“Out of the city, Evy. We need to get away for a couple of days, far from the Break, the Dregs, and all the reminders of what our lives were before this started. Maybe it will help.”
I swallowed a snort. He had the best intentions, but I seriously doubted a change of venue would alter how my heart reacted to his proximity, or how my guts twisted when my mind wandered back to that tiny closet at the abandoned train station. The place where I’d been tortured and left to die.
“I don’t know,” I said. Nothing else came to mind.
“About leaving, or about it helping?”
“Both. Neither. Take your pick.” The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to stop. For a man who had frustrated me endlessly in my old life, he had become the most patient person on the planet in my new life. He didn’t deserve me jerking him around like this.
I brushed my lips across his nose, a teasing kiss that made him shiver. Smiling, I grabbed the hem of my shirt and whisked it off in one smooth motion. It whispered to the floor, forgotten. His eyebrows arched.
The sofa vibrated.
Wyatt tensed. “Did you feel—?”
The second wave wasn’t so subtle. I pitched off his lap and hit the floor on my back. Both elbows scraped against the rough carpet. Glass shattered somewhere in the apartment. Everything was moving, shaking. Books fell to the floor like thunderclaps. Car alarms blasted outside.
“Is it an earthquake?” I shouted.
“Stay there and curl up.” Wyatt tumbled off the sofa and joined me on the floor, wrapping his body around mine from behind. We didn’t fit well in the pocket between the sofa and the coffee table, but I trusted him.
I’d always thought you got into the nearest doorway—I guess I was told wrong.
The shaking stopped after less than a minute. Car horns added to the mix of alarms coming from the street. Something in the kitchenette fell in a pop of noise and broke. I sat up and gazed around the apartment, taking in the fallen items. The wall by the door now sported a thin crack the length of my arm.
“Holy shit.” I clenched my fists, unsure when my hands had started shaking.
“You okay?” Wyatt asked as he sat up next to me. His wide-eyed gaze was reflective of what mine probably looked like.
“Yeah. That wasn’t just from the Break.”
“No, that was a full-on earthquake.”
The city was no stranger to earthquakes of a much smaller magnitude. Mostly they were barely felt. Earthquakes this powerful were rare and, if hidden history showed anything, usually products of troll activity. Trolls, also called Earth Guardians by the Fair Ones, were part of the Earth itself—dirt and stone and natural elements. They’d had their internal wars a hundred years ago, and the city had suffered for it.
Combined with the earlier Break-hiccup, I had no doubt something bigger was brewing belowground.
Wyatt’s cell phone jangled, no longer on the counter where he’d left it. He rummaged in the mess covering the kitchenette floor. Checked the display. The surprise on his face was hard to miss as he received the call. “Truman.”
I stood up and wandered closer, concerned as his surprise gave way to actual shock. My heart sped up.
“Hold on,” Wyatt said. He pulled the phone away from his ear, hit a button, then said, “Say that again for me.”
On speaker now, Adrian Baylor’s voice came over loud and clear. “I said Boot Camp was attacked, Truman. Unplug your ears.”
A chill wormed down my spine and spread gooseflesh across the backs of my legs. This was so not what I expected to hear. The start of a question squeaked out of my mouth. I clamped a hand over it to silence myself. Baylor was a Handler and a former colleague of Wyatt’s, and among those people who thought me dead. Again.
“That’s what caused the earthquake,” Baylor continued. “At least three trolls were systematically testing the underground security measures for about five minutes before the quake. A couple of their friends must have come along to stop them, because their fight? That’s what shook the city.”
Troll wars. Holy shit. My mind raced. Boot Camp was a secret, supersecure facility in the mountains south of the city. It was where new Hunters were trained to kill, and it was a place where only one in two people came out alive. Four years ago, I’d been one of the lucky ones.
I couldn’t imagine why a bunch of trolls would want to get at those kids and their trainers. But they weren’t the only secrets hiding behind the high, magically secured walls or the deep, oil-slicked, electricity-bound barrier beneath. After the discovery of a macabre lab of science experiments in an abandoned nature preserve a week ago, the contents of that lab had been moved to Boot Camp. Contents including scientific research notes, vials of liquids no one could identify, lab equipment and technology beyond anything I’d ever seen in person, and fourteen living, breathing creatures that had been tortured in the name of science.
Creatures that ran the spectrum from docile and harmless to vicious hellhounds created with the worst intentions. Creatures that could terrorize the public and kill without remorse if set loose.
“Has anyone heard from the Fey Council about this?” Wyatt asked.
“Feelers are out, but the brass says no word yet. We’ve got teams coming in to keep the place locked up tight, but we aren’t making the same mistake we made at Parker’s Palace.”
The mistake of thinning out our ranks to chase after minor incidents while those closest to the imminent slaughter didn’t believe it would happen. Sixty-four people were dead because of that mistake.
Wyatt puckered his eyebrows. “What do you want me to do?”
“Stay by your phone for now, at least until we have a plan.”
“Fine.”
As he snapped his phone shut, I said, “Fortunately, with the advent of mobiles, asking someone to stay by the phone no longer requires them to sit around at home and fidget.”
Wyatt gave a tolerant sigh. “You want to go out there.”
“You’d rather sit around and hope Baylor gives you an assignment? If trolls are attacking, then something’s wrong. They’ve been one of the most neutral species in this city for years.”
“Neutral or not, they seem to take direction from the Fey.”
His accusation struck me dumb. A chill settled in my stomach. True, at Amalie’s request, a troll named Smedge had once rescued Wyatt and me from a group of Halfies. The Earth-bound trolls had some sort of partnership with the Fey, but that didn’t preclude trolls from working for others given the right incentive. Or they had attacked on their own, for reasons beyond my present understanding.
“So now you’re accusing Amalie of turning against us?” I asked.
He scowled. “No, just making an observation based on fact. Amalie has been a staunch supporter of the Triads since the beginning, but she doesn’t speak for all Fey. Just for the sprites and the decisions of the Council.”
“A power play by other Fey?” Saying it aloud sounded ridiculous. The Fey seemed perfectly content to live outside the city, happily roaming the mountains and forests that surrounded us and leaving the more violent, city- dwelling species to kill one another.
“I’m just thinking out loud, Evy,” he said. “I’m not accusing anyone of anything, because I really don’t have a damned clue what’s going on.”
I nodded, knowing exactly how he felt. “Too bad I have no idea where Smedge went to ground. He’d probably know what’s happening.”
A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “That would make things too easy.”
“Yeah, and God forbid anything ever be—” A heavy thud rattled our front door. For a brief moment, I expected the world to start shaking. Instead, whatever had thudded slid down the length of the door until it hit the ground.
I reached under the coffee table and pulled a knife from its hiding place. Weapons were stashed all over the apartment, and this one was the most immediately accessible. Wyatt didn’t try to stop me; he didn’t tell me to be careful. I approached the door on silent feet, glad for the cement floor, and checked the peephole first—nothing in sight except the opposite wall.
Pressing my ear to the door, I listened. Heard the faint, muffled sound of heavy breathing. By my feet, something dark red caught my attention. It glistened on the floor, just under the door’s edge. Blood. I curled my
