Forever Young - Book 3

by Daniel Pierce

  She bit her lip. “My father,” she said, after a moment. “My father makes me different.”

  Tess looked over the top of her book at us. The scenery out the window moved faster as we got out of Uruará proper, no longer needing to worry about pedestrians or cars. “Genetics are funny, I guess, but I don’t suppose you’d like to give us some more detail?” She looked back at her book. “It’s not that we don’t like you or even that we don’t trust you. We just don’t know you well. Other than the fact you’re damned good with those knives.”

  “No, I understand.” Lila moistened her lips. “My father was a good man. He may still be a good man, as far as I know. I don’t think he’s still alive, but I could be wrong. He disappeared from our home when I was younger, and I’ve been trying to find him ever since.

  “My father was the one who knew so much about the vampires. He told me everything he knew, and he knew an awful lot. He knew their habits. He knew the different powers they could get, and how rare some powers are versus others. He knew what would kill them and what would only hurt them. He knew how to hide his scent from a vampire, and he knew how to track them down.” She rubbed at her throat, almost reflexively.

  “He was a scholar, but not like an academic. He worked for the electric company. He studied vampires in his spare time. I don’t want to say he was a hunter because it’s hard for a human to hunt vampires with any kind of effectiveness. But he tried. He knew them for what they were—monsters, parasites that feed on the misery of others. They have no use in the world, no purpose to the land or to society. They are good only for stories to scare children.” She sat up straighter, the purity of her purpose shining forth from her face.

  “I’m sure there’ll be other ways to scare children.” I covered her hand with mine. “You loved him very much. I can see that.”

  “My father was everything to me.” She smiled and blinked back tears. “He wasn’t obsessed, you know? He had a life. He was active in the church. He played football with his friends at the park. Like in America, they would call it a beer league.”

  “Right.” I grinned into her dark eyes. I wanted to give her as much reassurance as I could. “And what happened to him?”

  “I don’t know. I was maybe twelve or thirteen.” She looked out the window. “We had a storm. The power went out, and he got called out to help fix it. He never came home, but they never found a body either. None of the guys from his truck did.” She wiped at her eyes. “We’ve never known what happened to him. I’ve been trying to find out ever since.”

  I looked down. I couldn’t begin to comprehend that kind of grief. Both of my parents were alive and well, although they’d moved out to Arizona after they retired.

  “He showed me how to make knives and even bullets out of silver. We practiced against targets. You might have—I’ve heard this word used—call him an enthusiast for these things, and he told me it would be hard to find other people who would believe me. But he said someday I would hopefully find a Ferin who could help.”

  Tess, Kamila, and I all exchanged glances. “Your father told you about Ferin?”

  She smiled. “He didn’t just tell me about Ferin, but yes. He told me there were people attacked by vampires who somehow didn’t die. And those people had abilities too, and they fought against vampires all the time. If I needed help against vampires, I should find Ferin.

  “And Jason, he told me what you are, too. I knew as soon as I saw you.”

  My blood ran cold. Anyone’s would when they heard words like that. “And what am I?”

  “You’re a Lifebringer. You’re going to help destroy the vampires once and for all.”

  27

  My jaw gaped a bit. “You’ve heard of Lifebringers?” I couldn’t make myself understand it. Hell, even I hadn’t heard of Lifebringers until recently. “This is bizarre.”

  “Bizarre or not, I know exactly what you are. No other kind of Ferin has access to so many abilities.” She forced a smile, but then her face fell again.

  “I have been alone for years. Such an incredibly long time, I can’t even explain it. You wouldn’t understand. He went away, and I was alone. My mother tried to get rid of his things. She couldn’t stand to look at them, you know? She didn’t blame him for getting taken, or getting hurt, or whatever. She just cried every time she looked at them.

