The Killing Season (6 page)

“I wasn’t going to give you an excuse. You’re right: you were acting shi—
shooty
. But I know you had a reason. So explain it to me. Lie if you think you need to, but I’m your friend, Ollie. I’ll keep your secrets.”

I’d survived by keeping my secrets. It was the only way to make it. But with Sunny, I struggled. I’d been close to telling her my secrets before at Fear University. It had taken an act of God to keep them locked inside my mouth. But today, I didn’t have the strength or the will to keep my secrets anymore. If she was going to hate me for what I was, then I would let her. If she reported me to everyone at the base, I would let her do that too. I just didn’t have the will to hide anymore.

If this was the end, I was ready.

I told her everything.

I started with my past: the Tabers, and the little girl buried in the basement. I told her about killing Max’s father and spending two years on the run from Max’s twisted form of vengeance. She asked how I bought medical supplies on the black market, and I explained how I sometimes went without food or a place to stay during flu season or if I needed antibiotics. Then I told her about the night the ’swang attacked me in Kodiak. How I’d heard it speaking to me. She listened calmly while I explained I hadn’t known the communication worked both ways until I spoke to Hex the night I made Luke and Hatter take me on a hunt to capture a ’swang. I told her the truth about fall break and Hex’s attack against the walls: that my disease wasn’t a disease and that I had a father—Hex. Even after Sunny’s eyes became wide and unblinking, full of fear and likely horror, I kept going. I explained how when the day-form ’swang bit me in the ward, I felt pain. The endless, horrible pain. Finally, when my voice was hoarse and my mouth dry, I told her about Dean and the morgue and Fields.

“I’m a monster. Part aswang,” I said, the most important words coming out in a halting whisper from my mouth. “All the evidence points to it, and there’s no other explanation. I should have left when I had the chance, but I don’t want to. So I came here to find the truth about what and how this happened to me. Because I love you. I love Fear University. I love Luke. And Hatter and Thad and everything about this wonderful, horrible world. And I’ve never been so scared in all my life,” I finished, tears streaming down my face.

“Why are you scared?”

“Because I have so much to lose.”

Sunny was crying, too. She didn’t break her grip on my hands to wipe away her tears. “Why would you lose us?”

“Because if people know what I am,” I said, sniffling, “they’ll kill me.”

Sunny squeezed my hands so hard I looked up at her, shocked she had the strength to send warning waves of heat up my arms. With wisps of soft brown hair fanning out around her face and her glasses slipping halfway down her nose, she looked like my own personal redeeming angel when she said, “They would have to get through me first.”

I just stared. A moment ago, I was ready for her to run screaming from the room, to alert everyone in the base that a monster was in their midst. I’d been ready to die for what I was, because, in my heart, I really believed no one could accept me now. I couldn’t even accept myself. Imagining myself staying at Fear University with this secret, this truth, had been an untouchable dream. But seeing how Sunny sat unwavering beside me, a tiny flare of hope sparked inside me.

“How can you say that, knowing what I am?” I asked.

“That you
might
be part ’swang?” Sunny shrugged. “Cause I know the other part of you enough that I can trust the ’swang part.”

“You mean that?”

“Of course, silly pants. You’re my best friend, and you always will be. Nothing will change that. So where do we start?” Sunny asked, releasing my hands and swiping her tears away before she shoved her glasses back up her nose. She bounced off the bed, springs squeaking wildly, and regarded me with her hands on her hips.

“What?” I sniffed, wiping my hand under my nose.

“The only way you can stay here is if we figure out the truth, right?” She waited until I nodded. “And if we know the truth, we can figure out how to keep everyone else from figuring it out, right?” I nodded again, but my mind flashed to Luke and how I would manage to keep the truth from him. “So it’s simple. We figure out how this happened to you and we go from there. Because you’re not leaving. Fear University is your home and we’re your family. We’re just going to have to figure out how to make it all work. Now, where do we start?”

