Shards and Ashes

Corpse Eaters by Melissa Marr

HARMONY STOOD OUTSIDE the immense vat of viscous liquid. It looked remarkably like a cross between an aquarium and one of the coffee dispensers at every church dinner she remembered. Inside it, corpses floated. The water was thick with things she didn’t want to identify.

“Get out.” Chris grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the tank.

She looked past him to where the PBX was attached. The explosives were precious, used only when essential, but this was one of the essentials. The body of a girl about her age floated on the other side of the wall where the hole would be.

“Now, Harm!” He shoved her toward the door. “You were to be gone by now.”

Silently, she apologized to the dead girl for the imminent explosion—and the damage it would do to her body. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if her body would be treated with respect if they didn’t do this. She was food now, meat and skin consumed by the creatures that Harmony’s group opposed.

The explosions farther into the warehouse began. Hopefully, they’d draw enough attention that she and Chris could escape. Hopefully, only a few of the Nidos would be between them and the door. Hopefully, the monsters wouldn’t win today.

“Come on,” Chris whispered.

They moved closer to the exit and ducked behind a stack of boxes. His hold on her arm hadn’t loosened; she suspected it wouldn’t unless he had to fight. It wasn’t that she was reckless, not really. It was just that the only time she felt like life mattered was when she was taking something from the Nidos. They’d taken everything from her, from everyone who lived in North America. She liked taking something from them.

The sounds of slithering and harsh words echoed through the warehouse. The Nidos were heading toward the explosions. Those explosions were distractions, larger charges causing destruction, but as soon as the vat blew, the Nidos would come.

She felt it as it blew, a smallish explosion in comparison to the others they’d set. The crack in the glass was almost as loud. The fluid began to pour from the hole, and as it did, the crack widened.

They were at the door as the gush of water and human remains flowed into the warehouse.

“Faster!” she urged Chris. A fight she could enjoy, but being doused with a soup of decaying bodies was the stuff of nightmares.

It was foolishness, but she closed the door behind them.

As if sealing away the sight of it will change anything.

There were two Nidos outside the door, but Chris wasn’t willing to waste time on them. He lifted the sawed-off shotgun he had slung across his back and emptied both barrels into the Nido on his side.

“Got you,” she said as she threw herself on the back of the second one. The satisfying sensation of slicing his throat wide open wasn’t enough, but it helped her feel like all would be right in the world.

He bucked as he died, and she smiled.

When she released him, Chris was frowning at her.

“What?”

“Nothing, Harm.” He gestured at the street. “Move before more come.”

“I’m gone.” She took off in a jog.

When Chris caught up with Harmony, he was exhausted, not from the run or from their work at the warehouse but from the fear that came from watching her take stupid chances. She could’ve shot the Nido. They both had emergency guns. She didn’t even consider drawing hers.

“You’re on streetside.” He saw her sheepish look, but it only lasted for a blink. Then she shrugged and gestured for him to take the left side, closer to the dark alleyways and shadowed alcoves.

He didn’t look at her as they walked, but he couldn’t ignore the conversation they needed to have. “Do you try to get injured?”

“Nope.”

“You know they have a few openings for transfer to the Midwest.” Chris steered her farther from an open trunk on a relatively new sedan.

Harmony circled the car, peering in the windows. “And do what?”

They continued down the street. “You could work in one of the research centers, help with the trainees. It’s safer there.”

“I’m not qualified. I don’t get why . . .”

Chris stopped and held a finger to his lips. She grinned in anticipation of trouble.

He stepped into the mouth of the alley and moved toward the rustling coming from a pile of boxes.

Harmony eased closer.

An old man with rheumy eyes crouched in a nest of cardboard; he remained motionless as they approached.

Chris stepped up to the man, but not within his reach. “It’s not safe here.”

“Should I go to a nursing home?” The old man rose on his spindly legs and gazed in the general direction of Chris’ face. “The caretakers’ll send me to the creatures soon as I get sick.”

Harmony’s voice was soft, neither threatening nor reassuring to anyone who didn’t know her, as she said, “No. You should get out of town, preferably at night when they aren’t as active.”

The old man snorted. “You think? I’m not a fool, but I can’t see well enough to drive out, especially in the dark.” Bracing himself against the wall, he tottered forward. “But I have a car.”

“Really?” Chris examined him more carefully. Cars weren’t easy for anyone to keep, especially vagrants.

The old man cackled. “Well, maybe not have, but I can start one if you help me drag the fuel out to it.” He nudged a piece of cardboard with his foot. It slid to the side, revealing a dirty jug. “Got three jugs saved up. You help me carry the fuel out to one of them cars, and I can wire it.”

