by Logan Keys
Phillip sighs. “I would have already done that. The first time he dared to sleep, I was poised, the Skulls and I were ready. But he’s not as stupid as he looks. Not long after we left LA, he sent Leo and the child ahead of us to Anthem. If Cory doesn’t arrive safely and well, Leo’s been instructed----hypnotized to kill the kid.”
“What?” I ask in horror. “Do you think he would? Do you think that could actually work?”
“I’ve thought about it and honestly, I’ve wanted to just kill him and hope for the best, but every time I do, I picture some poor kid being murdered because of this bastard, and I just can’t. He’s smarter than he is creepy.”
I nod my head, my shoulders slumping in defeat.
“But hey, this is the first time you’ve been awake since we left LA and I think that’s progress.”
Phillip sits down on the road, straight in the middle. It’s funny, even without traffic, I still feel safer on the side.
I stay standing and I march down the road a ways, testing my constraints.
He’s right, I can feel it happening. My skin itches, my eyes go blind, and I’m half running back to where Phillip is to keep from ending up inside my fake Bodega prison.
“It’s like a leash!” I cry, tears building behind my eyes. “I can’t go back, Phillip. To that place. I just can’t do it anymore. I’m falling apart inside. We have to do something. Please. You have to help me.”
Phillip is at my side guiding me to the roadside. His face is filled with worry. He sits me on a log. “Here, put your head between your legs.”
“Whuh…? Why?” and then the world shrinks to a fuzzy little dot and I do as he says before I pass out. I’m panicking, my nails digging holes into my hands. Anxiety unfurls to such an extent that I’m shaking, my heart thundering in my ears.
I give up the fight, and I lean over to dry heave above the cracked asphalt. Tears pour down my face. “I can’t go back,” I whisper again and again. “I won’t. I’d rather die.”
Phillip sits quietly, his hand on my shoulder.
Finally, once I’ve cried myself out, I sit up and look deep into his wolf-like eyes. “Why are you helping me?”
He gives a soft laugh and pushes my hair behind an ear. “I guess you could say we are like brother and sister. I’ve never met you, but he said you were special and now I believe it.”
“He? You mean the doctor.”
Phillip nods. “We have more in common than you know, Liza.”
“We do?” I frown. “Were you on the island? Were you sick?”
“Long ago. When it was first being built. I was dying. I’d given up. I had the worst kind of cancer. The super cancer. The doctor fixed me. Just like he fixed you.”
“We were made the same way.”
Phillip smiles tightly. “Yes. The only two. The doctor sent me a message, you know? About you. He told me he’d lost patient after patient trying to make someone special like me. He was done trying. He wrote to me and asked me why I thought I had lived when so many couldn’t. I wrote him back that he needed to choose someone who was giving up. Someone who embraced death. Perhaps that’s what it took and not the other way around. My mother had told me long ago that death was just another place to go. The way we arrive here, we will arrive there as well. I was not afraid to die.”
“Neither was I.”
Phillip nods. “I know. That’s why it worked with you. Perhaps it is the one who gave up who can be revived in the end. The weakest and not the strongest. In a sense, we embraced death enough that this new life had another chance. Perhaps we ‘arrived’ here again.”
I nod. That makes sense, I had given up entirely.
“Then,” Phillip adds. “When you were hurt trying to take on the Cromwells, you’d lost too much blood. You were fading fast. The doctor tried every type of blood, but…”
“My blood is strange now.”
“Yes. Mine as well.”
It dawns on me. “You gave me blood?”
“I did.”
My mouth drops open. Phillip had saved my life.
He laughs and looks away. “I did. I swear they ran me dry giving it to you. The doctor said we were so similar in ways, and now…”
And now we share blood.
I lunge toward him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, hugging him to me. Tears flow over my cheeks. “Thank you,” I croak.
Phillip hugs me back, but he’s embarrassed by the praise.
“Sorry,” I say, drying my face on my shirt. “I’ve never had a brother.”
