by eden Hudson
Son of a bitch. Somewhere along the way this had turned into the kind of low that made people slash their wrists. I needed to feel my way back to good. Teeth grinding. Head buzzing. Somebody hot pressed against me.
Scout. Seventeen-year-old, illegal to feed off of, definitely illegal to fuck for another three months Scout. Harper’s little sister Scout. Following me around since I helped Mom in the nursery at church Scout.
We didn’t even make it to the bedroom. We stretched out in the hallway with her on top.
I shut my eyes and tried not to think, tried to just focus on the sensation overload. She wasn’t anyone. Just another body. My hand slid up her smooth, soft stomach. Her breasts. I could feel every one of her skin cells.
My fingertips bumped warm metal and Scout moaned. I opened my eyes. She had her nipples pierced. There was more metal in her bellybutton.
I had to look.
Yeah, she was pierced down there, too.
So much for the little sister angle. That’s some straight-up porn star shit right there.
I wished I could shut off the voice inside my brain.
What did you expect? Some innocent little virgin? Where do you think you live, dumbass?
I slammed my head backward and hit floor. The thud rippled through my skull like bass from a subwoofer. That felt good, but it was gone too fast. I did it again.
She grabbed my head to stop me, but thank fuck she didn’t say anything. Warm hands on my face. Heat surrounding me. Legs clenching my hips. A body to come with. That was it. Nothing else.
Desty
As tired as I was, as soft as the bed was, and as cool as the air was, I couldn’t sleep. Cycling into REM in a bedroom surrounded by fallen angels who wanted to torture and kill me, just down the hall from the alpha who wanted to use my sister and me to take over the world, just didn’t sound that appealing. So I laid awake on the softest mattress I had ever touched, under a downy comforter, on top of silk sheets, jumping every time I heard the mansion’s central air click on.
My thoughts kept swirling around in the same torturous patterns, finding new flaws, picking apart old ones, listing all the reasons everyone I’d ever loved had been right to leave me behind.
I missed Tough. I really, really wanted to hate him, but all I could freaking do was miss him.
The really pathetic thing was I couldn’t even be mad at him. The harder I tried to convince myself that Tough was the bad guy, the clearer his face after he killed Jax became. It wasn’t Tough’s fault. Everything had fallen apart around him. When your world shatters, you need someone strong. Someone with a spine. Someone who can help you fight back. Doormats need not apply.
Finally, I got up. The on-suite bathroom, in keeping with the luxury of the rest of the mansion, was all glass and stone-tile. The shower had six different shower heads—all of which spit out water that was practically boiling as soon as I turned it on.
It felt like everything from the past week was clinging to me. I undressed and stepped into the water, hoping it would burn the top few layers of my skin off.
Try and try, but you can’t wash off what’s inside. A line from one of Tough’s songs.
I shut my eyes and leaned into the spray. You really couldn’t—wash it, run away from it, ignore it. It didn’t matter what you did. When you looked in the mirror, it was still going to be you. When I got out of the shower, it was still going to be me. Coward. Idiot. Sperm dumpster.
God, it was no wonder everyone thought I was so naïve. Just get a guy to stick his dick in me and I would pour out my heart at his feet like a needy child.
I smacked the stone wall of the shower, then pulled my fist back and punched it. I had never hit anything that hard before, not even in Self Defense/P.E. in high school. The pain razored through my knuckles and down into my wrist. I winced and checked to make sure I wasn’t bleeding.
Good one, genius. Breaking your hand should help. I cradled it against my stomach.
My wrist brushed across the bellybutton charm Harper had given me so Tough’s next feeding wouldn’t kill me. A little red grenade, hand-picked by Scout to remind me what I was.
Before I could think about it, I grabbed the charm and ripped it out. Blood trickled down my stomach. A second later, pain flashed and spread across my skin like heat lightning through clouds.
The mansion’s air conditioning clicked on again, shocking me out of my doom spiral.
