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Everett awoke with a bleeding lip and his claws dug two inches into the hardwood floor.
He sat up in the same instant his eyes snapped open, wrenched his hands free and sprayed splinters across the room in the process. The walls stalked closer, pressed red into the corners of his vision; every inhale pulled fever-hot air into his lungs, cloying and rank as beast breath. Something stirred by the door, watching him. Breathing. The taste of copper and stale meat on his tongue. Breathing, snarling exhales by the door, louder and louder still.
He shut his eyes. Opened them again. The sound aligned perfectly with the rise and fall of Jin’s chest, his hunting partner sprawled with one leg over his hammock’s edge, snoring with all the gentleness of an earthquake.
Saurus’ twin moons streamed pale light through the window, glinting off whatever useless trinkets Lucia had scattered across the floor. Not yet morning, then. Hours before he had to awake for their next hunt, whatever their new assignment may be. Nothing but silence lay beneath the Dragon’s Egg’s glass ceiling.
Everett had not dreamed like a human since the day he’d first shoved snake fangs through his skin, another creature’s blood tacky on his teeth. When he was a child, his mind had conjured fantastically vivid images, woven storylines that stretched for hours. He’d dreamed of endless forests and towering spires, of slaying monsters with just his gaze. He’d dreamed of his mother’s hands, stirring a stew in languid circles or combing through the snarls in his hair.
This ability had long since deserted him. For the better part of his life, Everett had dreamed like an animal. His mind flitted through snapshots—tracks in the mud, bloodstreaked bone, sharp teeth and sharper eyes—at a dizzying pace. Raw feeling surged beneath his skin, some melding of hunt-thrill and blinding panic. He slept in short, listless intervals. He awoke often, heart thrashing against his ribs, knowing nothing in those first few seconds of consciousness beyond an overwhelming desire to survive.
The blood from his bitten lip trickled to his chin. He wiped it with his palm, the only part of his hand not sharpened or studded with teeth. Lucia’s hammock lingered in his periphery.
Dimly, he became aware of the feeling that flickered in his gut. Acidic, heavy. Steadfast, even as the rest of the dream’s remnants melted away. A more foolish mind might have called it guilt. Everett decided to call it the need for a good hunt.
He stood, cursing the creak of the floor under his shifting weight, eyeing Lucia’s hammock for movement. He offered none of this same respect to Jin, whose racket was more than enough to indicate how well he was sleeping. Everett pulled the blanket over the other man’s face as he passed, muffling maybe one decibel out of the hundred. With any luck, Jin would suffocate under the fabric within the hour, and he’d never be able to torment his roommates through their nights again.
The air hung cold on the fifteenth floor of the Hunter’s Spire as Everett slipped out the door and began his descent. In every moment the wind died, he listened for the faint rasp of breath not his own.
. . .
On the way to the Dragon’s Egg’s edge, Everett mulled over a number of things. He thought about how Huntmaster Hawk would lay into him if she knew what he planning to do. He thought about monsters strong enough to tear his limbs from their sockets, leave him like Jin’s newly bedbound friend; he thought about how his sharpened teeth had bitten through his bottom lip so many times that it was now more scar than skin. Any number of these concepts were more appealing than turning his thoughts to the nightmare that was the previous day.
For one thing, the Black Blades’ training pit only had a few more hours before its mud floor was strewn with spilled guts. Everett hadn’t gone looking for the fight—at least, not this time—but Alf had been stupid enough to challenge him to a brawl the second their eagle’s talons met the earth. For the first time, they’d agreed on something: tomorrow, training pit, winner takes all. They shook on it. Alf squeezed his hand hard enough to crush Everett’s knuckles together with the clack of scales. Everett had pulled the same hand away with Alf’s blood smeared on his claws, four fresh trails carved shallowly across the back of the other man’s palm.
Everett, in all his mercy, would at least grant the pest a swift end. He pitied the onlookers who would surely witness the gore, the poor souls who would have to pick what was left of Alf out of the mud. That afternoon, Everett planned to claw that smug grin off of the elf’s ugly face—and take a few layers of skin with it.
