The Warrior

by Rebecca Royce

  Was someone going to have to walk two hundred miles? The thought made me sick even as I silently prayed it wasn’t me who had to do it.

  Doug spoke again. “Are you asking for a volunteer to go?”

  “No.” Keith looked at Patrick. “We know who is going to go. We’re going to make it a mission.”

  Was Keith going to go to Liberty? He was the only Warrior I knew who had travelled anywhere. He had come from Scotland to become the head teacher at Genesis. I couldn’t begin to imagine what it felt like to cross an ocean on a boat.

  Patrick stared straight at our little group. I gasped. They couldn’t be sending me out by myself again. That would be too cruel.

  “Chad, you’re going in your car.”

  Next to me, Chad nodded at his father. “Yes, sir.”

  I stared at Chad. His face was passive, like the news he would travel two hundred miles didn’t throw him at all. In fact, his eyes glowed like he looked forward to the experience. I reached out to take his hand, not letting myself think about why I did. Something about the idea of Chad going off by himself in that Sports Utility Van he had restored made me need to hold his hand. Tightly.

  “It’s going to be okay, Rachel.” Chad’s voice felt like a warm caress, and I forgot for a second that anyone else was in the room with us as I stared into his dark eyes.

  “He will be okay.” Keith’s response made me jump an inch in the air as he intruded on our very public private moment. My cheeks got hot. Wow, I really hated to be embarrassed. “Because you’re going with him.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  Chad grinned. “Awesome.”

  Next to me, I thought I heard Deacon mutter a curse. When I looked at him, his eyes said he was bored and his posture, leaning backwards against the wall, screamed nonchalant.

  “I can’t go.” I hated how small my own voice sounded to my ears, so I made myself sit up a little, letting go of Chad but he laced his fingers with mine, which might have startled me if I hadn’t been so intent on making my point. “Tomorrow is Tia’s birthday. I won’t abandon her on Day One.”

  It used to be one in four Warriors died on their first trek out—their sixteenth birthday. Now, that number was staggeringly higher. One in three. More of the monsters, less of us, and no protection from our underground home. All in all, it was a bad, bad birthday present.

  Patrick shook his head. “Tia will have to do without you. Chad needs you to go. You are the one who saw the caverns and who can sense the Vampires more acutely. Chad’s going to need proof of our claims of Icahn’s betrayals. You’re going to be part of that proof.”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m sorry. I want to help very much but I can’t go tonight. Not when Tia needs me tomorrow.”

  Someone behind me gasped. I had just defied Patrick Lyons in front of the room of Warriors. I swallowed. Maybe I was the biggest idiot in the world but Tia was my best friend—he knew that, she was his daughter—and she needed me tomorrow. I tried not to look around to see reactions. That would admit to the people in the room I was scared as all hell at what I had just done.

  Chad spoke up. “It’s all right, Dad, I can’t get the car ready until tomorrow night anyway. It’s going to need a tune up.”

  Patrick sighed loudly. “All right. Tomorrow night, after Tia’s initiation, you’re both out of here. Bring us back help. There’s a war coming. I can feel it in my gut.”

  I stared at Chad. He’d lied. It was almost like I could taste his untruth in my mouth. He never told anything but the absolute truth.

  Chad’s importance in my life had only begun recently. All of my childhood fantasies had revolved around his brother Micah and I’d only had eyes for him. Still, once Chad had confessed his feelings for me, we’d been together almost constantly. I knew him as well as Tia, and I knew he lied.

  He’d done it for me. I’d challenged his father and Chad had made it so it was okay, when it should have been an explosion. He smiled at me, his brown eyes holding my gaze. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, my chest felt tight. He still held my hand in his and squeezed it, gently.

  I waited for the sadness to hit me. Whenever I thought about a guy romantically who wasn’t Jason, I would end up being overwhelmed by sadness. The emotion would grip me in its tight embrace and I would be overcome with it even if I sat in silence and didn’t tell anyone about it. I had become the queen of pretend happiness.

