Micah

  He touched the side of his enclosure. “She can’t re-clone me if you get rid of all the machines.”

  How things changed. He begged Rachel once not to destroy the cloning machines. “No way can we find them all. We know where one is, that’s it.”

  He shook his head, gasping for breath. “Micah, one cloning machine can destroy them all.”

  “Now, now, Isaac. You don’t want to be giving away family secrets.” Christa’s voice again. “I can make it hurt worse.”

  She couldn’t. I’d kill him first. Icahn kept talking between gasps. “In Genesis, there is a machine. Find it. Buried. Destroy it, and they’ll all fry…”

  He grabbed his throat. He was choking? What happened? I spun around. Christa was laughing. I would love to know what kind of machine he was talking about, but I wasn’t going to get that answer now. I kicked down the door to his enclosure and took off his head.

  I couldn’t give myself time to think about what I had done in the last ten minutes. Killing monsters to defend Genesis was different than this. I ran further into the medical bay, Christa’s laughter following me the whole way. But I found who I looked for. Brynna was strapped to a table, an IV in her arm.

  I was at her side before I even realized I’d moved. My body pulled to hers like a magnet. “Brynna.”

  Her eyes fluttered open. “Micah? What are you doing here?”

  “What are they giving you?” I’d talk to her about the hows and why later when I wasn’t moments from having beheaded Isaac Icahn. I needed to get her out of there. I knew how to remove an IV. Ours were more basic than this one, but field medicine was something Warriors knew how to do. I could rehydrate a fellow Warrior if need be.

  I carefully got the needle out of her arm and pressed a nearby bandage down on it until she stopped bleeding.

  Brynna finally spoke again. Her eyes were hooded, and she slurred a bit. “They’re weakening my immune system to make me a Vampire again.”

  Oh hell, they were not. I picked her up in my arms. “Time to go.”

  “You need to be free of me.”

  I winced. “You need to stop that nonsense right now.”

  Christa came around the corner, clapping her hands. “I knew you would do it. Like a rat in a maze, you found your cheese, Micah Lyons. I had to see. How strong was the pull? Could you get to her even with all the horror around you? You did. Bravo. I…”

  I shoved the medical table at her, throwing her backward. She could reward herself on a job well done when I was far away from here. I hoped I had killed her. I’d certainly swung the table at her hard enough. “All you’ve done, lady, is awaken a force you’d rather not have seen. We don’t like scientists who play with people’s lives. I can promise you that you will rue the day we ever found out you existed.”

  Her eyes opened, and her gaze hardened, her false joviality fleeing. So much for her being dead. “You won’t find that machine. You won’t even know what to look for.”

  I almost told her not to underestimate us, but why would I ever tell my enemy not to make a mistake in battle? Instead, I took my love and ran from the building. No one got in my way. I guessed the experiment was over. That was okay. This rat had found his way out of her deranged maze. At least for now.

  I had a feeling she had orchestrated everything I’d done in this sick version of the world. She might have been the puppet master, and me, her unaware marionette. Pinocchio had always been my favorite of the fairy tales my mother read Tia. She wouldn’t be pulling my strings anymore.

  Chapter 13

  Brynna shivered and shook. We weren’t going to get back to Genesis or even the tents where we left the others if I didn’t get her feeling better soon. A run-down shack with half a roof would have to do.

  I picked her up, and the fact that she didn’t fight me spoke volumes. She wasn’t a pick me up and carry me kind of a girl. I laid her down in the shack, and she scrunched up her face. “You were supposed to be going on with your life, free of the albatross that is me.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t make decisions for me, and I won’t make them for you. I don’t want to be rid of you. I want…” Oh hell, I was in already. I might as well own the extent of my feelings. “I want to make you happy. Every day. Every second of every day and night. I don’t know if I’m the right one to do that. In Before Time, you wouldn’t have looked at me twice.”