“Me, either. I mean a sister.”
“How touching.”
I spin around to find Cory watching from the edge of a dense forest. His face is tight with anger. “When I woke, you had gone.”
“Is it true?” he asks, blue eyes searching us like a boy who just found his Christmas tree surrounded by toys. “You’re both made by him? You share blood? Man, I want to shake his hand. He hated Simon, I hear. That’s why there is all of this.” Cory motions with a hand at the world around him. “So, are you both the same strength? What can you do, anyway? I’m curious.”
Curious and jealous. His eyes dart to mine, and he licks his lips and smiles. “A tad.”
I wipe my eyes and look away. I want to spit in his face. I want to attack him. But I can’t do anything without being sent away again. The thought alone makes me shiver with dread.
Cory comes closer, and motions between Phillip and me. “Fight each other.”
Phillip stands, indignant. “What?”
Cory steps up to Phillip. Their heights are almost identical. “You heard me, Skull. Wolf. Whatever they call you. Fight each other. Now.”
I stand, too. “No,” I say.
He knows in my head now Phillip is someone I value. Someone I owe. And he loves this idea now to make us enemies.
“Do it,” Cory snaps. “Or else,” he adds like a petulant child.
Phillip meets my gaze. “He can’t control me, I’ve been purged,” he says.
I frown at them both in question.
“True,” Cory confirms, folding his arms. “Somehow that messes up the connection.”
“But you gave me blood. Was it after you were purged?”
Phillip smiles at Cory, realizing why I ask. “Yes. I had been purged. Maybe she will figure out how to fight off your control.”
Cory touches his chin in thought. “Nah. I don’t think so.” He points at me then back at Phillip. “Fight him.”
My hands fist and I look down at them like they are traitors.
“See,” Cory says to Phillip. “Now, hit him. Right in his smug wolf-face.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say but then my throat closes, keeping me from talking anymore.
Cory moves aside, and I approach Phillip who watches me with anger. Not at me, but at Cory.
I strike out at him, but he moves in time to avoid being backhanded.
“Keep going,” Cory demands.
He moves to sit on the log to watch.
I switch into a fight stance, and Phillip circles away from me.
I long to beg Cory to stop it, but already I am taking another lunge at Phillip. This time, I catch him with a feint left, while my foot sweeps his legs.
He goes down. Though I struggle with Cory inwardly, outwardly I’m leaping into the air, using my full weight to bring a knee down, in an attempt to land on his throat to crush his windpipe.
At the last second, Phillip rolls away.
I stalk him but he holds his hands up. “I won’t fight her,” he says to Cory.
Cory shrugs and tosses a knife between us. “Liza, cut his head off.”
“How will you get into Anthem?” Phillip challenges.
I grab the knife, fear coiling around my middle, and I raise it ready to attack the only ally I have left in the world aside from Crystal.
“Kill him!” Cory demands, and I leap, landing in a heap on top of Phillip, who is so caught by surprise, he goes down beneath me.
Knife at his t
hroat, I close my eyes, prepared to cut.
Chapter Forty
Liza
My arm shakes and I struggle with everything in me, but it’s no use, my knife slides across his throat. First with a thin cut, then a second time it moves to saw more deeply---
The girl from before, the one with the briefcase comes out of the foliage, case still in hand. She sets it down, and drops to her knees. Without looking at us, she snaps it open and turns it to face Cory. Hand poised, she stares at him, deeply trying to convey something.
“Fine. Stop,” Cory says and my arm drops.
The knife clatters to the street. I collapse, panting.
Cory strides over and stares down at Phillip, who’s got his hands to his neck to stem the flow.
“Will it heal? Will you be okay?” I ask frantically.
“It’s not that deep, Liza, I’ll be fine,” Phillip tries to reassure me.
Cory says, “If you try anything again, anything, I’ll have her finish the job.”
With that, he leaves us be.