Chris studied the man and saw no telltale signs of deceit: his clothes were unkempt, his eyes white with cataracts. His health was pretty far gone. The Center had yet to find a case where Nidos sacrificed culinary tastes for strategy.

He glanced at his partner.

“We’ll help you,” she said.

After a bit of fumbling around, the old man picked up two of his jugs.

Cautiously, Harmony stepped forward and grabbed the third. Chris’ already tense muscles stiffened. Their work was always the sort of thing that required all of his attention, but lately, it seemed like every day they were on duty was busier. Being on the front line of the fight was a sure way to see the daily proof that the humans weren’t winning this war.

As they moved away from the shadows of the alley, the man didn’t bother to wipe the tears that fell. His voice was low as he said, “I know I’m old, but that isn’t any way to die.”

“I know,” Harmony murmured. “You’re not going to die in a vat. Right?”

“Right,” Chris promised. They’d get the man to safety, one person saved, and then Chris would go home and get drunk for the two days he had off.

By the time night fell on her second day off, Harmony thought she was going to climb the wall. The down days were to help them recover, rest, and work out. She did all of that—and she still felt like she would go crazy if she didn’t move. The calm that had come from the last days of work had faded by the end of her first day off. On the second day she’d woken midday, and then she’d watched the sun slowly drop with the same lack of patience she always did at the close of the second rest day.

She paused in front of the mirror. The scratches in the matte black painted surface revealed swaths of the glass. Before things changed, she’d spent hours looking in that mirror. Then, she had prided herself on her healthy appearance. Harmony knew that it wasn’t likely that she’d enjoy seeing her full reflection now; better to see only fragments.

When she had first painted over the mirror, she’d dragged her then-manicured fingernails over the still-tacky paint. Tonight she trailed her now-short nails over those scratches in the ritual she enacted every time she went hunting. She couldn’t swear that the rote actions had any real impact on her survival, but that first time, not quite two years ago, she’d left angry and untrained—but somehow survived. Now, she was composed and trained. She couldn’t do anything more to guarantee her safety, but she took comfort in the small rituals she had. Ritual worked; faith mattered. Everyone on Earth knew that now.

“Blasphemer!” her father yelled again.

His fists thudded on the door; the shelf she kept in front of it shuddered. Her mother’s porcelain angels, remnants of an old forgotten faith, rattled in time with the pounding as Harmony leaned in close to the mirror and outlined her eyes with smudged kohl, giving herself a sickened look. The shadowed eyes added to her regular pallor and made her whole face look wan and vulnerable.

He threw something in the hall. The tinkle of glass was followed by the bitter stench of alcohol, confirming that he had thrown another bottle. She couldn’t see the mess, but she knew what she’d see tomorrow.

As Harmony surveyed her eyes in the exposed stripes on the mirror, she lifted her hand to touch her shaved head. The first night she’d gone hunting, she’d hacked her hair off before shaving it. Now, she could only shave the stubble. It wasn’t exactly the same, but it was the closest approximation of the ritual that she could manage.

“They’ll find out what you’re doing and kill us both. You’re as bad as your sister was, and look where that got her,” he called through the door. That was almost a ritual too. Sometimes she wondered if she stayed here out of love or because she’d come to associate these pre-hunt rants with survival.

He was sobbing now, drunk and broken, but she’d learned months ago that sobs would shift back to curses if he saw her—and that curses were followed by punches all too quickly.

“Wear your charms,” he begged.

A flash of silver was shoved under the door. She paused and stared at it. The chain held a tiny locket, a heart, and a few other trinkets. She had once insisted Chastity wear it, believing it brought her luck, and after her death, Chris had returned it.

“Thank you, Daddy,” Harm whispered.

She fastened it around her throat, and then she returned to the mirror. She finished shaving her head, not needing the slivers of mirror for this part of the routine. She closed her eyes and completed the task with the same precision she’d once used for curling her hair. It seemed like such a long time ago that she’d been so foolish, before she understood how dangerous Nidhogg was, before Chastity had died.

Before I knew that gods could be monstrous.

He started pounding on the door again; this time he kicked it too. “I won’t die because of you. Are you listening? Harmony!”

She walked over to the door and reached a hand between the shelves barricading it. She laid her palm flat on the door.

“I am,” she whispered. “I listen to every word, Daddy.”

He couldn’t hear her, but their best conversations always happened when he didn’t hear her.

“I’ll be home late tonight,” she whispered.