  “I had to hide everything I could.” Lila sniffed and wiped at her eyes again. “I couldn’t let her see. I kept them, but I couldn’t talk to her about any of it. If I even said the word father, she cried.” She rolled her eyes. “She didn’t want revenge. She didn’t want to rescue him. In hindsight, I should probably be more charitable. She was grieving. So was I, though. So was I.”

  I touched her hand, feeling it quiver with her remembered grief. “Did you ever find any clues?”

  She stared out at the speeding countryside again. “I saw someone who looked like a friend of his, one of the guys from his truck. It wasn’t him, though. And he was out during daylight, so it wasn’t him turned into a vampire. It was just mistaken identity.” She laughed bitterly. “For a while, I thought I saw him everywhere. Every hat was his hat. Every truck the electric company sent out was his truck. My uncles told me I was hurting my mother, and said not to say anything even if I thought I saw him. Wherever he was, he wasn’t coming back. And that was it.”

  I shuddered. The uncles had obviously just been protecting their sister, but what an awful thing to say to their niece. “You didn’t give up though?”

  “Never.” Her eyes burned as she turned back to me. “I researched everything I could. I kept his things hidden under my bed and covered by dirty laundry. When I got older, old enough to be out on my own, I picked up the search even more thoroughly. I spoke to every police officer who had worked on the case.

  “They were kind. They showed me every lead they had. One of them was someone who knew. He told me he was pretty sure the vampires had gotten them.” She swallowed hard, her pretty neck drawing my eye. “He showed me a little vial of black ash. He explained he’d found it at the scene and collected it, like he would evidence. And he told me what it was.”

  I frowned. Something about her words wasn’t making sense. “He just busted out the vampire ash to a civilian?”

  She smirked. “No, he didn’t. He’d known my father. He’d learned from my father, actually. My father had taught him to recognize the black ash. Once he knew my father had also taught me, he was willing to share his suspicions.

  “I don’t know how the vampires operate in North America, but down here, they don’t seek out attention. They may have a lot of power, but they’re not so strong that they can get away with just killing people and scattering corpses about. They have to dispose of the bodies, or people will rise up against them. The officer thought that while my father may have killed at least one of the vampires, there were too many of them. The electric men were killed and their bodies disposed of, never to be seen again.”

  “It sounds plausible.” I grimaced because while it might have been true, it wasn’t necessarily kind. “What did you do then?”

  “I needed to know for sure. I still do. If he’s truly dead, I need to kill the vampires involved. If he’s not? If he’s just staying away for whatever reason? I have to know that too. I want to . . .” She looked out the window again. “I have to know. I’ll settle for killing as many vampires as I can. I don’t want to leave a single one of them standing.”

  “Now that’s a sentiment I can certainly get behind.” I said with a tight grin. “Seriously, though. It’s an awfully long journey from grieving tween to badass ninja of the favela.” I straightened up to stretch my back. Everything hurt by now, and sitting up on the side of a bed made my muscles groan in protest. I almost felt middle aged again, except for the fact that when I got some sleep I’d be right as rain.

  She chuckled, understanding my mild disbelief. “Yeah, well, I researched as much as I could, and I trained. I joined some martial arts studios afte
r my father disappeared, which I convinced my mother was for self-defense. It wasn’t exactly a lie, was it?” Lila tossed her hair back over her shoulder. “My father told me a long time ago that there was a war coming. The vampires were going to make a play to control the world, to take control from the living. He said the Ferin would lead the fight against them, but it was everyone’s fight, and everyone had to be prepared to help fight with them. With you.” Lila blushed.

  Even Kamila looked up at that one. “Your father knows about the war?”

  Lila nodded quickly. “He did, yes. He didn’t have too many details, but he said there would be a Lifebringer.” She looked back over at me, leaning a little closer. “That’s obviously you, Jason. You’re the Lifebringer. You’re the one who will lead us against the vampires. And I need to be part of this.”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. My first instinct was to say no. My second instinct was to say hell no. Lila was human. It wouldn’t take much to kill her. She’d also been grieving for her father for over a decade. She’d trained herself to fight vampires, and she’d gone up against plenty of strong undead in the short time we’d been together. She would need protection, but she was far from helpless. She was fearless and skilled in her own right.

