Bad Bloods (17 page)

“I wrote my name,” Briauna—the little girl
with scales—said quietly, like she was too afraid to be noticed,
but Steven nodded.

“You can still do that now.”

She was one of the newest members. Their
names and voices were starting to blend with everything Serena had
told me, and it occurred to me that she might have been
subconsciously preparing me to meet them all along.

A smile escaped me.

I got up from the table so no one saw it. I
still had to see Blake, but I didn’t get far. I heard her footsteps
before I turned around to face her. Catelyn. With her blonde hair
and light eyes, she looked so much like Serena it was painful. The
differences were obvious though. The scar on her face was the worst
of it.

She glanced over her shoulder, but Steven was
preoccupied with the kids, and she sighed before turning back to
me. “Daniel, right?” Before I could answer, her cheeks flushed,
burning her scar further. “Of course it is. Sorry. I’m being
silly.”

“Can I help you with something?” I asked
after a moment of silence passed between us, her staring at me, me
staring at her. We both cared for Serena but in such different
ways. The amount she must know about Serena—I wanted to ask—but I
swallowed my needs. Others always came first.

She bit her lip, as if contemplating the same
thing. “Why’d you pick her?” She couldn’t even say her name.

They did have the same hair color and
complexion after all. Catelyn might have resembled Stephanie more,
considering their blue eyes, and she looked enough like Serena that
she could pass for the western blood camp escapee, but Catelyn was
here and Serena’s gray eyes weren’t looking at me.

“Do you mean why didn’t I pick you?” I
reworded her question.

Catelyn nodded.

I glanced over her to watch Steven rough up
Huey’s hair. Huey. He transported with the feathers, if I
remembered correctly.

“Don’t you want to be with Steven?” I
asked.

She nodded again, but her question challenged
mine. “Don’t you want to be with Serena?”

Her name made my heart lurch. “No.” Not if
things go bad. “I want her to have a better life.”

“Without you in it?”

“That’s what makes it better.”

Catelyn folded her arms and cocked her hip to
the side. “That’s really selfish of you.”

I fought the urge to mirror her movements.
“Why do you say that?”

“She doesn’t want that,” Catelyn spoke like
she knew Serena far better than I did—which she did—and petty
jealously filled me. “She loves this life. It’s you who doesn’t,”
she added. She thought she knew me too. “You see her as a human.
She isn’t.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I cut her off.
“We’re all humans.” In fact, Serena convinced me of that. I had
always taken the “bad” out of “bad blood,” but I had never
considered us human. “But Serena’s the one that the world can see
as human.” My voice softened. “I’m not going to stop that.”

“I miss her.” Her eyes welled up. “It’s only
been a day, and I miss her.”

The way her voice cracked forced me to
recognize why she was interrogating me so suddenly. A part of her—a
small part of her—still thought she could get Serena back, that
Serena hadn’t left yet, and if she had, that we might not see her
ever again. And I had that part too.

I laid my hand on her shoulder, but I didn’t
say anything. There was nothing to say. Serena was gone, and
hopefully, we would win and no one would have to die, but the
chances were just that. Chances. And for now, we only had one
another and the memory of a girl who brought us together in her
last moments with us.

“Is everything okay here?” Steven approached,
his voice harder than before.

I nodded and let go of Catelyn. She leaned
her back against his chest like she knew he would be there just in
time to support her. He was. And I had to look at the wall to
control my envy.

“Everything’s fine,” Catelyn whispered,
trying to control her voice again. Steven must have believed her,
too, because he nodded, gaining my attention.

“Thank you for writing their names,” he said,
standing straighter than me. “I forget how important the little
things are sometimes.”

Before I could respond, a high-pitched squeal
erupted from the table, and we all turned to face the noise. Adam
was playing with Melody, and the other kids were already begging
for his attention too. Everyone loved Adam. It was one the reasons
I regretted I had taken the leader’s position instead of him.

“I’ll be back later,” I mumbled, knowing
Catelyn and Steven probably wouldn’t even hear my dismissal. I
bee-lined for the stairs, hoping I wouldn’t get interrupted again,
but hope was always useless. Robert was standing there, waiting for
me. I should’ve suspected it since Adam wasn’t with him, but I had
been too focused on the girl who looked like Serena.

I inhaled a large breath as I made my way
over to him, but he kept his dark eyes on the energized crowd.
“You’re teaching them how to write,” he guessed.

I wanted to snap, but I took another breath.
A shaky one. “Why didn’t you teach them?”

His gaze slid over to me. “Because the last
person I taught died.”

I stared back in defiance.

“Did you do this on purpose?” he asked. “To
challenge me?”

“What?” The word left me without me thinking
of it. “You’d be crazy to think that—”

His hand landed on my right shoulder before I
even saw him move. He squeezed, and pain seethed down my spine. It
took everything in me to keep standing. “Let’s make this perfectly
clear now,” he said, leaning close enough that his hot breath
landed on my cheek. “Just because Serena thinks she has a crush on
you, doesn’t mean I like you. Just because we joined up, doesn’t
mean we get along,” he said. “You’re dead to me.”

“I’m standing right in front of you,” I said
between clenched teeth.

He released my shoulder. “Not for long.”

This time, his words, not his grip, forced me
to stay. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

A stilled darkness lingered in his glare.
“Sometimes battles are unavoidable.”

“Daniel?” Her little voice made us both turn
to the coat closet, the one tucked behind the snowflake lamp we
stood by. Peyton’s green eyes reached out of the darkness before
she stepped out. How long she’d been hiding in there was a mystery,
but it was long enough. Her pupils were wide. “We”—she glanced at
Robert and then back at me—“Some of us were playing hide-and-seek,
and…”

Even the eleven-year-old knew she wasn’t
supposed to hear what she heard. I brushed past Robert to reach
her. He didn’t even object.

