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Now
For a while, they drove in silence.
Every now and then, Silver would turn to Adam and give him directions. Mostly, though, she stared out the window and occasionally glanced at Reese, marveling at the warmth coursing through her.
“She really grows on you, huh?” Adam commented at some point, keeping his voice low so as not to wake the sleeping girl.
Silver simply smiled in response. His fondness for the human was evident in his tone, as well.
“How did you know about the third discovery?” he wondered. “Or the rest of them, for that matter.”
“My skinwalker friends.”
“Ah. Right. Makes sense, I guess.” He paused for a bit. Then, “So what do we do now?”
“We need to lay low at my safehouse for a while,” she answered seriously. “You were right; we should have left earlier.”
“I meant with her.”
He wasn’t talking about Reese anymore.
Reluctantly, Silver looked up at the unconscious vampire in the passenger seat. The mental drawer she had locked in her mind sprang open, and she was once again flooded with guilt and self-doubt.
In her first terrifying days at the estate, Shauna was the only one truly there for her. It was her attempts to get them both out that led to her stint in the dungeon. And even though she gave up any dreams of escaping after that, she was still there for Silver as much as she could. Abandoning her was worse than leaving behind any of the others; worse, even, than finding out Adam was hybrid. She didn’t know if Shauna could forgive her, let alone if she could forgive herself for it.
“I couldn’t leave her again,” she admitted out loud. “Her mind is clean, and she’ll be unconscious until I wake her, but... I don’t know how to help her once she does.”
That wasn’t entirely true.
Adam must have sensed her hesitation and connected the dots. “But there is something you can do. You’re going back, aren’t you? To kill him.”
If she stuck to her original plan, because of the third discovery, Master’s direct descendants and most loyal supporters would die with him. People like Shauna and Adam would thankfully revert back to human. Only then would they be truly free.
Whether the same applied to Silver or not was harder to determine. No one like her had ever existed, so there was no way to tell what her fate would be. But she had long since prepared herself for the possibility that this would be her last mission.
Finally looking up at him through the rearview mirror, Silver tried to read Adam’s expression and gauge how much he had guessed. He didn’t give any indication that he knew the full truth of what she was planning, and there was no reason to divulge everything.
“Yeah, I am going back,” she finally said.
“Why didn’t you ever try before? Why now?” The question was merely curious rather than resentful or criticizing.
“I can’t,” she murmured sadly. “I’m not strong enough yet. The amount of power it would—”
She abruptly cut herself off, hit with a startling realization.
Frowning, she held out a hand in front of her and called on her magic. The longer she stared at her palm, curiously studying the silver glow that emanated out of her, the more her confusion grew.
“What?” Adam asked when she stayed quiet for too long. “What is it?”
“I’m not that tired,” she said, astonished.
“O-kay... Isn’t that a good thing?”
She dropped her magic before turning back to him. “I was wielding a lot of magic back there—especially with cloaking and mind control, but... I feel fine. Don’t get me wrong, I could do with some rest, but I can probably still use my powers for a few more hours.”
“Well, you did say you’d last an hour, and we were there for less, so maybe that helped.”
Silver shook her head. “You don’t get it. The whole reason I haven’t gone back yet is because I’ve been trying to get stronger. Every time I kill a supernatural, I have to burn the body. That allows me to last longer while using my magic. I’ve gotten stronger over the past few years, but it’s still not enough to take on a vampire army, much less a vamphyr. It shouldn’t have even been enough to last as long as it did tonight. I should be unconscious right now.”
Adam thought about it for a moment. “So... you’re getting stronger?”
“Yeah, without doing anything,” she confirmed incredulously. “It shouldn’t be possible. I certainly haven’t been able to do that in the past seven years.”
“Then, what’s different now?”
She paused for a moment, trying to think of an answer. “I have no idea.”
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End of Episode 3
Bonus Episode
Rebirth
