Sounds come first. Muffled voices, a barking dog, my pulse slowly throbbing in my ears. Pain comes next. My brain is trying to burst out of my skull, pushing my eyeballs against their sockets so hard they feel like they are going to pop. And then emotions—betrayal, sorrow, fear—but I can’t remember why I am feeling any of them. And finally sight.
Darkness. A square window slotted with bars shows me the silhouette of a charcoal sky. A bolt of lightning flashes outside the window, giving me a glimpse of pale rectangles covering the floor of my room—mattresses with barely enough space between them to walk. I squeeze my eyes shut and see the jagged slash of light that has been seared into my vision.
And then I wonder where I am.
Memories slam into me, memories that correspond with my emotions. Betrayal caused by Kevin. Sorrow caused by Kevin. Fear caused by Kevin … and the raiders. I have been caught.
My eyes pop open, and my hand goes to my belt, but I have no weapons. I jolt up from the mattress I’ve been sleeping on, groan, and cradle my head. The pain is so bad that I want to vomit again, but my stomach is empty. I take a deep breath and wobble across the room, my feet unstable on the mattresses, and peer out of the window.
Droplets of water speckle the glass, making the world outside a blur. Everything is dark, even the sky. Lightning flashes again, turning the sky pale gray and illuminating a large expanse of dead grass with a giant tree skeleton in the middle, enclosed on all sides by a brick wall.
Stumbling through the dark, I go to the other side of the room, to a door with a window barely bigger than my hand, and peer out. The room on the other side of the window is even darker than my room. Wrapping my hand around the doorknob, I twist, but the door is locked.
I go back to the window showing the tree and dead grass. Lightning flashes again, illuminating a window latch. I undo the latch and slide the window up, and wrap my hand around rain-wet prison bars. Pressing my face between two bars, I take a deep breath. The world smells clean and fresh. It is neither of those things.
Cool air seeps into the room and down to my feet. I wiggle my toes and a wave of panic hits me. Where are my shoes?
Another flash of lightning lights up my clothes. Kevin’s red hoodie is gone. I am wearing my vest—a really good thing—but the shirt underneath it is an oversize black T-shirt, not my regular dingy white T-shirt. Someone took my shirt off of me. My knees tremble and I fall onto my butt, bouncing on a mattress. The jolt sends a shock of pain through my head and a surge of nausea into my empty stomach.
Another rush of memory assails me—vomit being held tight against my face by a black beanie. I gasp a breath of rain-scented air. My hands go to my clean face, to my clean hair. Someone washed my hair. Someone changed my shirt but left my sports bra on, then put my vest back on me. I pat the pockets. They’re full. Even fuller than normal. I unzip the bottom pocket—the biggest—and something crackles.
Lightning flashes again, revealing the whole room, and I scream the very second it goes back to dark. Seared into my eyes is the pattern of the lightning broken by the shape of a huge man walking toward me.
I turn to run and trip on a mattress, falling to my hands and knees. Pressure zings my head and I groan, letting my neck wobble so my head dangles between my shoulders. A big hand grabs my shoulder and pulls me up to sitting. I curl my fingers into claws and start lashing out at the shadow. My short nails scrape against metal.
“Jack, it’s me, Jonah.”
My hands drop to my sides, and I stare at the massive shadow crouched beside me. And then I throw my arms around him. I don’t think I have ever been happier to see someone in my life. He doesn’t hug me back, not with his hands restrained in front of him with metal cuffs that go from his wrists to his elbows. “How’s your head?” he asks.
I let go of him and groan. “It hurts. I can hardly stand it.”
“I think there’s something in your vest that might help with that.”
I reach into the pocket I unzipped before Jonah scared me almost to death and pull out a plastic-wrapped rectangle. I open the wrapper and the smell of oats and cinnamon hit me like a burst of optimism. My stomach jumps and flips and tries to sail away with joy. I bite the granola bar and almost forget my pounding head. At least until I chew, because every time my teeth crunch, my head throbs.
“Give me a piece,” Jonah says. I break a big chunk off and hand it to him. He holds it to his mouth and then gives it back to me.
“You don’t like granola bars?” I mumble through my half-chewed food.
“I’m not hungry,” he says.
