I knew a whole slew of Warrior women who wouldn’t particularly enjoy being grouped into that category of women. Although, I doubted Micah was really chauvinistic when it came down to it. His mother could kill as well as any man I knew. Micah spoke again, this time to the women. “Thank you for the soup, ladies. It smells divine. We haven’t had anything homemade to eat in two weeks.”
The way they all sucked in their breath, I would have thought he said two years.
Lydia sat down in a chair next to me. She’d changed her clothes, wearing dark pants and a white shirt with buttons. Her blond hair fell along her shoulders. I didn’t see Charlie, but maybe he was with her frail mother. How sick was the woman?
Lydia touched my arm. “Are you hurt?”
“Ah… no.” She really was… pretty.
The thing about Rachel, the only other woman I’d ever spent time thinking about, was that she hadn’t been gorgeous. I’d thought she was beautiful, but it came from her guts and her glory. She was a survivor. Lydia was hands down the loveliest woman I’d ever seen, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. How was I supposed to deal with the kind of looks this woman had? Compliment her all the time?
“I asked because you took down all those monsters. Saved me over and over. You’ve come out of nowhere and been such a hero.”
I hated that word. “I’m not a hero. Trust me, I have done more fucked up stuff than you can ever imagine.” I wished I hadn’t said fucked after I said it. But Lydia didn’t wince. She just stared at me with her blue eyes, and I wanted to do better. “I’m a Warrior.”
“The kind that come out of the ground?” a second old woman with a cane called from across the room. Everyone hushed. She must be someone important. “The stuff of legends?”
Micah fielded this one. “We’re not legends. We’ve been through some stuff, but we’re real. Yes, at one point Deacon and I came upward. Not necessarily together but, yes.”
Micah’s exodus had been forced upon him when Genesis revolted against Icahn. Mine came when Rachel saved my ass.
“I see the prophecy is coming true.”
Micah closed his mouth and looked anywhere but at the older woman, which left only me to deal with that very strange statement. “The what now?”
She wobbled toward me. “The prophecy the man in white told my grandfather and the whole town long ago. If we just held out long enough, the Warriors would come and save us.”
I took a long breath, steady until Lydia placed her hand on mine—her skin was really soft. “Look, Micah and I don’t know anything about a prophecy or about saving any of you. We’re Warriors from Genesis, and we’re traveling to find out what else is in the world, basically. I’m glad we were around when Lydia and Charlie needed us. If we can spend the night, we’ll be on our way tomorrow.”
A flurry of conversation started again. In Genesis, the Warriors had mostly kept to themselves, and in the Vampire hold, we’d had to keep our voices down. Having this many people speaking loudly all at once was exhausting.
We were brought to an empty home where apparently newlyweds stayed when they first got married. The ladies took all but one set of our clothes with promises to wash them. I hoped they weren’t really stealing them in some sick ritual. It would be just my luck to end up in a twisted town where they preyed on barely clothed guys in their sleep. Why shouldn’t this go badly? Everything always did.
There was just one large bed, and Micah and I lay down in the darkness, pillows separating us. I thought he was asleep until he spoke.
“So Lydia really likes you.” He sounded amused. Why was that funny?
“I’m not exactly sure why.”
“Well, I think we were tied until you threw yourself on top of the Werewolf. It was an impressive move. You didn’t even hesitate. I know he’s not your favorite person, but that was a Chad move. Boom. On top of the Werewolf. I was impressed. She must have gotten stars in her eyes. We know it can’t be your charming personality or pretty face.” He laughed like he’d made a joke. “You are sweet to her. Telling her she was brave, which she was. But you actually saying it? You were like a different Deacon.”
I wasn’t comfortable with this conversation, so I decided to change it. “Where do you think the men are?”
“Well…” Micah cleared his throat. “I really hope they weren’t in the soup we just ate.”
I really—and I meant really—hoped so, too.
The next morning, we stumbled out of bed at the first touch of sunlight, wearing the clothes we’d been in the night before. The fire in the fireplace had kept us warm for a long time, and I should have felt rested. The move I’d made with the Wolf was probably why I wasn’t walking well and my back ached. I stretched, but it didn’t help. Great.
I opened the door to find everything else we’d brought folded and laundered. Since there was no electricity, somebody had spent the night cleaning. I’d have loved to know whom so I could say thank you.
The sky was the gray of early morning in winter. I missed the reds and purples of summer. The clouds were spotty with little white dots that really looked brown more than anything else. It was cold, bitterly so. I bent over to pick up the stuff, dinging my already sore back, and came back inside the house.
Micah accepted his cleaned articles with a nod, and then the two of us were ready to go.
A knock sounded, and Micah grabbed my arm. “We need to be sure how much we want to be involved before you open that door. They’re missing all their men. The Werewolves are attacking regularly. They’re living in poverty compared to Genesis, and it’s rough there. We don’t know who’s in charge.”
Another knock. We had to answer before we got rude. “How involved do you want to be?”
Micah ran a hand through his hair. “I’m following your lead on this one. You tell me. I set out for an adventure, for something other than Genesis, for a life. If this is what that is, then so be it. I’m up for helping. It’s better than the endless drab existence of fighting, sleeping, eating and doing it again.”
