Nightstruck (33 page)

And yet, as illogical as it was, I couldn't help the way my insides cringed at the memory and at Aleric's words.
It's your fault,
an evil voice whispered in my mind.
Your fault, and your responsibility to fix it, no matter what it takes.

“Did you keep count of the number of times Billy struck your father?” Aleric asked. “Did you ever ask yourself how much of it he was conscious for? The pain he must have suffered.… Do you remember the sound of him screaming?”

“Shut up!” I screeched. It wasn't just my hands and arms that were shaking now; it was my entire body. I was drenched in sweat despite the cold, and I could hardly get enough oxygen into my lungs. Every detail of that terrible night was burned into my memory forever. Most of the time, I was able to shove the memories away into a dark corner, but not tonight. Not with Aleric hammering at me.

“All because Piper wanted you to come play with her,” Aleric finished, with some satisfaction.

He'd poked and prodded and pushed me to the breaking point, but I like to think I wouldn't have gone over without the final, unbearable nail he drove into my coffin.

A scream split the night. A scream of terror and pain. A scream I could not fail to recognize. The scream of my father dying while I stood at the window and watched.

I didn't decide to pull the trigger. It just happened.

And there was another, entirely different scream.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

My nose stung with the acrid scent of burnt gunpowder, and my ears rang. Piper's eyes were wide and startled, her mouth open in shock as she looked down at herself.

The bullet had hit in the center of her torso, right around the base of her sternum. She clapped both hands to the wound, and blood overflowed her fingers, steaming in the frigid air.

The gun dropped from my nerveless fingers, and I stifled a sob with both hands as I blinked to clear the tears that were blurring my vision.

I'd done it. I'd shot her. Shot Piper, my best friend.

She shuddered and staggered, her knees visibly shaking as she tried to stay on her feet. She turned her gaze not to me, but to Aleric.

“Why?” she asked, then made a little sound of pain as her knees gave out and she dropped to the pavement on her butt. She was still staring at Aleric in shocked disbelief.

“I lied,” Aleric said, with no hint of regret in his voice. “She wasn't fully primed to become one of us yet. She needed another push.” He looked at me, his face glowing with satisfaction and the thrill of victory. “Think about this, Becket: Why did you shoot her?”

I wouldn't have answered him even if I'd been capable of speech. There wasn't a whole lot of light, but I could see that Piper's coat was getting drenched with blood despite her attempts to stanch the flow. I could also see that her face was ghostly pale and that her eyes were no longer that unsettling, inhuman shade of green.

“Did you shoot her when I pointed out she was a threat to those around you, as you planned?” Aleric continued. “Nope. That wasn't it. When did you pull the trigger, Becket?”

“Shut up!” I snapped. I found my feet moving me forward, toward Piper, who looked so pale and shocked and frightened. I had no idea if that bullet wound was fatal or not, my knowledge of anatomy not precise enough to know if I'd hit anything vital, but I knew it didn't look good. And although I couldn't help being glad to see Piper's eyes turn back to normal, I also couldn't help thinking that was a bad sign.

“You didn't shoot in some noble, selfless act of sacrifice. No, you pulled that trigger when I reminded you what happened to your father. You killed Piper not to save the lives of others, but in anger, in fury, as revenge for what she'd done. There's nothing even remotely noble about that.”

“Shut the hell up, Aleric!” Piper said. Her eyes met mine, and I saw nothing in them except the old Piper, the Piper who'd been my best friend for years. “Run, Becket,” she urged. “Get inside.” Her face twisted in a grimace of pain.

I'd been so numb I hadn't even noticed my feet moving, but now I dropped down to my knees beside her, putting my hand over hers and pushing. “Put pressure on it,” I said in a raspy whisper. “That's what you're supposed to do, right?”

Piper shook her head and made a weak effort to pull away. The effort cost her, and she groaned. “Forget about me,” she said when she could find her voice again. “You have to get inside. Now!” She sagged down to the pavement, hands still pressed to the wound as she curled her body around it.

“We have to get you to a hospital,” I said. Ignoring the blood that now coated my hands, I felt around in my coat pockets, searching for my cell phone. It might take longer than Piper had, to get an emergency crew over here, but I had to try.

“Forget me!” Piper said more sharply. She reached out and grabbed my wrist just as my fingers touched my cell phone. “Get inside. Hurry. You can't be outside during the Transition. Not in the state you're in.”

“Huh?”

“The Transition. It's like a riptide. When the sun comes up and the magic recedes, it pulls at you if you're vulnerable. Usually you'd be strong enough to resist, but not now. Not after this. You'll be Nightstruck for sure.”

“Would that be so terrible?” Aleric asked. He was standing nearby, looking down at the two of us, with a gloating smile on his face. “If you join us, you won't feel the least bit bad about having shot and killed your best friend in a fit of anger.”

I'd left the gun where I'd dropped it, otherwise I might have fired off a couple of shots at him right then. They wouldn't have hurt him, but at least it would have given me a hint of an outlet for some of the rage and horror that were building inside me.

“Run,” Piper said, more weakly. “Go. Leave me. You can't help me, and you don't have much time. Dawn's coming.”

She blinked rapidly and her breath hitched. Then her eyes slid closed and her hands went limp.

“Piper!” I sobbed, touching her shoulder but not daring to shake her for fear I'd hurt her worse. “Stay awake! Please!”

I knew she wasn't dead. Not yet, at least. But the pool of blood that had formed beneath her continued to grow larger. It was too much blood. Even if I could get paramedics here at the snap of my fingers, Piper was doomed. I'd suspected as much the moment the green had faded from her eyes, could think of no reason why the night might let her go except that she was of no use to it anymore.