A vent on the bathroom ceiling blew directly into the shower. I almost laughed. Only in a fallen angel’s lair could you experience the luxury of cold air on your burning face while you took a steaming hot shower.
Okay, I need to stop wallowing in self-pity for five seconds and think about this logically. Not everybody got to self-destruct. Somebody had to pick up the pieces and soldier on.
Tough wasn’t the villain here. It wasn’t even Scout. Possible Fatigues and the rest of the foot soldiers could be terrifying as heck, but all they were doing was looking for a means to an end. Wasn’t that all I was doing? Wasn’t that the whole reason I’d come after Tempie in the first place?
Well, here I was. I’d found her. If I really wanted my sister back, I could have her. All I had to do was agree to become the Destroyer with her. That could be my means to my end. I could find out what exactly Kathan wanted from us and how he expected us to achieve it, I could read the texts he’d talked about that explained commanders, and then I could negotiate. In exchange for my cooperation, I could get him to promise to free Tempie and me when the last battle was over, maybe even convince him to leave Tough and Colt alone. It wasn’t like Kathan would care about the people in one little farm town once he had control of the entire planet. There wouldn’t be any reason to keep fighting.
I might be handing over the world, but wouldn’t it be worth it? For once in my life I could actually do something—save my sister, protect the guy I somehow still loved from getting hurt any worse—and it wouldn’t be an empty gesture like following Tempie when she ran away or telling Tough everything was going to be all right. This time I could really help.
Anyway, it wasn’t like God was doing a lot of awesome stuff with Earth right now. Not from what I’d seen of the place.
I shut off the shower and got out. My knuckles throbbed and my stomach bled as I dried off. Good thing the towels were black. I held one against my bellybutton until the bleeding stopped, then I got dressed.
Possible Fatigues was at his post in the hall when I came out.
He smirked at me. “What’s the matter, doll face? Did you have a nightmare about black-winged creatures pulling out your toenails one at a time?”
“I want to talk to Kathan,” I said.
Tiffani
I tied off the last stitch and snipped it. Colt’s soft snoring stopped for a second, then went on. He’d been fighting sleep the whole time I was sewing him up. Finally dropped off when I’d gone back to the bathroom for more gauze. I’d tried waking him back up so I could warn him I was about to start stitching again, but all I’d gotten out of him were a few muffled groans. The needle, the suture, the rubbing alcohol—none of it had fazed him. His eyelids had barely twitched.
The couple of times Colt had dozed off in the bakery before, the sleep had been short and restless. Tonight as I watched the slow rise and fall of his chest, I could smell the serotonin and other rest-chemicals flushing his system. This was deep. I hoped it was peaceful.
I wrapped the suturing needle in its sterile plastic packaging and dropped it into the trashcan I’d brought in from the bathroom. Cut a bandage and taped it over the stitches in Colt’s side. With any luck, he wouldn’t rip them out anytime soon.
I almost laughed. With any real luck, Colt would give up the fight against Kathan, move to another continent, this end-time battle would blow over, and he would live happily ever after.
It’s awful loving someone who’s willing to die for what he believes in.
For a minute longer, I stood there watching him. His hair was almost s
haggy. Usually he asked me to cut it before it got this long. A five o’clock shadow was coming in at his jaw. When he woke up, I should say something to him about growing a beard and turning into one of them damn hippies. He would think that was funny.
If he remembered me.
What if his memories of me were gone again when he woke up? What if sleep was just a reset button?
“Hell.” If he woke up and didn’t remember me, I would go back in and do it all over again like I’d told him I would.
I gathered up the pieces of bloody gauze, shut off the bedroom light, and headed downstairs. Dug the lye and some gloves out of the broom closet, then hooked up the hose to the sink.
Depending on who you listened to nowadays, there were supposed to be a lot of complicated ways to obscure a zombie’s ability to track you. Eggs and tiny white rocks and other secret cures that would cost you a few hundred bucks and a little of your blood or semen. Maybe those craft tricks did work. All I knew was the one method I’d seen throw a zombie off every time was good old-fashioned lye and elbow grease. It’s hard to beat the classics.
