The Prey (The Hunt 2)

But Sissy’s no longer listening. Or looking at me. Her eyes are latched onto something just outside the chamber. Skin blanching, she points at the well opening.

The dusker—facedown and unmoving—has floated up to the surface, a lifeless blob. Its black hair is splayed across the surface of the water like cracks in glass. Its talons were caught in my pants, and I’d dragged it through the bottom tunnel and over to the other well. Where it had floated slowly and lifelessly upward.

Sissy moves toward it.

“It’s dead, Sissy.”

“Gotta make sure,” she says, and reaches down. The dusker is waterlogged and too heavy. Sissy drops it on the rim of the opening, and its upper body hangs out like a black, diseased tongue.

With my foot, I nudge its head until its side profile comes into view. Its eyes are closed, mouth open like a gaping maw, the tips of its incisors pressed against its lower lip.

It moans.

Sissy and I leap backward.

Its face begins to give off smoke, thin gray tendrils. It begins to whimper, fingers trembling. It’s the light from the GlowBurn: not bright enough to kill it, but more than enough to excruciate a slow burn on it.

“We need to end it. Destroy it. I’m taking it outside into the sunlight.”

“Sissy, let’s not risk it. Or waste time.”

“I’ll never rest easy knowing there’s a dusker in the mountains.”

“Sissy,” I say, my voice urgent and questioning. “It’s too dangerous. It’ll revive.”

But she ignores me. She bends down and links her arms under the dusker’s armpits. She hoists it out of the slot, then drags it backward, its heels dragging along the ground. But the waterlogged dusker is too heavy. After only a few steps, Sissy loses her grip on it, and it drops to the ground. It grunts lowly.

I pick the dusker off the ground, hoist it over my shoulder. Its head flops against my shoulder blade, its fangs unnervingly close. Wanting to keep its fangs in sight, I flip the dusker around until I’m cradling it. Its face holds an unexpected fragility. Long black eyelashes, in harsh relief against the white face. More smoke rises from its skin, the raw stench of burning flesh filling my nostrils.

We stand before the exit door. Daylight rims in through the edges.

“It might come to. From the pain. Be careful, watch its mouth, its teeth.”

Sissy positions herself next to me, her body pressed against my side.

“I’ve got its arms pinned against me,” I say. “You watch its mouth, its fangs—”

“Got it,” she says.

I grip the dusker tightly against my chest and sprint toward the double doors.

On impact, the doors smack open, banging loudly against the outside wall. Sunlight blinds us, smacking into us like a wall. But we don’t stop; our legs keep pounding the ground even as the dusker starts flopping in my arms, even as its skin starts to sizzle with the singeing glare of the sun. We run as fast and as far as possible from the Vastnarium, from the darkened inside in which the dusker might yet seek refuge.

Bathed in early morning sunlight, the dusker gives a bone-chilling scream. Its jaws start snapping, the sound of marble cracking.

I trip. I don’t know how, if it was over a rock or my own panicking feet, but I’m suddenly in the air. I plummet to the ground, knocking Sissy over, and the hard wintry ground sucker punches me in the gut. I curl up, gasping for air, hardly aware that the dusker has escaped my grasp.

“Gene!”

Incisors fly past me, gritted and grinning. A blur as its sleek body leaps over me, then it is bounding away.

I leap up a half second later and give chase. The dusker is fast, but compromised: already weakened by the near-drowning, it is pummeled by the devastating effect of sunlight. Its speed drops precipitously; then it stumbles, its legs soft as butter in a hot pan, its bones turning to gelatin. The body droops, definition fading quickly as muscle and skeleton carbonize away.

I leap at it, tackling it to the ground. All fight has gone out of it. Dragged by my momentum, it sheds warm lumps of skin and fat on the ground as we skid across. Coming to a stop and lying astride its body, I pin its head down, clamping the slowly snapping teeth away from me. My hands sink into the decaying skull, soft as a boiled egg now.

And then the dusker is all weakness. Not a muscle left to move its limbs, not the desire to live or to eat. Its chest, rising and falling weak as a rabbit’s sigh. It shrivels before me, only its thick raven hair undamaged by the sunlight. It is over.

And yet still it whispers, still it murmurs.

Sissy moves in, kneeling next to me. The dusker continues to melt away, yellow effluvium pooling around us. A raw pungent smell of flesh burning fills the air.

