The Killing Season (28 page)

On the landing’s worn carpet that smelled like the bottoms of dirty shoes, I mentally thanked Ollie for bringing me a vest. Killian hadn’t noticed its bulk beneath my hoodie, and the bullet had wedged into the Kevlar, right above my heart.

Behind me, Killian’s footsteps rang off the stairs. He whistled a random tune as he climbed, his gait casual. I fought back a shudder. This man had shot a friend point blank. Had laid his wife on a bed of poisonous flowers. Had turned over a young woman to her sadistic stalker. This place really had driven him crazy like the rumors said. He had to be to think he could pass the night’s events off as Coldcrow snapping and killing everyone. Like Luke wouldn’t know who had fed Ollie to the wolves.

A sob caught in my throat at the thought of her. I prayed I got to her in time.

Killian joined me on the landing. With my face down against the floor and eyes closed, I tracked his path around my outstretched legs. He came to a stop by my side and kicked me in the ribs.

It took everything I had to stay still, to keep limp, to not cry out as pain ricocheted up and down my ribs. He nudged me again, and when he got no response, he resumed his whistling and started to walk away.

Eyes flashing open, I reached to my waist and grabbed a slim throwing knife, the steel familiar and warm in my hand. I jerked up and surged forward, slashing the blade across the back of Killian’s knee, where those precious muscles controlled the movement of his leg. They severed, popping beneath my knife like taut ropes giving way.

One of us screamed. I didn’t really know who made the sound ringing off the entry’s walls. At that moment, all I felt was rage.

I’d never been so close to understanding how Ollie killed so easily as I was right then. I could have ended Killian right there. I really, really could have.

He stumbled, his leg giving way beneath him. He tried to twist around as he fell, but he only managed to drop his gun. Before he reached for it, I slunk forward on my knees and, with the same bloodied knife, stabbed him through the top of his boot, down through the fleshy meat and tender bones of his foot. This time, I was certain it was him who screamed.

Leaving the knife in his foot, I grabbed the gun and jerked to my feet, leveling the barrel against his temple.

“You won’t do it,” he said, gasping from the pain. “You’re too weak.”

He laughed at me as I lowered the gun. “Fuck you.”

I pulled the trigger.

The bullet tore through his other, uninjured knee, and he crumpled to the floor with a cry. It didn’t kill him, but it still felt pretty good. And I was certain he wouldn’t be climbing stairs anytime soon. Maybe never walking again.

Without another glance at him, I bounded down the stairs and across the entry. Still gripping the gun, I punched in the entry door’s code and heaved it open. I jerked it closed and went to the security’s room door. I had to punch in the code twice, my fingers shaking too hard, before the door released and started sliding open. A blast of wind knocked me back onto my heels, and I grabbed the door frame to keep from falling down.

I gasped down a lungful of icy snow and shielded my eyes against the onslaught. Icy pellets pummeled straight through my jeans and hoodie. I sank up to my knees in a drift of snow. It took once glance to confirm the snowcat was gone, which meant Max had taken Ollie in it, but I still shouted, “Ollie!”

The wind howled back in answer. At least, I hoped it was the wind.

Aswangs. The thought hit me. I was alone. Outside the base. With the security room door opened behind me, where snow accumulated in thick banks inside the holding room. The snowcat was gone, which meant Max not only had a head start with Ollie, but he would be better equipped to travel faster and farther across the tundra than I would be in a snowmobile, especially during a whiteout storm with a windchill as arctic as this one.

I hadn’t even grabbed a jacket.

I wracked my brain to figure out what to do next. If I radioed the police, I doubted they could get out here in time. I wrapped my arms around myself when I started to shiver. I needed to go back inside, to think and figure something out, but I couldn’t move. I searched the darkness around the base, my eyes peeling back the shadows like I would find Ollie buried under one.

As I finally turned to go, my eye caught movement, and my heart lurched with a potent mixture of joy and terror.

