The Killing Season (30 page)

But just a few more months with Luke and Sunny and Hatter would’ve been nice. Even weeks. Just more time to feel Luke holding me, Sunny laughing with me. To belong somewhere. To have a family who would protect me. To be wanted. Loved, even. Cared for. All the things I’d wished for, and apparently had at one point with my mother, but I’d forced myself to forget. And now, when I needed to remember the good things, I only saw all the things I would never have again.

I wished I had more time to learn about Irena Volkova. The warrior and not the traitor I’d made her out to be.

I stared at the floor as Max came back over to me. With one hand, he carefully lifted the hem of my gown, his trembling fingers trailing up my bare thigh until I almost gagged, and injected me with a diluted solution of the saliva. Carefully, without lingering too long, he pulled my hem back into place before he stepped back. A knife glinted in the corner of my vision.

His touch made me sick; the thought that I was powerless to stop him from putting his hands on me made me sicker. I had to get out of here before this got bad. While I could still think and run. Before the fear set in and paralyzed me.

Nothing happened as the saliva entered my bloodstream. I felt the same. But I knew this entire game between Max and I had changed. I’d had a margin of control in the basement when I couldn’t feel the pain, but now, I had none.

“I’m a little nervous,” Max said. I looked up at the tremor in his voice. His eyes were wide, lips slightly parted, as he stared back at me. “I’ve never done this without Daddy, and I spent so many years imagining . . .” He cleared his throat. “It’s just been so long, Ollie. I’m, well, I’m scared of you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you’ve lived with me every day. In my imagination. In my heart. We were so far apart at times, but I’ve dreamed of us together. We had this entire life with each other that only existed during the time when I laid down at night and imagined it before sleep took me to bad places with Daddy.” Max shuddered. He took a breath that made his shirt stretch tight across broad shoulders. “I lived for that time, when we came together, when I had the real life I wanted, not the life I was living, where you ran from me, and I had to hunt you down. During that time of night, I imagined you any way I wanted you. We lived the way we were meant to live.”

“Yes, sir.” My toes were numb from holding up my weight. I sagged a little farther into the rope around my hands. There wasn’t much point in holding myself up anymore.

“I loved you there. In that place I built for us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was I wrong to imagine all that?” His voice cracked, thick and deep with unshed tears. “Did you never want me? You ran away and found another man. All that time I spent imagining you at night . . . You spent it with him. Do you know how badly your betrayal hurts me?”

“No, sir.”

“Will you apologize to me? Will you say we can be together, like I imagined? That you’ll never betray me again, and we can have the life I dreamed for us.”

I knew what he meant about imagining another life. How many times had I done it in my dorm during those weeks I trained with Luke? Recalling our evenings together, but with new details, like a touch here, a look there. Picturing us together. Until I hadn’t had to imagine it anymore. Until it was real and I loved him in real life. Knew his body in real life. Knew the scars, the soft hair on his stomach, how his eyes watched me in the darkness.

How he’d vowed to kill Max, and I hadn’t let him.

How I’d wanted him to save me, and he did. Sunny too. And Fear University.

They all saved me from the girl who’d run from the man in front of me. The girl who would rather kill than love. Would rather punch than touch.

Who broke herself just to remind everyone she felt no pain.

“Will you?” Max asked again, his voice harder, like his father had taught him. The father who haunted our nightmares.

I met his eyes. “No.”

Slowly, he nodded, his head bowing in defeat. Eventually, he said, “You were such a good girl when we had you, but this place, this Fear University, has changed you. I don’t like it, Ollie.” He nodded again, but this time with determination, like he finally understood. When he met my eyes, his gleamed with renewed fervor. “I loved you in that basement. But we can get back to that. We’re both different now, but we can get back to that. I promise.”

A long, silent pause. My eyes on the floor.

Then, “Say it, Ollie. You have to say it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good girl. See?” Max smiled like the sun had finally risen, but I knew better. The sun wouldn’t rise again for a very long time. “We’re already off to a great start.”

N I N E T E E N

Sunny

“T
ell me again.”

