Brynna lightly shoved me. “Don’t get killed, asshat. And stop talking me in circles on this matter. You know what I want.”
I did. If we lived through this, I might give it to her.
The Vampires came down the hills in droves. I’d never seen so many at once, and I would have told anyone who asked, up until that moment, I’d seen a ton of them coming at me.
My attention was so fixed on the scene—on the way they seemed to glide rather than walk, in their ability to practically float above the earth—that I didn’t even realize my father was next to me.
“I tried to figure out once when I first saw my first Vampire.”
It seemed a funny thing to say before battle. “Did you figure it out? Must be Before Time. Like we didn’t know that’s what they were but those riots and the things happening before cold storage.”
He smirked. “Cold storage? Like that. Yes, then. We had one in lock up in a local police station, and I went with my crew to check him out. Who knew that was going to start a thing?”
Conversation stopped. The Vampires charged, and so did we. There was no hand-to-hand with the Vampires, you either staked and ran, burned them up, or they ended you. It felt like I had grown up doing this. That wasn’t true. The first sixteen years of my life had been Vampire-less.
And yet…
My body knew how to do this. Worry for Brynna came and went before coming and going again. She knew how to take care of herself. Chad jumped down the hill, rolling to the ground to drop kick a Vampire getting too close to Glen. Rachel swung from a tree branch, kicking two Vamps in their heads, and then jumped down to stake them. I guessed she was feeling well enough to do that. Or adrenaline had kicked in. She was fine, too.
I struck the Vampire in front of me with my stake. It went down into dust. I wore the green hoodie I’d swiped from one of them once right before the dusting. It wasn’t at all easy. I might need to give lessons in doing it sometime.
My mind did this when I battled until it went blank. I knew the nothingness would come. The battle-weary exhaustion where there was only staking, only the death, only the endless. Like realizing that about myself brought it on, I lost myself to the dance. The death dance…
I didn’t know how long I fought or how many of them I killed. The only one I became aware of after the fact was the one I didn’t kill.
I missed him. Or he dodged. I’m not sure. It happened. A lot. Like a million times, maybe. I missed him. He grabbed my father. It was a funny thing to see. I’d never seen a Vampire grab someone before. Not like this one did. Scratch. Bite. Wound. Kill. Yes. But he grabbed my father. I reached for him and hit the ground.
Why was I on the ground? I was sort of confused. My breath came and went, came and went. I rose as fast as I could, finally registering that the Vampire dragged my father away. I chased after them. Why would they take him? To turn him. I knew the answer. It had been years since they’d needed to change anyone, but this was how they’d do it.
The Vampire was fast. So much more so than I was. This was the nightmare. We didn’t want to be Vampires. What had Brynna said to me? Sometimes they got Warriors, sometimes they changed Warriors, she’d gotten a few herself. My father fought. He struggled. Of course he would. He was strong.
I called out. “Dad, hold on. I’m coming.” I ran as hard and fast as I could. “Brynna, help me.” I needed her. She was faster than I was, stronger.
I ran. And ran. Somehow, I lost them in the woods. A shout. I followed the sound. Fuck, I couldn’t breathe. Why was this so hard? I looked down. I was bleeding from my abdomen. When and what had happened? I didn’t even know.
I kept running. Another shout. I got to the scene in time to see Brynna picking the Vampire off my father.
“Hey!” Fuck. I didn’t know why I shouted.
The Vampire that Brynna tossed got to his feet. Before I checked on Dad, I had to get rid of him. I jumped on his back. A Deacon move usually, but I wasn’t going to be picky. I staked him from the back, right into his heart, and he vanished. I hit the ground into his pile of dust, but rebounded onto my feet a second later.
I reached Brynna, staring down at my father, and his unseeing eyes. “I… No.” I was ready to perform CPR. I’d get his heart started again. I knew how. I’d known how even before I was a Warrior. Lifeguarding class to meet women. I knew how.
Brynna squatted down, her hand on my arm. “Micah. He’s gone. He’s already changing, becoming a Vampire. They turned him. Can’t come back once it starts. You can’t come back.”
