Because he’s jealous of Dean.
The thought, almost peaceful in its simplicity, flowed through my mind. I’d been too angry with Benjamin’s reticence to be honest to focus on the real reason he’d grown cold and distant in the medical building. Benjamin had no way of knowing that I hadn’t even thought of pursuing Dean. He’d seen the rose and assumed the worst.
The worst had just happened, unless Benjamin thought Dean and I were sleeping together.
A hysterical, nervous giggle escaped me at the thought. I didn’t want to sleep with Dean—not really. He could provide a moment’s pleasure and comfort, I was sure, and would be more than willing to go to bed with me. He was handsome, brave, friendly, and displayed a lust for action and adventure that I shared.
But I couldn’t even kiss him without fantasizing about Benjamin. I loved Benjamin. I loved him, and I wanted to be with him.
But he might not want to be with you when he hears about what you just did.
I stood on shaking legs and collected firewood, all the while figuring out how I was going to tell Benjamin about my infidelity.
28
I crawled into bed and put my pillow over my head to block out Ember and Reid’s shouts in the living room. They’d been yelling at each other for fifteen minutes.
“—and I just want to be able to do what I feel is right without my girlfriend getting on my case! I shouldn’t have to have your permission to do every little thing!”
“This isn’t a little thing, Reid! This is abandoning your vows to protect Saint Catherine so you can play soldier!”
“You think this is a game?”
“Sure, why not! You think our relationship is a game! Why not killing Westerners, too?”
“How can you say that?”
“How can you say that I’m the center of your world and that you want to spend the rest of your life with me, and then just drop everything for revenge?”
“This isn’t revenge, it’s justice!”
“That is bull, and you know it!”
“They’ll never stop, Ember! They’ll never stop taking our people and killing us! I’m trying to protect you!”
“No, you’re trying to make yourself feel better!” Ember’s voice grew shrill.
I sat up in bed, my face in my hands. There was no way I was going to sleep.
“I hate it here, Reid! I hate the Sentinels! I hate that you’re a different person when you’re around them! And I hate that everything you said to me before the tribunal suddenly doesn’t matter now that you can kill Westerners all day long!”
“You’re just mad because your powers aren’t working,” Reid growled. “That’s what this is about. You feel powerless, and you’re taking it out on me.”
Ember’s voice grew dangerously quiet. “Oh, is that it? Thank you for explaining to me how I really feel. So, I’m upset that I’m powerless, huh? Well, there’s one thing I can still do.”
I bit my lip, knowing what was coming. “Don’t do it,” I whispered into the dark.
“We’re over, Reid. I’m sick of this.”
He gasped. “Ember, no. Please.”
“Get out of my sight.”
“Ember, please!”
“I said leave. You said you wanted freedom to murder people without your girlfriend getting on your case, right? Well, you’ve got it. I’m not your girlfriend anymore. Go butcher people to your heart’s content.”
“Sweetheart! Please!”
Ember burst into our bedroom and slammed the door behind her. She threw herself on her bed and began to sob.
I waited a few seconds, then walked over to her and kneeled next to her in the dark. I didn’t know what to say.
“Did I just do that?” she asked between sobs.
I stroked her hand. “Yes.”
“Do you think he hates me now?”
“No. Reid loves you. He will always love you.”
She sobbed harder, unable to speak for several minutes. I held her hand, tears slipping down my own face and dripping off my chin. There was so much pain in the house now.
She finally hiccupped and wiped her nose. “That’s what he said the night before the tribunal. We went on a walk, remember? It was cold, so he made a little shelter for us. He held me and promised to protect me. He said he’d always love me and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.” Her body shook as tears flowed anew. “We made love,” she whispered. “It was our first time. He told me afterward that all he wanted from life was to be with me. Now all he wants is revenge. I hate the Sentinels.”
She began to sob again, curling into a ball underneath the sheets.
I pushed her over in the bed and laid down next to her. “Benjamin and I are going to break up tomorrow, too. We can be miserable together.” It was the only thing I could think of that might make her feel better.
“Why?” she squeaked.
“I kissed Dean today.”
“You’re a moron, Jill.”
“I know.”
I held her while she cried herself to sleep, then let myself close my eyes and drift off into troubled dreams.
I awoke to the sound of gunfire.
“Get up! Get up!” Marco sprinted into our room and yanked back the covers. “Get your weapons! Now!”
Before I could even rub my eyes and ask what was going on, a bottle with a flaming cloth attached to it crashed through our window, shattering on the floor and spreading accelerant over the hardwood. A blaze sprung up immediately.
Ember and I screamed and jumped out of bed, edging along the wall and dashing out of the bedroom.
Reid fled his room, pulling on a jacket. “What’s going on?” He grabbed Ember. “Are you okay?”
I pulled them away from the doorway. “We have to get out of the house!”
As I said the words, bullets tore through the walls and windows. Our room was already engulfed in flames. Outside, the terrified screams of women and children mixed with the angry yells of men.
Above it all, gunfire pierced the scene.
I looked around frantically. “Where’s Benjamin?”
“Infirmary!” Marco shouted.
