The Warrior

by Rebecca Royce

  My illness? I touched my cheek as a nagging memory pounded in my head. Where had I heard something like this before?

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Ssshh, please.”

  I closed my eyes. Where had I heard something about Vampire illnesses? Truth was, I’d spent as little time as possible thinking about the Warriors who got scratched by the Vamps and lived. I’d helped to treat them in the infirmary, listened to Keith endlessly lecture us not to get scratched, but I’d avoided most other conversations. On purpose. It was too creepy.

  So of course it would serve me right to end up in this predicament now…

  My eyes flew open as I remembered. It had been Keith and Tiffani. They’d been talking about another Warrior. I couldn’t remember her name; she was dead now. Back then, however, she hadn’t been. In fact, she’d lived through a Vampire scratch. Barely.

  Keith had been concerned. On hunts, she kept feeling Vampires no one else could feel. He’d thought she might be losing her mind. They’d all been convinced the poor woman had gone crazy. Only, I didn’t feel nuts right now. I felt sane and rational.

  “This is bad. I really might be crazy. I know this Warrior, she’s dead now, she had this happen.”

  I sank to the floor as I told him the rest of the story. Things kept getting worse and worse. How was I supposed to fight if I couldn’t trust my instincts at all? I’d already proven I couldn’t count on knowing when a Werewolf was in the room. Especially, now that I was making out with one.

  Jason joined me on the floor. “Two thoughts.”

  I put my head on his shoulder. “Just two?”

  “Amazingly, yes. The first is maybe it’s not a question of you losing your mind. Maybe you are that much more sensitive now. Maybe you’re sensing a Vampire miles and miles away.”

  “During the day?”

  He sighed. “That is a problem.”

  “What was your second thought?”

  “You don’t have to fight anymore. You’ll stay with me, and I’ll protect you from anything that might hurt you.”

  His father’s confession floated in the edges of my mind, and I had to shove away the thought before Jason got a sniff of my fear and knew something else was up. What would happen if Jason and the others turned bad again? I had all but promised to stay with him now.

  He had to assume that I wasn’t leaving. I’d made him promise to wait on the sexual front, which meant I intended to stick around. But what if one day I woke up, and Jason was a snarling, growling beast that wanted to eat me?

  Even if I could survive the attack, and assuming I ever got my machete back, how would I live knowing I’d had to kill all of them? Or would I let them get me? Better to not be here than to be forced to kill him…

  “You’re thinking hard.”

  “They’re my thoughts. Leave them to me, please.” I really didn’t want to tell him what I’d been thinking about. It was better he thought me hostile than to know I feared for my safety around him.

  He put his forehead on my head. “I’ve tried to imagine what it must be like to not know everything by scent. Maybe if my mother had lived, she could have told me something about it or at least taught us better manners. She probably would have said something like, ‘Jason, just because you can smell it doesn’t mean you should comment on it.’”

  I closed my eyes when he kissed the top of head. I loved these little moments. The small gestures of tenderness. If he ever stopped doing them, I’d know something had changed between us.

  “Maybe you should take her imagined advice.”

  “But Rachel,” his voice was playful now, “you smell so delicious.”

  I leaned back onto the floor and stared up at him. From here, I could see the ceiling above our heads. The pipes and the insulation of the house hung down in some places. We’d be lucky if it didn’t fall down on us the second a good breeze hit.

  There was something to be said for living in the habitats. You never felt cold. You never knew if it was raining or snowing. But then again, not knowing something was happening didn’t make the fact that it happened any less true. It snowed whether we knew it did in Genesis or not. It was how we dealt with reality that defined us. My father couldn’t deal—hence the drinking. More and more I realized how little of a man that actually made him.

  I wanted to deal. I wanted to know it was snowing and still be alive, still be sober when it ended.

  I wanted…

  “What are you doing up there when I’m laying down here waiting for you to kiss me?”