She pulled her hand away as he began quoting from the New Scripture. He’d obviously been drinking early if he was already on scripture. Before the New Religion, he didn’t drink, but she was grateful that he did now. When he was drunk, he was more likely to stay home where he’d be safe.

Harmony slid a homemade dagger into each boot; then she grabbed her prized blade: a real machine-made serrated eight-inch knife with a good handle that didn’t get too slick when it was bloodied. She kissed the side of the steel, as she had the first night, and carefully slid it into the front pocket of her trousers, through the slit in her pocket, under the fabric, and into the sheath on her thigh. Her pants were loose enough now that it didn’t show.

“Stay safe, Daddy,” she said loudly enough for him to hear. She didn’t tell him she loved him anymore. She hadn’t said those words to anyone since her sister died.

Harmony opened the window and jumped toward the branch nearest the house.

Love is a mistake when we’re all going to die any day now.

The familiar burn of her palms connecting with the bark was quickly followed by the thud of her boots hitting the ground. The calluses on her hands dulled the sensations, but it was the reenactment of the steps that mattered, not the sensations themselves.

Chris waited, not nervously but with the ever-present edge that came from the fear that tonight would be the night that she wouldn’t show. He’d tried to convince her that sharing quarters was wiser. Most teams did. For reasons he couldn’t understand, she refused. Most days, she claimed she couldn’t leave her father—but other nights, she insisted that she couldn’t step into her dead sister’s life.

Although we both know that she already has.

He flicked ash onto the street, realizing as he did so that he’d only taken one drag from the cigarette. He was just about to pinch the cherry off—smokes were far too expensive to waste—when he saw her. She stayed to the shadows, but her movements were deliberate. She looked nothing like prey.

Yet.

Within another hour, that would change. Harmony would adopt the guise of a victim. She’d become the very thing that the devotees of Nidhogg found alluring: weak, sickened, and ready to be delivered to their god.

“You’re late.”

Harmony shrugged, snagged the cigarette from his hand, and took a drag. It was more ritual than necessity. The first night she’d killed one of them, this was how they met. She clung to those little details, like they would save her. Maybe she’s right. He didn’t try to understand the whole ritual or faith thing. All he knew was that a few drags on a cigarette wouldn’t deaden her sense of smell nearly as much as either of them would like. He smoked more often. The childhood warnings about cancer weren’t relevant anymore, not to them. If they stayed here, kept fighting, they’d die before there was any time for the carcinogens to have an impact, and the cigarettes helped. Even a slight deadening of scent and taste was a benefit in their line of work. Corpse-feeders stank.

Chris took the cigarette back. “Trouble?”

“Not really. Drunk earlier than usual. Sometimes, I think he hates me.” Harmony shrugged and looked away, but not before he saw the flicker of sadness she would deny if he asked about it. For all of her strengths, she still wanted a life that they’d never know again.

When the god awakened, society changed, and short of killing Nidhogg, the odds of finding the sort of society they’d once known were exceedingly slim. Of course, the odds of killing a god were slimmer still. Nidhogg was here, was real, and was staying. To those who questioned, it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t as omnipotent as he claimed. If he were all-powerful, they wouldn’t be resisting, killing his devoted Nidos, and refusing to obey him.

However, the faith that strengthened him was impossible to negate: he was real. Denying his existence was hard to do when he lived, breathed, and consumed them. The more they believed, the stronger he grew. Even those who wanted his death strengthened him with their thoughts of him. It didn’t matter whether they loathed or loved him. They thought of him, and that was enough.

How do you deny what is undeniably here?

The answer to that question was one the philosophers in the resistance pondered at length. Chris wasn’t a philosopher; even now that a god had come to earth, he wasn’t prone to a lot of metaphysical contemplation. His skills were far more practical: he killed monsters.

“Which area did we draw tonight?” Harmony walked close enough to his side that she appeared to be with him. Together they looked like a couple undaunted by the regulations that had spread up most of the eastern part of the country.

“Old Downtown.” He draped an arm around her shoulders, reminding himself that they had agreed that it wasn’t personal for either of them. Even though that’s a lie. The illusion required acting like a couple often enough that a good team had to be able to appear completely at ease. They had to look like they were together; teams were a harder target if they were convincing. The challenge, of course, was remembering that it was to be an act.

He and Chastity had allowed themselves to forget, and when she died, he hadn’t been sure he wanted to keep living. Of course, loving her was the only thing that had made living matter in the first place. He had no religion, no family, nothing but the fight and his partner. When he lost his first partner, he had tried to lose himself in a drunken haze he’d had absolutely no intention of coming out of.

