by D. Laine
“My dad served at Dugway before he retired,” Thea said. “He was one of the few who weren’t happy with the way everything had been dealt with. He took me, kept me away from all of it the best way he knew how. They were friends. They were trying to find ways to stop this Blythe guy.”
She glanced at Anderson, forcing me to do the same. I had to admit, the poor guy looked like I had just kicked his puppy.
He nodded faintly. “We tried, but it wasn’t enough. Things didn’t have to happen the way they did, but we couldn’t stop it. For that, and for your losses, I am terribly sorry.”
Staring at his bowed head, I concluded that my instincts about Anderson had been right. He was a decent guy. He didn’t pull the trigger that killed my parents.
The person responsible had met his fate. I had no one left to blame. At this point, I questioned if I needed someone to blame. Nothing would change. Considering I had a future worth looking forward to, I had no more reason to dwell on the past.
“I’m also sorry for misleading you,” Anderson added cautiously. “I had no idea who you people were. If I had known . . .”
I stared at him, and waited for the answer I expected. When he said nothing, I offered, “You would have shot us.”
“No,” he answered swiftly. “At least not in the manner you think.”
I glanced at Jake in time to see him grin at Thea. She smiled at Anderson in return, and I realized I was the only one with no clue what he meant.
“What’s going on here?” I demanded.
“One more revelation,” Anderson answered coyly as he backed out of the room. “It’s kind of a big one, so you might want to sit down.”
I turned to Jake, but he was watching Anderson. I turned to Thea next, and she made a show of retrieving my boots from under the cot. Apparently neither were going to elaborate.
“Let’s finish getting you dressed.” It wasn’t a suggestion. Thea forced me to take a seat on the edge of the cot, and began shoving my feet into the shoes.
“Thea? Seriously, what’s going on?”
She didn’t look up. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so you’ll just have to see for yourself.”
“Why wouldn’t I—”
A harsh snorting noise came from the doorway, interrupting me. It was followed by a cynical voice I would never forget. “Are you pathetic or what?”
My head snapped up so fast and so hard, the muscles in my neck nearly spasmed. Hearing Maria’s voice was one thing. I could shrug that off as a figment of my imagination or a lingering side effect of mourning. But to see her, standing in the doorway, with that familiar smirk on her face, was too much.
I had officially gone mad, because I sure as hell was seeing things. Or maybe I hadn’t sobered as much as I thought I had.
I blinked, long and hard. When I opened my eyes, she was still there. Laughing.
“Are you actually letting her tie your shoes?” Maria gestured to Thea before turning to Jake. “You were right. He’s like a toddler with a boo-boo.”
She sounded like Maria. She looked like Maria. Everyone else saw her, so I wasn’t so sure anymore that she was a hallucination. Throw in the fact that she had insulted me with ease, and I had no choice but to believe she was real.
Pushing my wounded ego aside, I exclaimed, “You’re alive?”
“Yeah.” She waved a hand at me dismissively, like she was tired of answering that question.
“How? I saw you . . .” Hadn’t I? If not Maria’s, then whose blood had I been covered in that day?
“I got shot with one of those demon-blood bullets,” she explained. “I almost died, because the moron who fired it didn’t know how to aim worth a damn, but I pulled through.”
I nodded along with her explanation, slowly absorbing this shocking turn of events. Even seeing it with my own eyes, it was hard to believe.
Glancing down at Thea, I asked, “You knew about this?”
“As of two days ago.” She patted me on the thigh as she stood—my shoelaces now tied. “Baby steps, Dylan. You’ve had a lot to take in.”
“No shit.” Turning back to Maria, I asked, “Where have you been?”
“They kept me locked up in a house while I recovered, in case the bullet didn’t work, or I died. I was unconscious for most of it, but got the scoop shortly after I woke up. I heard all about the trouble you found.”
“It has a way of finding me,” I volleyed.
Jake snorted as he moved toward the door. He obviously had an opinion about that, but chose not to share it. “I’ll let you two get caught up. I’m going to go find Robbie.”
The instant he disappeared, Maria tossed a thumb over her shoulder. “Do you mind? I kind of have a love-hate relationship with hospitals now.”
“No, I’m ready to get out of here, too.” I slid from the cot, and into Thea’s supportive arms. Maria scoffed, prompting me to go on the defensive. “What? It hurts.”
“I know, Dylan,” Maria grumbled over her shoulder as she led the way out of the hospital. “I got shot, too. Remember?”