“I’ve told—”

“Again.”

“Watch it, Luke,” Hatter snapped. “I won’t let you speak to her like that.”

I took Hatter’s hand and smiled a shaky, exhausted half-smile at Luke. The night before had been long with Eve and Haze hauling Killian’s unconscious body to a holding cell in the cellar. We were prepared for a raging, violent, tear-the-earth-apart Luke. We weren’t prepared when he just stood quietly with a terrifying blankness in his eyes as he watched his father’s form getting dragged away. Even when the hospital’s snowcat arrived to take Abigail, he didn’t speak, didn’t even look at his mother, who was critical enough that the hunters didn’t demand the hospital’s snowcat for themselves. Today was shaping up to be even longer. “It’s okay. I’ll tell you again.”

From the floor of Ollie’s bedroom, which had become our temporary headquarters, Luke just blinked dully at me, like he’d forgotten what he just asked. In his hand, he clutched Ollie’s black puffy jacket, the one she hadn’t had time to put on yesterday.

“She’s cold,” he said, murmuring the words to himself. But Hatter and I knew them by heart at this point; Luke hadn’t stopped saying the words since he’d found Ollie’s jacket on her bed last night. “She forgot her jacket. I need to get it to her. I need to . . .” He looked back up at me, where I sat across from him, huddled in a blanket from Ollie’s bed, wearing the same clothes I’d worn yesterday and smelling of sweat and blood. “Tell me again.”

I used to think I knew what broken looked like. I thought I understood the pain people went through because of this war and our chosen lifestyle. I thought my parents’ faces after hearing about Seth’s death had been broken. But I didn’t know. Not really.

As I stared at Luke, his body curled over the jacket like a dripping icicle in the sun, I understood broken. Knew what it looked like for certain. My parents hadn’t been broken—their expressions were ones of acceptance. Luke wasn’t accepting anything. The look on his face . . .

I never wanted to see it again.

“It started the night you and Hatter let her go hunting. She didn’t run the pack off, Hex did, which she told you. What she didn’t tell you is she learned she could talk back to the ’swangs that night. Her communication with them had nothing to do with being bitten or the saliva. She didn’t need either, but when she did talk back, Hex acted like he knew her.”

“It’s not possible,” Luke said under his breath. He’d said this countless times already, and, at this point, I didn’t bother arguing.

“When the ’swangs attacked over fall break, Hex said her disease wasn’t really a disease. She can’t feel pain because she’s part aswang. He said he was her father.”

Luke buried his head into her jacket and moaned. Hatter stood and went to his best friend, putting a scarred hand, the one with a missing finger, on Luke’s shoulder. He leaned into Hatter, two friends caught in a storm with no safe harbor.

“But she wasn’t convinced,” I went on. “She thought he was playing her. None of it made sense. Until the attack in the ward. The saliva made her feel pain. That was her real reaction, not hearing the aswangs. When that happened to her in the ward, she knew. Peg came to her that night and said Ollie had to leave. Fear University wasn’t safe for her. Peg convinced her that we would kill her.” I let that sink in, because Luke was still scaring me. Yes, he was broken. Yes, he was devastated Ollie was gone. But he’d yet to assure me or even himself that he actually
wouldn’t
kill Ollie. “That’s why she was going to leave over winter break. She needed to figure out the truth. Then Dean sent her here. We didn’t know about Thad being a halfling too until Ollie saw his scars. He came here to take her to the aswangs because they want her just as badly as Dean does.”

“Thad isn’t going to let us know if he finds her, is he?” Luke asked the floor.

“Doubtful. She could be halfway to Hawaii by now and we’d never know,” Hatter said.

I shot him a look to let him know he wasn’t helping before I said, “He might. Thad isn’t an awful person.”

“Not that good either,” Luke said.

“What do you want to do, man?” Hatter asked. “Storm’s starting to pass, but it’s still nasty out.”

Luke kept his eyes on the jacket. “She’s probably so cold. Do you think she’s cold?”

