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MY APPETITE DOES eventually return. Long after the fish has gone cold, but food is food and I guess I’m not ready to die out after all.
I don’t remember falling asleep. One minute I’m sitting up against the stone counter, counting emerging stars as the cloud cover drifts apart. The next, Georga is waking me for the second shift at midnight and I’m lifting my head from Gabe’s lap. When and how did that happen? Snoring softly, head rolled back against the counter, Gabe is fast asleep and doesn’t stir as I move. Kane’s shadowy form is propped against a nearby wall, head dipped and arms folded.
Leaving Georga to curl onto the floor, I step outside to sit on the deck. A wind has picked up, bringing a chill off the lake that dissolves the thickness of sleep from my brain.
I hold my breath, listening to the sound of waves lapping the shore, the breeze rustling through the bulrushes, the hum of insects.
The sky has cleared and a crescent moon swings high above the lake, brushing ivory highlights over the inky water.
I’m not entirely sure what else to listen for. Anything out of the ordinary, Kane says. If the hunters do find us, I doubt we’ll hear or see them coming.
Pulling my knees up, I wrap my arms around my legs. For every answer Kane gave us, we had a dozen more questions he didn’t even want to stab a guess at. They roll through my head now like a stone gathering horror.
Do the bloodsuckers hunt all the Tithed immediately or do they preserve some of them like they did with our ancestors? Leave some living wild in that enclosure so they have fresh prey throughout the year?
Why do some people die while others turn into bloodsuckers? Is it a genetic thing? Or is there a tipping point, a pint of blood less or more and you’re infected or you’re dead?
If I’m caught and fed on, will I turn into a bloodsucker?
Would I rather be dead?
I need to stop terrifying myself, but the thoughts won’t stop coming.
How do they feed? Do they have fangs that protrude at the smell of human blood like vampires? Will they prick my throat with pointy canines and sip their full? Or gouge a hole into my neck and drain me dry.
A heavy footfall on creaking wood jars me out of my head. My cowardly heart jumps into my throat as I spin about onto my knees—it’s only Kane.
I slap a palm to my chest, hoping he can’t hear it thudding. “Did we wake you when we swapped shifts?”
“I’m a light sleeper.” He walks around me and stands there, studying the blackness for so long, I am forgotten.
Then not.
“We need to talk,” he says and hops down from the deck, a shadow slipping from view.
The arrogance is almost amusing. I push to my feet and follow, however. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.
He hasn’t gone far.
I join him at the waves’ edge where the deck is falling into the lake, tilting my face up to the night air blowing in from the water. It’s a pleasant chill after the past few days of withering heat.
“Lake Ontario,” he murmurs. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Everything out here is,” I say, looking out into the vast expanse where diamond clusters break onto the inky horizon. “Beautiful and majestic.”
“And us, her humbled servants.” His tone is amused awe. “Let’s hope she treats us well.”
His gaze turns on me, an intense study beneath the moonlight that curls into my toes. “Never let your guard down. Don’t grow complacent. There’s no real safety anywhere, remember that. But this is about as safe as I can get you. I do believe that.”
There’s a note of remorse, regret—a whisper of some long goodbye in his voice that doesn’t belong. We’ve made it this far. We’re almost there.
“Why?” I ask, more clipped than intended. I’m unsettled.
Why is my safety so important?
Why do you care so damn much? The last time I asked, he answered with an almost-kiss that stroked my senses and haunted my desires.
This time the answer’s different. I already know that. “I sealed my own fate, Kane. You’re not responsible for whether I live or die out here.”
His knuckles come up to scrape beneath my chin, the gray in his eyes glinting. “Oh, but I am.”
I shake my head, shake out of his touch. “I didn’t give you a choice. If you hadn’t lodged my pairing with Gabe, this is still exactly where I’d be. I swore to you I wouldn’t pair with anyone else and I meant it.”
“No you didn’t.” He stills, his gaze going wide. Listening. Watching. “We both know you have too much fire in you to follow your boyfriend over a cliff like a witless fool.”