“So you know how it feels.” I hobbled after her.
She gestured to Thea. “But I didn’t have a nurse.”
“Well . . .” I glanced at Thea. Screw it. I would gladly accept the title of “toddler with a boo-boo” if it earned me a nurse as hot as her. “I happen to like the extra attention.”
Thea laughed as we stepped outside, and the sound was music to my ears. It numbed some of the bite from the unexpected chill in the air. For midmorning, it sure was cold. I had no idea what the date was, but I suspected winter was about to hit full force.
It was bound to be a brutal one thanks to the lower temperatures produced by the ash cloud. While not nearly as thick as it had once been, it was still in the atmosphere where it would linger for years.
But, with time, the sun would shine brighter, the temperatures would rise, and more stars would fill the night sky. One would be named in honor of Sadie, and I would be here to see it all happen.
Here . . . or somewhere. I actually didn’t know.
“Where are we going to live?” I asked Thea. “I don’t want to crap on that little apartment, because it got us through some hard times, but I’m not exactly excited to go back there. Now that Lucifer and the Watchers are gone, we can go anywhere. Right?”
“Not until after winter is over,” Maria said.
Thea grimaced. “She’s right. We can’t leave yet. But . . .” Her eyes sparkled, and a smile caught her lips. “Think you can walk a few extra steps, and make it to that house?”
“What house?”
“You know.” She gave me a pointed look. “Our house.”
I couldn’t help but grin at the memories we had already created there. “I didn’t realize it was actually our house.”
“It is now. On loan, that is, at least until spring.”
A snowflake landed on my cheek as if to punctuate her explanation. I glanced up, finding the sky full of them as they floated lazily to the ground. Snow was coming. Probably a lot of it.
But it would be a natural snow. The kind that would cleanse the Earth and provide us with a clean slate. When it was gone, the rebuilding would begin. We could go anywhere.
Our struggles weren’t over. The journey ahead would be difficult, at times bittersweet following the loss of so many we loved and cared about, but a journey with one certainty.
We would face it together.
EPILOGUE
THEA
9 months later
“Watch your step . . .”
Despite the death grip I had on Dylan’s arm, and his warning, I nearly tripped off the sidewalk. “You do realize it would have made more sense to put the blindfold on after we got to where we’re going?”
“That takes the fun out of it,” he said into my ear. “Come on. We’re almost there.”
“Thank God for that.” Otherwise, I would break my neck before I ever got to see this surprise.
Consider
ing the amount of time he had put into it, after already long days spent rebuilding a new life for ourselves, I suspected something big awaited me.
The past five months, after the worst of the snow melted, had been dedicated to getting things somewhat back to normal. We decided to stay where we were. The small town in the middle of nowhere, and all the people who lived in it now, had grown on me over the course of the long winter. When Jake, Robbie, and Maria all expressed an interest in staying, the decision had been an easy one to make.
While we still didn’t have the things that other parts of the country had—a reliable source of electricity and bountiful supplies of fresh water—we were happy with our choice. Those things would come, eventually. For now, the hum of generators followed me everywhere I went.
“Okay. Stop here. Turn a little bit.” With his hands on my shoulders, Dylan guided me to stand in the direction he wanted. Then he left. His voice came from a distance. “Don’t peek yet.”
I grinned. “I wouldn’t dare after all of this.”
I listened to the sound of a door opening, and a generator roaring to life, and my curiosity grew. Dylan’s hands came back, gently encouraging me to walk forward. I heard a faint click, then felt his fingers move over the back of my head. The blindfold loosened.
“Ready?”
I nodded, and the blindfold fell away. I blinked at the sight before me, though my eyes didn’t have to adjust to any sudden light. The room remained dark, but the shadowy shapes that filled it were familiar to me. If that weren’t enough, the whiff of chemicals in the air was a dead giveaway. I would never forget that smell.
“Do you like it?”
“Dylan . . .” I couldn’t find the words to describe how much I loved it. Of all the potential scenarios I had considered, this had never once crossed my mind. It wasn’t possible. “How did you do this?”
He guided me through the door. The broad smile on his face lit up the room in ways the black light in the ceiling couldn’t. He walked around the large basin in the center to stand beside the photo enlarger in the corner.
“Remember that run I went on to Grand Junction a few months ago?” I nodded, and he continued his explanation. “The high school there took a lot of damage, and they decided to demolish it and rebuild. There was a dark room. All the equipment worked fine, so I talked them into letting me salvage it.”