I turn, but the case is closed, and the woman is already lifting it and moving back into the woods. Phillip nods at her backward glance, his hand coming away with blood, but it’s already slowed to a trickle.
“That’s going to leave a nasty scar,” I say, voice quivering with remorse. “I’m so sorry.”
Phillip shakes his head, and rips a piece of his shirt away, pressing it to the wound. “It wasn’t you, it was him. Don’t worry, I’ve had worse.”
“The purge, you mean?”
“Yeah,” he says, distantly.
I put a hand to Phillip’s shoulder. “Jeremy didn’t talk about it much, but… I saw them. It was horrific.”
“I’d only ever endured the purge. I never saw it from the outside except for one time.”
We move to our place on the log again. I’m wary now, Cory could return at any moment, put me back into my mental prison.
“Except for one time?” I ask.
“How’s it look?”
I gasp. His neck is almost healed, except an angry red line. “Wow. That was fast.”
“We heal pretty quickly, although, that’s not to say we should risk being cut up. Anyway, yeah, I went back in there one time. It was when Crystal was last purged. We took the entire warehouse over. I went into that room, all of those bodies hanging, naked, and while the Skulls pulled everyone down, our largest recruitment day, by the way, I found her. I carefully pulled her down myself, and when I realized she wasn’t going to wake up, not right then anyway, I thought she was gone. I broke down and cried.”
My eyes grow hot. I remember when Jeremy had stood there not as himself any longer. It still feels like he’s died. And I suppose he has.
That’s what Phillip had felt then, that Crystal had died. He’s pale even now remembering it.
“I wrapped her in a blanket and carried her out. We took her to the doctor, and I demanded that he fix her.”
“Did he make her like us?” I ask.
“No. He didn’t have to. He saved her life, but she fought for it every step of the way. Three times purged. It’s unheard of.”
And now I see the love shining in his face that I’d missed before. “Ah, so it’s like that then?”
He smiles. “Oh, yeah.”
“So, why come here? Why take this mission?”
“Because I had to get away. It’s like that for me, but her, not so much.”
I remember the way she’d looked at Jeremy. Phillip’s gaze is dry when he says, “It’s been too hard to feel this way one sided.”
“And so, you risked everything to get away?”
“Not all of it was for that reason. I was curious. I wanted to see what the doctor had created.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Liza,” he says, wolf-eyes glittering. “You couldn’t be further off the mark if you tried. Crystal believes in you.”
“And you?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t starting to believe, myself.”
Chapter Forty-One
Dallas
“Your leader is dead,” I say to Shade who’s followed me to my side, before I turn on him, anger stirring. “Figure out what you’re going to do. You choose wrong and you die.”
I’m still pumped up from my kill. My body isn’t fully my own, but part she-demon. I’m pissed that he’d used me, even if I’d done the same.
“Really,” he asks with a dry drawl pulling out the word.
I nod. My threat is real.
Shade closes the distance in a blink and pushes me against the wall. He puts a hand at my throat, and I hiss at him. Even though I can’t breathe, he manages to choke me enough that I’m making god-awful sounds in a struggle.
“You think I couldn’t kill you, Dallas?” he rumbles near my ear. “I could pull your heart out if I wanted to. Isn’t that what it takes?” His thumb strokes me at my most vulnerable spot. “You think that thing lead me because I couldn’t take him out?” His voice drops to a whisper. “No one is like me. Not even you. I am part man, part hell. Even your vampire army can’t kill a shadow.”
He lets me go and I swipe a hand across his chest, leaving long claw marks that cut through his clothing. I make my own point. His chest is not a shadow, it’s there, and it bleeds.
“Why didn’t you then, huh? If you could take Bradford out, why didn’t you?” I ask.
Shade touches the wound on his chest, but shrugs. “Because after that, what? I lead? Yeah right. I don’t want the job. I don’t care about war. Or Anthem. You think some city filled with normals is gonna accept this face? Nah. None of that matters to me.”
