The Warrior - Initiation Driven Subversive Redemption Justice

  Deacon looked past me to the humans huddled on the floor. “Dad, Mom, you okay?”

  My eyes followed his gaze. I hadn’t paid much attention to the dazed and confused non-monsters.

  His father, who looked like a grown up version of Deacon—same dark hair, dark eyes, tough features—made me want to wince. That was what Deacon would look like if he got old enough. Not that I would know him. I was about to die. And even if I lived, I would no longer speak to him. Ever. Again.

  “I cannot believe you’re alive and that you’d come back here. What could you have been thinking?” Deacon’s father’s voice held an accent I didn’t recognize. It sounded close to Keith’s. His gaze bore into Deacon and me as if he wanted to jump up from his chains and rip our heads off.

  I snickered. “Don’t look at me. This wasn’t my idea.”

  “But….” Payne acted as if none of us had been talking at all. “Since Rachel lived through the attack and we did make a promise that she wouldn’t be harmed here, you’ve left me with no choice but to drag her into the next room to kill her.”

  I turned my head to regard Deacon. His face remained impassive. Any nerves he’d had entering the room had obviously fled. I needed to make sure he understood just what he’d done. “Not exactly what you agreed to, is it? Amazing how monsters can’t be depended on to keep their word.”

  “I’m going to remember that you said that the next time you’re going on and on about how blond-haired monster-boy up there is different than all the others and you love him. I’m going to remind you that you said that monsters are not dependable.”

  “Deacon.” I heard Payne step off the stage but I didn’t turn to look at him. I had no weapons and, unlike the vamps who I might get lucky fighting with a kick or a punch, there was no way I could do a thing against an unshifted werewolf without a machete. It seemed like the best use of my time was to make Deacon feel really, really bad for the few minutes I had left alive. I snarled when I spoke to him. “We’re never going to be alone again long enough for me to tell you how I feel about anything.”

  “Don’t do this, son,” Deacon’s father yelled as he strained against his chains. “Get the girl out of here. We raised you with humanity, even in this place where it seems like there isn’t any to spare.”

  I swallowed through the lump in my throat and told myself that I wouldn’t cry. No matter how much Payne tortured me in the other room, I was going to keep it together. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing me scream. I wouldn’t let Deacon know I had suffered, that his betrayal had meant anything more to me than I’d already expressed. I wouldn’t….

  “Micah,” Deacon called behind him. “Go for it.”

  Had he lost his mind? “News for you, buddy, Micah is not here.”

  “Really?” Deacon raised a dark eyebrow. “Could have fooled me.”

  An arrow shot out in the darkness and hit Payne through his left eye. He staggered backwards and screamed. I covered my mouth, shock making me silent as I took two large steps backwards. What had just happened?

  I felt the whoosh of the second arrow passing over my shoulder before it reached its target—Payne’s other eye. Still half-stunned, I managed to whirl around. Micah stood behind me, bow and arrow in hand. I couldn’t have been more shocked if I’d seen my dead mother falling from the ceiling. My hands shook as even more Warriors stepped out from the shadows behind him. I’d thought the room filled with trapped humans. I hadn’t really looked to see who they were.

  My entire team of young Warriors stood, armed and ready, in the room with us.

  “You were so quick to think I’d betrayed you. I’d be offended, but it was exactly what we wanted you to think.” Deacon’s words said one thing, but his eyes screamed of actual hurt.

  “You’re going to blame me for falling for whatever this is?” My heart beat fast against my ribs, so many things were happening all at once.

  “Fight later.” Micah rushed forward. “Payne’s not dead yet. The arrows are only going to make him mad.” He held out my machete. “Thought you might like to do the honor.”

  I’d never been so glad to see a weapon before in my life.

  “You two are going to have to explain a lot of things.”

  Micah nodded. “We are. But remember this—you haven’t exactly been trustworthy where blondie over there is concerned. We wanted to tell you. We decided we couldn’t.”

  His words burned, and I turned away from him. My friends hadn’t thought they could count on me? I’d saved both of them—on numerous occasions. When had I lost their faith?

