Friction (The Frenzy Series Book 4) (15 page)

Saul was too close to her. I knew what he was doing, apologizing and acting like burning her Mother and the others to death had just been a misunderstanding. Coming to her first while I was busy dealing with Mercedes. Saul swooped in, pretending to be her savior once again.

Porschia shook. With crossed arms, she hugged herself. “It’s okay, kitten. You did what you had to do to survive.” I saw Pierce lying on the floor, dead. Roman didn’t know yet. This was going to send him into a spiral, and I wanted Porschia away from him when it happened.

She took a step back from me. “I killed them all.”

“Good. They were doing much worse. You saw the bodies floating out there,” I said, ticking my head to the window. “You saw The Glen. You stopped them.”

“I feel sick,” she said. “I feel so sick.”

“Can I hold you?”

She shook her head vehemently. “Don’t touch me. I... I don’t want anyone to touch me.”

“Okay,” I stepped back. “I won’t. I promise.”

Saul stepped back inside with a basin of water, a towel, and a dark green dress that was poufy and not Porschia at all. “It’s all I could find. No jeans in any of the closets up here.”

She nodded to him. “Thank you.”

I eased away toward the door of the bedroom. She needed space to collect her thoughts and wash the remnants of the day away. Time would heal her. Eventually she would see that she managed to survive where others had succumbed. She stopped something so evil that the stink of it might never leave this place. But for now, she had to make peace with herself. She wouldn’t be able to do that with me or Saul in her face.

I nodded toward the bodies lying in the hallway. “We can clean this mess while she cleans herself up.”

Saul hesitated, looking back toward her with his hands in his pockets. “Sure.”

We each carried one corpse outside and tossed the shrews into the moat with all of their victims. It was poetic justice; their stories had come full circle, much like the cycle of life itself. Predators preyed on the weak. They lived well until something stronger came along and ended them. Life. Vitality. Weakening. Death.

When we were finished, Saul stayed inside with Mercedes, who was in the process of changing back into a human. Her fangs were already gone and shivers continued to shake her body. She lay on the couch beneath blankets that Roman brought down from the bedrooms above.

I ran to Porschia’s room to find the door locked. Tapping my knuckles against the door, I sniffed the air. Her scent was there. Lavender soap, blood, and fresh water. Hay and daisies from the fields below.

“Porschia?”

There was no answer.

I knocked again but still heard nothing. It took a fraction of a second to break the door in and half of that again to realize that she wasn’t in the room. Running to the window, I saw her on the ground below, crouching low in the tall grass, but looking up at me. “No,” I whispered. “Kitten, don’t run.”

As a bloody tear tracked a path on each cheek, she sniffed and shook her head. “I just need to get away from all of this; the smell and sounds. The almost-dead people we just freed. I’m not strong enough right now.”

“Let me come with you,” I yelled.

She shook her head. “No, I need to be alone. Just for a little while. I’ll meet you at Mountainside. I promise.”

Everything inside me screamed to stop her, to hold her close and never let her go, but if I did that, if I caged her, I knew I would lose her for good. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll meet you there as soon as I can. Go ahead. Let them know Blackwater will take them in.”

She nodded. “I can do that.”

It was a start. She was crumbling, but she still might find a new purpose in helping the residents of Mountainside find a new safe haven in the Colony of Blackwater.

My skin was finally clean. Using the tepid water, I rinsed the ends of my hair until the water was pink, tinged with Lydia’s blood. The dark green dress was ridiculous, something a princess or queen would wear. Thick material billowed from the corseted waist and way too much chest showed for me to be comfortable. Making my way over the bridge and away from the trail of fleeing humans, I headed toward the only place I knew I would feel at home, toward the woods, tearing at my skirt to make it shorter and easier to travel in. I decided to take a different trail than those of the fleeing people. If they saw a female vampire in a dress like
they
wore—in one of their dresses, no less—it would terrify them. And that was what I was; no better than the monsters I killed. Terrifying. The thing that nightmares were made of.

Human nightmares.

Because night-walkers and Infected didn’t dream.

They didn’t rest.

They couldn’t find peace.

And neither could I.

But I also felt a duty to these people. They were my neighbors. I would listen and watch from a distance, making sure they made it to The Glen and that those who chose to move on to Mountainside would make it there safely as well. All the way to Blackwater, I would protect them.

Hay-filled hills gave way to saplings, saplings to trees, and trees to the thick underbrush filling in the forest floor with each passing rain. Disturbing a mouse, he ran for a hollowed log.

I walked slowly, at the speed they travelled. I listened to them talk about what had happened, how frightened they’d been, and how the first girl I freed told them it was all over and to leave this place and never return. She told them that Mountainside would take them in until they all moved to Blackwater, a haven safe enough and big enough for them all.

