Like it had in Haven. Desiree flinched at that particular memory. “How long was I out?”
“A couple of days. You were very lucky. If you hadn’t found that pharmacy, and if Aiden hadn’t gotten here as fast as he did, you could very well be dead now.”
The adrenaline was wearing off, and Desiree’s limbs became heavy, but she fought to stay awake. Because this was real. This place existed, which meant she was still alive, and she still had a chance. “There was… Casey…”
“She’s fine,” Penny assured her, but her words echoed in Desiree’s mind. “Some of the other kids took her out fishing. Is she yours?”
She’s Aiden’s, Desiree wanted to say. He’d adopted her; that made her his. But now Aiden was gone. He’d saved Casey, and then Desiree, and he’d left them both behind.
He could have killed me. Klaus would have. He’d have left her on the side of the road somewhere to die, disposed of her like so much trash and never looked back.
I tortured him. I threatened Casey to make him do what I wanted.
And in return, Aiden had saved her life. She owed him, and the weight of that debt threatened to crush her into oblivion. How was she ever supposed to repay it?
“Dez? Is Casey your daughter?”
That’s how. “She is now.”
55: Sinna
Helena likes to talk. From the moment her eyes open in the morning, to the moment they close at night, the woman flaps her gums and will not shut up. It’s almost like having Aiden back, except he at least makes conversation about interesting stuff. Helena just talks, mostly about herself.
It’s enough to drive anyone crazy. By the end of the first day, Bryce is bristling something awful, and I have a killer headache. But neither of us says anything. A response of any kind only encourages more talk. We eat dinner and bed down, with Bryce taking first watch. I don’t sleep very well. I keep dreaming that I’m in free fall and jerking myself awake. On the third time, I wake enough to hear hushed voices from across the campfire. Bryce and Helena are talking—a real conversation—and from the handful of words I manage to decipher, I know it’s nothing pleasant. My heart aches for Bryce; I know he hates discussing the past, but he’s doing it anyway, because Helena needs to know. Aiden isn’t here to school her the way he had me, so it’s all up to Bryce. I want to go to them, offer what little comfort I can, but somehow the scene looks so intimate, I feel like an intruder for looking on. I curl up tight beneath my blanket, close my eyes, and will myself back to sleep.
When we set out the next day, I brace for more relentless noise. But as soon as we hit the road, Helena grows quiet. I don’t think she’s ever been this far outside of Hopetown before. It must not be what she expected.
Armed with a map, we are taking a more direct route back to Haven. The scenery is different, but it all looks the same. The wasted cities, sprawling drylands, broken roads, and dead silence are what I’m used to. It’s familiar ground to me, though I know the desolate silence outside the mule’s cabin is dangerously deceptive.
Helena pays attention, watches the landscape for threats, and when debris and damaged roadways slow us down, she curses and crawls out the back window, taking over Bryce’s watch spot as if it was made for her.
We drive almost nonstop. With plenty of food and water, we have no need to hunt or gather, and now that we have a plan of sorts, a real shot at getting Aiden back, Bryce is tireless, pushing the mule to the limit. Close to noon on the third day, we reach familiar ground, and Bryce stops the mule at the foot of a small hill. He just sits there, clutching the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip for so long it makes me fidget.
Helena is just as tense. “We’re here,” she guesses, but doesn’t move.
Something’s wrong.
When Bryce gets out and tells us to stay inside, neither Helena nor I have any inclination to obey. We get on our bellies and crawl up the hill after him. It’s hot and dry, the sun beating down relentlessly, turning the ground into a frying pan with sharp, brittle blades of grass. The dust we kick up covers me from head to toe. I breathe it in and hold back a cough. My eyes water, but I can’t stop now, can’t hold the others back.
And then we’re at the top, looking down at Haven, nestled in a valley four miles across the wide open space.
I have never seen so many Grays in one place before in my life.
~
Haven was gone.
