Page 7

In the wee hours of the morning, I staked off with the Diplomats on my first vampire-hunting mission.

With sunlight still two hours away, Dimmon was in a rush to find the bloodsucker and make him pay before dawn approached.

Baylen explained the vampire would go hiding in some dark cave once sunlight hit Nuhav, and he’d be lost to us forever. “We have to find him now, before he can get away—hopefully while he’s still hunting for warm bodies to drain.”

I had never seen a fullblooded vampire. Not many people had, I reckoned, and if you did, it would be the last time you saw one. Grayskins were uncommon but not unheard of, but noble-born vampires in Nuhav?

The thought chilled my blood.

As we ran with the pack of rabid younglings led by Dimmon Plank, Baylen explained, “These aren’t the noble-born though, y’see? They’re the ones cut off from higher society up in Olhav. Savage, desperate, hungry .”

“Sounds like you’re trying to scare me, Bay.”

“Good. These fuckers are terrifying.”

“You’ve seen one?”

He looked down at the ground to kick some refuse out of the way before continuing on with a small, morose nod. He said nothing more on the topic.

Just what have you seen in the years we’ve been separated, my friend?

We traveled from the southwestern dumping grounds north, parallel with the huge wall of the city, making sure to avoid any Bronzes and tower-guards at the wall.

Dimmon knew Nuhav better than anyone, Baylen said, and despite his large size, he could snake, dip, and bob through alleys and hidden passes better than most.

It was because of people like this, people like Jeffrith and Dimmon and the Diplomats, that people like me were taught to fear the alleyways this far south. You never knew when a dagger-wielding thief or vagrant was hiding in one, ready to cut you up and snatch your purse.

And now I was commingling with the cutters and purse-snatchers. It filled me with a dour, guilty feeling to see what I had become.

I didn’t keep my knife drawn. Baylen told me not to use it unless I absolutely had to. So far, I’d seen no reason. This early in the morning, hardly anyone walked the streets—only the drunkards, night-maids, and undesirables. And us.

The Diplomats took the mission in force, with no less than thirty of us.

We ran to keep pace with Dimmon, who seemed to careen and veer through alleys and around corners and buildings like he was trailing a scent.

My legs churned and grew tired after the first hour of searching aimlessly for a shadow in the night.

Baylen told me, “We’ll need this number if we do run across the bloodsucker. They’re strong bastards, y’know.”

“So I’ve heard.” A thought came to me then—one that should have startled me but for some reason didn’t. If anything, it made me calmer. “Do you think we’re going to die, Baylen?”

“Eventually, ‘less the bloodies get hold and thrall you first,” he said with a grim smile at the corner of his mouth. “But tonight ? Fuck no. I won’t let ‘em get you, Seph.”

His reassurance warmed my bones. Slightly. I wasn’t sure what a thirteen-year-old boy could do against an ancient monster built from darkness and terror.

Hopefully thirty of us would be enough.

Part of me hoped we would never find the vampire. I knew it would only lead to death and sorrow. Layson was already gone. What hope was there of saving him?

I realized, in that moment, with that thought . . . Dimmon wasn’t sending us on a rescue or recovery mission. He wasn’t trying to save Layson, he was trying to avenge him.

The warmth that had filled me with Baylen’s words quickly chilled when I recognized we were a feral gang of children being led by a madman on a hopeless quest.

My palms grew slick as I kept running, trying to turn my spinning mind off.

“There!” came a cracking voice to my right, on the far side of the street we ran down. “Shadow!” Jeffrith pointed off into the distance and Dimmon wheeled around, his longer legs carrying him quickly to the alley.

I didn’t see anything—until I came to the alley about four rows back from the others. There were so many of us bunched together it was hard to push through them.

Baylen said, “Stay near me, don’t worry ‘bout the others.”

I did. At the far side of the alley was a hunched form in the darkness—black against the purple night.

At the sound of our army of footsteps, the shadow looked over with red eyes gleaming and took off around the corner, vanishing around the side with a cloak fluttering behind him.

“After him!” Dimmon yelled.

We rounded the alley mouth and sprinted down the road to a town square, not unlike the one housing the bazaar in the Temple district, though smaller. Rows of shuttered shops lined the circular road, with alleys shooting off in six different directions.