Fights were easy. There was a language in torn flesh and snapped bone, and Everett spoke it well. Patching wounded feelings, however, was another beast entirely, and one that seemed frustratingly immune to all known hunting strategies.
By the time Alf had cleared off (surely intimidated by Everett’s unrivaled strength), Lucia had already been swept away by the enemy team’s blue-haired archer, and Jin was halfway to the infirmary to visit his training partner. Neither of them had bothered with any sort of goodbye.
A lesser man might have been hurt by this. Everett shook it off easily, went to sit alone in the gardens and ignored the gnawing at his thoughts. Hours later, Jin and Lucia passed side by side, the former chatting about some over-exaggerated tale of glory, the latter giggling like a loon. Lucia’s eyes wandered sideward for just a moment, and she’d locked gazes with Everett.
Less than a second passed before she turned back and the two disappeared down the path, but Everett remembered the look on her face. It was the same one she’d worn when he’d snapped at her on the back of the eagle, hoping she’d flinch. Like a kicked puppy. Like something weak.
Everett couldn’t sink teeth into words that turned rancid in the air. He couldn’t rip the throat from the silence that lolled between them, ugly as it was invisible, and therefore he was at a loss for action. This monster was unslayable at best and a headache at worst, and he would wait until it inevitably starved and died. Until Lucia wouldn’t look at him like she had at the beast they’d felled that morning. For now, he’d banish any thoughts of her.
The glass barrier of the Dragon’s Egg hummed as he approached. He could feel the electric undercurrent grow stronger, the prickle of potent magic. In front of him, a palette of tied tree trunks patched a sizzling gash in the glass.
The Guildmaster could praise Osiris Black and his sorcery till the moons collided, but that didn’t change the monster that had thrown itself against the dome that morning, ripped a hole in the magic with onyx-tipped nails. Allegedly, other arcane users would be docking at sunrise to seal the damage properly. For now, though, there remained a sliver of open air between lumber and glass, just wide enough to squeeze through. He pressed into it, and seconds later he was staring up into open sky.
Everett would have to rub that one in Jin’s face later—the other man could call him scrawny all he wanted, but if Jin had tried that gap, he would’ve inevitably been discovered in the morning, thoroughly stuck. A deserved fate for his hunting partner, he who would fight dirty in an arm wrestle. The scene was easily imaginable, the corners of Everett’s mouth twitching upwards.
The previous day’s events pierced this image like a javelin. Suddenly, the thought of Jin was only worth a scowl and a sour aftertaste. Everett kept walking.
Not far into the jungle, the mud became mussed with tracks. A low growl carried on the wind. He followed the sound, hoping for it to grow loud enough to scrape against his skull, until he could hear nothing else but the familiarity of the hunt.
. . .
He found the beast stuffing its face with the remains of an unlucky deer. From behind, it appeared to be a panther two sizes too large, its fur bristling dark along a catlike body, its tail whipping against the ground. Thoroughly distracted with its kill. Silently, Everett closed the distance between them.
Wild instinct clamored for control at the back of his thoughts, and he fell into it effortlessly. Heat flared out from the hole in his chest, black ichor racing through his veins. The jungle darkened as the panther morphed into sunset shades, all reds and yellows and oranges, signaling a heat source in the cold night. His claws twitched. A single desire drummed behind his eyes, the overwhelming need to kill, kill, kill.
Jin and Lucia had questioned his control.
Everett shut his eyes tight enough to send light starbursting through his head. Waited. Opened them again. The drumbeat quieted. The panther’s crimson fur returned to soot black.
He’d hunt as a human tonight, just to prove he could. Every move would be his own. Soon enough, his teammates would realize their fault in doubting that.
The panther froze, muscles coiling taut, and Everett leapt forward.