A hellacious whoosh told me that the ceiling was on fire.
The four of us rushed out of the house.
Armed men ran in every direction, shooting wildly at the residents. Nearly every building was on fire, the flames reflected in the broken glass all over the ground. Next to our house, small, bloody footprints led off into the forest.
A man across the street grabbed a tiny boy, while another dragged a hysterical woman toward a truck idling in the trees.
“They’re taking captives! Stop them!” I screamed.
Marco’s eyes glowed yellow and he raised his hand, releasing a beam of heat at the truck. The beam cut through the grill, melting the engine block. He rushed toward the man.
I grabbed Ember’s hand and sprinted toward the infirmary, ducking behind trees and buildings. I had to get to Benjamin. I’d defend him against the Westerners with my life.
Two men wrestled a blonde woman to the ground twenty feet from us and pulled a burlap sack over her head. I shoved Ember behind a tree and hurled my knife into one of the men’s heads, then threw myself on the other one, breaking his neck with a simple twist.
I pulled the bag off and gasped—it was Eleanor.
“Go!” she yelled. “Help the others!”
I jumped up and ran back to Ember. “We need to get inside!” Ember shouted. “There’s too many of them!”
I agreed. There was an unknown number of Westerners in Liberty, and while I wanted to get a machine gun from the armory and start fighting back, I had to consider Ember and Benjamin’s safety. We were thirty yards from the infirmary. One good dash and we’d be reasonably safe, and then I could protect them both from the marauders.
An explosion in a nearby house blasted Ember and me several feet forward, directly into the middle of the street.
We tumbled over and over in the b
eaten snow and gravel, coming to rest in a disoriented, bruised pile. I pressed my hand to the warm trickle inching down my face. My ear was bleeding.
In the distance, a man yelled, “That’s them!”
The world went dark as a burlap sack was shoved over my head.
I screamed and thrashed against my attacker. I couldn’t see where he was or how many of them there were, but I heard Ember struggling. I reached for my knife, but it was gone. Without a weapon, I groped around wildly for anything I could reach, and settled for jamming my elbow into a muscular abdomen repeatedly. The man grunted but didn’t let go.
Warm hands lifted up the side of my shirt and pressed cold metal points into my skin.
Every muscle in my body constricted at once, ripping an agonized scream from my throat. I fell to the ground, my limbs jerking uncontrollably. Nearby I heard the sharp buzzing of the Taser followed by Ember’s high scream.
Someone grabbed me under my arms and began to drag me down the road.
A few feet away, the zipping of a bullet ended in the sound of a body hitting the ground. A wet, hollow pop above me concluded with a heavy thud next to me.
I lay on my side in the middle of the snow-covered road, my muscles not responding to my brain’s commands. All around me, the night was torn apart by screams of terror and pain.
Cracking, splintering crashes began to join the pandemonium. Houses were collapsing.
With stiff, jerky movements I sat up and pulled off the sack. Spots floated in my blurry vision as I fell into a crawl and dragged an unconscious Ember by the hand to the side of the road, in front of a smoldering shell that used to be a house. Its occupants were nowhere in sight.
“Ember, wake up,” I croaked, shaking her. “Wake up. We need to get inside.”
The ground trembled. Elsewhere, Reid was battling the Westerners he hated so much. I tried to rise and join him, but my legs would not respond. My bare feet burned, though I could not tell if it was from the below-freezing temperature or a side effect of electrocution. They were bleeding. I watched the blood ooze from the cuts with remote fascination.
Trucks and vans began to race away down the road, their revving engines loud and powerful as they passed us. Men leaned out of the windows and shot at random targets, yelling and whooping. Some tossed yet more burning bottles.
My shoulder exploded in crippling agony. I fell backwards, warm blood flowing in the soft snow beneath me, and gazed up at the full moon overhead as it shone through the clouds. Snow swirled down in gentle spirals.
It was so quiet.
29
I sat up with a gasp.
I was on the floor of the main building, which had miraculously survived the raid, surrounded by three dozen or so blinking and confused people. Several Sentinels walked up and down the rows, offering water to the people on the floor.
Next to me, Ember sat up and rubbed her head. “What happened?”
Benjamin blurred up to us, his face gaunt. “I thought you weren’t going to wake up,” he said, handing us water bottles. “I healed you both minutes ago. It doesn’t usually take that long.”
I poked my shoulder through the neat little hole in the cloth. “Was I shot?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice raspy. “And electrocuted. And your feet were torn up. You’d lost a lot of blood and you both had Taser burns.” He reached out to touch my face, then pulled his hand away.
I pushed myself to my feet, then helped Ember up. “How many casualties?”
“Fourteen dead. Ten missing. No injuries, but a lot of the kids are psychologically scarred for life, and I can’t do anything about that.” He pointed to a little boy who was huddled in the corner, rocking back and forth without blinking. “Aiden’s dad was killed in front of him, and his mom was dragged away.”
“Where’s Marco and Reid?” I asked, working to not growl the words. I would have my revenge against the Westerners, but first I needed to make sure my team was safe.
