1
“Why can’t life be all unicorns and marshmallows?” I sighed, sitting at a café across the street from a known shadowkind bar. “Then I wouldn’t have to kill things to feel better.”
I took a sip of my frappuccino and watched the stained-glass-inlaid door of the bar. The afternoon sun glared above, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue you only ever saw in movies. Most killers hunted during the night, cloaked in shadows and hidden by the dark. It either took a really crazy person or a completely stupid one to hunt in broad daylight.
I'd been trained for both night and day, made into the perfect hunter who could blend in wherever and whenever. The nightmare that woke me this morning jolted through my head again, the pain of the cattle prod blazing pain through my ribs a very real memory, and I flinched in the little metal chair, the legs squeaking on flagstones. I kept trying to pretend I was normal, and my nightmares kept reminding me I was anything but.
I glanced down, as if I could see my scars through the pretty pink sundress I wore. Like all good trainers—or keepers as we called the people who raised us, twisted us, and taught us how to hunt monsters—they only made marks where they wouldn't be seen.
Humans were the worst.1They made quick decisions about a person's morality from their looks. And people with immense scarring? They were dangerous. Criminals. Worthy of a second, lingering glance, a reassessment.
That was the best way to get caught: to be noticed.
"Come on," I whispered, tapping my long fingernails against my frappuccino cup. I'd painted them with baby pink kitty heads in between fits of turbulent sleep. One was already chipped. "Typical," I sighed. That seemed like an omen of how today was going to go.
My nightmares had been getting worse for weeks, and my paranoia told me it was because the keepers were drawing closer. I might have escaped six months ago, but I hadn't exactly been free all this time. How could I live happily ever after when I knew they were hunting me? How could I settle down, meet a nice man, and start a family when I knew the keepers would find me and kill anyone I loved before they threw me back in the hutch?
I tried to shake off the memories, fixing my attention on the blocky shadowkind bar across the street. I'd be fine once I bled some of the anxious magic out of me.
I shouldn't have evenhadmagic—I was human. But my keepers had a lot to answer for, and especially their trusty doctor with his cold, terror-inducing lab.
If they hadn't taught me to cut a throat or sever a limb or dissolve a person inside out with my magic, I could have been a regular thirty-one-year-old woman sitting at this café, drinking coffee while she waited to meet up with her friends, or even a boyfriend.
But I wasn't regular, and I was barely a woman. I didn't have friends, had never had a boyfriend beyond hasty, panicked sex with other weapons—that was what the keepers called us. And instead I sat here waiting for a shadowkind monster to exit the bar across the street so I could do the only thing that ever made sense to me: kill.
I sucked more iced coffee through my straw, chewing the end and casting a quick glance around to see if any of the other café-goers were watching me. So far, so good, but you could never be too careful. The keepers had weapons who could go unnoticed until it was too late.
I discreetly patted the skirt of my pink dress, feeling the shape of the knife strapped to my thighs. Not that I really needed it when my magic could turn someone to a puddle of goop and floating eyeballs, but I felt better with a backup weapon.
"Oh god, here goes nothing," I breathed when the double doors to the bar opened across the street and a perfectly normal looking, black-haired man exited. The only hint at his otherworldly nature was his height—six-foot-threeat least—and I bet his eyes had a metallic sheen up close. But the real proof he was shadowkind was that no human would step foot in that bar. It was covered in so much void magic they'd find themselves repelled without knowing why.
Unless it was a human who'd been tortured into killing monsters. Like me.
I quickly drank the last of my frappuccino and hurried down the street after the shadowkind, flicking silver hair out of my face so I could see. I should have braided it, but ah well. I hadn't exactly been thinking straight this morning, with memories of screaming, agony, and the soft, deceiving voice of my keeper filling my head.
All you have to do is affect the apple, Hala. Move it, break it, wither it, explode it—it doesn't matter what method you choose or what your magic does. Just do something, and then I won't have to shock you again. Okay?
I shook my head hard to dislodge the memory, racing across the road and giving a driver an apologetic wince when they blared their horn and slammed on the brakes.
“Sorry, so sorry,” I called, running to the pavement on the other side.
I’d never normally run in front of a car, but I was shaky and on edge, and I couldn’t let the shadowkind monster out of my sight. I needed this so badly, my magic was starting to prickle my skin, itching to get out. One little kill, and I could breathe easier.
It was the only thing that made sense to me, the only thing that gave me calm. I knew it was because I'd been trained to associate death with the absence of pain, tocraveit, but I was powerless to fight my upbringing.
"Oh!" I breathed, my eyes widening when the shadowkind headed down an alleyway between a florist and a supermarket. "You big idiot. You’re making it too easy to catch you."
I made sure no one heard me saying that. It would defeat the whole looking-like-an-innocent-woman thing. It wasn’t like Iwantedto be a killer; I didn’t live for the bloodlust and gore like other weapons did. I needed it for my sanity. I’d tried everything else—meditation, crystals, kickboxing, yoga, music, colouring books. You name it, I’d tried it, and I’d been crushed when it didn’t ease my rapid breathing and too-fast heart, or quieten the noise inside my head.
Safely on the pavement, I kept a few feet between me and the tall, dark-haired shadowkind, my skirt swishing around my thighs as I walked. After the night I'd had, action felt good. It brought me back to the present, to lifeoutsidethe hutch, and reminded me I might not have been free but at least I wasn’t locked up. A tiny glint of freedom was still better than none, after all.
I was what the keepers made me, but nowIwas in control.
Breathing faster with nerves and excitement, I crept around the corner into the alley the shadowkind vanished into and spotted him halfway down. Reaching under my skirt, I slid out my knife and kept it in my palm. My heartbeat steadied at the feel of it, the helplessness from my dream—well, my memory—pushed back a few feet.
"Excuse me," I called, and the monster turned instantly. I was told I had a sweet, innocent voice that even the hardest criminal would fall for. I didn’t know about that, but at least no one ever heard me speak and immediately grew suspicious. "You dropped this."
I held out my hand, making sure he couldn't see what I held. Up close, he was annoyingly handsome. Even if this was just a glamour hiding his true, monstrous self, he should have been ugly. He shouldn't have had killer cheekbones, sparkly aqua eyes, and lips that split in a dangerous smile.