The walls still stood, but the shacks inside had been toppled, piles of metal and debris lying throughout the enclosure as if someone had gone on a rampage and leveled the place. The scent of a recent fire still hung in the air, stinging Sinna’s nose.
On either side of her, Bryce and Helena were transfixed by the sight. The valley clearing, deliberately leveled on all sides to better see an enemy approaching, was crawling with converts. They stumbled around, but there was something very deliberate about the way they moved. Circling. As if they were guarding their prize. At times they’d slam into one other and a fight would break out, drawing a number of them into the fray, but they never devolved into chaos. Something always stopped them, and they went back to what they’d been doing.
“There must be hundreds,” Helena mumbled.
Bryce’s entire body quaked, radiating aggression like a massive heat wave.
Sinna laid a careful hand onto his forearm. “Bryce…”
His arm twitched, and he sucked in a sharp breath. When he exhaled, it was on a growl so low, Sinna barely heard it, but its rumble translated into the ground and caused a tremor she felt to the marrow of her bones. She snatched her hand back.
“This can’t be the place,” Helena said. “There’s…nothing there.”
Nothing, and no one.
Sinna gulped. “They could have gotten out,” she said, grasping at straws. “They had escape tunnels, trained guards. They would have been long gone by the time…” The breeze struck her flat in the face and called her a liar. Downwind of Haven, the reek of burning hair and bone turned her stomach.
“Gate,” Bryce said, his voice unrecognizable.
Sinna looked at the undisturbed gates of Haven—the portal, and the entire perimeter was still intact. There was no discernible damage to the walls, and no sign of an attack. The colony, it seemed, had been destroyed from the inside. Sinna shook her head. “It doesn’t mean anything. Aiden would have found a way out. There’s no way he wouldn’t have.” He was a survivor. “He’s safe, I know it.”
“And Desiree?” Helena’s voice quavered, but not with anguish. She was shaking with fury.
Sinna didn’t know what to say. “Maybe Klaus got her out,” she tried, but didn’t believe it herself.
Helena’s face scrunched up and shifted. Unlike Bryce, her transformation was more subtle, almost delicate; her eyes changed color, lips drawing back to reveal small, sharp fangs.
Bryce reached over Sinna, grasping Helena’s shoulder.
The moment he touched her, Helena snapped at him.
He yanked back, curling an arm around Sinna on the retreat, and he rolled over, depositing her on the other side safely away from Helena. Then he faced the girl, snarling, “Pull it back.”
Helena hissed, but her real target was down in that valley, and she launched at them, driven by anger and mindless violence.
Bryce snatched her ankle, dragged her back down the hill, moving fast to keep her off balance.
Sinna scurried after them, ducking out of sight of the compound. They were fighting like dogs—biting and clawing, kicking up a dust cloud as tall as she was. Bryce easily overpowered Helena, but Sinna wasn’t worried about him winning. She worried he would tear the girl limb from limb. Keep it together. Keep it together!
By the time she reached them, Bryce had Helena pinned to the ground by the throat. His claws and fangs were out, but nowhere near like in Hopetown. He was holding on—somehow. Underneath, Helena fought like hell to dislodge him. Bryce’s choke hold cut off her screams, but didn’t stop her from ripping into him i
n other ways; she’d shredded the skin on his arms, blood dripping before the wounds healed over. Helena kicked out erratically, without focus enough to form a strategy and do real damage.
Bryce snarled and snapped his fangs in her face a fraction of an inch from her nose. And he stayed there, staring her down until she settled. A long time passed before Helena finally came down and the effort left her gasping, arms flung out to her sides as though she couldn’t lift them anymore.
“We go around,” Bryce declared, and it was like he’d ripped out his own heart with the words. He didn’t say it, but Sinna knew. Those tunnel cells had been reinforced. Converts might not have gotten in. If Aiden was still down there, odds were good he was still alive. His brother. Alive, and trapped down there. And Bryce couldn’t go free him with two females in tow—Sinna wasn’t strong enough, and Helena was completely out of control, worse than Bryce.
