by G. K. DeRosa
I followed Dad to the door as he snuck out for his daily assessment of the grounds. From the crack in the door, I could just make out the huge gaping hole on the second floor of our home. I hadn’t been outside to see more of the damage. The angels now made daily visits, flying just over the top of the roof. Night was even worst. The constant flutter of ginormous wings consumed my days and plagued my nightmares.
Ash sat at the table, chewing on a strip of beef jerky. He donned the same blank mask he’d been wearing since the day he came back from his destroyed home three days ago.
Guilt swirled in my belly, tossing and turning like a ship on a stormy sea. I couldn’t let him keep suffering alone.
With Dad outside and Mom in the bathroom, we’d have some semblance of privacy. Now was my chance. I marched over and sat beside him, yanking the jerky out of his hand. “You need to talk to me, Ash. Please. I’m here for you.” I fixed my gaze to his, refusing to let him squirm away.
He shook his head and raked his hand over his weary face. “I can’t.”
“I know this is horrible. No—I don’t know. I have no idea what you’re going through because you won’t let me in. I can’t imagine how awful this must be for you but shutting me out isn’t the answer.”
“You don’t get it,” he muttered.
“Don’t get what?” I scooted closer, pleased I’d made some sort of progress.
“I should’ve been there.” He paused and swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bouncing wildly. “I would’ve been there if it hadn’t been for you.”
My neck snapped back as if he’d actually slapped me. All the air evaporated from my lungs as I absorbed the look of hatred in his eyes. The day of the attack flitted through my mind like a movie reel. I’d stopped him from going home. He had stayed to play another game of Monopoly with me.
“Ash—” My throat felt like it was coated in sawdust.
He raised his hand and shook his head again. “Just don’t.”
“You blame me for not being there with them?”
He clenched his fists at his sides, and I waited with baited breath for him to punch the table or the nearest inanimate object. Hopefully not me. “I should’ve been there,” he gritted out through his teeth.
“You would’ve been dead!” I leapt out of my seat, glaring down at him. How could he be so stupid?
“Maybe I should’ve been!” He pounded his fist against the makeshift table, and it toppled over with a crash. “They were my family. As messed up as things were sometimes, they were all I had. I should’ve been there.”
“No…” Tears streamed down my face now, and there was no stopping them. “You still have me and my parents. We need you, Ash. I’m so sorry you lost everything, but please… If I’d lost you too, I wouldn’t have survived.”
He just kept shaking his head, refusing to meet my eyes.
I threaded my fingers through my hair, pulling at the ends. An unladylike grunt bubbled to the surface. How had this happened? How was our world being ravaged by vampires and angels? How was my best friend mad at me because he didn’t die?
“Ash, please.” I knelt down in front of him, squeezing his clenched fists.
He diverted his gaze out the window, and a deep crack etched across my heart.
“I’m so sorry, Ash.”
The bathroom door creaked open and I jumped up to my feet, wiping the tears from my cheeks. Mom stepped out without giving either of us a second glance. She tightened the tie of her bathrobe and slipped back onto the cot. My mom no longer existed—we’d only been left with her empty shell.
I convinced myself it was better that way. Maybe she couldn’t feel what the rest of us had to endure and selfishly, it would hurt less when I lost her. Because somehow I knew I would. I’d lose all of them.
And I was right.
Epilogue
Losing my parents finally leveled the playing field between Asher and me. A part of me always felt he resented that they were alive, and his family wasn’t. One day he got his wish.
That was a horrible thing to say, and I really didn’t mean it. I didn’t truly think my best friend wished for my parents to die. And I knew he definitely didn’t wish to be the one to find them—or rather their mutilated corpses.
Vampires. We’d thought the angels were bad, but once the immortal bloodsuckers ravaged the north, we prayed for the angels to return. Not many in our small town survived. Not many had been prepared like my Dad had been.
Even with all the provisions, he and mom ventured out once a week to scavenge for more. I never should’ve let them go that day. We had more than enough at that point in time, but Dad was always worried we’d run out with four mouths to feed.
When they didn’t come back after two days, I knew they were dead. The most they’d ever been gone was twenty-four hours. I tried to go out to look for them, but Asher refused to let me go. He was thinking the same thing I was—I could see it in his eyes. They were gone.
At some point overnight, I awoke to an empty basement. Asher’s cot was bare, his boots missing. Duke sat by the door with his big ears on high alert. Fear surged through my insides, tangling them into terrible knots. He’d gone out searching for my parents. I knew this without a doubt because I would have done the same for him.
The next few hours were some of the worst of my life. I paced the length of the basement until I’d worn a path on the cement—or at least it seemed like I should have. I sent up prayer after prayer to a God I wasn’t sure existed anymore to bring them all back safe.
I couldn’t lose them all. I wouldn’t survive alone.
A low growl drew me from my dark thoughts, and my heart leapt up to my throat as Duke’s hackles rose. He stood with every muscle strained, eyeing the door as the growl reverberated in his throat.
