Now that had been a response I hadn’t anticipated.
***
Everyone else had scampered off an hour earlier, and now I watched Micah and Deacon leave in the darkness. They walked side-by-side toward their tents. Micah laughed at something Deacon said and I shook my head. I hadn’t expected the two of them to become friends. It was a good thing for both of them.
Turning around, I regarded Jason who watched me with an amused glint in his eyes.
“What?”
“You did great today.” He sat down on my bed. “You’re a natural leader.”
“Thank you.” I shrugged as I walked toward him. “There’s nothing natural about it.”
“Want to tell me why your bed smells like Deacon?”
Oh no. “It’s not what you think.”
“I don’t think anything. I don’t smell him on you or I’d be losing my mind. But he did sleep here, didn’t he?”
I nodded. There was no point in lying with Jason’s sense of smell. “He did. Once.”
“I’m not going to be able to stay here with his scent on the bed.”
I hadn’t thought about that. Wow, this was bad. “We could change the sheets.”
“We can burn them.” He stood back up grinning from ear-to-ear. “Tonight, you stay with me in my tent.”
That probably made more sense anyway. Jason really shouldn’t be away from his pack right now. I had no idea what his father was going to say to them. He’d admitted he didn’t want to be here or to have Jason with me. If this was going to work, we would have to be around to halt his interference.
“I’ll grab a few things and meet you there.”
He shook his head. “I’ll wait.”
“Thank you.”
I rushed around the room picking up my stuff and shoving it in my backpack. A benefit of having Jason actually being in my home was that I would finally have all the things I needed to fight properly instead of being virtually helpless in his presence.
My Vampire radar went off and I groaned.
“You okay?”
I looked up at him, trying to smile. His father was right. A relationship with me would be filled with pain.
“There are Vampires near by.”
He sniffed the air. “I can’t scent them yet.”
“What can I say? I’m talented.”
“In so many ways. I’m not surprised the Vamps are running about. It is nighttime.”
I stood up as I picked my bag off the floor. “Not for much longer. Soon they won’t be able to come here and attack anymore.”
He held out his hand. “That’s right.”
We walked together through the tent flap. The cold air hit me and I shivered, wishing I had taken the time to get some warmer clothes from the storage supply shed.
“Think we can make it to your campground without running into a member of the Undead?”
He sniffed the air. “I can smell them now. They’re all around.”
I sighed. “On that note.” I pulled my stake off my leg where it was almost permanently strapped.
Jason pointed. “There’s one.”
I looked in the direction he’d indicated. He was right. My heart stuttered.
Here it is.
The clothes. I’d always know the clothes. They were the last ones Chad had ever worn. I wondered if the Undead changed or if they were forever dressed in their last outfit.
I could barely speak but I got the words out through the lump that had formed in my throat. “It’s Chad.”
Even as Jason stood in his human body, he growled like a wolf. “I’ll end it for you now.”
“No.” My voice was barely a whisper. “He’s here for me. I’ll do it.”
“Rachel….”
I interrupted him. I knew what he was going to say; I’d have said it to him if the situation were reversed. I appreciated his need to protect me but I couldn’t be saved from this task. It was mine to own.
“Keep the others off me. I don’t need a swarm of Undead right now.”
He nodded as he briefly touched the back of my neck. “They won’t get near you.”
“Thank you, Jason.”
I walked forward to Chad. The world faded away with each step I took. It wasn’t cold anymore. It wasn’t dark. I had no senses. All of my attention focused on the task at hand.
I’d told Jason that Chad had come for me. That was true beyond which I’d understood before. Sure, Icahn sent him to come after me because he was Chad, and Icahn had known it would hurt me. But maybe Chad had come here for this very moment. Maybe if there was a part of him that was still Chad, somewhere deep inside of him where the Vampire hadn’t reached yet, he’d come here to have me do just what I was going to do.
He’d come for me because in the same situation, I would have come to him. I’d made him promise not to let them change me, and he’d sworn he wouldn’t let it happen. It was time for me to keep my unspoken vow to him.
My hands shook and I didn’t care. I walked straight to Chad like he was still my boyfriend and not a creature that wanted my blood, wanted my death more than anything in the universe.
I stared at him and he regarded me. More of Chad’s natural beauty had disappeared in the few days since I’d seen him. The red veins in his face were more prominent. His dark eyes had sunken deeper into his face. The Chad that I knew was leaving this Earth and this was the one chance I had to set him free of the destiny that awaited him.
“Rachel Clancy.” He bared his fangs.
I still didn’t move.
When we were in school, Keith had told us that in every life there was a moment—a single decision we would make that would define us. Most people wouldn’t know when they’d had their moment. They would simply continue on not knowing that their destiny had shifted in that single drop of time.
I was luckier than most. I knew this was it.
I raised my stake. My voice shaking, I spoke what I knew would be the last words I ever said to him.
“I loved you, Chad. I failed you. I’m sorry.” I swallowed. “Forgive me.”
With more strength than it required, my shaking hands pushed the wooden stake I gripped through Chad’s hard chest and through what remained of his human heart.