“Not a chance,” Helena rasped, then she groaned like an old woman, rising to her feet. She had to lean against the mule to stay upright. “Those motherfuckers killed my sister. You go on and take Barbie around, but I’m going that way.” She pointed dead ahead. “I’m gonna wipe them off the face of this Earth.”
“Don’t do this,” he warned.
“Don’t have a choice,” Helena replied. “You said your brother was down there. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same damn thing if…”
“If what?” he challenged.
“If it weren’t for me,” Sinna said, and Bryce, still facing Helena, went rigid. “She’s right. If I wasn’t here, you’d already be down there, and you know it.”
Bryce turned on her. “Stop.”
“Why? I’m only saying what we’re all thinking. You want to go around? Which way? And how far? Remember why we turned south in the first place? And what are you going to tell your pack when you come home without Aiden? That you traded his life for mine?”
“Sinna…”
“There’s three of us,” Helena said, “and a whole lot of firepower. We play this right, we can take down a shitload of them before we run out of steam.”
“And then what?” Bryce growled.
“Dunno about you, but like my idol, Bon Jovi, says, if I’m goin’ down, might as well be in a blaze of motherfucking glory.”
“You’re an idiot,” Sinna retorted.
“Hey! Jon Bon Jovi is a legend.”
Sinna ignored her, drawing Bryce’s attention back. “We can use the tunnels,” she said. “If we make enough ruckus, it’ll draw them out. We go straight in, they won’t expect it. And we’ll get out through the tunnels.”
“No,” Bryce said. “We’re going around. If Aiden were here—”
“He’s not here,” Sinna snapped. “He could still be down there in that cell, waiting for us. That’s what we came here for, right? That was the whole point of this little trip—to get Aiden out.”
Bryce’s jaw clenched so tightly, she could almost hear his teeth grinding together, and his hands balled into fists, seeping blood between the fingers. Wind swept his hair back, baring his scars to the sun. He looked murderous, and so torn, it broke her heart.
Then the wind changed, and his chin dipped, hiding his face from her. His shoulders sagged in defeat.
A shriek echoed down in the valley, sending chills up Sinna’s spine.
Helena sighed and pushed off from the mule, pulling her armor out of the weapons stores. “Well, looks like the discussion’s over.”
56: Aiden
Fifty Wolfen walk into a convert bar. Everybody drops dead.
Wishful thinking on my part, but what the hell. Everyone needs aspirations, right? We haul ass back south, me at the head of the fleet. Every last mule from the stable is chugga-chugga-chugging along behind me like a damn funeral procession, and inside them, every Wolfen present is cracking asinine jokes.
For once, I don’t have the stomach to join in the horseplay.
I keep seeing Haven overrun with converts. People screaming as they’re torn apart for a fast meal. Klaus bailing out, using his own people as a convenient distraction to make a clean escape, and I can’t stop myself thinking, Will that be me?
The fifty Wolfen so ready to lay their lives on the line for the greater good are trusting me implicitly. Their alpha’s kept them alive and safe this long, risked his own life countless times to make sure they had all they needed. He wouldn’t lead them to slaughter now. He knows what he’s doing.
Yeah. That’s exactly the problem: I know.
I know the places we pass. There’s the site of Arik’s last feeble stand. The corpses are gone, dragged away and picked apart by wildlife, but the jeep we drove to this point still stands, tires melted to the road, metal top hot enough to fry bacon. I know the place where we go off road, and the little nothing-of-a-hill we go over. No need to check out the car parked beneath the trees; it’s dead as a doornail, the rusted skeleton remains of a civilization long dead and devoured.
I know what to expect beyond that tree line, too—a swarming, ravening sea of converts aboveground and below, ones conditioned not to avoid Wolfen, but to seek them out like a rare delicacy.
I know once the fighting starts, it’ll be so thick, no one will see me slip away.
And I know there’s a chance, however small, that once they figure out I’m gone, the troops will lose their heads and give the other side an advantage the converts might be smart enough to exploit.