His claws sank squarely between its shoulder blades, anchoring his hold as the monster whirled around. The punctures hissed and bubbled beneath droplets of fizzing acid. A sound tore through the trees, vicious and unnatural and only slightly worse than Jin’s snoring, as the creature’s head turned to snap at him. Reptilian eyes blazed wide in the moonglow, lizard-like from the neck up.
Everett slashed down the thing’s hide and rolled off its back, just as teeth closed where his arm had been a half-second earlier. The lizard-panther warbled through a muzzle still caked in gore.
By the time it charged forward, Everett was already halfway up the tree, nails scoring tally marks into the bark. He jumped not a second later, let the velocity slam him into the monster’s back. Tooth-studded knuckles connected in the same spot his claws had already torn open.
He was expecting the beast to howl, scrabble pitifully at its attacker. He was less prepared for it to roll over like a dog, throwing him to the ground and promptly crushing him under its weight. The air left his lungs. An odd crunch rang out beneath the monster’s yowling, something he would’ve written off as a twig snapping if not for the fact it had come from his own chest.
He staggered to his feet at the same moment the creature righted itself. Forked tongue jabbing the air, it leapt at him. He ducked at the last second, raked claws across the beast’s underbelly, warmth spraying across his face. It hit the ground hard and struggled to stand.
Everett was at his quarry’s side in an instant. A twinge of pride rippled through him, the certainty that his strength alone was enough to fell this monster, that he didn’t even need the beast that roiled in his own blood. He would slash through the last of its fight, sever the jugular when he embedded claws into the—
—neck of the man that slumped before him, weary understanding in his eyes until his own blade bit through his windpipe, and then he was choking, sputtering up his own blood and the only thing in his face was panic, he didn’t want to die and Everett knew the feeling, he didn’t want to die and Everett drove the blade in deeper, wishing the whole thing would happen a little—
—quicker than him, the monster saw his falter and sprang to its feet. There was no time to react. Claws hooked into his upper back and dragged down across his sternum. He snarled, twisted blindly and felt teeth sink in beside his arm, a bite that had been marked for his neck. Another twist and he was free, gouges zigzagged down his upper right arm, a chunk of his shoulder in the monster’s maw.
When the drumbeat started up again, when his skin hardened like hide and the edges of his vision watercolored red, he made no effort against it. Playing human was only going to get him killed. Jin and Lucia could disapprove all they wanted the next time they brought down a monster without his help.
The monster lunged again, and he met it readily. They danced in vicious steps, traded tooth for nail, each intent on ending the other. Everett couldn’t feel the claws in his skin, only the dizzying thrill when his own sank through fur. The twin moons stared unblinking through the trees.
A flash of ebony barreled past him, crashing through the foliage. Everett spun around to see the beast’s tail flicker past a fern, and then it was gone.
He stood, hunched and wide-eyed, breath grating ragged against his lungs. Cowardly. Weak, fleeing the fight like that. The sound of the beast’s escape grew fainter, and then the only noise was a low rumble beneath the canopy. It took a few seconds more for Everett to realize the sound was coming from his own throat.
He bit back the growl, stumbled to the nearest tree and drove his claws into the bark in hopes they’d stop itching for contact. Slowly, the world stopped spinning so fast.
The moons watched from their perches, impassive. He swung his head up to meet them, hair tangled and mud-smeared across his face, daring them to judge. They stared back, and he was met with silence.
. . .
Everett walked without direction. He couldn’t remember when he’d started moving, only the fact that one moment he was staring at the blood beaded on the underbrush, and the next his legs were moving. The infirmary wasn’t an option; Artery had staff working around the clock, but he couldn’t visit until daylight to avoid drawing suspicion to his unauthorized hunt. The gardens could have nosy insomniacs strolling beside the hedges. He was too restless to return to the room he’d left.
His feet carried him forward regardless. Everett followed the wounded animal instinct to keep moving, outpace anything hungry enough to trail him. It didn’t matter where he ended up. He didn’t even notice the clearing until he staggered into it, the moons’ glow suddenly unfettered without trees to filter through.