“We’ve alerted every hunter in every city, town, and ditch in Alaska. If she leaves the state, we’ll know. We’re going to find her.”

When Hatter got no response, he turned to me, desperation etched in his scarred face. We were losing Luke. I scooted over next to him and put my hand over his on Ollie’s jacket. “You want to find her, right, Luke? You still love her?”

Nothing.

“She needs you,” I tried again, squeezing his hand harder. “You have to keep trying to find her and bring her home.”

Still nothing.

“Come on, Luke. We were supposed to keep her safe.”

Nothing again. But nothing wasn’t working anymore.

I dug my nails into his skin, but he didn’t flinch. With a growl, I jerked the jacket away, ripping it, and surged to my feet. Luke was right behind me as I twisted away, his fingers clawing at my back before Hatter grabbed him. I spun back around, keeping Hatter between us.

“He has her!” I shouted. “He’s hurting her right now. Right this second. Can you imagine what he’s doing to her? Because I can! I can count all the ways that bastard will hurt her. And then he’s going to kill her when he’s finished making her want to die. After she’s probably screamed our names, begged us to come save her! Wake the fuck up, Luke Aultstriver! You’re acting like your heartless, coward father!”

Luke lunged. With a grunting curse, Hatter punched him squarely in the mouth, sending Luke crashing to the floor, a spray of blood coughing from his mouth.

He laid there, hand to mouth, bleeding. Above him, Hatter and I waited, my chest heaving and hands shaking, for something. For anything other than this numb shell resembling Luke.

“We could get the police involved. They won’t help much, but they could help us keep an eye out. Do you want to do that, Luke?” Hatter asked, keeping his voice calm, though his knuckles had started bleeding. “Do you want to find her? Do you still love her?”

Slowly, like Hatter’s words needed to sink through a few murky layers, Luke lifted his head and began to move. He gathered his legs beneath him and stood. Still clutching his mouth, he met his friend’s stare. I kept my place next to Hatter and narrowed my eyes. “Call them,” Luke said, the sound muffled behind his hand. “Let’s get them here.”

Hatter let out a relieved sigh, but I wasn’t so sure. “Sounds good, man,” he said, clapping Luke’s shoulder. “Let’s go rally the troops. We’ll get your girl, okay?”

“Then what?” I asked before they left. Hatter was already at the door.

“What do you mean?” Hatter asked. I loved him for the fact that he still believed Luke wanted the best for Ollie, wanted to save her. But I knew better.

“If you find her. Then what? What will you do to her, Luke?” I asked him pointedly.

He turned toward me slightly, his eyes falling to a spot on the floor beside my shoes. He said under his breath, like he hoped I wouldn’t hear, “I don’t know yet.”

* * *

Ollie

“Tha—” Abruptly, I coughed, cracking my split lip open wider until I winced. “Thank you, sir,” I finally managed.

Max’s brow furrowed, blood—my blood—splattered across his mouth. He reached up and brushed his finger across my busted lip. Sweat dampened his brow, made his shirt cling to his chest, but he looked just as tattered as I felt, which was really saying something, because I was too exhausted to even flinch away from his touch. I just stared at him, fully sagging into the ropes binding my hands.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, pulling his hand back. “I shouldn’t have hit you like that. Messed up your face like I did . . . Daddy always said we had to treat you like a lady . . .” He trailed off, frowning, like his thought had run away from him into some dark corner where the shadows had teeth. I understood those corners.

I was in one right now.

With a shake of his head, Max went back to the tiny kitchen. I looked away, my eyes falling to the floor, which was slick with blood. My tattered nightgown barely covered my body. The strips of old material clung to me, dampened by the blood streaming down from the thousands of tiny, fractional cuts covering my body. They weren’t deep enough to scar. Not deep enough to make me pass out. But deep enough to hurt. To make me cry and beg and plead. Deep enough to make me doubt everything I ever thought I knew about myself as Max cut into me again and again, keeping his perfect pattern, his steady hand, his breath shallow with fevered concentration against my skin. Blood dripped down my legs, off my toes, and onto the floor in thick splashes.