  I took off my jacket and tried to put her in it, but she squirmed until I gave up. Her eyes had heat in them. “Micah, I don’t even know who the girl is from Before Time. I don’t give a shit what she would have liked and wouldn’t have. She went and got made a Vampire. Pretty early in the process of all that mess, too. She wasn’t strong. She’s part of me, but also not. I’m strong.”

  “You are.” I held up the coat. “You don’t want it?”

  “That’s not going to help.”

  She shivered like she was cold, but the jacket wasn’t going to help? “What will?”

  “Blood.” She looked down. I hated that the need for it made her ashamed.

  I tapped her chin, and she looked up at me. “That’s between us. Nothing to ever feel awkward or bad about. I like it. I more than like it. You need to feed, you feed from me. That’s how this works. The how and why it happened doesn’t fucking matter.”

  She could curse, and so could I.

  Brynna sighed. “Micah, I’m not sure I can stop. I could drain you. Kill you. You’re perfectly capable of dying, by the way. The stunt in there makes me want to throttle you. You’re not a one man wrecking ball.”

  I’d never been short of confidence. I smiled at her, slowly. “Sure I am. I got you out, didn’t I?”

  “That was luck.”

  I shrugged. “That’s me, hun. Lucky.” I took her hand, drawing her up. “I trust you. And if you overfeed and I die… well, a guy’s gotta go sometime. You sucking on my neck as you make me feel… well, everything? Good way to go.”

  Tears streamed from her eyes. “I never want to hurt you.”

  “Then don’t. Come on. Stop arguing.”

  She sighed before she leaned forward farther. She didn’t latch, didn’t bite down on me. No, she kissed me so slowly right on my mouth that I quit breathing, quit thinking. Her voice was no more than a whisper. “Thank you for saving me, Micah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

  She’d whispered, so I did, too. It was that kind of moment. “You’re mine. Do you understand? Mine. You never need thank me for jack shit.”

  Brynna wrapped her arms around my neck. Her breath was warm, and she bit down. I closed my eyes. The immediate surge of heat to my cock came, but unlike other times, the need to do anything about it, the sensation passed fast. I was… content.

  She needed blood, and I had it to give to her. The world shifted left. I might collapse, but that was okay. It was a heady feeling.

  Brynna pulled back. “You okay? Is it too much?”

  She sounded breathy, and I grinned at her. “You’re so pretty, Brynna.”

  Her whole face seemed to beam back at me. How was such a thing possible? “I took slightly too much.”

  “I’m entirely in love with you.”

  She put her fingers on my lips. “Tell me those words when you’re not hard and high.”

  I pressed my forehead to hers. She smelled so good. “But I like feeling hard and high. I like how I feel this close to you.”

  Brynna pushed me back onto the floor and rolled next to me. “I’m not taking advantage of you when you’re like this. You’re not in your right mind. The two of us suddenly going at it is one thing, you being blood drunk is something else.”

  “Here’s a hint.” Why didn’t she know this? “I always want you. I’ll always want you. You’re my wife, right? You can feel free to understand my body is yours.”

  She went still. Had I said something wrong? “I’m not your wife.”

  “Isn’t that what a mate is, really? It’s forever. Like having a wife.” I yawned. “Trust me, if you
weren’t here, I’d be touching myself thinking about you. Fuck, probably shouldn’t have said that.” I closed my eyes. “I’m going to be that weird guy who said that now. The weird guy you’re stuck being mated with. Married. Whatever.”

  Brynna kissed my cheek. “Sometime when we’re not in a shack in the woods, I’m going to ask you to show me how you stroke yourself, thinking of me.”

  She was the coolest. In this fucked up world. My Vampire was the coolest.

  My head pounded, hard. I finally had to give up and open my lids even though I never wanted to again. A cool bit of water hit my lips. I sucked it down. It didn’t help. I sat back on my elbows. Brynna was beautiful in the sunlight. But my head hurt like a son of a bitch.

  “Hi.”

  She winced. “You look like hell.”

  “Well, I feel that way.” I touched the side of her face. “But I’m seriously glad you’re feeling good. I’d feel this way a million times to make you feel better.”

