He finally turned away and walked out of the building. The door slammed behind him and the atmosphere released its choking hold.
My shoulders immediately sagged from both relief and the debilitating weight of where we had ended up.
This was not how today was supposed to go. My father was not supposed to be alive anymore. And I really wasn’t supposed to be locked in this prison for real.
I turned into Vaughan and threw my arms around his neck. “I love you,” I cried into his chest. “I love you so much.”
His entire body stilled at my confession. He took a steadying breath as if he needed to absorb the depth of my words and then his arms wrapped around my waist and he squeezed me so tightly I could hardly breathe.
“Say it again,” he demanded in my ear.
“I love you.”
I felt his kisses all over my forehead, trailing down my temple, pausing at my ear before he made his way across the line of my jaw. I tilted my head and gave him access to my lips.
I tasted the sweat and dirt on his lips, my own mingling with his; but beyond the struggle of our day, I also tasted him. He kissed me hard and fast. He didn’t linger or turn it into something intimate. He just let me know that he loved me too, that I was his, that I belonged to him.
When he pulled back, his hand found my chin and his fingers held me in place. He stared down into my eyes and spoke with breathtaking conviction. “I love you too, Tyler. You’re here, do you understand? You live here.” His free hand swept up and pressed against his heart. He moved his hand to my chest. “This is forever. You’re mine now. You’re my family. You’re my future. He’s not going to touch you. I swear it. And we’re not going to stay here, because I have a life to start with you. A life I plan on fighting for with every single piece of me.”
I lifted my hand to cup his rough jaw. His beard was gritty with dirt, sticky with blood. There was a cut across cheek that still trickled and his left eyebrow had started to bruise and swell. “I trust you,” I whispered. “You can have my future. You can have me. All of me.”
I watched his eyes churn with the deepest emotion. Love, adoration, trust, commitment, hope and something so soul-deep I couldn’t find a name for it swirled in his blue depths and made me feel more than I had ever felt in my life.
I had been afraid to tell him because I was afraid I would lose a piece of myself. I felt so shattered after Logan died that I was afraid loving Vaughan would be like giving away whole pieces of myself that I would never get back.
I had been wrong.
Instead, I felt found again. I felt whole again. I felt my entire existence piece itself back together and become the person I was supposed to be… the life I was supposed to live.
And I was bound and determined to live that life with Vaughan.
Matthias had gotten too cocky. He’d let his success go to his head and because of that, he underestimated us. He’d made a mistake by not killing us now. He should have taken his gun and ended every last one of us.
Because there was no way we would let him win. There was no way in hell we would let him take us back to the Colony so he could torture us for the rest of eternity.
By letting us continue to live, he had sealed his own fate.
He was a dead man.
I would kill him myself at the earliest opportunity and I had absolutely no doubt there would be one.
A choked gurgle drew my attention and I reluctantly left Vaughan’s arms to check on Diego. His naturally tanned skin had paled from loss of blood and pain. His soldier stood over him looking pathetically helpless without a weapon and nothing to do. He fidgeted back and forth on his feet, crossing himself nervously and whispering something that sounded like frantic prayers.
When I leaned over Diego, the man started pleading with me in soft Spanish. He put his hand on my shoulder and started speaking so rapidly, I couldn’t even pick out the few words I knew.
“Lo siento,” I whispered to him. “I don’t understand. Only English. Uh… Solo English.”
He shrugged one shoulder. The look of helplessness on his face tugged at my heart. Under different circumstances this man could have tried to kill me. If Matthias wasn’t in the picture, Diego probably would have sent him after us. But we didn’t have the luxury of different circumstances now and these circumstances had turned us into allies.
“I’ll help him,” I promised with slow words. I gave him a thumbs up, hoping he would get the point. “He’ll be okay.”
I looked down at Diego. He was definitely not going to be okay. In fact, I was pretty sure he was going to die tonight.
I maneuvered his body so I could rip the sheet I had been using to stop his blood flow completely off the bed. Then I rearranged it and tucked the non-bloody side back beneath his wet shirt. Diego moaned weakly every time I moved him. His eyes never opened though, I could see that he was in too much pain.
“Is he going to live?” Reagan spoke softly behind me.
I turned around and told her the truth. “I have nothing to clean his wound with. I have no way to stop the bleeding. He’s already lost a lot of blood as it is.” I glanced back down at Diego and for the first time I noticed the tick in his jaw, the strong way in which he kept his mouth shut. It was a strength I hadn’t expected to see. I turned back to Reagan, “I’m not sure.”
She nodded once before bending down to whisper something in his ear. Diego didn’t verbally acknowledge her, but I watched his torso harden, I watched something like determination slip back into his pained expression.
She didn’t offer to repeat what she said to him and I had a feeling she wouldn’t have told us if we asked. When she stood back up, we moved to the other corner with Hendrix and Vaughan.
As soon as we were huddled together, Hendrix shared, “Andy let the Feeders out. He thought they would give us enough time to get out.”