  Tess spared me having to doublecheck. “Lila, you’re obviously able to take care of yourself. It’s just, there’s a good chance most of us won’t be coming back, and we’re designed to be immortal. Are you positive this is something you want to get in the middle of? I want to make sure you fully understand how this is going to go.”

  Lila smiled down at the floor. “I know what I’m getting into. And I’m prepared to meet every consequence of my actions. I’m even eager.”

  “Eager.” I ran my hand through my hair. “Should we bring you somewhere to get help?”

  She gave me a playful nudge with her shoulder. “You know what I mean. It’s not a bad thing. I want to live. I want to get old and live a life that doesn’t involve fighting all the time. It’s just that this is what my father would want for me. This is his legacy. He wasn’t just a student or a scholar. He had his reasons for wanting the vampires destroyed too. He’s not here anymore, so I have to pick up where he left off. When it’s done, then I can move on. Until then, I have to keep on going.”

  I relaxed a little. Bringing a suicidal person into a fight was never a great plan, but if she accepted the risks with a clear mind, we could probably move forward. “That makes more sense. Are you sure the vampires were involved?”

  “Other than the vial of black ash?” She raised her eyebrow. Then she slumped in her seat and sighed. “I wasn’t there, so I can’t be a hundred percent sure. But I’m as sure as I can be, I guess. There were some problems with drug gangs in the area, so the linemen could have had an encounter with them too. I don’t think that’s what happened though. Even if it was, the drug gangs are all tied up with the vampires, so it would be the same.”

  “True.” I swung my feet up and lay back into a reclining position. I wasn’t trying to be seductive or otherwise weird about it. I just needed to support my back. “Listen, in all your travels, did your father ever mention a place called Patagonia?”

  She looked up sharply. “You mean the province in Chile?”

  “Please don’t lie to me. Not now, okay?” I said gently.

  She slumped a little. “Okay. I’ve heard it mentioned a time or two. He didn’t talk about it much. It was supposed to be something like an old building or fortress, but deep in the rainforest. According to the legend, it’s so deep in the jungle that sunlight doesn’t reach the ground, and the undead can walk the earth at all hours of the day or night.” She snorted and waved her hand. “Ridiculous, right? There are spots in the rainforest like that, but no place where the canopy is so thick you could build a whole fortress.”

  The train whizzed through a field and into a patch of forest. The interior looked dark enough, but I could see what Lila meant. I could still see things deep in the jungle, flowers and vines and birds as bright as anything. It was beautiful, and I looked forward to going in.

  “Do you think it’s real?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think he knew if it was real. Like I said, he didn’t talk about it much. It didn’t come up a lot in his research, and if it did, it came up in some weird contexts.” Her eyes went far away. “I remember one time he said to me, ‘Lila, they claim they come from Brazil. They say they came from one space in Brazil, but they’re all Europeans. Tell me how that’s supposed to work again?’ And then he laughed. I don’t think he took the idea of Patagonia all that seriously.

  “That said, there are a lot of vampires around lately. I’ve been watching them ever since I figured out about the fake shanty in Uruará. And they’ve all been talking about Patagonia too. So whether or not my father believed in it, the vampires do. And they’re all trying to find it.”

  “So they don’t know where it is for sure.” Tess put her book down, abandoning any pretense of being separate from the conversation. “That jives with what we saw on the map.”

  “You have a map?” Lila perked up. “May I see it?”

  Tess looked at me, and I waved at my pack. I wasn’t getting up for hell or high water right now. “We were trying to figure out how much to trust it,” she explained as she handed it over. “Jason found it in a vampire den in Belize.”