He lifted bottle after bottle, shook them, and tossed them aside. “Empty. Every damn bottle is empty, Chas.”

Saying her name wasn’t enough though. He’d kept on talking to her like she was there, but she never answered.

Three more bottles were rejected. The fourth had a good inch of liquid—hopefully gin—in it. Unfortunately, it also had a cigarette butt floating in it. He paused, shrugged, and lifted the bottle to his lips.

“That’s disgusting, Chris.”

He turned. “Chas?” He lowered the bottle, holding it loosely in his hand. “You’re dead.”

She didn’t say anything, but her head bowed momentarily. After what sounded like a sob, she crossed the room and took the bottle from him. “It’s not your fault.”

“I was late. If I hadn’t been late—”

“You’d be dead too,” she interrupted.

“I’d rather be dead.”

She slapped him. “You’d rather let them kill you? Let him eat your corpse? What happened to fighting?”

“I can’t fight without you.” He pulled her to him. He knew now that it was a dream. It had to be a dream because dead girls don’t slap people, but he would rather sleep than wake if that meant Chastity was with him. “I need you, Chas. I love you.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but he kissed her before she spoke. Her kisses were different, but he couldn’t expect a dream to be the same as the real thing.

When he pulled away, he told her all the things he had told her since they’d first fallen into bed. “I love you. I can’t do this alone. I need you here. Now.”

“You’ll fight?” She stepped away. “Promise me, Chris. You’ll fight. No giving up. . . . They killed Chastity. You have to fight. Help me fight them.”

“I will,” he agreed. Something in her words was wrong. He paused, but then she kissed him.

Chastity let him undress her, and they made love.

Later, when he sobered up, he realized that it wasn’t a dream at all—nor was it Chastity.

“I need you to train me,” Harmony said. “My sister wouldn’t want you—or me—to die.”

“You’re not . . .” He put an arm over his eyes. “I didn’t mean . . . Tell me I didn’t force—”

“I said yes, Chris. You needed to think I was her, and it’s probably for the best. Partners need to be at ease with each other. Now, you . . . you should be at ease with me, right? It’ll help.”

“Partners?” He moved his arm and stared up at her.

“I’m not interested in replacing her”—she made a vague waving gesture toward the mattress on his floor where she’d just been—“there. I want to be your partner on the streets, though. You trained her. Train me. I’ll fight.”

“No.”

Ten months later, she was every bit as good a fighter as Chastity had been. A year after that, she was more lethal and still looked enough like Chastity that more than a few people mistakenly called her by her dead sister’s name, but there was no way he’d ever mistake them for one another now that he’d gotten to know Harmony.

The elder Davis sister had been a good soldier, devoted to the fight; up until the day she died, Chastity had done her job and done it well, too. She killed any of the creatures—human and other—that served Nidhogg. She was still soft though; she wept when she killed humans, not in the moment, but afterward when they were home. Harmony, on the other hand, didn’t cry. She also didn’t laugh the way Chastity had. Sometimes, when she’d won in a fight where she been outnumbered or overpowered initially, she smiled with the sort of relaxed joy that Chastity often took in little things. But the only things that seemed to make Harmony that happy were victories in the almost-lost fights. Getting close to the edge of death and winning, that was where Harmony found her joy.

Chris stuffed the extinguished cigarette butt into his pocket. The nicotine-stained filters would be recycled again and again until they were so noxious that they were of no use as cigarettes. Some fighters tore little bits of them off to use as nose plugs, but he hadn’t yet gotten to that point. If he survived long enough, he would, but counting on surviving was foolish. Maybe if they lived farther north, they’d have better odds, but if they stayed this close to the god’s lair, they were just biding time. In the days before the god’s arrival, people stayed in dead-end towns, in dead-end jobs, in dead-end relationships rather than take the risk of something new. He’d sworn he would be different, but here he was, staying in a town where dying young was inevitable. Because Harmony won’t leave. If he could convince her to move, they could try to find a safer place, but she only cared about the fight. And I only care about her.

He hadn’t meant to fall in love with his dead girlfriend’s sister, but he had—not that he’d be foolish enough to tell her: Harmony didn’t believe in love. She’d told him early on, “Two of the three people I’ve loved are dead. The third is a drunk. Love’s a bad idea.” So Chris kept the words to himself and did his best to keep them both alive.

