I had to say something and would have, gladly, if I could have made my tongue work. “Ah….”
Patrick clapped his hands together as he dislodged himself from Carol who I could tell fought to regain control of her emotions. “We need to go.”
Tia stormed out ahead of her father, shooting her mother a look of hurt and anger—almost rage. Glen ran right behind her. If I hadn’t been so horrified by what happened, I might have laughed at how fast he left the Lyons’ tent.
Micah followed, pulling the hood from his sweatshirt over his head as he went. The nights could still be chilly, even though it was spring, and it reminded me to grab my dark sweatshirt from the chair where I’d placed it. Chad waited for me at the door as he called goodbye to his mother.
As I walked past, Carol, the woman who had been the closest thing to a functional parent I’d ever had, grabbed my arm, stopping me. I looked up, scared to meet her eyes, but terrified not to at the same time.
Tia’s mother spoke through gritted teeth. “She’s not ready. You know what she’s like. Tia is all heart. She never thinks with her head. Right now, all of her attention is consumed with Glen. She’s not scared enough.”
“Mother.” Chad’s voice cut through the room like an arrow hitting its target, and Carol let go of my arm.
“Even if that’s true, there is nothing Rachel can do about it.” She nodded like she’d heard her son but her eyes never left mine. “Keep her alive, Rachel.”
I stood frozen to the ground. I wanted to promise her I would. There was nothing I wouldn’t give the Lyons, and for Carol in particular, I would move mountain ranges if she asked me to. Only, I couldn’t promise her I would keep her daughter—my best friend—from harm.
There were too many variables. Too many things that could wrong.
Tears sprung to my eyes and as I tried to talk through them, my voice sounded clogged and strained. “I’ll do my best.”
Chad grabbed my arm. I hadn’t realized he’d come to us. “Get it together, Mom. We’re Warriors. We’ve never had any choice in the matter. Don’t put Tia’s inadequacies on Rachel.”
He yanked me up against him and for the first time, I didn’t object to being handled that way. With his arm around me, he pulled me from the tent. I couldn’t believe it was possible, but I’d never been so relieved to be away from his mother as I was in that moment. Outside, I finally felt like I could breathe again.
Chad sighed. “That wasn’t nice of her, she shouldn’t have done that.”
We walked side by side, his arm around me in a clear gesture of possession. I liked his body heat against the cold fear that permeated my soul.
I had questions and I needed answers. I couldn’t put my head under the covers and pretend nothing had happened, like I might if I watched a horror movie.
“I’ve never thought of Tia as inadequate. She’s strong. She kicked butt in school. What was that all about?”
Chad was silent, and I thought he might choose not to answer me. Finally, he spoke. “I know that’s how she seems to you. She’s the only girl—Mom babied her and….”
His voice fell off. After a minute, I spoke again, needing him to finish what he was going to say. “And?”
“And the things that make Tia a wonderful person—her loving, caring heart—are not going to make her a good Warrior.”
To the Lyons family, there was nothing more important than loyalty. I could only imagine what it had cost Chad to utter those words to me when I knew it went against every ingrained instinct his parents had instilled in them since birth.
“We’ll watch her.”
Chad nodded. “We’ll try.”
A light spray of rain had started by the time we reached our destination. Most of the other Warriors were already assembled as Patrick fit Tia up with the gear she needed to successfully complete the night. Moving to the weapons trunk, I pulled my own bag out of the container.
With six months of practice behind me, I attached my stakes, my machete, and my first aid kit to myself with the ease that comes with performing a task every single night. Even if I’d been half asleep, I could have gotten the job done and that was disturbing unto itself.
How many times over the last few weeks had I done this ritual without paying attention to what I did? Forcing my attention back to the task at hand, I made sure I had all the equipment set up exactly as it needed to be.
Looking up, I saw Tia across the fire pit that lit up the Warrior meeting point. She laughed at something Glen said.
