The Forever Song

by Julie Kagawa

  Chapter 12

  Two hours before dawn, we found Sarren’s last message waiting for us.

  We smelled it first, of course, the familiar, unmistakable scent of blood drifting over the empty highway like invisible threads. The highway had entered civilization again, taking us through empty towns and subdivisions, crumbling houses on either side and cars scattered about the road. Wary, we continued on, each thinking the same thing—that there was some kind of trap, ambush, or atrocity waiting for us down the road. We weren’t entirely wrong.

  The stench of rot, decay and wrongness soon joined the smell of blood, so it wasn’t surprising when we approached an overpass choked with weeds and vines and saw a mass of spindly pale things swarming under the bridge.

  “Rabids,” Zeke muttered, as the four of us paused on a corner across the street, watching the monsters hiss and scramble over the hulk of an ancient, rusting semitruck that blocked the path we needed to take. The swarm wasn’t huge, but there were enough to be dangerous. “Should we find a way around?”

  “What if someone’s in the truck?” I asked, watching him carefully. And though my voice was calm, I was almost terrified of his answer. If he shrugged or gave no indication of wanting to help survivors, then I would know my Zeke was truly gone. “Someone might be hurt,” I went on, as Zeke gazed at me blankly. “If we leave them now, they’re dead.”

  “If this is Sarren’s work, they’re probably already dead,” Zeke answered, making my heart crash in despair. “But,” he added, and pulled out his machete, his eyes going hard, “I suppose we have to make certain.”

  Relief flooded me. I glanced at my sire, hoping he thought the same. “Kanin?”

  The Master vampire nodded once. “I’m right behind you, Allison.”

  Jackal groaned. “Oh, yeah, stroll merrily up to the van reeking of blood, placed very conveniently in our direct path. That doesn’t sound like a trap at all.” But his dinged, bloody fire ax emerged from beneath his duster, and he gave it an easy twirl. “Rescuing bloodbags and saving puppies.” He sighed. “That sounds about right for this group. You bleeding hearts are going to be the death of me, I just know it.” Gazing down at me, he smirked and gestured to the distant pack. “Well, this is your party, sister. Why don’t you get it started?”

  Drawing my sword, I stepped off the curb into the road, bared my fangs, and roared a challenge into the night. My voice carried over the wind, echoing off the rooftops, and the rabids jerked up, pale heads snapping toward me. With piercing shrieks and wails, the mob leaped off the truck and came skittering at us, claws and talons scraping the cement, jaws gaping to reveal jagged fangs. My monster surged up with the explosion of violence, eager and bloodthirsty, and I ran forward to meet them.

  Zeke was suddenly beside me, cold and silent as the horde bore down on us, his face the same killer’s mask I’d seen in Jackal’s tower. The first rabid sprang at him with a howl; Zeke’s blade flashed, and the monster’s head left its shoulders, bouncing into a car. Snarling a challenge, I slashed my katana at the next pair of spindly bodies, cutting through one and into the other. Their black, foul-smelling blood spattered the snow, and then the rest of the swarm flooded in, surrounding us, and everything dissolved into madness. I heard the savage crunch of bones as Jackal’s fire ax connected, crushing skulls and knocking rabids away, and caught glimpses of Kanin’s dark, graceful form from the corner of my eye as his knife parted heads with lethal precision. Rabids pressed forward, screaming, and I met them with my blade, feeling the shiver of metal as it passed through undead flesh, the monster inside howling with glee.

  A different roar, icy and furious, made me whirl around. Zeke stood with his back against an overturned car, two rabids hounding him on either side. One had its fangs sunk into his sword arm, even as the blade itself stuck out of its collarbone. The other hissed and pressed forward, jaws snapping eagerly.

  I lunged forward to help, but with a rabid still gnawing on his wrist, Zeke reached back with his other hand, pulled the gun from his back holster and shoved it between the rabid’s eyes. There was a boom, blood and bits of skull exploding everywhere, and the rabid fell away with the back of its skull missing. At the same time, Zeke yanked his machete from the dead rabid’s body, turned and sliced it through the second one’s neck.

  “Zeke!”

