Beasts Made of Night Page 22

  I think I’m Crossing.

  “Taj.” Tears hang in Aliya’s eyes. “Taj,” she says softly. “Please.”

  The footsteps grow louder. Aliya glares at me, then heads to the window. Princess Karima wears a look of gratefulness on her face. The doors creak on their hinges, and I stumble into the shadows, just as King Kolade and a phalanx of Palace guards spill into the room.

  “Sister, what have you done?” The king breaks away from the Palace guards and races to the princess. Izu’s blood pools at his feet and soaks the hem of Karima’s gown. Questions form on the king’s lips, but all he can do is step back to avoid the puddle. The red, like a finger, points to me. A dragon’s scaled tail rises out of it. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, brother,” Princess Karima replies softly, reassuringly.

  “There were reports of trouble in my chambers. I had gone to pray before the grand announcement and—” His words run together.

  “Please, brother. The Unnamed watches over all of us. I am safe now.” She gestures to Izu. “He tried to attack me. Arzu was able to fend him off, but it fell upon me to strike him down.” She collapses into her brother’s arms. The knife clatters on the tiles.

  From where I hide, I can see the look on Arzu’s face, all the different emotions battling themselves. It’s a single moment of clarity, before the world blurs again. I keep fighting the darkness, but with each second it gets harder and harder. Whenever I look for Karima, though, or listen for her voice, the light shines a little brighter. The darkness becomes a little less.

  Karima puts a hand to her brother’s face, steps close to him. Envy stirs in my chest. Someone else’s envy, I tell myself. “Brother, there has already been too much chaos. I know you worry about what you will say to the people. The Unnamed will guide you. For now, seek its counsel.” Her smile deepens. “Pray, my brother. Pray.” She holds her hand out, palm up. “To you and your people, brother.”

  “To you and yours, Princess,” Kolade says, returning the smile. He turns his gaze to Izu’s body and stares for several silent seconds. To the Palace guards, he says, “Attend to this,” and together they lift Izu’s body and carry him away, a red streak marking his path.

  The retinue, with the king at its head, leaves the room. The clank of their armor and the slip of their boots grow fainter until there’s nothing but the sound of us breathing. Princess Karima glides to the doors and barely touches them, but they close.

  Before she comes to me, I take one step out, and she holds me, and I can’t think of anything else but the warmth that suddenly bleeds into me, a light that pushes out every bit of darkness. It fills every crack inside me, flooding me, so that were I to open my mouth, light would shine from it. The only thing that stood between us, the Mage Izu, is now gone. Then her lips are on mine.

  I feel . . .

  I feel forgiven.

  CHAPTER 32

  IT’S EASIER NOW to imagine a life with her. If Karima accepts me, perhaps it’s only a matter of time before the others can. I can wear clothes to hide my sin-spots. I can learn the rules, how to behave, how to walk, how to wear my hair. I will never have to worry about when and how I will eat. I may never need to Eat again. I have earned this.

  “Princess,” I whisper. My heart-mate.

  “Taj,” she breathes, and it is the most wondrous sound in the world. It is music.

  I can’t remember the last time I wanted something so badly, the last time I dared to want something so badly. I am holding a dream in my hands, and I squeeze tighter, because if I don’t, maybe it will escape me. But Karima doesn’t push away. Instead, she leans farther into my embrace. If I never moved an inch again, it would be worth it.

  Screams. From outside.

  Arzu’s already at the window looking over. I still hold on to Karima. I don’t want to let her go just yet.

  A griffin crashes through the windows, spraying shards of glass everywhere. Arzu falls backward. When she tries to get back up, her arms are bloody from where she has skid. The inisisa flaps massive wings. My feet slide against the tiles. A trail of blood marks their path. Izu’s blood.

  Arzu struggles up onto her knees.

  I feel fearless. Calmly, I guide Karima behind me and walk to the griffin, which swings its head back and forth as though in pain. The crowd below us keeps getting louder. Maybe they saw this inisisa and are simply scared. I stand before it. “Enough,” I say, and it stops moving. Docile, it lowers its head. The nape of its neck meets my eye. I unsheathe my daga, and in one slice, the griffin’s head falls away.