“Rachel fought it off.” She’d been scratched. She didn’t turn.
Were those tears coming down Brynna’s face? “Just a scratch. Not full on changing. No one survives this. Not even those immune to it.”
Of course, Brynna would know. The memories. I shook my head. “I…”
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” She’d never called me that before. Weird thought. Everything felt slow. My father was gone. Where had he gone? I… I stood up, nearly knocking Brynna over.
“Why did they do this?” I pointed at my father. “Why take him specifically? They targeted him.”
She nodded, rising slowly. “There was some sort of compulsion given during the feeding. I put my thoughts into the mix. They’re slowly starting to back off. But to hurt specific targets was in there. All of your friends and family, actually. But not you.”
Not me? “Why the fuck not?”
Right then, I’d have been okay with it. Kill me. Take me. A thought dawned on me. Why was I so fucking slow? Why was this taking so long? What was happening? “He’s becoming a Vampire.”
She looked down. “He is one.”
“No, he’s not. We can cure him.”
“Maybe.” She shook her head. “Maybe not. I can take him. I can bring him to the lab. We can wait and see. If that’s what you want.”
She was right. I hated her words, but they were truth. He likely couldn’t be cured. This was it. This was his end. He was… a Vampire. And all of this was my fault.
I couldn’t fix it. I could only… I grabbed my stake.
Out of all the eventualities in the world, out of all the things that had and hadn’t happened—even with Chad becoming a Vampire—I’d never imagined this one. I couldn’t leave him like this. There was a promise Warriors made to one another. We would never, not any of us, become a Vampire.
I took my stake. It was time. It wasn’t a choice. It was a necessity and some sort of dramatic irony I should have seen coming a mile away if I wasn’t such a fucking idiot. His eyes flew open, and gone was his usual hardened gaze, instead confusion and the ever-present bloodlust in the eyes of the Vampire wearing my father’s body. I lifted my stake. I never gave him a chance to know.
Right there on the cold ground, I staked my father. He dusted. Into nothingness. One second, so present in the world I had to challenge his leadership and the next, dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.
I breathed like I’d run a marathon. Oh, right. I was hurt. Or maybe this was…
Brynna’s arms came around me from behind, and I shrugged her off. “Don’t.”
“Micah.” She sounded hurt. “Let me…”
I rose. “No.”
The icy wind blasted my face, the rain pounding down.
“I can go.” Her voice was low. “I can understand how…”
Enough. “I’m in love with you, Brynna. And if you have to somehow make this about you, about you being a Vampire, then so be it, but I can’t make you feel any better because I can’t feel a damned thing.”
And she was going to have to live with that.
Being Brynna, she didn’t run. I expected her to yell. Instead, she hugged me again. Despite my having told her no. I closed my eyes. Her body was warm. I wasn’t ever going to be okay again, or at least not the old version of okay I’d been before tonight. However little okay I actually was.
When it came down to it, I did like the hug.
Chapter 14
Margot stit
ched my stomach, and it should have hurt. I’d declined the numbing cream she wanted to put on me. A little pain would be wonderful after this huge amount of nothing wafting through me right now.
“Micah? You okay?” Brynna raised her eyebrows.
I shrugged. In the room next door, my sister wept loudly. They’d probably sedate her if she wasn’t pregnant. Tia had a way of turning every tragedy we went through to her own personal narrative as though she was the only one going through it. I rubbed my eyes. Maybe I could take a page out of her book. I could start ranting. Yelling might do something about this whole numb thing.
Margot raised her eyes to look at me. “You’re done. Micah? Are you hearing me?”
“I’m hearing you.” I jumped off the table, and she hissed a breath.
“Careful. You don’t want to tear them.”
I should ask how many people we lost. I should try to find out if the civilians were okay. I should go see my mother. I should check on my little brothers. My big brother, his pregnant wife. I should know how my nephew was.
I cocked my head to the side. “Have you been betraying us this whole time when we trusted you with our most needy people? Our tiny children? And the secrets we tell no one?”