I crept over to the old wooden chest and pulled out my dad’s gun, my hands shaking. It may not stop a vampire or an angel, but maybe it would slow one down. I cocked the safety, my finger a hair’s breath from the trigger and trained it toward the door.
Three quick knocks and a long pause. Releasing the breath I’d been holding, I lowered the gun and ran to the door.
Hauling the metal bar to the side, I pushed the heavy thing open and my heart nearly gave out at the sight of my best friend. He wrapped me in a tight embrace before I could get a word out. Glancing over his shoulder, I anxiously searched the bare tree line for my parents—a tiny shred of hope still lingering.
When I pulled back, my eyes finally met Asher’s. It was like I’d been punched in the gut—all the air whooshing out of my lungs with just one look.
“I’m so sorry, Liv.”
A shudder wracked my chest, and all the fear and anxiety from the past few days exploded into a powerful sob. They were gone. My parents were really gone.
I crumpled to the floor and took Ash down with me. He held me while I cried, rocking me gently. I bawled until every drop of moisture had depleted from my body. When I had nothing left, icy numbness crept through my veins. My eyelids were heavy and swollen but everything else was numb. I felt like I was floating, no longer tethered to the earth—there was nothing left for me there anymore.
At some point, Ash lifted my chin and stared down at me, his green eyes filled with more sorrow than the day his own family died. “We’re going to get through this, Liv. I promise you. We’ll survive this somehow.”
I nodded because I didn’t have the energy to fight with him and curled back into his chest. Closing my eyes, I waited for the darkness to pull me under. I didn’t want to think anymore; I didn’t want to feel anything. Ever again.
Hours later or heck maybe even days later, I dragged myself off the floor. Asher’s head leaned against the cinderblock wall, his neck at an uncomfortable-looking angle. His chest rose and fell slowly, and for a while I just watched him. Even asleep the sharp angle of his jaw was pronounced. Dark smudges shadowed his eyes and there was a hollowness to his cheeks that wasn’t there just a few months ago. I wondered what
I looked like now? Dad hadn’t thought of equipping the bunker with something so unnecessary as a mirror. Pain lanced through my heart like a hot poker at the thought of never seeing him again.
Nothing was left of our house above the basement. It had all happened so fast that I never thought to bring some pictures or other mementos down to the bunker. And now all I had left were memories. One day our home stood proudly in the middle of the apple orchards, and the next it was gone. Just like my parents.
Ash and I hunkered down in the basement with our supplies, able to survive for months without leaving the bunker. Time moved swiftly—days morphing to weeks and then months. It’s true what they say: time heals all wounds. Eventually things went back to normal for Ash and me. Well, as normal as they could be for two orphan teenagers trapped in a basement with angels and vampires fighting overhead.
Asher had changed though; he wasn’t my happy-go-lucky best friend anymore. I supposed I’d changed too. We’d both lost so much, more than any person should have to bear at our age—at any age. In a world like the one we now lived in, how could you not change and expect to survive?
To continue Liv’s story, grab book one in The Vampire and Angel Wars - Wings & Destruction here. And read on for a special sneak peek of the first two chapters.
Sneak Peek at Wings & Destruction
Chapter 1
Winged-beasts circled the dark sky overhead, the flapping of their enormous wings creating an incessant drone. It buzzed across my eardrums twenty-four/seven, a constant torture. Maybe that was their plan—to wait for the remaining humans to go insane. I stared out of the little basement window with my hands over my ears. When would the angels leave? It had been weeks since the fighting ended and still they remained.
This was vampire territory now. A chill slithered up my spine as the terrible image that flooded my nightmares coalesced in the forefront of my mind. My dead parents. Murdered like more than half of the adults in the country. Sometimes I wished they’d killed me too.
A cold nose squirmed its way under my arm and buried itself in my lap. I cracked a smile and rubbed behind Duke’s big ears. He whimpered, and I pushed the dark thoughts away. Somehow he always knew when I needed him most. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, buddy.”
He barked, and I quickly shushed him. Vampires and angels had heightened hearing. They had heightened everything. The only reason we’d survived this long was because we lived on a remote farm in upstate New York. The fighting started in the big cities, and one by one each large metropolis in the country fell. You’d think in a war between angels and vampires one side would’ve killed the other off.
You’d be wrong.
Instead, it was the human population that ended up nearly decimated.
Both sides were much too powerful, and neither would surrender. They ravaged cities in golden fire and pools of crimson blood. In the end, there were no winners. Not really anyway. They split the country along the fortieth parallel dividing their spoils in half. The vampires got the north including New York City, and the angels got Washington D.C. and the remaining southern half.
One thing was certain: the humans lost.
A light knock at the basement door sent my heart rate skyrocketing. Duke bared his fangs, and a low growl reverberated in his throat. I jumped up and blew out the candle on my makeshift bedside table. I put my index finger to my lips and shot Duke a narrowed glare. The growling stopped, and he fell to my side as I crept toward the door.
I crouched at the foot of the stairs as sweat trickled down my back. Two more knocks and a long pause. My shoulders sagged, and I released the breath I’d been holding.
“It’s me, open up,” a familiar voice hissed through the metal door.