As usual with Chris, Harmony didn’t feel the need to distract either of them with unnecessary chatter. As he did that first night, he kept his arm around her as they walked. Silently, she checked that item off her mental list, too, and he didn’t comment on her insistence of replicating so many small details every night they went hunting. All he ever said was that it provided an excuse to keep their voices low as well as presenting a unified front against any watching devotees of the New Faith. Sometimes, in the thoughts she never shared, she thought of her fellow fighters as devotees of a faith, too. They were devoted to a god who hadn’t yet appeared, who maybe never would, but she believed he or she had to be out there in the universe. It was a quiet belief, with the sort of small rituals and whispered prayers that wouldn’t draw attention—or maybe it was a fantasy as much as Chastity’s dreams of a different future. Either way, it was better than the New Faith.

Most of the faithful were zealots, and like all zealots, they focused on some facts to the exclusion of all others. They had proof that their faith was true: their god was here on Earth. They didn’t want to discuss the fact that their god required human sacrifice, that he ate corpses, that a great destroyer wasn’t doing any favors to the civilization on Earth.

Within months after Nidhogg’s devotees revealed the presence of their corpse-eating god, all flights and ships from North America were refused docking or runway access across the globe. Any flights attempting access to foreign nations were summarily shot down; boats were sunk. Humans helped the Nidos—the reptilian creatures that had appeared and served Nidhogg—and the New Faith spread to South America within months. Within two years, most of North and South America was reduced to sporadic internet and telephone access with the outside world.

All of that had happened when she was still a kid. She’d never been outside the country, that she could remember. There were pictures of a trip to Europe when she was in elementary school, but by the time she was nine, everything had changed. There were vague memories of a life before the New Faith, but most of what she’d known was after Nidhogg. At seventeen, she’d lived half of her life under the pall of the New Religion. Sometimes, Harmony thought it was for the best: she didn’t want to remember a life that would never be again.

Since Nidos, despite their mostly human appearance, were—like Nidhogg itself—reptilian, they were unable to flourish in the upper reaches of North America. They could also be killed, and that was the chief victory of the resistance so far: they killed monster after monster. No one knew if it had any real impact. Killing the creatures, and the humans who supported them, had led to a few reclaimed towns—and the scant bit of useful intel that they had.

Despite some small victories, the exodus north had continued, but that was as far away from the corpse-eating new god that one could get. Although the access point between Alaska and Asia had not yet been breached by the Nidos, the fear of it was enough that humans weren’t allowed to cross into Asia either. People still tried, and stories circulated online of people claiming to have succeeded, but the truth was that anyone who tried to cross that barrier ended up dead for their efforts. The world that Harmony had been born into was long gone, and unless they could kill a god, it wouldn’t be returning to the relative safety they’d once known.

Chris finally asked, “Did you hear about Taylor?”

“He was a good guy. At least he got a clean death.” Harmony respected Taylor’s partner, Jess, a little bit more for putting the bullet in Taylor. Bullets attracted attention, but Jess had risked it to assure that he wasn’t thrown into one of the Nidos’ vats while still alive. Everyone who knew about the urns filled with decaying corpses was terrified of drowning in one.

When she’d first seen the photographs of the stew of dead bodies that the Nidos lived off of, she’d retched. That image was one of the ones that never stopped haunting her. She still woke from nightmare images of her mother’s face in the rot-filled water, from cold sweats in dreams that she was drowning in the decay of people she knew.

“I’d shoot you, you know,” Chris assured her; his words filled in the silence that had stretched out while horrors filled her mind. “I’d kill you before I’d let them throw you in one of those things.”

“I know.” She looked up at him, and he kissed her forehead. For one of those perfect quiet moments, she wondered what life would’ve been like if she’d been born only a decade earlier. “Is it weird to be comforted by promises to be killed?”

“Not if it’s a choice between quick death and something horrible,” Chris said.

“I’d kill you, too,” she added.

“I know.”

They lapsed back into silence then, and Harmony debated asking him about the differences in the world. He was three years older than her; it didn’t seem like a big difference now, but he’d known a world she could only try to imagine, been old enough to truly see the change. For as long as she remembered, this was the only world.

Chastity leaned against the wall. Her knees were bent, and she looked shakier than Harmony had ever seen her.

“You’re lucky,” she whispered. “If we hadn’t seen you . . .”

“You did.” Harmony listened to the sound of yelling outside their room. Their father had thrown something. Since Mom died, he was drunk more days than not. After what Harmony had seen tonight, she’d thought about stealing one of his bottles of vodka. Bodies floated in various stages of decomposition, arms and legs tangled together, eyes wide open and staring lifelessly. She’d stood silently looking into the giant cistern of corpses, too disgusted to even scream.

“You can’t go back there, Harm,” Chastity warned.

“I needed to know. . . . I just wanted . . .”

