Vera Stitchwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Vera Stitchwood pressed against a cellar wall and counted the torches passing above. Nine. Last night there had been six. The townsfolk had decided monsters were the reason their children woke screaming, and they meant to burn them out. Vera had come to this town for one thing only. She wanted the person who killed her, the one who stitched her body back together wrong and scraped her name from the world. But a dead girl who could not climb stairs fast could not hunt by night if a mob owned the night. First she needed somewhere the sun and the torches could never reach. Her longer arm had cramped from holding still. Her backward knee ached. Dawn was an hour off. By light they would search every cellar in town, and this one had a window at street level. She would be found. A voice came from the dark behind her. "You breathe too loud for a corpse." Vera turned. A girl stood among the barrels, eyes burning orange. Her teeth were sharp, her nails sharper. She looked human until she didn't. "I'm Luna," the girl said. "You're the stitched one everyone's scared of. Good. Means they're not looking at me." She said it flat, like reading a receipt. Then her jaw clenched and shifted, as if something under her skin wanted out. She forced it down. "You're like me," Vera said. "Three of me. All hungry. Don't make it worse." Luna jerked her head toward the floor. "There's a way down. Old catacombs. Lava underneath keeps it warm and dark. No sun. No torches. I've been hiding there for weeks." Vera did not trust the kindness. Nothing in this town was kind. "Why tell me?" "Because nine torches tonight. Twenty tomorrow." Luna pried up a flagstone. A red glow breathed up through the gap. "They catch one of us, they catch all of us. I'd rather not burn alone." Boots hammered the cellar door above them. Wood cracked. A man shouted that he smelled something dead. "Move," Luna said. Vera dropped through the gap. Her bad knee buckled on the stone steps, but these went down, not up, and down she could manage. The passage opened wide. Far below, molten light ran through carved channels, washing the ancient dark in orange. Stone coffins lined the walls. Warmth touched her cold skin for the first time since she died. Luna slid the flagstone back into place above them. The shouting went muffled, then gone. "They won't find this," Luna said. "Nobody living comes down here." Vera looked at the coffins, the lava, the warren of tunnels stretching past the light. She had a place now. A place the day could not touch. From here she could hunt without running from torches. "I need to find someone," Vera said. "The person who made me this way." Luna almost smiled. "Then you'll want to meet the others."