  I didn’t have time to contemplate that answer even as the question burned its way through my stomach lining. Payne had managed to rip the two arrows from his eyes. The empty, bloodied sockets staring in my direction wouldn’t stay wounded indefinitely. No, all he needed was a shift to change him back to good health.

  I wouldn’t allow that to happen.

  Clenching my arms for the assault, I lunged forward. With a practiced swipe, my muscles did what they had been trained to do over and over again in Keith’s classroom. They took off Payne’s head. Since he was in his human form, I had less density to cut through than his gigantic wolf form. I fell forward a step from the momentum until a hand pulled me backward. Without turning around, I knew it had been Deacon’s.

  “I can’t let you fall on your face,” he whispered close to my ear. “If I let you go, can you stand?”

  The room erupted into chaos. Andon howled to the sky, his pack members raising their heads to do the same. I wasn’t sure what they were saying, but I knew it couldn’t be good news. The doors slammed open and more vamps than I could count rushed through the door.

  My monster locating abilities chose that moment to turn back on, and I nearly doubled over from the pain. Grabbing my stomach, I wished I could pass out.

  “Rachel?”

  I shoved him away. “Just go, Deacon. Rescue your family. We’ll talk later.”

  He took off, leaving me as I’d requested. By the shouts around me, I knew that the Warriors had taken to fighting the vamps. I didn’t need to watch. Because it was still day. These vamps would be sluggish even if they were the meanest ever created. I looked at the stage. Andon and his pack were notably missing. Had they run away? Cowards. I shook off the pain and I made myself stand up straighter. Tired or not, I didn’t want to be assaulted by a vampire while I was unprepared to take care of myself.

  Then I noticed him. Jason. His pack might have left but he stood by the window staring daggers at me.

  I walked forward and so did he. I would never know which one of us had moved first. With the world involved in a fight to the death around us, I only had eyes for him and from the red rims in his eyes getting deeper every moment, I knew his focus lay entirely on me. He wanted me dead.

  My fingers tingled from holding my machete too tightly and, for a change, my hands didn’t shake. Whatever was about to happen, it felt like one of those moments that was supposed to happen, as if it had been planned to occur by someone other than me. Meeting Jason had felt like that, too. If I was going to kill him—or if he was about to slaughter me—then it would be the end of a cycle that had begun by accident and spiraled into a relationship neither of us had been prepared for.

  “Shouldn’t you have scampered out with the rest of your pack?” I raised my voice so he could hear me before we’d arrived at our mutual destination.

  Jason snarled. “You are a bane on the world. It is time to remove your presence.”

  “Oh yeah?” My mouth went dry. He would always have this effect on me when I was in his presence. “You going to do the job, tough guy? Looks like your big, strong father put his tail between his legs and ran away. Why don’t you go join him?”

  A snarl came out of Jason’s mouth so loudly that it would have been funny if I hadn’t seen murder in his gaze. “You don’t talk about my Alpha that way.”

  “Same old song and dance with you.” I took a step farther towar
d him, which officially placed me in his personal space. The heat radiated off his body but did nothing to warm the chill that had invaded my soul. “I know you won’t remember this when you wake up from this crazed daze. It could be hundreds of years from now, or just days, it doesn’t really matter. Your eyes will open, and you’ll be back to being you. It’ll be too bad because whenever that is, I won’t be there for you anymore. I hope that somewhere in your subconscious you hold on to this moment. You keep it deep inside of you. I tried to help you. I loved you. Jason, you could have left the pack.”

  “I would never consider such a thing.” He raised his hands, his fingers stretching, claws popping out where his fingers should have been.

  “Do it. Take a swing at me.” I raised my machete. “I dare you.”

  A sound I couldn’t hear must have caught his attention; he swung his head around before growling again. Seconds later, he ran from me like a man on a mission that was important than fighting with me. I let out a breath I’d held since I’d made my ill-conceived threat. Jason didn’t love me, not as he was. I, however, was still in possession of all my memories and emotions. He could easily kill me.