Margot got to her feet from the stool where she’d sat. Next to me, Brynna shifted. Did she intend to stop me from doing something or help me do it? I couldn’t really tell. The whole numb thing. I didn’t even know if I cared how Margot answered this, one way or another.
Deacon was suddenly next to me, too. I turned to stare at him. “I was getting ready to ask Margot if she knew she’s a clone.”
Her eyes widened, and she paled.
I pointed at her. I wasn’t reading people really well right now. “Does that look like a response someone would have if they knew?”
Deacon grabbed my arm. “Come on. You’re done. You’re going to sleep or get wasted. Margot, don’t go anywhere. I have questions for you. Brynna, could you watch her for a second? Make sure she doesn’t try to run. I’ll settle down your guy here, and then we can switch spots.”
Brynna nodded. “I could take him.”
“I’m not a toddler.” I shoved out of his hold. “I don’t need to be managed.”
Margot bent over, her hands on her knees. “Don’t let him break those stitches. I don’t think I’m mentally in a position right now to keep my hands steady.”
“No one thinks you’re a toddler.” Deacon’s voice was calm. “But you’ve had a shock and…”
I interrupted him. “A shock? I’ve had a shock? I don’t have shocks anymore. Maybe once. In a time you never knew, I could expect things to go a certain way. I could expect things in general. Not now. Not anymore. Now, I have to anticipate that everything sucks and it’s always worse than I could have imagined. My father being dragged off to die in some sort of plot Margot may or may not have had something to do with? Yeah, I should have seen his death coming. I’m not shocked. Frankly, I’m numb. I’m bored. And I’m over this whole fucking thing.”
Brynna was in front of me in a flash. Her Vampire speed. I’d never get used to it. “I’ve got him, Deacon. You stay with Margot. Find out if she did this. I know Doubleday did. But how far this goes, I don’t know.” Brynna took my hand. “Come. Please. With me. If you need to yell and scream, you can, at me, outside.”
I didn’t want to yell and scream. “Why would I want to?”
Deacon patted me on the arm. “We got this.”
“Got what?” What in the hell was everyone talking about?
Brynna tugged me outside. The cold air hit me but didn’t clear my head. “Why can’t I think?”
“You don’t have to think. You only have to come with me, okay?” We were walking toward my tent. Maybe she was tired. I wasn’t. I’d never seen so many people standing outside in the middle of the night. They hushed when we passed, their gazes on us. Were they staring at Brynna because she was a Vampire? I’d fucking end them.
A woman ran up to us, and I caught my breath. She was older, and I knew her because she worked in the mess hall. “Micah, we’re all here to support you. Your father was a good man. I know it had gone sour these last few years, but we believe in the Lyons. We believe in you.”
“Believe in me?” I stumbled, and only Brynna’s hand on me kept me upright. “Don’t believe in me. Believe in Chad if you want to. He’s worth it… I’m…”
“Okay.” My mate tugged me on. “Thank you. He’s exhausted. Thank you for your support.”
I wasn’t exhausted. Still, when we went into the tent, Brynna laid me down on the bed and drew me to her. I let her. She held my head to her chest, and I could hear her heartbeat. Strong. Steady. Amazing that it did. I closed my eyes. “Do you need to feed?”
“Sshh. No. I think you need to feed more than I do, but neither of us is going to worry about hunger right now.”
I closed my eyes.
The wind howled, the snow came down on our heads in heaps, yet we all braved the cold for my father’s funeral. The ground was frozen, so we hadn’t even dug an empty grave to commemorate him. He’d have an empty urn instead. My mother wanted to come up for the funeral. He’d apparently “spent enough of his life underground,” and so here we all were freezing.
What had I learned in the two days since his death? I kept asking myself that, because it was what he once would have asked me.
“What did you learn failing the exam, Micah?”
“What did you learn crashing the car, Micah?”
