Chapter 4

Lyra had never seen anything move like that.

One second the shape by her closet was only shadow. The kind her eyes made up when she woke too fast in the dark. Then it had a shoulder. An arm. Fingers reaching for her, the nails catching the little bit of light left in the room.

Then the room was gone.

Concrete. Cold air. Copper on the back of her tongue that wasn't hers. A parking structure she'd never stood in. Blood on the ground, not enough of it, and a name scratched into a pillar in jagged, angry lines.

VALE.

Across the street from a lit window she somehow knew was her own, a man stood in a doorway. Watching it. Not moving.

Kael.

It let go of her all at once, and her knees buckled against the wall behind her. The shadow was still crossing the floor. Still reaching. She screamed his name anyway, before she'd even decided to.

"KAEL!"

The window blew in.

Glass sprayed across the room, catching lamplight in a hundred small pieces as Kael came through it low, already moving before his boots hit the floor. A blade came out of his jacket, silver, narrow, a symbol etched along the flat that caught the light and caught something in her chest at the same time.

She'd seen that symbol before. Not recently. In the dream. Carved into that altar, half swallowed by moss. The same shape she'd traced with her eyes in a hundred nightmares she'd never told a single person about, because who did you tell something like that.

The thing by her closet turned on Kael instead. It moved fast, faster than her eyes could follow clean, closing the gap between itself and him before she'd finished flinching.

Kael was faster.

He caught its wrist an inch from his own throat and twisted. Something in its arm gave with a wet crack that turned her stomach. He drove the blade up under its ribs, one motion, no hesitation in it at all. The thing made a sound low in its chest, not a scream, more like tearing, and staggered back toward the window with something black already soaking through its shirt.

"Stay down." Kael didn't look at her. Every part of him was angled between Lyra and the thing bleeding three feet away.

She wasn't going anywhere. Her legs weren't hers anymore.

It lunged again. Kael met it, blade flashing twice, and this time it didn't get back up. It didn't fall so much as fold, and then it wasn't a body anymore at all, just ash sliding apart into nothing, until there was only a black mark burned into her carpet and a smell in the air like a struck match.

Neither of them said anything for a second. The quiet after felt bigger than the room.

Kael straightened, blade still in his hand, breathing hard enough she could see it. When he turned to look at her his jaw was tight. He didn't look relieved.

"You hurt?" His voice came out rough.

She shook her head. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking, so the gesture probably didn't mean much. "What was that." Her mouth had gone dry. "What was that thing."

"Later." He crossed the room fast, crouched in front of her. There was a cut over his eyebrow, bleeding down the side of his face, and he hadn't noticed it yet. His eyes had gone careful in a way she didn't like. "How'd you know I was outside."

The truth came out before she could stop it. "I saw. There was. A parking lot, blood, a name on a pillar." Her voice kept breaking apart mid-sentence and she couldn't fix it. "I saw you. Standing across the street. Before you moved. Before I even heard you."

Kael went still. Not scared-still. The other kind. The kind that meant he'd been afraid of exactly this since the first morning he watched her walk to class and she hadn't looked back.

"What name," he said. "On the pillar."

She knew. She'd known since the vision let go of her, and saying it felt like handing him something she couldn't take back.

"Mine." Her voice barely made it out. "It said Vale."

He didn't say anything to that. His jaw worked once, like he was chewing on something he didn't want to swallow.

Past the broken window, past the scorch mark still smoking faint on her floor, a whisper rose up from the hallway. Closer than the first one had gotten. Close enough that it shouldn't have taken either of them by surprise, and it still did.

It was laughing.

Kael was on his feet before the sound finished, blade already turning in his grip, putting his body between Lyra and her own front door.

"Is there another way out of here." He said it low, not really asking, already scanning the room for one.

"The fire escape. Where you came in." Her teeth had started chattering and she hated how it sounded, how young it made her voice.

"Not fast enough." He didn't take his eyes off the door. "Get behind me. Now."

She moved before she'd decided to, the same way she'd screamed before she'd decided to, her body running on something her brain hadn't caught up with yet. The whispering on the other side of the door dropped lower, almost a purr, almost words she couldn't quite make out no matter how hard she strained to hear them.

Then the doorknob turned.

Slow. Deliberate. Like whatever was on the other side wanted her to hear every inch of it.

Kael's free hand found her wrist and pulled her back another step, putting himself fully in front of her, blade up, breathing shallow through his nose the way people did right before something they couldn't control anyway.

"Whatever happens," he said, quiet, not looking back at her, "don't run. It's faster than you. It's faster than both of us."

The door handle stopped turning.

For three full seconds, nothing happened at all. No sound. No movement. Just the two of them standing in the wreck of her apartment, glass under their feet, waiting for a door that had gone completely, unnaturally still.

Then something slammed into it from the other side hard enough to crack the wood down the center.