by Logan Keys
Or so they believe.
And when the sun sang that song of its rising in the distance, those that were bitten were helped into the darkness…forever.
But I wasn’t there to aid them.
I left Joelle now.
I ran for the tower before it was too late.
Guilty, knowing he probably hates me now, I still thought of him even while I was covered in blood of the vanquished. Even regretting my part in the massacre, I sought his forgiveness, and his alone.
I may be a walking nightmare, but even nightmares want love.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Dallas
Shade had escaped the tower. The other vampires had lost him during their watch. I had searched and searched, but the sun was starting to rise. It had burned, but soothing myself physically is not what I crave.
Shade was nowhere to be found.
And it was when I’d given up, when I’d finally sank down in a barren alleyway, that I’d accepted my fate. That I had made my own peace with the fact that I, Dallas, now feeling all of my true name Daisy, the same failures as before, gave over my life to the sun.
It was perhaps a type of karma. God punishing me for all I had done.
Shade would live, but I was not so deserving of this life, or any for that matter.
I had whispered my goodbyes, then prepared to pay my ransoms in burnt flesh. Pound for pound.
And I had realized that this might have been what was right all along. For me to end myself. Had I been brave enough before, it might have occurred to me. For what is better than to walk from this path and go onto the next---meet Tommy at the pond?
And so, I let go.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Liza
The night is a sad one
I lose a sort of virginity. Maybe one that means more than sex. People should consider a moment in time when they have done something they would not wish upon their enemy as more important an experience than sexual knowledge.
I’ve killed before. I’ve killed Reginald, the zombies, the guards.
I’ve killed.
But not like this.
Not with a premeditated desire to kill for more than justice or self-defense. Instead, to make a deal with Cory that when we get to Anthem, he sets the captives free. And the payment? One life. No matter the kind.
The others died in a fight with me, or thinking I’d die first. But this is pure madness. A man screaming for mercy as I bring the blade down upon him in front of his own children is not only about justice.
This is an execution.
I’m an executioner.
Judge and jury.
Revenge as it says on my arm.
Is this why Spirit found me? Why Pretend Man made me? And Cory merely finished his work by giving me a motive. Is it true we are here to settle a score for humanity?
The father had tried to run. He had gotten as far as the wood line before I’d cut the bastard down. I feel no guilt for what happens to him after life. No guilt that he is the one I should kill first with my precious blade. But I do feel guilt that it is to be this moment on this plane of existence that he should be punished over a promise that might never come to fruition.
Over a pact made between two strangers that his life might be given for empty words even if he deserves every inch of my sword inside of his belly.
However, the thought remains that it is possible his life, and what he chose of it, is not worth more than that: a false agreement.
In the end, after the shock of warm blood upon my new clothes and my face wears off, I feel only quiet and resonating justice. In this age, where men and women do what is right in their own eyes, I have Spirit as an answer to the depravity. And she glows as she works, deciding that he is guilty as well, finding more power in the wrongs made right.
She is fed. I can be happy in that. Her power is restored.
I can assuage my guilt that if Spirit agrees with this act, then I am somehow absolved of evil. I can pretend that I am not like Cory, wishing to harm humans on a whim.
I’d expected his children at least to cry, the youngest to weep. She had not, none of them had. The eldest had come to take the backpack, suddenly sharp-eyed, aware, and not at all dull-witted as we’d been led to believe.
She’d taken the pack, and her sister’s hands, and she’d nodded to me before leaving.
It had all been an act. Clever.
I may be their angel of mercy after all.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Dallas
“Is it supposed to hurt?” But that’s not Tommy’s voice. It’s Shade’s.
“Death? I’m not sure,” I whisper. Inside of my thoughts, I cry out at the injustice. He’d met me in my afterlife, it seems.
“Dallas,” he murmurs.
I open my eyes to the darkness. “This isn’t heaven,” I say. But it doesn’t look like hell either. “Am I dead?”
His laugh is dry, and it tickles my ear. “No. But I wish that I was.”
“Where are we?” My voice sounds so far away.
He puts a hand to my cheek. “I found you in the sun,” Shade says, with a soft sadness. “These are my rooms,” he adds, and finally I see him through the shadows.
He’s a whole person now.
Shade rises and moves toward the window.
I sit up and hold out a hand to stop him. There is a strip of light that’s pushed its way through the curtains. It’s hurting my eyes.
Yet Shade walks up and puts a hand through the light, letting it dance along his skin.
Without burning.
I feel the burns all over me. They’ve healed, yet the pain is still there. But Shade is impervious to the sun.
“It seems that I’m not all the way changed yet.”
“How long has it been?” I ask.
“Half a day,” he answers.
I frown and put a hand to my head. So much time has passed. “You should be changed.” I sound as confused as I feel.
His handsome face---the real one that’s no longer a void---breaks into a smile. “One of a kind.”
I smile back. “Stop doing that. It hurts me for you.”
