Page 89

I watch him struggle. And I relish it. “Jealous?”

He glares. “Don’t test me. Not now. Not tonight.”

I take a step back toward him, smoothing a hand down his tie, straightening it. His shirt is still rumpled and askew from when I tore it earlier. I study the way his chest inhales beneath my touch. I can feel the pulse of his heart, and the hunger sinks its claws into me again. It would be so, so easy . . . “What are you going to do if I decide I don’t want to listen?”

“You. Never. Listen.” His eyes burn, the fire in them something between longing and loathing. I infuriate him, I know. And I love every moment of it.

Thump. Thump.

A sound breaks through the hall—the same heavy beats we heard on the top floor. Instantly, we break apart, anchors in hand.

Thumpthumpthumpthump. Louder. Faster.

“What is that?” I whisper.

We both stare into the shadows at the end of the hall, the yawning blackness where no moonlight reaches.

The sound goes silent.

Neither of us dares to breathe. My chest squeezes. My breathing shallows. We do not move. We do not speak.

“Maybe it’s—”

I grab Lonan’s sleeve, stopping him from speaking as I catch the barest trace of movement. The lavender light of my scythe has caught a reflection, just a glimmer, the flash of a pair of eyes.

“It’s on the ceiling,” I breathe.

As if it heard me, a neck twists into the light, its face illuminated by the light of my scythe. It’s one of the girls from our year. We had History class together. Her ball gown is in shreds, the pink silk dirty and torn, her skin now deathly pale, her eyes opalescent. She bares her teeth to us, two razorlike fangs piercing her bottom lip as she smiles, gripping the ceiling like a spider.

She hisses. It’s a sound so animalistic and predatory that it sends a shiver down my spine. But then . . . the sound is echoed. It travels down the halls in waves, dozens of hissing voices mimicking hers.

“Lonan,” I whisper.

Slowly, he lifts his sword so that the light is cast farther down the hall. It catches on dozens of white, shining eyes speckling the shadows.

Siphons.

We have not seen other students in so long. I didn’t want to think about what became of them. Some naive part of me prayed they’d gotten out. I was wrong.

“Go,” Lonan whispers to me.

I turn, ready to run, but I’m stopped short by the sight before me. Eyes dotting the ceiling like stars in the night. We’re hemmed in.

Lonan has spent years protecting me, but to his credit, in this moment, he doesn’t shield me. He knows I’m not helpless. We’ve both spent years training in the Light, and we fall into that training on reflex. He pivots, his back turned to mine.

One of the siphons drops from the ceiling, landing on all fours. A girl in her first or second year. She crawls toward us, arm over leg over arm, inhuman, fangs bared, eyes a devilish white.

I can’t think of who she used to be. I have to lean on my broken heart. I let the aching thing in my chest go cold. I let myself become what they are—half meiga, half monster. Unfeeling and devastating.

She smiles a predator’s grin. And then she leaps.

I swing my scythe, cutting her through the middle. The scream of pain is heartrending. Blood paints the floor. But, almost heedless of the open wound in her stomach, in a moment she’s on her knees again, charging toward us. The others fall from the ceiling, crawl down the walls, scamper across the floor. Dozens.

I sweep my scythe through them like a harvester of wheat, and blood flies like chaff. It’s worse than any fight with a fiendling—they’re unyielding, ignoring gruesome wounds to keep attacking.

A boy from my History class catches an opening while my scythe is on a backswing, dried blood marring his white hair and vitiliginous skin. He grabs me by the scalp and rips my head to the side. I brace, ready to feel teeth tear into my neck. But then I’m shoved sideways. He grabs Lonan by the shirt, jerking him backward.

I’m moving faster than I can think. In a blink, I’ve lunged into the boy and plunged the silver dagger clenched in my other fist into his chest. He falls to the ground and sputters momentarily as blood wells around the stake. The milky color in his eyes drains. He goes still. I wrench the stake from his chest only to see another siphon sprint past me. I barely catch her neck with the curve of my scythe before she reaches Lonan.