THE COOL MORNING air whipped across my cheeks as I loped along the sidewalk. I sucked it into my lungs, letting the freshness of the breeze wash through me.
Now that we’d spent a while in the house where we’d shacked up during our extended visit to the DC area, I had a regular routine—when I didn’t get diverted by any other responsibilities, at least. I’d always loved running to clear my mind, and the freedom of being able to stretch my legs in the open air rather than staying in place on a treadmill was exhilarating. I had a three-mile circuit I’d established along quiet residential roads where I could almost always count on having an open path.
Even though the route was familiar and I’d never encountered any trouble on it before, I stayed cautious. My gaze skimmed over my surroundings, watching for any threat. The Blood Hunter had to be angry—let’s be real, most likely furious—about the ways my crew had interfered with his operations in the past week. It was only a matter of time before he retaliated one way or another.
But this early in the morning, most people were still in bed or, at best, puttering around putting their breakfasts together. Only a few cars rumbled past me, early birds heading to work. A woman weeding her front garden tipped her head to me, and I nodded back as if I were just another regular neighbor out for a jog. It was kind of freeing to pretend I was one of those regular people, even if I couldn’t imagine enjoying such a mundane life.
My heart thumped in a fast but steady rhythm. My thoughts flowed through my mind in time with the pounding of my feet on the pavement. For this brief span of time, nothing really mattered except—
A shout broke the peaceful atmosphere. Then another, a pained cry for help.
My head jerked around. The sound was coming from around the bend where I usually turned the corner. I pushed my legs to a sprint, all my senses on high alert.
Rounding the corner, I spotted the problem immediately. Gangly legs with bright sneakers that immediately made me think teenager squirmed where the rest of the figure was trapped under a ride-on lawn mower. Somehow the guy had ended up wedged between the two sets of wheels. The machine didn’t sound as if it were on, thank God, or he’d have been sliced to bits.
I should have wondered how anyone could have ended up in that situation. Maybe if I’d looked closer before rushing in, I’d have noticed some telling detail that would have tipped me off that this wasn’t a simple accident. But as much as I was a killer, I also had a strong instinct to protect those who needed it. I raced over at top speed, worried that the blades might switch on at any moment. The mower must have been moving when the kid had gotten stuck under it, right?
I dropped down next to the machine and heaved it upward so the kid could pull himself out if he wasn’t too injured. “Are you hurt?” I asked, just as my gaze jerked to the face of a teenage boy… who was definitely not hurt at all. He was shoving upright as if he’d never really been trapped in the first place. And his defiantly triumphant face was one I knew.
“Carter?” I sputtered, yanking myself backward, away from my brother—but it was a split-second too late. Carter had already jabbed a syringe into my thigh, the needle piercing right through my sweatpants and into the muscle.
I still tried to scramble away, but a rush of dizziness swept over me, followed by a prickling darkness that closed around my mind. My last thought before I slumped over and the whole world went black was that I might have just discovered one way that the Maliks had captured their many victims.
And now I was one of those victims.
The first sensation I noticed upon waking was the painful crick in my neck and shoulders. I dragged in a deep breath and moved to stretch, and a bite at my wrists stopped my movement. They were trapped behind my back—bound tightly.
My eyes popped open despite the heaviness weighing down my head. My last memory flooded my mind—Carter, the setup with the lawn mower, the syringe.
I was lying on my side on a rug, the smell of leather and old paper filling my nose. Whatever drug Carter had injected me with was still hazing my senses, making it difficult for me to concentrate, but recognition sparked in my mind.
The secret basement study in the Malik family home—that’s where I was. Surrounded by the evidence of the murders they’d carried out: the records of dates and deaths, the photo of the country house where they carried out their rituals… and all the strange objects I’d noticed during my first exploration here. A child’s shoe, a toy, a hairclip—it made a sick kind of sense now.
Those had to be mementos from their victims.
They weren’t getting anything like that from me.
As I flexed the muscles in my arms to test my restraints, a voice reached me from behind. “She’s awake.”
It was Grandma Ruby. I guessed that was no surprise. Carter wouldn’t have been acting of his own accord. He’d simply been the family member left who’d been most able to carry out a plan that relied on quick physical action.
I kept my ears perked, trying to get a sense of my grandmother’s position in the room as I subtly tugged at the cord wrapped around my wrists. It was tight, but I’d gotten out of jams worse than this before. These people were used to tying up children who didn’t have a fraction of my strength or skill. If I could just focus better, I’d be able to work the bindings loose with little twitches and minute movements right under my captors’ noses.