Had Carol and Chad been correct, and I’d never seen what was right in front of my face? Or were they wrong? Did they not know Tia’s capabilities as well as I did?
And if they were right, why didn’t Patrick or Keith put a stop to this and not let her go forward?
Deacon’s voice in my ear made me jump. “Worrying about Princess Lyons?”
I swatted him away. “Don’t call her that. You don’t like Chad—I get that—but Tia has nothing to do with any of that.”
He nodded. “You’re right, of course.” Swinging me around he pulled me up against him and I gasped. “But here’s the thing, Rachel. You’ve spent so much time trying to be a part of their family. I get it. I miss mine, too. You couldn’t even count on your dad and he was here. That makes it worse. Take a look around. No one here has what they have. Almost everyone is alone and the people who are paired up don’t have the Lyons’ secure family grouping. Stop trying to be like them. Be you before you lose yourself in them.”
He let go of me and I fell backwards two steps into Chad’s hard body. Catching my breath from Deacon’s brief but upsetting tirade, I tried to smile at Chad.
“Did he hurt you?” Chad’s eyes were cold, and I was afraid he might go after Deacon. I had enough to worry about without bringing their issues into the fray.
“He couldn’t hurt me. If he tried, I’d beat him down.” I shrugged. “He was just fooling around.”
Chad snarled. “Because if he was, I’ll kick his—“
Keith interrupted. “Mr. Lyons, Ms. Clancy, can I have your attention please? Or are you doing something more important than saving humanity from monsters that want to eat them?”
Chad shook his head and pulled himself together, hiding his shaking hands by shoving them in his pant’s pockets. I hadn’t worried about Deacon hurting me. He was upset about Chad, but I hadn’t lied when I said I could have taken him down. I trained him. I knew all his moves, if he was stupid enough to try any. I sighed. I was more bothered by the things he’d said to me. Was I trying to be a Lyons out of some misguided need to have family?
For a second, I closed my eyes. I needed to be there for Tia tonight, even if she only had eyes for Glen. I couldn’t be contemplating life and whether or not I was obsessed with the Lyons as some sort of coping mechanism.
Keith divided the group up. Due to it being Tia’s first night, it didn’t surprise me that Keith took the Ones out instead of Patrick. There would be a giant conflict of interest for him. These days it was okay for Chad and Micah to go out with him, they were trained fighters, but Patrick was the wrong person to be with Tia. I wondered if Keith would let me go with Tia or if he would separate us.
Finally, his eyes fell on me. He smiled. “Go on, Rachel, go with Tia.”
I smiled. I’d never been so excited to be hunting the things that go bump in the night. I’d promised her mother I would try to keep her safe. I couldn’t do that if we weren’t together. “Chad, you, too. Micah, you go with your dad. Keep him calm if you can.”
“What about me, boss?” Deacon called from a distance away in the woods.
Keith looked skyward before he grinned at Deacon. “Can you behave? Because if you can’t, you can do elevator patrol for the evening.”
“I’ll use restraint.”
Keith nodded. “See that you do. You’re with me, too.”
We gathered into our requisite groups. Following Keith into the woods, I felt the same nervous energy that hit me every nig
ht on my way out of the ‘safe zone’. Not that we were ever really safe. No, but we liked that term. In the ‘safe zones’, other warriors surrounded us, and there was safety in numbers.
The Warriors would be walking the perimeter of the colony tonight to give Tia a feel for what she could expect. When we weren’t bringing out new Warriors, Keith and Patrick tended to let us wander a little bit further to get more combat training.
The idea was that tonight would be an ‘easier’ night. Of course, what should be lightweight could turn out to be Hell on Earth, as it had been for Glen’s first night. I whirled around, looking at my team. Glen wasn’t with us. I knew that hadn’t been a mistake. Maybe Patrick had told Keith to separate Tia from her boyfriend. I approved of the idea. Moving forward, I took up my place next to Tia.
“How are you?”