  Jason blinked twice before grinning. Seconds later, he pressed his mouth to mine, and I sighed as all coherent thought left my head. There was only Jason and the way his lips felt on mine and on my cheeks, and on my neck.

  The snow piled outside, but we stayed warm and pressed to each other, stopping only when things got too hot between us. Then he’d get up and go ‘cool down’ a distance away from me. One time he actually left the house to throw himself into the snow.

  When he came back, we decided it was best if we went to sleep. Jason spread our jackets on the floor. He lay down, pulling me next to him. With his arms around me, I wasn’t cold. My back pressed against his mid-section, and his breath tickled the back of neck. Periodically, he would kiss me there, just a light touch of his mouth to my skin.

  “Do you think the snow will last much longer?”

  It took him a moment to answer, and I wondered if he’d gone to sleep. “When I was a child, we had these people whose job it was to predict the weather. They would be on the television during various storms telling us when it was going to be over.”

  “Is the fact that you didn’t answer my question an indication that you don’t know?”

  He laughed quietly. “It’s an indication that I’m not a Weather Man, and I don’t have a clue.”

  “Can’t smell it? Can’t feel it?”

  “No, all I can do is smell the snow and I can smell you. My senses are on overdrive.”

  I shivered as a Vampire signal hit me again. “Do you smell Vampire?”

  “Sorry, Rachel, I don’t.”

  “Jason, what does your dad want me to look at?”

  “I wish I knew. He won’t tell us, which is weird.”

  His sisters had said the same thing. It was bugging the crap out of me.

  “Rachel?”

  “Yes?”

  He sighed and I felt it all over my body. “I know you can’t scent things like I do so this is going to seem too fast to you, I think. But I have to tell you because I have to.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I love you.”

  He loved me? I think my heart stopped beating for a second and when it picked up, it was at twice the speed. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  Tia loved me. Her family loved me, like you love a cousin who had temporarily moved in with you. I loved them. I loved my dad—flawed and hopeless as he was. I think he loved me, as best he could. He had shown up at the end, right before I’d left.

  Jason loved me?

  I needed to say something, and the truth was always the best answer. Or at least it was for me.

  “I have a hard time with love. The person who was supposed to love me best in the world, my father, he’s a drunk. I’ve been taking care of him since I was nine years old. Before that, people kept me away from him most of the time. I’m sorry I can’t say it back instantly. I’m sorry it’s such a hard thing for me to feel. The people who loved me—with the exception of my best friend—they end up dying or hurting me. It doesn’t feel safe to really love someone.”

  That was the most I’d ever confessed to anyone about how I felt about love. I hoped it would be enough for Jason. It was awful that I couldn’t say it, even worse that I couldn’t feel it. Or if I could, it was hidden away so deep inside of me that even I couldn’t recognize it anymore.

  “I’m never, ever, going to hurt you.” His voice was soft, but I didn’t hear hurt in it. Either he’d antici
pated my not saying it back, or he was hiding his pain. I hated the second choice.

  “I believe that you will never mean to.”

  However, if he suddenly became a mean, bad Werewolf living in an angry dream state, all bets were off.

  “The people who should have cared for you didn’t do a very good job.”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “In ten years, when you’re my wife, and we have our first baby…”

  I rolled over so I could stare at him, all of my horror at the thought probably apparent on my face. “Babies?”

  He arched an eyebrow at me. “Too much?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, all I was going to say is that you will look back at this, from there, where you are sure of me, sure of yourself, confident in our love, and you’ll feel so much more secure than you do now.”

  Jason had lovely dreams. Ten years from now, I was likely to be a cracked-up lunatic hearing and fearing Vampires everywhere I went if I wasn’t dead because my signal system was all screwed up. Maybe I would walk around like a girls’ choir singing at the top of my voice into a Vampire Kiss.

  I liked his dream better, but I couldn’t adopt it as mine.

  “Let’s go to sleep.” It was all I could say.