  This must be what power feels like. To command these things and have them obey. My fear is gone. No sin-beast can kill me. My head is aflame with them. I see them everywhere. They turn the world into a whirlwind of shadow and light, but I can move. I can feel myself walking and using my daga and turning to face the princess, my heart-mate.

  The smile fades from my face when I see how Karima stares at me. Arzu, too, is frozen where she stands. I hold my hands out into the moonlight. My sin-spots are shifting. The tattoos are morphing. Bits of black rise from the skin of my arms and legs. My sin-spots, they’re leaving me. Suddenly, I can see my skin beneath them. Smooth. Unblemished. Beautifully brown.

  Pain like I’ve never felt before lances my stomach. Everything hurts. Every single part of me, ripped apart. My legs collapse beneath me, and I can’t feel them anymore. I try to get to my knees, but I can’t move. My body seizes, then my limbs thrash. A scream comes out of my mouth. I’ve lost control of my arms. My breath catches in my lungs.

  By the Unnamed. I’m Crossing.

  Bile spills out of my mouth, black, as black as dreamless sleep. My mouth fills with it, but more of it pours out, a fountain of darkness. It streams down the side of my face and pools on the floor, leaking into my hair, my clothes. I gag, and more comes out. It feels like every sin I’ve ever Eaten is leaving me. When it ends, I can’t move. Pain blinds me. But when the world comes back into focus, I see that my arm, stretched out in front of me, is clean. My skin. I can see my skin.

  Then, as suddenly as it had come, the hurt is gone. In an instant, I can stand. I can feel my limbs. When I look up, I can’t believe what I’m seeing. The entire room is filled with inisisa. Snakes, large and small, slither on the ground. Griffins hang in the corners of the room while a sin-dragon scrapes its claws against the tiles. Bears roar at us, and lions slink back and forth, eyeing us hungrily. Above the rest, the torso of a sin-spider hangs, its legs arcing over the heads of the beasts. Everywhere I look, inisisa.

  All at once, they tense. They’ll kill us all.

  “Stop!” I hold my hands out, and the creatures all still. It worked. I can’t believe it.

  It worked.

  Karima’s eyes change. “Your power.” She talks as though there’s no more air in her lungs. And she strides toward me slowly, hesitating. She wants something, but she’s slightly frightened to take it.

  “I’ve saved you, Princess.” When I talk, she stops where she stands, and the fear returns to her eyes. “Izu and Prince Haris, they were going to kill you, and I saw your cousin’s sin before he could commit it. Izu is gone. It is nothing for us to wipe the rest of them out of the city.”

  She puts her hands to my chest, looks me in my face, and says, “Yes.”

  Then, from somewhere in the distance but getting louder, the sound of screams. Like a wave, rushing up on us until the noise is unmistakable. Then I remember Izu’s threat, and my heart chills.

  I break away from Karima and step to the window to see inisisa spilling like oil through the streets of Kos, inky black filling every alley and side street, leaving comatose Kosians in their wake. Then I see it. Bo, his shirt torn, daga in hand, at the center of a circle of sin-wolves. Without thinking, I leap over the edge and onto the stone steps of the Palace.

  CHAPTER 33

  I HIT THE ground and roll down the stone
steps, then come to my feet and sprint straight toward where Bo was standing. I turn down one of the narrow alleyways, but a puddle of blackness appears. It spills toward me and rises up off the ground, morphing into a sin-bear. As it rears on its hind legs, it growls, showing sharp black teeth. I jump out of the way as it slams its paws down, narrowly missing me. I lunge for it, slicing straight through the nape of its shadowy neck. Before it even fully evaporates, I’m off again. Sin-snakes coil and spring at me, and I slice and slice and swing my daga and spin, cutting a path straight through them.

  A window crashes open in a home overhead, and a sin-wolf grips an aki in its claws as it crashes to the ground. Other aki run along rooftops, shouting to one another, teaming up on inisisa together. I look up again and see Omar darting from one balcony to another, swinging himself off of ledges and leaping over bannisters. He moves with a quickness and grace I never could have taught him. A sin-leopard chases him, nipping at his ankles. In one swift turn, he attacks, plunging his daga between the beast’s eyes, driving it all the way back into the nape of its neck. The inisisa explodes into a tendril of blackness.