I hadn’t realized he felt that way. “We’re going to talk about that. Later.”
“Sure.” He rolled his eyes. “Let’s have a big chat about it.”
I answered the door. Lydia stood there, two mugs in hand. She beamed. Wow. She was somehow even prettier in the morning than she’d been in the dark. I hadn’t slept very much, maybe two hours. Was I starting to lose it?
“Hi,” she said with a grin then walked past me into the cabin. “I saw you were up. I mean, I saw you come out and get the clothes.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
She smiled again. “So I thought you might like coffee.”
“Coffee?” Micah practically skipped past me to grab his mug. “Thanks, gorgeous.”
I really could have done without hearing him call her that. She was. But Micah and his flirtations always got the girl.
“You’re welcome.” She lifted the mug. “Deacon?”
I didn’t usually drink the stuff. It could sometimes make me jittery. I took it because she’d made it. “Thanks.”
“Well, okay.” She rocked back on her feet. “I was hoping you’d come meet with the council. Or what’s left of the council. With all the men gone, it’s kind of a makeshift situation.”
Micah raised his eyebrows. He wanted me to decide. Well… all right. “Sure. When did you want us there?”
“Oh, great.” She touched my arm, and it was like she imprinted her fingers on me somehow. “Thanks. A couple of hours.”
“Sure.” Micah nodded as he imitated my wordage. Asshole. “Where?”
She walked to the window and pointed. Lydia was still in the same outfit as the night before. Had she not slept? “Down that block. The big house.”
“Hey, did you get any rest?”
She shook her head. “Too wound up. I’ll crash eventually. Thanks. Again.”
I waited until she left the cabin before I turned to Micah. “Thoughts would be appreciated.”
“She makes a damned good cup of coffee considering they have no electricity.”
It was too early for violence. “That’s not what I meant.”
He set down his glass and yawned. “I think we both know what it really means when people go missing. Our resident psychopath, Dr. Icahn, who was responsible for all our woes is gone, or at least we think he is. I suppose it's possible he was cloned a bunch of other places. He always said there were other scientists. Maybe there are. The entire male population removed? That seems like an experiment to me.”
“I keep searching the skies,” I confessed to him. “A tower. A big building. Something like the way Icahn ran things. If they took the men, they had to bring them somewhere. No way do you make a bunch of guys walk for more than a few hours without someone getting away or someone dead.”
Micah walked to the window. “There’s nothing as far as the eye can see.”
“Which means nothing.”
He tapped on the window. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe it’s underground.” I pointed. “Where the eye can’t see.”
Where I had spent the first eighteen years of my life. In the darkness, sometimes being brought to the surface to be walked around like an animal they had to occasionally show the sun. In a place where a bright light like Lydia would be snuffed out the first time she blinked the wrong way.
“We find the men. Or at least what happened to them. We help them learn how to defend themselves then help them make themselves safer. Then we move on?”
I raised my cup. “That sounds like a plan.”
“I like a plan.” Micah nodded. “Two-mile radius. I’ll go north and east. You go west and south. We search. Find the opening in the ground. Since I have no other ideas, expect that it will look like Genesis’ does.”
Maybe by the time we got to the council, we’d have something to tell them.
I hadn’t made it very far down the road before Lydia caught up to me. She had on a coat. Not mine, since that had been returned to me with the pile of laundered clothes. Hers was brown and seemed both sturdy and warm. “Where are we going?”
I didn’t know exactly. This was probably going to be a boring day of searching, but everything always had the possibility of exploding at any time. I didn’t want her involved. How long could she stay awake anyway? Worry was an odd emotion for me, but I was doing it just the same. “You should get some sleep.”
“I can’t explain it, Deacon. But since you got here. I just feel like things are going to get better. You are what we’ve been waiting for.”
I stopped moving. “Lydia. You… you say the sweetest things, but I’ve got to tell you, I’m not used to it. I’m not a hero. I’m not even close to one. Truth is, I’m not even that nice of a guy. I hurt people. A lot of them. A good person died. I’m going to try to help you as long as you realize that I’m just as likely to make things really bad as I am to make them better. If we’re on that same page, we’ll get along.”
Her face didn’t fall. She nodded, but I couldn’t be sure she registered what I said to her at all. “My family has been here in Geronimo since the monsters came. Living with the people here, starving sometimes with the people here, dying with the people here. Until yesterday, I never thought there would be anything to live for, anything to believe in. I hold on. That’s what I do. I take care of Charlie. I help my parents. I teach school. There was no hope. Now there is. Maybe you’re an imperfect hero, but you’re the first one we’ve had in a long time. Can you teach us how to fight?”
“Yes.” I sighed. “That I can do. That I will do. Hey, Lydia, what’s your last name?” I didn’t even know it.
“Lydia Matthis. And yours?” I had to give her credit. She could walk fast and have a conversation at the same time. She kept up perfectly.
“Deacon Evans.”