Tessa, my copilot, complains I’m too quiet. She requests I sing something. I have nothing to offer her—no ready jokes, no jaunty tunes to lighten the mood.
I tell myself I’ll stay long enough to make sure the tide is in our favor, to see them through the worst of it. I’ll take my time fighting my way through to the other side, take down as many of the fuckers as I can along the way, but I will not stop. Once I’m through, I won’t look back. I can’t. Bryce is my brother, my blood. He’s stood by me from the moment an orderly led him to the playroom that first day; saved my life so many times I lost count. He’s bled for me—for all of us. He’s killed for us, almost died for us, and like every other dog in this little rebel army, instead of being hailed as a hero, he’s feared by the pack. Too strong. Too unpredictable. A factor one; the only one still alive and unconverted. They accept him among them because of me, but never let a pup play too close. Never take their eyes off of him when a fight breaks out. Never forget what he’s done for them, and how easily he could do it again—to them.
He knows all of this, too. Yet he’s never let them down. Not once.
Montana is safe. They’re set for whatever comes next.
My brother and his mate are not. So guess who I’m going to be fighting for.
Past the hill, we slow to a quiet crawl. The wind’s against us. Don’t know how well the scent blocker will last. I can already feel a charge in the air; an oppressive weight that won’t be relieved by a cool breeze.
In a couple more miles, when we’ve got a handful of trees around us for cover, I order a full stop and dismount. Beyond that line of trees, the landscape opens up, and Haven is right there. The mules make great battering rams, but once they plow into the swarm, anyone inside one will end up trapped like canned tuna. It’ll be infantry only from this point on.
Spencer is our lookout. While everyone piles out and starts stretching their legs and readying weapons, he climbs the highest tree he can find.
Less than two minutes later, he’s dropping back down and stumbling over to me. He doesn’t say a word, just drags me over to the tree, points up, and hands me a scope. His face is flushed, nostrils flared; he’s breathing hard as if he can barely contain himself, aching to plunge into battle—hungry for it. But his gaze is steady, hard, as he stares me down, a wordless command to hurry the fuck up.
We’re attracting an audience, standing there. Tessa comes over, frowning. Several others raise their heads in question.
I take the scope and climb. Spencer’s a wiry bastard; I can’t climb as high as he did, but it’s
enough to catch a glimpse of the clearing around Haven. It’s even worse than I expected. There are too many of them, and they look established already. The compound is surrounded. No way they won’t catch onto us the moment we leave the trees.
Spencer chirps from the next tree over to get my attention. He makes a peace sign and points to his eyes. He traces a hill in the air, makes a fist and pulls it down.
I bring the scope back to my eyes and pan up, past Haven to the hill on the other side. I trace its contours slowly, looking for whatever made Spencer flip. Movement catches my eye, and I adjust the range to focus on the grass at the top of a crest.
“Son of a bitch!”
~
Spencer beaned him with a pine cone, but it wasn’t like the horde could hear them.
Aiden climbed down, mind racing. The others stared at him, waiting for orders, news of the battlefield—something.
Spencer dropped beside him. “This is good, right?”
“What’s going on?” Tessa asked.
“We can do this,” Spencer said, bouncing on his toes. “Holy shit, are you kidding me? We can totally do this!”
“Okay someone talk to me.”
Aiden paced two short steps to the tree and back again. It wasn’t enough room. “This changes everything.”
“Hell yeah, it does!” Spencer punched the air. “Might as well sit back and let the B-man handle this. Boys and girls, we’re goin’ home!”
A hum of conversation turned into a free-for-all with everyone talking over each other, demanding answers, asking about the plan. Spencer wouldn’t shut his mouth, speaking for Aiden as if he had a clue what the fuck he was talking about. He was convincing the others of something stupid before Aiden could get his thoughts together.
Tessa, bless her heart, put an end to it. “Everyone shut up!”
Kind, soft-spoken Tessa hollering at the top of her lungs? Everyone clammed up to stare.
“Go on, Aiden.”
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