Bent against the wind, came five shadows. I caught their lurching, stumbling steps, but only when I squinted did their shadowy forms reveal themselves as not shadows, but thick, black fur.

With a strangled scream, I stumbled back inside the security room and slapped in the code to send the door sliding back so I could open the other one and get inside. I raised my gun and took what I hoped would be a good aim. I fired off a shot right as the keypad chirped beneath my fingers. Above the door, a red light started flashing, bathing me and the snow in the stuttering, bloody color. The snow inside the room was piled up too high. The door couldn’t close. I looked up. The aswangs drew closer, forms hazy through the snow, massive shoulders braced against the wind.

I could keep shooting them and hope I got them all before they got me, or I could start digging. I was a terrible shot.

I dropped to my knees and started shoveling snow back outside with my bare hands. After only a few handfuls, they turned numb and furiously red. The door hadn’t budged.

“Sunny!”

I looked up, thinking I heard my name. The ’swangs trudged forward, struggling against the wind that sent tornadoes of ice and snow gusting around them. Black fur glinted beneath the moon. Feeling the panic cutting off my airway, I started shoveling twice as fast. The door moved a few inches.

“Sunny!”

One of the ’swangs threw back its head and pulled its fur off. I blinked in confusion as Hatter materialized from beneath the monster’s pelt. They were close enough now that the flood light from the roof illuminated their forms. Beneath four other pelts, Luke, Eve, Haze, and Thad appeared. Completely stunned, I stood and stepped out of the way as they hurried into the holding room.

Eve and Haze took over getting the security door shut so we could get inside. I stepped farther into the holding room with Luke, Hatter, and Thad, my mind too cold and too tired to process their bloody faces, the gore covering their clothes. When Hatter reached to put a hand on my shoulder, I cringed away, shivering in the gusting wind.

“Di-did I shoot you?”

“I’m fine, Sunshine,” he said quietly, keeping his distance. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head, ice shards sticking to my eyelashes. The door let out a mighty groan, and the light above it stopped flashing. When it was closed, we opened the entry door and stumbled inside.

My breaths came in shallow pants. I shivered so hard my bones ached. The hunters gathered around me, dripping in blood and sinew from the underside of the ’swang pelts they’d worn.

Just then, Luke saw his father up on the landing, unconscious from the pain. “Where’s Ollie?” His voice cracked a bit and he coughed, bending over with the force of it.

“Where is everyone?” Eve asked.

“Coldcrow’s dead,” I managed to say. My teeth started chattering. “Killian shot him. In the head.” I blinked and saw the gaping hole in the back of the old man’s head, how it had turned his gray hair violently, drippingly red. I looked down at the gun in my hand. The same gun that had probably killed him. I dropped it. “He’s dead.”

“Christ,” Eve said. Next to her, Haze went still.

Luke turned to Eve and Haze. “Go check out Coldcrow.” Without waiting, they hurried up the stairs, side-stepping Killian’s body. “And my mom?” he asked. “Is she still alive? Is Ollie with her?”

“He took her,” I said, trembling hard enough to hurt my spine. I was going into shock. “Ollie’s gone. She’s gone. Oh, God. He took—”

“Who? What—” He surged forward, reaching for me, but Hatter stepped in front of him with a growl. Thad wrapped a long, strong arm around Luke’s chest and held him back as he thrashed toward me. His eyes flashed with a feral wildness that chilled me even further. He looked insane. Just like his father had moments ago.

“Control yourself, Luke,” Hatter warned, but Luke ignored him, his eyes focused only on me.

“Tell me.” He choked on the words. Desperation made his voice thick, like something between a growl and a dying breath.

“Killian gave her to him. To Max. And he took her. On the snowcat. She’s gone. I couldn’t stop them.” The words nearly strangled me, and a building hysteria clenched my throat tight. Hatter’s worried face hovered at the edge of my blurry vision, but I only saw the hole in Coldcrow’s head. “We found Abigail in the bane and she had this flower in her mouth and Ollie saw her move and she was alive but I didn’t think I could save her and she still might die and your dad did that and then Ollie went to get help and she came back and said that Killian was here and that we needed to hide and she was going to find him and stop him and I tried to make her wait because I’m supposed to help her but then I found Coldcrow and then Killian came back in from outside and he shot me—”

“What the fuck?” Hatter grabbed me. Jerked me to him. His hands ran over me, fumbling with my vest. “That bastard shot you? Where, Sunshine? Show me where!”