“You think I can find a way to stay?”

“I think if you want to, we can,” Sunny answered, her voice full of faith in us.

Even with the newfound hope, the weight of what I was—the dirtiness of it—dragged me down. “Do I have the
right
to stay?” I whispered.

Sunny took my hand. “As much as anyone else does. Maybe even more. Ollie, you’re special, and maybe what you are makes you that way, but you’re still incredibly important to the university. To me. To Luke. I mean it, okay?”

I just shook my head in wonder at my friend, feeling that flare of hope burst into a small flame. I didn’t think I could feel any more fear than I felt on the trip up here. Or when I was battling the ’swang with Sunny in the cage with me. But I felt it now, hearing that my best friend would stand beside me, seeing the violent truth of it in her pretty, simple brown doe-eyes. I was right to be terrified. I had so, so much to lose.

And so much to gain. To keep. To clutch so tightly to my heart I would never let it go again.

I took a deep breath. “I found a note in Luke’s room before we left with the name Olesya Volkova written on it.”

“Your real first name,” Sunny said, voice hushed.

“Right. So we start there. With the Volkova family.”

“Do you think,” she swallowed loudly, “you’re related to them or something?”

I gritted my teeth. “I knew who my mother was, and she wasn’t anything like a hunter. I think there’s a connection, but I don’t think it’s blood related.”

Sunny was already lost in thought with her lip caught between her teeth. “Research would be easier with the university’s genealogical books, but we can manage. There has to be some records in this place.”

“There’s something else. This morning Killian told me Dean sent me up here to find someone who’s been leaking information to the aswangs. He said it’s my extra credit, and if I don’t find the person, I won’t get my pardon.”

“You know,” Sunny said, scowling deeply, “I wish the ’swangs were half as dumb and animalistic as the professors make them out to be. All of this would be a lot easier then. Now they have spies at Fear University?”

“Apparently.”

She nodded. “So we figure out where we can find information on the Volkova family and we start looking for the leak.”

“Are you sure—”

Holding up her hand, Sunny interrupted me, “I’m with you on this. You can’t shake me no matter what happens? Got it?”

I cringed slightly; her words echoed too ominously in the empty, quiet hall.

* * *

Dinner was an anti-climatic affair. I’d expected Luke and the others to be back, but they weren’t. Sunny and I sat next to each other, in the same spots as last night, while Abigail took her seat to the right of the table’s head. It was a massive table that felt too big for three people until Coldcrow came down to join us halfway through the salad. He mumbled an apology for being late and took a seat, making the chair squeak crazily.

When he’d tucked into a plateful of salad and nearly a gallon of dressing, I asked, “Is it normal for the hunters to run late?”

“Late?” Coldcrow looked up, his mouth full of lettuce.

“Yeah.” I pointedly looked at the crouton bits crumbling into his beard. “Late.”

He swallowed. “Darlin’, if they’d arrived back before now, something would’ve been wrong. God’s Forgotten is a long way off.”

“Why start at the farthest place away?” Sunny asked. She’d barely touched her food, and her face was paler than it’d been earlier.

“Because it’s the hardest place.” Coldcrow grunted like we were bothering him.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I argued.

Coldcrow set his fork down and looked up at me, his mustache twitching with annoyance. “They start there because it’s the hardest and farthest. If they manage to clear it out first, it’s easier to keep the area clear when they’re all chewed up and tired toward the end of the season. They have to be full strength to take those woods, do you hear me? God’s Forgotten is the worst place up here. The
worst
. You can’t take a step without touching a ’swang or . . .” His voice trailed off like he’d almost misspoken. He cleared his throat and hurried on. “Or other things. There’s so many of ‘em in those woods that the hunters feel constant fear and pain in their heads. Some hunters can’t take it. We send those to guard Barrow. Only the ones who won’t be driven crazy by the fear go to God’s Forgotten. Or maybe the ones that are already crazy go there. Either way, those woods are a damned slaughterhouse.”

