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HARVESTING VEGETABLES was a peaceful, hardworking trade.
Lucky for us, it needed several types of sharp, dangerous tools like shovels, knives, and trowels, which were all stacked against the far wall.
Along with a few scythes.
Sloan screamed in terror as the vampire threw himself through the window, wrapping his arms around her torso to haul her back through.
My body coursed with adrenaline, fear, and anger as that unnamable force and strength seized it.
“Follow me,” I hissed at Maer as I jolted toward the supplies table, not waiting to help her up. I snatched up a large stone that was used to mash up vegetables and handed it to Maer as she caught up. I knew she was in immense pain and could barely move, but there was no time to comfort her. I braced my hands on the table. “Smash the chain.”
She looked at me like I was crazy. “I don’t have enough strength—Ugh!”
Maer cut herself off as she raised the stone with both hands and slammed it down on the metal. As we both expected, the chains didn’t break; she wasn’t strong enough.
“Come out, come out!” taunted a male voice from outside. “We just want to talk!”
Maer and I exchanged glances and wondered the same thing: Who was we, and why weren’t they busting in?
“Koen!” Sloan cried out.
Emotion and energy swept through me like a flood. I looked around frantically for something to break the chains. The scythe would do the job, but that would require more strength than Maer could offer and more time to saw through the thick chain. I couldn’t defend Sloan with cuffed wrists.
I grabbed the stone from Maer. “I’ll free you first.”
She set the chain on the table, and I struck the stone down. The chain cracked. Another strike—
Screech—crack—
Maer’s chains broke apart. She swore in surprise. “It’s like you drank blood—”
“It’s nothing,” I panted. “I told you the metal was weak.” I handed the rock back to her. “Remember what Aeros said? What gifts we have? You have to be just as strong. Destroy the chain, Maer! My sister—”
Outside, Sloan shrieked my name again, followed by the male voice. “I’m getting close to biting her!”
“Maer,” I snarled.
She slammed the stone on the chain—again—again—again—
Screech—crack—
My chains snapped. Without waiting, I snatched one of the scythes and kicked open the front doors, careening around the corner—
To see three vampires dressed in Rhidian gold waiting with gleaming swords. One of them had Sloan in a chokehold, his lips parted near her neck.
“There’s one,” he hissed mockingly. “Where’s the other? Surrender now!”
The sun was just barely past noon. These were half-bloods, who had some tolerance to the daylight. But it wouldn’t be long before their skin started to singe.
“Let her go!” I roared, another wave of strength surging through me. Knowing they would refuse, I lunged with my scythe raised.
The two Rhidians met my attack. They clearly had less battle training than I did and certainly not against my weapon of choice, and I quickly left them disarmed and injured. But they recovered just as quickly, and I wasn’t fast enough to—
“Hey!”
It was Maer. I didn’t have the chance to falter, but I caught her in my peripheral—she was also raising a scythe. The half-blood holding Sloan dropped her to turn and face Maer with an arrogant chuckle.
“You want to fight, weak little girl? I don’t need a weapon to—”
With a powerful, wide sweep, Maer swung the giant sickle—
And lopped the half-vampire’s head clean off.
Sloan swore as it landed a foot away from her with a meaty thud.
My opponents immediately withdrew, all of us watching the body fall to its knees before collapsing sideways, going still.
I glanced at the head. Its eyes were frozen wide in disbelief, but there was no life in them.
Was it dead? Like, dead dead?
Could half-bloods really be irreversibly dead by just a beheading and no burning-to-ash?
Judging by the expressions on the other two, the answer was yes.
I took a sudden step forward, spooking them. “Do you want to meet the same fate?”
They turned tail and fled.
Still gripping my weapon, I helped Sloan to her feet and retreated from the head, putting her behind me. She was shaking like a leaf. I didn’t blame her. She had battle training, but she was not prepared for such violence. As a healer, she didn’t even attend arena battles.
Then I looked at Maer. In an instant, the odd force controlling my anger and strength evaporated to make room for uneasiness.
Maer stood panting for breath, gripping the scythe until her knuckles were white as she stared at her kill with a manic look gleaming in her eyes—a delightedly murderous look that matched the too-wide smile on her lips.
As if she sensed me watching, she lifted her head. “Is that strong enough?”
I knew what she was thinking: Killing the thing that made our lives a living purgatory felt good. We had the skills to kill vampires—the very skills we had to entertain them for sport.
Maer exhaled as if she’d been running. “They’re killable. It’s possible. I can—I can kill—”
I knew she was about to name someone, but her expression lost its mania, and she cut herself off to say instead, “We need to leave Sanlow. This is our only chance to escape.”
“You’re insane,” Sloan spat.
Maer turned a sharp glare on her. “What, you’d rather sit around and wait for more half-bloods to attack? To wait for nighttime? We could be executed! Wouldn’t you rather take this chance to be free?”
Free. No one knew the meaning of that word. No one dared imagine what it meant.
Sloan didn’t respond, just looked at the severed head. Neither it nor the body moved.