A hill swept upwards before him, a thick tangle of shrubs and weeds woven along the incline. At its apex, starlight pooling in her blonde curls and nose turned towards the sky, kneeled a girl.
Everett watched her, unmoving, as the bugs in the foliage began to hum. She was facing away from him, but somehow he knew her eyes were closed, could imagine the peace on her features. In the stillness, he turned to leave—and stopped when the motion flared new feeling through his bleeding shoulder.
With a last glance at the trees, he started towards the top of the hill.
“Didn’t know you were a night owl,” he said midway up, and Lucia whirled around with a yelp.
She relaxed once she realized who had spoken, turned back around and pulled her knees up to her chest. “You’re not supposed to be out here.”
Everett crested the hill, lowered himself onto the grass beside her. “Neither are you.”
“Yeah, but I—“ Lucia’s eyes had flickered over mid-sentence, and for the first time, she saw Everett outside of the hill’s shadow. “Stars, what happened to you?”
“Fought three monsters one-handed,” he told her. “And won, obviously. Barely even-“
He broke the sentence off in the same instant he twisted away from Lucia’s outstretched hand, her fingers hovered over the gash in his shoulder. She looked up.
Everett grasped for an explanation and just as quickly gave up. There was no easy way to convey the animal in the back of his mind, the clawed and fanged thing that had paced the confines of his skull ever since he’d swallowed blood not his own. It moved quicker than he did, hellbent on survival. A wound, naturally, was a vulnerability, and anything interested in those spots sought to take advantage of an easy weakness.
Lucia blinked, and abruptly Everett felt incredibly stupid.
“Are you going to let me help you?” she asked, staring at him. “Or would you rather keep losing blood over your pride?”
He huffed out a breath equal parts sigh and growl, but leaned back towards her all the same. Gingerly, Lucia shifted his hair out of the way and rested her fingers at the injury’s edge, peered at it with a distinct curiosity. Her palm lay against his bare shoulder.
“Your hands are cold,” he muttered. She ignored him.
“This streaked tissue—the deep red part—that’s probably muscle. And this white part…move your shoulder?”
He shrugged one arm up and down. What little flesh remained in the area responded with a feeling not unlike bursting into flame.
“Yeah, that’s tendon. It’s sorta shiny, moves with the muscle. And this…”
“Lucia.” At least someone was having fun, besides the colony of fire ants that had apparently taken up refuge in the wound.
She froze, then rubbed her eyes. “Right. Um. Hold still.” She cast another glance to the stars, raised her palm to her face, and promptly licked it.
Everett stifled a wince when she pressed the same hand over his shoulder—though whether his aversion was to the pain or his healer’s methods, he couldn’t say. “Disgusting,” he said, staring daggers into the grass to avoid watching his muscles knit back together. Tendons too, apparently. “Absolutely wretched.”
Lucia giggled, held her hand steady as a strange warmth prickled beneath her touch. He’d felt the same in the aftermath of that day’s hunt, the way her magic seemed to fizz beneath his skin. Light radiated from her fingers to match the newfound luminance of her eyes, squinted in concentration.
At last, she sat back. The glow ghosted from her eyes and was replaced with something wearier. Everett ran claws over his shoulder, found nothing but smooth skin where the flesh had been ripped seconds earlier. He draped a hand over his upper arm in what he hoped was a casual motion, hiding the smaller scratches lest Lucia insisted on healing those too. Something told him she was more exhausted than she let on.
“Could’ve at least left me with a cool scar,” he said. His crushed rib had seemingly leeched off the magic meant for his shoulder, no longer complaining with his every inhale.
She shoved her own shoulder into him with all the force of a fruitfly. “I’ll be sure to do a worse job next time,” she said, already returning her gaze skyward.
The stars traced pathways in the sky above them. Everett glared up, silently demanded them to reveal what could possibly be so interesting. They looked nice, sure, but so did a fresh kill and Alf fleeing the cafeteria with cheese in his hair, and both of those situations were significantly more exciting.