“Split up! Find him and corner him. Shout when you’ve got eyes on him.” Dimmon gave the order and the mass of Diplomats split up into smaller groups.

Baylen and I charged left, along with two other kids I didn’t know. This is a horrible idea, I thought. If we have strength in numbers, why would we split up?

Dimmon was no leader. He was a cutthroat desperate to show his strength to his people—his sycophants. He wanted to appear cunning and savvy, when I could tell he was a fool.

Baylen and I came to the front of another corridor, which frustratingly split off into three more, deeper into an alleyway. We slowed our run to a crawl, padding silently down the labyrinthine passage.

Baylen drew his dagger, so I pulled mine from the belt-loop of my tunic. My friend and the two others glanced right down one of the narrow paths. Silence fell over the tight space, coaxing my heartbeat to thud loudly in my ears.

As they moved ahead, I looked left down one of the passages—

And froze.

A figure stood in the darkness, uncloaked, with a bald head and red eyes, slowly backpedaling deeper into the gloom.

My breath stilled as I realized it was the grayskin who had given me his cloak as a blanket the other night, to help me from the cold. The one who had left me alone when I’d fallen asleep, when he easily could have snatched me up like Layson and drained me dry if he’d wanted.

Almost imperceptibly, the grayskin shook his head. I could hardly make out his face in the darkness, yet I recognized enough of his waxen, ashy features to know it was the same man.

“Seph!” Baylen hissed from up ahead. “What is it? You see something?”

I gulped past a dry throat. My palm was clammy on the handle of my dagger. I spun it in my hand before glancing toward Baylen and the others. They had traversed the entirety of the alley while I stood frozen here.

“N-No,” I croaked. I looked over once more at the grayskin before continuing. “Thought I did. Was a cat.”

Baylen harrumphed as I approached them. His eyes narrowed suspiciously but he said nothing as I passed.

We came to the other side of the town square. The alley had wrapped around it from the back.

Shouting erupted far to our right, past a raised garden and fenced sculpture of a gargoyle that stood in the middle of the square.

“There! Bloody fucker!”

Dimmon’s voice.

Our group sprinted over.

A cloaked figure emerged from the alley closest to us, stumbling as he almost barreled headfirst into Baylen at the front of our group.

I gasped, sliding to a stop, seeing the sweaty fear on the cloaked man’s face. The man tried to swerve at the last second to avoid Baylen—

But my friend jabbed his dagger into the man’s stomach.

The cloaked man crumpled forward, falling over Baylen. My friend stabbed him again, then a third time, and blood squelched on the cobbles at our feet.

I slapped a hand over my mouth, horrified as the groaning figure slumped on Baylen and forced both of them to the ground.

Seconds later, Dimmon and the rest of the Diplomats emerged from various alleyways and shadows.

“You got him! Good work, Baylo!” Dimmon shouted encouragingly.

A few of the Diplomat boys worked to slide the figure off Baylen so he could squirm out from under him. They rolled the body over . . . to show the face of a middle-aged man with a mustache, blood trickling down his chin, eyes open sightlessly in death.

“Fuck,” Dimmon growled, kicking at the corpse once Baylen was standing again. “False alarm, crew.”

Jeffrith kneeled in front of the man and lifted his head by the scruff of his hair. “It’s a human,” he mused, then let the head plop down hard onto the cobbles as he let go of him.

Baylen was coated in blood. I felt I was going to be sick, bile rising in the back of my throat. Baylen had just killed a man—the wrong target—simply for looking like the alleged cloaked vampire we were searching for.

I stuffed my dagger away at my belt as a wave of nausea passed over me.

“Hey, look at this though, eh?” Jeffrith said as Diplomats started to turn around in shame. A few of them stopped at the sound of his voice.

Jeffrith reached into the man’s tunic and came out holding a bulging sack that jangled when he lifted it up for everyone to see. “Not a bad haul for a false alarm, eh, sir?” He shot Dimmon a small smirk.

Color drained from my cheeks. I glanced over at Baylen, whose eyes were wide in shock. I knew, and hoped for the sake of his soul, he was stunned at what he’d just done . . . and what Jeffrith was implying.

Dimmon grunted to himself and nodded. He glanced up at the sky. “Come on, lads and ladies. Sun’ll be up soon. Let’s get back home.” He inclined his chin to Baylen as he passed us, not so much as giving my friend a glance as he said, “Nice work, boy.”