“Marco was shot three times, but he’s fine now. Reid got burned, but besides some missing hair, he’s good. I made sure of it. They’re both in the other room. Reid’s been talking nonstop about you,” he said to Ember. “He thought you were dead when they brought you in and, uh, kinda had a breakdown.”
Ember gasped and ran off to the little room off to the side.
Before I could help myself, I threw my arms around Benjamin, who froze, then returned the tight embrace. He stroked my hair, which was sticky and matted with blood.
“I thought you were dead, too,” he whispered. “I was the one who found you in the snow in front of the infirmary. You were coming to protect me, weren’t you?”
I inhaled the smoky, salty smell of his neck. “Yes. I thought they were going to try to take you again.”
“I wasn’t sure if you cared anymore,” he said quietly. “But I do. I always will.”
I pulled away and looked at him. Though his face was smudged with soot, it seemed to me that there had never been a more handsome man to grace the earth. I trailed a finger down his cheek. He closed his eyes, his breaths slowing and deepening. When my finger passed over his lips, they parted slightly.
Our intimacy reminded me of the last intimate moment I’d had.
“We need to talk,” I whispered. “About Dean.”
His eyes flew open. “What happened?”
His tense question made me look down. Benjamin was sharp enough to sense that something had “happened,” and for the first time I couldn’t deny it.
I couldn’t meet his eyes. “Later. In private.”
He grabbed my hand. “Tell me what happened.” His tense words held a vein of fear.
“Jillian! You’re okay!”
I broke away from Benjamin and turned around to watch Dean hurry toward us. His clothes were tattered and burnt, hanging off him like rags.
“Yes, I’m okay. Benjamin healed me.”
Instead of answering, Dean swept me up into a deep kiss.
There was no warmth in my stomach, no fluttering in my chest, just shock and horror that Benjamin was watching the fruit of my terrible mistake.
Dean let go and looked me up and down. “As soon as we regroup, we’re going to plan a counterattack. They took Graham and Antonio, as well as some of the non-Sentinels. Get your team.”
I nodded, dumbstruck, and slowly looked around for Benjamin.
He was gone.
30
Two days passed.
The main building, the armory, the school, the infirmary, and eight houses had survived the attack. All other buildings had been burned to the ground. Patches of red snow were soon covered by fresh snowfall, hiding the signs of the recent violence.
Seventy-five people had lived in Liberty before the attack. Nearly a third of them were now dead or taken captive. The remaining residents were hobbled by grief and despair, and rebuilding efforts were slow. There were few spare construction supplies on hand, and further hindering the reconstruction efforts was the fact that most able-bodied men were desperate for revenge and only wanted to rescue their friends. Repairing a town did not satisfy this hunger.
Meanwhile, my team was splintering down the middle, and I could do nothing to stop it.
The morning after Dean’s passionate kiss, Benjamin would not speak to me, or even look at me. He moved into the infirmary’s quarters, which had two beds for the medical team Liberty had always hoped to bring in.
Upon hearing that there was a second bed, Reid joined him. Ember cried for hours but did not ask him to come back.
Marco, Ember, and I moved into the armory along with several other Sentinels, leaving the more comfortable main building and school for the civilians.
Gregory was more irascible than ever, terrified that Antonio, a recently rescued slave, would be punished for his activities with the Sentinels. When Marco vowed to help him find Antonio, Gregory screamed that he didn’t need a superhero’s help to find his “brother.”
Marco didn’t speak much after
that.
With that weight on my shoulders, I began to help salvage efforts on the second day after the attack. Before I began, Dean pulled me aside and told me to search for one thing only: the safe containing JM-104.
“It was in my house,” he said, throwing a worried glance at the blackened, ashy wreckage he’d once called home. “I can’t find it. Keep the news to yourself, though. I don’t want to start a panic.”
Thankfully, he was so busy with reconstruction that we’d barely had time to speak apart from that moment.
I tossed a crumbling beam aside and scoured the charcoaled floor for anything resembling a safe. Besides wood and remaining bits of furniture and hardware, there was nothing recognizable. I pushed more debris to the side and cleared the foundation, but the safe wasn’t there.
I walked all around the yard, feeling around in the foot-deep snow for a metal box. Nothing. I looked behind trees and bushes in nearby yards, remembering the blast that had tossed Ember and me to the ground, thinking that perhaps an explosion had thrown the safe, too.
After an hour, I had to conclude that the safe was not to be found.
The snow, which had been falling lightly all morning, began to thicken and swirl in the rising wind. A snowstorm was moving in, which would hamper the search. After one final sweep of the area, I hurried down the street to the armory, where most of the Sentinels had already retired because of the storm.
Marco and Ember were in the main building, spending time with several children who’d lost one or both parents. Reid was checking the new earthen fortifications around the perimeter of Liberty.
I pushed open the armory’s door and was greeted by the sight of Benjamin attending to four flu-sufferers on cots in the corner. He gave me a hard stare, then turned back to John Carl, Zander, Gabe, and a man I thought might be named Jonathan.
Dean was in the corner, speaking in hushed tones to Ken. They both looked worried.
I joined them. “Any luck?” Dean asked.
Sentinel Page 28