Martin leads me to the gravel driving path in front of the asylum doors, shimmering with a dark-orange sunset. He ushers me into his buggy. I sit, alarmed and confused, into his passenger seat. “What’s happening?” I ask breathlessly.
“I know where he is going.” He starts the engine, and our buggy bounces over the gravel as we exit onto a scenic dirt road. “Are you that naive, child? To not know that I would have you followed?”
Dessin was right to threaten that couple. They worked for Martin.
“I must say, when I followed you to the forest, I worried I’d see a little more than I bargained for. A naked encounter. A murder suicide. Or perhaps seeing his bull-like body assaulting yours with a friendly weapon. But the other council members would not listen to me. You walked on water in their eyes. So, I had you followed. I’d bet my wife’s expensive wardrobe that he’ll be there waiting for you.”
I stare at the dark landscape through the windshield—the rolling hills, the moonlit fields of grass. “And what exactly do you think will happen when you see him? Alone. This is your death sentence, and you know it.” I wipe my damp palms on my uniform. I want this day to be over. My life is about to spin out of control.
“Demechnef sought me out to administer a deal. They clued me in on this monster they created and set a course for a plan to obtain him.” He adjusts his hands on the wheel. “Since taking him as a child and turning him into their ideal weapon, they did their jobs a little too well. He learned of loopholes, such as our asylum. We have what you call an invincible little force field around us. Demechnef cannot touch us. Back when the laws were written, religion took over science, and it was strongly believed by our leaders of the faith that the asylum had as much immunity as the church.”
He takes a turn at Nocturne Road, and my stomach churns at how close we are. I look down at my feet, my brain glitching, rummaging through all I’ve learned, hoping to find a way out of this.
“They told me if I could find leverage to hang over his head, I could control him. And if I could control him, I’d become a Demechnef bureaucrat. It’s been my dream since I was a boy.”
The buggy jerks, and I am yanked forward, my hands slamming on the windshield. I whip my head to the side to gawk at Martin, whose mouth is hanging open as if he’s been struck by lightning. I follow his eyeline past the wheel and into the stream of the dim headlights to Dessin standing strong and hardened like a gladiator walking through fire, with DaiSzek by his side. The great beast I met in the woods.
“Devil’s crop,” Martin whispers under his breath. He pulls a knife out of his console and scoops me up from my seat onto his lap. “To answer your question, this is how I expect to take him on. Using the leverage I found.” I’m hauled from the buggy with him pulling my back to his chest, using me as a shield with a knife to my throat.
Dessin stares at Martin, bleeding him dry with a look of hell’s fire. “Have you finally lost your mind in that torture pit, old man?”
“I am in control here. I want you to surrender!” Martin’s hand shakes against my throat, wobbling the sharp point against my jugular. I try to take deep, controlled breaths. He won’t slit my throat. If he does, then Dessin will surely kill him. But what if he doesn’t have anything left to live for?
“Have you not seen enough of my wrath, Martin? Are you foolish enough to believe this will stop me?” Dessin takes a step toward us, causing Martin to press the blade harder to my soft skin. I yelp at the jab and suck in a frantic breath. Dessin’s attention flashes to me, pinning me down with a harnessed feral temper. It’s the most animalism I have ever seen in his darkened eyes—shadowed with previous murder. Blackening his soul.
“It’s her, isn’t it? She’s the leverage Demechnef pointed me to!” Martin pants against my ear—his body hot and sweaty against my back.
“She means nothing to me,” Dessin says, low and wicked.
“Is that a fact?” Martin shouts against the summer wind, puncturing my skin with the knife, digging it in enough to cause a rush of blood to snake down my cleavage. I whimper at the pang of splintering pain in my throat.
“I’ll skin you alive,” Dessin growls, following the snarl and low predatory stance of DaiSzek, the bear-sized wolf, black as the starless sky.
“You will not lay a hand on me. Not while I have her in my grasp.” Martin digs his fingers into my shoulder. “I am to turn you into Demechnef. And only then will I let her go. I’ve broken the laws that protect the asylum and have no life to lose!” He’s desperate and lower than maggots under a corpse.
But I won’t be the reason Dessin goes back. I won’t be Martin’s leverage.
With a rush of wind filling my lungs, I explode in a window-shattering scream, causing Martin to flinch away, loosening his hand around the hilt of the knife. In a clumsy movement, I grab the inside of Martin’s wrist with my right hand and his blade with my left, maneuvering it out of his clutch, slicing the inside of my palm in the process.
But before I can complete my planned reaction of kicking him between the legs the way Dessin taught me—he’s barreled over by a flash of white—the same way I watched DaiSzek tackle the night dawper to the ground.
