The Warrior

by Rebecca Royce

  “What will we do for shelter tonight?”

  The pack was likely hours ahead of us. We’d never catch up before the snow got here.

  “I’ll shift and keep you warm.”

  “I don’t think you can keep the snow off me. Not even with all of your fur, wolf-boy.”

  “I could if you let me shift and lay on top of you.”

  “Ah…no, nothing about that sounds comfortable for either of us. What is option two?”

  He stopped moving. “What makes you think there’s an option two? Option one might be it.”

  I hadn’t considered that. In the brief time I’d known Jason, his mind always seemed to be seeking out multiple angles and lots of options. I had assumed there was an option two. I really didn’t like the idea of option one. In fact, it made me feel a little bit creeped out. Would I have to spend the whole night under the wolf?

  “I’m joking with you. I can smell your anxiety.”

  I put my head down on his back.

  In this case, it was a good thing he could scent what I felt. Other times I didn’t like it as much but, hey, it was right to pick and choose when his senses bugged me and when they didn’t. We were in a strange, pseudo-dating, pseudo-friendship spot.

  He wanted to be my boyfriend. Well, okay, he wanted to be my ‘mate.’ But I was human and I didn’t have mates, so he would have to deal with my thinking of it as dating. I was rapidly, and much sooner than I probably should have, getting over the whole wolf as a monster problem.

  Most Werewolves were still monsters, even if Jason, Andon, and their whole pack were not anymore. It still bugged me that we didn’t know how they woke up and that Andon worried about going back into the pit of evilness without warning.

  With that issue kind of worked out, I wasn’t sure if I could really let Jason take Micah’s place in my heart. It had belonged to Micah for so long that I couldn’t—or maybe wouldn’t—let it disappear. It would be like letting my whole past vanish. The Lyons family, and everything they represented, was part of me.

  Jason was going to have to make his own spot inside in my heart, and then I’d see where that left us. I could already feel him carving out space for himself every second I was with him.

  He turned left and I looked over his shoulder to see where we were going. “Will you lose track of the pack if we stop following?”

  “Nope.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You’re certain?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve tracked them through snow before.”

  “You have? Why would that have happened?”

  “When we turned sixteen, Dad left us behind for a few days with instructions to follow. We had to catch up within a week. It was a test. It was how he knew whether or not we could be trusted on our own.”

  I thought about what he said. “That’s not so different than what is supposed to happen with us. I should have been sent up with other Ones and Twos and been watched under supervision for two years.”

  “Then why weren’t you?” His tone sounded cold, like the outdoor temperature had found its way into Jason’s vocal chords.

  I assumed his father had told him about my situation. Apparently, not. “Didn’t your dad tell you?”

  “Think of my father when he’s in his Alpha role as your confessor. He’s not going to tell anyone anything you tell him unless he thinks it’s going to harm the pack.”

  “My confessor?” Jason was the first person I’d ever met who used so many expressions I couldn’t follow.

  “No priests down where you live?”

  “Sorry, but I’ve seen them on television. We sometimes get old TV shows. If they can get them cleaned up, they put them on and we all get to watch them. There was a movie…what was it called...oh, the Thorn Birds. There was a priest in that. Is that what you meant?”

  “I haven’t seen a movie in forever unless I was watching them and I can’t remember. I didn’t see the Thorn Birds when I was growing up. Sorry.”

  “But you used to see a priest?”

  He shook his head. “No, Dad was never big on religion. But I had a neighbor who did. Ah, here we are.”

  I arched my head to see what he was talking about and gasped when I saw what had caught his attention. Spread out before us, like pieces of a movie set, was a row of houses.

  “Are these actual houses?”

  “No, they’re pretend.”

  I whacked him gently on the shoulder. “No sarcasm please when I’m feeling awed.”

  “I haven’t found too many like this. That was one of my biggest disappointments. Everything is just gone, like it never existed. But this neighborhood is still here. It’s not where I lived, but it’s close.”

  I could have told him the history of the whole thing. I could have told him that the original Warriors had destroyed all of the houses because the Vampires and the Werewolves had tried to take up residence in them. They’d thought, mistakenly, that they’d be able to beat them back more easily if they didn’t have homes to return to. All they’d managed to do was lose track of the monsters more easily. Now, we didn’t know where their homes were.

  I could have told him about all of that. But I didn’t. To me, it was history. To Jason, it was the missing part of his life. It felt weird to talk about it with him like I might discuss Alexander the Great and the Pyramids.

  “I take it you’ve come this way before.”

  “Dad tends to go in the same direction every time we travel. We never end up in exactly the same spots, but it’s always kind of close. So, yes, I happened upon this place a time or two.” He walked a little further down the street.

  I looked at the various types of houses. Some of them were white, some were brown, and some of them looked to be brick…all of them were decrepit. Forty-six years was a long time for a place to stay vacant, open to all the elements.

  “Which house should be ours, my lady?”

  “What?”

  “Which house is ours? Pick out the one you like.”

  “Don’t you think we should be more strategic about this? Which one offers the best protection, which one are the monsters less likely to invade, that kind of thing?”