I lifted the lever to release the deadlock and heaved the door open. If my dad hadn’t had this old door fortified when things started to get bad, I would’ve never survived this long.
Emerald green eyes peered in through the doorway. “You gotta be more careful, Liv. I could see the candlelight through the window as I got closer.”
My best friend padded down the stairs and ran a hand over his buzzed dark blonde hair.
“You only saw it because you knew it was there, Asher.”
“Maybe. But I only have normal human vision—unlike the others.” His eyes veered up toward the sky. “I want you to be careful. Especially when I’m not around.”
I placed my hands on my hips and stared up at my friend. At six foot one, he had to duck when moving through certain parts of the basement. I had no such problems. I may have been tall for a girl, but luckily I fit just fine in the safe house my dad had built. “Why are you back so soon? I thought you weren’t returning till tomorrow.” I picked up the candle and moved it further away from the one window, re-lighting it.
He shrugged, and a dark shadow fell over his bright irises. “There’s nothing out there, Liv. I went as far as Thompson’s farm, and there wasn’t a scrap left.”
I glanced at the bare metal shelves along the dark wall. The utter emptiness mirrored the sensation in my chest—and my stomach. Only a handful of cans remained. We’d survived on our stock of supplies for almost six months, but if we didn’t find more soon, we were screwed. I plopped down on the floor and Asher sat across from me, the reflection of the candle’s flame dancing in his eyes.
Angels and vampires didn’t need food to survive so they didn’t care that they destroyed everything edible during the war. The vampires took humans as hostages and turned them into blood slaves so they had all they needed. They created slave camps all along the north to sate their blood lust. New York City was their capital—Grand Central Station the seat of their throne. No one knew how many humans were still alive and enslaved. Everyone had lost someone in the past year, and the worst part was not knowing if they were even alive.
I guessed I was lucky I knew. Even luckier I hadn’t seen my parents’ horrific fate with my own eyes. Only Asher bore that burden.
“We’ll have to go farther out to search,” I finally said. My parents died six months ago to protect me, and I wouldn’t let their sacrifice be in vain. I couldn’t give up, no matter how much I wanted to sometimes.
“You’re not going anywhere.” He reached out for my hand and squeezed. “It’s not safe.”
I jerked it out of his grasp. I hated when he treated me like a little girl he had to protect. Asher was eighteen, not even a full year older than me, but he always treated me like a kid sister. “It’s not safe for you either, and you still went.”
“Well, I can’t just sit here and let us starve.”
“Neither can I.” I tucked a wave of dark hair behind my ear and gave him my best steely gaze. “We’ll go tomorrow morning—all of us.” I wouldn’t leave Duke behind either.
He shook his head, his lips pressed together in a thin line. “You haven’t been out there in weeks, Liv. You don’t know what it’s like.”
I got to my feet and approached the small window, blades of brown grass obstructing my view. The sky was completely dark now, but the steady droning continued. “Maybe it’s time I did.”
Chapter 2
I rolled over on the cot and jabbed my elbow into the cold metal frame, sending a sharp tingle all the way up my arm. I clenched my jaw to suppress the curse on the tip of my tongue. No matter how many nights I’d slept on this uncomfortable thing, I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it. I swore I had hit my funny bone at least once a week for the past year.
Dad had made us move down here as soon as things got bad. He was smart. The surrounding farms didn’t fare as well, my best friend’s included. I rolled back over, and bright green eyes locked onto mine.
“Sorry, did I wake you?” he whispered.
“No. It was this poor excuse for a bed.” The sun never rose anymore; the sky was always covered in dark clouds, which made it difficult to figure out when to wake up. Luckily, my wristwatch still worked. I checked the time and grunted. “Why are you up so early? It’s barel
y five.”
He shrugged and ran his hand over his short hair. “I couldn’t sleep.”
His cot was across the way from mine; if I reached out I could’ve touched his nose. Something made me want to, but the hollow look in his eye stopped me. “Everything’s going to be fine, Ash. We’ll find food today and we’ll survive, just like we have for the past months.”
He swung his long legs over the side of the crude bed and sat up. “I don’t know. Something’s changed since the war ended. It’s like the vamps and angels are working together. That’s only going to make things worse for us.”
I sat up too and met his gaze with a fiery one of my own. “Don’t you give up on us, Asher St. John. I need you. We’re all we have left.”
He wrapped his fingers around the edge of the cot and squeezed. His eyes were shiny, and I knew his thoughts were on his family. I averted my gaze to give him a second. He lost his parents and little sister early on. His farm was a few miles from here and had somehow gotten caught in the middle of the early fighting. An orange ball of fire had decimated the entire place in minutes taking his whole family with it. Asher would’ve been dead too if he hadn’t been visiting me that day. Before the world went to hell, I thought there could be more than just friendship between us. Then everything happened, and our feelings got buried in the ash along with everything else.
He cleared his throat and shot up to his feet. “Since we’re up, we might as well get an early start.”
I followed his lead and began to gather my belongings for the trek. We had no idea how far we’d have to go to find food, so I piled all of our remaining cans and bottled water on the floor and divided them between the two backpacks.