Vaughan nodded once. “It almost worked.”
“It also almost got us killed,” Reagan groaned. “And now I’m covered in Zombie goo.”
“My brothers will be back,” Vaughan spoke in a soft voice. “They’ll regroup, grab more weapons and come back for us.”
“Matthias will be waiting for them,” Reagan warned in a soft voice.
“Good,” Vaughan said simply.
Hendrix nodded, he agreed. “We’ll be waiting for them too.”
I let this new reality settle over me and embraced it with more courage than I had ever felt in my life. I wasn’t scared anymore. I wasn’t afraid of Matthias or the pain he promised. I had fought him and survived. I would do it again and again and again until he was nothing but a corpse with my bullet buried in his chest.
This wasn’t over.
It was only just beginning.
Look for Volume Eight of Love and Decay, Season Three, available now.
Keep reading for a sneak peek of Season Three, Episode Nine!
About the Author
Rachel Higginson was born and raised in Nebraska, but spent her college years traveling the world. She fell in love with Eastern Europe, Paris, Indian Food and the beautiful beaches of Sri Lanka, but came back home to marry her high school sweetheart. Now she spends her days raising their growing family. She is obsessed with bad reality TV and any and all Young Adult Fiction.
Look for more from Rachel in 2015.
Other books by Rachel to be released in 2015 are Every Wrong Reason, an Adult Contemporary Romance, Bet on Me, an NA Contemporary Romance and Love and Decay, Season Four, a Dystopian Novella Series about Zombies, the end of the world and finding someone to share it with.
Other Books out Now by Rachel Higginson:
Love and Decay, Season One
Love and Decay, Volume One (Episodes One-Six, Season One)
Love and Decay, Volume Two (Episodes Seven-Twelve, Season One)
Love and Decay, Season Two
Love and Decay, Volume Three (Episodes One-Four, Season Two)
Love and Decay, Volume Four (Episodes Five-Eight, Season
Two)
Love and Decay, Volume Five (Episodes Nine-Twelve, Season Two)
Love and Decay, Season Three
Love and Decay, Volume Six (Episodes One-Four, Season Three)
Love and Decay, Volume Seven (Episodes Five-Eight, Season Three)
Love and Decay, Volume Eight (Episodes Nine-Twelve, Season Three)
Reckless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 1)
Hopeless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 2)
Fearless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 3)
Endless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 4)
The Reluctant King (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 5)
The Relentless Warrior (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 6)
Breathless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 6.5)
Fateful Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 6.75)
The Redeemable Prince (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 7)
Heir of Skies (The Starbright Series, Book 1)
Heir of Darkness (The Starbright Series, Book 2)
Heir of Secrets (The Starbright Series, Book 3)
The Rush (The Siren Series, Book 1)
The Fall (The Siren Series, Book 2)
The Heart (The Siren Series, Book 3)
Bet on Us (An NA Contemporary Romance)
Bet on Me (An NA Contemporary Romance) coming 2015
The Five Stages of Falling in Love, an Adult Contemporary Romance
Every Wrong Reason, an Adult Contemporary Romance
Follow Rachel on her blog at:
http://www.rachelhigginson.com/
Or on Twitter:
@mywritesdntbite
Or on her Facebook page:
Rachel Higginson
Or sign up for her newsletter:
Newsletter
Please enjoy a sneak peek of Episode Nine, Season Three.
Chapter One
1076 Days after initial infection
Question: How does one survive the night when one’s worst nightmare has come true?
Answer: By imagining how to kill said nightmare over and over and over.
Matthias Allen paced in front of my cell like he was the caged prisoner and I was the one announcing the death sentence. His face cringed with fury, his dark eyes glittering black in his raged out state. He looked more insane than ever.
And all of that fury, or most of it, was directed at me.
It was odd to have someone hate me this much. I had never been the recipient of this many negative feelings.
Not that I didn’t deserve Matthias’s bad mojo, it was just bizarre.
Before the Zombie Apocalypse, in those carefree days that seemed more and more ridiculous compared to my new reality, everyone liked me. I had been a likeable person.
I didn’t enjoy conflict, so I didn’t cause big scenes or drama with my friends. I didn’t even stand up to Quarterback Chris when he acted like a total douche. I just went with the flow, happy to have a ripple-free life.
But now my entire existence rippled. No, not rippled. That was too tame of a word. I rocked. And crashed. And wrecked every single thing I touched.
I was an ocean in the midst of a perfect storm. My waves crashed with deadly ferocity, pulling everything around me under before tossing them to the surface again.
I was an earthquake. The earth trembled beneath my feet. The ground opened up where I stepped and threatened to swallow whole everything I held dear.
I was a volcano. I was a tsunami.
I was a tornado that razed everything in my path, destroying everything in my wake.
And that destruction had come to Matthias and annihilated his carefully controlled life. No matter how often I justified my actions or accepted Kane’s sacrifice, I took everything that Matthias loved.
