The Dark and Hollow Places (26 page)

I grab a few chunks of wood from a long-ago fire and use them for charcoal, long black streaks crumbling under my touch. I shut everything else off but the feel of my body moving, the joy and need of it. Leaving the smallest part of me to listen for anyone approaching, the rest of me indulging in the release of creating.

I draw out lines, shade in contours. Sore muscles along my arms and shoulders protest and I push them harder. Underneath my fingers shapes begin to form, faces and bodies straining against the wall. Sweat breaks out on my neck and down my back and I lose all track of time and place. I forget the pain along my scalp, the way the cold air seeps against the back of my ears.

It’s just me and the wood and the wall. Images that flash in my mind and are translated by my fingers before I can see them and piece them together. It’s like I’m not even involved, just a conversation between hand and subconscious. I sweep lines out and then smudge them with my wrist: a woman’s hair tangling in the breeze. I sketch a child’s lips around a crack: a perpetual scream.

As I step back, I realize what I’ve been drawing. Etched along the length of the wall is an army of people, stretching from side to side and deep into the distance. They shuffle toward me, fingers outstretched and pleading.

The moonlight makes them look almost real. Spirits of people from long ago breaking through the crumbling bricks, needing what’s left of our world.

I’ve drawn myself in there, the shadow of scars along my left side, my hair in angry spikes. My sister next to me, perfect and free, her fingers entwined with Elias’s. Recruiters tangled
with the Soulers in their tunics. Everyone I’ve ever known—all of us gone.

All of us shells.

Except for one. Standing in the middle of the crowd is Catcher. The only one with his arms loose by his sides. The only one with his mouth closed, just standing in the midst of it all.

I stare at my drawing of him. I’ve captured the way his eyebrows curve, the slight slant to his eyes.

The loneliness and despair inside him.

Slowly I walk back to the wall. I pull out a thin strip of wood with a sharp black point. Painstakingly, I begin to scratch the bars of a fence over the mass of Unconsecrated. Needing something to hold them back.

Their fingers curl around the links, their faces against the fence. But when I get to Catcher I can’t stand to draw over him. I place the tip of the wood on my lip, thinking.

Using my fingertips I begin to add new details to the drawing, the chalkiness of the black dust gritty under my touch. To the left of Catcher runs the fence, but to the right I add other details. Rather than clutching the links, the Unconsecrated hold flowers, and balloons tug them to the sky. They wear bright hats and absurd makeup. I make them smile, as if they’re laughing rather than moaning.

I stand back from the mural, my breath still coming fast from the explosion of effort. Steam rises in wispy clouds from my cheeks and I’m panting for breath. I stare at the plague rats writhing against the fence, at the ferocious need of them. A complete contrast to the people on the other side, ridiculously happy. And in between is Catcher, as if he belongs with both and neither.

I cross my arms over my chest and stare at the image of him, feeling myself falling for him even more with every heartbeat. It’s stupid and I know it. I even hate myself for it, trying to find any reason to explain away the blaze of desire in my chest.

He’s gone
.

I pushed him away.

And I pushed hard enough that he left.

My mind conjures images of my legs wrapped around him in the tunnels, of how he held me as we escaped from the City and how he swept me into his arms in the snow as if I were beautiful.

Every memory stings, reminds me of what I gave up. My mind screams for me to stop remembering, to just be done with the pain of it, but my body still warms, wanting Catcher.

They bang on the door at dawn the next morning, not even caring if someone answers before breaking it down.

“What’s going on?” Elias bellows.

I hear him trying to stop them but he can’t. They go from room to room until they shove open my door and I’m standing there dressed, already pulling on my coat.

My sister pushes past them and as soon as she sees me she gasps and screams, “Annah! What happened? What’s going on?”

I’d already seen my reflection in the window: a thin line of scabs arching behind my ear, a bald spot where the hair ripped free. I’d gone ahead and cut the rest of it before going to bed, preferring not to feel the remnants of my hair against my cheeks knowing it’s no longer enough to cover my scars.

Conall stands at the head of the crowd of Recruiters. I glare at him and he grins, coldly. “You’re gonna pay.” He raises his hand as if to hit me and Elias jumps forward, grabbing his arm.

“What’s going on?” Elias shouts, trying to regain order, but other Recruiters have pushed into the room and are clutching me, pulling me into the hallway. “What is this?”

I don’t fight them but they drag me anyway, grinning at my grunts of pain. I hear Conall explaining to Elias and my sister about the man I killed last night and Elias bellows that he’ll talk to Ox and get everything straightened out.

The joyous malice in Conall’s voice is unmistakable when he says, “Ox is the one who ordered this.”

M
oans drift through the air as Conall drags me to the cable-car platform and hands me a shovel with a sharpened end, the same tool the Soulers carried last night. My stomach twists with foreboding but I keep my face placid.

Ox stands by the rope ladder leading to the shore on the unprotected side of the wall circling the Sanctuary. Unconsecrated stumble at the bottom, reaching up for us, swiping at the bitterly cold air. Their knuckles—those who still have any—look red and raw, their faces scraped by ice.

The river’s a riot of slush with frozen water cracking and shifting around the edges. I can just see the shadow of the Recruiter’s body in the shallows, his skin already distorted and swollen.

A few boats stuffed with refugees from the Dark City float beyond range of the Recruiter crossbows. They no longer shout for help or beg to be let ashore; now they just watch us with desperate eyes. It’s impossible to tell how long it will be
before the Unconsecrated swell from the Dark City and fill the river until they overwhelm the Sanctuary as well.