A chesty grunt to the dirt. Dessin’s hand reaches up against my chest, keeping me an arm’s length away. And I fall backward, not at Dessin’s touch, but at the sound of a roaring dragon coming from behind us. I shriek, turning around on my bottom, facing DaiSzek as he flashes his fangs and sharp teeth.
“Skylenna, look away.” Dessin’s heavy and troubled voice pulses through my chest. He’s holding the knife against Martin’s throat, watching the blade pierce his skin slowly.
No, not again.
Watery flashes of the sickle—cutting through flesh—chopping past bone.
I will not pretend like I know the previous host, but I can imagine that murder, blood, and death—all at his hands—will not help bring the previous host back.
“No,” I whisper in exasperation. “Stop,” I say. I remember the darkness overcoming him when he snapped that man’s neck at the abandoned Demechnef headquarters. He did it for me. He did it to protect me.
His eyes snap up to me in distress, and I know I have to be the one to protect him now. “Get back.” His words jolt through the old road and back to me.
“NO! I need you to be whole. And killing—killing chips away at everything you are. I need you whole.” I drop to my knees in front of him, placing my hands over his jawline, searching his eyes for the humanity I can hold on to.
“He needs to die,” he growls. But in the warm molten swirling in his eyes, I’ve caught him. Hooked onto an anchor. I begin to pull.
“Not by your hands,” I pant, inching closer to his body, tightening my hands around the bulge of the contracting muscles in his arms. “You told me if I can guess your greatest fear, I can meet him.” He’s staring at me now, brow tightly knitted together, with the look of an assassin as I slowly remove his mask. “I know what it is now… Your greatest fear is losing me. I know this because my greatest fear is losing you.”
I pause to catch my breath. And his face is gravity, pausing, stunned in silence. “If you’re ever going to listen to me… hear me now,” I beg him. “Come back to me. Please come back to me. I’m right here.”
Our heartbeats synchronize into the dead silence.
“I need you,” I whisper.
His eyes narrow on me, and it’s as if he’s watching a tidal wave coming straight for him, unable to react, unable to run or hide.
It crashes over him.
His pupils dilate, widening until the chocolate brown is almost swallowed in the darkness. Then, the brown fills in once more, radiating with flecks of green and gold. The new expression on his face is overwhelmed with sorrow and exhaustion.
Martin wiggles his way out of Dessin’s grip and runs into the forest. But much faster than he can make his escape, the massive black and russet-red mountain, DaiSzek, explodes into a ferocious sprint after him. In a flash of blackness, there are only guttural screams.
Dessin doesn’t seem to notice. Is it even Dessin? Could it be the previous host?
He doesn’t take his eyes off me. Instead, he places his hands on my wrists. I realize my hands are still grasping the top of his neck and jawline.
“Dessin?” I ask.
A sad smile. The kind you receive at a funeral. “My name is Kane. I’ve waited—a very long time to see you again.”
The words are mummified in my throat. Capsulated.
I can’t believe I’m finally meeting him—but—what did he say?
—to see you again.
“What—” An anchor tugs in my mind, teetering on the edge of a memory.
“Hold on,” he whispers, and those eyes are portholes guiding me far away.
I’m back at my father’s house four years ago, my body broken and bloody, sniffling cries as my legs swing back and forth from a moving object—carrying me.
“What’s happening?” I mutter the question, but I’m not sure if it escaped my lips. My forehead is wet and throbbing, and the left side of my vision is blinding red.
“Hold on,” his voice breaks, sounding like he’s about to lose it. Cry out in pain or yell in anger. “I’m so sorry, Skylenna.”
He was younger here. His hair was slightly shorter. There wasn’t any scruff on his jawline or chin. He was—Kane.
He was the man who saved me. Survivah’s infirmary never received the name of the man who carried me several miles from my father’s secluded home near the woods. I always had wondered, though. For years, I called that person my angel. I was convinced God sent me protection to carry me from the brink of death and deliver me back to life.
And he’s here now—patiently waiting, watching, wondering if I remember. We’re kneeling in the middle of the dirt road, our bodies clasped together, with only the moments of Dessin lingering between us—but I remember him.
“You…” I utter. “You were there. You saved my life.”
He nods his head once.
“But how? And why didn’t you—why didn’t he ever tell me?” My mind is flowing a steady bountiful river of questions. Is this why he has always acted a certain way around me?
Is this why he has always been so protective of me? But why all of the secrets?
He presses his forehead against mine, closing his eyes as if sensing my urgency to know what is going on.
“These are questions for another day.” His voice is different. Changed. Still deep and strong and powerful. But now, it’s laced with a conscience, with remorse.
“Why can’t they be questions for right now?!” I raise my voice. Fire rising in the depth of my chest.
“Because, Skylenna, we’re fugitives now.”
His eyes lift slowly, taking my hands into his and holding them to his chest.
“It’s time to run.”