He didn’t move, didn’t flinch. That was so unusual for Vampires. They always tried one last attempt to get away. But not Chad. I stared into his eyes as his Undead life faded from view. I waited for his struggle.
It never came.
The task seemed endless as I pulled the stake back out.
In front of me, Chad’s Undead body hit the ground, dead.
A little over six months ago, I would have screamed. Someone would have had to carry me off in hysterics. Not now. I stood silent as the wind whipped around me and my long red hair hit me hard in the face.
No tears fell from my eyes. I didn’t see the other Vampires who I knew must be around. Jason had kept his promise.
On my sixteenth birthday, I’d become a Warrior. The day Jason had failed to appear for our meeting, I’d grown up. Today, in the moment when I’d watched Chad let me stake him with no struggle, I’d learned a truth I knew I’d never lose.
I might be a child. I might be the daughter of a drunk with only mediocre fighting skills and a penchant for doing the wrong thing.
But I had a destiny. And when I’ve completed it, the ones who harmed us will have paid for their crimes.
***
My name is Rachel Clancy.
With only months left until I turn seventeen, I have explosives to make.
Subversive
The Warrior – Book Three
By
Rebecca Royce
~DEDICATION~
For Meredith, who loves Rachel. Thank you for everything.
Prologue
My name is Rachel Clancy.
Forty-seven years ago, a small number of people managed to survive Armageddon. If you want to call it survival. Now, we are all that’s left of humanity. Thi
s concerns me on so many levels I can’t even deal, so most of the time I don’t. I have too much on my plate to waste time thinking about things that happened before I was even born.
I just turned seventeen.
My birthday came and went without much fanfare. Unlike when I turned sixteen, and I accidently changed the world around me in a permanent way, my seventeenth birthday didn’t make anything monumental happen.
I keep wishing I could wake up and not know all the things I do. Shouldn’t the adults be protecting me from problems too large for me to handle?
Maybe it’s simply that events have become so intense. One second I’m planning, the next second everyone is carrying those plans out. I shouldn’t be in charge. Not when everything’s going to explode.
Up to this point, I’ve been really lucky, but let’s face it, luck usually runs out. My hands now shake when I hold my stakes. I’m so sick of killing vampires.
Chapter One
For December, the weather remained pretty mild. Or so I was told. I’d only ever experienced one other December above ground. In Genesis, December had felt like every other month in an underground habitat—dry at a steady sixty-eight degrees. Mild or not, I huddled into my jacket, wondering if the cold bothered me or if my subconscious wanted me to burrow deeper so no one could find me.
“You ready?” Micah Lyons looked up across from me, a knowing glint in his eyes. He loved this, making things explode. I had liked the rush of it in the beginning, too. The first couple of times we’d lit a match and stood back to watch the world shatter had been the most fun I’d had in years.
Now, however, the destruction and noise gave me a headache. We no longer watched things from a distance, but learned what it really meant to run for our lives from a lethal threat other than from a monster. We had to get away from the area before the blast destroyed us as well as our target. The idiots who didn’t know better expected, even revered, dying in the pursuit of a vampire. Dying in a blast we created ourselves didn’t hold as much clout for them. I really didn’t care about any of it. Well, not very much.
Micah still waited for my answer. “I guess.”
He raised a dark eyebrow, looking so much like his older brother, Chad, it made my heart pang. Before Chad had died and been made a vampire, he had been my boyfriend. Then I’d staked him right through the heart. He’d have done the same for me, I think. Most of the time, however, I tried really hard to never, ever remember anything having to do with Chad at all. I wonder if when I killed him, I ended part of my own life as well. The part of me worth knowing.
“You guess?”
I nodded. Had he suddenly become hard of hearing? Had the explosions deafened him? I dug my hands into the dirt in front of me. The ground temperature felt cold but at least it didn’t have snow on it. For that, I could muster up gratitude. I hated the white stuff. We lost as many people to pneumonia as we did to vampires. Only I couldn’t slaughter disease with a wooden stake.
Micah called the little hole we’d dug ourselves a trench. His vocabulary shifted according to whatever era he explored in books, and recently he’d been reading about old wars. Trenches were supposed to somehow keep us safe from falling debris. I had my doubts about the sturdiness of his makeshift version. Running definitely made more sense.
Once again, Micah waited for my response; this time with his eyes narrowed as he regarded me.
“Yep.”
“I’m sorry, Rachel.” Micah’s eyes flared in a way that reminded me of his father’s gaze. “Would you rather be somewhere else? Are the training exercises you set up suddenly boring you?”
“No, of course not.” My cheeks heated up at his words, as I’m sure he intended. “I said I was ready. Do I have to do a happy dance about it?”
“It’s like your mind is someplace else. If you act this way tomorrow, you could get us all killed.”
I’d never wanted to deck Micah Lyons more in my life. “I’m well aware of the ramifications of my actions.” Now I sounded like our former teacher, Keith. Ramifications. The word even felt funny coming out of my mouth. “I get that I’m in charge of this. Now light the stupid thing and run like hell.”
