"Tell me when you've seen enough," I said, averting my gaze as I turned and paced the ship's deck, moving along the shadowed length until I emerged once more in the sickly moonlight bathing the bow. The rising breeze coming off the ocean brought some relief to the oppressive smell of flat, stale brine, but not enough. It still burned in my nose.

Guilt rose like a moon swept tide until it gripped me with physical tension, assuming a taste much like bile on the back of my tongue. "Mercenary" was a word people used too freely, and it lacked a certain gravity when I applied it to Mitch—Derek, him—but it was apropos nonetheless. A mercenary sold himself, his skills, and sometimes his life to the highest bidder; he did what he meant to do, washed the blood from his hands, and felt nothing for those he ruined along the way.

I couldn't have recognized his duplicity. The man's livelihood depended on his acting skills, on duping fools, and I could no more blame myself for being a fool than I could blame the rest of his victims—and yet guilt rankled my wounded pride. I was smarter than that, wasn't I? Wasn't I?

My hands gripped the boat's rail. The sudden urge to kill Mitch—Derek—myself, to wrap my fingers around his throat and squeeze, frightened me as much it soothed my ragged, frayed sensibilities. Craving violence never satiated the desires of an aggressive man, and though some ingrained notion of morality told me all that I had asked for from the Sin and all I would see him do was wrong, that voice broke apart under the louder, horrific flashbacks of cultists chanting and Tara screaming.

It wouldn't bring her back, but I thought it might make me feel better.

Sighing, I worked up the nerve to return to the Sin and turned—when my foot slid out from under me, and I landed on the deck with a yelp.

I'd never been on a ship before. Nearly drowning after Tara inadvertently threw me from a cliff had bequeathed a lifelong aversion for deep water and the ocean in particular. In my limited experience, I expected decks or docks to have water on them, so I ignored the subtle, liquid sheen on the bow when I walked its length—but now, thrown down, the liquid seeped into my clothes and splashed in my face. What is this?

A huddled range of metal drums and colored canisters surrounded me, the containers stacked in a rough formation along the edge yacht's rail and part of the structure I had no name for. I lifted one hand to my nose, sniffed, and choked on the unmistakable stench of gasoline. I could smell the gas before landing in it, and I'd blamed the odor on the ubiquitous cargo vessels floating nearby—but I'd been mistaken. Gasoline shimmered over the deck and caught the moonlight.

Christ, did he not secure these? I stood, wiping gas from my hands, and it trickled from where it soaked through my blouse. Grunting, I gripped the rail for support, set on returning to Darius—after all, Derek wasn't going to be enjoying this boat for very long, so I cared little if it caught fire from his shoddy maintenance—when I happened to glance at the containers once more. Through the warbling moonlight, I glimpsed the jagged knife marks marring the plastic gas canisters.

Those...someone made these. On purpose. I knelt, running my fingertips along the wet, bent edges. Why? Who?

Fear choked me when I spotted the bomb. I'd never seen one before—on television, yes, but television was hardly indicative of reality—and so it took a moment for my mind to make sense of the tangled wires, the mechanical detritus, the strange, plastic block, and digital counter half-hidden by a slip of cardboard, the cardboard I'd shifted when I'd fallen. Metallic prongs held the counter in place, and the tiny red numbers flickered, counting downward, with only five of those precious little numerals left.

My breath stuttered in my chest, and I screamed, "Darius!"

The Sin arrived in an instant, ripping through the veil of sulfur and ash as he struck me with the full force of that otherworldly heat, moving through time and space in a mere blink of an eye. His gaze landed on the bomb. Hardly a breath passed between us before Darius—eyes widening—had his arms locked around mine as he threw us from the yacht's deck.

We hung suspended in the cool night air when the bomb went off. An eerie silence came, an inhale, then a fizzle, a crackle, then a burst of brilliant white light. The inhalation shuddered with a roaring boom, and the explosion came like a crescendo, a bestial scream rising into white noise as the sheer force slammed into Darius's back. My neck bent and my skull cracked into the creature's jaw. The grunt of his breath spilled against my skin.

Fire licked the air and caught my gasoline-soaked clothes. We toppled over the railing, propelled by the explosion, and sailed into the inky blackness stretching from water to sky with no end. I struck the marina first, the bite of frigid seawater painful as we skidded across the surface and I twisted and flailed. The impact tore me from Darius' grip, strong fingers spasming against my arms, and I hit the water again, gasping, then once more before the riled waves caught me. I spun and sank into the cold, deafening silence of the harbor.

