My eyelids were the only part of my body I could move, but I couldn’t control them. I pried them open, blinking a dozen times before my vision focused on the ceiling. The bumpy plaster mimicked the storm clouds I had seen last night, the ones I lost consciousness to. His touch still burned through my veins.
A bad blood.
I sprung up, and my spine squeezed as I remembered everything. Charlotte. Her russet stare. The gunshots. The way my legs pumped as I ran. The children’s screams. The way the boy’s green eyes narrowed right before he kicked me. My voice as I spoke my name one last time. The world was black when my mind slipped away beneath his touch.
I created chaos, and I had lived through it.
Somehow—in some way—I was alive, and I had no idea where I was. The congested room was dusty and dim, but the shadows couldn’t conceal the golden-brown walls. The only light came from a small television. It was old, probably older than I was, and I tore my eyes away from the bright static. It would only obscure my night vision.
When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I held my breath. No one was around. I was alone, but the curtains were pinned to the walls. Not the best sign.
I stood up on shaky legs as lightning flashed, revealing the rose color of my new prison’s cloth, and my toes dragged across the shag carpet before I realized my shoes were gone. I told myself I could handle running away barefoot. I told myself I could do anything.
I focused on the nearest door, knowing it was my best exit, but I needed a weapon first.
I tiptoed through the living room, across the wood floor, and moved into the kitchen. Careful not to bump into the four iron stools on the end of the island, I swerved around the fridge and found a knife set on the far countertop. It was in my grasp before I heard the floorboards creak.
When I spun around, my heel smacked the cabinet, but I kept my focus on him. He stood in the doorframe only a yard away.
“You don’t need that.” The guy’s voice was as crisp and clear as the sound escaping the soda he popped open. He even took a sip.
My fingers tightened on the blade’s handle as I prepared for a fight. A deadly fight. But nothing happened.
“You don’t,” he repeated, his gaze leaving my weapon. Apparently, the sight of an insane girl bearing a knife in his kitchen wasn’t frightening.
I recognized him as the one who stopped me in Shadow Alley, the bad-blooded one. His eyes were impossible to forget. The emerald color was unnatural against his olive-colored skin. Even though his mop of curly hair casted a shadow over his face, his stare radiated through the dark. Unlike me, if you looked at him close enough, you could tell he wasn’t human. Not completely anyway.
A knife didn’t scare him. He had seen worse. Most of us had.
I kept my weapon in front of me. “You attacked me.”
“To save you,” he countered like a parent would to a naïve child. “You weren’t making it out of there alive.” He gestured to the front door with his soda in hand. “And you won’t live if you leave.”
My toes pressed against the floor. “Are you going to stop me?”
“I guess you can find out.”
He would. I could hear it in his tone.
“Look at it this way, Serena,” he drew out my name. “I wouldn’t have risked myself just to kill you.”
He had to be lying. If he waited a day, there would be an award for my capture. In our broken economy, I wouldn’t forget what desperation did to a person, but his casual shrug said he knew nothing of desperation. Or, at least, that was how he wanted to appear.
“I’m just helping someone who is unfortunate. Is that a crime?”
“Technically, yes.” I found my voice, rendered rough by weeks unused. “You could turn me in.”
“And risk exposure?” He smirked at my suggestion. “You and I both know that bloods run from attention, even good attention.”
The boy—whoever he was—had a point. He was like me. I knew it the minute his fingers contacted my bare skin. But I expected him to lie, to hide behind my insanity. He could easily turn me in and claim I was delirious. He didn’t. He confessed.
“You’re a bad blood,” I accused, waiting for him to change his mind, wanting him to make sense.
“I prefer blooded. Bad blood has a negative connotation,” he spoke like a politician, emotionless and monotone, and he never averted his eyes from mine. “I want you to trust me, so I have to trust you.”
My palms were clammy, but my grip didn’t subside. Trust. The word thundered inside of me as the cramped house rumbled from the real thunder outside. Trust didn’t exist in a world filled with hate. Even then, his relaxed expression tempted me to believe in trust again.
We were silent in that moment and the muffled lull of the rainstorm consumed us. It was November, but it hadn’t snowed in Vendona in twelve years. I was five the last time I witnessed snowflakes, and the house moaned like it could sense my memories. The boy sipped his soda as he looked away for the first time. He fixated on the curtains, but his lips bent down. He was no longer concerned with me. He was somewhere else entirely, somewhere dark, somehow stuck. He had memories, too.
