The cuts twitch and tighten, struggling to draw closed.
“You like this, don’t you,” the prisoner gasps as I settle the tip of the dagger above his left nipple. “You northerners are sick.”
A flick of my wrist separates nipple from chest. The Siphon screams.
I take his other nipple, too. Then I draw the edge of the blade in a long, slow caress from his sternum to the hollow of his throat.
“You dirty wolf lover,” the prisoner says, defiant even as he slumps in his chains. “I don’t know anything about the children, but I wouldn’t tell you even if I did!”
Something inside me finally snaps, the shadows at the edges of my vision pulsing into an insistent thrum.
Saela is gone. Lost. The other children… I won’t be able to save them. Thiscreatureisn’t going to tell me anything.
I’ve failed.
Killing rage turns into something darker, deeper—something too ugly for words. It’s like the shadows fill me, consume me then. Blackness in my mind, behind my eyes, a deep pit that stretches through me and makes my muscles clench.
No more questions. No more interrogation.
No more thoughts buthurt. Punish.
Kill.
I return to the table and pick up the bone saw—a long, narrow implement with fine serrations sharpened to a razor’s edge.
The Siphon’s final howl of pain and terror is cut short as I saw through his trachea. But he’s still alive, blood spurting from his severed jugular as I work the saw deeper, fighting to decapitate him even as his flesh begins to heal around the blade.
When the saw finally bites through muscle and tendon, striking bone, his eyes are still rolling, mouth agape and pooling with blood.
Some distant part of me is aware that what I’m doing is horrific. There’s no purpose to this torture now, no goal but pain and revenge.
No justice but death.
When his head finally separates from his body, the perfect features remain unmarred, his eyes open and accusatory.
His skull thunks to the ground, rolling a few feet, leaving a thick crimson trail on the dirty stones.
I stand over the corpse, breathing hard, painted head-to-toe with Siphon blood.
Anassa’s approval envelops me. She’sproudof my brutality.
All I feel is hollow.
I barely rememberthe walk to my tent. I collapse into my bunk and fall instantly into sleep, still wearing my bloodied clothes.
Hours later, I wake to dull morning light and a soft clinking sound. My dreams were full of shadows and blood and I’m sweating, my clothes damp. I blink, trying to shake off the nightmares.
Stark sits a few feet away, arranging his needle and several bottles of ink on the little table where I left my weapons the night before.
There’s a movement in the corner of the tent and I squint at it—are the shadows shifting again? But as I stare, they settle down, back to normal. Great, just another hallucination.
My body protests as I lever myself up from the narrow cot, eyes bleary. It’s early. I’ve only been asleep a few hours.
“Time for new ink again?” I grunt, raspy with sleep.
“These you can be proud of,” he says, gesturing for me to take the chair beside him. “Marks that remind us of what we have to do to defeat our enemy. To keep the bloodsuckers from destroying our world and everything and everyone we love.”
It’s a struggle to rise. My whole body is stiff, aching from battle and exhaustion.