“I shot him,” I said, my eyes drifting up to where Killian still lay on the landing, out cold. “I shot him back.”

Hatter found the bullet over my heart. He let out a long hiss. “He fucking shot her, Luke.”

“We need to go after her. Now. We have to go.” The rage played out across Luke’s face, in the tension of his mouth, his flexing jaw, the wild gleam in his eyes.

“Just wait,” Hatter said, his voice a raw rasp. He shook me slightly until my wandering eyes found him. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you anywhere else?”

“She’s fine!” Luke shouted, thrashing against Thad’s hold. “We have to go!”

Hatter’s head snapped toward his best friend, quick as a cobra. “Back off, asshole,” he growled. “Your girl isn’t the only one messed up, okay? Back
off
.”

Luke bared his teeth at his best friend but Thad held on, wrenching back when Luke tried to shake him off again. “Luke!” Thad shouted, making me jump. “We barely made it here alive. Let’s just figure out what the hell is going on first, okay?”

Hatter cradled my face in his hands, his thumbs running across my cheekbones. I didn’t realize how hard I shivered until he held me still. “How long has she been gone?” he asked quietly.

“Fi-fifteen minutes,” I managed. “No more than half an hour.”

“If she’s only been gone—”

“Not in this storm, Luke,” Thad snapped. “We can never catch up to them if they’re on the snowcat, even if we knew what direction they went in. We can’t track her in a whiteout.”

“But she can’t be alone with him. Sunny, please,” he pleaded. Instead of straining against Thad, he looked like he’d sunk into the other hunter’s hold, like Thad was holding him up now, instead of holding him back.

I hadn’t saved her like I was supposed to. She was gone. My throat tightened with tears.

Luke and I both knew what Max would do to her. We’d seen her after just a few minutes alone with him when he tried to grab her in Barrow; our Ollie had vanished into a terrified, trembling mess. Max had a power over her, a power to break her. If he had that chance . . . if he had too long with her, I didn’t know what state we would find our Ollie in when we got her back.

We had to get to her. Bring her home. Get her back.

Through the fear and cold and shock, a horrible thought crept like a spider up my spine, niggling at the base of my brain. Hatter and Luke were arguing, but my eyes went to Thad. He watched me close enough that he recognized the look in my eyes. His weary eyes begged me to stay silent. But he knew a way to track Ollie. He’d said before he would use the storm as cover to leave with her. That he could move through it better than the normal human. It was the only way, and I wasn’t leaving her alone out there.

“You can,” I said quietly, my voice breaking. “You know a way to track her.”

“What?” Luke shoved away from Thad, who released him and stepped back, hands up. Luke’s head snapped back and forth between us. “Go then!” he shouted, shoving at Thad again. He just stumbled back, his eyes still on me. “What are we still doing here? Let’s go!”

“Sunny,” Hatter said, thinking I was losing it, “no one—”

“Thad can.” My eyes never left Thad’s face. “You can. You have to.”

“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Thad said, stepping farther away.

I surged toward him, and grabbed the front of his jacket. “Yes, you do!” I screamed, spit flying. “Go get her. Save her!”

“Sunny,” Hatter said, reaching for me. “What are you talking about?”

Trembling, I released Thad and stepped back, my eyes going to Luke, who had started to shake violently, his hands pressed to his face. “He’s the only one who can track her in this storm. He’s—”

“Sunny, no,” Thad said, his hands raking across his face.

“—Part ’swang.”

Hatter wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close, like he was shielding me from Thad. My attention swept to Luke, who’d gone still, too still. His face turned so blank and empty I had no clue what he was thinking.