  He spun on me as I came up, eyes bright and glassy, lips curled back to show fangs. Blood streaked his face and the front of his shirt as I stared at him, a cold-eyed, snarling vampire, and he raised his gun.

  “Duck, Allie.”

  My instincts responded even as I was tempted to stand there gaping. Instead, I threw myself aside just as the pistol barked, and a rabid shrieked behind me and slammed into a car.

  I darted to Zeke’s side, and we faced the last of the horde together, back-to-back. Rabids leaped at us, wailing, and fell before our blades as we moved around each other, guarding the other’s flank. I stuck my katana through a rabid’s chest, ripped it out and turned to slash another lunging at Zeke’s blind spot. Zeke decapitated a rabid, spun, and fired his pistol into the face of another behind my shoulder. The roar of the gun made my head ring, but the rabid was flung back, its face a bloody mess, and didn’t rise again.

  And then, it was over. Zeke and I stood in the center of a gore-strewn circle, limbs and bodies scattered at our feet. Lowering my blade, I stared at the field of carnage, looking around for Jackal and Kanin. They stood a few paces away, the Master vampire calmly wiping his blade on his sleeve while Jackal pried his ax from a rabid’s severed head and tossed away the skull in disgust.

  I looked up, met Zeke’s gaze, and my insides fluttered. He was gazing at me with a faint, familiar expression, one I hadn’t seen on him since he’d Turned. The icy mask had cracked a bit, admiration, respect and a little awe filtering through the terrible blankness in his eyes. The corner of his mouth curled, very slightly, and he shook his head.

  “Still incredible, vampire girl,” he whispered, sounding almost like himself again. “Dangerous, beautiful and unstoppable. You haven’t changed.”

  “Oh, isn’t that sweet,” came Jackal’s loud, mocking voice before I could reply. “Let’s make goo-goo eyes at each other in the middle of a stinking corpse field, how very romantic.” Ignoring my glare, he kicked an arm out of his way and sauntered forward, the ax vanishing beneath his duster once more. “But before you two start making out, maybe we should check the thing we fought all the rabids to get to?” He glanced at the back of the semi and rolled his eyes. “Don’t want Sarren’s trap to go to waste, after all.”

  We approached the doors cautiously. Now that the fight was over, the scent of blood returned, stronger and more powerful than ever. The truck practically threw off waves of the smell. I didn’t know what we would find when we opened that truck, but knowing Sarren, it was probably going to be worse than I could imagine.

  A beam was set across the thick double doors of the back. Keeping rabids from getting in, I wondered, or preventing something from getting out? No sounds came from inside the container; everything was eerily silent again, muffled and still in the falling snow. Jackal leaped onto the back of the truck, grabbed the beam, and yanked it out with a raspy screech that made me wince. After tossing it behind him, he paused and observed the truck critically.

  “You know this is not going to be pleasant, right?” he stated to the rest of us. “Whatever the sicko has in here, he obviously wants us to see it. Which means it’s probably going to fuck with at least one of us, really badly.” He snickered, shaking his head. “Course, that’s the trap now, isn’t it? We could walk away, right now, but not knowing what’s inside is going to drive us bat-shit crazy.”

  I frowned. He was right. I couldn’t walk away now, even if I knew there was something awful waiting for me inside. Bracing myself, I took a steady breath. “Open it.”

  Jackal shrugged. Dropping to the ground, he gripped the bars running vertically up the truck doors, tensed briefly, and threw t
hem open with a squeal.

  A wave of cold billowed out of the container, and with it the smell of blood, death, offal and human insides hit me like a slap in the face, making my stomach clench. Peering into the long, shadowy interior, I realized I had been right; what Sarren had left for us was far worse than I had imagined.

  I clenched my fists, fighting the urge to turn away. Even with all the atrocities I’d seen, the horrible things Sarren had done, this one took the prize. The wall’s original color was impossible to tell, because it was streaked floor to ceiling in blood, thick and dried and black. The floor of the container was caked with it, a congealed, slimy carpet nearly an inch thick, glistening dully in the moonlight. Humans hung on the walls, staked or nailed in place, their skin peeled back in grotesque star patterns around them. A few didn’t even have skin, raw muscles and bones bared to the light, their faces twisted into masks of horror.

