The surrogate stepped closer, unfazed by the threats Zy and I represented, as if her fascination with me eclipsed all other concerns. Her eyes narrowed as she studied me. “Who are you?”
“How many of you are there?” I asked, instead of answering. Surely the government hadn’t kept themallalive...
“Enough. More than you can fight.”
“Answer the question,” Lenore whispered, and the melody of her voice was like a strong current, trying to carry me along with it. To drag me under. Though she was talking to the surrogate, if anyone had asked me a question, in that moment, I would have answered it.
“Five thousand. Maybe six,” the woman said. “I can feel every one of them, like limbs from my own body. As if I had five thousand hands, all ready to push the same button. To plunge the same knife...”
“Five thousand. What happened to the rest?” There were more than threehundredthousand left in place of human infants, in March of 1980.
“Limbs lost in battle. Casualties of war. They’re gone, but I can still feel them. Dead, yet they still cause pain. But they kept their secrets...”
“Kept their...?” And suddenly I understood. The government had tortured—killed—hundreds of thousands of surrogates, likely in an attempt to understand the enemy. Yet they’d learned nothing from their efforts.
“We are fewer now, but stronger,” she said. “We are crawling like flies on the corpse of humanity.”
The image brought bile to the back of my throat. I shuffled forward, joining thefuriaein eagerness to end a threat that had no right to exist on the same planet as my defenseless daughter, much less in the same cabin. Ineededto kill her. Yet I needed to hear what she could tell me even more. “You’re here to end the human race?”
“Not to end it. To feed from it. From pain. From chaos.” She seemed to have no reservations about spilling her guts, and whether that was from her compulsion to be near me, the siren’s influence on her willpower or simply pride on the part of a violent anarchist, I had no idea. “We make one cut, and instead of bandaging the wound, humanity tries to carve it out,” the surrogate continued. “They turn a dribble of blood into a fount. One bite into a feast. They are fools fleeing from their own shadows, and we have only to cast the light.”
A growl rumbled up from the floor, and Claudio stepped into sight on all fours, his silvery fur glimmering in moonlight spilling through the front door. His eyes practically glowing in the dark.
“Claudio. It’s okay,” I said. The surrogate didn’t even seem to notice him.
“Kill her.” Gallagher’s voice rumbled over me from behind, resonating in every bone in my body. Echoing in my mind. And though I didn’t turn to look, I knew he was holding our daughter. I couldfeelAlina, sleeping just feet from this mass murderer. “Kill her, Delilah.”
“Delilah.” The surrogate seemed to be tasting my name. She shook her head. “No, that’s not right.” Yet she took another step toward me.
A high-pitched canine whine rose from Genni’s human throat. The whole cabin was waking up, and the surrogate was surrounded, but she didn’t look scared.
She looked curious. Driven. “What are you?”
Gallagher was right. It was time to end this.
“I am fate.” I stepped forward and took her hand, as if I’d shake it. “I am vengeance.” Violence surged through me as thefuriaeflexed within my skin, stretching the length of my arm. Using me like a funnel to pour self-destruction straight into the surrogate.
Her eyes widened. She reached for her throat with her free hand, and this time I turned and lurched away from her, around the table. I didn’t need to see the show to know how it would end. Especially once the wet gasping sounds began.
While the monster died on the floor of our cabin, I took my daughter from Gallagher and carried her back into the bedroom, where I curled up with her on the bed. He followed us into the room and pulled the blankets up to my waist, careful to leave the baby uncovered. Then he leaned over me to pluck her tiny red cap from her head.
And though he didn’t say a word, I understood what was happening.
Tonight, my daughter would taste her first blood, not with the appetite that fed her belly, but with the one that fed her soul.
The front door squealed closed, and a few minutes after that, I heard Gallagher ask Claudio to open it for him. I knew from the rustle of cloth and the heavier-than-normal sound of his steps that he’d just picked up the body.
By the time he got back to the bedroom, smelling of fresh air and fresh blood, I was lying on my pillow, shaking with spent adrenaline, while our daughter slept soundly beside me.
“Delilah.” Gallagher sat on the other side of the bed, with Alina between us. His gaze held a bold, open affection that made me wonder how long he’d been shielding his feelings from me. “It’s okay. You did your duty. And tonight, Alina will bathe in the blood her mother provided.” He sounded oddly proud as he held out his hand to show me that her tiny red cap wassoaked. “That is an honor I did not expect you to claim.”
“Well, I didn’t do it on purpose.”
Careful not to wake her, Gallagher slid the saturated cap onto Alina’s head, and I groaned, until I realized it hadn’t left so much as a smudge against the sheets. She squirmed for a minute, her tiny features tensing. Then she relaxed back into a deep sleep, as satisfied as she’d been after I’d nursed her.
Within seconds, her cap looked dry, yet a brighter shade of red than it had been minutes earlier.
“Definitely a warrior,” Gallagher whispered. Then he reached over her to sweep a strand of hair back from my forehead. “What’s wrong, Delilah? You were magnificent tonight.”