Reflecting on the control of the Elders I could now see that they did wrong by keeping us sheltered, but we had it better than others. I never realized there were people out there like the three women I’d just witnessed. Geographically, we were so close that even Blackwater wouldn’t have been safe from their wrath if they needed to extend their reach to find further victims.

After passing through several hills and valleys I came to an abrupt stop, much like the trail of rusted metal shells stretching east and west as far as the eye could see. Nature was showing her power through it all. Cars, trucks, vans, and enormous vehicles pulling towering boxes behind them. Three rows in opposite directions. Every vehicle bumper to bumper with only weeds and saplings separating them now. It was a sea of desperation. I stepped closer toward the closest car. Four doors, no windows, and two skeletons picked over inside, the bones strewn over the seats, floor and console, even spilling into the back.

The other cars would likely be filled with the same. Mother said that when the virus hit, people tried to flee the great city beyond Blackwater to outrun the disease, but it was already too late for most of them. Most of them didn’t make it fifty miles.

I stepped back from the car and moved back up the hill into the trees. I smelled him before I saw him. “Roman.”

“Tage is a mess,” he started. “You just left him back there.”

He still didn’t know about Pierce. What had they told him?

“I’m fine.” The heart beneath the millstone on my chest shouted that I was a liar. Did the same show on my face?

“You’re not, but for the record, you didn’t do anything wrong, Porschia. You need to accept this or you’ll never find peace.” He didn’t know yet.

“Was acceptance instantaneous for you? Did you immediately fall in love with being in Frenzy, or being a night-walking creature that fed on your friends and family? Or did it take a while to sink in?”

He sighed, leaning back against a tree trunk and scrubbing his face with his hands. “It took years.”

“Then expect it to take me years, too. Allow me the same time to adjust.”

He nodded, looking down at me. “I have a feeling you won’t have the same luxury of time.”

I had the same feeling. Something big was going to happen. For years, I had no idea of what was going on around me. I lived in a bubble of fear, trying to avoid Mother’s hatred and sequestering myself from everyone in the Colony. I didn’t see the experimentation, the way the Elders truly ruled, or the way the night-walkers interacted with one another and with others in the Colony. I did what I was told. A lamb among lambs, surrounded by wolves. But there were larger predators than wolves to worry about and no one realized that beyond the forests and settlements beyond, there was a strange wind blowing. Dust was being stirred and I could feel the tiny stinging particles beginning to pepper my skin.

“Where is Tage, Saul, and my sister?”

“Mercedes is walking with the other humans, toward the end of the trail. Saul is across the mountain from us watching from that direction, and Tage is running toward the front to make sure we cover all angles.”

“That’s good.”
Mercedes must be miserable.
I’d seen how weak Roman felt when he changed, how he got sick almost immediately, how he almost died. I didn’t want that for her. We had to get her back to Blackwater quickly.

Descending into a valley, there was a strange metal structure with poles holding it up and a building beyond. Roman smiled, offering, “Gas station. It’s how they fueled the cars.”

Lettering on the building’s small sign had faded away to nothing, but I couldn’t help but stare at the vines and weeds and wonder what it must have been like to live during the time it was in use, to drive in one of the cars—maybe the sleek one in our backyard for which I was named—to blaze down the highway when it wasn’t filled with rust and trees and bone.

“I know you’re in pain, because of your brother.”

Roman sucked in a sharp breath. Some wounds were sharper than others. “The women drained him. There were bite marks and bruises all over him.”

I pursed my lips, holding back my confession.

He paced back and forth; looking to me and then back at the hill before us. Roman sat down hard on the ground and cried. His shoulders shook and the sound of heartbreak and anguish poured from his mouth. When the torrent cleared, he looked up at me, tracks of blood trailing down his face. “You know what I miss the most? I miss the good part of him. Something changed him. I don’t know if it was the Infection or the way desperation twisted his mind, but he wasn’t the same brother he was when we were young.” He gave a sad smile. “Though I guess I’m not exactly that brother, either. It’s the same with you and Mercedes. You each made decisions and chose your actions, and maybe you wouldn’t have done what she did to survive or maybe you would have. Maybe she wouldn’t have done what you just did back there. Maybe she would have. It’s just that life throws things at you so fast that you have to decide how to deal with them in the blink of an eye, and sometimes we choose right and sometimes we choose the wrong way of handling a thing. But it’s a split second decision; more instinct than deliberation, and those choices, those split second choices can completely alter our lives forever.”

“And the lives of everyone around us,” I finished for him.

He cleared his throat. “Do you regret killing those women? The slaves that did their bidding?”

“I do.” Lying was almost second nature to me now. I didn’t regret killing Lydia, Marta, Elise or the monsters who worked for them. But I regretted killing Pierce. In the moment, I thought it wouldn’t matter to me. Did Pierce deserve to live? Maybe not. But what right did I have to condemn him?