“Suit yourself.” I swallow and put the piece I handed to him into my mouth, chew twice, and stop. There’s something wet and warm on top of it. “Wat did you put on dis,” I mumble, mouth full.
“Something that will make your head feel better.”
“Medicine?”
“Yes. Chew and swallow, Jack. Chew and swallow.”
I fight the urge to gag and chew as fast as I can, then gulp it down. “What kind of medicine was that? It was warm and thick like . . .”
“Spit?”
I shudder. “Yes.”
“My spit has the ability to help you heal faster. Hasn’t Fo told you about the time when she shot Bowen?” His voice is quiet, almost emotionless.
“She what?”
“Blew a hole clean through him. He would have died, but her saliva had the leftover effects of being a beast, and she happened to be kissing him a lot at the time. Because he ingested her saliva, his body healed faster. You know that the government modified the bees to withstand all pesticides and predators, right?”
“Of course. Everyone knows that.”
“It gave the bees incredible physical strength and the ability to heal more quickly. Lucky me. I was given a vaccine that had traces of the chemicals they gave the bees. It altered my genetics, just like it altered the bees’. I’m freakishly strong and heal more quickly, too.” His voice is toxic. “How is your head feeling now?”
I slowly move my head from side to side. It feels like my brain has doubled in size and is going to squirt out of my ears at any second. “A little better, maybe,” I lie.
“Do you want some more spit?”
“No! Unless you can find a less disgusting way to give it to me.”
Silence settles over us. I look at Jonah and realize he’s looking at me. The window lights up and the room is flooded with a split second of light, just enough for me to see the way he’s staring at me—like I’ve got explosives strapped to my chest—before everything goes dark and thunder rumbles.
“I would never make you kiss me,” he whispers. “I see the repulsion in your eyes when you look at me. I’m not the kind of guy you should be thinking about kissing anyway, especially when you’ve got a decent guy trying to win your heart.”
The double meaning behind my words sinks in, and I lean away from him. “Okay, I did not just ask you to kiss me. And my eyes aren’t filled with repulsion when I look at you.” My voice is filled with repulsion. A wave of guilt makes me want to shrink and disappear. “Wow. That sounded really bad. I’m so sorry, Jonah. I guess I have a talent for doing really stupid stuff.”
He drops his head and laughs a hoarse, whispered laugh, possibly the first laughter that has come out of him in four years. “I know I’m hideously ugly. You don’t have to pretend I’m not.”
My heart aches at his words. I know how it feels to look at yourself and see nothing beautiful there. And then I think about how Jonah held the beast-child for hours while we waited for the cure to start working, and how he spoke so gently to me when the raiders caught me and Bowen was furious. He is good and kind and meek. That is real beauty.
“Jonah,” I whisper. I kneel in front of him, take his face in my hands, and lean forward until my lips are on his. They’re cool beneath mine and so much softer than the rest of him. He kisses me back, soft and so gentle that tears spring to my eyes. He shouldn’t be here. He’s too good for this place. I pull back but don’t let go of his face. “Real beauty can’t be seen.” My voice trembles with the truth behind the statement.
He’s quiet for a long moment, and I don’t let go of his face. Finally, he says, “Thanks, Jacqui.”
I sit down on the mattress and wrap my hands around my knees. “And I hate Kevin, if he’s the decent guy you’re talking about.”
“Don’t hate him. Not until you can make a fair judgment about him.” Jonah lies down on the mattress beside mine. “Life’s too short to let little things bring you down.”
My nostrils flare and I grit my teeth. “You call Kevin’s handing me over to a gang of raiders a little thing?”
“Yes. Trust me. There are worse things that could happen.”
“There are?” I don’t understand how he can say this when I am living my worst nightmare. “Like what?”
He lies absolutely still and silent. When he doesn’t answer, I take the rest of the granola bar out of the wrapper and eat it. It’s not until I swallow the last bite that I realize my head didn’t hurt when I chewed. I blink and my eyes don’t feel like they’re going to burst out of their sockets. Maybe there is something beneficial about eating beast spit.
I lie down on my mattress, rest my hands over my stomach, and stare into darkness.
“Being tortured by a group of raiders because they want you to tell them where your new bride is. That’s probably worse.”
I sit up too fast and my head feels like it’s going to snap off. Pressing my hands against my temples, I ask, “Are you talking about Bowen?”
