I went from one parental extreme to another. Standing in the door of my father’s tent—which wasn’t so much a home anymore as a bar—I regarded him quietly. He hadn’t seen me yet as he hummed to himself moving several stools around to set up for the evening hours.
In all of the years that I’d known him, I’d never seen him as happy as he seemed in that moment. Dad looked truly content these days. No one asked him to fight. No one reminded him of his shame. He no longer had my impending Warrior-hood to worry about since I’d passed that six months earlier. No, he could absolutely abuse his body in total privacy by drinking with his customers and no one thought anything wrong with it.
No one but me, and I wasn’t around much.
It pained my heart to know I was about to do what I was going to do. Whatever else he was—some people called him a traitor, he was certainly a drunk—he was my father and it melted my insides that in his strange way he’d finally found the kind of happiness he’d never known since my mother died by running his bar and not thinking about Warrior stuff.
“On my sixteenth birthday I waited half-an-hour to see if you would wake up from your drunken stupor.”
My father, Harold, jumped a foot in the air and grabbed his chest as he regarded me.
“Rachel, honey, you terrified me. When did you get here?”
I shrugged as I walked forward into the room. I could have done a tap dance and he wouldn’t have noticed. He tended to forget I existed unless I went missing for large periods of time.
“Did you hear what I said?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, I missed it. What did you say?”
I’m told at one time he was quite handsome. Now, his blond hair was all but completely grey and his eyes were constantly bloodshot. His face looked bloated and his long aristocratic nose shaded a constant red.
“I said that I waited for half-an-hour for you to wake up on my sixteenth birthday.”
He looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t wake up and then I got there too late. You’d already been put in the elevator.”
Yes, that had been quite the scene. It had shaken me to the core and that had been a really bad thing considering I was going Upward for the first time to fight for my life.
“We need to talk, Dad.” I walked until I stood right in front of him. Another father might pull his teenager daughter into his arms and hold her just because that was something they did. Not mine, never mine, and right now that was fine.
“What is it, Rachel?”
“I need you to teach me.”
He laughed. “What could I possibly teach you?”
“I need you to teach me to do the forbidden skill.”
My father’s eyes narrowed. “Absolutely not.”
“No?” I pounded on the table next to us. “No isn’t an acceptable answer here, Dad. I’m not going to be fighting back anymore. There are those of us who have had enough. I have had more than enough and I’ve only been doing it for six months. I won’t lose anyone else to this game they’re playing. No more. You’re going to teach me to blow things up or I will find a way to do it myself.”
“Rachel, what you’re talking about is forbidden.”
“By who?” I shouted now and I didn’t care. “All of the rules we follow, all of the ways we train, all of the techniques we use, they’re all Isaac Icahn’s rules. He is the enemy. I don’t know why everyone over the age of thirty refuses to see the truth right in front of their faces. We can’t win this, ever, if we don’t change the rules to fit us.”
My father sunk down into the chair. “Let someone else do it.”
“Oh, Dad.” I wished I could cry but I had no tears left for my father. “I can’t do that. I’m not built like you. Some day if I have a daughter, I’ll be awake when she gets up on her sixteenth birthday. I won’t let someone else see her off that morning.”
My father wept outright. Big, gulping sobs as he covered his face with his hands. I stared at him as I tried to figure out how I felt about the fact that he could cry like that and seemingly not feel any shame for it. Patrick Lyons was already pulling himself together and not crying publically over the death of his first-born. Yet my father felt compelled to weep because I wanted him to teach me to make a bomb.
I bent down until I was at his eye level. “Dad? If you do this for me, I won’t ever ask you to participate again. Do you understand? This will be the last time, the last thing you ever have to do for me.”
He raised his eyes to mine. I knew he loved me—as much as a broken man who’d never been put back together correctly could—and I wasn’t surprised when he nodded his head.
“Tomorrow afternoon, when you get up, I’ll be here. We’ll start then, okay?”