A sob tore from my throat, and I stifled it with my blood-coated hand. I had come here to kill Piper, but I realized now that I had never truly expected to succeed. Deep down I'd been convinced I wouldn't be able to pull the trigger, and I'd never really considered what I'd have to live with if I did it.

But only if the night didn't take me.

If I wanted the pain to go away, if I wanted to escape the guilt that was already choking me, all I had to do was sit here by Piper's side and wait.

What did I have to go home to? I was trapped in the city, cut off from my mother, my sister, my remaining family. My house was unlivable and would be for the foreseeable future. My father was dead. Luke couldn't forgive me for getting his mom hurt. And I had murdered my best friend. Why on earth would I want to go back to all that?

I was tempted. Very, very tempted.

But that was the coward's way out. I had allowed the magic in, had started the nightmare that had killed so many and would kill so many more. Aleric had been after me—mostly through Piper—from almost the very beginning. It wasn't because he liked me, and he hadn't chosen me at random. There was a reason he wanted me to be Nightstruck, and that reason couldn't be anything good.

Was it possible that I had the means to undo the damage I had done? It was my blood that had triggered the magic's growth. Perhaps my blood could reverse it. And what better way was there to make sure that didn't happen than to manipulate me into the joining the night so that I'd no longer care about the suffering of my fellow human beings?

I staggered to my feet. I wasn't sure I believed my own arguments, but I
did
believe that Aleric very much wanted me to be a Nightstruck and that giving him what he wanted was a bad idea.

He smiled at me indulgently as I swayed and tried to regain my bearings.

“It's too late, Becket,” he said. “You'll never get inside before Transition, and you're too broken to fight it.”

“We'll see about that,” I said. I dashed the tears from my eyes—no doubt getting streaks of blood all over my face—and started running for the exit. I thought Aleric would follow me, try to stop me, but he must have been very convinced I couldn't get inside in time, because he let me go.

I pulled out my phone as I ran, checking the time. I didn't know exactly when sunrise occurred, but I knew it was somewhere around seven. My heart seized when my phone told me it was 6:58. I had scant minutes, maybe even seconds, to find my way inside.

The hydra was still parked in the pathway, hissing and snapping. I didn't have time to figure out a way around it, so I just blew past, expecting to be bitten and maybe ensnared. I was pleasantly surprised when I hit the sidewalk unscathed.

There was no time to think or devise a plan. All I could do was make for the nearest building and try to get in.

The nearest building was a hotel. In the old days, there would have been polite doormen waiting at the glass entrance doors to let me in, but since the changes, those doors were barred and reinforced. The lights were on in the lobby, and I could see a pair of armed security guards lurking about, ready to jump into action at any sign of an attack.

I slammed into the bars and reached through to pound on the glass. “Help me!” I screamed. “Let me in!”

I can't imagine what those guards must have thought. I was out at night, hysterical, and covered in blood. They had to know I wasn't Nightstruck, because I didn't have the green eyes, but they had no idea what might be after me. They both drew their weapons and pointed them in my direction.

“Please!” I cried. “Just let me in!”

But I realized there would be no way I could talk them into opening those doors, not in the small amount of time I had left. Even if I could calm myself enough to make a coherent plea.

I turned to look behind me, and to my horror I saw a faint glow in the sky, a glow that was getting brighter by the moment. I had no time.

My phone was still in my hand, and I quickly typed out a text to Luke, hoping to at least give him and his mom some clue of what had happened to me.

Became Nightstruck by being out during Transition. Love U.

My skin was beginning to tingle strangely. I hit Send before I had a chance to change my mind or delete that last part. Facing almost directly east, I watched the sun rising over the city, saw the Transition taking over before my very eyes, saw the high-rises on the other side of the square lose their scaled, spiked, or otherwise unpleasant facades and turn back into normal buildings, saw the rows of gallows changing back into streetlamps.

Aleric stood at the very edge of the square, smiling at me and waving until the Transition hit. The iron fence around him shrank back to its usual height, and Aleric disappeared altogether.

Panting and terrified, I pressed my back against the bars, delaying the moment the Transition would hit me for as long as I possibly could. Piper said that ordinarily I'd be able to resist the pull, so I tried to calm myself, tried to ignore my best friend's blood on my hands.

“Don't think about it,” I ordered myself. I told myself to think about flowers and puppies, about Marlene's contagious smile and Luke's intoxicating kiss. All the good things that would be forever gone from my life if I let the night take me. I had to fight it, had to hold on to myself no matter how much it hurt.

And then the first hint of dawn's light hit me. I saw a brutal montage. Billy, his spines and horns dripping with blood. My father's body lying broken and bleeding in the gutter. Piper collapsing to the pavement as blood poured from the place where I had shot her.

A paradoxical euphoria filled my body, chasing away the horrors one by one. The relief was indescribable, and I wept with it. It was like that first glorious sip of air when you've swum underwater too long. I knew that air was poisoned, knew I shouldn't let it into my lungs. I had promised myself I'd fight it.

But I breathed it in anyway, and everything changed.

 

 

TOR TEEN BOOKS BY
JENNA BLACK

Replica

Resistance

Revolution

Nightstruck

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JENNA BLACK
is your typical writer—which means she's an “experience junkie.” She received her bachelor of arts in physical anthropology and French from Duke University. She is the author of the Faeriewalker series and Replica series for teens, as well as the Morgan Kingsley urban fantasy series. Visit her at
www.jennablack.com
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