Carson wanted this.
Nick’s hand suddenly slapped down on top of Carson’s. He challenged me with a lift of his eyebrows. Did I expect him not to? He shrugged like he didn’t care what I thought.
Dante placed his larger hand on top of the others’. “If you say I belong here, Whit, I’ll believe you.”
“I do, Dante.”
Brandon hadn’t moved. I had thought he’d be first, but he was hesitating. “We’re dooming you to our fate. We died. You didn’t. I did this. I brought you here. I can’t…”
I shook my head. “I’m trusting you to be honest. Trust me. Maybe… maybe somewhere inside, you knew we had to happen like this.”
Brandon sighed. “There’s too much unknown. And the leaders of the Controlled. They’re evil.”
Thunder shook the earth and lightning flashed again. “Brandon. You can say no.” I didn’t know how much longer we would have.
He placed his hand on top of the group’s and less than a second later Isaiah’s followed. John tilted his head. His face scrunched up like he wanted to speak but didn’t. His hand completed the link. Cold swept through my body. It was all encompassing, and for a second, like I jumped into an icy pool, I couldn’t breathe.
“Whit?” Nick’s brow furrowed; his voice shook. “You okay?”
I jolted awake. My hands shook, and I looked down at them. For just a second in the streaming sun, my nail beds were blue. I gasped. It must have been a trick of the light. Their regular hue returned, and like the weird dream, the moment slipped away.
Brandon stirred, his eyes fluttering open. “And of course morning comes too soon. I’d ask if I snored but since I don’t breathe—and I forgot to wake you up again.”
I laughed, a small sound I didn’t really feel. “Head trauma brings on weird dreams.”
He touched the side of my face. “You okay?”
“Yes.” I hoped I was. Yawning, I turned on my side and brought my hands under my head. “Do you dream?”
Brandon shifted onto his back to look at the ceiling. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Dreams happen when you’re alive.”
“I think we need to redefine ‘alive,’ ” I said. “You have feelings, thoughts. Dreams are thoughts you have when you’re asleep. Why wouldn’t you dream?”
Huffing a laugh, he crossed his arms and glanced at me. “You’re always arguing.”
“I’m not arguing!” I sat up, crossing my legs so I could see his face better. “I’m just saying, let’s be flexible with the definition of ‘alive.’ ”
“Seems like you’re arguing.” One side of his mouth curled.
“Brandon.” It was hard to be serious when his blue eyes danced the way they were now.
“Whitney.” He used his serious voice.
“Brandon.”
“Whit.”
“I’m not arguing.” I placed both hands on his chest and lowered my face to his. I went a little cross-eyed staring at him this close. Ready to continue, I opened my mouth, but a pulse beneath my hand startled me.
Brandon’s eyes went wide with confusion, and he suddenly covered my hands with his own. For a second, the pallor of his skin was chased away by a rosy blush. Heat poured off his body, but as soon as it happened, it passed.
“Dante!” I yelled, jumping off the bed. Uncaring of anything except getting the person I identified as closest to a doctor, I swung open the door to the other room. “Dante!”
He was already striding toward the door. “What happened?”
How did I explain? “Brandon’s heart.”
“My heart beat.” For a moment, Brandon sounded like the boy I first met years ago. Unsure. Self-conscious.
Carson and Nick strode down the hall. They passed by me and went right to Brandon. “Are you sure? How do you know?” Nick asked.
“I felt it,” I answered.
Both of them whirled toward me before turning their focus back to Dante. He’d lowered his head to Brandon’s chest and was listening intently.
“Don’t you need a stethoscope?” I asked.
“I’ve upgraded my hearing in this ear.” Dante sat back. “Deaf in one ear.” He pointed. “Super hearing in the other.” Pulling his leg under him, he smiled at Brandon. “I’m sorry, my friend. You’re the same as you were.”
Shoulders slumping, Brandon nodded, but I wasn’t so appeased. “You didn’t hear it. But I felt it and saw it. His face flushed pink and his skin was warm.”