“Mom’s not in there, and anyone that is in there is beyond our help.” Chastity reached out, winced, and glanced at her arm. Her sleeve was wet with blood, but she kept her arm outstretched. “Come here.”

Instead of accepting the hug her sister offered, Harmony grabbed the first-aid box on Chastity’s dresser. Once, they’d both had jewelry boxes sitting there. Harmony’s was pink; Chastity had a matching red one. Now, the things that littered the surface of Chastity’s dresser included knives, bandages, and bottles of antiseptic.

Their mother had taught both girls to sew, and every time they did this, Harmony thought of her. Of course, she’d intended for them to sew skirts, not skin. Harmony cleaned her sister’s wound, and then she threaded the needle with the deep-blue fiber that she would have to snip and tug out later. Not getting the disintegrating thread meant going to the hospital, and hospitals were like grocery stores to the Nidos. It wasn’t openly acknowledged, but there had been enough reports of disappearances that anyone who paid attention realized that the claim of “only taking freely offered corpses” was a lie. As the population dwindled, the natural-death rate wasn’t high enough to satisfy Nidhogg’s appetites.

“Promise me, Harmony.” Chastity lifted her gaze from the needle that Harmony held ready. “I want you to be safe. Once we’re able, we’re going to get out of here. We’ll go north, start over somewhere else. You, me, Christian, and Daddy. It’ll be better.”

Harmony bit down on her lip, pinched the sides of her sister’s knife wound closed, and tried to keep her stitches straight and tight.

“Everything will be different when we get out of here. It’ll be better,” Chastity promised.

Neither of them commented on their father’s drunken ranting on the other side of the barred bedroom door. They were all coping with her mother’s death differently. Chastity fought; their father drank; and Harmony tried to ignore the increased number of missing neighbors, the way her sister insisted she stay in after dark, and the stench of her father’s almost nightly descents into oblivion.

Things never got better for Chastity or their father, and none of them believed that they were going to improve. Chastity was wrapped in a sheet and set aflame on a bier to prevent the corpse eaters from consuming her. Their father was rarely sober, and Harmony had no expectation of living too many years longer. Chastity’s hopes for another life had been a fantasy; this was reality.

Would it be worse to think you had a future and lose it?

Harmony had been eight when the new god arrived. She’d never really known a world where there was any doubt that gods could be real. All she could do was kill the monsters and hope that if this god was real, so were other—better—gods.

“Are you going to stay quiet all night?” Chris prodded.

“Sorry.” She leaned her head against him briefly. “Dad was weird; we’re working downtown; the news about Taylor . . . I guess I’m feeling . . . I don’t know.”

“Me too,” he said.

“We’re almost there. Let’s go kill something. Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll get more than one tonight.”

The shift in Harmony’s mood as she pondered the inevitable violence in their night was markedly different from Chris’ reaction. Every time they cornered a Nido, Chris was filled with fear of losing Harmony. Afterward, he was cheered, but until they were past the fighting, he was apprehensive. Harmony was comforted by the prospect of violence—of revenge—in ways he almost envied.

They entered Old Downtown and started to prowl the clubs. There weren’t as many people out this near curfew. Those who were fell into one of four categories: the devoted, the deniers, the deadly, or the dying. Which category a person fell into wasn’t always apparent at first sight. There were cues, of course. The people still denying the hell they were living in were the ones most likely to be wearing shoes not suited for running. Admittedly, though, the dying were prone to such folly on occasion. They weren’t necessarily rushing to their deaths, but sometimes their “what happens, happens” approach meant that they were as likely to flee from the corpse-feeders as not. The devoted wore shoes fit for running down prey. The deadly were clad in boots, easier to load with weapons and still useful for running.

“My girl’s not feeling well,” Chris told the doorman as they approached the line outside the Norns. “Can we get inside so none of the N—so no one notices?”

Harmony’s posture had shifted as they’d walked. She leaned on him, appearing fragile, and simultaneously tilted her head so that the bruises along her collarbone were visible. “It’s okay. I can wait out here,” she murmured to him. “I don’t mind—”

“I do,” he snapped. He pulled her closer, caught her hand in his, and lifted it to his lips to kiss her wrist. In the process, the sleeve of her jacket slid back, exposing the bruised and needle-marked skin of her arm. He wasn’t sure what she’d injected into her body. Drugs? Nothing? It wasn’t disease: he was certain of that. Harmony’s pallor, bruises, and demeanor were all lures. She counted on the illusion of sickness, and most nights, it was enough.

Chris caught her gaze. “Harm?”

“I’m fine,” she lied. She hadn’t been fine in a long time, but that wasn’t something he knew how to fix.

