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I’m sitting at a table in a cluttered hut. Cluttered with porcelain plates and bowls. The table has a red Tartan tablecloth on it, and my chair has a cushion. I notice all these details, and they seem important.
There’s a creak behind me, and I turn as the door opens fully. A woman with long gray hair and a smile that stretches from one side to the other greets me. “Kacey!”
My body jolts. It’s me, this time? Not one of Red’s memories.
“Aunt Caia-Lu?” I stare at her, feel my breaths melt away.
Caia-Lu steps closer. Her face is thinner than I remember, hollows hanging beneath her eyes, around her cheeks. Her hair is nearly fully gray too. No black strands, but her eyebrows are dark. And her eyes are the same—powerful, glistening, mesmerizing.
“It’s so wonderful to see you again, neshama sheli,” my aunt who is dead says.
Dead.
I’m dead?
I look around. Is this the New World?
“But we haven’t got long, Kacey.” She sits down next to me—suddenly there’s another chair in here. Was it there before? I can’t remember, and I blink. But my head’s not hurting now. Of course not. I’m dead. “I need to talk to you.”
“Talk to me?”
“You have the energy,” she says. “The Rijikarii.”
“No!” I cry. “That’s what Red said—and that was just him. I’m not...” But I don’t know what I’m trying to say. My thoughts are still muddled, confused.
“You have to learn how to control it, Kacey. It’s my fault Rijikarri is in the world, and I should’ve realized that the largest amount of it would gravitate to you, for you have my blood and my soul. So, you have to wield control over it. It’s not as bad as I thought for so long it was—I can see the way. But we have to get there. You have to learn before it’s too late, else I fear none of this will happen.”
“Too late?” I stare at her. “For what?”
“They’re going to come after you, Kacey, and you need to make sure that when they do, you can control the power, the Rijikarri. It is the only thing you will have there. You’ll be the Guardian. You’ll be there to protect, so make sure you learn how to use your energy in time.”
“The Enhanced?” I inhale sharply. “The Enhanced are coming after us?”
And where am I now? because I’m not actually in this hut with her...am I?
I breathe deeply.
“Learn its ways and master it, Kacey,” Caia-Lu says. “Embrace who you are before it’s too late.”
And then she stands and her chair disappears. Something hisses, and as I’m staring at her, she disappears.
And then everything’s a whirlwind of things moving, being whipped away by some invisible hand, until there’s nothing left.
Until I’m not here.
Nothing is.
Just emptiness.
NINETEEN
I jolt awake, choking. Feel sick and—
“It’s all right,” Evor says, and he helps me sit up—just in time for me to vomit all over him.
My stomach twists and turns, and there’s pain in my chest when I breathe. A tickling sort of pain—or at least it is at first. But with every new breath I take, it gets stronger, like it’s the sharp end of a quill digging deeper and deeper.
I try to move back, away from the vomit that seems to splatter everything. The smell is putrid and curls around me.
“You’ll be okay,” Evor says. His arm is around me. In the dark, I can’t see his eyes—but I detect the worry in his voice, in that statement, in that lie.
How will I ever be okay? Kazem’s gone.
My Kazem.
I gulp, and tears slide down my face. I’m never going to see him again. Never going to—
“Just try and stay calm,” Evor says. “This isn’t going to help your head.” He leans back a little staring into my eyes. “Damn. It’s too dark.”
But there’s moonlight. I concentrate on that. On the moon. I like the moon, don’t I? But as I stare at it, my stomach twisting, feeling rubbery and stretchy, I can’t remember why I even like the moon. What it means to me.
Without Kazem, I’m not even me. I’m just floating. I’m nothing, I’m— I don’t even know. My head—there’s something really wrong with me. Is this what grief feels like? Is this—
“Enhanced!” Shweta’s scream cuts the night.
No—not Shweta. The imposter. The correction seems important, and then I jolt.
The Enhanced. They’re going to come after you, Kacey.
My eyes widen. Shit. I jump up. Pain lassoes around my leg. There’s movement to my right. Maggot and Clive and—mirrors, behind them. So suddenly here. And it’s him, leading the pack: it’s Red, smiling that gallantly smug smile of his. Because he thinks he’s got me. Got all of us. And his Beast thinks it too.
But he’s wrong. He’s so bloody wrong.
“Surrender to us willingly,” Red calls, his voice clear and sharp as glass. “Surrender and we will—”
“Get back,” Maggot shouts. “We’re armed. We will shoot you.”
Armed? But I look around and I see no weapons. No nothing. We have nothing.
More mirrors shine in the dark, and I turn, see more Enhanced Ones to my left. My feet keep moving, more pain in my right. They’re behind me too, and to my right. I hear Clive gulp remarkably loudly.
“We’re surrounded,” Evor says in a low hum.
“I said get back!” Maggot shouts louder.
