The Host (The Host 1)

"Let me go," I whispered. "Put me down. "

"I didn't mean to wake you. I'm sorry. " The last words were fervent, apologizing for more than waking me.

"Let me go. "

"You're not well. I'll take you to your room. "

"No. Put me down now. "

"Wanda -"

"Now!" I shouted. I shoved against Ian's chest, kicking my legs free at the same time. The ferocity of my struggle surprised him. He lost his hold on me, and I half fell into a crouch on the floor.

I sprang up from the crouch running.

"Wanda!"

"Let her go. "

"Don't touch me! Wanda, come back!"

It sounded like they were wrestling behind me, but I didn't slow. Of course they were fighting. They were humans. Violence was pleasure to them.

I didn't pause when I was back in the light. I sprinted through the big cavern without looking at any of the monsters there. I could feel their eyes on me, and I didn't care.

I didn't care where I was going, either. Just somewhere I could be alone. I avoided the tunnels that had people near them, running down the first empty one I could find.

It was the eastern tunnel. This was the second time I'd sprinted through this corridor today. Last time in joy, this time in horror. It was hard to remember how I'd felt this afternoon, knowing the raiders were home. Everything was dark and gruesome now, including their return. The very stones seemed evil.

This way was the right choice for me, though. No one had any reason to come here, and it was empty.

I ran to the farthest end of the tunnel, into the deep night of the empty game room. Could I really have played games with them such a short time ago? Believed the smiles on their faces, not seeing the beasts underneath. . .

I moved forward until I stumbled ankle deep into the oily waters of the dark spring. I backed away, my hand outstretched, searching for a wall. When I found a rough ridge of stone-sharp-edged beneath my fingers-I turned into the depression behind the protrusion and curled myself into a tight ball on the ground there.

It wasn't what we thought. Doc wasn't hurting anyone on purpose; he was just trying to save -

GET OUT OF MY HEAD! I shrieked.

As I thrust her away from me-gagged her so that I wouldn't have to bear her justifications-I realized how weak she'd grown in all these months of friendliness. How much I'd been allowing. Encouraging.

It was almost too easy to silence her. As easy as it should have been from the beginning.

It was only me now. Just me, and the pain and the horror that I would never escape. I would never not have that image in my head again. I would never be free of it. It was forever a part of me.

I didn't know how to mourn here. I could not mourn in human ways for these lost souls whose names I would never know. For the broken child on the table.

I had never had to mourn on the Origin. I didn't know how it was done there, in the truest home of my kind. So I settled for the way of the Bats. It seemed appropriate, here where it was as black as being blind. The Bats mourned with silence-not singing for weeks on end until the pain of the nothingness left behind by the lack of music was worse than the pain of losing a soul. I'd known loss there. A friend, killed in a freak accident, a falling tree in the night, found too late to save him from the crushed body of his host. Spiraling. . . Upward. . . Harmony; those were the words that would have held his name in this language. Not exact, but close enough. There had been no horror in his death, only grief. An accident.

The bubbling stream was too discordant to remind me of our songs. I could grieve beside its harmony-free clatter.

I wrapped my arms tightly around my shoulders and mourned for the child and the other soul who had died with it. My siblings. My family. If I had found a way free of this place, if I had warned the Seekers, their remains would not be so casually mangled and mixed together in that blood-steeped room.

I wanted to cry, to keen in misery. But that was the human way. So I locked my lips and hunched in the darkness, holding the pain inside.

My silence, my mourning, was stolen from me.

It took them a few hours. I heard them looking, heard their voices echo and warp in the long tubes of air. They were calling for me, expecting an answer. When they received no answer, they brought lights. Not the dim blue lanterns that might never have revealed my hiding place here, buried under all this blackness, but the sharp yellow lances of flashlights. They swept back and forth, pendulums of light. Even with the flashlights, they didn't find me until the third search of the room. Why couldn't they leave me alone?

When the flashlight's beam finally disinterred me, there was a gasp of relief.

"I found her! Tell the others to get back inside! She's in here after all!"

I knew the voice, but I didn't put a name to it. Just another monster.

"Wanda? Wanda? Are you all right?"

I didn't raise my head or open my eyes. I was in mourning.

"Where's Ian?"

"Should we get Jamie, do you think?"

"He shouldn't be on that leg. "

Jamie. I shuddered at his name. My Jamie. He was a monster, too. He was just like the rest of them. My Jamie. It was a physical pain to think of him.

"Where is she?"

"Over here, Jared. She's not. . . responding. "

"We didn't touch her. "

"Here, give me the light," Jared said. "Now, the rest of you, get out of here. Emergency over. Give her some air, okay?"

There was a shuffling noise that didn't travel far.

"Seriously, people. You're not helping. Leave. All the way out. "

The shuffling was slow at first, but then became more productive. I could hear many footsteps fading away in the room and then disappearing out of it.

Jared waited until it was silent again.

"Okay, Wanda, it's just you and me. "

He waited for some kind of answer.

"Look, I guess that must have been pretty. . . bad. We never wanted you to see that. I'm sorry. "

Sorry? Geoffrey'd said it was Jared's idea. He wanted to cut me out, slice me into little pieces, fling my blood on the wall. He'd slowly mangle a million of me if he could find a way to keep his favorite monster alive with him. Slash us all to slivers.

He was quiet for a long time, still waiting for me to react.

"You look like you want to be alone. That's okay. I can keep them away, if that's what you want. "

I didn't move.

Something touched my shoulder. I cringed away from it, into the sharp stones.

"Sorry," he muttered.

I heard him stand, and the light-red behind my closed eyes-began to fade as he walked away.

He met someone in the mouth of the cave.

"Where is she?"

"She wants to be alone. Let her be. "

"Don't get in my way again, Howe. "

"Do you think she wants comfort from you? From a human?"

"I wasn't party to this -"

Jared answered in a lower voice, but I could still hear the echoes. "Not this time. You're one of

us, Ian. Her enemy. Did you hear what she said in there? She was screaming monsters. That's how she sees us now. She doesn't want your comfort. "

"Give me the light. "

They didn't speak again. A minute passed, and I heard one set of slow footsteps moving around the edge of the room. Eventually, the light swept across me, turning my lids red again.

I huddled myself more tightly together, expecting him to touch me.

There was a quiet sigh, and then the sound of him sitting on the stone, not as close beside me as I would have expected.

With a click, the light disappeared.

I waited in the silence for a long time for him to speak, but he was just as silent as I was.

Finally, I stopped waiting and returned to my mourning. Ian did not interrupt. I sat in the blackness of the big hole in the ground and grieved for lost souls with a human at my side.