“Yes.” He shifts, and the mattress he’s on squeaks beneath him. “Or, having your free will stripped from you, and then being struck with the overpowering desire to kill and eat anything that moves. And then remembering it every waking and sleeping second of your life. That’s worse than being handed over to a gang of raiders.”
I barely hear his whispered words over the drone of rain falling on the roof. But I do hear them. I think of the empty look in his eyes, his long silences, and my heart aches.
“I don’t want to find my mom,” he whispers.
I gasp. “Why not?”
“I killed my dad. I remember it. It was in the music room. My hands . . .” He takes a deep, trembling breath. “My mom will never be able to forgive me.”
I reach out and touch Jonah, resting my hand on his shoulder. Kevin’s betrayal is dwindling down to insignificance. My problems seem small now, relatively speaking.
“He’s the Siren,” Jonah says.
I frown in confusion. “What?”
“Kevin. He’s the Siren.”
I blink twice before answering. “Are you serious?”
“He denied it when I asked him, but I still think he is.” Jonah shifts on his mattress and the cuffs on his arms reflect the dim light seeping through the window.
“No way. He’s a raider.”
“No, I’m pretty sure he’s the Siren. Think about it, Jack. The cowboy warned us to keep away from the Sirens because, in the cowboy’s opinion, Sirens are bad. But the cowboy is a raider. That means the raiders don’t like the Sirens. That means the Sirens are probably good. Do you see what I mean?”
“Maybe,” I say.
“If I’m right, Kevin is playing both sides—raider and Siren. The raiders didn’t brand him because more innocent people trust him that way. It was our plan to have him hand Bowen and me over to the raiders so we could get into this building without getting shot.”
“We didn’t plan that,” I blurt.
“You didn’t help us plan that part, but that’s what we planned. Kevin didn’t want you to know he was working with the raiders.”
I bristle with frustration. “Why wouldn’t Kevin tell me something so important?”
“To protect himself and you. The fewer people who know what he really is, the more likely he is to live. The raiders think he is one of them, so they trust him. He can go where they are, and know what they have planned. That’s how he saved us when we were at the golf course—by knowing how the raiders work—and how he saved you when you guys were surrounded by them later that night. Today, he didn’t tell them that you’re a girl, which drastically increases your chances of surviving.”
He pauses for a long moment and then adds, “I believe he’s the one who freed the raiders’ women.”
I think of the things I saw in his shelter—the tampons, the baby formula, the diapers. “Did they have babies? The raiders’ women?”
“I don’t know.”
It almost makes sense. Except for the fact that he handed me over to them. Especially if he broke all the women out in the first place.
“But he gave me to—”
“He had no choice,” Jonah retorts. “You were wearing a bright red sweatshirt! They saw you coming. If Kevin let you go, the raiders would have known he’s the Siren, and his cover would have been blown. Can you imagine what they would do to him if they suspected he was the one who broke all of those women out? He’d be lucky if they killed him.”
I think of how I treated Kevin when he handed me over to the raiders. If Jonah is right, I owe Kevin a huge apology. “So, why didn’t they put me in wrist cuffs?” I ask.
Jonah laughs under his breath. “You’re just a little thing—not a big enough threat. They cuffed me and were going to put me in with the beasts. … Electromagnetic cuffs are only necessary for beasts and Fecs. They’ll shock me with them if I get out of line, and they are held together with five hundred pounds of force.”
“They have beasts here?”
“About ten.”
“Why?”
“Something about the ‘new guy’ wanting them. I don’t know if Fo told you, but drinking beast blood is a lot like eating beast spit. It makes you stronger and makes you heal faster.”
I shudder.
A light flickers, something more yellow than the stark, pale blue of lightning. An icy hand grabs mine, squeezing. “They’re coming,” Jonah whispers. “Be tough, don’t say anything stupid, and act twelve!”
The light flickers again, illuminating the square window in the door. A shadowed face appears in the window, and the slow arc of a flashlight sweeps across the room before stopping on Jonah and me. The door rattles and then is opened, and a black mass is dropped inside. The door slams shut and a lock clicks into place. Before I have time to wonder what just happened, Jonah is on his feet and across the room, grappling with the dark mass. It takes me a moment to realize what it is—a person.