The admission flounders me. He’s right, of course, although I don’t call it fire, I call it cowardice. But if he knew my threat was so empty, why did he concede? It went against everything within him. There was a storm in him that day, a fury I’d caused by pressing him to help me.
No.
No.
Do not presume to blackmail me.
No
No matter how many different ways I pleaded, he refused to lodge my pairing without Gabe’s knowledge or consent.
Then, just as I was walking away, shoulders braced against defeat, my eyes blazing into him with defiance...
Yes.
“Why did you change your mind, then?”
He looks at me a long time, a searing look that judges and accuses. “Love.”
“Love?” I laugh. “You don’t believe in love.”
“I never said I don’t believe in love.”
He never did. I’m just not interested in it. That’s what he said.
“You were so convinced your love for Gabe would solve everything,” Kane says. “In my gut, I knew it was bullshit. Love always causes far more problems than it ever solves. But I’m a hard cynic and you turned from me with such burning conviction in your eyes...I chose to trust you with your own heart instead of my blackened one.” Brows riding low on his hooded eyes, his voice quietens, “Who’s the fool now?”
“Me,” I sigh.
He brings two fingertips up to stroke the line of sensitive skin beneath my jaw, sensations cascading down my throat.
My pulse stutters. In protest, I hope.
“You’re young and in love,” he says. “I should have known better.”
Was young and in love.
What am I now?
I’m not sure.
I feel about a hundred years older and not much wiser.
He cocks his head, his mouth suddenly inches closer to mine. “You know what I do believe in?”
Chemistry. Physical attraction. To put it bluntly: lust.
A nest of butterflies begin to stir, fluttering to the bends of my elbows. His face is a masterpiece of temptation. Chiseled in arrogance and dark beauty, a perfect storm of reckless want and sinful cravings.
He looks into my eyes, a deep, searching look that tugs a grin into the corner of his mouth. “Yes, you do.”
Whatever he sees in my eyes amuses him.
Heat flushes my throat.
Bastard!
If he kisses me, I will slap him.
His fingers fall away from my jaw as he steps back, shifts so his watchful gaze is scanning the shoreline and surroundings again, everywhere but me.
“I’m not going to the island with you tomorrow,” he says, a casual statement, as if he’s commenting on a broken fingernail instead of breaking my world.
What?
My brain gets whiplash from the sudden turn.
“Once you guys set off,” he goes on, “I’ll double-back a slightly different route. If the bloodsuckers do track us down here, that should add to the confusion.”
Red hot fury rises up my throat. I am so sick of noble boys and their self-sacrifices. “We don’t need you to be a decoy!”
“I’m not staying behind to be your decoy, it’s just an added bonus.”
“Then what?” I grind out between clenched teeth. It feels like rigor mortis has set in my jaw. “What’s changed in the last couple of hours?”
“Nothing has changed.” His gaze skims me, doesn’t pause before it continues scanning. “I was never going with you. I came here for something else.”
“You came here?” I repeat in broken confusion. “For something else?”
“When you were Tithed...” He folds his arms across his chest, unfolds them again as he blows out a sigh that sounds as if he’s blowing out some crusty demons. “This is a detour. I just needed to get you somewhere safe first, as safe as possible out here, that is.”
My throat is tight with un-screamed fury. I want to scream at him to look at me, not out there, but I can’t, because he can’t, he’s doing my job for me. I want to punch something, preferably Kane, but I can’t because his body’s already black and blue!
“When were you going to tell us,” I hiss.
“Once the raft was ready,” he admits after a pause. His voice has the decency to show a trace of shame. “You don’t need me anymore. I’ve told you everything I know.”
“There’s always more with you, Kane.” There really always is.
He says nothing.
“What did you come here for?” I demand.
Nothing.
“Why can’t we go with you?”
Nothing.
“You’re not going to do this,” I tell him, every word defined and stamped with the pressure building in my chest. “You told me to stay close, to follow you, now you want to dump me on an island and take off?”
“It’s complicated.”
“The truth is always simple. It’s the lies that complicate everything.”
“Senna,” he breathes out.
“Kane!”
He clears his throat. “I was only made an Alder so I could be in place to volunteer for the Tithe without disrupting the system. We’ve been planning this for over a year.”