Another explosion rocked the surface. I didn't hear it, but the vibration moved through the water as I writhed in the resulting undercurrent, my arms roving, searching for purchase, anything I could use to orient myself. Sand burned my eyes and salt petrified my throat, bubbles frothing—but I couldn't see where they rose, where the surface was. The whole of the world succumbed to the whirlpool, the water towing me under until I tumbled over and over, flailing in the dark. My lungs screamed for air.

I remembered it being like this before. The unyielding crush, the unforgiving cold, the deafening, smothering chill consuming warmth and awareness until only panic and terror remained. I spent what little oxygen I retained screaming, struggling, kicking against the terrible embrace of whirling sand and water. Death's bony fingers latched over my windpipe, squeezing tighter and tighter, promising to never let go. I wanted out of this place. I wanted out.

My shoulder struck something substantial, and I clung to it, desperate to hold onto anything I could use to push myself toward the surface. That substantial something latched onto my arm and, relentless, it tugged me farther into the depths. I fought, knowing if I could only land on the bottom, I could find a way to swim to the surface, could push up and find a way out. This was a harbor, the tide shallower so close to the rocky jetties and docks, and if I could only get free of the tumbling detritus entrapping me—.

My head breached the surface, and an acrid breath scoured my throat and waterlogged lungs when I sucked in air. I trod water, coughing and determined to stay afloat, but my attire hung heavy and the fruitless struggling with the sea exhausted my muscles. I began to sink underneath the rising swell, choking on the bitter water, when hands wrapped themselves around my hips and Darius threw me from the harbor's grasp. I gasped—then groaned when I flopped onto the dock with a solid, wet slap. My awkward landing knocked the air right out of me again and I coughed, but oh was I grateful for the grating texture of unkempt wood against my cheek.

I crawled to the edge of the dock and heaved the contents of my tender stomach. My middle quaked, trembling and cramping, and the salt burned in my eyes, hot as fire in my throat and mouth. "Jesus Christ—."

Despite my resistance, Darius rolled me over, and his hand grasped my chin as he lifted my face to his. I blinked and stared into his strange eyes. "Can you breathe? Are you injured?" he demanded, raking back his disheveled hair. Dazed and somewhat befuddled, my stare roved over him, landing on the right side of his face and neck, the skin blackened and blistered, bone visible beneath the torn flesh. I gaped and tried to touch the grievous injury, but Darius swatted the hand away. "It will heal momentarily. Are you injured? Can you hear me?"

Not precisely, no; his words penetrated the thick fog in my head like aftershocks of an earthquake, slower and softer than the real thing, the world coming back and aligning in place one precious millimeter at a time. What in the hell just happened?! Touching my inner ear, I drew back wet, bloody fingers. My entire arm quivered with cold and shock. "I—it's difficult to hear you, but I think I'm alright," I replied, the words grating in my raw esophagus.

Darius snarled. "The cult is undoubtedly responsible for this, tying up their loose ends before people like us can flush them out!" Swearing, the creature rose and turned as he stomped to the edge of the dock, glaring across the water. The chill in the air intensified.

In the confusion, Darius had thrown us onto the dock across the harbor from where we'd arrived. A pillar of fire atop the water had replaced Mitch's yacht, smoke billowing from the inferno as the warped, blackened wreckage crumbled into the tide. Flames crawled over the DPC cargo ship as well, the whole of it veiled in a nether of trembling ochre sparks as it slowly capsized into the bubbling marina. Even in my muffled ears, I could hear the rising sirens and screams echoing across the water. A mist of ash rained upon our cold faces.

Mitch—Mitch was dead, and not by our hand.

While the yacht burned, I found myself staring at Darius. Having taken the brunt of the blast, sparing me from the fire, grievous wounds arced across his torso and formed a motley, grotesque image in his skin. As he'd said, the damage was already healing, broken bones realigning before my eyes, bloody gashes knitting together as bruises and abrasions lessened with every breath. Remnants of his tattered shirt hung around his neck and arms.

Stretched over his upper back was a monstrous scar. Deep, beveled ridges outlined the wound, as if the flesh had been carved into repeatedly by a broad, flat blade. His other injuries vanished, blending into the skin still painted with soot and blood—but the scar remained, a vicious and ugly testament to the violent, destructive creature who wore the mark upon his body. The most disturbing thing about the scar, however, wasn't its brutality or size. It was what it said;

BETRAYER.