“It’s true, what Katie says,” I said. “I’ve been with her for a while. She has no problem controlling herself.” I tightened up the last nut and bolt and looked at Billy. “Go try the engine.”
Billy backed around to the driver’s side, opened the door, and then turned the ignition without getting into the car, all the time watching Katie. The engine started on the first turn.
“Here’s the map,” Bob said.
I opened up the book and showed him where Nindock’s town was situated.
“Couple of hours drive,” I said. “You should get there before nightfall.” I handed back the map. I wasn’t convinced Bob paid too much attention to where I’d pointed, as he barely took his eyes of Katie.
“Come on. Get in. Let’s get out of here.” I could hear the fear in Billy’s voice, and I watched as Blaire backed away from Katie, never once taking her eyes off the vampire. Billy helped get the two children into the car. As soon as they were all in, they drove away without another word, just hateful stares at Katie as they passed her, heading back to the road.
As soon as they were gone, I stepped over to Katie and put an arm around her shoulder.
“Is that normal? That kind of reaction?”
“It’s been a while since I had any dealings with anyone who wasn’t infected and knew I was a vampire but, yeah, pretty much normal. Ever since the infection started, a lot of people have been killed by uncontrolled vamps before they came up with the implant. The bad rep has obviously stuck,” Katie said. She looked both sad and resigned at the same time.
“I’m sorry. I never realized.”
“I know. It’s fine. It just makes me even more determined to find a cure for this virus, and the quicker the better.” She turned to me and offered up a grim smile. “Do you think Famil will be able to work something out?”
“I hope so, Katie. Truly I do.”
“What about you, Jevyn? Are you going to be able to work something out with your mother to come back regularly?”
She looked down to the ground between her feet. I so wanted to say yes, but at the same time, I knew my mother was going to make life difficult for me if I tried to make the case for spending time on Earth. The only way I could see her allowing it was if there was something in it for her and the family. Some advantage she could gain that would outweigh the risk of allowing rifts between Earth and Dracos. Famil finding a cure would certainly ease that path, but I still felt, in my heart of hearts, that what I had, what Katie and I had together, was coming slowly to an end.
I lifted Katie’s face with my fingertip and flashed her the biggest, brightest smile I could.
“Nothing will stop me from coming back to see you, Katie. Nothing.”
The smile on her face was beatific.
I hoped she couldn’t tell that I didn’t truly know whether I’d be able to keep that promise.
Someday, I hoped I could tell her the truth, but the prospect of breaking her heart in the process filled me with dread.
“Jevyn,” she said quietly.
“Uh huh.”
“What’s that noise?”
Chapter Twelve
Katie
A barn in the middle of nowhere
Idaho, Earth
“I DON’T KNOW,” Jevyn said. “I don’t hear anything.”
I studied his face, a picture of confusion right then. He was lying. I thought he was being truthful about wanting to come back. No, I knew he was telling the truth about that. I thought he was lying about nothing being able to stop him. I wasn’t completely in the know with all the political machinations that went on in Dracos, but I had to face the reality that circumstances could easily turn to mean that he might not be able to come back. The fact that he wanted to was enough for a little while, though. And it made me feel better that he was trying to spare my feelings.
“Come on.” I said. “Let’s go take a look.” It was a strange thing. It wasn’t much of noise, but it was big. I could tell. Like a huge disturbance in the atmosphere with a deep resonant rumbling.
I’d never experienced an earthquake, but I guessed it would be like that. I could feel the vibrations underfoot.
We took a few steps out into the yard and stopped. The sound was louder outside, but it seemed to be coming from all around as the noise echoed off the distant surrounding hills and mountains.
“What is that?” Jevyn asked, turning in circles, as if trying to get a fix on where the noise was coming from.
“Over there.” I pointed, finally figuring out the direction from where it was emanating.
Jevyn spun back around to where I was pointing. In the distance, a small dark dot appeared through the heat-haze-filled sky and then another. Suddenly, there were twenty, maybe thirty, and they were heading straight toward us.
We backed up slowly into the doorway of the barn and craned our heads around the side. Slowly, as the pounding sound got louder, the black dots got bigger and bigger, gradually becoming clearer in the dusty sky. I counted them. Twenty-four large helicopters. Not all the same. Some had vicious-looking missiles loaded beneath them. We pulled back farther into the barn as they flew overhead, feeling the drumbeat of the rotor blades pushing the air beneath them down to the ground and blowing up dust and debris as they passed over, almost like a mini-tornado passing over with the machines.
The group was about halfway across us when the lead helicopter set off a missile. The sizzle of it reached us a few milliseconds later. I watched the missiles exhaust trail as it sped away and then dipped down toward the ground, followed a second later by a flash of light and a second after that by the distant report of an explosion.
I had a terrible feeling about who or what might have been the target.
As the helicopters finally passed fully overhead, we both crept out to watch them slowly recede into the distance.
“SCAR,” I said.
“Heading toward Nindock’s town by the look of it.”
“We have to go see what was hit. We need to go help those people if we can,” I said.