If I’d been feeling sort of eh earlier, I no longer did. Anger surged through my veins, making me stronger and sharper, which might have been exactly what he wanted.
He nodded, taking his gaze from my face to stare at the fuse in front of him. “Ready. One. Two. Three. Go.”
The words he spoke were the same words every member of us used when we practiced this. Ready. One. Two. Three. Go. No one died accidently when we counted down that way.
We always worked in twos. One of us lit the fuse of our homemade bomb, the second made sure the fuse stayed lit, since we’d had trouble with that in the beginning. Then we’d both ran like our life depended on it.
Since it did.
Micah lit the fuse, and it worked. His always did. Like all the Lyons, when he set his mind to accomplish a task, it worked. I took a moment to confirm it, since it was better to be safe than sorry, before I leapt to my feet. Micah and I ran in tandem. We worked well together as a team, even if he was angry with me. I expelled my breath fast as I easily crossed the lawn to the safe-zone. My nightly jaunts through the woods slaughtering the undead tended to keep me in peak physical shape.
My brain continued the countdown to ka-boom as I moved. When we reached twelve, we had to be a safe distance or we’d be blown to bits. I’d counted to ten when I crossed into safety. Micah threw himself on the ground and covered his head. That was protocol; I knew I should do the same. Instead, I turned to watch the explosion.
The two seconds before the blow seemed to pass faster than normal—I only had time to blink and the small makeshift shed we’d triggered to blow shot up in the air. There was no shortage of places to destroy in our world. Old houses, sheds, and stores made great target practice.
I covered my ears, trying to block out both the noise and the knowledge that the world had shifted with this final blow of a long-dead person’s home into the sky. There would be no turning back now.
We’d done this. I’d done this.
Nine months earlier, I’d set out to learn how to blow things up. Basically, I’d had to emotionally blackmail my father to teach me how to create a bomb. I’d instructed the others and now we were explosive experts, performing the tasks as if we’d always been doing them. We could be locked away for knowing how to make bombs. I had no idea what they’d do if they found out not only could we blow things sky-high, we used our abilities on a daily basis. Amazing how we had rid ourselves of Isaac Icahn, but still held tight to so many of his rules.
We’d declared war. No one had manipulated, cajoled, or arranged this for us. In fact, if the adults knew what we did during the day when we should be sleeping, they would certainly stop us. It was fine for us to live dangerous lives, as long as we did it under their terms.
The debris toppled downwards in every direction, fire spreading in its wake. I gasped. Had anything ever been so beautiful?
Strong arms pulled me backward. “Pixie-girl, are you out of your mind? Are you hurt?”
Jason reached out and roamed his hands over my body, looking for injury. When he patted at my face, I pushed them away. He’d ruined my moment of beauty.
“I’m fine.”
“Why didn’t you duck?”
I wiped at my face, hating the moisture I found there. Had I really been crying? I’d had no idea, and I wasn’t sure what that meant.
After a moment, I shrugged. “I didn’t feel like it.”
“You didn’t feel like it?”
Jason Kenwood and I had met on my sixteenth birthday. He was a werewolf and his pack had recently been semi-accepted by our habitat. Mostly because they’d saved our lives when we’d been in a lot of trouble. They weren’t enthralled like the other werewolves we faced nightly, which meant they were safe to be around and made good allies. But things would always be tense, with neither side really trusting ea
ch other.
However, that wasn’t a problem between Jason and me.
A year earlier, he’d pronounced me his mate, but since I didn’t change into a wolf every time the moon became full, I thought of him as my boyfriend and refused to use the same terms he did. My feelings for Jason were complicated, to say the least. He was my first love and the first guy to break my heart. I had literally sat in the snow waiting for him, but he hadn’t shown up to get me after promising to do so. To his credit, he hadn’t known I waited. His father, the Alpha of their pack, had misled him. When he’d found out about the deception, he’d come after me to make things right.
We’d gotten back together about thirty seconds after Chad died, which started to concern me more and more. My feelings for Chad had been real. They’d taken a long time to develop but they’d been genuine and powerful. Why had I leapt back into a relationship with Jason? Was I looking for—I don’t know—comfort? And what did that mean for any future relationship between Jason and me? What would happen when I no longer required comfort?
“Rachel, you smell—”
I interrupted. “Don’t talk to me about my smell.”
Jason could scent my emotions. It was one of those wolf-things. I didn’t like it when he commented on them. It felt like an invasion of privacy. My thoughts were not for public consumption, not even if he could differentiate them by scent alone.
He flinched as if I struck him and it made me want to hang my head in shame. What the hell was wrong with me? Sighing, I rubbed his arm. He looked down, watching my hand touch him.
“I don’t know why I’m being the way I’m being.” I’d spoken the truth even if it made things more confusing.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
His eyes were such a pure blue. No matter what doubts I had about Jason when he wasn’t around, I couldn’t be near him for more than a few seconds before I melted into a puddle of mush.