  I waited.

  And waited.

  But there was only Chad’s beautiful smile and the sense of being with someone I’d known my whole life, and trusted to have my back on a nightly basis. Not to mention, he was really, really cute. My cheeks got warm and I looked down at the floor. Wow, what was going on with me?

  Deacon cleared his throat. “If you two want to spend the rest of the night sitting on the floor, it’s your own business, but the meeting’s over and I’m leaving.”

  I looked around. Deacon was right. The room cleared out and we were still in it.

  Chad glared at Deacon. “I’d be happy to sit here all night with Rachel. But you’re right. We need to go fight. That is, if you’re up for it, Deacon.”

  As Chad let go of my hand, I felt small and foolish. What had I been thinking staring at Chad like that in front of everyone? I closed my eyes wishing I could magically poof myself into my tent and away from everyone, so I could get a sense of what was happening to me.

  I got to my feet. “I need to go see my Dad before I go out fighting. I won’t be late for the meet-up point.”

  Chad nodded. “See you there, Rachel. Be careful going to your Dad’s. The sun is starting to set.”

  Deacon shook his head. “She can take care of herself. The sooner everyone sees Rachel for what she really is, the better. I’m so sick of all of you people babying her. She’s going to get tired of it, too—”

  “Hey, Deacon,” I stopped him from speaking. “I don’t need you telling me what I am or how I am or whatever.”

  “All right.” He nodded. “But do me the favor of not confusing hero worship with love.”

  Deacon stormed from the room like a man being chased, and I let him go without another word. He had to have seen the little private scene between Chad and me. No one would know better what that meant than Deacon.

  I might not know myself all that well, but what I did know was that when Chad had lied for me, it had done something to my heart. I had felt frozen in place, like my emotions had been held in check waiting for someone to thaw them. I’d been afraid to move, afraid to try. And now, it was like something inside of me melted….

  Walking from the room out into the main entranceway to Genesis, I spotted the elevators. I hated travelling in them. The first time I’d had to endure the experience, they’d been so heavily guarded no one who wasn’t authorized could have gotten near them. But now they went up and down constantly. The doors were open and I stepped inside.

  The lifts were rickety contraptions. Leaning against the railing, I waited for the doors to bang shut, which would indicate they were ready to take me upwards to the surface of the Earth. With a loud thud, the doors closed and the machine began its ascent. It squeaked, squealed, and shook like it was being assaulted on all sides. I hung on and closed my eyes.

  There were so many important things to think about. I was going to Liberty. That was a major event. Lives depended on us bringing back help. I was going to have to tell my personal story to complete strangers.

  So what was wrong with me that I couldn’t stop thinking about Chad Lyons?

  “God, I’m so pathetic,” I said to the empty elevator.

  As I reached the surface, the machine that was the bane of my existence opened its doors and I rushed out into the open. I smiled to the Warrior who stood waiting to enter the elevator as I left before I headed out to my nightly visit with my father.

  I kept a regular appointment with him. Well, it was my decision to make the visits. I’m not even sure if it registered with him that I showed up the same time
every night or not. But it had become important to me, so I kept up the task.

  One of the decisions I had made when I returned home six months earlier was to make a point of not to judge the things other people did, my father in particular. He was a drunk and had been my entire life. Somehow—thanks to Carol Lyons—I had still grown up okay. He loved me as best as he was able. When he’d thought I was dead, he’d gone off into the woods, leaving everyone. When I’d needed someone, he had shown up to sit with me as I stupidly waited for Jason to come back for me. When my faithless Wolf boyfriend hadn’t arrived, my Dad hadn’t uttered one word to make me feel worse.

  Dad had been a great Warrior before grief over my mother’s death had destroyed him. He’d let everyone down. It couldn’t be easy to live with that burden, and although I’d spent most of my childhood embarrassed by him, I knew now that I couldn’t begin to walk in his shoes.

  And even more importantly, it wasn’t my job to try.