  My mind went immediately to the image of the dead Warrior in the Outpost. I shivered and felt my stomach turn. Yes, we needed to be smart about this. I, for one, didn’t want to end up torn to pieces and left to rot in a house.

  “No, none of this is going to be very safe. We’re going to need some good luck tonight.” I couldn’t see it but I knew he was grinning because of the upbeat nature of his voice. I’d seen him do this glass half-full routine before. I could almost guarantee he had that half-grin displayed on his face.

  “I feel like I’m basking in good luck because I’m here alone with you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, wolf-boy, you want me to just pick a house like I would pick a card if you were a magician?”

  “No, not like a magician, like a person picking her favorite house. Which one is your favorite? Which one is your taste? White almost-gone siding or falling-apart-needs-to-be-condemned brick?”

  “Um, I think I like the missing half a roof ranch house. But given that the snow is coming that will be a really bad idea, I think. So I’ll take the brick. That sounds good.”

  He nodded. “Nice choice, she-wolf. The brick it is, then. If we’re ever here together in summer time, we’ll vacation in the ranch house.”

  I laughed. Jason had a way of finding delight in every situation. Didn’t life ever bog him down? I couldn’t possibly be such a treat that the world looked bright and cheery to him. I’m simply not that wonderful a person. Still, I laughed until I shook at his stupid joke. If he could be happy, I could be amused.

  He carried me into the house. The front door was unlocked and opened easily. We stepped into the front hall, and after a moment of physical awkwardness, we got me out of the harness on his back. I stumbled for a moment before I righted myself. It had been hours since I’d used my legs, and they tingled as I walke
d around.

  Jason, for his part, didn’t seem bothered at all. It was like he hadn’t carried me for hours and hours. I yawned.

  “Stay here,” Jason’s voice was all business to match a stern expression on his face, “I want to make sure we don’t have any unexpected surprises.”

  “Jason, I’m a Warrior. I can handle the surprises as well as you can.”

  “You’re forty-eight hours from being nearly dead. You don’t have to prove your toughness today. Tomorrow, if you want, you can be completely competitive. I still get to take care of you today.”

  As if his words were the final say on the subject, he rounded the corner into the darkness of our shelter from the upcoming storm. I narrowed my gaze as he left. Yeah, I wasn’t going to stand there to wait for him to come back. Sick or not, I wasn’t built like that.

  I walked quietly into the darkness, finally turning into a large room. On the front wall stood a decimated fireplace. Bricks that once lined the fireplace were strewn all over. The room was bare. If it had ever held furniture—and I had to assume it had—it was long gone. My footsteps echoed on the wood floor, and I shivered.

  People had lived here, going through their business, totally unaware that everything was going to change in an instant. I wondered if they had made it through the initial assault. Had they perished on day one? Or been taken out later as the monsters had picked survivors off one by one? Had they been one of the lucky ones to make it to one of Dr. Icahn’s habitats? Did I know them?

  “Honey, we’re home.”

  I gasped and whirled around. “You scared me.”

  “I stood here for a full minute before I spoke admiring your body in the setting sun.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I guess I must have been lost in thought. And stop admiring my body. It’s not that interesting a sight.”

  He smirked. “Says who? I don’t think you’re in a position to know what it is I admire and don’t admire.”

  “Let it go, Jason. You only want me because I’m the first new girl you’ve met in ten years. If you’d found someone else you’d be wanting her, not me.”

  “Nope.” He stepped forward. “It’s not only my human half that wants you. The wolf does, too. It’s why he didn’t attack you and came to your rescue when you were with the Vampires. That’s primal, baby.”

  “Baby?”

  He walked to me, pulling me into his arms. “You’re my baby.”

  I closed my eyes and felt his arms go around me. “All right, let’s say for a moment that I believe you really have as much of a thing for me as you claim you do.”

  “Let’s say that. Yes.”

  “Don’t laugh at me.” I pinched his back and he laughed at my effort, his body shaking silently. “I have something important to say here.”

  “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  I was sure he sniffed my hair. I’d gotten so used to it now I hardly noticed the invasion.

  “Then we have to agree right now that you understand I’m not going to sleep with you. For a long time.”

  He shook his head. “You’ve already slept with me. A couple of times.”

  “Not that kind of sleeping. Don’t deliberately misunderstand me.”

  He pulled back to look at me, his eyebrows pressed downwards. “How long is a long time?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose I’ll know when I’m ready. I want an agreement that there isn’t going to be any kind of pressure to get me to change my mind on this subject. I’ve seen too many people get into too much trouble. I don’t want a baby, not now, and I don’t want to get crazy over you—obsessing about what you’re doing all day or crying all the time.”

  He stroked the side of my face, and I shivered. “Maybe it won’t be anything like that. Maybe it will just be another way we can show each other how we feel about each other.”

  “Not yet. And I don’t want to be pressured. I mean it. This all stops right here if I don’t have your promise on that subject.”

  “I’m not going to pretend that it doesn’t disappoint me. A lot. But I’ll wait until you tell me otherwise. I won’t even bring up the subject until you do. Is that good enough?”