If they didn’t murder me before I had the chance to complete my escape, that was.
Footsteps rasped across the floor. Three figures came into view in front of me, making me crane my neck to see their looming faces. Ruby, Carter, and my mother.
“Is this your way of proving that you’re not criminals?” I asked, my voice coming out with a bit of a croak. “Because I’m pretty sure kidnapping is against the law.”
“You’ve been corrupted by evil-doers,” Iris said, her face as sallow as it’d been when I’d come by to ask about the Blood Hunter. “Brainwashed into something as evil as they are. We have to help you.”
Ruby snorted. “If she can be helped. She was in their hands for more than twenty years. I think she’s rot all the way through by now.”
Iris turned to look at her mother-in-law. “It isn’t her fault. She was all sweetness when she was born.”
“That was a long time ago. She’s made her choices since then. She’s old enough to own them and the awful allegiances she’s made.”
The understanding seeped into my gradually sharpening mind that they still didn’t know exactly what the Blood Hunter had shaped me into. They had no idea that I was just as brutal a killer as the men who’d come with me to the country home—they probably thought I’d simply instigated the slaughter and stood back to watch.
Which worked in my favor. I could already feel the bindings around my wrists starting to give way. And they hadn’t bothered to tie up my legs. Filled with hubris until the end.
“We have to give her the chance to throw off their influence and be who’s she’s meant to be,” my mother insisted, and peered down at me again. “You can break through it and become a real Malik. We’ll welcome you.”
“Or else my granddaughter really did die in that crash two decades ago in every way that matters, and only a monster is left,” Ruby muttered.
Irritation flared in my chest. I was so sick of the expectations these people put on me, the way I’d had to pretend to be someone I wasn’t around them, when they were the biggest hypocrites I’d ever met.
“The only monsters in this room are the three of you,” I spat out. “I’ve never harmed a kid in my life.”
“Don’t you dare dishonor the sacrifices we make by referring to us that way,” Ruby hissed and leaned down to slap me across the face. The blow jarred me enough that my senses sharpened even more, but the sting was short-lived.
I’d spent my entire life being punched and kicked by trained professionals, and she thought a slap would cow me? I laughed, working on the knots at my back. It was only a matter of time before I’d slip past the bindings.
And then…
I didn’t want to think about what it’d come to.
“You could have just left well enough alone,” I said, seeking out my mother’s gaze since my grandmother had obviously already condemned me. “You didn’t have to grab me and tie me up. I made it clear that I’d leave you alone as long as you stopped your own crimes.”
Before my eyes, Iris’s face hardened into a rigid mask. My heart sank before she even started speaking. “We can’t stop our divine calling, Rachel. The world needs the work we do.”
“It’s not work,” I shot back. “It’s murder. Stop pretending it’s anything glorious and face up to what you’re actually doing. Those kids never hurt anyone. They can’t help who their parents are. And you didn’t just kill them, you tormented them first.”
Carter stirred restlessly behind the family matriarchs, and I thought I caught a flicker of uncertainty pass through his expression. For a second, he looked almost queasy at my words. Maybe there was some hope for this family after all.
“We let loose the brutality of their genetic line to disperse that energy into the universe, away from the innocent people it was harming,” Iris insisted. “You haven’t even tried to understand.”
Then her voice softened again. She blinked, a watery glint coming into her eyes. “I don’t want it to be like this. Maybe you think the ways you’ve been taught are the only way you can survive, but if you would just let us show you that there are different ways, you can break free of their influence and become a real Malik. Please. I want my daughter back.”
I’d loosened the cord just enough that I could feel the give that would let me slip my hands free when I was ready. I held them in place as I glared at Iris. “The last thing I’ll ever be is a Malik while that name means slaughtering children. You can’t even admit the truth of what you’re doing, and you talk about me not understanding?”
“She’s too far gone, Iris,” Ruby said in a disgruntled tone. “Your little girl doesn’t exist anymore, only this fiend someone else created in her place. And you know what that means.”
Iris’s mouth twisted, but she inclined her head in acknowledgment as if she agreed with Ruby’s assessment. My gaze darted between them. “What does it mean?”
“We can’t allow a menace like you to continue wreaking havoc in this world,” Ruby declared. “We brought you into it, so it’s our responsibility to take you out of it.”
“You’re going to kill me? Because I won’t join you in torturing kids?” I’d have laughed again at the absurdity of this conversation if it hadn’t been so horrible at the same time.
