TWENTY-TWO

I feel Blake before his SUV pulls into the parking lot. The anger that’s simmered underneath the surface is gone, replaced by something stronger. Resignation?

He stares straight ahead as I climb into the car, but there’s a wave of relief that mixes with my own. It matters to him that I’m safe. We don’t say anything for the first few minutes of the drive. Somewhere along the I-15, the silence becomes unbearable.

I look at him. “Are we going to talk about this? ’Cause I’m a little freaked.”

Blake doesn’t answer. He sets his hand on the top of mine and squeezes. I close my eyes and relax into the artificial warmth. It’s weird how danger feels so much like safety. His thumb rubs my wrist, brushing the silver chain.

When we get to R.D., he doesn’t drive toward my house. “Where are we going?” I ask. I finally feel the wariness I should have felt when I first got in the car.

“The Heights.”

“I think I just want to go home.”

“Not yet.” Blake finally turns toward me and I have to suck in a breath. I might never get used to the fact that Blake Williams is Looking. At. Me.

“The Sons don’t ask questions, Brianna. If there’s a threat, it’ll be extinguished. End of story. The only thing that’s kept them from hunting you down so far is fear of exposure. It won’t last long. You need to be prepared.”

“Them? More than Jonah?”

“Jonah’s a punk. He’s the least of your worries at the moment. Most of us don’t even care about the old wars, but Rush and his group are another story. Jonah’s got them fired up. You need to be prepared to fight.”

“Fight?” I have a different plan in mind. It consists of going home and burying my head under my pillow until this all blows over. Not exactly proactive or realistic, but better.

“It’s fight or die.” Blake pauses. “So what were you doing in Mira Mesa anyway?”

I search for an answer. “I left the party with a girl from school and she brought me there.” Not a lie. Not the truth either.

“To a gas station?” Blake isn’t buying it. Of course he’s not. He can feel my discomfort.

I can’t tell him the truth. I may not want to be part of Sherri’s blood war, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to throw her to the wolves, either. “We aren’t exactly friends. But it’s not like I could stay at Joe’s.”

Blake pulls into the vacant lot where his house once stood, driving up the charred driveway to the concrete pad. He lets go of my hand but doesn’t move to get out of the car. “Why didn’t you leave with Christy?”

“She’s kind of mad at the moment. She thinks Jonah and I … ” I let my voice trail off. I can’t finish the sentence. I rub my neck where Jonah’s hands squeezed it. I have to remind myself that I can still breathe.

“I shouldn’t have left you there.” Blake’s eyes are soft, and I’m struck by the difference in him. In the quiet moments when he’s not smiling or flirting, he’s almost another person. This is a boy that a girl could fall in love with, if he ever gave her half the chance.

“It’s not your fault.”

“He could’ve killed you.”

“You stopped him.” I can’t resist reaching across the car to let my fingers trail along his shoulder.

He shakes his head. “You don’t understand. I almost didn’t come.”

My hand slides down between his shoulder blades. “You did.”

The air is still, crackling. He leans toward me, his breath on my neck. “What is this, Brianna?”

I don’t dare move, for fear he’ll pull away.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen this way.” He kisses me. Soft. Warm. Not nearly enough. He stops, leaning back against his seat. He runs his hand through his hair with such force that he ends up looking slightly crazed, his blond layers sticking up and out at odd angles.

Maybe Sherri was right. Maybe I’m a little slow on the uptake. This wasn’t supposed to happen this way. What does that mean?

“What wasn’t supposed to happen?” I ask. He just sighs and looks out the window, ignoring my question.

What? Blake wasn’t supposed to like me? Of course not—he was supposed to kill me. I grab his arm, forcing him to look at me again. “Should I be dead right now?”

His eyes are sad, resigned to the truth even if he won’t come right out and say it. “It’s complicated.”

“But I should be dead, right?”

He doesn’t say a word, which is as much of an admission as a full confession. He’s every bit as thick as Sherri and her little death squad.

“I am not Danu,” I state. “I don’t care if she burned down a farm or caused a drought or stole someone’s husband. She’s been dead for a thousand years or more. And I have no intention of dying over something my great-grandmother to the hundredth power did or did not do.”

“I know you’re not her.” Blake’s eyes are a swirling mix of emotions that barely hint at the spin cycle of anger and grief that rises inside me. “You’ve done what she could never do, haven’t you? You’ve bound me to you in a way I can’t escape. Made me feel things that go against everything my family stands for.”

“Your family? Is that what this is about? What about you? What does Blake Williams stand for?”

He stares outside of the car. The charred trees outside look almost alive as the shadows of their bare branches weave and twist around each other. “Can this wait? I’m trying to help you here.”

“I’m still getting over the fact that you regret saving my life.”

He spins to face me. “Let’s get one thing straight. I’ve let my family down in every possible way. I’ve attacked one of our own, and now I’m about to deceive the entire Circle.” Blake’s lips curve up gently in a smile that’s at once sad and imperfect. “But I don’t regret saving you. That’s the problem.”

My mouth is dry. “Oh.”