My mind had caught on the words he’d tried to hide, and I remembered Luke asking about the sort of activity in God’s Forgotten. “What
other
things?”

“Things a first-year doesn’t need to worry about.”

My brows rose. “And what exactly–”

“I think I’ll finish my dinner in my room,” Coldcrow said, standing quickly and sending his chair scraping back across the floor. “A man can’t get no peace with all these damned questions.”

As I watched him stomp off, Sunny grabbed my hand under the table. I wondered if her grandmother had told her tales of other things in the woods besides aswangs, but at my questioning glace, she shook her head, her expression as confused as mine.

After that, we didn’t eat anymore, and when the salads were taken away and the main entree of cooked hare was brought out, I nearly gagged.

Abigail said to Burt, who was busy filling up our drinks, “Get some plates ready for the hunters. They’ll be home soon.”

It was the first she’d spoken since we’d been down here, and I wondered how in the hell she knew when they would be home. Before I could ask, another person swept into the room in a blur of lavender and the smell of cigarettes.

“Yum, hare. My favorite.” The woman, wearing skinny pink jeans and a
My Little Pony
T-shirt, plopped down in the spot Coldcrow had just vacated.

Her purple hair fell in a series of complicated braids down her back, slender wisps of it framing her abnormally large blue eyes. As she moved, I caught a faint tattoo of a name on her inner wrist. She caught us staring and paused.

Sunny cleared her throat. “I don’t think we’ve met yet. I’m Sunny Lyons and this is Ollie Andrews.”

“Ollie Andrews,” Abigail murmured before taking a long sip of her wine. The silence stretched out as we all looked at her, expecting her to say something else, but she never did. Apparently, she was talking to herself.

“Right, well,” the young woman, who couldn’t have been more than ten years older than me, said, “I’m Nyura Vasilievna, the resident reproductive and behavioral scientist. But everyone just calls me Nyny.”

Her nickname sounded like “nay-nay,” and Sunny’s eyes lit up when she said she was the scientist. “Oh! I’m training to be a medical doctor back at the university. What kind of work do you do here?”

“Watch the cameras mostly for behavioral analysis,” Nyny said, “or as the fine brutes of Barrow say, I’m watching for the ’swangs to screw.” With a roll of her gigantic, manga-like eyes, she turned her attention back to Sunny and smiled. “But I also work with the wolf’s bane. Why don’t you come up to the greenhouse tomorrow morning and I’ll show you around. It’s on the fourth floor.”

“Exciting!” Sunny said. “Can Ollie come too?”

Nyny cocked a brow at me, her smile fading. “The finer details of science are normally lost on the hunter types.”

I matched her flat expression and said, “The finer details of my fist normally aren’t. Lost, that is.”

“Uh, right,” Sunny interjected quickly. “What kind of lab setup do you have here?”

I didn’t care about lab setups, so I tuned them out and sipped on the soup that was supposed to accompany the hare. My eyes kept flicking to the entry’s door, but not five minutes after Abigail had told Burt to prepare the hunters’ food, a scraping noise came from the front door followed by a whoosh of pressurized air. The hunters swept into the base with a blast of icy air on their heels.

I tensed, but no one else at the table made a move to stand, so I settled for watching from the dining room as the hunters stumbled inside, shoving the front door closed. There wasn’t enough light to see specifics, but from the way they moved as a group—tired and dragging—I knew they were hurt. Eve passed closest to the dining room, cradling her arm, which had been hastily wrapped in a bandage. Sin limped beside her, and as they went by, he shot me a long and cold glare—a warning obviously.

By the time the shuffling group had gone up the stairs—smelling like sweat and blood and sap—I hadn’t caught a glimpse of Luke among all the people. Beside me, Sunny’s shoulders slumped, and when she looked down at her plate I thought she might burst into tears. The first floor of the base turned silent in the hunters’ wake, and only the wind beating against the outside walls could be heard.