  “Okay.” He blinked. “If you can tell me how to do that I’d be grateful.”

  “My father finds that half a bottle of whisky works pretty well.”

  He scrunched up his nose. “I can’t stand the smell of alcohol. It makes my whole body revolt.”

  “No drunken Werewolves?”

  “Not in my father’s pack.”

  I closed my eyes. Maybe if I pretended to go to sleep, I would. I’ve never stayed so long with my eyes closed when I was awake before. After a while, I heard Jason start to breathe deeply. Not snore, exactly. The ins and outs of his breaths were longer, deeper, and I knew he’d gone to dreamland.

  I opened my eyes. His were closed, his features easy in slumber. Tiffani’s words came back to me. Sometimes it’s hard to sleep. I wished I had Keith’s sleeping pill right now.

  Jason’s breaths were calming. If he could sleep, it must mean he didn’t scent any danger. Soon the rhythm of his breathing lulled me off into my own version of dreamland…

  My mother stood before me again. This time she was whole, and not an image of herself in the water. I’d never seen her before, not as clearly as this. She was taller than I was. I had never heard that about her, I wondered if it was true or if my brain had made her up.

  Keith and Tiffani flanked her on both sides. Tiffani held a baby in her arms, it was crying and she was trying to comfort it.

  Keith shook his head at me. “How could you leave us here?”

  My mother turned to him, shaking her head. “They don’t stay babies forever, Keith.”

  Just then Tiffani’s baby disappeared in her arms. She shrieked and whirled around. “Where is he? Where did he go? What’s happening here?”

  “Don’t you know, Tiffani?” My mother walked away from the other two. “It’s all coming to an end again.”

  My eyes shot open, the skin on the side of my face burning where the Vampire had branded me. I squirmed to get my arm free from Jason’s embrace so I could rub it. I was freezing, Vampire freezing, and I knew I must be having another episode.

  Get up. My inner voice screamed at me. You’re not nuts.

  Jason mumbled something, rolling away from me as he started to snore in earnest. I rolled my eyes. Figures, the guy I was most likely to spend the rest of my life with, brief though it may be, was a snorer. Well, he’d have to get used to being elbowed in the ribs.

  I sat up, moving as quietly as I could and pulled my jacket off the floor. I put it on and looked about the room. It was pitch black now. I crept quietly into the hallway, knowing it had been a mistake to have not looked around the house while there was some light by which to do so. I couldn’t wake Jason. If I was going crazy, I needed to find out on my own.

  I pulled the stake off my leg, thank goodness they’d let me have that back, and I tried to imagine that my gifts—my Warrior freakishness—were like Jason’s senses. He could smell things I couldn’t. They weren’t real to me, but they were real to him. They existed even though I couldn’t sense them.

  I felt Vampires. That meant there were Vampires somewhere, even if Jason couldn’t smell them.

  It was real. I had to believe in myself, even if no one else would.

  That meant going where my instincts told me to go. The thing about being a Warrior, and I’d always known this, was it went against every natural instinct we possess. Vampire in the house? Run out the front door screaming your head off. What do Warriors do? They go kill the Vampire.

  And right now? They wanted me to find the door to the basement and start climbing down. I sighed. I’d spent my life underground. I had to go back now? I turned left down the hallway and stopped before an open door. No doubt about it. This was the way to the basement, and this was where I was going.

  I stepped onto the first step, listening to it creak beneath my weight. Then the next step. The next. The next. I made myself take a breath. I gripped the stake in my hands, realizing it was Keith’s stake. The one he’d given me because it was lucky.

  For the first time, I wondered if I was doing something really stupid. I’d left Jason alone upstairs, unprotected. If there were monsters in the house, shouldn’t I have woken him to keep him safe?

  No, he’d had a long day. He’d carried me miles. He deserved to sleep, and if this turned out to be nothing, he would really think I was cracked.