Shade strides near. “Why did I find you laying outside, Dallas? If I hadn’t been there. If I had been too late…”
“I deserve it,” I murmur, rolling onto my side, away from him.
He pushes my shoulder back, his golden halo of hair falling into his eyes. So opposite of before. Now he’s bright as the sun. “Because of me?”
“And others.” I put a hand to his perfect cheek. “I’m sorry, Shade. I’ve never been sorrier for anything in my life. You will thirst for blood now. Once the transition is complete, oh how you will hunger. What I do disgusts you but you, too, will now eat this way.”
He grabs my hand, turns his head and kisses my palm. “I know that,” he says. “But I have you. Fully. Not just with shadow kisses.”
I shiver at the caressing. I swallow. Tears burn their pathway down the sides of my face. “Do you? Do you want me? Still. Even after all that I’ve done to you? Don’t you hate me?”
He grabs my hands and puts them to his face. “Feel that? I have this to thank you for. I’m me again. I will miss the invisibility, the ability to go to the nowhere. Yes, that part is gone. But, Dallas, I have not seen my own face in so long… I’m not angry with you. I could never hate you.”
I grip the sides of his face and give him a good shake. “You should be,” I grit out. “You don’t know what this life is like.”
He leans closer, stares deeply into my eyes. “The only person who hates anyone here is you. Stop hating yourself. And the others, they are not going to hate you either. They knew what they dared. Death. But you gave them another chance. War is war, they understand that. And Joelle didn’t kill them. She could have.”
“But she stole their real life. This is not the same. We are not alive.”
I put my hand to his chest and I gasp. Beneath my fingertips is the strong and steady bea
ting of a heart. “I feel your heartbeat.”
Shade covers my hand. “Is that a problem?”
“No. You said you felt pain. That’s the feeling of dying.”
His lips find mine. “That’s funny. I don’t feel dead, I feel more alive than ever.”
And Shade kisses me again before I can say anything more. Hungrily, I kiss him back.
He breaks away from our feverish need. “Rest,” he whispers. “Heal.”
I nod and fall asleep before my head stills on my neck.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Crystal
“Was it my son?”
I watch Karma’s glacial face try so very hard to depict a wounded mother. It’s laughable.
“No,” I answer.
Jeremy has never been their son. Although, their downfall will be that in fact he is their son biologically. Interesting how things like that go.
Karma comes closer. “Crystal, I know you think that you do something brave by denying me this, but you will tell me who it was that tried to rescue you as soon as you are purged, anyway. I will know everything about you. Everything about your rebels. Their families. Who has helped them. And I will hunt each one down until there is no one left to say your little quote. What was it? Against all Authority? Who came up with that?”
She smiles. “I bet it was you. It’s not poetic enough for my boy. No. It sounds brutish. Like a girl who wants to be a man trying to sound tough with big words.”
Karma leans in to whisper into my ear. “But one with small ideas.” She grips my face painfully between her fingers, and says, “If someone even mentions your name again, they’ll be hung from the hooks.”
When she backs away, her mouth is an “Oh” of surprise. Her mind has not understood what her body already has.
Her hands grip her throat where I’ve cut her. The knife Jeremy had held before, the one he’d cut my ties with, I’d kept it after his escape. And stupidly, the guards had never re-tied my hands. They were only told to bring me back, and so they had, and I’d held my hands together behind my back, knife hidden between.
For just this moment.
Just this chance that Karma would be stupid enough to get close. Too sure of her control over me.
I never expected it to work and so now I share her surprise. My arm had come almost of its own volition to strike at Karma like a cobra. And a red line beneath her chin has appeared as if by magic.
Karma staggers backward, blood trickling down onto her pretty dress. Her perfectly pale skin is marred by reality in every which way now, the dirtiness of her soul and deeds bleeding all over it.
She can’t even scream, but Carolina does. Jeremy’s sister rushes forward. “Get the doctor!”
Karma falls, and Carolina catches her, rips her shirt off, and puts it to the wound. But already I can see that it’s too clean a cut, and far too much blood is pooling around the Cromwells on the ground already.
The doctor rushes in, and I have to keep myself from gaping at the man from the island.
He runs to Karma’s side. “Lift her. She needs surgery,” he says.
“Do it!” Carolina barks at the guards who quickly obey.
And so, it is all of the Cromwells they will listen to. Jeremy’s father had never let on that the programming included his children. If we’d only known… before.
They take Karma away in a flurry, and the doctor follows them, sparing me only one quick glance that conveys nothing of his plans.
And then we are alone in the room together, Carolina and I. I still have my knife and there are no guards to protect her.
Her one eye watches me, and she approaches, boots squeaking on the tiled floor.
“I’ve wanted this moment for a long time, Crystal,” she says. “Ever since my father was murdered by your little friend. I don’t know what my brother sees in you people.”
We circle one another. “Us people? You mean patriots. True citizens.”
“I mean poor.”
“I was never poor, Carolina.”
That makes her eyebrow quirk and I realize I’ve said too much.
“Your move,” she says.
