As I’d predicted, the second Micah ran, one of the wolves decided to give chase. I moved fast, leaping over a large branch to get in its way. With a swish of Tiffani’s machete, I took off its head.
The other two wolves snarled at me and lunged. I whacked one of them with my machete while I attempted to dodge the other one.
My maneuver didn’t go as I’d planned. My machete hit the wolf’s neck but got stuck. Jarred, I tried to pull it back out but my weapon remained where it was, halfway lodged into the werewolf’s jugular. I tried to swallow but my throat suddenly clogged with terror.
The wolf snarled, showing me his neck and the giant steel collar he wore around it. If monsters could sneer, I would swear he did, letting me know that he’d beat my little trick. These were smart werewolves, hanging in the trees, wearing protective gear. I’d not encountered their ilk before.
In front of my eyes, one of them shifted, an impressive feat considering it was a full moon and only the Alpha of a pack could control his own shift during that part of the moon cycle.
In his human form, the man stood at least a foot taller than me. He walked forward and shoved my stunned form down onto the ground. I crab-walked backwards until I hit a large object—probably a tree— behind me. The wolves, one in human form, stalked toward me slowly, like they didn’t have a care in the world.
“Well, Rachel Clancy.” My stomach lurched. Why did they always know my name? Had they passed around a picture of me? Had Icahn commissioned a likeness? “It will be my great pleasure to tell the master that I defeated you, once and for all.”
The wolf next to him growled. “Yes, you are right, Anders, that we defeated the girl.” He stared at me as if I was the most delicious piece of meat he’d ever seen. “Let me ask you this. Where are your wolf-protectors now?”
I had a hard time finding my voice. “Look at you, big men. Picking on a little, unarmed girl. I bet you’ll go back home and be big heroes. Great work.”
“You have been a thorn in the master’s side for too long.”
“Tell me.” I pushed backward until the tree behind me helped me to stand up. I didn’t want to die on the ground, cowering with fear. They could smell my terror. I didn’t have to give them the visual aid to go with it.
“What were you before you were this?” I enunciated the last word. “A doctor? A lawyer? A teacher? What did you do before you were nothing? Do you even remember? You must have been an Alpha. That’s why you can shift tonight. Do you even remember what that meant?”
“Enough.” His brown eyes flared red. “End her.”
The wolf with half his neck chopped off rushed forward. I darted left but he was faster. Weaponless, my genes weren’t helping me very much. His mouth crunched down on the side of my arm. I screamed before the pain ever really hit me, just knowing the pain that would be coming.
But my roar did nothing to stave off the actual experience. Light flashed before my eyes. The pain didn’t contain itself to my arm but exploded from it. His teeth continued to tear a hole into my body as he dragged me forward. To my left, I saw the Alpha shift back into his wolf form.
I’d almost died from a monster before. My memory of that time had dimmed. I only knew I wasn’t going to survive this time. He treated my body like his personal rag doll. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to watch Alpha wolf take his turn. Maybe if I closed my eyes I could make the whole thing move faster. Or I could force myself to pass out.
Micah had gotten away. I wouldn’t die with another Lyons death on my conscience.
The Alpha wolf bit down on me, and I couldn’t even scream this time. Tears streamed down my face and rather than speed up, time seemed to be slowing down. My mind traveled away from my body. It felt odd and calming.
I started to remember. The years I’d spent living in father’s house down below in Genesis came first. Tia handing me a sandwich every day, and the times I’d silently spend watching Micah come and go, his presence trumping all others in the world. Training first with Tiffani and then with Keith. The way they’d both watched me like I’d mattered, and how I’d looked forward to those times during the day. The dread that had taken root in my stomach every afternoon because I knew I had to go home, at least for a while, and clean up my father.
But there were good memories of him, too, which surprised me. Sometimes, when he stayed sober, I would watch him carve small wooden dolls. He could do any kind of an animal. When he’d finish, he’d hand them to me, and I felt like those small presents were the best gift anyone could ever give me. Until I’d had enough of cleaning up after him, and I’d tossed them all out with the trash when he’d finished a particularly bad binge.
After that, I could see the time I’d first spent with Jason. How light and airy everything had suddenly felt, as if life outside of Genesis could exist. I’d been a fairy-tale princess who finally got her happy-ever-after just as I’d stopped believing such a thing could happen.
The first time I’d seen the night sky. The first time snow had fallen on my eyelashes before I’d learned to hate the weather. Beautiful moments. I’d practically forgotten they’d ever happened.