“Earlier today,” Lucia started, breaking him from his thoughts, “during that hunt…were you ever afraid?”
The answer was glaringly obvious. “No.”
“Not even when we first saw the monster? Not even when it attacked you?”
“I’ve never been afraid in my life, Lucia. Fear is an emotion I’m incapable of experiencing.”
She shot him a withering look. “Mhm.” Another silent pause, another glance to the sky. “I was.”
A fly plopped onto one of the scrapes on Everett’s leg, began lapping at the blood. He impaled it with a claw and tossed it aside. “Reasonable. I understand not everyone has the same strength and bravery I possess.”
“I’m serious, Everett. The monster, how huge it was, the way it screamed at us. And the responsibility of leading the group, how I felt so ready until we saw it—“
“I’d told you to pass the horn over,” he reminded her. She glanced back at him with a new watery sheen over her eyes. “…but I guess you did alright,” he added quickly. “For a rookie, anyway.”
“And Jackal.” Lucia wrung her wrists as she said it, twisted the skin until it turned red. She didn’t seem to notice. “How long he must have laid there, surrounded by the bodies of his friends, watching his own legs rot. I kept thinking that could be us someday. That Jin could be killed in front of me, that you or I could be left torn apart in the leaves, wishing we were dying faster.”
“Lucia.” She turned to him, curls swaying around her pointed ears. “Promise if you ever see me like that—like him—you’ll grant me death.”
Instantly, she started to protest before an odd glimmer appeared in her eyes. She regarded him with something akin to awe. “You are afraid.”
Everett shifted like he’d been slapped. “In Alf’s dreams, maybe.”
She held fast to the thought. “No, you are. Not of monsters or guild leaders or that blond meathead who almost ruined our hunt, but of death. You’re afraid of being weak.”
Everett swore he felt something in his face twitch. “Sure. If it reassures you, I suppose I’ll allow your projecting.”
Lucia huffed, rested her chin on her knees. “You’re insufferable.”
“So I’ve been told.”
The insects chirruped in the weeds. Everett wished they’d shut up already.
“My mother used to place so much praise on the natural order. Like if we were born human, we might as well accept our place in the food chain and fall in line.” He didn’t know why he was telling her this. “If I had any respect for the natural order, I’d be dead by now.”
Lucia studied the beetle that had alighted on her arm. “My mom used to tell me and Mar—tell me that what sets us apart from monsters isn’t scales or fangs or towering height. It’s feeling. Empathy, kindness: that’s what makes us human.”
Everett could count on one hand the amount of times kindness has saved his life on a hunt. “Useless.”
“Then what sets you apart, huh? What makes you not a monster?” Lucia poked at his hand. “Claws, fangs. Weird-and-sort-of-creepy hole in your chest. Sounds pretty monster to me.”
Might as well be, Everett thought but didn’t say. He settled on glowering at her.
Lucia was unfazed. “It’s because of those emotions, no matter how weak you think they are, that you’re any different from whatever just tried to gouge your arm off. You can’t kill that part of you without killing your humanity.”
The acidic feeling returned to him with a vengeance, ran hot through his veins. “Your naivety will be your end.”
She hummed. “Maybe. I’m alive right now, though, so I must be doing something right.”
Everett was only half listening. His mind was already back among eagle feathers and open sky, the horned primate’s blood sundried on both their hands. The words he’d spat at her, the guilt that had coiled serpentine around his thoughts in all the hours since. The accusation that she was weak, and moreover, that she was content with it.
“That talk we had,” he began, “on the way back.”
Lucia waited for him to go on.
If Everett were more honest, he would’ve returned to the lie he’d jabbed at her, that she sat there and did nothing for the hunt. He would’ve admitted that he made the claim because in reality, it better suited himself.
Jin had smacked the creature around and subdued Alf’s impromptu sabotage. Lucia had shielded them both with healing and protection. Everett had landed a few good blows before losing it, nearly killing the thing they were expressly told not to kill, and spending the rest of the fight facedown in the mud. His lethality had turned into a liability, and the others were right to question his control. In truth, in the parts of his head that he kicked down and shut out, he questioned it himself.