I kept my voice down. It was protocol. We really shouldn’t be talking at all except that we all did, all the time. Sometimes. Well, not Chad. He never broke the rules. I smiled at the thought. There was something sort of adorable about how good he was all the time.
“Do you think they separated me from him on purpose?”
As I’d been thinking about Chad just a second earlier, I couldn’t fault her for thinking about Glen. Still, we both needed to get our head in the game.
I saw no point in lying to her. “Yes.”
She smiled. “That’s what I thought.”
“Maybe you should have waited to bring him to your parents’ tent if you wanted him with you tonight.”
She nodded. “I’d rather have you.”
Chad turned around and shot us a look. We both nodded as we made our way forward. In unison, we shut off our lights and immersed ourselves in complete darkness.
It was the black of the night that led us on. I searched for the place I always visited in my own mind that pushed me on into the unknown. I don’t know what it is really. I’ve never had a word for it. But it’s a part of me that shows up every night when I need it. I’d found it in myself after I had come back from the abyss Jason had left me in. Inner strength was the best way I could explain it.
The monsters lived in the dark. They could see us, smell us, hear our hearts beat, and the air coming in and out of our lungs as we breathed. The monsters knew our blood flowed and that they were stronger than we were. They needed no further advantage, so we didn’t give them one. No lights would lead them to us.
And they knew what we knew, which was that even as they were capable of dwindling our numbers, of taking out our weaker members—more often than not we beat them. I smiled at the thought. I might be a little sick in the head, but I liked the idea that a Vampire shook in its undead boots when it thought of me.
Tia grabbed my hand. I was shocked to find her fingers were cold and clammy in mine. I squeezed her gently when I felt her start to shake. She really was in big trouble if she reacted this badly to the dark. We hadn’t even found any monsters yet.
Not knowing what to do, I tried to push down my own concerns. Maybe this was her freak out. I’d cried and screamed like a baby when I’d seen my first Vampire. Glen had puked. People reacted differently to stress.
Tia would get it under control. She had to. A sudden pain over took me. It was cold, Vampire cold, and horribly intense. I groaned lightly and in front of me Keith and Chad stopped walking. We all went out together enough that they knew what my groan meant.
I was the most accurate human Vampire detector, and I’d just gone off.
There were lots of them.
Coming right at us.
Chapter Four
It took all my effort not to fall over from the pain of feeling the Vampires. Chad grabbed my shoulders when I swayed, as Keith halted the rest of the group’s progression forward.
“How. Bad. Rachel?” Keith’s voice was low in the darkness. I couldn’t make out his features, but I could hear his tension in his tone.
“It’s a group.”
“Do we need to run, or can we stand and fight?”
Keith wanted to know how many Vampires I felt. They were still a distance away, or all the other Warriors would feel their presence as well. “Stay and fight.”
I hated having to make the decision. I’d had to choose whether we fought before, and as long as I had this strange ability to detect the monsters so much earlier than everyone else, we might as well use it to our advantage.
“All right, kids, this is show time.” Keith’s voice was hard. This was his standard fight signal. When I had been starting out, Keith hadn’t been an active Warrior, he’d only been teaching. Now that we were all above ground, there was no such thing as ‘teaching only,’ and he was back in the field with the rest of us.
I nodded, pulling Tia with me to the nearest tree. As I pushed back against the strong bark, I looked at her and hoped she remembered all of this from the preparation work we did in class.
The others were silent. They hadn’t felt the Vampires yet even as I shivered and tried not to freeze from the inside out. My senses reeled from the enormous pain.
“What’s…?”
Inwardly cursing, I covered Tia’s mouth with my hand. Flipping out was one thing. Getting us all killed was something else entirely. She seemed to have forgotten all of her training.
This moment—the pre-fight—was silent time. She needed to be quiet. Right now.