I peeled my bony fingers off the handle and placed the knife on the countertop. It took another kind of strength to step away from it. When I looked up, he was watching me again.
“Where am I?” My voice trembled. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer, but I had to ask.
“Calhoun’s house.” He didn’t explain who Calhoun was. “My name is Wilson by the way.” His brow furrowed. “Daniel. My name is Daniel.”
“Daniel,” I repeated, wondering if he’d change his name again. This time, he nodded. “Why’d you lie?”
He glanced down, revealing thick eyelashes. “Would you tell me your real name if you hadn’t already told me?”
I wouldn’t have. A name wasn’t just a name. It was a trait, an identity. It was personal. It was traceable, proof of your illegal existence, and he’d given his to me willingly.
Openness and honesty didn’t exist outside the Southern Flock—only risk did—but Daniel was demolishing that notion.
Thunder rattled the foundation, and the knife clattered against the counter. Rain pummeled the house so harshly the smell of moisture flooded the kitchen. I hugged myself, but still shivered in the uncanny temperature. It was heavy but cool, and a part of me had adjusted to the deadly warmth of my cell. Freedom was cold.
Daniel shook off his plaid jacket, but when he started to cross the room, I stepped back, smacking into the cabinet again.
He flinched like he hadn’t expected my reaction. “Take it,” he offered the jacket from a distance. When I didn’t reach out, he tossed it onto the island, and it landed in front of me.
I kept my eyes on him as I snatched it. He didn’t try to get close again. He only watched me as I shrugged it on. The warmth was comforting, but the size wasn’t. He was bigger than I was. Much bigger. And I hadn’t realized it until his sleeves dangled over my fingertips. I had to be a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter, although my current weight wasn’t my norm. It would take weeks to build my strength back up. Still, I recognized his muscular vigor. It was a trait of the streets. Whoever Daniel was, he didn’t live in this house.
“You’ve been out for an entire day,” he offered the information before I realized I wanted to know.
Twenty-four hours had passed. I wasn’t sure what the time meant other than I was still alive. I wasn’t dead. I had a future. The realization was difficult to accept.
“What time is it?” I refused to look around the room for a clock.
Daniel’s eyes darted above my head. “Late, really late.” When his eyes flicked down, he studied my face. “Do you have somewhere you need to be?”
To him, I was a bad blood on the loose, not exactly a person expected to have priorities, but I did have somewhere I needed to be.
Home.
Of course, the average bad blood didn’t have
a home. They only had the streets and death, but I wasn’t the norm. The Southern Flock was home to me. Just the thought of Catelyn’s suffocating hugs made my heart lurch. I had forgotten the basics—what their voices sounded like, what they smelled like—but their faces were melded into my mind, their love sewed deep into my veins. No one could ever truly forget love. But I wasn’t about to admit that to Daniel. I had already told him too much.
He cleared his throat to garner my attention. “Are you all right?”
“I am,” I managed. “Physically, I mean.”
“You’ll be all right, you know,” he said. “Mentally, I mean.”
“Thanks.”
He turned his back to me, and I could see where sweat had collected on his undershirt. Despite that, his hair wasn’t matted. He hadn’t slept, and if I wanted to attack, this was my chance.
I lifted my hand toward the knife only to drop my hand to my side. “Why’d you help me?”
He kept his back to me, still, as if listening for my actions. “I’m not sure.”
The silence following his honesty was painful. He could’ve been killed. We both knew that.
I didn’t reach for the knife again. “Thanks.”
Daniel’s back rose as he half-laughed, half-grunted. “You shouldn’t thank a stranger for doing the right thing.”
“A lot of people wouldn’t say you did the right thing.”
“A lot of people are wrong.” When he turned around, his expression locked into a glare meant for someone else. “What they did to you—to all of us—is wrong.”
I swallowed his words, unable to argue.
“Look,” he paused as his forehead furrowed into a series of lines that would wrinkle with age. “I’m leaving.”
“What?”
He walked to the front door. “I have somewhere I have to be.”