He leaves off what does matter. If I had a beating heart it would stutter over wanting to know. But luckily, I’m not the old Dallas anymore. She’s dead.
I shake my head, trying to see through the haze of red. I’m so hungry. I’m starved after the battle.
“I’m going to go eat,” I say, turning to leave, but Shade latches onto my arm with an iron grip.
With fury bolstering my strength, I throw his hand away, and I launch myself at Shade in a flurry of emotion. I’ve caught him unaware, so his body gives, and we bounce off the wall and roll onto the street.
“You think you are so invincible, shadow man?” I hiss, and before I can control myself---the blood I’d brought from his chest has put me into a frenzy---I strike him like a viper. Two pin pricks blossom at his neck before I finally pull myself back and reel the hunger in.
One minute I’m on top of him, ready to eat my fill, and next, I’ve thrown myself back ten feet and I’m about to flee.
I’ve scared myself.
But not Shade.
Shade doesn’t care about my inner struggle or the warnings, he follows me--stalks me, and grabs hold. Shade lifts me into his arms, but I fight him, shoving him back. He pushes me too, and we slam into the brick wall again, that cracks after so many hits.
His cold lips find my throat, and he bites me hard enough to draw blood. He nips at my chin, uncaring of the blood-crave drawing up inside of me, turning my thoughts into chaos. I try to drive him back, but Shade only continues, now hovering over my lips, his own wicked tongue tasting mine.
My teeth cut him, but he doesn’t care as he dives in anyway, again and again, forcing himself past my sharp boundaries, bleeding like a human and not a shadow.
Even in the recesses of his hot mouth, he tastes like the blanket of snow on a dark winter night, frigid, but clean and crisp, and somehow that heats me to a boiling point. This is the first human blood I’ve tasted, and it makes my bones ache with need.
I pry his hands away roughly and I punch his chest so hard he finally lets me go.
“Not until I’ve eaten.”
He laughs, backing away, hands up.
“Go,” he says. “Go, before I lose my own self. All of me. Just… leave.”
And I’m gone.
Chapter Forty-Two
Dallas
I’m so confused the next morning, that I open my door in the sunlight burning myself twice. After the fight with Shade, I’m discombobulated. The second time I open the door, I scream in fury at being unable to just leave whenever I want.
My limitations grip me. They make me feel weak. I growl in frustration and pick up a chair and throw it across the room. Crashing to my knees, I let tears flow over the loss of being able to do the simplest of things while being utterly invincible in ways.
The reason: Because Shade doesn’t deserve a crazy bloodsucker, and I don’t deserve to fall for a man without a face.
Energy spent, I grow groggy and finally give in to my day of rest. The burns are painful, so my dreams hit hard. My dreamscape is the same, it always is, but I start in a different place.
I’m at the pond.
“Do you think we’d be married, Dai?”
I jolt and turn to find Tommy sitting there next to me.
“What?” I rub my eyes. “Huh?”
“We’re eighteen now. If everything hadn’t happened, we’d be married, right?”
I smile at him, and launch myself across the space between us. I want this to be real so badly that I won’t let him go.
He chuckles, catching me, and we sit like that for a while.
Finally, I sit back to look him over.
“No,” I say. “So much has passed. We’d probably be too different.”
And he is different. This Tommy isn’t sixteen, the age I last saw him, he’s grown up. He’s a man.
Tommy smiles. Even if he will turn into a zombie or dead, I don’t care. Brown eyes, brown hair, and that Tommy grin. The saddest parts of me, they need this.
I know without checking I look like the other me too.
“Look at you!” Tommy says, with a laugh.
I glance down and frown. I’m not the normal me. I’m me-me. The leather clad, vampire me.
I cover my mouth, embarrassed.
“Nothing will ever pass enough to change this, Daisy.” Tommy motions between us.
“I miss you,” I say, voice wobbling, tears threatening.
“Me too,” he says, and he sighs, glancing over at the pond, at the setting sun. “I missed this, too.”