This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab Page A

found a way in. UVR lights glared down fromthe ceiling, giving the hall an eerie glow, and a single red dot flickered in the corner. The security cameras in South City were all wired into the same closed grid, but August still pulled the FTF hat down over his eyes as he climbed to the third floor, the violin slung over his shoulder.
    Sunai, Sunai, eyes like coal,
    Sing you a song and steal your soul.
    He could hear voices through the walls, some low and others loud, some distorted—television or radio noise—and others simple and real.
    When he reached 3B, he pressed his ear to the door. The hungrier he got, the sharper his senses tuned. He could hear the low murmur of the TV, the floor creaking under the weight of steps, the bubble of something cooking on the stove, the inhale-exhale of a single body. Osinger was home, and he was alone. August pulled back; there was no peephole on the door. He took a deep breath, straightened, and knocked.
    The sounds in 3B stopped abruptly. The footsteps stilled. The TV went dead. And then, a bolt slid free, the door opened, and a man peered out into the hall, too thin in a half-buttoned shirt. Behind his back, his shadow coiled. Behind his shadow, the room was a maze of towering paper and books, half-collapsed boxes, bags of trash, clothing, food—some of it rotten.
    â€œMr. Osinger,” said August. “May I come in?”
    When Albert Osinger met August’s eyes, he knew. Somehow, they always knew. The man paled, then slammed the door in August’s face. Or tried. August caught the wood with his hand, forcing it inward, and Osinger, in a panic, turned and ran, toppling a stack of books, pulling over a shelf of canned food as he scrambled to get away. As if there were anywhere to run.
    August sighed and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

The elevator doors slid open, and the veneer of wealth fell away. Up above, Harker Hall might be all veined marble and gold trim, but down here in the basement there were no polished floors, no glittering chandeliers, no soothing Bach. Those were just layers, the waxy skin of the apple. This was the rotting core.
    The basement of the Allsway Building housed an “event space.” A decade earlier, a bomb had stripped the paint and taken the lives of seventeen people but left the steel and concrete bones intact, and it was here, the echoes of terror still ghosted on the walls and soaked into the bare floor, that Callum Harker held court. Not with his citizens—his subjects —but with his monsters.
    Kate hung back, watching from the bank of elevators. The basement lights had all been directed away from the walls and toward the center of the massive room, spotlighting the raised platform in the middle. In thedarkened corners, dozens of Corsai gathered. All around the basement’s edges the monsters rustled like leaves, or debris, a death rattle in the shadows, a hoarse chorus of whispers, their voices coalescing from many into one.
    beat break ruin flesh blood bone beat break
    They were nightmare creatures, the stuff of bedtime stories gone wrong, the things that lurked under the mattress and in the closet, given life and teeth and claws. Be careful, parents told their children, be good, or the Corsai will come, but the truth was the Corsai didn’t care if you were careful or good. They swam in darkness and fed on fear, their bodies sick, distended shapes that looked human only if you caught them out of the corner of your eye. And by then, it was usually too late to run.
    Kate looked straight at the nearest one, focusing until her eyes adjusted and she could make out its milky pupils, its shadowed edges and sharpened teeth. Almost impossible to kill. A blast of sunlight to the head—anything less just dispelled them—but you had to find the head for that to work, which was harder than it seemed when their edges ran together, blurring in the dark.
    The Corsai had a hive-mind—you ruled them