“After the way they spoke to you? The way they were scared of you?”
I thought back to what had happened. “They were just afraid, Jevyn. Of everything. We can’t just leave and not at least go see if there’s anything we can do.”
Jevyn got a really weird look on his face. I couldn’t tell if he was going to hurl or hug me. Finally, he made his mind up and hugged me like there was no tomorrow.
I tried to push him away, not because the hug wasn’t nice, it was, but because every minute, every second we wasted, one of those poor people might be dying. I said that to Jevyn, and reluctantly he let go.
“Go change in there.” I thumbed back into the barn. Jevyn nodded. “And fold up your clothes,” I yelled after him. God, I sounded like my mother.
A few moments later, he walked back out in his dragon form, holding his neatly folded clothes in his mouth.
I took them from him and shoved them into my pack.
Then I jumped on board, and Jevyn flapped and carried me into the air.
My worst fears were confirmed when we reached the site of the explosion. The ground all around the car was scorched. Some of the plants and bushes, dried as they already where, were smoking or burning small flames that gave the scene a weirdly ritualistic air, like candles around an altar.
Bob and Billy were both out front of the car, or at least the remains of it. Twisted pieces were strewn randomly across the narrow road. They had been blasted out, I assumed—one through a door, the other through the windshield. The sun, waning, still reflected and refracted the light through the granular remains of the windshield that were scattered around the car.
Both rear doors were open, and the trunk was also up, so it was difficult to see inside. I didn’t think there was any chance of survivors from whatever hideous weapon SCAR had decided would be the indiscriminate end of this family.
Then something fell out of the passenger door. It was difficult at this heigh
t to see who it was, but it looked like Blaire, judging by the size of the body. A body that then tried to drag and claw its way from the car across the dusty, debris-littered road.
“Get down there. Quickly,” I said, yanking on Jevyn’s neck.
Jevyn nodded once and then banked around, landing and coming to a stop in front of the wreckage.
“Check those two.” I pointed at Bob and Billy, although by the weird positions their bodies were in, I didn’t hold out much hope for them. I ran straight to Blaire, who was lying on her back a couple of feet clear of the car.
I had to stop before I reached her. Much of her exposed skin was blackened, and in places, it was still singed and smoking. The smell was horrendous. Her clothes had seemingly melted into her.
I could see she was breathing, but they were short and sharp last breaths if ever I’d seen them.
I swallowed hard and took the last couple of steps I needed to reach her.
Her eyes were closed when I got to her, and I could hear a rattle in her throat which told me she didn’t have long.
I picked up her hand. Nobody should have to die alone in my book, and even if she never realized that I was holding her hand, I hoped that somewhere deep in her mind she knew she wasn’t alone.
I nearly jumped when she opened her eyes and turned her head to look at me.
She took a harsh rasping breath, and in a voice that sounded so different from the voice I’d heard earlier, she spoke in short spells between gasps for air.
“Please . . . please . . . look after . . . my boys . . .”
I nodded because I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t be sure she even knew who I was.
“Please . . . are they . . . okay?”
I looked into the back seat of the car at the two boys and then back at her, forcing a smile onto my face.
“They’re banged up, but I think they’re fine,” I lied.
Blaire allowed her head to drop back and lay gasping for air.
“Thank . . . god.”
“Yes, thank god.”
“Listen . . . I’m sorry . . . I was . . . so scared . . . back there.”
“Doesn’t matter. Just don’t be scared now.”
She turned her head to me, and after another couple of gasps, she said, “But I am.”
Her eyes closed, and after another rasp of burnt lungs, she breathed no more.
I placed her hand on her chest and went to look numbly at the lifeless bodies of the two boys in the back of the car.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to Blaire as a flame of rage lit inside me.
I jumped when I heard Jevyn’s voice. “Katie, we need to go.”
I flicked out a hand to wave away a fly that had landed and was crawling across Blaire’s face. Why had SCAR attacked this family? They hadn’t done anything that warranted being blasted to oblivion with a missile. It made no sense.
“We can’t just leave them here.”
“We have no choice. We have to go.” I felt something grab my jacket and start to gently tug me away. I could feel hot dragon breath on my neck. Slowly, I allowed myself to be pulled away, never taking my eyes off the scorched body of Blaire.
***
IT TOOK ANOTHER hour of steady, silent flight for Jevyn to arrive at Nindock’s place, but the puzzling thing was that the helicopters had vanished. Nindock’s town looked as close to normal as it had a few hours before. No smoke rising. No damaged buildings even; just people hurriedly going about their business before the sun sank over the horizon at the end of another day.
Jevyn wanted to go down and check with Nindock to make sure everything was okay, but I persuaded him that getting back before it got completely dark was more important.
Eventually, he agreed, and he swung his dragon body back toward Lynnette’s.
All I wanted was somewhere to lay myself down and try to sleep, although the pictures in my head might not allow that. I needed to rest, regardless, and having left the borrowed clothes behind at the site of the wreckage from the car, we still had to get some clothes for Jevyn to wear.