“I probably just absorbed some of your heat,” Brandon replied. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Let him be,” Nick whispered to me when I approached the bed, and I glared at him. I knew what had happened.
“Not to cast doubt on your super hearing but maybe you could check him out with a stethoscope? Or an EKG? Do you have one of those? I’m not confused. My heart beats every day.” I put my hand over my breast, but I actually couldn’t feel it. I tried another position, moving my hand beneath my breast and when there was nothing, moved it to my ribs. Absorbed in my investigation, I didn’t realize I’d been groping myself until Dante coughed.
“I’ll get a stethoscope.”
“My heart isn’t beating.”
That got everyone’s attention very fast. Dante skipped the stethoscope, pressing his ear straight into my chest. It should have been awkward or uncomfortable, but I was too freaked out to care. What was happening?
“It started again.” His face was passive, but I heard the tremor on the edge of his voice. This wasn’t normal. He knew it, and I knew it.
Brandon pointed at me. “She has not been bitten. Not even scratched. I mean, would kissing me? Would saliva make her sick?” He grabbed hold of the wall. “I should have thought of that. Of course. Like any other infection, sharing spit makes a person sick. Shit, I’ve killed the love of my life.”
“No,” Dante spoke strongly, his voice like a blast through the room. “This virus is transmitted through a bite that causes sickness and inevitable death. Not that too many Infected go around kissing people. But I can assure you, you didn’t make her sick. It’s almost like…” He didn’t finish his thought.
I gulped. “What were you going to say?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. You need to get home and hooked up to some kind of IV. You need doctors. Real ones. Not someone who just happened to have figured some shit out. Come on.”
He tugged on my hand, and I had to scramble to keep up with him. My pulse was fine now. In fact, it galloped like I’d run a race.
We nearly collided with John as he came into the room. I tripped, but John grabbed me before I fell.
“We have to get her home.” Dante tugged me closer to him. “She’s—I don’t know.”
John cleared his throat. “We can’t just storm her into Roanoke.” He shook his head. “Are you okay, Whitney?”
“I don’t know. I think I had a heart attack.”
“Fuck.” John ran a hand through his hair. “Let’s take her home, Dante. Come on.”
“You’re coming?” Dante picked me up. Brandon, Carson and Nick were on his heels now, too. We were really making a scene. I’d not noticed how many Infected there were here, but a crowd of fifty or so men had gathered to watch us leave as Dante pretty much ran through Zero. We made quite the parade.
“I can walk.” Each step Dante took bounced me, and my voice stuttered.
He shook his head. “If your heart stops beating again, I don’t want you exerting yourself.”
If my heart stopped beating again, I was probably dead. But for some reason, held in Dante’s arms, I was calm. Still, it felt like I was missing something, a final piece to fill in some bizarre puzzle my mind had created, and I couldn’t…
“Hey!” Isaiah ran after us at full speed. “What’s going on?”
John shook his head. “Her heart stopped beating.”
“What the hell? Why isn’t she hooked up to something medical?” Isaiah grabbed Dante’s shoulder and pointed back to his workshop.
“Fix her!”
Where was the mellow guy from the night before? Dante jerked slightly but otherwise kept storming forward. “If I could do that, do you think I’d be frantically getting her home?”
“Stop,” I got out, but everyone ignored me. Dante went headlong into the woods, uncaring of what may have been ahead of us, or behind us. “Dante!” I pinched his side. “Stop!”
His body twisted at my pinch, and I used the momentum to slide from his shoulder. He came toward me, hands outstretched as if to lift me again, but I put mine out. “You can’t walk me back to Roanoke! None of you can!”
“So we’re supposed to let you hike two miles through the woods? After your heart stopped?” Isaiah pulled his blonde hair away from his face and tugged on the ends. “Are you insane or just stupid?”
“Don’t be a dick,” Nick—Nick?—said.
“Fuck off, Nick.” Isaiah pushed the man when he’d inserted himself between the two of us.
“Don’t tell me what to—” Face red, Nick tackled Isaiah to the ground. The other men dove toward them, trying to separate the two.