  For a brief moment, I was relieved I was a vampire. Because if I’d been human, I would have fallen to my knees on the ground and puked up my last meal. Even now, though the Hunger raged at the amount of spilled blood and the monster looked on with indifference, I felt sick. Sick, and filled with a sudden, blinding hatred. No one with even a sliver of humanity would do this. I was a monster, and I traveled in the company of monsters, but even Jackal had lines he wouldn’t cross. This…depravity was just further proof that Sarren had no humanity left; he was a true demon in human skin who had killed, maimed and tortured all these people, just to prove a point. And a terrible one, at that.

  On the far wall, a message glittered, stark and black. Written in blood, of course. Only, I had been wrong; this one hadn’t been left for me, or Jackal, or even Kanin. No, it was far more horrible, and filled me with a cold, lingering dread.

  Welcome to your future, it read. Ezekiel.

  “No.”

  Zeke’s voice was a strangled whisper. He stumbled back from the container, eyes wide, face contorted in agony and horror. Hitting a rusty car, he turned from the semi and its grisly contents, putting a hand against the door as if to brace himself.

  “No,” he choked out, closing his eyes. “Oh, God, I can’t do this. I can’t do it anymore.” Bowing his head, he pressed his face into the metal, his voice dropping to a moan. “Let me die,” he whispered, making my insides clench. “Before I become…that. Just kill me already.”

  “Zeke.” I stepped toward him, and he flinched, shoulders hunched in anguish. “Look at me.” He didn’t raise his head, and I took another step, my voice urgent. “Dammit, listen to me. Don’t let Sarren get to you. This is just another one of his twisted mind games, and if you start listening, you’re giving him exactly what he wants.”

  “Because, it’s true, Allie.” Zeke finally looked up at me, his eyes a little wild. I blinked as that searing, glassy blue gaze met mine. “You don’t know me anymore,” Zeke whispered. “You don’t know what I’ve done. Those people in the barn, they weren’t the only humans I killed. I helped Sarren murder an entire village, kill every soul there.” His eyes closed, and he dropped his head into his hands. “And then, when we were done, we strung their bodies from a tree and painted a wall with their blood.”

  My stomach turned. I remembered the slaughtered outpost, the tree of corpses and the barn streaked with blood. Zeke had done that, been a part of it. I realized how blind I’d been. If I had done that, even if it was under a compulsion, I wasn’t certain I could live with myself, either.

  “It haunts me, every night,” Zeke whispered, clutching at his hair. “I can’t get their screams out of my head. But no matter how much that disgusts me, no matter how much I hate myself for it…there’s a part of me that wants to do it again. And it will never go away, will it?” He looked up, and his eyes stabbed at me, almost accusing. “I’m always going to feel like this, like I’m going to explode if I can’t hunt down a human and tear it apart.”

  I bit my lip as he paused, waiting for my answer. I didn’t want to say it, to confirm what he already knew, but I wouldn’t lie to him. “No,” I whispered. “No, the Hunger will never go away.” He turned away, and I stepped forward, desperate to talk him down, to give him some kind of hope. “But you can control it, Zeke. We all have to learn to fight it. That’s part of what being a vampire is.”

  “But I’m going to slip up one day.” Zeke’s voice was low, defeated. “One day, I won’t be able to resist. And it will be the barn all over again.” And I couldn’t answer, couldn’t deny it, because I knew that was true. That, one day, he would slip up. There was no question in my mind. Kanin’s own words came back to me, that warning he’d given, not so very long ago, when I first became a vampire.

  Sometime in your life, Allison Sekemoto, you will kill a human being. Accidentally or as a conscious, deliberate act. It is unavoidable. The question is not if it will happen, but when.

  That held true for Zeke now, as well. And we both knew it.

  “What if I get to Eden,” Zeke went on, “and I can’t control myself? The people there, my family, they won’t suspect anything. What if Caleb or Bethany come running up to me, and I…” He closed his eyes, unable to continue, his face twisted with loathing. “I can’t do it,” Zeke whispered, his voice choked but resolved. “I can’t go to Eden, not like this. Go on without me.”

  “I am not leaving you behind, Zeke.” Anger and panic flared, and I bared my fangs at him. I would not lose him now, either to Sarren’s twisted games or his own guilt. Atrocities aside, I had to make him see that he wasn’t alone.

