Page 114 of Vervain

I take a step towards him, saying, “Serun, why are you awa…” My forward step becomes a step back when a clicking, insect-like sound stings from behind him, followed by a thud. My body tenses as whatever hits the ground and moves, sounding like a sandbag dragging across wood.

“Serun?”

He stares at me without blinking or moving.

I peer closer, and when his outline sharpens, something moves, more distinct than sound. A long, taloned claw creeps over his shoulder, then another, until a creature’s hand grabs him, sinking its grip into his flesh, burrowing inside like a cavity until it looks as if bone protrudes from him. “Found…you…”

Before I can do anything, darkness pours out of him, hitting the ceiling and dripping down like cinders, raining black hellfire. The insect noises grow louder, and as I take another step back, the creature, its teeth sunk into Serun, moves towards me in a blur.

Air fills my lungs, crushing the cage around my heart. I rise from the bed, my hand going to my chest, gripping where it aches. Sweat beads on my forehead, and through panting gasps I take another deep breath. When I exhale, I look behind me. Serun is asleep, his arm across my waist—the same position he was in before I unclasped that fierce grip.

Was it all a dream?

I touch my fingernails, one hooking under the other, scraping across, but there are no signs of grains or any feeling of soil from all that digging I did earlier.

Falling back onto the bed, I wipe the sweat from my brow and close my eyes. “I had a nightmare, not that you can listen,” I murmur, laughing at my own pathetic joke. “The creature that tried to kill my brother severed your head. It felt…real. Too real.”

As my muscles relax and the heaviness pulls me under, Serun draws me towards him. His frosted finger glides across my dry lips before I sink.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

EMPIRICAL OBSERVATION

Saya Claymore

Death lingers in the air. Bodies sprawl on the ground, the remains of a group of humans who risked the night on the highway rather than wait for daylight. But maybe they had already been exposed? Perhaps they didn’t have a choice.

Olivia says it wasn’t her. Still, my mind drifts to my vivid nightmare of finding the body in the woods, of how it became vervain, and of the creature attached to Serun.

“A cult is in the area,” Serun says, stepping over a body as if it’s a hindrance—an obstacle in the way, not a human being. I swallow the lump in my throat and vow never to grow so cold as to accept death instead of anger and defiance.

Pushing through the disgust writhing in my stomach, I step over a stiff body sprawled near the cars that cluster the highway. Turned-over, burnt cars lie open, as if the humans inside had no time to park and had to leave.

“What was it like when Mother left?” I ask him to distract myself from stepping over another lifeless body.

“Silent.” Serun dissolves into smoky shadows and stands on the other side of the railing. “Without her voice in prayer, the world grew silent and afraid. That was until more and more nightwalkers appeared.”

“By you.”

“In the beginning, but I didn’t like the concept of creation,” he says, offering me his hand. I take hold and shuffle onto the other side of the railing. His clawed hand tightens on mine as he says, “But I would do it to have you for eternity.”

I release my grip on his hand and scan the woods by the river to distract me from my racing thoughts. “Are we crossing or going around it?”

“Crossing.”

With a nod, I make my way down the pebble-strewn slope. In the blink of an eye, Serun’s ahead of me by the riverbank. Olivia falls into step beside me, her gaze flicking from one thing to another, as if she’s worried someone might spring out to attack us.

“So, you’re telling me the slayers created more of you?” I say as I greet him by the tall grass that whistles in the soft breeze. “And they created more of themselves.”

“I wasn’t a liked creation.” He pinches the fabric of my clothes, and before I can protest, I’m in his arms. The air stirs, and my stomach tightens with a thousand butterflies. In the blink of an eye, we appear on the other side of the river. “They wanted something they could control.”

Once I am on my feet, I notice Olivia staring at us in disbelief. “Oh, what the fuck?” she whines as she makes her way through the water.

My ear twitches, and I lift my gaze to the cars on the highway. “How many did they make for it to get that bad that human… people were escaping their cars?”

“Oh, was that what you were insinuating?” Once Olivia steps out of the water, drenched from the waist down, Serun turns away, his shadows skimming his shoulders and pooling on the ground like a cloak. “That was because of the nightwalkers. The white coats came in when the infestation began, blocking the highways and stealing humans from the streets who had the DNA type they needed.” Fiery eyes narrow. “They experimented on them as if they were fragile little playthings.”

I lick my cracked lips, my hands at my sides clenching into trembling fists. There’s so much I don’t know about the world—things hidden or rumoured, and I wasn’t the only one. Everyone in the Darkovish Feeding Ground regarded slayers as legends, mythological creatures.