The boy in the cage—Deacon—who had looked at me as though I mattered, and he couldn’t believe I’d let him down. He’d turned out to be such a perpetual pain in my behind and yet I knew I would miss him if he suddenly vanished. Laughing with him when nothing should have been funny. The hard, haunted look in his brown eyes when I’d chosen Chad over him.
Chad…his image came and went from me like a fleeting brush of wind I wanted to hold on to but like the boy himself, I couldn’t. That seemed so unfair. Shouldn’t I be able to have Chad, who had been my friend before he’d been anything else, in death if nowhere else?
Remotely, I felt my head slam onto the ground hard. Were they lifting me up and throwing me back down? I didn’t know.
The images in my mind moved further away, and I moved to follow them.
Chad had died. I’d stabbed him through his precious heart because we’d promised each other what every Warrior promises another Warrior: I will not let you be a vampire. So why did I feel like I’d killed him? Why did even remembering it now cause me so much guilt that I begged my mind to let me pretend it had never happened?
I could see more things. Jason coming back, the security blanket he had been for me during the most tumultuous time in my life. Tia’s baby and Tiffani’s. Wondering if I ever even wanted children.
And then the Icahn clan. After I died, no one would stop them. Not that I’d been doing such a bang-up job, but at least while I lived no one could forget what they’d done. If one person lived who knew what had happened, who didn’t forget, or pretend that somehow existence could continue in a normal fashion while the Icahns still breathed air, then that held significance. Someone whose thoughts, if nothing else, held them accountable for mass destruction.
My mother…I could almost remember her. How her hair smelled….
I suddenly felt lighter. I wasn’t being thrown around. Was this the end?
“Rachel, don’t you dare die on me.”
I knew that voice but I couldn’t place it. Not while I drifted so beautifully where there was no pain, just my own thoughts and visions.
I’d liked where I was going. My mom….
“Your mother is not here, and you are not seeing her today. I don’t even know if that even happens. Rachel, come on.”
Desperation laced Deacon’s voice like I’d never heard before. Why was he bothering me so much when I’d finally found happiness?
“Rachel.”
It felt like he squeezed my cheeks in his fingers. I opened my lids, desperate to ask him to stop, to leave me alone. The world felt very bright to my abused eyes even though daylight had not yet arrived, and I blinked rapidly trying to clear it. Why did the moon have to be so darn bright tonight?
Tears slid down Deacon’s pale cheeks. Funny, I’d never thought of Deacon as a crier. Jason, yes. He could get a good weep going when he wanted to, but not Deacon, the boy who had lived underground only to come upward and find out he had to fight monsters still. Deacon never shed a tear.
“Why are you crying?” I tried to raise my hand to touch his face but I couldn’t. The burn in my arms had become an extraordinary thing…I closed my eyes. I needed not to feel.
“No.” He pinched my cheeks again. “Don’t close your eyes.”
I glared at him. If I wanted to drift, I didn’t need his permission.
“I’m crying because you are scaring me, okay? Other people get to die, Rachel. Not you. Never you.”
I raised an eyebrow, even though it pained me. “Never?”
“Not until I’m dead.”
He stunned me. I guess it had never occurred to me that Deacon really felt things that deeply. Oh, I knew he claimed to have romantic feelings for me. With Deacon, however, it always felt like a really surface thing. In our hearts, I’d thought, we were basically friends.
Now, as I lay in front of him broken and bloody, he got romantic?
“I think I’m dying, Deacon. It’s too late for me. You should leave me here and go before the wolves come back.”
He shook his head. “You’re not dying. You can’t because then life will cease to matter.” He shouted the last part of his sentence as if he wanted someone other than me to hear it. “And those particular wolves are not coming back. They’re dead.”
“Why are you shouting?”
Deacon slipped one hand under my neck and the other under my lower back. “I want the universe to hear me.”
“The universe?”
He laughed. “It couldn’t hurt. I’m going to pick you up now.”
“I’m torn to bits.”
“No, you’re not.” He shook his head emphatically. “Just your arms and your shoulders. They were playing with you, hadn’t really gotten started on killing you yet.”
“It feels like I’m dying.” It really did, and that urge to drift started again. I could add this moment to my list of images. Deacon showing his soft, romantic side over my dying, mutilated body. That thought stopped me short.
“You could still be bleeding to death. I think you’re going into shock.”
He scooped me up in his arms like I weighed nothing. In the year he’d lived above ground, he’d all but doubled in size. Fresh air, better food, and exercise had made him broad and powerful. I’d just not noticed until this moment because I’d been totally focused on Jason.
Deacon swore as he moved forward. “I never thought I would say this…ever…but I wish Jason hadn’t left because it would mean his father the doctor could save you.”
