Chapter 63: Cassian

The first thing Darian felt was the cold against his back. Wood floor, not alley asphalt.

He opened his eyes slowly. Wooden ceiling, a broken beam at the far end, its edge splintered like a bone that had snapped years ago and never been set right. The smell of medical alcohol mixed with something else — old smoke, cigarettes put out a long time ago, and paper. The smell of old paper, thick and dry, like a library that had been locked up for years. From somewhere distant, the sound of a ceiling fan turning in an uneven rhythm. Tick. Tick. Pause. Tick.

He moved his finger. His shoulder still hurt, a heavy pulse reaching his neck every time he breathed deep. He tried to move his leg. It trembled from the cold more than the fatigue. He felt the roughness of the floor beneath his back, every small crack in the wood pressing into his skin like the tip of a needle. His whole body was telling him he was not where he was supposed to be.

"You took longer than I expected," a voice said from the corner.

A man sat on a wooden chair, a closed book on his knee. Gray at the temples, but his face wasn’t old. His hand was on the book’s cover, opening and closing it without turning a page. The motion was rhythmic. Like a man counting. Like a man waiting.

Darian tried to sit up. The pain put him back down on the floor again. He put his hand on his shoulder without thinking, and let out a long breath through his teeth.

"Wait. The shoulder was dislocated, not broken."

"Who are you?"

"Cassian."

Darian stayed silent, waiting for the rest. The man didn’t continue. No title. No job. No place.

"Cassian just?"

"Yeah."

Darian looked at his shoulder. The bandage was clean, tied tight, in a way that only one kind of hand knows how to tie — a hand that has done it before. He felt the dryness in his throat, tried to swallow, couldn’t easily. His tongue was heavy in his mouth, like cotton. On the table beside him sat a glass of water nobody had touched. The water was still clear, but the surface was flat — not the kind of thing that had been sitting for hours.

"You were the one standing in the alley."

"Yeah."

"You said something before I passed out."

"I said I didn’t expect anyone to figure out what you figured out on his own."

Darian sat up at last, though his shoulder objected with a short, sharp pain. He put his back against the wall, and felt the wood breathing beneath him. He reached for the glass, took a sip from it, his hand still trembling a little. The water was cold, not lukewarm. Someone had poured it recently.

"What are you, exactly?"

"A hunter."

"Hunt what?"

"Whatever grows if you leave it alone."

"Meaning monsters?"

Cassian looked at him, not answering right away. His eyes measured something in Darian’s face — not fear, not doubt. Something else. Like a man seeing something he had been looking for a long time.

"Sometimes."

Darian went quiet for a moment. He felt the wound under the bandage warming, or maybe that was just his imagination after a night like this one. He tried to remember what had happened in the alley, but his memory was full of empty — he remembered his shoulder popping out, he remembered the ground getting closer, and then nothing.

"What were you doing in the alley?"

"Following something."

"Following what?"

"Something that’s been following you."

Darian felt his stomach drop.

"That thing I killed."

"That thing you killed," Cassian repeated, and there was no judgment in it. Just acknowledgment. "You did more than most people would have."

"Most people would have run."

"Most people did."

Darian thought about the alley. The empty alley. The fear in his chest when he realized no one was coming to help him. The thing in the dark that had taken his breath away and turned it into something else.

"So you were there the whole time."

"I was there for the last part. I arrived late."

"Late for what?"

"Late to save you from the first hit. You saved yourself from the second."

Darian tried to laugh. It came out as a cough. His shoulder sent a spike of pain down his arm.

"Doesn’t feel like saving."

"It never does."

A knock on the door.

Light. Twice only.

Cassian stood up faster than Darian expected from a man who had been sitting so still, and reached for the light switch and killed it in the same instant, one motion, not two.

The room went dark except for the streetlight coming through the crack in the window. The light was a dull yellow, falling on the floor in a long line. Darian felt his heart pounding in his ears, much louder than the pain in his shoulder. His mouth went dry again, even though he had just drunk.

"Don’t talk," Cassian whispered, standing rigid beside the door, his hand on its handle without opening it.

Darian heard footsteps in the hallway outside. Slow. Someone walking without rush. The footsteps stopped in front of the door for two seconds. Darian felt time stop with them. He heard himself breathe without deciding to, pulled his breath back into his chest with effort. Then the footsteps continued farther away, disappearing at the end of the corridor.

Cassian stayed standing a full minute longer before he turned the light back on. His hand was still on the handle when he spoke. Even when the light returned, his expression didn’t loosen.

"Who was that?" Darian asked, his voice lower than he intended.

"No idea." Cassian went back to his chair, sat down slowly, and set the book on the floor beside him. "But nobody comes to visit the neighbors at this hour."

Darian felt a tiredness reaching into his bones, a tiredness heavier than any fear he was supposed to feel. He felt his leg grow heavy, felt even breathing become an effort.

"How long was I out?"

"A few hours."