  So I tried to reach out to him whenever I could and leave the rest to fate or destiny or whatever.

  The smell of whisky assaulted me as I rounded the corner. I tried to hang on to all of my wonderful, deep feelings and not gag from the way the smell brought back all the hard times from my childhood.

  It was amazing how things like scent could transport me to other places entirely. One sniff of whisky and I’m eight years old—hungry, scared, and alone in our house in the habitat.

  I pushed my way into my father’s tent. He ran an unofficial bar. I’m not even sure where he got the booze anymore. There had to be some kind of bootlegging going on, but I didn’t have time to figure it out. If the powers that be—Patrick and Keith—wanted to take him to task they could. I was just glad he was busy and that he wasn’t drinking the entire supply himself.

  “Hi, Dad.” I shouted over the drunken debauchery going on inside Dad’s large tent.

  “Hi, Rachel,” he called, signaling me to come over. “Going out?”

  He always asked me that, as if I was going to some dance instead of risking my life taking down Vampires and Werewolves.

  “Yep. Then tomorrow I’m going to Liberty.”

  He leaned up against his bar as he regarded me. Taking a large tug from the flask he always carried, he choked on it as he swallowed the life-sucking liquid down his throat.

  “Damn. That’s far.”

  I nodded, knowing today would be a short visit. “Yep, Dad, it really, really is.”

  But maybe it would be the beginning of something new for Chad and me. The thought made me grin, which probably seemed crazy to all the people in the room who weren’t inside my head listening to my thoughts. That was fine by me. If people thought you were nuts, they tended to leave you alone.

  Other than my father, there wasn’t a person in the tent I wanted to spend any time with.

  Loneliness was better than bad company.

  Chapter Three

  Tia’s birthday celebration defined the word strained. There wasn’t another way to describe it. Carol broke down into tears within minutes of the start. First, because Tia was now sixteen and Tia was going to be subjected to the same fate Carol herself had undertaken. Then she wept openly about the fact that Chad and I had to leave. Finally, the third explosion of tears had come from the idea that Tia could now date whoever she chose whenever she chose to, which was why we had Glen at dinner with us.

  Glen had been the source of many hours of hell for me during my school days. No matter what I did, he had made fun of me. Standing in the Lyons living room, he didn’t look so tough. Now, he looked like a guy who wished he was anywhere else other than where he was.

  Blond-haired and blue-eyed, a lot of people remarked on how good looking he was. I personally thought he’d let it go to his head. Now, as he stood next to Tia, they looked like examples from Greek mythology. They were strikingly beautiful. Chad had his hand on my back, and for the first time I didn’t try to make him stop doing that in front of his family.

  I wasn’t going to lie. I liked it.

  “So.” Tia took me by the arm, pulling me away from her weeping mother and her brother’s strong arm. It was the first time we’d been alone together all day. “My Mom’s cake was pretty bad, wasn’t it?”

  I shrugged. “It was fine.”

  I’m not a big dessert person. When you’re hungry a lot of the time—as I had been growing up—you learn to like the essentials. I like chocolate; we don’t get much of it because it’s so scarce, but I’m not big on things like strawberry icing or custards. Tia’s birthday cake had been made of both. Still, Tia had a mother who made birthday cakes. She was so lucky, and she never appreciated it.

  “How do you think Glen is holding up?”

  I looked over at the little group still standing around the living room. He was, perhaps, slightly less green than he’d been when he arrived.

  “Your father, Chad, and Micah are all staring him down. Your younger brothers are a little bit confused, but I think the two of them might start in on the process any second. I guess he’s holding up fine.”

  She sighed and smiled. “That’s what I thought, too.”

  Tia lapsed into silence for a second, and I wondered what she was thinking about. On my sixteenth birthday, all I could focus on was the fighting coming up. Tia’s head seemed to be filled with Glen. Not that I couldn’t understand the feeling. I could. I was quasi-obsessing about Chad.