Iris folded her arms over her chest, her entire body stiffening now. I could see her accepting this new sacrifice she’d decided she had to make. “We’ll be putting you out of the misery it seems you’re unable to shake. It’ll prevent so many more horrors in the long run.”
Maybe it was a stupid remark, but I couldn’t stop the words from tumbling past my lips. “Funny, that’s the exact same thing I thought when I sliced through your husband’s throat.”
A wounded little cry spilled from Iris’s lips, and her hands clenched at her sides. She reached and took a long, thin knife from the shelf next to her. “You’re not my daughter. You can’t be. The people who took her created a monster, and we can’t let the abomination they’ve created continue.”
Every inch of her body and every note in her voice told me how committed she was to this course. She was never going to accept anything other than my obedience or my death—and possibly even the former wouldn’t have swayed her now. To her delusional mind, killing me was somehow an act of heroism.
My grandmother watched with avidly gleaming eyes. Only Carter showed any hint of hesitation, his eyes going wide as he stared at his mother. His throat worked with a thick swallow.
A sense of resolve settled over me. I didn’t like it, but I knew how this would have to end. Monsters would meet their deaths today, but none of them would be me.
Iris bent down over me, holding the blade poised as if preparing to stab it into my heart. She pushed my shoulder to force me onto my back—and at that moment I jerked free.
As I flung the cord that’d bound my wrists aside, I swung around so my leg collided with her calves. My mother tumbled onto her ass, the knife slipping from her grasp. She threw herself after it, her fingers grasping frantically for the handle.
I leapt for it at the same moment. She caught hold of the handle and jabbed the blade toward me, but I wrenched her hand around. Any lingering guilt I might have felt over ending her life fled at the vicious snarl she aimed at me in the instant before the knife plunged into her own chest.
Ruby shrieked. I whipped around in time to meet her onward charge, a small machete I hadn’t known she had within reach clutched in her hands. I dodged to the side and slammed my elbow into her back, sending her stumbling into the desk.
She shoved herself back toward me with a wild swing of the blade. I snatched the knife from my mother’s chest and parried the desperate blow. She heaved it through the air again, and before I could duck, a fist pummeled my shoulder from behind.
My brother had joined the skirmish. I kicked back at him, sending him crashing to the floor, and spun out of the way in time to escape with just a shallow cut across my arm. Ruby hurtled toward me, and I caught her wrist in my hand. A flash of panic showed in her eyes in the instant before I flipped the machete around and let her fall on it throat first.
As my grandmother slumped with a gurgle and a splatter of blood across the floor, I whirled around. Carter was hauling himself to his feet, his movements shaky. He groped around him, probably searching for anything he could use as a weapon. Before he had the chance to catch hold of anything, I knocked him to the ground.
He started to wriggle away, but I knelt over him, pinning him down with Iris’s knife still clenched in my hand. My brother stared up at me, horror and fury and fear all rippling through his expression.
I could have cut him down too, right now, and ended every part of the Malik family line except me. But as I scowled down at Carter, taking in the twitch of his jaw and the pallor of his face, I remembered the hesitation I’d seen in him earlier. The momentary nausea I thought I’d caught when I’d talked about the family’s crimes.
He was only eighteen. Just out of high school, basically a kid himself. He’d been brought up his whole life hearing the Maliks’ delusional garbage spewed at him from all sides, never knowing anything else.
I knew another kid who’d grown up similarly. Who’d had her mind and her morals warped by the people who’d wanted to use her for their own ends. But I’d carved my own path when I’d gotten the freedom to break from their grasp.
Didn’t my brother deserve the same chance?
“Think about the ‘sacrifices’ you watched or maybe even joined in with,” I said, low and steady. “Think about the kids you all cut up and beat and burned before you killed them. Think about the way they must have cried and whimpered in pain. Do you really believe that was okay? That it was something good? That it was right for them to die that way?”
Carter opened his mouth and closed it again. His jaw hardened, but at the same time, he stared at me like he was one of those kids himself, frightened and confused.
He wasn’t completely committed to the party line. Some part of him still had doubts. I had to give that part the opportunity to turn his life around.
He sucked in a breath, his eyes narrowing as if he was going to make some snappy remark as his previous anger returned. I didn’t want to hear it. I rammed my fist into his temple in just the right spot to knock him out, sending his head snapping to the side.
His body slackened. I hefted him up into a fireman’s hold and turned toward the secret staircase.
I’d made my choice. Now we’d have to figure out what to do with him from here on.