  “Do you think you’re the only one who’s gone through this?” I demanded. “Do you remember all those times I said we couldn’t be together, because you were a human and I was a vampire? When I told you I couldn’t go to Eden, because I was afraid I would kill someone? Remember what you told me, then? You said I’m not a monster, and I’m not evil. Why is it different for you?”

  “Because I am a monster!” Zeke snarled back. His fangs flashed as he whirled around, glaring at me. “This is what I am, Allison! I’m a demon—you know it as well as me.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

  Jackal abruptly shoved himself off the truck and came stalking forward, eyes glowing yellow, his lips curled into a grimace of disgust. “Puppy, I am getting so tired of listening to you whine about this,” he snarled at Zeke. “This isn’t rocket science. If you don’t want to be a monster, don’t be a bloody monster! Be an uptight stick in the mud like Kanin. Be a selfrighteous bleeding heart like Allison. Or you can stop agonizing about it and be a fucking monster, it’s actually a lot of fun.” He narrowed his eyes as Zeke and I stared at him, stunned. “But for the love of piss, make some sort of decision. If you don’t want to eat babies and nail bloodbags to walls, that’s your choice. What Sarren did or made you do in the past has nothing to do with it now. You’re a vampire. Do whatever the hell you want.”

  Zeke blinked, still in a state of shock, but I bristled and stepped forward, baring my fangs at my brother. “That isn’t fair, Jackal,” I growled. “He never wanted to Turn. Sarren forced this on him—”

  “And you,” Jackal interrupted, turning on me, “are part of the problem. Bitching and crying because he’s not acting like a human anymore. Here’s a news flash, sister. He’s not human anymore. He doesn’t need you holding his hand every time a kitten dies. Maybe when he was a mewling, pathetic meatsack, he needed some kind of protection, but he’s one of us now. Or he would be, if you didn’t act like it was the end of the world because he likes the taste of blood. Stop treating him like a mortal and let him be a bloody vampire.”

  Taken aback, I fell silent, and for a moment, we all stared at each other. The wind picked up, blowing the scent of death and mutilated corpses into the road, and the rabids lay scattered around us like fallen limbs, bloody and broken. It caught Jackal’s duster, causing it to billow out behind him as he glared at us, his expression twisted with mockery and disgust. Behind him, Zeke’s face had gone blank again, glassy blue eyes staring out a
t nothing.

  Then Kanin stepped into the circle, his voice weary but calm. “Dawn is nearly upon us,” he said, giving no hints to his thoughts, his feelings about the sudden outburst between his two offspring. “I suggest we get out of the open. This conversation will have to wait until tomorrow night.”

  That ended it. With a final, disgusted snort, Jackal turned and stalked off down the road, shaking his head. He didn’t look back, and within moments, the raider king had slipped between the sea of scattered cars and disappeared from sight.

  “Allison.” Kanin looked at me, his dark eyes impassive. “Take Ezekiel and find a place to sleep. Try to stay close. I’ll find you both this evening.”

  “Right,” I murmured, and Kanin too, disappeared, melting into the darkness surrounding us, leaving me and Zeke alone.

  I glanced at Zeke, who hadn’t moved from his spot next to the car, and jerked my head toward a peeling, two-story house on the corner of the street. “Come on,” I said quietly. “Let’s get out of the open.”

  He didn’t say anything, just followed me across the road, over a sagging picket fence, and through a weed-choked yard to the steps of the house. Inside, rubble covered the floor, and the walls were cracked and peeling, showing rotting boards beneath, but it was in better shape than most empty houses I’d seen. A fireplace sat crumbling against the back wall, bricks scattered over the floor, and a gutted armchair lay overturned in front of it, covered in moss.

  I spotted a staircase against a wall and motioned Zeke toward it, knowing the bedrooms would probably be on the second floor. The creaking, groaning stairs took us to an equally noisy hallway, with a trio of doors that led to individual rooms. The largest had a rusty brass bed and a mattress big enough for two people, but it also had several windows that faced east and nothing to cover them with. The room across the hall was smaller, but its one window was already boarded up, so in that regard, it was an easy choice. Of course, there were other factors to take into account.