Outside, I sniffed the air. Fresh spray paint, unpopped popcorn, unspun sugar, and unwashed carnies. Colt’s blood. But no Tracker. If the zombie had been within a mile, I would have smelled his rotting carcass. Colt must’ve taken a route that couldn’t be driven. The Tracker might get around fast in his big blue truck, but he was slower than Christmas on foot. It was going to be a long night for the fallen angels following him.
I found Colt’s scent trail and started scrubbing. With the vamp speed, it only took me about thirty minutes to erase his tracks to the edge of town. Then I pulled the bloody gauze out of my pocket and made a new trail across town. It would be fainter than the real thing, but because it would be the Tracker’s only lead, he would follow it.
I ended the blood trail in the alley behind Rowdy’s, dropped the gauze in the dumpster, then headed back to the bakery.
Colt was still asleep when I made it upstairs. I climbed in and curled against his unhurt side. He started, but he didn’t wake up. After a few seconds, he put his arm around me.
I laid my head on his shoulder. His body was so hot. The warmth soaked into my skin. I hoped his scent would, too. Sweat, gun oil, tattoo ink, sunlight, and heat. I closed my eyes and breathed it in.
For the first time in years, I fell asleep.
Tough
I must’ve gotten dressed to leave. Anyway, I had my jeans and boots on when Scout pushed me down onto the couch.
“Just stay,” she said. “Listen for a little bit. You’ll see that we’re serious. You’ll…”
She kept talking, but I checked out for a while. If I nodded every now and then, I guess it looked like I was paying attention. The high was still holding strong. I rubbed the back of my head against the couch, felt my hair bristle across the worn-out pattern of the fabric.
At some point, that crow boy, Cash Pershing, Lonely’s little cousin, showed up, all decked out with shiny hunks of metal hooked through his face like he’d fallen headfirst into a tackle box.
For a little while him and Scout went into the kitchen—I assume so they could talk about something I wasn’t allowed to hear because screw me. I probably could’ve picked it up with the vamp hearing, but I didn’t try. Because screw them.
Then they were back in the living room and a couple of girls and another guy were there, too. I was pretty sure they were all from Scout’s class.
“Well, Emma’s in the class below ours,” Scout said. So I must’ve asked.
Wait. What the hell? I couldn’t ask. I couldn’t talk at all anymore because of Jason. So… Seriously, what the hell?
Scout was still talking. Maybe this was important. “And there are a few more in the senior class, but most…”
I nodded. The hairs on the back of my head slid over the rough fabric of the couch. My fingertips were touching the fabric, too, next to my legs. Pushing on the cushion, then letting go. Little bouncing people, jumping in a bounce house.
I hadn’t imagined something like that since I was a little kid. Really little. Like, Mom-still-alive little.
“…but you know how cowards are. As soon as they see our signs around town and the sedition we’ve been spreading…”
I ground my teeth, but managed not to groan this time. That would’ve been awkward, groaning like I was rubbing one out in front of all these high school kids.
Who were apparently still talking to me. Scout was even gesturing.
“…with the age limits and grace period…”
Legal shit. NPs and their fucking rules. Where was Jax when you needed him?
I snorted. Jax was dead and gone.
Gone, gone, gone, gone. The tune bounced around inside my head—manic candy-pop with a suicidal edge. High as hell and twice as screwed. I wished I had my guitar so I could try to play it. It’d be almost impossible to get that tone right. The singer would make it or break it.
“…others, but they can’t do what we can. Without openly breaking his own rules, Kathan can’t retaliate…”
Of course that singer was never going to be me. Jax had said you couldn’t change a corpse once it’s dead, not even with magic. So my voice was gone, gone, gone forever. Like Desty. Well, like any shot I’d had with her. Like any shot I’d had at Heaven. Gone, gone, gone, gone.