“Oh, my God . . .” Hand to mouth, I looked around the perfectly assembled picture developing room—aka, a dark room. I thought I would never see another one. “I can’t believe you did this.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Don’t assume I knew how to put all this together. I had a little help. One of the National Guard guys happens to be into photography.”
That didn’t matter. I ran my hands over the edges of the basin, and breathed in the familiar scent that could only belong in a dark room. I didn’t need to rummage through the boxes stocked neatly to the side to know that he had stocked everything I needed to make pictures.
Well, almost everything.
“All you need is a camera, right?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah. I can probably find one—” I gasped when he held a vintage 35mm up in front of him. “Where did you get that?”
“Will this work?” He looked worried. “Because the guy—”
I lunged across the short distance between us to take the small treasure in my hands. “Of course it will work. They don’t make cameras like these anymore. I’ve always wanted one.”
He smirked. “That’s exactly what the guardsman said. I had him bring it down on the last supply run. He said you would like this one.”
“He was right.” I beamed, unable to take my eyes off of my gift. “Thank you. So much.”
“It’s the least I can do.”
“No, you have already done—”
“Thea.” He silenced me with a finger to my lips. “I want to make you happy.”
I finally looked up, meeting his penetrating gaze. “I am happy.”
“Good. Because I am too.” He stared at me for a moment before cracking a smile. “Besides, I figured you would want something to take pictures of the baby with when it comes.”
His eyes sparkled like they did every time someone mentioned the baby, and I swore he bounced on his tiptoes once or twice. His arm wrapped around my shoulders as we turned for the door, and I leaned into him with a smile of my own.
“I swear you’re more excited about the baby than I am,” I teased.
“What’s not to be excited about?” He gaped down at me. “I get to be an uncle. An uncle. Do you have any idea what kind of devious things I can teach that kid?”
I sighed as I stepped outside. “Poor Robbie.”
Dylan shut the door behind him and powered down the generator. “The best part is, I can send him home to his father at the end of the day.”
“Poor Jake,” I amended.
“They’ll thank me. Some day.” Dylan nodded confidently as he fell into step beside me.
Together, we walked toward the house that was unofficially ours. It had no electricity, no running water, fluctuating heat, and a bare bones pantry, but it was ours. It was where we made memories, and planned to make many more.
I now had a camera to capture the precious moments I once thought I would never experience again. Births and birthdays. Weddings and anniversaries. Random cool evenings spent huddled around the fire with my new friends. We had safety and we had each other. That was all any of us really needed.
Above us, the stars began to twinkle in the darkening sky, letting us know that the fallen were never far away. Their presence would forever remind us of what we had endured, and while they would always be missed, I could now look up to them for strength and guidance. Each step I took forward would be done so with the intention of making each and every one of them proud.
We would rebuild, and their sacrifices would not be in vain.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
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ALSO BY D. LAINE
Apocalypse Assassins Series
Marked
Tagged
Endured
The Ignited Series
Ignited
Sacrificed
Salvaged Soul
Avenging Heart
What Comes Next (standalone)
The Monster Ball: A Paranormal Romance Anthology
About the Author
D. Laine is the author of the young adult Greek mythology based Ignited Series and the contemporary romance standalone What Comes Next - which were written under the name Desni Dantone. She resides in Pennsylvania with her family and enjoys reading in her spare time - anything with romance! When not reading, working, or chasing after her three boys, she enjoys just about anything on the CW or I&D channel.
For future release notification, you can sign up for her NEWSLETTER. Or join her Facebook Reader’s Group for more interaction with the author and other readers, early look at teasers, and special opportunities.
You can also connect with the author here:
www.desnidantone.com
[email protected]
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Marked
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Tagged
Prologue
1. Thea
2. Dylan
3. Thea
4. Dylan
5. Thea
6. Dylan
7. Thea
8. Dylan
9. Thea
10. Dylan
11. Thea
12. Dylan
13. Thea
14. Dylan
15. Thea
16. Dylan
17. Dylan
18. Thea
19. Dylan
20. Thea
21. Dylan
22. Thea
23. Dylan
24. Dylan
25. Thea
26. Dylan
Epilogue
Endured
Prologue
1. Dylan
2. Thea
3. Dylan
4. Dylan
5. Thea
6. Dylan
7. Dylan
8. Thea
9. Thea
10. Dylan
11. Thea
12. Dylan
13. Thea
14. Dylan
15. Dylan