  As she spoke again, she lost her smile. “Glen told me how you defied my Dad at the Warrior meeting. What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking I didn’t want to miss your first night out.”

  She nodded. “It’s not a good idea to piss off my father.”

  I knew that and I’d been really, really afraid when I’d showed up at the Lyons’ tent tonight. But Patrick patted me on the back and told me Tia was lucky to have a friend like me who had her back—even when it went against all good sense. He’d grinned and I’d relaxed.

  “I don’t plan on doing it again. It was important to be here with you.” It was kind of annoying she seemed so ungrateful. “Would you prefer me to leave? I’m sure Chad could miraculously get the car ready and we could be off.”

  She gasped. “No, Rachel, that’s not what I meant. Sheesh.” She bit down on her lip. “I’m really confused about a lot of things right now. I’m sorry if I’m not being nice.”

  “You don’t have to be nice to me, Tia. I’m just not sure what’s going on with you. We’ve trained our whole lives for what you’re about to do. You don’t even seem to care.”

  “I care. But I told you what I think is going to happen. We’ll get out there. The Vampires will come. You will all surround me and I’ll never have to do anything, anyway.”

  I nodded, not because I agreed with her, but because she had been saying this same refrain for six months. “Okay. Say that happens. I don’t think it will, but what happens tomorrow night? And the next? And the next? Do you think it’s even physically possible that we could protect you the rest of your life? Some time you will get called out on a mission without any of us.”

  She waved her hand. “You’re being so dramatic.”

  Opening my mouth, I wanted to argue that Tia had no idea what she was talking about. Then I decided to keep quiet. I really couldn’t tell her what it was like. She was going to have to experience it. The best I could do was to be there for her when it was over. If she wanted to spend the remaining moments of her childhood thinking about Glen, then that was her choice.

  I glanced at Glen, who was making conversation with Tia’s mother. Or, I should say, he attempted to make conversation in between her bouts of crying. After a second, I found what I sought. He had the look. The one that told the world he’d looked into the abyss that was the Warrior life and come out the other side changed.

  All the Warriors had it one way or another. Some tried to hide it by being really jovial or pretending they were adrenaline junkies who didn’t care about the future. Some were like Chad who
paid attention acutely to details, like he could control his future by being the most prepared person in the room. Others fell into fits of depression. Those few were eventually screened out—if they lived that long.

  As for me, well, I tried to move forward. I had this idea, absurd though it might be, that maybe there would come a time when all of this would be a memory. When we would win.

  I shivered. Every once in a while, I was overtaken with the sense that death had entered the room with us, that it was always with us, and the fact that we pretended otherwise was just that—pretend.

  Tia’s father took that moment to re-enter the room. He sighed. “Time’s up. We need to get going.”

  Carol rushed to his side. “Patrick, you need to make an exception and give Tia six more months. She’s not ready.”

  Her shriek silenced the room. I swallowed. What? Why on earth would Carol Lyons think that? Tia had always been one of the strongest students in Keith’s class. She never failed a test. Her parents were amazing Warriors—Patrick being the best who ever lived.

  I’d been with Carol when Chad and Micah had each had their day to go out and fight for the first time. Why was she reacting this badly about Tia?

  Tia rolled her eyes. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mom.”

  “Carol.” Tia’s dad held his wife close and whispered something in her ear I couldn’t hear.

  I looked down. I wasn’t family, not really. They treated me like their favorite niece and had cared for me since my father checked out to embrace the booze. I loved them. I hated any moment of tension that took place between them.

  Glen moved from where he stood to stand next to Tia. “I think you’ll be fine. Don’t you think so, Rachel?”

  He looked up at me like we were friends, and he wanted me to support him. I supposed I could have done what he wanted and earned some kind of golden points with Tia for standing with him. But, I was too busy trying not to lose my dinner. Carol’s words had thrown me for a big loop. Was Tia somehow unprepared, or was her mother being overprotective?

  I had to say something and would have, gladly, if I could have made my tongue work. “Ah….”