I spent the time it took to get back to Lynnette’s shop wondering where those helicopters had been heading and why they felt the need to blow the car up.
I knew independent travel outside of SCAR-designated areas had been banned, but I never thought I would live to see the day when SCAR would resort to killing an innocent family.
That was something I was determined they would pay for, and pay dearly. Those people might have been scared with good reason as it turned out, but they didn’t deserve to die.
Chapter Thirteen
Jevyn
Lynnette’s shop
Boise, Idaho
IT TOOK ME two days to recover from the excess of flying I’d done to get to Katie’s bridge and back. I wasn’t sure how long it would take Katie to get back to normal after we had both seen the results of the SCAR missile attack.
I’d spent the time trying to cheer everybody up. I thought they were suffering from a little cabin fever after being cooped up for so long in Derek’s basement.
Katie had spent the time resting and slowly allowing the anger I could see in her eyes to bubble and boil up inside her. I wouldn’t want to be the next person who crossed her, that was for sure.
I wanted to spend more time with her, but by a combination of my useless innate skill at keeping my nose out of other people’s heads and her body language, I thought it best to stay at arm’s length and let her work through things in her head and bring her anger under some sort of control.
It was Marty who managed to bring her around by announcing that if he didn’t get outside for a while he would go batshit crazy. Then, Penny suggested that they needed food supplies urgently.
“If we don’t get some supplies soon, we’re going to be eating each other,” Penny said, flicking a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
“I’ll go,” Marty said. Then plaintively he added, “Please. I need to get out.”
“What do you think?” I asked Katie as I dropped down to sit next to her on the sofa.
She looked blankly at me. “Hmm.”
“To Marty and a couple of the other guys going out to look for food. Do we have money?”
“Money doesn’t buy you food anymore, Jevyn,” Nova said from what had become his corner of the room.”
“How do you get food then?”
“Steal it, or trade for it.”
“Steal? Doesn’t that mean somebody else doesn’t get any? Anyway, I thought you guys only needed blood. You all have the sprays now.”
“It’s a different kind of hunger,” Sparks said, leaning over Derek’s shoulder, looking at the screen he was messing around on.
“Huh?” I said, failing to understand.
Penny sat up straight, a sure sign she was about to make a meaningful contribution. “Blood controls an instinct that comes with the infection, but we get little in the way of nutrition from it. We still have to eat normally, or our bodies begin to shut down and we starve to death, blood or not.”
“So, where do you get the food from?”
“We raid the supermarkets, food stores, empty houses. The usual.” Penny looked around the room for the nods of agreement she got.
“I didn’t realize how bad things had gotten here.” It was the first time I’d given much thought to how Katie and her friends survived on Earth.
“It’s getting worse all the time,” Katie said quietly.
I was worried that her introspection might be having some effect on her, on what was going on in her head, but I didn’t really know her well enough to know what. Nobody else seemed to have noticed. I needed to talk to someone who knew her better than me so I could get a gauge on how she was.
I stood up on the pretense of having a walk around the shop to see if there was anything we could use to barter with. The place was full of crap, so there had to be something. I stepped behind the sofa Katie was sitting on and caught Nova’s eye, flicking my head to get him to foll
ow me upstairs. He nodded, so I set off upstairs and into the shop where I waited.
Footsteps up the stairs followed a few moments later, and Nova stepped out from behind the curtains.
“What’s up?” he asked as he came just inside the shop. I didn’t want to go any farther in in case someone outside spotted movement and decided they wanted to poke around. Plus, I could see someone else following Nova in a fit of nosiness.
“It’s Katie. Did she tell you about what happened yesterday?”
“On the bridge or in the barn and after?”
I hadn’t ever had a chance to really get to know Nova. Katie had told me about them being friends for a long time but not much more than that. He seemed to be a very quiet and thoughtful man, but I always got the feeling that he disapproved of me and of my burgeoning relationship with Katie.
“She told you about the bridge?”
“She tells me everything, Jevyn. I’m her best friend.”
“She told you everything? Absolutely everything?”
“She keeps the detail to a minimum when that sort of thing occurs. Don’t worry.”
I heaved a sigh of relief.
“I meant after the barn. The car.”
“She did. Too much detail for my liking.” Nova’s dark eyes had rings of darkness around them that highlighted just how pale his skin was getting.
“It was bad. Look, Nova. I asked you to come talk because you know her so much better than I do. How do you think she’s doing? I’m worried about her. She’s been so quiet.”
Nova looked up at me for a few moments, and I knew then that I had to maintain eye contact with him, that he was testing me, trying to assess me in some way.
“This is normal,” he said. “Whenever something bad happens, she just has to process it for a while, but as soon as something else crops up, she’ll be all Katie again.”
“Okay, thank you. That’s a weight off my shoulders.”
“No problem.” He hesitated, half-turning away to head back downstairs. “You’re going to break her heart, aren’t you?”
Riding Rifts (Vampire's Elixir Series Book 2) Page 11