unable to sever the spinal column.
Long skinny fingers twine around my foot, trying to pull me back and himself forward. He tugs and jerks, his grip so tight it’s almost impossible to shake loose.
I lean against the stairs and kick at his face with my free foot again and again, feeling the crunch of his nose, watching his eye socket cave into his skull, the eyeball inside squishing like an overripe grape.
But still he fights—mouth opening and closing, sharp broken teeth glistening.
My sister makes it to my side and swings the lantern high before bringing it down hard on the Unconsecrated man’s arm. Glass crashes and shatters. Flaming oil spills out, coating his body and spraying my pants. Quickly I beat out the embers on me before they can burn through the material and blister my skin.
The Unconsecrated man isn’t so lucky. Flames devour his hair, eating away at his tattered old clothes and flesh. I gag at the stench of black smoke roiling up the stairs as I grab my sister’s hand and haul her back up to the daylight.