“After you.”
She smiles, jumping forward, her lithe body nimble and quick.
I spin away from her long legs, scratch the knife down her arm, tripping her, and backhand her in quick succession.
Carolina regroups, touching the blood on her lip.
I smile and shrug.
This time I’m the one who closes the distance, and she lets me get into her space too easily. With the knife at her throat, I hold her ponytail, but she has a hand between the blade and her neck.
Her head flings back into my jaw with a crack. I see stars, and an iron tang fills my mouth from where my teeth have ripped open my cheek on the inside.
Carolina hunches forward, pulling me onto her back, her bony ass cutting into my stomach. I cough from the air leaving my lungs and spit a spray of blood onto her shoulder.
With a twist, she takes my wrist, and spins it behind my back. We trade places, and she reaches for the knife, but I let it go on purpose, stomping on her knee while she’s distracted. She limps away, crying out, gripping her leg.
I take advantage, quickly flipping her onto her back.
I jump into the air, prepared to land with a face-crushing blow from the force of my body coming down behind a knee, but she rolls away.
We circle each other once we are both on our feet.
Fast jabs test each other’s style. We trade punches, and after I almost knock her visor off, she lands blows to my nose that rock me to my core. More blood sprays out from my mouth.
I don’t back off, or hesitate. Her punch lands as I’m already tackling her. I grab her by the middle and take her to the ground. Brute strength is how I’ll win this match.
One of her hands in mine, I break the bone in her arm---or at least I thought I had. Any normal bone would have snapped like a twig, but nothing happens.
She laughs at my surprise, punching me, and I realize, the half of her that has the fake eye is entirely robotic. Her super strong hand grips me by the throat now and launches me into the air.
I land with a thud, and she comes over, her boot swiftly kicking me in the ribs. And again.
I roll to the side, but she drops on top of me, grappling strength against strength, and with that arm, I’m losing.
I’m pinned as she leans into my face, and wraps the fake hand around my throat, cutting off my air.
“You’ve stolen everything from me,” she hisses.
“Kill. Me.” I grit out.
She starts to cry, but they’re angry tears of rage from her one organic eye. Tears of hatred. “Oh, I will. Just not now, Crystal. It will never be this easy. I want to watch you die a little at a time. But before that, and this is the most important part, you’ll watch your rebellion die first.”
I struggle with her mechanical hand, gasping, fighting for air.
She smiles as my world shrinks down to a red robotic eye.
Chapter Sixty
Dallas
There were only two that Joelle forgave who’d not worn their scarlet fabric. Her parents. Her father stoically gave up his forces, and his daughter took control of it all. Her mother, well her mother, had seemingly gone mad over the events and hid in her tower.
The rest of the changes completed. Even the specials became vampires.
Shade did not.
He was strong, and fast, and special, but he was not hungry, and he could walk in the light. The opposite of Joelle, but equally powerful. The second perfect special to counter her own.
He was light and fair. While she is dark and dusky.
From what Shade has told me, this is what Simon had lived for. A pair of specials impervious to the weaknesses that plague the others. I had seen Joelle walk through fire. It is possible that light would not destroy her as she’d previously thought. Not now.
But since they’ve been created, I wonder what will
drive this leader and man.
Shade is right. He is one of a kind. And it took Joelle to make him because she was the mother of it all as her own special seemed to demand.
However, Joelle is far more interested in other things. “We have our army now, and we are stronger than the Authority together. Bring me the old man.”
They move to let an old soldier come forward. His uniform says: Nolan.
“I never thought I’d see the day,” Nolan says as if he’s still adjusting to the new leadership.
Aren’t we all?
Joelle glances at the bright red ribbon on his arm, and smiles. It’s not a welcoming smile. “I did not expect that.”
“Well, I like to surprise.”
“Can you follow me?”
“Yes.”
“Even after we ransacked your men?”
“Brutality has its place. I respect firm decision making and strategy. I respect that you felt this was the only way, and you were not willing to back down. All of that is something that might actually win a losing war, my lady.”
He bows.
Lotte rushes to my side. “Dallas,” she whispers.
Joelle turns to us, her mind racing. “Tommy’s coffin.”
The two say it at the same time. Joelle is reading her mind before I can read Joelle’s.
“What?” I demand. “What is it?”
Lotte’s eyes are filled with confusion. “There was an accident, it was knocked over during the fight.”
“What?”
“It’s empty.”
Chapter Sixty-One
Liza
“Don’t move! For God’s sakes, don’t move!” Phillip’s blurry in the fog. His eyes are the only thing piercing through to remind me that death has not gripped me completely, it’s not yet stolen me from this agony.
I open my mouth, but there’s no sound. Phillip grips my shoulders pinning me down. “I’m going to pull the sword out, okay?”
I barely nod my head and he leaves me and the fog takes his place. Through the gloom, I see his hands gripping the sword’s hilt, and with a yank, Spirit’s free. And I am free to bleed my lifeblood onto this cold forest ground.