  “Rachel.” I turned to look at Sloane. “You okay?”

  Girlfriends. I hadn’t had one since Tia had checked out from my version of reality. She didn’t mean what Micah or Deacon would mean. Sloane wasn’t asking me if I was physically wounded.

  “No.” I shook my head. “But there’s nothing to do about it, is there?”

  She squeezed my arm. “Nope. If it means anything, I thought you were so brave, so tough when you didn’t know we were here. You didn’t cry or beg….”

  “It’s an act.” I said the words aloud and it felt as if a burden released from my shoulders. “Don’t believe in me. I’m nothing. I’m not brave, tough, strong, or right. You guys weren’t wrong to mistrust me. It might be better if everyone just abandoned me all at once. This whole leave Rachel one at a time thing is killing me.”

  I wondered if Sloane wished she hadn’t opened this conversation.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “How did you even know where we were?” I spoke directly to Micah as we tromped through a light dusting of snow on our way back to Genesis. Micah and Glen flanked me on both sides. I’d been staunchly ignoring Deacon since we’d gone upward. At the moment, he didn’t seem to mind; he was so busy extolling the virtues of Genesis to his family and friends.

  “We put a tracker on Deacon.”

  I shook my head. “A what?”

  Micah grinned and pointed to Glen. “Ask him.”

  “Okay.” I sighed. “Glen, what is a tracker?”

  There was a skip to Glen’s step I hadn’t noticed before. He seemed downright giddy. “It’s a before-Armageddon technology.”

  I stopped moving. “How did you get a hold of it?”

  “I found it in a box. I got put in charge of cleaning up all of the mess Icahn left below.” I remembered when that had happened. He’d been late to one too many meetings, thanks to Tia’s theatrics, and Keith had thought Glen needed to do boring things to get his head back in the game.

  “You found a technology and you…what? Kept it?” The idea seemed so foreign to me. There were very distinct rules about unsanctioned pre-Armageddon technologies. Of course, those were Icahn’s rules, and I didn’t think we should be following any of his dictates. Still, he had a new device, and he hadn’t turned it over to proper channels? Glen had turned out to be a real rebel.

  “I just didn’t want it to disappear into the Turtle’s office or hand it to Patrick Lyons—no offense Micah—and never see it again.”

  Micah shrugged. “Who knows what Dad does with that stuff? I don’t blame you.”

  “I just kept it.”

  “How did you even know what to do with it?”

  Glen opened his mouth to answer when Micah laughed. “Didn’t you know our boy Glen here has a real brain for engineering? If he wasn’t stuck being a Warrior, he could be bringing us all back to pre-Armageddon easiness.”

  I nodded as his words sunk in. What could all of us be doing if we weren’t fighting monsters?

  “Don’t get on your soap box, Rachel.” Micah read my mind uncannily well. “Glen might have a higher purpose, but you and I are meant to fight in the muck.”

  I shook my head. “I was going to wait to do this, but I can’t hold my tongue. How dare you do what you did to me? How dare you guys arbitrarily decide that I’m untrustworthy and make these decisions without telling me? Not to mention using me, terrifying me, and….”

  Micah placed his hand on my arm. “Look, I get it. You’re pissed. I don’t blame you. Deacon and I knew we’d be taking that risk, and it’s not that I don’t care. But try to see yourself from my perspective.”

  “And how exactly do see me?”

  He sighed. “You’re this incredible girl. A leader. Brilliant. Funny. Our best friend. The love of my brother’s brief life.”

  Damn him, for bringing up Chad.

  He continued. “And then you go and fall in love with this wolf who, granted, saved my life. We all tried to rearrange our thinking, to like him, to see what you see in him….”

  Well, Micah had. Deacon hadn’t made any effort to do that at all. I wasn’t going to argue the point at the moment.

  “You come up with this fantastic idea. This life-altering idea. You tell the wolf about it, and he tells his father who pretty much openly despises you. Everyone could see what was happening. You had blinders on that we couldn’t make you take off. It seemed like you had to see the truth for yourself. When Andon approached Deacon….”