He touched my hand. “We should have run away. When your mother died—and I screwed up—I should have taken you and run away from Genesis. Somewhere far away.”
The idea was appalling and it made my stomach ache. I’d only grown up at all because of the Lyons interference. If he’d taken me away, I’d probably be dead.
“I know you did the best you could.”
And in the end, that was all any of us could do, wasn’t it?
***
I trudged with my hands in my pockets toward my tent. That had gone the way I expected it to. Now, I had to make it work. It was going to require more than just me announcing that we were going to form a society to blow up the monsters to actually accomplish anything. Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to lead it by myself. If everyone had a particular talent, then we could all contribute. I hoped.
The sun was setting, which meant that soon it would be time to go out and fight. With Keith occupied with his new baby, it was not the time to change things. We were going to have to do this slowly, efficiently.
I walked into the tent not sure how many people would be in there. Maybe it would just be Jason, but what I saw astounded me. Every Warrior I knew under the age of nineteen stood waiting for me. Joining me seemed to be all of the young Wolves from Jason’s pack. I was flabbergasted and it wasn’t until Deacon cleared his throat that I realized my mouth hung open like a landed fish.
I closed it and wiped my sweaty hands on my pants. All eyes were on me as I stepped further inside. There was barely enough room to stand in my small tent.
“Hi. Everyone.” I cleared my throat, feeling really inept. Why had I done this again? My heart rate picked up and I looked for Jason across the tent. He smiled and nodded at me.
“I see you’re all here. I didn’t expect so many of you, and I guess I’m little bit thrown.”
Glen, Tia’s boyfriend who had gotten her pregnant, spoke. “Micah said you have a plan for destroying the Undead. I’m always interested in hearing about that.”
I really didn’t like him. I never had, and it was all I could do not to roll my eyes.
“Right, well, first let me say how pleased I am that you’ve all come together for this.”
I motioned at the large group.
Micah spoke first. “They rescued us out there and you’ve told us a million times that they aren’t like the other Wolves. We’ve decided to believe you.”
“I’m not convinced, but since I’m in the minority here for now I’m going along. If they pull anything…” Deacon stared right at Jason when he spoke. “I’ll take off their heads.”
“You’re cute, even if you have a nasty mouth.”
I choked at Autumn’s statement and it quickly turned into a laugh. Soon the whole group cracked up, which I preferred to the strained silence.
“Here’s the thing, guys.” When I could speak, I continued. “It can’t go on like this. They’re going to kill us all. We have with us a group of Werewolves who woke up. That means it’s possible to do so. I’m not saying the Undead can be saved. That’s too late, they’re dead, but the Werewolves lived among humans a long time and no one knew. No one got hurt. I think our goal has to be to destroy the Undead and then capture Icahn. He’ll know how to save the Wolves, if it’s possible.”
I shuddered as I thought about Payne. He might be under some kind of ‘spell’ like Jason’s pack had been, not realizing what he did, but I had a feeling that Wolf liked his situation. If he had a choice, I suspected he wouldn’t want to be awoken. He really seemed to get off on the torture.
“Did you ask your Dad?” Micah pulled me out of my thoughts.
I nodded. “Tomorrow Dad will start to show me how to do it.”
“How do you what?” Glen again. Out of everyone, why did he have to be the most vocal? Shouldn’t he be back in his tent taking care of his pregnant girlfriend or something?
“Dad is going to teach me how to make bombs.”
I expected the silence that filled the room, and I raised my hand to indicate I wanted to continue before they all lost their minds.
“Icahn didn’t want us to know how to do that. He made it a rule. It makes so much sense now that we know he was never on our side. There is almost no one left alive who knows how to produce explosives, except for my father, and as of tomorrow, me. If anyone has a problem with it, they can leave here and not participate any further.”
Micah spoke first. “I think we should all know how to do it. Do you think Harold would teach all of us?”
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.