I felt it the second she sensed her first Vampire. Her body shook violently. I knew the feeling well, and I wished I could make it easier for her. Vampires made us cold. Werewolves brought on the worst case of goose bumps I’d ever had. Well, most Werewolves did. Jason and his pack hadn’t made me react at all, which meant it was possible I was signal deficient when it came to the lycanthrope population.
“They’re here!” Keith’s shout rattled me. I knew it was a large number—I could sense that—but for him to scream meant it was really, really bad. I hoped I hadn’t been wrong when I suggested we stay and fight.
As I flipped on my light, I briefly illuminated the small patch of trees around us and did a quick count. I’d seen four Vampires. That was doable. I switched off the light and squeezed Tia’s hand.
“This is it. You can do it.”
I jumped forward to enter the fray, leaving part of my heart behind with Tia. She was my best friend—my sister—and I couldn’t do this for her, no matter how much I wanted to.
She was going to have to fight on her own. Two Vampires immediately assaulted me. I didn’t handle them well. My mind—so full of fear for Tia—didn’t react as quickly as it usually did, and consequently my body felt sluggish. Still, after hitting the ground hard on my rather sizable rear end, I jolted myself back into concentration.
I rolled left and then I was back on my feet. I could feel my breath coming in and out of my lungs fast—like it always did when I fought the Undead. I pulled my stake from where I had fastened it to my leg as I plunged forward taking down one Vampire while I simultaneously kicked the one behind it.
“Oomph.”
I whirled around in time to see Deacon, his light still illuminated, get hit by the Vampire I’d thrown behind me.
Deacon is stronger and bigger than I am. It doesn’t matter when fighting these creatures. My genes are the same as his. We both joined the unlucky chosen when we were born capable of defending ourselves against the monsters. Still, he did something I’d never be able to do, which was to swing it over his shoulder and throw it to the ground before staking it, hard.
He jumped up as he grinned at me. “Watch where you throw those things.”
I smiled. Only Deacon could make this scenario anything less than miserable. I whirled around as I searched for Tia. She hadn’t moved. Motionless, she stood just where I’d left her.
I rushed to her side, fear making me move faster than I ever had before. If she was hurt, I’d never forgive myself. Rationally, I knew it wasn’t my fault but when Tia was involved, reason was not the process that dominated my brain. It was emotion all the way.
I grabbed her arm as I shook her. “Are you okay?”
She didn’t answer me and I turned on my light. Her eyes were wide—huge—but open and breathing was shallow but steady. What the hell was going on?
I whirled around looking for help. Everyone was engaged. Chad had three Vampires he handled flawlessly in the distance. Keith helped two other members take down four more. I turned around and shook Tia again.
“Tia!” I called her name.
Nothing. Not a movement or a response. Deacon appeared at my side.
“What’s up? Did they get her?”
I shook my head. “Not that I can tell. She’s just not answering.”
He shook her—harder than I had. “Tia, snap out of it.”
We both waited. The fear in my stomach growing with each second she was unresponsive.
Deacon whistled through his teeth. “I think she might be in shock.”
“Not possible. We’re Warriors. We all have the gene. It means we can fight them.”
“Yes.” Deacon nodded as he shook Tia again. “But we’re also human. Lots of things can make us really bad at what we’re supposed to be able to do. It’s the difference between them and us. They’re born to feed, to kill, and destroy us. Above all else, that’s what monsters do. Humans? We can do these things. We can fight—when we have to. We can survive, as a species.” In one swift movement, he put Tia over his shoulder like he had the Vampire. Her head bobbed like a mannequin I’d seen once in a store in Genesis. “Don’t forget, Rachel, not everyone with Warrior genes survived Armageddon.”
Without another word, he took off running, Tia over his shoulder in the direction of the tent city we lived to protect.
“What’s the problem? Is she hurt?” Chad’s panicked voice broke me out of my stupor.
We needed to get her help. I wasn’t even sure what to say to him. What did it mean to be in shock? Why couldn’t I ever decide to shut down completely and let other people take care of me?