“Watch its fangs!” Sissy warns.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s done in.”

The dusker’s mouth suddenly opens wide as if yawning, exposing a row of sharp incisors. Its jaw shudders, vibrates, as if shivering. A faint sounds scratches out.

“S-S-Saw…” it whispers, mouthing a word.

Sissy and I share a confused, horrified look.

“Saw-saw…” it murmurs, barely audible.

I lower my ear to its mouth.

“No, Gene. It’s a ruse…”

I push her hand away. “It’s okay,” I whisper, but not to Sissy. To the dusker. “It’s okay. It’s over now.” And I lean forward until my ear is down to its lips.

It sucks in one last breath, eyes gaping wide like a pair of gasping mouths. And that’s when I notice its arm, what’s left of it, anyway. Five branding marks, disintegrating in the sunlight.

And finally it utters its last word. I lean in closer.

“Sorry,” it says.

And then it closes its eyes.

We don’t say anything. I put my hand in the dusker’s black hair and, with hesitation at first, gently stroke the silky lengths. My fingers comb through the still-damp hair, over and over, until the dusker is silent, until the dusker is gone, until nothing is left of her but hair.

38

WE SPRINT THROUGH the village. Morning has swung into full momentum and village girls are now pouring out into the streets. Sissy and I drop all hopes of remaining undetected and make a beeline right down the main road. Girls turn to look at us, their heads swiveling around as we pass.

We enter my cottage quietly and take in the silence of the interior, the emptiness of the dining room. Avoiding the creaky steps, we ascend the staircase. The bedroom door is slightly ajar, and I carefully peek inside. All the boys are on the bed, their wrists tied to separate bedposts. Only David sees me; his eyes widen. I raise a finger to my lips. Blinking hard, he points with his chin toward an unseen corner of the room.

They’ve posted one sentry.

A large one, but, more importantly, a sleeping one. A finished bottle of wine lies on its side, pressed up against a chair leg. The elder’s mouth is wide open, a snore gurgling in his throat but not quite making it out of his mouth. They obviously weren’t expecting any resistance or rescue.

Sissy slides into the room behind me, dagger in hand, and starts cutting the ropes. The boys, all wide-eyed now, know better than to say a word. I stand facing the elder, the wine bottle now in my hand. At the first sign of waking up, I will smash the bottle into his face.

Within a minute, the boys are all cut loose. The bags we’d packed earlier are still stacked by the door, and we grab them as we tiptoe out of the room, closing the door behind us, leaving the drunk elder none the wiser.

Outside, we fly down the path. We have the advantage now. Out in the open, we can easily evade their potbellies and lotus feet. Our escape is all but assured. We run past groups of girls who gape and stare. We sprint off the cobblestone street, onto a dirt path. Girls are washing laundry on the deck by the river, and they stop to observe us as we run past. I see one of them stand, take a few urgent paces toward us. It’s the girl with freckles and she raises an outstretched arm, beckoning us to stop. B

ut there is no time, and we blow past her, cross the river, sprint into the woods. There might as well be a hundred miles between us and them, there’s no way they can catch us now.

* * *

We don’t stop running for a full fifteen minutes. A bubbling stream gives us the excuse to stop; we fill our canteens, glad for the chance to catch our breath. Sissy checks on Ben’s head where he’d been earlier struck by an elder. There’s a small bump but he seems none the worse for wear. Epap has a few bruises and scrapes on his face and arms. He says he delivered a few good punches before they’d overpowered him.

He clutches his jacket suddenly, then stumbles behind a tree. We hear him retching, then dry coughing. He comes back, his breath sour, his face pale. He kneels beside the river, splashes water on his face.

“Better now?” Sissy asks.

“Still a little groggy. From that soup they made me drink. They forced me to drink it on threat to the other boys. Said they’d bring you back if I finished it.” He grimaces, shakes his head. “The only thing it brought was a fainting spell. But the cold water’s helped. So has running, breaking into a sweat.” He stands up. “Whoa, too fast. Still dizzy. Give me a few.”

We do. I use that time recounting to them everything I learned from Clair: the Mission, my father, the need to travel east. They nod somberly as I speak, their eyes casting warily in the direction of the Mission.

Only Jacob is conflicted. He picks up his bag slowly, drops it back down to the ground. “So we’re really on our own now.”