“I think these days, Andon would let me die.”
“No, he’d never be that obvious. Andon would push you off a cliff when no one looked.”
Hearing that was such a relief. Deacon didn’t react like I was crazy. “You agree with me?”
“Of course. Andon’s out to split the two of you up.” He shrugged, which I felt since I was pressed against his chest. “I would have liked the guy for it if I hadn’t worried he was going to get you killed in the process.”
The world spun around me. Either from blood loss or Deacon’s words. “Please don’t drop me.”
“Never.”
I’m not sure what happened over the rest of the trip. I could hear the crunching of twigs beneath his feet. I could feel the snow on my face. Then that stopped. Maybe Deacon covered me up. I think he did. I drifted in and out of the world but never back to the movie screening of my life. I’m not sure what had changed to keep me so grounded in this world. Deacon’s heartbeat through his soft shirt felt nice against my abused skin.
***
“Rachel, can you hear me?” Keith’s voice interrupted my dozing. I lay on a cot in the medic tent. I’d been there a while. Days?
“I don’t think the wolves tore off my ears.” I opened my eyes, wishing I hadn’t. I knew they’d been short on medication but they were certainly dosing me up on painkillers, enough to make me want to throw up every time I woke.
“You saved Tiffani and Levi.”
Keith looked ragged, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. He had a large scratch down the side of his face.
“Saved Tiffani and Levi?” I tried to remember. “Did I?”
“You did.” He sat down next to me in a small chair for family members. My father had not, to my knowledge, used it. Even thinking about me in here, this injured, must have thrown him into drunk-ville. I had the impression someone spent a lot of time in that chair. Although I didn’t know who. Odd to be so drugged up.
“I also lost her machete.”
“That’s okay. She doesn’t use it anymore.” He leaned over me. “You also saved Micah Lyons.”
“I did?” I really couldn’t remember that at all.
He laughed. “You’re a big hero. Again.”
“I think you probably did a number of heroic things yourself.”
“None of them included saving my wife and child from certain death.”
“Okay. Please don’t thank me. Gratitude makes me totally uncomfortable.” I couldn’t believe I uttered that aloud. Sleep seemed better that talking.
“Why do you think that is?”
Really? Keith intended to quiz me while I lay in this bed nearly dead? “I can’t talk about this while I’m so injured. I don’t do self-examination very well on a good day. Can this wait until I’m better?”
“You’ve been in here a week. I’m forcing you back to the land of the living.”
“Then maybe they need to cut back my medication. “
He nodded. “They are.”
That meant I’d have pain again. Horrible, mind numbing pain.
I tried to sit up. If Keith wanted to talk, I didn’t want to be at a disadvantage. If I’d been there a week, then I had a question I needed answered.
“Has it been Jason sitting here with me?”
Keith shook his head, his strawberry blond locks looking disheveled. “Jason left, remember? How far back does your memory loss go?”
“He should be back.”
Keith shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
There were much more important things I should be wondering about. Why had the vampires overwhelmed us? How many wolves had hit us? How many injured were there total? Casualties? What had it done to our defenses?
All I could think was that it was a good thing I hadn’t sat out in the snow waiting, again.
Keith looked at me expectantly, and I felt as if I needed to speak. “So, my dad then? He’s actually been sitting here?”
“No.” Keith scratched his head. “As you can imagine, it did not go well when we told him how hurt you were. Patrick says he crumbled to the floor.”
“Then who has been sitting here with me? Or am I just imagining that someone’s been here?” The desperate imagination of a lonely girl.
“I can’t get Deacon to go home or to go out on patrol. We’re still taking hits from the wolves. I could use him. I had to practically threaten to evict him from Genesis—not that I could—to get him to do rounds today, and then he only came because I agreed to sit with you.”
Deacon. He’d rescued me and he’d sat here for a week. “Keith.” My mouth felt dry. “Why do you suppose he did that?”
“Because he’s in love with you.” Keith scratched at his chin absentmindedly, as if he hadn’t just delivered an announcement that was a huge deal as if it was nothing new.
“He wants me. He’s not in love with me.”
“Want you? As in wants your body?”
I nodded. “He’s also my friend.”
“If he wanted you, after all this time, he’d have found someone else to want. He loves you, kid. And I love you. And so does Tiffani. But not in the same way Deacon loves you.”
Deacon did. I couldn’t deny it anymore. Still, Jason and I had not broken up. I loved him even though I hated him. I loved Deacon—as my friend. The pain I’d dreaded creeped up my arm.