Wildblood

Chapter 58

58

Miya

When Alina promised to reveal her father’s hideout, Miya hadn’t expected to find herself loitering outside Piggy Bank’s Coin Laundry. It was shuttered for the day, a piece of cardboard shoved haphazardly in the window, the word closed scrawled on it in permanent marker. Gavran perched on the shop sign’s P, squawking triumphantly.

“That’s weird. Usually when he’s here, there’s someone inside watching the door.” Alina cupped her eyes and pressed her forehead to the tinted glass. “It looks empty.”

Miya wondered if Kai got loose, but that was no guarantee that he was alive. “How do we get inside?”

Alina didn’t respond. Her face was still pressed to the window, her hands sliding down the smooth glass with a low squeal. Her eyes were peeled open, and she stared into the laundromat as if searching for something—or someone.

“Hey…” Miya placed a tentative hand on the girl’s shoulder, and she jumped, blinking away her stupor. Perhaps Caelan was nearby, influencing her double.

“Sorry,” Alina muttered, straightening. “Must’ve zoned out.” She reached into her pocket and fished out a key, presumably for the door.

“He just gave you a key to his multipurpose butcher shop?”

Alina snorted. “Are you kidding? I stole this from his desk.”

“Doesn’t he lock his office door?” Miya pressed.

The teen shrugged. “He locks everything, which is why I took up lock picking. How do you think I get out of my room?”

Miya tried to school her features, tempering her horror. “He locks you in your room?”

Alina gave her a dark look, then turned the key in the knob. “I wasn’t being cute when I said my house is a prison.”

No shit. Pyotr used the fetch to justify his Rapunzel-like treatment of his daughter, but he’d be an abusive dickweed regardless of the circumstances.

The door chirred open to the sound of running machines. “I thought it was closed,” Miya said as she gingerly stepped inside, Gavran gliding in behind her. The lights were off, yet the washers and dryers were all on.

Alina’s expression was grim. “He’s trying to cover something up.”

Miya grimaced as a series of macabre images flitted through her brain. No one could hear a person scream over the cacophony of a dozen laundry machines. They needed to slow down and figure out a plan. Even if Alina felt safe prancing around her father’s illicit empire, Miya did not. Pyotr’s men wouldn’t hurt his daughter, but a civilian who’d gotten her nose into their business was fair game. “We should?—”

Alina’s gasp interrupted her. A shadow moved toward the rear of the laundromat, and the teen booked it toward the figure, leaving Miya paralyzed by the front door.

Gavran was the first to give chase, the blur of feathers shaking Miya loose as she too bolted after Alina. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a crimson puddle, an arm that didn’t lead to a body, waxen skin bereft of life.

Miya clamped her mouth shut and forced down the sick, then skidded to a halt as she caught up to Alina, now standing in the doorway to an office.

Long shadows stretched into the small space, and as Miya followed the gore painted over the tiles, she found Kai at the end of the grisly path. Scarlet streaked his arms, torso, and neck, his hands stained from fingernails to wrists. Dried blood trickled from his scalp, matting his dark hair—a nauseating clue to how he’d been taken.

He pivoted, wild eyes snapping to Miya as his lips parted in surprise. She saw the relief wash over him the moment his body caught up to his brain. Sorrow constricted around her heart; Kai hadn’t any inkling of her fate. For all he knew, she could’ve been dead in the King of Spades. Behind him, Pyotr pointed a gun at Zverev, who held a shellshocked Caelan by the shoulder. The girl’s gaze drifted, then settled on Alina.

Fetch and human peered into one another, utterly transfixed. Gray, determined stares, focused yet distant all at once. Then, the simultaneous tap of their soles against the floor closed the gap by a single step.

Pyotr roared, shifting the barrel from Zverev’s head to Caelan’s. A deafening bang rang out in the small space, and Miya clapped her hands over her ears as Kai lunged. The sound must’ve been excruciating, but he only winced, heedless of the damage to his eardrums. From the corner of her eye, Miya saw Caelan fall, her face eerily neutral, empty of emotion.

Then, a grunt.

Zverev stumbled back, hand flying to his ribcage. He’d shoved Caelan out of the way just as Pyotr pulled the trigger, rotating his body to protect his vitals. Pyotr had aimed for Caelan’s head, which was nowhere near Zverev’s. The bullet could scarcely hit him anywhere lethal.

Kai grabbed Caelan as her hands and knees hit the floor. Her head hung between her arms, juddering like a marionette’s. As Kai pulled her up, Miya felt every fiber in her body wretch with terror.

Caelan’s shadow hadn’t moved.

As the teen rose, her umbral counterpart twitched as though testing its bonds. An elbow snapped, and its neck twisted, the dark shape of the head rotating toward Alina. Then, it crawled forward and reached for its twin.

Breath hitched in Kai’s throat as he saw the thing move. He reeled back, Caelan in tow, and darkness spewed from the writhing shade, slithering everywhere until even the windows were eclipsed. The overhead light flickered, and with each sputtering blink, a shadowy maw yawned open, devouring the room. When it could unhinge no further, the fangs broke away and skittered along the floor, the walls, the ceiling. Unwieldly teeth took the fetch’s shape, every one of them mirroring their sibling on the floor.