What had I learned since I got my father killed? Well, there were all kinds of grief. There was a grief of what was not said. The grief of what was. Would I have unmanned my father in front of everyone he knew if I’d known he was going to die? No. Should I have done it in any case? Should I have done it if I’d known he would live fifty years? No.
“You know what,” my sister called out, interrupting Tiffani. She’d been saying something about my father’s heart for service. I hadn’t really been listening.
What have you learned, Micah? Well, I don’t much care what anyone says most of the time.
Tia rose. “Dad’s on his way here, now. I mean, let’s face it, everyone gets cloned, right? Chad’s a clone. Margot’s a clone.” She had been cleared from all wrongdoing. I didn’t know if believing her was a good thing or a bad thing. What did it matter? Life sucked. “I bet he’s on his way here. Let’s not mourn him. Let’s be happy he’s coming back. Hell, even Jason is out there somewhere.”
“Sit. Down. Tia.” Chad spoke through clenched teeth.
Glen shook his head. “Don’t talk to her like that.”
Even in death, there was nothing more divisive than my dad. Here he was, splitting up the family again. And he was only here in metaphor or symbolically or some shit. I laughed. That wasn’t appropriate, but I’d long since passed over the line of civility.
What have you learned, Micah? Well, I’m a little bit fucked in the head.
Tiffani called out, “Keith has not been cloned.”
All right, I’d had enough. Beside me, Brynna shifted in her seat. My mate was turning out to be seriously there for me all the time. Maybe when I stopped being so screwed up, I could thank her.
I rose. “You people have no idea what you’re talking about when you talk about clones.” I rocked back on my feet. “You’ve seen the ones they lose. Chad. Margot.” She winced. The doctor really hadn’t like being cloned. “Icahn when he was here. But this whole thing can and does go wrong. Or they can make it go wrong. A whole house of them. Three arms. Half a liver. Two heads.” The mess of the place, the sheer horror of a funhouse gone so distorted it would never, ever leave my mind. “People screaming for help. My father wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to handle this.” And here I was, betraying him in memory, speaking ill of the dead. But messing up was what I did. “None. I don’t know what to do or if there is even anything to do about it.” I looked down at the snow. “Don’t listen to me. Don’t talk to me. Don’t trust me.
I know very little. What I do believe is he loved you, Tia. From the moment you were born, you were his girl. And, Luke and Ashton.” My younger brothers, they had to know. “I remember when you were born, he was so happy. He loved you. And Chad.” I nodded at my oldest brother so he’d understand what I couldn’t even say. “You were everything. You were all his legacy. You were everything. Mom, I…”
She rose slowly. “Micah, you didn’t know him. Not when I first met him. He was you. Or somewhat like you. You’re kinder than he ever was. But don’t assume how he ended or the middle bit was how he started out.” Her voice broke. “He wasn’t perfect, but he loved his family and tried to keep everyone safe.”
That seemed to be the last statement on the matter. The funeral broke up afterward, and most of the civilians who had come decided to go back underground. It was funny. We’d all hated the below ground existence, but up against the snow, some of the population chose to go back down until spring. Like bears hibernating…
“He loved you, and at the same time, he knew he wasn’t a good father to you.”
I stopped. Brynna had been so quiet I hadn’t even known she was behind me. I both wanted to reach for her and to tell her to leave me alone. I’d never been such a battle of emotions ever.
I shut my eyes. “You know that how?”
“I have his memories.”
Well, that was news to me. I lifted my lids. “What? He was a Vampire for three seconds.”
“Nevertheless, they passed to the hive mind, and here I am with them. I’ve struggled with what to tell you. I have to say, your mother is wrong. You are not your father. You’re what he should have been.” She touched my arm. “That being said, he did love you.”
She sucked in a breath, her eyes distant. Suddenly, a memory moved through me. It took me a moment to recognize myself as a toddler. My face was rounder, my eyes seemingly bigger. I was on my father’s shoulders, which meant I saw myself from below. He laughed at something I said. It changed. He threw me a ball, and I caught it, easily. Pride wafted through him. Instance after instance flew through my consciousness until a recent one came into view.