And killed it.
Yes, he was an evil dictator bent on controlling everything and every person he could get his hands on. Yes, he was a sadistic lunatic that would strangle the life out of me at his first chance.
Yes, he planned to torture me until I screamed my submission and paid for my sins.
But he was also a man that had been upended by the force of me. While I didn’t exactly feel repentant for my actions, I did have to adjust to this new version of me.
I wasn’t Reagan Catherine Willow, good daughter, good friend, good girlfriend, good-ish student. I didn’t have a promising future laid out before me. I didn’t float mindlessly through the day, believing everything would be wonderful because I was happy and nothing could take away that happiness. I didn’t have good chances for survival.
I was now, Reagan Catherine Willow, Zombie hunter, dismantler of evil regimes and savior to freedom. I was a rebel. I was a zealot. I was a fighter that would never give up.
I made enemies wherever I went. More people hated me than liked me.
I could die today or in fifty years, but I would not die a shallow, fickle child that stood for nothing and fell for everything.
I would die a woman. A woman with convictions and principals. I knew what I believed, without doubts and without fear. I knew the difference between good and evil and that sometimes they bled together, but there was always right. I knew I had a purpose. I knew I would always need a purpose.
And I knew what it was like to care more about other lives than my own.
The Zombie Apocalypse had changed me in a lot of ways. But not all of those changes were bad.
They were just bad enough to smudge the edges of my moral compass. But I still believed in freedom. In justice. I still stood for liberty. I still held convictions that defined who I was and who I would always be.
I just had enough life experience to make murder a gray area.
Because I sure as hell wasn’t going to let the quality of life get in the way of ending Matthias Allen.
Hendrix’s strong hand wrapped around mine and squeezed. I dropped my head to his shoulder, feeling the heavy exhaustion from too many sleepless nights.
“We’re going to get out of here, Reagan,” he whispered into my dirty hair. His lips brushed the top of my head and I closed my eyes against the intensity of his sweetness. “I swear it.”
“I believe you,” I whispered back. I believed him because I couldn’t face not believing him. “We’re going to get out of here, but not before I wring every last drop of blood from his lifeless body.” I purposefully raised my voice so everyone could hear my threat.
Matthias’s big head swung my direction, the expression that he wore promised a world of pain. “If only y’all could put your money where your mouth is.”
“Let me out and I’ll do my best,” I returned with a smile. Hendrix’s hand squeezed tight. He hated how I antagonized Matthias. He’d much rather I waited until the right opportunity and then let my gun do my talking for me.
If only I had that self-control.
A slow smile spread across Matthias’s face. “Haven’t we done this before? Your best just is not good enough.” He rubbed at his side, arrogance and victory blasting off him.
I had tried to kill him before and didn’t succeed. Although I did wound him. That had to count for something, right? It wasn’t exactly a bull’s eye, but I hit the outer rings.
Fifty Points to me.
The door opened and one of his men rushed inside. The dusty wind chased him in, whistling through the narrow crack to the outside. Something that looked like ash drifted over his head and I sniffed the air, wondering what it could be.
The man stomped his feet and shook out his head the moment the door was closed. He brought the stench of rotting Zombies and embers with him.
“It’s nasty out there,” he growled, spitting dirt with each word. “I didn’t know they had weather like this down here. You can barely see the hand in front of your face ‘cuz of all the dirt and the wind’s blowing so hard it ‘bout knocked me sideways.”
“You scared of a little dust?” Matthias taunted. The rest of the men snickered. “We’ve got bigger problems to worry about than the forecast.”
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The man took a step back and turned to the side. “It makes hunting down children difficult, is all I’m sayin’.” He shook his head again. “And the fire is picking up. The boys are having trouble keeping it contained.”
Matthias cursed under his breath before grabbing two of his men by the backs of their collars and shoving them toward the door. “If you want to get anything done right, you have to do it yourself. Let’s go.” They pushed through the door, into conditions that looked, from my vantage point, more dangerous than a little bit of dust, and disappeared into the shocking darkness of early afternoon. The usually glaring sun was blotted out by churning clouds that flashed the whitest lightning.
The Mexican man that had stayed with Diego, who had told us his name was Javi, started laughing animatedly and pointing toward the door. His eyebrows pushed into his hairline while he spoke rapid Spanish. I had no idea what he said, but I guessed he didn’t see weather like this very often. He laughed under his breath and rubbed his rough, dirty hands over his scruffy chin.
I looked at Hendrix and raised my eyebrows. “Do you think your brothers got out okay?” I whispered, hoping nobody else would hear me.
“They did.” I read his lips because his voice hadn’t made enough sound. “They’ll know how to stay alive.”
I hoped the same was true for us.
I looked around at the rest of our cell. Vaughan and Tyler sat huddled together, their arms wrapped around each other. Tyler looked more relaxed than usual, even though we were locked up and her father had promised to kill us.