"A few hours is a long time."

"It is."

"How long were you sitting there?"

Cassian didn’t answer right away. He looked at the book on the floor, then at the door, then at Darian.

"Since I brought you here."

"You’ve been sitting here since I passed out."

"I wanted to see what you would do when you woke up."

"And what did I do?"

"You asked the right questions."

Darian looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked at the room around him. It was small — smaller than it had seemed at first. Wooden walls, a single window, a table, a chair, a bed he wasn’t in. The bed was at the far side of the room, made up like no one had ever slept in it. Cassian hadn’t put him there. Cassian had put him on the floor.

"Why the floor?"

"Because the bed is closer to the window."

"You wanted me on the floor."

"I wanted you where you wouldn’t be seen from the street."

Darian looked at the window. The crack in the curtain. The angle of the bed.

"You’re careful."

"I have to be."

"Why are you helping me?"

Cassian considered the question for a moment. He picked the book up off the floor and turned it over in his hands — reading the title, then reading it again, like he hadn’t done it in a while.

"Because you did something that most people can’t do," he said finally. "You killed something that shouldn’t be killed by someone alone."

"That’s it?"

"That’s enough."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you’re either going to become something useful, or you’re going to become something that has to be put down. I want to find out which."

Darian felt the words land like stones in his chest.

"That’s honest."

"Lying takes time."

"You have time."

"No. I don’t."

Darian looked at the fan. The rhythm of it. Tick. Tick. Pause. Tick. The fan seemed to slow down as the room grew quieter, like the building itself was tired.

"I need to call my sister."

"You can’t."

"She’ll worry."

"She’ll do more than worry."

Darian felt his jaw tighten. He started to argue, then stopped.

"How long have I been gone?"

"Six hours."

"She’ll have called."

"She has."

"How do you know?"

"Because your phone’s been vibrating in your pocket since I pulled you off the ground."

Darian reached for his pocket. His phone was still there. He pulled it out. Forty-three missed calls. Twelve messages. All from her. All asking the same question.

He stared at the screen without reading any of the messages.

"The last one is a voice message."

"I know."

"Did you listen to it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"It’s not mine."

Darian stared at the phone a moment longer. Then he put it down, face-up, on the floor beside his knee.

"They won’t know where I am."

"They won’t," Cassian said. "Because you’re not there anymore."

The killings I did were the first time."

"I know."

"They won’t be the last. Right?"

"No."

The word landed in the room like something thrown on the floor. No explanation followed.

Darian reached for his phone again. It was on the table beside the bed — his table, his phone, his message. The screen was cracked at the corner, a white line cutting through it, a division between two halves of everything he had ever typed. He opened it. A half-written message from last night, to his sister: "I’ll pass by you tomorrow morning, don’t forget to bring..."

He never finished it at the time. His fingers hovered over the screen now, they didn’t move. The white line on the screen was a wall — a thing he couldn’t cross.

"She’s going to think I’m dead."

"Not tonight."

"Then she’ll think I disappeared."

"She’ll think you’re busy."

"She won’t."

"She will. Because that’s what she wants to think."

Darian looked at him.

"You don’t know her."

"No."

"Then don’t pretend to."

Cassian didn’t answer. He just looked at the book on the floor, then at the door, then at Darian. And for a moment, Darian saw something in his face that he had seen before in his own — the look of a man who had run out of ways to say a true thing without hurting someone.

"If you tell her the truth, she’ll believe you," Cassian said.

"That’s not the problem."

"Then what’s the problem?"

"That if she knows, she becomes a target."

Cassian went quiet. His silence was heavy, the silence of a man who knew the answer before the question. He reached into the pocket of his coat, pulled out a small folded paper, and set it on the table beside Darian’s phone without a word.

Darian unfolded it with a hand still trembling a little. An address written in quick handwriting, letters not lined up, like someone writing while walking. And beneath it a name: Owen.

"Who’s this?"

"Someone like you, from two years ago. Still alive. If you want to know what it means to survive, go talk to him yourself."

"And you?"

"I’ll be here until dawn. After that I walk, whether you agreed or not."

Darian folded the paper again. He held it between two fingers, felt its weight, then slid it into his pocket next to his phone. He could feel the two objects touching. The address and the calls. The future and the past. One on top of the other.

"Why Owen?"

"Because Owen’s been where you are now."

"And where’s that?"

"In the room where you decide."

Darian looked at him.

"What decides?"

"Whether the thing you killed was the last of it, or the first of it."

Cassian stood, went back to the window, opened a crack in the curtain with two fingers and looked down at the street below, without saying anything else.

The fan above them was still turning in the same broken rhythm. Tick. Tick. Pause.

Darian looked at the paper in his hand, then at the phone, then at Cassian’s back standing at the window. The silhouette of him against the streetlight was thin, and still. Like a man who had learned to become small so he could stay in one place.

He deleted his sister’s name from the recent calls list.