“It’s okay, Peyton,” I said as softly as I
could manage. “We were just talking.”

“That—” She looked back at Robert, and
beneath my touch, she trembled. In the two years she’d been in the
Northern Flock, I’d never seen Peyton afraid of anyone but
Kally.

“Peyton.” I gave her a little shake so she’d
look at me. “It’s going to be okay, all right?”

I listened to the floorboards creak, and I
knew Robert had walked away, leaving me to deal with the frightened
child he had scared. Anger boiled in my veins, but I kept myself in
check for Peyton. “He wouldn’t hurt you,” I added in a whisper. “He
wouldn’t hurt anybody,” I clarified, wishing I could believe my own
words.

She bit her lip but nodded. “Go hide
somewhere else,” I said, and she did exactly what I said.

I headed for the stairs and didn’t take two
steps before I saw I wasn’t out of trouble yet. Maggie stood at my
doorway, her red hair curled up around her frown. I shook my head
as I made my way up the stairs to her. She must have checked on
Blake when I couldn’t, but she blocked my door so I couldn’t see
him myself. She waited for me to explain, but when I didn’t, she
sighed. Her brown eyes watched the others over the railing.

“And here I was, thinking I was admiring Adam
playing with kids,” she deadpanned.

“It’s not a big deal.”

“Robert threatened you.”

“He hates
me
,” I clarified. “No one
else.”

“And you expect that’s going to help
anything?” Her curls sprung up as if to add to her conviction.

I leaned against the wall. “I expect he’ll
help everyone but me,” I said, “and that’s okay.”

Her eyes were daggers. “But you’re still
going to tell me not to tell anyone about this?”

I nodded. “Especially Adam.” She frowned.
“Maggie, please.”

She looked away like she couldn’t stand to
look at me anymore, and a few deafening seconds passed between
us—the leader and the redhead who had an undeniable crush on the
boy who should’ve been the leader.

“They really are like us, aren’t they?” she
almost whispered.

I thought of the Southern Flock kids. Melody,
Timmy, Huey, Briauna, and more. All with different, terrifying
stories that brought them to a kitchen table full of crayons and
potential doom. “Yes.”

“Then we all have equal chances of dying,”
she said coldly. “Don’t increase yours with whatever happened
between you two, got it?”

Adam had told her. At least, she said it like
he did. Like they were secretly dating and he’d spilled every
secret of his—including my secret—to the redhead he’d pulled out of
the gangs. Listening to her words made my skin prickle like glass
was scraping away at me.

Maggie never used her powers. In fact, I had
to ask Adam about them, and he only knew from one very specific day
I wished I could’ve forgotten. Right after she was brought in, she
told Adam he should’ve been the leader, and he screamed at her,
told her he wished he had left her where her brother had left her,
and that’s when it happened. Adam described the feeling as a
thousand fire ants eating him from the inside out. Now I understood
the feeling, but I understood far beyond that. Adam loved her. He
always had. He just stopped himself from loving her. Why, I didn’t
know, but if I had to guess, it had to do with that feeling her
powers gave off. It was the opposite of love. It was pain. Real,
mind-melting pain.

“It would kill him,” she said, the pain
subsiding. “It would kill more than him.”

I nodded, blinking through the nausea rising
up my throat, and as soon as I did, every sensation disappeared.
Maggie nodded back, and I wondered if she was even aware of what
she’d done to me. We all lost control, after all. But we were
losing control more now than ever before.

Things were going to get worse. They always
did.

My first
night in the Highlands I stayed in a hotel—a hotel that was far
beyond any house I’d been in. I had my own room, bathroom, living
room, kitchen, and other rooms I didn’t know what they were for. It
was bigger than Cal’s entire apartment, and I could see everything
from the floor-to-ceiling window on the sixteenth floor. All but
the outskirts. The lights of the city were too bright to see past
them, but I tried anyway, straining my eyes the entire night.

Now that a day had passed, the sunlight
seemed too bright for my insomniac eyes. Even though the car’s
tinted windows blocked most of the Highlands out, I blinked my
blurry vision away to study every last inch of the paved roads we
drove down.

Catelyn would’ve loved it. All the shops and
diners and colors. So many colors. Every building was
custom-designed, purple and tall, then yellow and square, then red
and oval. I leaned over to catch the sky, but skyscrapers blocked
any clouds. All I could see was shine. Artificial shine. And my new
clothes itched with my nerves.

My heart slammed against my chest every time
I “met” someone’s eyes through the glass. I knew they couldn’t see
me as we drove by, but I could see them—all clean and proper—and I
felt as I always did in the outskirts, forced to see a world that
refused to look back. I had to dig my nails into my palms to keep
myself from rolling the window down, to scream at the fathers who
walked with their children, children they’d never have to give up,
to the couples who didn’t have to fear their future offspring.

We were so different, and yet they walked
too.

I didn’t even know I had presumptions about
the Highlands until Adelio drove me through it. When I pictured the
Highlands, I pictured dozens of cars—all shapes and sizes—with only
one person in each one. But most of the people walked like we did
in the outskirts. I could barely fathom the main difference.

“There are so many people,” I said, hoping
Adelio would explain how I was supposed to stand out. Compared to
the outskirts, the Highlands were packed shoulder-to-shoulder.
There would be no way to run in a crowd like this. In fact, we
could barely drive through it. Our car inched forward, and people
walked around us, as thick as a river.

“More people live in the Highlands than in
the outskirts,” Adelio spoke as if he sensed my thoughts. “It’s
part of the problem.”