This was my opportunity. It was the hardest decision I’d ever had to make in two seconds, but I ran. None of them could set foot in Roanoke. If they did, they’d be target practice for the guards around the perimeter, or worse, something to experiment on.
Blood rushed in my ears. My heart was working fine now.
The sun was low in the sky, still rising above the land. I ran toward it—east.
Glancing over my shoulder, I expected to see the guys behind me, chasing me, but I was alone. Branches snapped beneath my feet and my breathing was loud and ragged, but I kept running.
Ahead of me, water rushed and gurgled. It had to be the Roanoke River. If I saw it, I’d know where I was and how to get back to town. Something rustled behind me and instinctively, I glanced over my shoulder. As I did, I caught my foot on a branch and went down, hard.
The next sound I heard wasn’t someone running, it was a growl. Immediately, I covered my mouth with my hands and rolled onto my side, curling into a small ball.
Stupid!
Controlled limped and dragged their bodies through the forest. Their feet shuffled through the dead leaves, breaking fallen twigs and shrubs as they went. My heart pounded so loud in my ears, I was certain the creatures would hear it.
Keep going. Keep going. The shuffling changed directions. Thank God.
I forced myself to breathe through my mouth, keeping it slow even when my lungs were dying for more oxygen. Slow. I needed my heart rate to decrease and my pulse to match.
Slow.
My hand slid from my mouth to my neck. Beneath my fingers, my pulse beat slower and slower. It was working. If I could lie here, quietly, without drawing attention to myself, it was possible the Controlled would go right past me.
“There!” someone yelled. I recognized that voice. It was one of my father’s guards, Mace.
The Controlled growled louder in response.
I scrabbled to my feet to dart in Mace’s direction, but leapt right into the body of a Controlled.
The scent hit me first, and then it grabbed me, pulling me toward its broken, snapping teeth. I went boneless to break free of its grasp, but I merely dragged it to the ground with me. Teeth an inch from my face, I struggled to keep it from biting. My arms burned, and I screamed in frustration as I gave one more heave. Managing to lift it slightly, the Controlled suddenly flew away from my body.
“Whitney! Let’s go!” Rough hands pulled me upright, and then Mace pushed me forward. Gunshots echoed through the woods as they shot at Controlled after Controlled.
I paused, overwhelmed, and Mace grabbed me. My hand hurt from his grip as he dragged me along after him, unconcerned with whether or not I was actually keeping up. My heart raced. “Mace, slow down a second. I can’t—”
“You’re going to have to.”
I’d always hated him, but I supposed he wasn’t wrong. Mace had been in my life as long as Brandon, but my relationship with him was totally different. Where Brandon was trustworthy, Mace lied. Where Brandon was kind, Mace was cruel. Men like Mace, men like my father, excelled in this world, and I hated everything they represented.
In truth, Mace had been the child my father had always wished he had. Neither my brother, Dexter, nor I lived up to Gil’s standards. My poor brother. Death was the only way Dexter had escaped our father’s unforgiving scrutiny.
Gunfire sounded, again and again and again. Please stay away. All I could do was hope Brandon had his friends kept far away from here. They were all incredibly smart. They’d know not to run toward gunfire.
I sucked in a long breath as we got to the gates of Roanoke Township. Divided by the Roanoke River, it used to be the commercial hub of southwest Virginia. Now, it was the perfect place for my father. Here he could hoard all the supplies he wanted and set up his empire.
The first ten years of my life I’d not been particularly concerned with things like commerce. Not unless it involved me getting (or not getting) something I wanted. My father—rich, good looking, and a congressmen—could afford what I wanted all the time. And that had been enough for me.
Then he’d killed my nanny. He got away with it, like he got away with everything, and always would for the rest of his life.
My past seemed like a dream. None of my father’s power mattered after people started getting sick.
That was that. My brother died. Zombies came. Whether or not I was in love with Brandon didn’t matter. Not to my father.
As I raced, I glanced up at Mill Mountain. It was always my touchstone when I came back to the city limits. It was unchanging. A sign the world still spun, even if everything else changed.
