Call. Urgent.

She backed away from the line of televisions, ducking behind a display of some nondescript, nonperishable food. One minute passed. Two. And then it rang.

"Katherine," came her father's voice, only a ghost of his former panic in his voice. He'd regained his usual composure. "Are you all right?"

"Why would you say that on TV?" she snapped. "I told you it wasn't them!"

A measured exhale. "I don't know that. Not for sure."

"I do," she whispered angrily.

"So he is with you."

The question threw her. "What?"

"Frederick Gallagher. Also known as August Flynn. Henry's third Sunai." Her chest tightened. She would have told him, was planning to tell him. Hell, she was planning to deliver the monster to her father's feet. Now she couldn't bring herself to say his name. "Has he been with you the entire time?" pressed Harker.

But Kate didn't give. This wasn't August's fault. August hadn't tried to kill her. August had saved her life.

"Katherine-"

"Where is Sloan?"

"Hunting down those who moved against me."

"He's the one moving against you!" she snarled.

"No," he said evenly. "He's not. I questioned him myself. Sloan says he had no hand in the attack."

"That's a lie!"

"We both know he cannot lie."

Her thoughts spun. It had to be Sloan. Who else would have done this?

"Dad-"

"Stay out of the city until you hear from me."

"So you can let people think I've been abducted?"

"So I can keep you safe." His tone was hardening. "And you need not code the messages, Katherine. This is my phone, after all. Who else would see it?"

Your shadow, she wanted to say.

Instead, she hung up.

"You're letting out the cold," snapped a rasping voice. August drew his head out of the beverage case to see a wiry old woman in a Horizon uniform.

"Sorry," he said, shutting the fridge doors. "I meant to let it in." The words sounded wrong on his tongue, but they were already out.

Nearby, a woman's voice started rising as she talked into a cell.

A man dropped his cup of coffee, spilling it on another trucker. The second swore, and shoved the first back, a little too hard. Tension rose like pressure in the store around him.

The woman hurried away, and then, between one burning heartbeat and the next, August caught the scent of crime-old blood, a chill in the air that rustled against his fevered skin. August swayed, his fingers tightening on the strap of the violin case as his gaze slid across the store, over shelves and faces until ... there. The whole world came into focus around the man. He was stocky, with a mud-splattered coat, a short, uneven beard, and a head too small for his shoulders.

But August didn't care about any of that. All he cared about was the shadow coiling like a cape behind the man, restless and wrong, and the fact he was already out the front door, taking the promise of cold bones and clear thoughts with him.

August moved to follow but someone gripped his arm.

Kate. "We have to go," she snapped. "Now."

"Kate, I ..." He couldn't drag his eyes from the man's shrinking form. "I need to ..." But before he could finish, she took his jaw in her hand-he was amazed it didn't burn her fingers-and turned it toward a bank of televisions mounted on the wall. Her face was plastered on the screens-all the screens-above the headline: KATHERINE HARKER ABDUCTED, FLYNN FAMILY SUSPECTED.

He felt himself surface, a painfully sharp moment of clarity as he took in the headline. "No," he said, the word knocked out of him like a breath. "I didn't-"

Just then the front doors chimed open, and the driver, the one who'd given them a lift, came in and saw the screens and stopped. "What's this?"

"Shit." Kate pulled August down below the rim of the shelves. "Go. Now." She shoved him in the direction of a hall. He cast a last, desperate glance toward the front doors, but the man with the sin-made shadow was already gone.

"Come on," said Kate, pushing him past the bathrooms and through the back exit, out onto the other side of the truck stop's tarmac. The UVRs rained down on them, and August winced, head pounding.

"I didn't abduct you," he said. "I saved your life. You're the one who decided to run."

"And you're the one who decided to come with me." Kate was already walking away. Away from the truck stop. Away from him. She disappeared around the nearest corner, and he forced himself to follow.

"We have to tell someone," he said, jogging to catch up. "We have to let them know you're okay."

"In case you forgot," she called back, "someone is still trying to kill me."

"They don't even have to!" August knew he had a point. He was fighting to hold on to it. "This is exactly what they wanted, Kate. To blame my family for breaking the truce. And it's going to work if we don't-"

Kate spun on him. "What do you want me to do, August? I can't just go back-"

A set of doors burst open behind them.

"Hey, you," called a voice.

August and Kate both turned. It was one of the truckers from inside the store, a hard-looking man with a pistol hanging loosely from his fingers, a second, unarmed man trailing in his wake. August started to shift in front of Kate when another pair of doors flew open behind her, and two more figures spilled out into the pool of light. The man had a bat, the woman a knife, edge glinting in the glaring light. Beneath the UVRs, they cast no shadows-four more people, and none of them were sinners.

The ground tipped dangerously beneath August's feet.

He started to slide the violin case from his shoulders, hoping he could at least disarm them, when the first man moved, swinging up his gun and firing. The bullet ricocheted off the tarmac inches from August's feet. The sound was deafening, and for a moment he was back in a school cafeteria staring down at the small black tallies on the floor before Kate's voice brought him back.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she snapped at the man.