The more I saw of the town, the more I could see what she meant about mess. Everywhere I looked there were claw marks. The Werewolves had been very destructive. That was going to stop, too. They could be overwhelmingly difficult but not insurmountable. These people had put up with being picked apart for too long.
“What are we looking for?” She stared up at the sky.
“The entrance to hell.”
Three
Snowflakes started to come down on us. I side-eyed Lydia to see if she wanted to go back to the town, but she was adamantly studying the ground and didn’t seem to notice. Whatever else she would turn out to be, she was as tough as anyone I knew when it came to the weather. With snow covering the ground, we were looking for steam. It would be the only indicator there was something below. The heat from the underground lair steamed through when it snowed.
“What’s it like? Where you’re from?”
Which place? I almost asked her then thought better about it. She hadn’t done anything—yet—to earn hostility from me. “I’ve lived in three places. My first eighteen years was in a Vampire facility, and the last few were split between habitats both above and below ground. They’ve all been different from each other.”
Lydia paled. Now that was interesting. What part of my answer had made her upset? She cleared her throat. “I hate Vampires.”
Didn’t everyone?
“Do you have a lot of encounters with them?” On our own, Micah and I hadn’t seen any, which wasn’t that strange. Vampires liked to hunt, but it was easier to do so when there was either a caged food supply or a large group of humans living in one particular area together. The two of us by ourselves might be a curiosity but probably not worth the effort to hunt unless they were starving. A town like Lydia’s? It would attract attention. I hadn’t felt a Vampire presence since we’d arrived, which might not be weird. Maybe it was just an off night. Genesis didn’t have those. We were always fighting.
She shook her head. “We almost never see Vampires. But when we have, I just… hate them.”
“Hating them is a good emotion. I can teach you to fight them, too. Before I leave you’ll be all set.”
Lydia let out a long breath, and a gust of fog appeared where she’d exhaled. Seeing our breath in the cold… it was something I could do without. “Maybe you won’t want to leave. Maybe you’ll like it here.”
“I don’t like anywhere, Lydia. That’s part of my deal. Trust me, by the time I leave, you’ll be glad to be rid of me.” I offered her my hand. “We’re not finding anything. Let’s go.”
She took my hand without hesitation, which just showed how little she knew me. “We should keep looking. I love that idea that people could be living beneath our feet.”
“I don’t think you have a habitat down there. You’d know by now. People come up from habitats. They have to. Either to fight the monsters or to scrounge for supplies they can’t make or grow. It’s possible you have a science facility being run by a sociopath. We’ll see.”
She stopped moving. “You say the strangest things. I only understand maybe three-quarters of the things you say about the world. But I love that you’ve left your home. I love that you arrived here.”
“And I can’t decide if you’re just being nice to me because all of the guys have vanished.”
Her smile faded, but she didn’t let go of my hand. In fact, she squeezed my fingers. “They’re cowards. Every last one of them. None of them would ever, and I mean ever, jump on a Werewolf. You’re… amazing. And thank you for speaking the truth, for telling me what you wondered. It’s so much easier if we all just do that. If we somehow say what’s real even if it’s hard.”
I didn’t understand this woman. Not even a little bit.
Micah and I sat across a long table facing six women who constituted Geronimo’s council. I didn’t know how many of them were on the council regularly or who had joined since the men went missing. It was time for some answers. They needed to know us and we them. If Micah and I were going to take on a mission to help these people, then everyone needed to be sure we were a good fit.
The woman with the cane spoke first. “You
must have questions.”
Micah called out. “Can we start with names? It’s always so much more polite to address each other using them, or so my mother always taught me.”
All five of the women, who ranged from the ages of fifty to sixty, blushed. There it was. Micah and the blushing women—of all ages. Internally, I rolled my eyes. My mother had been too busy teaching me how to survive in the Vampire facility to worry too much about manners.
My friend—was that what he had become?—communicated again. “I’m Micah Lyons, and this is Deacon Evans. We come from a place called Genesis.” Before I could interrupt, he kicked me. How did he know I was going to? “It’s about two weeks walk east of here. Well, if you’re going at the pace that we were. Although we weren’t always together, the last few years Deacon and I lived in that place. May I please know your names?”
I had come and gone a bit but that was neither here nor there for Micah’s story apparently.
The same woman as earlier answered him. “I’m Dinah,” she said then indicated the other five women in order of which they were sitting. “These are Gracie, Taryn, Bonnie, Wendy and Charlotte.”
Gracie had red hair and blue eyes. She seemed the youngest of the group. Taryn had deep lines around her eyes and squinted a lot. I bet glasses weren’t an option around here. I was sure I could tell the next three apart better if I cared to but Bonnie, Wendy, and Charlotte all looked very similar to me. Little old women with gray hair. Micah had them all tittering in their seats.
Having done his charm number, he sat back in his chair. “Why don’t you all tell us what’s going on? Deacon and I are strangers. I’d imagine you don’t get too many here. You’re the first people we’ve met since we left home. I was raised to help others when I could; it's part of our Warrior code. We’d like to help, if we can.”
Dinah nodded. “We get very good feelings from you. We really do. As you can see, we have a lot of big problems. Our men are missing, and the Werewolves continue to pick us off one at a time.”