Pyotr howled like a madman, and Gavran dove from his hiding spot atop a shelf, clawing at the mobster’s hand until the revolver tumbled from his grasp. Zverev leapt for the weapon despite the panic, then slammed his employer into the wall. Pyotr lurched, the air fleeing his lungs with a wheeze. Zverev’s fingers curled around his throat like a vise as he drew close and growled through bared teeth, “Watch your daughter die.”

Miya snatched Alina’s arm to guide her away, but the girl wouldn’t budge. She was rooted to the ground like an ancient tree, her shadow stretching toward Caelan’s. It was as though she existed in two worlds at once—part of her in the physical plane and the rest of her tangled in the dreamscape.

Caelan’s eyes flashed to life as Kai hauled her back. With quick, ragged breaths, she tracked the darting shadows. She fought against Kai’s hold, her body pushing her forward against her say so.

“Make it stop,” Caelan wailed in a moment of lucidity. Agony warped her features, and she bucked and thrashed to kick herself free. “Please, just make it stop.”

Miya wrapped both arms around Alina’s torso, lowering her center of gravity and drawing on every ounce of mortal strength to move the immovable. Then, a chilling whisper spilled from Alina’s lips.

“Do it, do it, do it, do it,” she hissed, eyes wide and bloodshot, her bones vibrating beneath skin and muscle.

The fetch’s thralls writhed and shuddered like ravening ghouls, their arms lengthening into wisps as they grasped at their human twin. The one that’d separated from its master jerked closer, straining until Caelan’s silhouette met Alina’s, their arms plaiting into a cord. Color flaked from Alina like scorched paper. Her skin blanched, the vibrant cinnamon of her hair draining away, the strands parched and brittle. Behind the sea of shadow, Caelan grew impossibly brighter—a star in a midnight sky. Her hair lengthened, lush and fiery like an amaranth sunset. Her cheeks flushed, and her eyes morphed from a stormy gray to the vibrant blue of a summer afternoon. She was stealing Alina’s vitality, remaking herself into the keeper of not one life, but two.

Gavran sliced through the air, then hooked his talons into Alina’s shoulder, his outline joining with hers. The contours of the raven bloomed into that of the boy, his shadow spilling to the floor next to the girl’s. The raven cocked his head, and the boy mirrored him.

They were all connected by what they cast—a chimera of things both human and not. Miya traced the stream of darkness that bound Alina and Caelan, their limbs fused in a spectral tether.

A tether that’d just formed.

Disparate parts must be brought together , Gavran’s voice reverberated from the walls.

He’d told her as much, hadn’t he?

You need both halves to see the whole.

“I need to cut the tether,” Miya resolved, her eyes fixed on Gavran’s shadow. “That’s what you saw in the park, isn’t it? You saw their shadows merge.” She gritted her teeth, realization spuming into anger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

The boy’s head clicked the other way, and so too did the raven’s.

The cost, Dreamwalker. Not every solution is worth the price.

“What the hell does that mean?” Her muscles ached from the strain, her vocal cords sounding shredded.

What you call a tether is in fact a limb, and what you seek is not a release, but an amputation. If you sever the cord, you’ll sever a piece of the fetch. An essential part of her will die with her bond.

His words were a dagger through her middle. No matter what she did, something would be lost. Still, burgeoning fury shackled her in place. “You should have told me! It could’ve been a clue, a way forward!”

Gavran’s wings fluttered, and the feathers of the boy’s cloak ruffled with them. Tethers are not to be trifled with. They are living things, and their instinct is to survive at all costs. Hacking one to pieces has unforeseen consequences, but letting nature take its course is simpler, more sensible.

Miya understood now: the tether was the thing inside Caelan, forcing her closer to Alina even when she fought to stay away. It was what broke her bones and tore her open when she wouldn’t obey. Now, it was bursting free, determined to finish what it’d started.

Gavran should’ve told her. He should’ve let them decide together. It was information they could’ve forged into knowledge, and knowledge offered solutions.

“We could save two lives!” she reasoned.

Or you’ll damn both with your refusal to sacrifice one for the benefit of the other.

Miya buried her face in Alina’s shoulder. She wanted to wilt, every untenable outcome lancing her skull as she grappled with what to do. They were out of time. If they let Caelan overtake Alina, they’d condemn her to a fate she would’ve died to avoid. But if they honored Caelan’s wish and killed her first, they would save no one. Between a father who caged his daughter like a prized canary and a fetch who would take her place, Alina’s life was forfeit.

Desolate, unmoored, Miya searched for the one person who could ground her—weave her weakness into strength. He was indominable, a ballast in any storm. Feeling her silent plea, Kai’s mordant gaze found her like a compass needle pointing north. He was losing his own battle, but he refused to let Caelan go. Miya knew he’d heard every word, the fetch’s fey magic splintering the boundary between worlds until Gavran’s voice penetrated both.

Jaw set, Kai bowed his head, the burnt red of his irises glinting to the flicker of fluorescent lights. Ever the blade in Miya’s hand, he unsheathed his hunting knife.