  Panicked Kosians dart in every direction, and I can barely keep on my feet. Something smacks me in the back of the head, and then I turn around to see a spear of black ink rush toward my mouth. The inisisa I killed—I can’t escape those sins. The bile from the snakes and the bear slides down my throat, and I choke, but a moment later, it’s all gone, and all that’s left is some dizziness. I rock back and forth but manage to still myself. Noises soften, and the world blurs, but I put my arm out in front of me, and sin-spots appear. Four sin-snakes wrapped around my left forearm. A bear running down my right. It hurts my heart to see them back, these sin-spots. The last time I’d been able to see the skin of my arms so unspotted, I was a child. And then, with Karima, to see again what it looked like to be a regular Forum-dweller, only now to have that taken away.

  My face is wet with tears, but I can’t stop.

  A sin-griffin swoops low overhead, and I chase after it. Kosians cower in corners, scurry down alleyways, barricade themselves in vendor stalls. Inisisa tackle the Kosians who couldn’t find shelter in time and devour the ones who can’t get away. I can’t save them.

  I cut into a small alley and vault onto a rubbish pile, scrambling up to the roof of a home. The griffin flaps its wings in the distance and circles the teeming masses of Kosians trampling one another in a stampeding herd below. It dives down and reemerges with comatose bodies in its talons, then arcs through the street again.

  My body aches, but I force myself to continue. I jump from rooftop to rooftop, just like when the guards were chasing me. Just as I did before any of this happened.

  As I run through laundry hanging on clotheslines and around rooftop gardens, I angle myself toward the main thoroughfare and time my leap so that I hurl myself through the air just as the griffin is about to pass beneath me.

  I fall on the griffin’s back, and we spiral down into the street, crashing hard onto the ground.

  Already, the Eaten litter the streets while inisisa pick over them, then move on to other Kosians. Furniture lies on the ground in the Forum as the sin-beasts tear into homes, looking for their victims. Storefronts and stalls are toppled over with their wares scattered all around me.

  Just as I turn, the griffin, now turned into bile, jets down my throat. This one dizzies me. I take a few steps forward, then stumble. I can feel inisisa circling me. They make no noise except for the sound of paws and feet crunching in the dry dirt. I come to my feet. My head is still swimming. They’ve cornered me. I hold up my daga and get into fighting stance, but I know it will be no use. The beasts come closer and closer. I close my eyes. I’m shaking, but if this is how I’m going to go, by the Unnamed, let me die fighting.

  “Eh-eh!” I hear from above. When I open my eyes, Ifeoma, Tolu, Emeka, and Sade jump down from a balcony above. Just in time.

  They each take one on, and I jump in. Together we fight them off, our dagas moving at lightning speed. We choke down the sins, and a moment later, it’s over.

  “So,” Ifeoma says, strutting forward. “The city of Kos is needing us now? They better write songs about us.”

  Sade laughs and loosens the strap for her daga, holding it out into the light and doing an elaborate bow. “You see, I am keeping track of all the inisisa I kill tonight. So that when I tell the Mages, they will call me diligent.” She is smiling when she says all of this, and her teeth glow pearly in the night.

  Emeka comes forward and slides his arm out. “To you and yours, Taj.”

  I smile. “To you and yours, Emeka.” I face the rest of the group. “Bo?”

  “He didn’t find you?” Tolu asks.

  “No,” I tell him. “He was looking for me?”

  Sade puts her strap back in place. “Yes, he said it was urgent. Acted like fire ants had crawled into his pants.”

  Then I remember seeing him surrounded by that pack of sin-wolves. “Bo.” I set off at a dash, having to hurdle over the broken remains of shop stalls and dodge crumbling balconies. The others follow close behind me. Each protecting a side, they bat back any inisisa that chase behind us.

  The circle, when I see it, has grown smaller. There are fewer sin-wolves, but Bo is down on one knee. His chest heaves. His shoulders have slumped.

  “Bo!” I call out, and the inisisa turn.

