CHAPTER ONE
Someone’s blood was caked into my hands, but I had no idea who’s. I stared at them like they were alien objects; totally foreign things that didn’t belong to me. A hand came down hard on the grey, metal table I was sitting at, rattling the chains cuffed to my wrists—and my teeth.
I turned my eyes up and found two men staring at me, one of them more pissed off than the other. They wore black uniforms, their shirts tucked into their combat pants and buttoned up to their necks. From their belts hung a set of handcuffs, keys, and holsters with guns in them.
Embroidered nametags on their chests identified one of them as Brickmore, and the other one as Howes. Brickmore, the man who’d slammed the desk, glared at me, the veins on his neck and bald head popping, his teeth gnashed together.
“For the last time,” he growled, “What is your fucking name?”
I stared at him, my heart beating a ragged rhythm inside of my chest. “I don’t—”
He jabbed a finger at me. “—don’t you pull that I don’t know bullshit again. It’s not gonna work, and it’s not gonna get you out of this place. Tell me the truth, or I’m gonna have to start pulling your teeth out one by one.”
Howes laid a hand on his colleague’s shoulder. “Maybe it doesn’t know who it is,” he said. “You know what they say about these creatures, right?” He pointed at his head and made a swirling gesture with his finger.
It? Creature? Hearing them talk that way made me grind my teeth. I swallowed hard, pushing down some of the anger rising rapidly into my chest. I didn’t know where I was, what I was doing here, or even who I was, but I knew I deeply disliked the stink of these two men.
It wasn’t just what they were saying, or even the fact that I was chained to a desk in a dull, grey room made of what looked like solid concrete. There was something about them that made me feel like someone was dragging nails down the back of my brain. Every time I tried to concentrate on what I was doing here, on remembering, that sensation only got worse and made it harder to think.
“I’m gonna ask you one last time,” Brickmore said, “Do you know who you are? Do you know what you’ve done?”
He’d said it like he was accusing me of something. I looked down at my hands. Of killing someone. “I didn’t kill anybody,” I said, finally connecting some of the dots.
“You deny it? Look at you! You’re covered in his blood.”
He was right. There was more of it; on my hands, up my arms, across my legs and chest. Not only was I covered in drying, brown blood, I looked like I’d been chewed up by a wolf the size of a school bus and spat back out. My jeans were tattered and torn, and my shirt was ripped, exposing more of my skin than I liked.
But I didn’t have a scratch on me; not as far as I could tell, anyway.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, “I-I don’t know where I am.”
He slammed the desk again and reached for my face, but stopped himself short, his fingers twitching. Instead, he pointed at me again. “He was a good person,” he snarled, “A good man. One of the best. I’m gonna make sure you never see the light of day again, you understand?”
My mind reeled. I saw myself standing in a room, the walls painted with blood. I could smell it in the air, feel the heat of it against my skin. I shut my eyes and turned my head to the side, trying to fight the vision, to will it away. I didn’t do that. That wasn’t me.
“Isn’t it supposed to have wings?” Howes asked. “Where are its wings?”
Wings?
“They’re probably broken,” Brickmore said, “These Outsiders are always broken.”
But I wasn’t broken. They were there, under my skin. Hidden. Waiting. I could feel them now, even if I hadn’t before. The muscles, the bones, they were strong, and they made me feel stronger for having them.
I stared at him, scowling. “Let me go,” I said, my voice a low rumble in my throat. A warning. A threat.
“Let you go? I already told you. We’re locking you up and throwing away the God-damned key, fiend bitch.”
The word bounced around inside of my chest like it had its own echo. Fiend. No, that wasn’t who I was, or what I was. I didn’t exactly know the answers to those questions, but I knew, deep in my gut, that I hated the word more than I hated them.
“Maybe you’ll confess after a few years in this place; if you survive that long,” Howes added.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” I said, “You have the wrong person.”
“Tell that to the Horseman,” Brickmore growled, the spittle from his mouth spraying against my face.
Staring at him now, studying the hint of silver in his blue eyes, something started coming back to me. Not a memory, exactly, but a feeling. The chains around my wrists. I wasn’t new to them, I wasn’t a stranger to chains, or tight walls, or even darkness. There was something else, too. I could hear his pulse, the excited beating of his heart.
He was enjoying this, despite the accusation that I’d killed a good man; possibly even a colleague.
That was when I saw my moment. The room was small, barely large enough to fit four people, and the chains around my wrists—while slack—weren’t loose enough for me to grab him, but they hadn’t bound my feet, only my wrists.
Instinct took over, muscle memory blazing into action.
Twisting my torso to one side gave me enough leverage to bring one of my feet up and smash it into the side of Brickmore’s head. Blood spurted out of his mouth and he groaned, recoiling, his hands flying up to stem the crimson flow. Howes, alarmed, reached for his gun.
There was no way I’d have been able to punch or kick him from where I was, but I didn’t have to do either of those, because I had wings. Still running on instinct, I whipped around my chains and made my wings rapidly expand. They were huge, dark, leathery things but they moved like whips. I knocked the gun out of his hand and sent it clattering against a wall and to the floor.
“Oh shit!” Howes shrieked, his eyes wide and filled with grotesque horror. I slammed one of my wings into his face. The moment of contact was exquisite. Howes cried out again, only this time out of pain instead of shock. He staggered and fell into the corner of the room, clutching the side of his mouth, which was now also bleeding.
“You broke my mouth!” he yelled.
“Should’ve been paying attention,” I said.
With both men now injured, I turned my attention to the chains keeping me tied to the table. They were simple manacles; rigidly built, made of solid iron, and designed to keep someone from moving around freely. Something about them, though, felt familiar. Too familiar. My fingers were already starting to work on the linchpin that made them work the way they were supposed to, but without a tool, it was slow going.
A flash of light filled the room, and my whole body seized up, as if every single one of my nerve endings had decided to suddenly clench like a fist. I fell flat on the table, limp, my cheek hitting the metal hard. I couldn’t move. My whole body was numb, but I wasn’t unconscious. Not yet, anyway.
“You didn’t need to do that,” Howes said, through his swollen mouth.
“I thought you said you could handle her,” came a smooth voice. It was calm, low, and dangerous, like a panther’s purr. A third man was in the room with us. Had he been here the entire time? Why hadn’t I seen him, or smelled him?