Like I should’ve been.
I stood up. I wanted my guitar. I wanted this out of my head. Gone, gone, gone, gone.
“Tough?” Scout grabbed my elbow.
Everyone in the living room was staring at me—which was a hell of a lot more people than I remembered being there just a minute ago. Not just high school kids anymore. Drake and Jim had been in my class in school. And Tawny Hicks, Beth Ann’s little sister, had graduated the year before we did.
I gave Scout a look. Just how damn many people did she have in her army?
“I told you, it’s growing,” she said. “Just tonight, we recruited thirty-odd people. By the time everyone else hears that the inmates are taking over this prison, they’ll be begging to join the uprising. And we’ll be ready.”
For some reason, that was funnier than anything else I’d heard so far. I laughed. I jerked my arm away from her, then headed for the door.
“Tough?” Scout said.
“You’re wasting your breath,” somebody told her. It sounded like Drake. “That dickhole’s good for two things—and stand up and fight ain’t either one of ‘em.”
I laughed again, a lot harder.
The dented metal screen door slammed behind me. I got in the truck and fired it up. I was still laughing. And singing that song. What am I going to do when this buzz is gone, gone, gone, gone?
Scout
I sat down on the top step and watched Tough drive away.
When his truck’s taillights disappeared, I leaned my head against the stairs’ bent metal railing and squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t start crying like some bitch-ass punk now, not with my whole army gathered in the living room. That would be so lame of me.
The trailer door opened.
“He just has to go somewhere for a little while,” I said. “He’ll be back. He’ll think it over and—”
“Hey, shiny girl.” Cash dropped onto the step beside me. “Don’t waste those diamonds on him.”
I laughed and swiped at my eyes. “You’re so weird.”
“And you’re so blind,” he said. “But you shine like tinfoil in the sun, so I won’t hold it against you.”
I stood up and checked my watch. T-minus two hours and nineteen minutes. Leaders don’t get time to mope. They have shit to do.
“I’ll talk to him again,” I said. “I’ll do a better job of explaining.”
“In the meantime, what will your army do?” Cash gave a jerky crow-nod at the trailer. “The inmates are getting restless.”
“I know,” I said. Then I realized what he’d said. “Wait. Were you there when I did my speech?”
“In th
e redbud tree.” He licked his lip between the double spider-bites. “You were born to be a dictator.”
“That’s what I keep telling people.”
He gave a crawking laugh, then held out his hand. “Help me up. I’m supposed to be meeting some four-legged hide-sacks at the territorial border.”
“Yeah,” I said. “In an hour.”
“Pays to be early when you’re dealing with your enemies.”
“You promised, Cash. No traps, no ambushes, no tricks. We need them.”
“I did promise,” he said.
“If you think I won’t murder you for fucking me over—”
“Oh, I know you will.” He grinned. “Ruthless as the sun. It’s the mark of a good dictator. Now, if you don’t mind…” He stretched his hand out to me again.
As if a crow needed help standing. I rolled my eyes, but I pulled him to his feet anyway, leaning back so I could get some leverage.
Still holding onto my hand, Cash shifted form and let the momentum pull him into the air. His glossy black feathers brushed across my fingertips as he flew away.
Colt
When I woke up, it felt like something was missing. In a good way. Like when you’ve had an ache for so long that you get used to it, then one day it stops hurting, and pinpointing what has changed takes a minute. I didn’t want to move until I figured it out.
No screaming. My brain was quiet. I felt around for the black noise. It had backed off. It was giving me space, but I couldn’t figure out why.
“Didn’t sleep long,” Tiffani said. Her voice was gravelly, as if she’d just woken up.
I felt myself smile. Yeah, right. The insomniac vamp had curled up and slept beside me like a kitten. I turned over to face her.
Tiffani was laying on her side, head propped up on her hand. In the bluish light from the window, her brass-colored eyes looked gunmetal gray.