Finally, he looks at me, a scowling, distant look. “Every year, for a hundred and twenty-two years, Ironcross gives up ten of its citizens. The Alders believe it’s time for change. It’s time to fight back.”
I didn’t hear that right. Couldn’t have. “You’re what...some sort of one-man army?”
“Not quite.” His lips twitch. “More like a spy. I’m here to do reconnaissance on the state of the world.”
“I’d say that’s pretty obvious.” I throw my arms out. “It sucks.”
“Remember how I told you we don’t think the bloodsuckers are immortal?”
“You lied?”
“I didn’t lie. Disease may turn a human into a rabid animal. It may turn the body against itself, so it requires fresh, untainted blood in order to survive. A virus may alter the brain into higher functionality, such as speed and strength and extraordinary senses. But a disease can’t make man immortal.”
He scrubs a hand over his bristled jaw, his eyes scanning before returning to me. “But if they’re not immortal, and all uninfected humans have long since died out—”
“—then all bloodsuckers would have died off too,” I finish, finally understanding what he’s getting at. “But they’re not all dead. You saw what Grigore was capable of.”
“Not all dead,” Kane agrees. “The Alders have been theorizing on this for many years. One option is that some of the Tithed are being turned to make new bloodsuckers. Which could mean their numbers have dwindled, maybe drastically. It’s possible they’re not as undefeatable as they once were.”
The air whooshes out of my lungs. Everything Kane has said makes sense. Including his liberal use of words such as theorizing and option and could and possible. “Nothing is certain. It’s just as likely the world is swarming with them. Maybe they are immortal. Maybe every Tithed in the last one-hundred-and-twenty-two years has been turned.” I do the math. “That would be over a thousand bloodsuckers, at least half of them a reasonable age today even if they are mortal.”
Kane nods agreeably. “That’s exactly why I’m here, Senna, to get Ironcross those answers.”
“Dead men aren’t spies, Kane, they’re just dead. How on earth are you going to get close enough to the bloodsuckers to spy on them?”
“I’m still working on that.”
Sure you are. “And how will you deliver any information you come across? We can’t slip past the bloodsuckers to return to Ironcross—” My eyes flash into him. “Or was that a lie?”
“Not a lie,” he says. “And I’m still working on that one, too.”
“For a plan that’s been in the making for a year, there’s still an awful lot you’re working on.”
“That’s the point, Senna.” His gaze drifts off me, scanning the shadows again. “We’ve been stuck behind that wall too long, too blind to plan anything.”
“You have zero chance of making it back to Ironcross alive.”
“Have a little faith,” he drawls, unconcerned at the prospect of his demise.
Frustration builds in me. This is exactly why I didn’t believe his supposed fall from grace. Kane is such a stubborn champion for the Alder cause—now he’s going to die for it.
“Why are you doing this?”
He thinks before he says, “Because someone has to. Because Ironcross is a human farm. Maybe the world is still ruled by the bloodsuckers. Or maybe they’ve been whittled down to a handful and we’re being terrorized by a shadow army of illusion.”
Well, when you put it that way.
“You really think there’s a chance we could be...” my tongue resists the word, like a foreign language it’s never learned to shape “...free of the beasts one day? Free to leave Ironcross, free to go wherever we want?”
Free of the Tithe.
Free of Alder law.
I’ve never felt trapped like Gabe. At least, not that I thought...not until now, with this slim hope swelling inside, daring to—
“There you are.” A silky, unfamiliar male voice.
The beat slams out of my heart as I turn from the lake. He’s not wearing a hooded cloak. That’s the first thing I notice with a flutter of relief as the man steps out of the shadows. He’s tall, with a slim build, pale hair that shines with a translucence in the moonlight. Dressed in black leather pants, leather boots folded over at the knees, a black tunic shirt with a high collar.
Kane moves in front of me, blocking me from view—blocking my view. I step out from behind him. It’s too late to hide. If this stranger is trouble, I want to see it coming.
“That’s far enough,” Kane says as the man approaches with a loping stride.
A rich, amused laugh tells us what he thinks of that.