“But—”
“You’ll be taken care of,” he promised, swiftly giving me the once-over. “You’re safe here. Calhoun will help you.” When he nodded behind me, I turned around.
An older man entered the room from the same hallway where Daniel had appeared. He was broad and bald, but his right sleeve dangled at his side. It fluttered as he walked into the kitchen and flipped the lights on. His face might as well have been sculpted from stone. That is, until he smiled. His goofy grin didn’t suit his military body.
I leapt toward Daniel to avoid the unpredictable man. “I—I can’t trust him,” I whispered, even though it was pointless. Calhoun had heard me.
Daniel smiled for the first time, a dimple appearing on his right cheek. “You can,” he said, “and quite frankly, you don’t have much of a choice.”
“The red light is still on.” Calhoun’s baritone voice, unlike his grin, fit his exterior. “The streets are flooded with officers.” Officers still looking for me.
I stared at Daniel. “Then, why are you leaving?” Anyone could be arrested during a red light. It was the law. But he didn’t care. He grabbed a black jacket off the coatrack.
“I’m not the one they’re searching for.” The only semi-familiar face I had was about to leave.
“I have a home,” I blurted out, hoping my words would entice him enough to stay.
He froze as though they did, until Calhoun chuckled like my words had no effect on him at all. “Doesn’t change the fact that they’re after you,” the old man said. “It won’t be safe to travel until tomorrow mornin’. They’ll create a lie by then.”
“You’ll be safe here.” Daniel emphasized his last word. “I won’t be coming back, so Cal can take you wherever you need to go.”
“Are you going to see Michele?” Calhoun mentioned a girl’s name I hadn’t heard yet.
Daniel nodded once as he put on the jacket he had grabbed. It must have been Calhoun’s because it was too big for him, but Daniel didn’t ask me to give his back.
“Be safe out there,” Calhoun continued on, his accent growing thicker. “In the meantime, I’ll get Serena home.” He knew my name, too. “You hungry?”
My paranoia surrounding my identity disappeared at the thought of food, and my stomach grumbled. The hunger was borderline nauseating. I had to lay my hand on the wall to keep myself from lunging across the counter and fighting the man for food.
“Calm down,” he said, recognizing the desperation in my stare. “I’ll whip something up for you.” He opened the food cabinet, and various cans caused my vision to blur.
“Really?” I squeaked.
“Really,” he called over his shoulder. “Just sit.”
Daniel moved in my peripheral vision until I saw what he was pointing at. The four barstools I had avoided out of fear now looked like the front seat to heaven. I sat down before I could convince myself not to.
“See?” Daniel tried to muffle his laugh, but failed. “You can trust him, too.”
Blood rushed to my cheeks as I nodded, but I didn’t look away from Daniel. He was a little older than I was, maybe by a year or two, but he was capable of laughing. I wasn’t. His smile was the first smile I had seen in weeks, and the single expression churned my insides with comforting nostalgia. His expression calmed me, but his next move caused my panic.
He opened the door and left without as much as a glance back.
I leapt off my chair and rushed to the front door. “Daniel.”
He turned around, one foot on the pavement, the other one on the last step. Rain dripped off the ends of his hair, but it didn’t stop him from looking at me. The red lights moved across his cheekbones. “You’re okay, Serena.” I had lost count of how many times he had said it.
“Do you have to leave tonight?” I wanted to stop him, to save him from the streets in the same way he had saved me, but he put his other foot on the cursed roads of Vendona.
“I don’t get caught.”
“I didn’t either.”
Daniel surveyed the street. He was still, as if he had forgotten how to breathe now that he met me. The reality of being caught was something else entirely.
“I won’t,” he said with a sigh, but he didn’t sound like he meant it. “Get yourself home. Take care of yourself.” In his words, I heard what he didn’t say—Don’t worry about me.
My hand curled around the doorframe. “Goodbye, then.”
Daniel’s emerald eyes trailed back up to me. “I don’t say goodbye unless I think it’s final.”
With that, he spun toward Shadow Alley and walked away. I didn’t follow him. I was too shocked at his words, at his expectation to see me again, and by the time I focused, I knew it was too late. He had disappeared into the protective darkness of the bad blood lane.
He was gone, and I would leave in the morning. Either way, I was safe, and safety was all that mattered. I could only hope the shadows would keep Daniel safe, too.