He flashes a grin, armor securely back in place. He even manages to quell the spinning in my stomach. “Besides, letting you die would be a bit like losing a piece of myself, wouldn’t it? No way in hell I’d let that happen.”

I want to grab him and wipe that stupid smile off his face. “Can you be real for more than thirty seconds at a time?”

He laughs. “Trust me, you don’t want real. Real is a pretty twisted place. You’ve seen the blackness that fills my soul, remember?”

I turn away. It should be obvious that the black soul was mine. Blake practically glows with silver light even when we’re not in the midst of some bizarre soul bond. And I didn’t need to see my soul to know the darkness inside. I’ve kept it at bay for the last three years. Sasha may think that Danu just wanted to live in peace, but from what I’ve seen, Blake is right. Having power is dangerous when your heart wants vengeance.

“Hey,” Blake says, his hand rubbing my shoulder. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Was it that bad?”

I shake my head. “What if it’s not you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The black soul. What if it’s me? What if I’m some kind of evil, vindictive, psychotic killer?” There. I’ve said it out loud. What I’ve feared since I was thirteen. Since I almost killed two kids in a fire. For what—disappointing me?

Blake laughs. Not the reaction I expected. “I hate to break it to you. You’re all of those things.”

“This is where you’re supposed to tell me I’m imagining things. That it’s all going to be okay.” That I can choose who I want to be. That I can change my nature.

“There’s a reason my kind has hunted your kind for a thousand years.”

It’s my turn to look away. “It all seems so pointless.”

He takes my hand in his, letting his fingers weave in between my own. “It’s just the way it is. Kill or be killed. For all I know, at some point you’ll come after me, and one of us will have to kill the other.”

“I won’t kill you,” I say, too quickly and too loud. It doesn’t sound like the truth even to me.

“You don’t know that. For now, you need to understand what you’re up against. It’ll make it easier to keep you—and that little piece of me inside you—alive. There are seven of us who are Seventh Sons. Jonah you know, and you’ve met Rush. Micah and Jeremy are my cousins. They’re good guys.”

I raise my brow, not masking my skepticism.

“It’s the old guard you have to watch for,” Blake continues. “Rush, Levi, and Dr. McKay.”

“The geneticist?”

Blake nods. “He’s actually not as rabid as the other two. They’re kind of extreme in their beliefs. I always thought they were a little nuts, believing in the myth of the bandia. But now … ” He lets his voice trail off.

“Now what?”

Blake grins. “Now I know better.”

I want to bottle that smile and keep it with me.

“Anyway, Micah and Jeremy are nothing to worry about. They’ve been hoping to meet someone like you for a long time, but they won’t hurt you. You’ll understand when you meet them. It’s the others who are dangerous. The breeders, too. They’re human, but in some ways they’re the most bloodthirsty of the lot.”

“Breeders?” If I wasn’t creeped out before, I am now.

“Humans who have been recruited into the Circle because of their genetic ties to Killian. First through sixth generation carriers.”

Whoa. It seems Sasha has some good intel. “Do the breeders know what they are?”

Blake nods. “Too much knowledge has been lost because the demigod power only manifests every seventh generation. The Sons didn’t know the secrets of the Seventh Sons that came before them. The giollas helped, but even they had their limits.”

The familiar word sends a new wave of fear through me. What had Jonah said? “Giolla?”

“Servants to our kind, like Joe.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s kind of a historian. He passes down information from the Sons that came before. There’s less use for the giolla now, since we’re able to isolate the Killian gene and test humans who might be carriers. Now that we can pinpoint the carriers to a specific generation, we can use selective breeding to create Seventh Sons in almost every generation.”

“How? If the power only manifests every seventh?”

“By combining carriers of the Killian gene from different generations. My dad’s a fifth generation carrier and my mom’s a sixth generation carrier, so I’m both a sixth generation carrier and a seventh generation Son. Since I have the sixth generation gene, my own sons will be sevens and manifest the demigod power too. They’ll be both Seventh Sons and first generation carriers.”

“Okay, that’s not confusing.”

Blake grins. “It gets more complicated. If I breed with a fifth generation breeder, my children will also carry the sixth generation gene, which means that my grandsons will manifest the seventh generation power. Dr. McKay wants us to breed with the more remote generations, so that eventually we can breed all seven generations of the Killian gene into one person, ensuring a line of Seventh Sons in every generation.”

“It’s not that different from how thoroughbreds were created from a mixture of other breeds,” I say.

“Kind of sick, right? But it works. We can pass down information directly to the next generation of Sons, so Joe mostly babysits the younger Sons. He makes sure we don’t do something stupid that will get us discovered before we learn how to control our powers.”

“You said that someone like me hasn’t been seen for generations.” I let the unspoken question hang in the air. Why are they breeding for more Sons if they think the main threat is gone?

“I always assumed the bandia legend was a common enemy to bring us together, or a folk story made up by generations past to explain our kind.”

“Where exactly are we supposed to have gone?”

“We thought we’d broken the curse.”

“How?” The big SUV feels altogether too small. I lean against the passenger door.

“By ripping out the heart of every last bandia.” Blake smiles then, teeth gleaming in the dark. “I guess we missed one.”