Kane steps forward to intercept him. The next moment is a blur of black-on-black and Kane’s body is surfing the shoreline of waterlogged sand and reeds that drag him to a sliding stop before my brain catches up with a scream ripped from my throat.
He rolls into a crouch on his feet, springs up into a sprint back to us. He’s okay, but he won’t be for long.
None of us will be. That’s what flares through my brain like white-hot lightning as I race up the shore, and I don’t know why I’m bothering, maybe it would be kinder to let him go to his end quickly and brutal.
But I can’t give up.
I promised myself I wouldn’t.
“Kane!” I throw myself in his path. A knee jabs my ribcage, knocks the wind from me as we tumble over each other...once, twice...he lands on top of me and immediately rolls off with a grunt.
Scrambling onto my hands and knees, I grasp for him, an arm, a leg— got you. “Don’t,” I breathe out. “He’s one of them. You can’t fight and win.”
Kane wipes my grip from his calf and pulls himself up into a crouch again, leaning in to me. “I can slow him down,” he says, his voice quiet, desperate. “Run.”
“Please do.” The bloodsucker’s here, feet planted casually apart and arms folded, looking down on us with a sneer.
He’s brought a friend. A dark-skinned female with sleek hair, black as the night, slashing across her high cheekbones like feathered blades. She’s dressed in a figure-hugging version of black leather. The tunic-styled top pinches at her waist and flares over her slender hips.
She smiles. “We wouldn’t want to deprive you of the full experience of a good hunt.”
I’m relieved there’s two of them. If I can’t run, Kane won’t get himself killed trying to buy me time. Buy me time? He’s not thinking straight. He could buy me hours and I still wouldn’t be able to run fast enough to get away.
And then there’s three. A male dragging Georga out across the deck.
I wait for a forth to escort Gabe, my breaths choppy, my nerve endings shivery at the base of my skull—there’s Gabe, his shadowy form stepping out from behind them as the third hunter carelessly swings Georga off the deck, as if she’s a bag of rubbish tossed out. She lands face down in the sand with a cry but I barely spare her a glance. My eyes are fixed on Gabe and the arrow fitted in the bow he’s holding.
“No!” Kane roars.
Too late.
The arrow flies and the hunter freezes, time freezes, the breath in my lungs freezes, then his head rocks forward and he starts to topple... Another blur in my peripheral vision and the female is at the base of the deck, on her knees, catching his falling body in her arms.
I can’t see where the arrow struck.
I can’t believe Gabe actually injured the hunter. Shot a bloodsucker with his bow and arrow. Euphoria floods through me. It’s possible. We are not absolutely defenseless.
Gabe is nocking another arrow in his bow.
A high-pitched wail pierces the night, inhuman, the cry of an animal in pain. It takes a moment for me to realize the noise is coming from the female.
It sounds like death.
Everything happens so quickly, I’ve only just registered how much trouble Gabe might be in when the female’s on her feet. She’s still making that terrible noise, and maybe that’s what slows her down—so slow, my brain keeps up with what my eyes are seeing—so fast, it’s over while I’m still thinking, she’s lost her flaming mind, over before the icy tremor runs the full length of my spine.
That awful wail deepens into a howl as the female leaps onto the deck. Her landing foot springs her high into an air kick that sends both Gabe and the bow skittering off the edge where the deck falls into the lake. She spins about and leaps again, an impossibly long, high leap that covers the distance to where Georga is backing away into the tree line.
“Salmona.” The pale-haired male at my side calls the name like a hushed command, an understated exclamation.
If it’s meant for the female, she’s not listening. She grabs Georga by one arm and throws. Georga screams as she goes sailing through the air. The scream cuts off abruptly as she smashes onto the deck.
The howling drains away, an echo fading into the night as the female turns and sets her sights on me. Time stops, the ticking seconds condensed into this frozen moment of comprehension. This is all I’ll get. One blink of the eye. One beat of my heart. That’s the space of what I have left before I become her next crippled victim.
She blurs, and there’s a collision that creates its own energy, a sonic crash, an explosion of stars—and the female is pinned to the ground beneath the male.
“There will be retribution for Birken,” he tells her.
She bucks beneath him. “I will have it now.”
