We ran.
Flynn sprinted ahead, Kisa's hand locked in his, while I guarded their backs—arrow nocked, breath ragged. The alleys twisted like rotten entrails, clotted with ice and the stink of spoiled meat. A sucker's howl ricocheted off the stones, too close. Lorraine's school loomed three blocks east. Three blocks. We'd practiced this route blindfolded, but practice never included the wet snap of talons on brick or the keening wails of neighbors being dragged into shadows.
"Up!" I hissed as we reached the tavern. Flynn boosted Kisa onto the roof, then scrambled after her. I followed, my boots skidding on frost-slick shingles. Below, pale figures slithered, too fast. Moonlight caught the crimson glint of their eyes.
"They're herding us," Kisa panted, clutching the wolf-tooth pendant. "Like sheep."
"Shut up and run," Flynn snapped, but his voice cracked.
We leapt to the next rooftop, tiles cracking underfoot. The school's watchtower rose ahead, lights still on. No Lorraine. My gut twisted.
A laugh cut through the cold. Not behind us. My gaze lifted up.
The sucker crouched on the gable of a crumbling chimney, his skin the color of a drowned corpse, lips peeled back over jagged, translucent fangs. His voice was syrup and broken glass. "Little arrow-flinger. You've been skipping meals. All spine, no sinew." He inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring. "But your brother… ah. He's ripe. Fear sweats sweet off him."
I loosed an arrow. He vanished, reappearing inches from my face, breath reeking of copper and clove. "Mmm. Spicy."
His hand lashed out. Talons gouged my cheek—white-hot pain, then blood streaming warm down my neck. I stumbled, loosing another arrow blindly. It grazed his shoulder. He hissed, black ichor bubbling from the wound.
"Iris!" Flynn lunged, knife raised.
No. Stupid idiot.
"Pup's got teeth!" The sucker caught Flynn's wrist, bending it backward until bone creaked. Flynn screamed.
I tackled the creature, dagger aimed for his ribs. He dissolved into mist, re-forming behind me. "You'll watch him die first," he whispered, tongue flicking my ear. "Then the girl. I'll make you count his screams."
Kisa's stone hit him square in the temple.
He staggered. Not much, but enough.
"Go!" I shoved Flynn toward the next rooftop. Kisa scrambled after him, but the sucker seized her ankle, yanking her backward. She slammed onto the tiles, gasping.
"Sweet thing," he purred, straddling her. "Let's see what your prayers taste like."
Flynn charged, roaring but he sucker backhanded him mid-leap. Flynn crumpled, blood streaking his temple.
No.
I lunged, driving my dagger into the sucker's side. He snarled, clawing at my arm, shredding my sleeve. Pain seared in jagged breaths as his talons raked muscle. I twisted the blade deeper. "Bleed, you bastard."
He laughed, black blood dribbling down his chin. "I'll wear your skin as a scarf—"
Kisa's boot cracked into his jaw. His head snapped sideways. I wrenched the dagger free and plunged it into his throat.
This time, he screamed.
Lorraine's words hissed in my memory, "Carve the symbols. Makes 'em hurt."
The sucker writhed, clawing at the dagger. Smoke curled from his wound. "You—filthy—maggot—"
"Stay down." I stomped on his chest, snapping ribs like kindling. His crimson eyes dimmed to ash.
Kisa swayed, clutching her arm. A talon had ripped through her coat, the edges of the wound already purpling. "I'm… fine," she slurred. Then her knees buckled.
Flynn caught her, face pale. "She's burning up!"
"Move!" I hauled them both toward the school's outer wall. The gate hung ajar. Drag marks scarred the snow inside—blood, not all of it human.
The cellar doors were still barred. Flynn shouldered them open, Kisa limp in his arms. I slid the bolt shut behind us, lantern light revealing shelves of dried herbs, rusted arrowheads, and Lorraine's prized oak bow hanging untouched on the wall.
No Lorraine.
Kisa shivered on a moth-eaten cot, her breath shallow. Flynn pressed a wad of linen to her wound. "It's… it's not closing."
"Infection takes hours," I lied, rifling through Lorraine's salves. Days. Minutes. Depends on how deep the rot goes. We've never had someone directly infected from a sucker, but we knew it would not make a mindless beast, this time. It would be another sucker, and we cannot do that to Kisa.
Why her, goddess? Why not the countless others who killed for fun or thieved for greed? Why an innocent soul like her?
I had been like a sister to her as I was with Flynn, played with her in my lap, fed her our own home broth when her mother left the town for days, told her stories of ancient heroes and deadly suckers, of the wolves that failed to save her.
Time curdled in the cellar. Kisa's whimpers frayed into guttural rasps, her body arching off the cot as if pulled by invisible wires. Sweat glazed her skin, pooling in the hollow of her throat, and the wound on her arm pulsed like a second heart, black veins branching beneath the surface, corrupting the freckles she'd once traced for Flynn under summer stars.