Elias races onto the platform, his steps reverberating across the old wood. “What’s going on?” he shouts, his face purple with rage. “You can’t do this!”

Ox turns to him, a blank expression on his face. He points at the decapitated Recruiter below. “She killed one of my men and there will be consequences.”

Elias stops, breath coming out in fast pants that cloud the air in front of his face in the cold morning. His lips are blue. “What? Annah couldn’t kill anyone!”

Everyone stares at me. There’s no use lying—it’s clear they know the truth. I raise my chin defiantly. “He was attacking me,” I spit at Ox. “I was defending myself.”

My confession is enough for Ox and he pushes me toward the ladder, but I turn on him. “It’s not my fault you can’t control your men. He practically ripped my hair out—he deserved it.”

Ox hesitates and Elias jumps forward, trying to yank me back, so I’m in the middle of a tug-of-war between the two men.

“You can’t hurt her,” Elias argues. “What about Catcher?”

Below us the Unconsecrated reach and moan, pushing against the wall. A few more wash ashore, bloated bodies almost frozen. They lie there, still and silent. Eventually, they’ll struggle to their feet as well, hungering for the living.

I scowl as Elias and Ox argue. I know what the result will be—Ox has already proven more than once that he’s not one to show mercy.

“She’s not going to be killed,” Ox reassures Elias and I snort even as my insides relax with relief. “She’s going to be
put to work.” He swings his hand down to the shore. “We need someone to sweep during the day anyway.”

I swallow again and again as fear reaches deep inside me. But I refuse to let anyone know I’m afraid.

Elias starts to protest but Ox shifts forward, leaning his huge bulk against Elias’s leaner body. “For what she did to my man it shouldn’t even be a question,” he growls. “I’d kill her myself if I could. Do you want to argue that she shouldn’t be punished? You know me better than that.”

Over Elias’s shouts of protest Conall drags me toward the rope ladder. I kick at his shins and he pushes me over the edge of the platform until I have no choice but to grab the ladder or fall to the ground below. He holds the shovel out at me and when I reach for it he lets it drop, slipping through my grip and falling where the plague rats trample it.

Unconsecrated fingers brush my ankle, their desperation fevered with me so near. I don’t allow myself to scream as I grip the rungs of the ladder, no weapon to defend myself.

Elias leaps forward, shoving Conall out of the way and kneeling on the dock, reaching for me. Before I can warn him, Conall’s recovered and kicks Elias in the ribs and there’s nothing I can do.

With a grunt and a whoosh of air, Elias’s face crumples in pain and he falls to his side, clutching his stomach. He scrapes a hand against the platform, trying to push himself back up, but Conall steps on his fingers, grinding his heel into the wood.

“You questioning a direct order?” Conall asks, bending low so his face is flush with Elias’s. I can hear Elias groaning with the pain.

“Catcher won’t let this happen,” Elias mutters.

Ox laughs and pushes Conall out of the way before dragging Elias to his feet. Elias’s body is crooked as he tries to curl around the spot where he was kicked, cradling his injured hand to his chest.

When Ox speaks his voice is deadly calm and serious. “Catcher doesn’t control the Sanctuary, I do. We need only one of you to keep him coming back to us—you should remember that next time you want to forget the rules.”

Wind swirls around us, flinging snow in my eyes and chapping my fingers that are already numb from gripping the rope ladder so tightly. Long-dead fingernails scrape along the bottom of my leg, trying to pull me down, and I lash out, kicking them away, but they stumble back to continue groping for me.

Elias pants, his arm pressed into his side and his face pale with pain. “Don’t do this, Ox,” he pleads.

My breath catches in my throat at the agony in Elias’s expression. I glance down at the Unconsecrated huddled beneath me. There are only a handful, more slowly making their way down the shore toward us.

If I jump I might be able to get clear of them, but it would be a stupid and risky move. If I twist my ankle or break my leg I’ll be useless, unable to get away fast enough. I press my head against my arms, trying to figure out what to do next.

There’s a commotion on the platform above me, and as I look up I see my sister elbowing a Recruiter in the gut and pulling the crossbow from him. Before anyone can react she grabs a sling of bolts and skids to her knees just above me.

Closing one eye, she aims at the nearest Unconsecrated clawing at my feet. “I’m not the best shot, so you might want to keep still,” she says, and I cringe as she exhales. There’s a
sharp twang of string and the thunk of an arrowhead penetrating the plague rat’s skull, his body crumpling limply to the ground.

She’s aiming for the next one when Ox roars up behind her. “You want to join your sister? Fine!” he shouts, jamming his foot into her back just as she pulls the trigger. The bolt goes wide, burying itself in the shallow frozen water along the shore.

My sister teeters on the edge of the platform and I grab her just as she falls, pulling her against me with one arm, gripping the ladder tight with the other. Her feet kick at the empty air, the Unconsecrated below us an utter frenzy.

“No!” Elias screams, jolting toward us. Conall grabs one of his arms and another Recruiter the other. With a jerk of his foot Conall kicks at the back of Elias’s knees, forcing him down onto the platform. His face falls a few inches from mine.

His eyes strain with terror and panic. “It’ll be okay,” I tell him, trying to sound more sure of myself than I am. “We’ll take care of each other. I know how to survive.”