Everett said none of this aloud.
“You were helpful, Lucia,” he told her. “Important to the mission’s success.” She’d saved his life, too, mission be damned, but acknowledging that he’d needed the help at all felt like swallowing teeth.
Thankfully, Lucia seemed to understand. Her eyes crinkled in a smile as she nodded, started to reply before her words were cut short by a yawn. She scrubbed at her eyes as she shifted closer. A moment later, her head was resting on Everett’s newly healed shoulder. He made a wordless noise of annoyance, grumbled under his breath, but wrapped an arm tentatively around her back regardless. One clawed hand settled on her forearm, careful to not scratch through.
“‘M just glad you woke up,” she murmured, words slurred with sleep. For an instant, Everett was sprawled bloody under the trees, Lucia crying into his chest, the aftertaste of her healing magic fizzing under his tongue. And then it was over, and he was sitting at the top of a hill and breathing too-warm evening air, listening to his heartbeat and the one that thrummed beside it.
Every other night, Everett dreamed like an animal. He still couldn’t figure out why this night had been different. For the first time in years, his mind had played something more than lightning bursts of instinct, swapped out the reel for another story.
His first human dream since his childhood was everything he’d remembered dreaming to be: vivid, captivating, stretching like taffy across the hours ticking by. That night, he’d dreamt of crouching over Jackal’s mangled body, pressing a well-worn blade into the hunter’s throat. He’d waited for the dream to move on, for the story to progress. It hadn’t. The minutes ticked by.
He couldn’t remember exactly when Jackal’s face sloughed from his skin to be replaced by another, when the man’s bloodied black hair lengthened to sun-colored curls, when his ears grew pointed and adorned with silver cuffs. He couldn’t remember when Jackal had stopped being Jackal and started resembling someone else entirely. It was easier to recall when the blade withered and Everett assumed its place, his own claws pierced through her throat.
“Glad we’re all alive, really,” Lucia continued, and he shook himself free from the dream that had trailed him out of his room, out of the Egg, into the jungle and up the hill.
“We’re Team Sigma. Unkillable,” he told her. “Except for Jin, probably. Hard to believe he’ll survive in the field when he can’t hold his own in an arm wrestle.”
Lucia let out a quiet laugh. “‘S a stupid team name,” she mumbled, and it was.
“I’m going to kill Alf tomorrow.”
She yawned again, eyes already closed. A fallen leaf had nestled in the folds of her cloak. “Yeah. I don’t like him either.”
“No, I mean it. Even picturing his stupid face makes me want to tear his insides out and throw them to the eagles.” He paused, pondered his words. “And I remember what you told me. About control.”
Lucia waited for him to go on.
“I want you to be there. At the fight, tomorrow. My…” Another pause, the words foreign against his teeth. “My humanity. I think it’s harder to forget when you’re there, too.”
A bird tittered from the clearing’s edge. He realized the night was paling in yellow light, the first sunstreaks of dawn visible on the horizon.
“Ok.” The leaf in her cloak dislodged with the breeze and went tumbling down the hill. “I’ll be there.”
They stayed that way, each tucked comfortably against the other, until sunrise swept the stars under its light. Everett kept watch for motion in the trees below, listened to Lucia’s even breaths as he sorted through his own thoughts. Eventually, the field was awash in daylight, and it was only a matter of time before their hidden entrance to the Egg was swarmed with hunters. He stood.
Lucia let out a string of sleepy protest, but eventually she stumbled to her feet. Everett surveyed the treeline, ensuring their path was clear of danger, before looking over at her.
“You think Salt and Pepper are up cooking this early?”
Lucia stared back with bleary eyes, looking for all the world like the only thing she understood was a strong desire to resume her nap.
“C’mon,” he said, starting down the hill. “Let’s go get you a grilled cheese.”