The doorman motioned them in. “You shouldn’t have her out here when she’s sick, man.”

The frown Chris gave the man wasn’t faked. “If I could keep her somewhere safe, I would.”

Harmony winced. “Come dance with me.”

Sometimes, he wished they could go out to the clubs for an actual date. Instead, their evenings were spent training, hunting, and killing. It had long since stopped being the life he wanted, but he couldn’t leave here without her. He wouldn’t. Instead, he kept his arm around her, and together they made their way into the crowd. Time hadn’t healed him; no amount of killing seemed to bring him peace. It had helped her, but he had been fighting for a couple of years before she had joined him. Maybe that was the difference: he was tired.

Harmony tensed as she saw her prey: a Nido approached, trying to sniff her out.

Chris wondered how far she’d go to ensnare them. The bruises on her arm were injection marks. As much as he believed that she wouldn’t sicken herself too much to fight, he also knew that if she could carry a disease that lured them, she would. Mentally, he made a note to try to get some clothes worn by the recently ill. Doing so was difficult, because the scent of illness faded too soon, but it was a strategy that added a little bit of extra verisimilitude.

“Couple fight now,” Harmony whispered as he pulled her toward him.

“Harm—”

“Teammates, Chris. I’m not as vulnerable as I look. You know that.” She looked down, so her forehead was resting against his chest while she spoke.

“I still worry,” he said. They could only use so many scenarios before they were caught. They rotated sections, rotated clubs within the sections, but even that wasn’t enough. Different scenarios made sense.

“It’s what we do; it’s worth it.” Harmony’s voice sounded raw. “If we’re going to die, it has to be for something, Chris. If we’re going to live—”

“I know,” he interrupted. You’re my reason, Harm. My religion. He put his hand on the back of her neck. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Not too fast.”

“Count five and go.” Chris watched the Nido approach with the same trepidation he always felt. He and Harmony had a system, and it worked—but so had the system he and Chastity had used.

“You don’t understand.” Harmony shoved him and turned away, running into the Nido’s arms as if she were unaware that he was there all along.

Now comes the hard part.

Chris stepped up to the bar and ordered a drink. He wasn’t going to walk out the moment Harmony left. More than half the time, Nidos in this part of town worked in pairs. It made this section harder to work, but it also meant that hunting here usually meant two kills. Of course, it also meant that their side often took more risks—and more casualties.

In the mirror that hung behind the liquor bottles, Chris watch as the Nido said something to Harmony. In barely three minutes, he had an arm around her, leading her away, taking her outside. The challenge for Chris was in not looking over his shoulder, not racing outside, not scooping her up and insisting they escape north to try to find a safer place to live.

Instead of doing all the things he wanted to, Chris waited, half hoping that the Nido’s partner would arrive and half hoping that there was no partner so he could move on to the next step of this strategy: run after his emotional girlfriend.

Harmony nodded and held on to the Nido’s arm as he directed her to a side door of the Norns. Her heart was steadier every time she did this, as if there was a calm almost in reach, and she wondered guiltily if the calm was death. She wasn’t going to slit her wrists or do anything drastic, but she was well aware that most hunters died. Dying while fighting for a better future seemed like a good way to go, maybe even a way to reach the kind of afterlife where she could be happy, where she could enjoy the sort of existence that people talked about when they talked about before.

The crack of metal on metal echoed as the door hit the handrail on the cement ramp into the alley. If she hadn’t been going outside to kill him, stepping into the poorly lit alley would be unsettling. As it was, she found the dark comforting.

“Do you have a car or something?” She slid her free hand into her pants pocket to withdraw the knife hidden there, but before she withdrew it, a beam of light flashed on, aimed directly at her and blinding her temporarily.

“You won’t need that,” the Nido beside her said.

Then another voice drew her attention: “She’s my only other child. We’ll be even now, right?”

“Daddy?” Harmony stumbled, partly from the inability to see and partly from the panic that washed over her. “Daddy! What are you doing here?”

She jerked her arm away from the Nido, but he caught her, gripping her biceps with a bruising hand before she could go very far. Think, Harm. Think. She couldn’t expect Chris to hear her if she screamed; the music inside was too loud. All she could do was buy time until he got there—except every scenario she knew was a blank then. Her father was it, the last family she knew she still had. Her sister was dead; her mother was dead.

The light lowered, and she saw another Nido standing beside her father. This one looked like a reasonably attractive woman, and she stood beside Harmony’s father like she was his date: a small smile on her lips and a hand resting lightly in the crook of his folded arm.