  I jolted a step backwards. “He really did that?”

  “How else could we have gotten Deacon’s family all in one place?”

  “I haven’t had a lot of time to digest anything other than your betrayal.”

  “Do you really see it like that?”

  “Micah.” I wished I was still young enough to stomp my foot. “Deacon made me think he’d sold me out.”

  “I didn’t think you’d believe him. He said all he was going to have to do was act slightly odd and you’d fall for it. Why was he right? I know why Chad hated him—he was competition for your heart—Deacon goes out of his way to drive me crazy. But he’s insanely loyal to you. Why doubt him?”

  “I don’t need to be psychoanalyzed by you.” I walked a distance from him before I turned around. My doubts and fears about Deacon were my own. Maybe it was just that he was too…much…for me. He didn’t let me control things. He didn’t let me be in charge. If I let myself fall into Deacon, I might never come up for air. I turned around. “What would you have done if the ceiling hadn’t fallen?”

  “Found a way to separate you two from the rest of us. We were thinking on our feet a bit. The vamps just helped us out.”

  “Fabulous.” I rubbed my nose. I was getting a blister from the cold. “Do you trust me now? Since I’ve seen that Andon worked with Icahn and that Jason could never have been mine, despite what I wanted? Since I’ve learned the same lessons for the millionth time? Do I get to be on the inside again or should I keep looking over my shoulders to see if you and Deacon are plotting against me?”

  “Rachel….”

  “Rachel Clancy.” I whirled around at the sound of a voice I hadn’t anticipated. Patrick Lyons surrounded by Keith and the other Warriors stood in line in front of us. Patrick’s voice held a seriousness I’d not heard from him in a long time. Shivers travelled up my back at the sound.

  “Dad.” Micah’s voice raised an octave in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  I scanned the line to the last member in the row. The Turtle. I swallowed. All of the Warriors had looked stern and upset. The Turtle had glee in his gaze. That couldn’t be a good sign.

  “We’re here to arrest you, Rachel.”

  Deacon shoved Glen out of the way to stand next to me. “For what?” His voice sounded hard and steady. All thoughts of my anger toward Deacon fled, and I
only knew gratitude for his presence.

  “For subversive acts against the Genesis government and the habitat as a whole. Rachel is a traitor.” The Turtle didn’t move from his space as he threatened me.

  “Rachel is no traitor.” Micah finished his sentence with a flurry of curse words. “I won’t let you take her.”

  “Micah.”

  He didn’t take my hint and kept speaking. “We’ll stop you. Every one of us. We’ll all leave Genesis if you arrest her. Then what will you do? Are you prepared to lose every Warrior between the ages of sixteen and nineteen?”

  “Micah.”

  “Son.” Patrick’s voice hissed like a whip slapping at our backs. “Don’t say things you couldn’t possibly mean. How would you feed yourselves?”

  “Rachel and I could make do.” Deacon wasn’t kidding. I could feel his steel resolve pulsating in the rapid pulse in his wrist. It wasn’t until that moment I realized I’d gripped him. Forcing myself to let go proved harder than I wanted.

  “Rachel, please.” Hearing Keith speak for the first time in that moment brought me back into reality. I saw an emotion on Keith’s face I’d never seen from him before: disappointment. It tore at me. He’d wanted me to be the leader, not to be whoever he thought I was at this moment. Shame threatened to bring me to my knees.

  “It’s okay, guys.” I stepped forward. “I’m sure this can all be resolved.”

  Micah and Deacon spoke in unison. “Rachel.”

  I ignored them as I stared at the Turtle. “You understand that whatever I did, I did alone. The others, they don’t hold any blame.”

  “We know they’ve been misled by you. That much we understand. The rest you will have to explain.”

  I nodded. If only I could.

  ***

  I wanted a lawyer. They wouldn’t give me one. I’d asked for a drink. I still hadn’t gotten it. I knew myself to be in serious trouble if Keith, who I had loved as a teacher and respected as a Warrior, whose wife and child I had saved from death, wouldn’t bring me any water.