“On the prince’s judgement, not yours.” He rises to his feet over her. “Bring the carriage,” he says and steps into a blurred streak.
The missing seconds catch up to me. Gabe went over the edge into the lake and he hasn’t reappeared. Georga smashed into the deck and she hasn’t gotten up.
Adrenaline kicks steel into my shivery nerves. I break into a run, my bare feet slapping the wet sand, then slapping the shallow water as I near the deck.
“Gabe!” I shout as I run, willing him to hear, willing him to walk out from the dark depths of the water. “Gabe!”
Whatever state Georga’s in, that will hold. But if Gabe was knocked unconscious before he hit the water, then right now he’s drowning.
A shadow emerges from the swollen, rotted structures that support the parts of the deck not yet washed away. My feet hit the brakes, my toes squishing into the sand. I didn’t actually expect Gabe to walk out the water—he isn’t, he’s cradled in the arms of the male hunter who’s carrying him from the lake.
“A little water-logged,” the male remarks lightly, “but he’ll live.”
That’s where he blurred off to?
To rescue Gabe?
My slack-jawed surprise doesn’t last long. He’s a bloodsucker. A vampire. Of course he prefers his snacks pulsing with warm, rich blood.
He drops Gabe unceremoniously onto the ground and lopes off, proving my point. They don’t care. They don’t give a damn!
Gabe picks himself up onto an elbow and leans to the side, spluttering a rheumatic cough and hurling, coughing, hurling—mostly lake water, I imagine. Once the fit is over, he collapses onto his back, as if that took his last ounce of strength.
Heart hammering, I fold onto my knees and pull his head onto my lap. “Gabe?”
His eyelids drag up until he’s looking into my eyes. “I just need a minute.”
I nod, raking my fingers through his dripping hair. “I’ve got you. Take all the time you need.”
My gaze lifts. The male hunter squats beside his friend, brushing a hand over his eyes—he’s dead, I realize with a start. That’s why the female went berserk. That’s what the male was saying about retribution.
Kane’s striding across the deck. He goes down, stays down for a long while. Georga, I think. When he rises, it’s a slow turn in my direction, his silhouette a lonely image up there on that deck.
Panic and dread course through me. Every breath becomes a struggle, as if I’m sucking air through a holey straw.
Gabe pushes off me, using a hand pressed to the ground to help himself into a sitting position. “What is it?”
“I’ll be right back.”
“Senna.”
I’m on my feet, shaking my head at him. I can’t speak my fears. I don’t want to make them real.
I’m trembling from the inside out, stumbling in my clumsy haste to cross the sand.
Kane hops down from the deck to catch me in his arms before I can pass. “Don’t.”
A sob chokes deep inside my throat, traps what little air I’ve managed to draw. “I have to.”
“Senna, she’s gone,” he says softly.
I know.
I know!
It’s a scream inside my head. Or maybe a scream out loud. I can’t tell the difference with the roar of blood pounding between my ears. A death march. A death stampede. The panic erupts into full-blown crazy and I shove, punch, kick my way out of Kane’s arms to scramble onto the deck, crawl over the rotted wood...
The crazy deflates the moment my eyes land on her prostrate form.
One leg twisted outward. Her neck angled oddly. A thick wood pole from the battered rail poking out of her chest. If the broken neck didn’t get her, landing on the wooden stake would have. The dark, syrupy substance is everywhere, matted in her ash blond hair, staining her t-shirt, pooling onto the deck around her, a metallic taste on my tongue.
Blood.
Strong arms wrap around me from behind, try to pull me away. “You don’t have to see this.”
Gabe.
I extract myself from him and put two steps between us. He doesn’t understand. I have to look, because Georga deserves to be seen as her life force drains away.
I drop to my knees, mindless of the blood and gore as I cradle her head in my lap and look over her broken body, tears streaming down my face, my tribute giving her back her own words and allowing the wind to carry them away on a whisper.
“You were not content.”
“You raged.”
“You were never given a chance to love so hard it would feel like suffering.”
“You were never afraid to lift off from the ground.”
“You flew into the sun.”
“Goodbye, my friend.”