  “Yes.” Actually, I was hugely surprised by how nice he was being about it. I’d heard all kinds of stories of guys getting really mean when you said ‘no’. Tia had to beat the crap out of someone once who had given her a hard time.

  “I have my own condition.”

  “You do?” I caught my breath as I waited for him to answer.

  “I still get kissing privileges.”

  “Yes.” I wanted that, too. I felt my cheeks heat up as I realized how fast I had answered that. He had to know I had been thinking about him kissing me. God, I was so unsmooth.

  “And you know that I’m ready, willing, and able when you change your mind.”

  “Have lots of practice with this? Abigail Skyler, maybe?”

  “Nope.” He kissed the top of my head. “Jealous?”

  Maybe I was. But I’d never, ever admit it. Even though I was fairly certain that he knew I was jealous, thanks to his ever present-nose and its ability to scent every emotion I felt.

  “And you don’t get to put me in a friend category. You don’t get to decide that ‘hey, he’s a nice guy, but we don’t do anything much together so I’m going to decide to be his best bud.’”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re the one putting the limit on us, but I want it understood that we are more than friends. Even if all we’re doing is kissing.”

  I thought about Micah and the life I had left behind in the habitat. It felt really far away from where we were. This house—Jason—the strange conversation we were having. Even Tia seemed like a memory, instead of my best friend I was driven to return to. If Jason had been a wizard, I would have sworn he’d placed a spell on me.

  “Okay.”

  He’d done it. He’d made his own space in my heart. It was his. As I was now.

  He winked at me. “Great. Wanna play a game?”

  “Did you carry checkers somewhere on you?”

  “No, but if I’d thought of it I’d have brought a deck of cards.”

  He let go of me, and I walked toward one of the windows. “Where do you get all of the things you have? Deck of cards, the dark sunglasses, the harness to hook me to your back.”

  Jason moved toward me. “When we first woke up from the daze, Dad started getting us the stuff we would need to survive. Every time we come upon a house that is still intact, we search it. Also, I’m not embarrassed to admit, we steal stuff from the Werewolves and the Vampires whenever we can. It took some time but we got what we need. I found the glasses and the cards in the back of an old discount warehouse.”

  “What’s a discount warehouse?”

  “We sometimes speak a different language, don’t we?” He came up behind me, putting his arms around my waist.

  I rubbed at the dirty window with the sleeve of my coat. I cleared away some of the dirt and grime and was able to see through a single pane. As I moved closer, I gasped.

  “Jason.” I could hear the awe in my voice, and I did nothing to hide it. “It’s snowing. I’ve never, ever seen it before. It looks just like I’ve always imagined.”

  A tear slid down my cheek, and before I knew it, I was crying and I had no idea why.

  Chapter Twelve

  I couldn’t seem to make my tears stop.

  “I’m sure I would feel the same way,” Jason whispered in my ear. “It would be like I suddenly woke up on an alien world or something. It was like that for me when I first came back to myself. It was like the world had blown up and someone had forgotten to tell me.”

  I sniffed as I wiped at my cheek. “I’m not even sure why I’m crying.”

  “We can stay just like this, if you want.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “You said something about a game.”

  “All right.” He let go of me. “We’ll play, this world never ended and we�
��re just two regular teenagers. I’ve come to take you out on a date.”

  “I never lived in that world, so you’ll have to help me. Back home, when people go on dates, it’s to the central square. The Warriors hang out in one part and the other people in another. I’ve never been there, not on a date anyway. I have, however, seen the Brady Bunch so I know how the guys used to come to the door to pick up Marsha.”

  “I was born a good deal after the Brady Bunch era.” He ran a hand through his messy blond hair, and I was struck again by how beautiful he was. Really, so much prettier than I was. It wasn’t fair. Men shouldn’t have such long eyelashes. “I was only eight, so all of my information comes from watching my babysitter make out with her boyfriend when she was supposed to be watching us.”

  “Maybe we should play something else.”

  He grinned. “I can think of a couple of things.”

  Dirty mind. I shook my head. He was going to be hard to resist. A strong, sharp pain of cold hit my insides. Oh God. I nearly doubled over.

  “What is it?” Jason was by my side fast, gripping me in his arms.

  “Vampire.” I spoke through gritted teeth. “A lot of Vampires.”

  My body shook but I pulled out of Jason’s arms. I wasn’t going to be down on the floor shaking like a baby when the Undead busted through the door. I wasn’t going to be so easy to nearly destroy this time. No way, no how.

  “Are you sure? I don’t smell any. I can smell them miles away.”

  “I’m not crazy. They’re here or close by. Somewhere.”

  From the way it hurt, I would bet money they were in the room with us. I whirled around. Where could they be? There was just enough light left in the room from outdoors streaming through holes in the roof to tell me the Vampires shouldn’t be able to walk around yet.

  I appreciated that Jason hadn’t yet called me out on this fact. He looked around and sniffed the air in a deliberate manner.

  “I’m getting nothing, Rachel.” He stopped moving, his face a stone mask hiding his thoughts from me. “Are you sure it’s not that you’re feeling sick? Your illness coming back?”