What a ridiculous idea. The world had ended the day Brandon died, yet the mountain looked the same as it always had.
How did that work?
Mace dragged me forward to a high wall.
The walls were a post-Infection addition to Roanoke. We hadn’t had rock walls to keep us trapped inside during my childhood. No. The walls of my childhood had been metaphorical.
“Where did you go?” Mace’s hand on my arm was tighter than it needed to be.
“I sleep-walk. Went right out of the compound. Excellent job training the guards, Mace.”
He didn’t smile or even roll his eyes. But a tic in his jaw gave away his annoyance.
I didn’t owe him an explanation, and neither he nor anyone inside the walls would know anything about where I’d been or who I’d discovered.
My father stood on the other side of the wall, his guards with him. I counted ten. He usually only pulled out that many when he wanted to intimidate someone.
Well, it was wasted on me.
“Whitney.” Dad insisted on wearing the same sorts of clothes he’d worn as a congressman: buttoned shirts, khakis. The world had ended but somehow my father had an unlimited supply of khaki dress pants. His hair, which used to be the same auburn as mine, had gone blonde and white. It made his blue eyes seem even icier.
“Hi,” I said. “Mace has good timing.”
Mace squeezed my arm again, and I knew I’d have bruises later on. Dad’s eyes flashed to my arm, and he smiled with tight lips. “Thank you for finding her, Mace. I know she must have been frightened.”
Two older men I didn’t recognize stood near my father. In fact, a lot of these guards were new. They huddled in small groups, studying me with interest.
Personal guards, no matter where they were, were easily recognizable. They had the best weapons and the cruelest eyes.
“I’ll find you later, Whitney.” Dad wouldn’t dress me down in front of strangers. His image was too important for him to risk word of his wayward daughter getting out. “My daughter recently lost her best friend. It’s been a difficult time for our family.”
Mace’s entire body tensed next to mine. “Let’s go.” He tugged me, looping my arm through his so it looked as if he was walking me the way a gentleman w
ould. Rather than risk more bruises, I left my hand in his until we’d gone around the corner.
“I can walk by myself,” I said and tried to yank my arm free. Mace held on, and I glared up at him “Let. Me. Go.”
But he didn’t. “You put yourself and my guards at risk, Whitney. We don’t have enough survivors to go running around the forest looking for a spoiled brat.”
Rather than answer, I pulled even harder. He let go, and I went stumbling backward. “Next time, feel free to tell my father no.”
He lurched toward me, grabbed my shoulders and shook me so hard my teeth clacked together. “There won’t be a next time, Whitney. You’re not leaving here again.”
I knew I couldn’t leave, but suddenly my future stretched in front of me. I’d stay here, controlled by my father, and surrounded by people who seemed to love this new world. It brought out, and heightened, all the worst parts of them.
“You went to find him, didn’t you?” Mace asked, bringing my attention back to the present.
“Brandon’s dead, Mace,” I snapped. “You made sure of that.”
Mace smiled at me, all white teeth and dead eyes. “I had nothing to do with Brandon’s death.”
Elbowing him, I tried to push my way to the building and my room. I wasn’t arguing with him. Brandon had sacrificed himself for me, but both Mace and I knew we wouldn’t have been outside of Roanoke if Mace hadn’t reported a nonexistent hole in our wall.
“You should be thanking me,” Mace said as I opened the door. “Now you don’t have to let the pathetic boy down.”
Asshole.
My room was two steps away.
Anger tended to make me careless and forgetful. I couldn’t hear past the ringing in my ears. But something that Mace said flew back at me as I tried to catch my breath, staring at my flushed face in the mirror. Mace knew Brandon was dead. Why on Earth would he ask me if I’d looked for him? Of course I hadn’t gone looking for Controlled.
Well, I actually had. But he didn’t know about the letter Brandon sent me. Was it possible that Mace somehow knew there were Infected out there independent of the horde?
I sighed. I wasn’t going to ask him. My question would just raise suspicion.
Lightning Strikes: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Storm Book 1) Page 6