  Brynna sighed. “We’re not doing this again. I mean, I’m never going to need you to do quite what you did again. I could have killed you. I warned you. I…”

  I got to my feet. It wasn’t pretty, but I managed it. “What are our issues currently? We’re kicked out of Genesis. We have to figure out if we want to do something about my father. Doubleday is scary as fuck, and Margot is a clone. Does that about sum it up?”

  She put her hands on her hips. “You’re distracting me.”

  “I don’t seem to be doing a good job at it.” I pointed to my head. “Not a good day to expect me to be kind and gentle, okay? If you’d rather not put up with my bad mood, feel free to run off and find me tomorrow.”

  She didn’t. Instead, she cupped our hands together. “Those do seem like our problems at present. Since we can’t, in fact, change the world back to the way it was.”

  “Then let’s get back to Genesis, deal with my father as a problem first, and find the cloning machine that will kill all other cloning machines.”

  Brynna nodded. “Guess it is finally time for me to face your friends and family there. I like the ones here. They haven’t tried to stake me.”

  “We do different and odd really well around here. My brother came back from the dead. It’s one of those things.” I took her in my arms. “Besides, they’d have to get through me if they weren’t nice to you.”

  She sighed. “Micah. How is this happening?”

  I smoothed my thumb over her lips. “Let’s not worry about how. Let’s be glad it is.”

  “Here they are.” My brother’s voice sounded in the distance, and we both turned to look at him. “Here they are.”

  I looked at Brynna. “Do you suppose they tried Doubleday’s first before they found us here?”

  Chad arrived by our side. His cheeks were red, and he panted. “We have been looking for you two since before dawn. I knew you couldn’t be dead in that burned out place. You had to do the burning.”

  “Burned?” Brynna shook her head. “Did it burn down?”

  Deacon came up next to him. “Sure did. Well done, Micah.”

  I couldn’t take credit for what I didn’t do. “Not me.”

  “So what happened?”

  I didn’t know, but I could almost guarantee—almost—some version of Doubleday was out there, waiting to strike again. Immediately, I thought of Margot. How deep into this was she?

  “We have to talk.” I waited until the rest of them joined us. “First off, Jason is out and running free. I saw him. We talked. That’s not the worst news.”

  Chad shrugged. “He’s nothing to me anymore. I got the girl.”

  I loved my brother’s ability to be sure of himself. I’d never stop wondering if Brynna might not have preferred someone else. I shook my head. Not now. I could obsess later. “The other bit is more complicated.”

  “More complicated than cloning?” I noticed Rachel had gone a little pale. All of her exes running around in the woods again had to be bringing back memories of a time when everything had felt like it might explode.

  “Afraid so.” I looked at Brynna, and she nodded. They had to know about Margot. “He’s not the only clone we need to be concerned about.”

  Deacon had been quiet for so long I knew he was stewing. That could either mean he’d gone grumpy on all of us and would be of no use now or he was plotting out something which might actually work. I left Brynna for a moment to fall into step with him. Lydia side-eyed me and then slowed to walk next to Brynna. We were going to arrive at Genesis and make some demands. We weren’t even hiding it.

  Unless that was about to change because Deacon had a better idea.

  “Upset?”

  A muscle ticked in Deacon’s jaw. “I brought her to Genesis. That was because of me.”

  Margot… he was talking about her. Yes, he’d nearly been tortured to death, she had been locked up, and when we got to them, she’d saved him. At that point, she’d come along to Genesis. “I don’t think she’s bad. She’s cloned. That doesn’t inherently mean evil, right? I mean, look at Chad. He’s like the definition of good. If we had a dictionary, it would show his picture under the word good.”

  Deacon’s eyebrows went up. “Dictionary?”

  “Never mind.” Every once in a while, the fact he’d never lived in Before Time became a problem. Icahn had filled his brain during one of his tamperings with a lot of pop culture. Dictionaries were apparently not one of them.

  “But what if she isn’t?” He sighed. “Have I once again brought pain down on all of our heads?”