"Is it true?" said the trucker, his gun leveled on August's chest, but his gaze on Kate. "You're Harker's kid?"

"Does that make you the monster?" cut in the man behind him.

Before August could answer, the man with the bat caught Kate's wrist and dragged her toward him. She kneed him, and he went gasping backward, but the woman with the knife grabbed Kate and forced her back, shoving the blade beneath her chin.

August started forward, and the gun went off again, this time nearly grazing his cheek.

The woman with the knife smiled, her teeth half metal. "Finders keepers, boys. Reward's mine."

"Only reward you're gonna get is a bullet." August almost wished the man would follow through. He was having trouble staying on his feet, his focus swinging from the bat to the knife to the gun while the tension rose around them all like heat.

"Tell you what," said the man with the bat. "We'll take the girl, you can take the boy."

"I think we'll take 'em both," said the one with the gun.

Kate hissed as the knife pressed against her throat. "How do you plan to do that?" asked the woman.

The air was humming now, the woman with the knife and the man with the gun locked in a kind of standoff; the man with the bat and the one with nothing but fists inching closer.

Their eyes were shining strangely, the way people's did when they spoke to August, greed and violence all starting to surface ... as if they were feeding on his hunger. August's head spun; he knew he couldn't quiet the chaos as long as it was rising in him ... but maybe he didn't have to. Leo knew how to twist these feelings in people, how to sharpen and focus them.

Mind over body.

Instead of fighting the influence, trying to rein it in, he turned the volume up, let it roll across the tarmac and over the men.

Kate must have also felt the shift in the air, in the attackers, in herself, because her eyes met his. Her fingers twitched, and an instant later he caught sight of metal in her palm.

"I'll take the bitch with the knife," said Kate, driving the switchblade into the woman's thigh. She shrieked, and Kate got her hands up and shoved the woman's arm, ducking out from under the blade. At the same moment, August lunged, knocking the man with the gun back as hard as he could into the one behind him. The gun went off, then clattered to the tarmac as the two went down, a foot away from where the others grappled and swore, knife and bat forgotten. August heard the rumble of an approaching truck, the short, sharp burst of its horn, and grabbed Kate's hand and ran. Shouts rang out after them, along with the sound of a body hitting pavement and muffled curses, but August didn't look back as he and Kate sprinted around the corner of the truck stop and across the glaring tarmac toward the open gate.

The truck pulled through, and the barricade began to close. The guards were turned away, eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the semi, and by the time they saw August and Kate coming, it was too late. They were out, and through, moments before the gate slid home and locked.

They veered off the light-lined road and into the fields, August straining to hear the sound of tires over his pounding heart, but the trucks didn't follow, the guards didn't fire, and the gate didn't open.

Still, they didn't stop. Didn't look back.

August lost track of the seconds, lost track of the fact that Kate's hand was still tangled in his, lost track of the fever and the pain. Was he crazy, or was it actually starting to fade?

They ran, cutting a jagged path through wild grass, past bunkers and lines of trees, and by the time they finally slowed to a walk and then at last a stop, they were alone, surrounded by nothing but darkness and the distant glow of the road.

Kate gasped for breath, pressing a hand to her wounded stomach, and August sank to his knees, fingers splaying in the cool, damp dirt.

He wanted to lie down. To press his cheek to the ground, the way Ilsa did, and just listen. Kate dropped to her knees beside him, her shoulder against his, and for several long moments they sat there, swallowed up by the wild grass. The night was so quiet, the world so calm; it was hard to believe there was any danger in it.

August caught the distant grumble of trucks and tensed, but the semis held to the road, none of them bold enough to venture beyond the safety of the light.

When they finally got to their feet, the first light of dawn was beginning to break across the horizon, turning the world a bruised purple instead of black. His vision swam, and Kate reached out a hand to steady him. "You okay?"

The question echoed in his head, rippling his thoughts like a stone in a pond, becoming an answer as it spread. Okay. Okay. Okay.

And it was crazy, it was impossible, but he was. The pain was thinning, his muscles and bones finally starting to loosen. He drew in a shuddering breath, shock mixing with joy. Leo was wrong. He'd done it. He'd come through.

"August?" pressed Kate. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," he said, the word filling his body and mind. It was the truth.

"Good." She had something cupped in her hand. She turned it toward the thin dawn light, and then started walking.

"Where are we going?" he asked, falling in step behind her.

Kate didn't look back, but the answer reached him, catching on the air and carrying like music.

"Home."

VERSE 4.

Face your Monsters

I.

For six years, home had been a house at the eastern edge of the Waste, far enough from the darkness that no one came, far enough from the nearest town that the lights didn't reach.

V-City was a place from the past, a place for the future, but Kate and her mother lived in the present. She wanted to remember it as boring, dull, restless, but the truth was, it was perfect. And she was happy. The kind of happy that smoothed time into still frames.

Arms wrapped around her shoulders while she read.

A warm voice humming while fingers braided her hair.

Wildflowers in vases and cups and bowls, wherever they would fit.

Color everywhere, and sunsets turning the fields to fire.

Somewhere else, the world was really burning.