Nice work? Fury filled my veins. We just killed an innocent man, based on a whisper of a rumor, and now we’re robbing his corpse!

My first night with the Diplomats had gone exactly as I feared it might.

The gang slept for most of the day after the events of the early morning. We never found Layson and never heard from him again. He was gone—vanished or stolen like he’d never existed at all.

Next evening, Dimmon Plank called a rare halt to “band activities” so we could “commiserate Layson’s loss.” In actuality, it was so the gang could buy liquor with the stolen coins Jeffrith had found, and so the Diplomats could celebrate the haul.

Turned out the man Baylen had killed was wealthy and rather important in this district of Nuhav. Word circled the street of the man’s death all through the day—we had left him right there on the cobbles, after all, so it wasn’t like he was hard to find.

Fendrus Havvacam had been a man who sold clothes. More than a tailor, he was a shopowner with six locations and factories across Nuhav. He’d been finishing up early-morning banking between one of his shops before the day got started, and before he unfortunately ran into us.

“Unlucky son of a bitch,” Baylen told me while upending a bottle of wine to his lips that night.

Unlucky? That’s what you say after killing a man, Brother?

All mention of Layson and the bloodsucker had ended. Dimmon was making sure to ply his people with enough booze to keep us numb and quiet—I could see his tricks even if no one else could.

We had the fires going, dotting the dumping ground that was partly hidden off the street. Diplomat boys and girls were huddled around them.

A minstrel—or one of the boys who called himself a minstrel and happened to own a lute, which attracted many girls to his fire—was busy plucking away at one of them.

At another fire, boys played cards and gambled, and then broke out into wrestling matches that spilled into the streets when things didn’t go well.

At our fire, Baylen became exceptionally drunker. I started to worry about him. He had reclined, humming to himself, his eyes red and beady. He looked relaxed and drowned in liquor, blinking as if ready to pass out.

When Bay glanced over at me, he found me staring at him. Anger came to his cheeks in a flare of embarrassment. “You better not be lookin’ ‘cause you pity me, Seph.”

“Baylen . . .” I shook my head. I hadn’t had a drop of booze—I didn’t trust anyone here except my former Brother of the House of the Broken. “. . . I’m sorry that happened. I know it can’t be easy—”

“I said stop !” he yelled, and then swigged the rest of the bottle and tossed it behind him. It clanked and rolled down the cobbles.

I nodded, falling silent, knowing it was best to stay quiet. Couldn’t talk when he was like this. Any words from me would be seen as provocation right now.

About an hour later, his head popped up. He had dozed off, thankfully, but now he had a delirious look in his eyes when he glanced over.

He smiled in an ugly way, still drunk, and scooted next to me. The fire was dying. He smelled awful. Truehearts be true, we all fucking did.

“Y’know, Seph . . .” He trailed off and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. Abruptly, he was much too close to me, making me increasingly uncomfortable. “You’ve gotten so pretty, huh? Anyone told you that?”

I gulped, trying to stave off my growing disgust. Please don’t make me hate you, Baylen. I’m begging you.

This was not the Brother I knew, grossly throwing himself over me. If I was being honest with myself, he hadn’t been the Brother I knew since he’d left the House of the Broken. That protective, roguish boy was gone, replaced by a hardened person on the cusp of adulthood.

He squeezed my body against his, our thighs touching. His eyes dropped to my chest, down the collar of my tunic.

I clenched my jaw. “Baylen . . .”

Bay’s hand wrapped around my side, landing on my hip. His stale, boozy breath washed over my face. He leered at me, eyes drooping like he was in a daze.

Yes. A daze. That’s it. Can’t hold it against him if he’s not in control of his faculties and—

Baylen squeezed my breast through my shirt.

I jolted, shoving him off me. Jumped to my feet and shouted, “Baylen, fuck off!”

He toppled over to his side with a cackle. From other fires, boys and girls chuckled at the sight of me spurning his drunken advances.

Baylen’s cheeks were red and looked as warm as the fire felt. I had embarrassed him. There was a dangerous look in his eyes now as he glared up at me.

“I’m going to bed,” I said flatly. “And you’d do well to do the same, Bay.”

My heart sank as I walked away.

Because I knew I could no longer trust Baylen Sallow after that night.