  I smirked. “Nah, you’re an old married man now. This shit is on me. This is my battle. My father. My problem. Margot falls into the same category. He’s got her there with him. This falls right into the Lyons shit. Dad made her our doctor. We’ll put this one square on my shoulders.”

  “You put everything on your shoulders.” He shook his head. “Just where you had Apollo tattooed on you. Why did you pick him? You chose all of our tats. Why that one for you?”

  I blinked. That was the farthest thing I’d expected to talk about today. “I want to live in the sun. That’s all I ever wanted.”

  I looked over my shoulder as Brynna laughed. She’d lived most of her existence in the darkness. Maybe we could both figure that out, how to live in daytime. Aloud. And the way we wanted to.

  “Tia.” I stared down the hill at Genesis. “Dad isn’t going to shove you in jail with his grandbaby in your stomach. Go get him. Tell him we’ll all be in the center of the outdoor habitat in half an hour. He can come and talk to me, or we can battle, his Warriors versus ours. You might remind him who is younger and stronger.”

  My sister groaned. “I’m not going to threaten him. I’m not stronger. You can go ahead and threaten him if you want to, but I’m going to deliver your message and get out of the way. Besides, I’m sure he has calmed down by now.”

  He hadn’t.

  My father steamed with anger, but to the credit of all of my cohorts, none of us flinched. He yelled and screamed, called us traitors, and I stood there and took it. When he was done telling me all the things wrong with me—or at least a long list of them—I decided it was my turn to talk.

  “Once upon a time you, were the one of the most honest, trustworthy, upstanding people on the planet. You didn’t break laws. You didn’t even bend them. You walked a straight line.” I sighed. “And then Isaac Icahn came into our lives and, for some reason, decided he wanted to screw with our family.”

  I kept my voice low. I’d learned that trick from him. It covered anger. He didn’t know if I was calm or if I was mad. That gave me power. He, by contrast, had forgotten himself, and now I knew the depth of how pissed off he was.

  I kept speaking. “Your time leading is over. You’re unfit. Step down before we have to take you down. I don’t think you want to know if I can. And it wouldn’t just be me. Your entire family would rise up against you. I don’t think that’s what you want, right? You kept us alive through startlingly miserab
le circumstances. But people are starting to suffer. There are Vampires able to get the jump on us now, and we were given no warning. Plus, you have a possible traitor in your midst you know nothing about.”

  His nostrils flared. I expected him to yell, to scream. But he did nothing. Now just the silent sound of the rain pounding on our heads filled the area around us. No one moved, hardly anyone even seemed to breathe. This was a pivotal moment. I knew it. He knew it. Hell, the universe itself seemed to know it.

  “Step down from your leadership role. Go into advisory. Give Chad your place on the council.” Maybe it would help if I made sure he understood it wasn’t me who was going to take the spot. “Get out of the way before you get us all killed.”

  The rain picked up. We were all going to be drenched, and we’d lured quite the crowd. The civilians were all around us.

  “Micah.” He visibly swallowed. “I’m not saying you don’t have reasonable points. But…”

  Behind me, Brynna gasped. “Vampires. They’re here. They’re everywhere.”

  I whirled around. I didn’t see anything. I didn’t have a signal for any of it, but if she said they were here, they were here. “Friendly?”

  Her eyes were huge. “No, love, not at all.”

  “Incoming,” I shouted, knowing it would get everyone’s attention. The Warriors ran to cover the space, grabbing their weapons from their packs, moving the way we’d been taught. We had to protect the civilians. Even my father acted. Whatever was about to happen with him, we had a job to do first.

  Brynna grabbed my arm. “Something is wrong here. This isn’t a feeding, they’ve somehow been manipulated into thinking they need to massacre everyone. This isn’t going to end fast or easily. I’ll do what I can.”

  I kissed her, straight on the lips. “Be careful. I’m so not ready to be a widower yet.”

  She pursed her lips. “I’m not your wife. If you want me to be, then man up and ask me.”

  “No, you’re my mate. More important, right?”