He clung to her hand, his thumb rubbing raw circles over her knuckles, as though devotion alone could scour the rot from her blood. "Look at me," he pleaded, but her gaze had fractured, pupils thinning to venomous slits. When she convulsed, her fingernails gouged the cot's leather, shredding it like rotted silk. It hurt my heart to see the baby I had cared for as family, being lost to the suckers.
Above us, the ceiling groaned. Dust sifted down, ghostly in the lantern light. I raised my bow, arrow trained on the cellar door, every muscle taut as the string. Three consecutive knocks. Then a lone one. The pattern Lorraine drilled into us because suckers mimicked voices, wore skins like coats.
The knock came again, weaker this time. I wrenched the door open.
Lorraine collapsed into my arms, her weight like a landslide. Blood masked her face, clumping her silver-streaked braid into a rusted rope, and her left arm hung twisted, bone jutting through the wrist. A gash split her ribs, weeping sluggish black—sucker talons, not blades. "Kisa—?" she slurred, teeth red.
"Here," I replied.
I dragged her inside, her boots scoring trails through the dirt. Flynn didn't turn. He'd folded himself around Kisa's shuddering frame, his cheek pressed to her clawed hand as if to leech the fever through his skin. Thankfully, Lorraine's wounds closed as I cleaned them, her salves working their magic, but Kisa's breath hitched now, a wet click-click rattling in her chest.
"No," Lorraine rasped when consciousness returned. She crawled to her daughter, her broken arm dragging like a dead thing, and cradled Kisa's face—a face she'd kissed scraped knees and nightmares from for seventeen years. "Baby," she whispered, her voice splintering. "Look at me."
Kisa's eyes flickered, human for a heartbeat. "Mum." A tear cut through the grime on her cheek, oily and black. "It's in my head. I can… hear them. Laughing."
Lorraine's sob tore through the cellar. She pressed her forehead to Kisa's, their breaths mingling—one ragged and mortal, the other thickening, labored, wrong. "I'll fix this. There's—there's yarrow in the stores, moonroot—"
"Mum." Kisa's hand shot out, talons curling into her mother's tunic. The fabric sizzled where her fingertips brushed it, flesh beneath blistering. "Don't let me… become them."
Flynn recoiled. "No. No."
Lorraine froze. Her healer's hands, those that remained steady through stillbirths and sucker sieges, trembled as she turned to me. Her gaze dropped to the dagger at my hip, its hilt etched with wolven runes she'd carved herself. "For the mercy you pray you'll never need," she'd said when she gifted it.
Kisa's back arched, a strangled cry escaping her. Her jaw unhinged with a wet pop, fangs budding like thorns. "Please," she gurgled, black spittle flecking her chin.
Lorraine's wail was a sound that would haunt this cellar long after we were ash. Her knuckles blanched around the knife's hilt. She cradled Kisa's head in her lap, fingers brushing the fever-damp hair from her daughter's forehead. The motion was automatic, maternal, even as her throat convulsed with swallowed sobs. "Hush, my baby. Hush."
Flynn hovered nearby, his fists clenched so tight the scars on his palms split open. Blood dripped onto the dirt floor. "There's gotta be another way. A poultice, or—or one of your charms—"
"Charms?" Lorraine's laugh was a serrated thing. She lifted her shirt, revealing the wounds on her ribs, the edges already knitting together. Clean and human. "You see this? I heal. She…" Her voice broke. "The rot's in her marrow now. You know what comes next."
I did. We all did.
Kisa's fingers clawed at her collarbone, leaving red furrows. "Itch. It itches inside—" Her body arched, a guttural sound tearing from her throat. The wound on her arm pulsed, veins branching black beneath her skin.
Lorraine flinched but didn't pull away. Her free hand found the wolf-tooth pendant around Kisa's neck—the one she'd carved herself when Kisa turned seven, after the girl survived an attack from a sucker that killed three grown men. "My brave girl," she whispered. "My clever girl."
Kisa's gaze locked onto hers. "Please."
The dagger trembled. I stepped forward. "Lorraine. Let me—"
"No." Her voice cracked like a whip. "It's my responsibility."
I didn't argue. Lorraine had taught me to shoot, to track, to survive. But not this. Never this.
Kisa's hand shot out, cold fingers wrapping around her mother's wrist. The blade hovered above her heart. "Do it. I beg you."
Flynn turned away, retching.
Lorraine's face hardened, a mask I'd seen a thousand times when she nocked an arrow, when she set a broken bone, when she buried her husband. A mask that fissured now, grief spilling through. "Close your eyes, my girl."
Kisa obeyed and the dagger plunged.