We all stood there for a moment as if there was no need for haste.
Something propped against the barn wall caught my eye.
“That’s it!” I gasped, startling the girls. I grinned at them. “We steal horses.”
Maer grinned back and tossed her scythe from one hand to the other. “I like the sound of racing down the street on a steed holding this thing.”
In the time between waking in the barracks, until she beheaded the half-blood, I had forgotten that she was a reckless battler. She had been unable to rise from a bed and could barely run. But now she seemed back to her typical self, ready to fling herself into the fray and forge ahead until she was drenched in blood.
Her face was already spattered with it. What was a little more if it came to it?
Despite her clear animosity toward Maer, Sloan protested, “You’re not well enough to ride a horse! You need bed rest.”
“I appreciate the advice, healer,” Maer said scathingly, “but I’m not wasting all this daylight to hide like mice in their holes.”
Sloan crossed her arms. “You’re going to regret pushing yourself to or past your limits,” she noted, “and you can’t blame me when your body fails.”
Maer opened her mouth to retort, but I stepped between them. “Either way, we don’t have time to argue among ourselves. The nearest stable is just off the Square. I vote to leave Sanlow behind for good.”
The girls gaped at me: Maer with rare delight, Sloan with disbelief. I never thought I would disagree on something with my sister, especially on a life-changing, life-threatening one like this. I was generally content with our lives. Sloan was actually enjoying her Medic training, and she was very good at what she did. And she was far more inclined to stay safe and alive than risk an escape that could easily backfire.
We were different in that way. I was willing to take chances. Sloan wasn’t.
I set my scythe against the barn wall to take Sloan’s hands. She glared up at me defiantly. “Sloan, you mean the world to me. The last thing I want to do is put your life in danger. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. So if you want to stay—”
“You already put me in danger!” she snapped shrilly, yanking her hands free. “And I will not let us be split up.”
I blinked in surprise. “You mean you’ll—”
She handed me the scythe with a determined look, her voice firm. “Mom and Dad wouldn’t want us separated, nor would they want us to give up. They would want us to go after the possibility of a better life, wouldn’t they? And if we’re to die, I’d rather die on free land.”
That was easier than I thought it would be, I mused.
Sloan glanced at Maer, whose expression was no longer venomous as if Sloan had done something to calm it. “And I can’t, in good conscious, ignore someone in need of medical attention.”
Maer twisted her mouth in a scowl but didn’t argue. She wasn’t proud enough to pretend she wasn’t in pain.
I thumped the end of my scythe twice on the ground. “Great! I’m glad we’re all on the same page. Let’s get going. Maer, do you need me to—”
“No carrying! I have this staff now. If we can walk this time,” she added tentatively.
“Fast walk?”
Maer groaned. “Okay.”
“What do we do about the—the—” Sloan couldn’t bring herself to mention the dismembered body.
“Body,” Maer said as if sounding it out to a child.
“Don’t patronize me,” Sloan snapped.
I withheld a sigh. For a second, I thought they were about to get along. “We have no choice but to leave it. But we can hide it.”
Handing my scythe to Sloan, I completed the unsavory task of hauling the body and head into the barn and piling them in the far corner. To think, just last night, my biggest problem was wearing an uncomfortable outfit—which I was still wearing, unfortunately. Fortunately, a bucket of water was on the supplies table that I could rinse my arms off in. I started to head out but quickly grabbed two knives.
I returned to the girls and handed Sloan one of the knives, handing Maer the other to put in her overcoat pocket.
Sloan gaped. “I’m just supposed to hold this?”
“Yes,” Maer and I said together.
“All right, I guess.” She sighed.
We set off southward toward the Square, Sloan and me flanking Maer in case either of us needed to support her as she used the scythe as a cane.
Sloan bent down to pull a stalk of celery from the ground and handed it to Maer. “The benefits aren’t immediate, but it’s good for you.” After Maer accepted it and started to munch on the crunchy vegetable, she asked, “What are we going to do about food and other supplies like herbs, Koen? We don’t even know what’s beyond the town walls. For all we know, it’s the edge of the world.”
There were too many unknowns, buts, and ifs to start listing. “We’ll get there when we get there. Let’s just focus on one thing at a time.”
Sloan elbowed me lightly. “We make a good mix. The planner and the think-later.”
I grinned at her. “They say balance is healthy.”
“Nothing about this is healthy,” she snorted, but there was amusement in her tone. “We—”
We made it to the alley between buildings but heard the commotion before we saw it—shouted orders to “Find them!”
The manhunt had begun, and we were nowhere near the stables.
“Hey.”
We all jumped and spun at the hushed voice. Someone poked their head around the next alley over. His hair was black, his skin pale, his eyes sky-blue, and his sclera—gray, halfway between human and vampire. He was a half-blood from the Bloodfrost coven.
I shoved Sloan and Maer behind me, raising my scythe. “Leave us alone,” I growled.
He stepped out and raised his hands in surrender. “I’m not going to reveal you. My name is Aspen. I overheard that you’re escaping Sanlow. I can help you do that.”