  I took the next step when I heard it.

  The hissing noise. Like a snake but not. My insides froze. Vampire.

  Was it in the room with me? I tried to judge. I’d been around Vampires twice now. Once so badly that I was forever marked. Could I tell how far away it was?

  No, it didn’t feel like it did when they’d surrounded my cage. I had barely been able to function when that happened. At the moment, I was still on top of my game.

  So where was the thing?

  I reached the floor. It was concrete, and it made no noise as I walked on it. Where was it?

  I heard the hiss again. But it didn’t make sense. It couldn’t possibly be right. Because if my hearing was right, and my instincts were correct, then I was hearing the hissing of Vampires—oh yes, more than one—beneath the foundation of the house.

  There were a slew of Undead monsters below that house. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I never would have heard them or sensed them if I hadn’t been struck and marked by the Vampire.

  He had almost killed me, and I had awakened a different Warrior. If I could manage to convince everyone I wasn’t nuts, I could prove to be a very powerful weapon.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I shook Jason gently on the shoulder. I needed him to wake up. Now. His eyes flew open and he rubbed his face with him hand.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Get up and come with me.” I paused. The poor guy had just woken up. “Please.”

  He did as I asked without uttering another word, and we reached the hall before he spoke again. “How did you get up without waking me?”

  “You’re exhausted.”

  I held a hand to my lips to indicate I wanted him quiet. So far we’d been lucky. The Vampires hadn’t heard us or smelled us up here. Or maybe they smelled Jason and knew he was a wolf, so they left him alone. Or maybe they didn’t like the snow and stayed below for that reason. I had no idea, but I knew it was important he not make too much noise.

  He nodded and followed me down the stairs into the basement. As we came down the stairs, I could hear them again. The cut on my cheek burned and the coldness inside of me started up again. This time I was prepared for it, and I didn’t double over in pain. No, I managed to stay upright breathing through the sensation. I pointed at the concrete, and he raised an eyebrow as he shook his head in confusion.

  I pointed again and
he bent down to look at the floor. Why wasn’t he doing the sniffing thing? He did it everywhere. He couldn’t do it now? Frustration filled my veins, and I squatted down next to him. In an attempt to do my best impression of him, I sniffed at the ground.

  In the darkness it was hard to make out all his facial impressions, but I got the impression he rolled his eyes at me. Next to me, I could hear him sniff. He did it once and then nothing. Then he did it again.

  Great, he wasn’t scenting anything, and now he’d really think I was a lunatic. He’d have his father lock me up in that cage, this time permanently. The only good news was that I knew how to break out of it now. Just bang on it hard.

  I stood up. This was pointless. No one was ever going to believe me unless they could hear it, too. That would mean returning to Genesis. But I wanted to stay with Jason.

  He grabbed my arm to stop me, and I heard him sniff again. His head shot up and he sniffed again.

  Could it be happening? Anticipation flowed through my blood. Had he scented it? Oh, it would be so nice to not be alone in this, to have him know I wasn’t crazy.

  He stood up, pulling me with him. His breath came out in short spurts and his body shook.

  We moved fast as we ran up the stairs hand-in-hand. As we tore into the hallway, I thought Jason was going to explode. We were back in the living room in a flash. He picked up the harness we’d used to carry me into the house.

  “We have to get out of here. They’re beneath us.” He looked up at me. “But then again you know that. Sorry, I’m losing my mind a little bit with the need to get you out of here. I don’t know if they can smell us or not. How can they be beneath the ground?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The implications of the whole thing were starting to dawn on me. Humans were under the ground, if the monsters were there, too…

  “Did you go down there by yourself?” Jason rushed to the window and I heard him curse, the first time he’d ever used profanity in front of me.

  Wow, he was really worked up. “Jason, I’m sure we’re safe up here right now. Yes, we need to leave but I think it’s going to be okay.”

  I walked up behind him, placing my hand on his back.