  Lila glanced at the map and nodded. Her whole body tensed as she looked at the paper. “This is roughly where my father thought it would be, assuming it exists at all.” She looked up. “You’re on the right track. But that red circle covers a lot of ground. We’re going to have to be prepared to do a lot of hiking.”

  “You’re not kidding.” I yawned. “Do you think we can make it?”

  “After what I’ve seen from the four of you? I think we can make it anywhere.” Lila leaned back against the wall, her body warm against my legs.

  28

  I woke up with a start. I hadn’t realized I’d fallen asleep, but I didn’t feel bad about it either. I’d needed the rest. Lila was asleep too, curled up against my side like we’d been together for months. Tess was curled up back in her own bunk, and I was happy to let her stay that way.

  Kamila and Zarya were both awake. Kamila smiled at me and gestured to the table, where coffee and food waited. I disentangled myself from Lila and got myself a cup of coffee. The cup was cold to the touch, but I reheated it with a thought.

  “Sorry I was out so long.” I looked out the window. Night had fallen while I’d succumbed to my fatigue. “What do I need to know?”

  “That sleep is normal and healthy?” Zarya laughed. “Seriously, Jason. You put yourself through a lot over the past couple of days. You could probably go right back to sleep if we pulled into Belém and went to the safehouse, couldn’t you?”

  “Maybe.” I scratched at my wild hair and chuckled. “You never know when you’re going to get the chance again; although, I admit I’m hoping the safehouse has a bigger bed.”

  Kamila’s eyes danced. “Oh? Is there something you have in mind?”

  Lila yawned and sat up. “Good morning,” she said. “Or is it night?” She looked out the window. “Ugh.”

  I heated up a cup of coffee for her. “Don’t worry too much about it. At this point, it doesn’t much matter.”

  “Jason is right,” Zarya told her. “What does matter is that we’ll be pulling into Belém soon. We’ve got an apartment waiting for us there, so we should be relatively comfortable while we figure out what to do next.”

  Lila nodded slowly. “My father mentioned a network of people helping the Ferin. I suppose it’s part of that then.”

  “Exactly,” Kamila said.

  I tried to quell my nerves about getting to Belém in the dark. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. Staying in an apartment building full of civilians made me nervous, simply because we were exposing them to undue risk.

  The train pulled into the station at Bel
ém, and we disembarked with everyone else. Nothing made my skin crawl any more than usual, so we took the time to get a map and figure out a route to our safehouse. Just in case we were being followed, we picked a roundabout route that should have thrown most people off our trail.

  Our safehouse was a high-rise tower near the beach, with a doorman and elegant foyer. Tess and Zarya approached him to get the key, while the rest of us hung back. I had noticed silver fixtures on the old-fashioned doors leading into the lobby, and inlaid silver on the elevator buttons as we made our way up to the top. This building was a safe haven, not just for us but for the people who lived here full time. We could relax.

  We settled in and found places to sleep. I took the king-sized bed with Tess, Zarya, and Kamila. Lila took the smaller bedroom. If she had anything to say about the four of us sharing a bedroom, she kept it to herself.

  “If you need anything, call out,” I told Lila, who responded with an arched brow.

  “What could I need?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but in about ten seconds I’ll be snoring, and I worry when we’re a stationary target. Call it a habit of mine,” I said, fighting a yawn.

  “I’ll be okay. You need sleep.” She leaned up and kissed my cheek, and in a moment I was good as my word. My last memory was Lila borrowing clothes from Tess for a shower, and watching them share a friendly moment. That, in and of itself, was a relief.

  The next day, we all woke up in our own time. The refrigerator and pantry had all been stocked with fresh fruit and eggs, so Kamila, the first one up, had decided to make breakfast for all of us. We ate around the table like a normal family, and I washed the dishes just because I could, savoring the routine of it all.

  Just as I finished up the last dish and put it into the drying rack with a satisfying little tink, Tess’s phone rang with an incoming message. “It’s Ali, my contact. He wants to meet up.” She showed us the message.