Page 133 of Vervain

A woman wearing a fox’s mask leans into the room, but I can’t tell what she’s doing until she faces the children, huddled together near the bloody bodies. “Come, children. You will be safe in here.”

Saya?

I open my mouth, wanting to know if that is my friend behind the mask, when my breath sharpens. This shadowy figure appears beside her. My eyes narrow further, my mouth snapping shut as his hand touches hers, and she doesn’t flinch.

Holy fuck, is this the nightwalker from the private room?

My mind reels, going into a thousand places, but I smile. That’s Saya. I know her monotone voice anywhere. I can’t believe the kids listened to her. She still sounds like a fucking robot.

“Other children will be hiding. When this is all over, I need you two to be strong for them,” the shadow creature says, and they listen to him. Why are they listening to him? Why aren’t they freaking out at the blood on the walls and the dead bodies on the⁠—

The lure… Saya is now a nightwalker, and they’re using their powers to keep them complacent. I know, because my grandma told me! She’s always right about these myths.

As soon as the door closes, I face this fucking guy and croak out, “Bring them in here—now, fuckface.”

He grimaces, but opens the door anyway. The kids jump and reach for the exit.

“In here. Quickly!”

They look to each other, and without a word, run into the closet with us. Fuckface closes it again. We don’t talk. We don’t make a sound. We watch and wait.

“Any survivors!”

“Stay here,” fuckface whispers. My eyes open, and a groggy spell lifts as I notice the door to what looks like a hospital room swinging open and a flashlight sweeping through. The red lights stopped flashing some time ago, and everything plunged into darkness, like a power outage.

The children crawl further back into the closet, and the Bleeder opens the door, stepping out with me in his arms. The man at the entrance snaps his torch onto us. I wince at the harsh light before he settles it on the Bleeder’s face. “Ellis, what are you doing here?”

“I was watching over her when I heard the commotion and hid.”

“Pussy,” the other sneers.

He shrugs. “I’m alive, though. An alive slayer is better than a dead one.”

Slayer? Isn’t he a Bleeder?

The man lowers the torch and leans against the door with a sharp sigh. “It is a slaughterhouse down here. I’ve found so many dead bodies that their faces all look the same to me.”

This fuckface Ellis guy moves to the bed and rests me back on it. The man doesn’t seem to notice me. He looks out into the red hallway.

“How many casualties?” Ellis says.

“A lot. Fifteen doctors, twelve slayers, Leon’s wife, and all the children.”

My brow furrows. When I face Ellis, he glances in my direction and shakes his head. I bite my lip and lie back, pretending I want to go back to sleep. The man ignores me, as if I were a bug in the grand scheme of things.

“The children?” Ellis sighs sharply. “What the fuck.”

“Right,” the man scoffs. “I said the same thing when Dr Hill and Jaxton told me after quarantine here was lifted. Serun must have really hated the children. Cleaned them up good.”

I grip the sheet beneath me, and my hair prickles at the two children huddled inside the closet. Then I go back to the gentle push he gave them as he lured them into the room, telling the kids not to open the door.

One is lying, and I don’t want to think Saya would ever be okay with killing children. Fuck me, I’ve heard horror stories about what she’s done whenever anyone hinted at threatening Cole. Suffocation. A bleeding eye after she stabbed someone with her fork in the mess. She was violent.

“They are sending word to Daebroke,” the man keeps talking, as if he has word vomit. I’d never tell him a fucking secret.

“In Sylvar? Why?” Ellis steps closer to me, his hand finding mine and easing my muscles. A warning glint is in his eyes before he focuses on the man still overlooking the corridor. “No one disturbs the council there.”

“Well, when you kill children, you can, especially if all the children were slayers.” Cold blue eyes roll towards Ellis. “This is war, Ellis. Best get as many fucks as you can in. Dr Hill is breaking the treaty, and she wants Jax and Leon to lead us all in to burn it to the ground.”