“She looks a lot like the other one,” the female Nido said.

Harmony looked at her father. “Daddy?”

He shook his head. “I tried to save you. I told you what would happen. You didn’t listen.”

The Nido patted his cheek with her free hand. “We took care of the problem last time, and we’ll fix this too.”

A cry escaped Harmony’s lips. It might have been a word, or it might have been only a sound. She wasn’t sure. The Nido restraining her stepped away, and she almost fell. She took several steps toward her father. “How? Why?”

There were two Nidos with her father, and even though she wasn’t being held back, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, much less what she could do.

“Your sister caught their attention. What was I to do?” Her father glared at her through bloodshot eyes. His sallow, fleshy face didn’t look anything like the father she remembered.

Harmony shook her head. “And Mom?”

He stepped closer, so he was near enough that she could embrace him. “That wasn’t my doing. I didn’t know. . . . She was sick, and I only left her at the hospital for the night. I didn’t know they—”

“But you knew when you . . . what? Told them where Chas would be?”

“I had to make a choice,” he pleaded. “I tried to save you.”

Although the two Nidos watched them, they didn’t interfere. Harmony looked into her father’s face, but she couldn’t summon any words for him. Night after night, she’d hoped he would recover from the dual tragedies of her mother’s and sister’s deaths, but he wouldn’t. He was responsible, and now they both knew it.

“You told them where Chastity was . . . and now me too?”

“All I did was add it to the necklace. I warned you, but you wouldn’t listen.” He pointed at her. “The tracker is on that. I had no choice.”

Harm’s hand went to the charms around her throat. She yanked the necklace free and threw it at him. “You had a choice.”

“You don’t understand,” he insisted. “They would’ve killed us both. They would’ve killed all three of us before, when Chastity was blaspheming. I saved you then. What was I to do?”

“Not give either of your daughters to the monsters. If there is another world where we meet after this life, I hope Chastity and Mom are there waiting for us.” She slipped her hand into her pocket. “Maybe they’ll forgive you, Daddy. Maybe I will too.”

She withdrew the knife and shoved the blade hilt-deep into his throat. As the Nidos grabbed her arms, she watched her father clutch his bleeding throat. It wouldn’t help. She’d learned where to stab a human; she’d severed his carotid artery.

“If I hated you, I’d have let you go into their foul stew while you were still alive,” she told him as he died.

The distant sounds of music, the sizzle of a nearby streetlight, and her father’s dying were all she heard then. The Nidos gripped her arms, but she kept her hand tight on the hilt of her knife.

I don’t want to die.

If she didn’t get away, she’d end up drowning in corpses. The images in her mind were almost as vivid as the real thing had been. This time, though, Chastity wouldn’t be there to rescue her.

Harmony let her body go suddenly limp, surprising them and dropping to the ground as they lost their grip on her. That was one of the first lessons she’d learned: do the unexpected. Most captives tried to tug away or shove, so her captors were likely to be ready for that.

As she rolled to her feet, she launched herself at one of the Nidos. She knew she couldn’t kill them both, but she wasn’t going to let them take her away. Better to die fighting than drown in the dead. Her shoulder stung from an unavoidable stab wound, and she knew dimly that there were other wounds she wasn’t registering yet. None of that mattered though. I want to live. I want Chris to live. She knew he should’ve been there by now, and the thought of reaching him, of keeping him out of their vats, was enough to give her an extra surge of adrenaline.

“Harmony!” Chris yelled.

She wasn’t sure when Chris had come outside. All she knew for sure was that she was on the ground, on top of the Nido, and her knife was wet in her hand. A trickle of something dripped down her cheek. She didn’t know if it was her tears or her father’s blood. The temptation to look at Chris warred with the fear that he’d look at her with disgust.

“Harm,” he repeated, softly this time. He had hands on her waist, lifting her up with little effort, as if she really was the rag doll she suddenly felt like. He pulled her away from the dead Nido and her now-dead father.

“You’re bleeding,” she said foolishly. Bleeding was normal; death was normal.

He took her hand, and uncurled her fingers from the hilt of the knife. “There was one inside, too, or I’d have been here sooner.”

“This time . . . I thought . . . I really thought I was going to die,” she whispered. “I don’t want to die.”

Instead of saying things that would make her fall apart, he suggested the same thing he had not long after Chastity died: “We could go north. Try to get to somewhere safer.”

She leaned against his side, not just because of the ritual but because she wanted to feel close to him, and this time, she gave him the answer she never had before, “Yes.”

And they walked away from the Norns, away from the father who’d betrayed her, and away from a life that held a too-soon expiration date.