  The wolves rush toward us, and Sade and the others scatter.

  The first wolf leaps for me. Emeka tackles it, and the two roll. When they come to their feet, they lunge for each other, but Emeka stabs the beast through its torso. Sade has already attracted the attention of another, while Tolu steps in front of me to draw even more. Ifeoma and I rush to Bo. But just as we reach him, a lion leaps out of the shadows and barrels into Ifeoma. She cries out in pain. A scream catches in my throat. Fury builds in my chest. I stalk over to the inisisa she’s fending off, and my daga catches the light from overturned lamps. Ifeoma has her own daga in the lion’s chest, and I run up to it and bring my daga down swift, straight through its neck.

  Blood is pumping through my veins, and I can’t catch my breath. I feel powerless. All around me, inisisa stalk. Bodies everywhere. Motionless. Glass-eyed. Eaten.

  Aki still battle the remaining inisisa, but the sins they’ve Eaten slow their movements too much. Some are Crossing over. There’s not enough skin on my body to Eat them all. There’s not enough skin on all of our bodies to Eat them all. I fall to my knees next to Ifeoma, whose eyes have begun to glass over. Inky teeth marks show where on her shoulder the sin-lion has bitten her. She blinks at me, and for a second, her white-pupiled eyes return, and she fumbles for my wrist, and I give it to her.

  Her legs shake, and I know she’s lost feeling in them. Her mouth is now frozen, and no words escape. She’s Crossing. Her arms go limp, and her hand falls out of mine.

  The aki from the forest stand on rooftops or crowd windows, slashing at sin-falcons, climbing onto the backs of bears and stabbing at the napes of their necks. It’s war. And they’re dying. So many of them are dying.

  Air fills my lungs. And I scream.

  “STOP!”

  It stops. The rampage, the carnage, it all stops. All of Kos is silent. My voice wasn’t my own when I said that word. It felt like someone, something, was speaking through me. Passing through my body and out of my mouth. Something Unnamed.

  Every face in Kos turns my way.

  I stand.

  The inisisa, as one, bow their heads.

  CHAPTER 34

  IT STILLS MY breath to see them like this.

  The noise has ceased. There isn’t even any weeping for those just consumed or those trampled underfoot. There is complete and utter silence. And all around me are sin-beasts.

  That’s when the realization hits me. I am the most powerful man in Kos.

  Behind me, the other sin-beasts
walk, crawl, slither, and climb over the balcony so that they fill out the steps around me. An army of shadows.

  At the top of the stone steps stands Princess Karima. A lightning bolt of red stains her white dress. Izu’s blood. Other than that, she is pristine. She glows. Like a beacon of light, she draws me to her. When she stands at my side, she seems to draw all the light in Kos into her. The flame in every candle bends her way. The two of us. I have the power to control inisisa. She now has the power to rule. We are Kos’s protectors. We will change this place. We will fix it. Remake it. Together.

  There’s commotion down below. Aliya pushes through the crowd to stand near the bottom of the steps. Other Mages flank her, filling out the bottom row. The rebels.

  “Taj!” Aliya’s voice steadies me. “Taj! I knew it was you. Ever since that night at Zoe’s, I knew you were special.” Her voice carries. It turns the massive distance between us into nothing. “I knew it, Taj. I swear to the Unnamed, as soon as I saw you, I knew you were different. In the prophecy. The Paroles of the Seventh Prophet. He speaks of aki who can command and control sin-beasts. Your coming was foretold! Join us.” She waves her hands wide to indicate the Mages on both sides of her. “Call off this army of inisisa.”

  I don’t move. I can’t.

  “Taj. Please.” She takes a step closer, daring me to do something. “From the moment you sat at my table, Taj. When you kicked your feet up and ate my date, I knew.” Her lips curl into a smile.

  “Aliya.” The night at Zoe’s. The shisha smoke. The smell of her hair as we leaned against each other in that underground cave, palms pressed together. The sound of shovels digging into loose earth, rain falling all around us while we buried Zainab. Flashes. Like light shining on shattered panes of glass. I blink it all away. I can feel my fists clenching at my sides. “I’m not just a tool.”