But the Enhanced don’t get back. Red leads his men closer and closer, the circle tightening. I spin, shifting my weight from foot to foot.
“We have to run,” I hiss at Maggot, then Evor. “There are gaps between the Enhanced.” Not big gaps, but gaps nonetheless. Gaps that are getting smaller as they close in. “We have to run now!”
I surge forward, but my head spins. The land tilts toward me and everything’s off kilter for a second, two seconds. An arm grabs me, and I think it’s Clive until I see the mirror eyes and—
A flash of a gun. Moonlight glinting on metal. We have guns?
No. They’re theirs.
“Obey!” an Enhanced shouts, pointing the gun at the imposter—wait, that’s not Shweta? But before I can think, before I can do anything, Clive screams.
I spin toward him, see an Enhanced grab him. See colorful vials—so many—and they reflect the enemy’s eyes. So many of them, too, like stars in the night.
And we’re outnumbered.
Red grins.
We all know we can’t get away from this.
No! We have to try, we—
My Beast rises—and maybe I’m summoning him, or maybe I’m not. Maybe he’s in control or maybe we both are. Maybe we’re working together, because he’s rising now, and I’m not scared. I am raw and I am rage, and I’ve got people to protect. Grief has blinded me, and I want to kill.
I want it. I want it. I want it.
So I do.
I scream as the power rises in me. Scream and scream, and Maggot’s shouting, but then she’s not. I can’t see her, all I can see is me, my power. My Beast. Crimson energy burning, spreading from me in a wave.
It incinerates the Enhanced Ones.
It incinerates Red.
Clive cries and I turn, see him in the corner of my eye as my Beast reaches him.
“No!” I yell, and my Beast obeys, pulls back.
Evor’s mouth has dropped open.
Another wave of Enhanced Ones looms, drawing closer and closer, like they’re magnetized to me and my Beast. And my Beast keeps taking and taking and taking. Screams and splatters of blood and labored breaths and hushed pleas for life...until it’s over.
Until it’s done.
My head pounds. Stars dance in front of my eyes, and my legs weaken. I stumble as I look around.
My Beast killed all the Enhanced out here. All of them. They’re just lying there, dead. Fallen.
Only us left. Me and Maggot and Shweta and—
The Beast didn’t kill Shweta. Her eyes are wide, her breathing heavy. Her hands are clenched to her chest, her shoulders curled. Her dark hair is a mess.
She locks her eyes on me. “That’s new, too.” Her voice is strangely breathy. “Maybe this pathway’s the last one.”
But I haven’t got time to mull over her words because Maggot grabs me.
“What the fuck was that?” she screams. “You a Seer? All this time? You can kill them?”
“No, I’m not a Seer,” I say. My throat burns and I swallow hastily, feeling like I’m going to choke for a second or so. “I didn’t foresee this—”
Except...except I did. I didn’t foresee it, but I was warned. Caia-Lu warned me they were coming. But that’s not a Dream Land warning. Is it? My gaze crosses to Shweta. I don’t think she’s Enhanced. I think she is the real one, because all the Enhanced have been killed. By me. It’s just us. Just Untamed.
Shweta just stares at me. Then she makes a startled gargling sound, and I see her gaze fix on something behind me and a little to my right.
I turn and—
“Oh Gods.” Maggot’s words are low. She doesn’t move. Just stares.
We’re all staring.
It’s Evor.
He’s lying on his side, blood pooled around his head. His eyes look strange, glassy, and his skin tacky, sticky. I look at his chest. Look for the rise and fall.
There is no rise and fall.
I take a sudden step back. Evor’s dead?
“It was the Enhanced,” Clive says to me. “They shot him. It wasn’t you.”
I breathe out slowly. It wasn’t me. Not another Untamed death on my hands.
Maggot is still stone-still. Just staring at her brother. Shweta snaps out of her stupor and rushes to Evor. She kneels beside him, placing her fingers against his neck. Then she shakes herself and rolls him onto his back.
We all watch as she starts CPR. And I want to go forward, I want to help—there’s a part of me that wants to. But there’s a bigger part of me that’s numb and unfeeling, watching as Shweta tries to save a man who I know is already dead.
We all know that.
“His death won’t be in vain,” Maggot says.
I look up at her, see the hardness in her steel eyes. Her fists are clenched so tight her knuckles are like pearly white pebbles. And I know.
I know what’s going to happen now.
That’s what I’m here for, the Beast says. His voice is velvet stirring inside my stomach.
Maggot knows what I can do. Maggot is angry. But Maggot is a leader. Maggot always puts her people first. She is going to use me to protect her people.
I’m going to have to keep killing now. I’m going to be doing exactly what the Beast has wanted me to do all of these years.
But the worst thing is how I feel about that now—because I don’t feel fear or repulsion. I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.