I Am Forever (What Kills Me) (32 page)

Darkness.

I blinked grit out of my eyes and spat sand from my mouth. I took mental stock of my parts. Wiggled my toes and fingers. Nothing hurt, but I couldn’t move. My legs were pinned under boulders.

“Zee!”

“My lady!”

I heard Lucas and San’s muffled voices and their hands digging through rock.

“I’m here,” I called back. “I’m okay.”

A chunk of stone shifted and a sliver of moonlight sliced through the black. Someone’s fingers wormed into the crack and pulled the rock away to reveal Lucas’s frantic face.

“Zee, are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m stuck.”

They moved another chunk. I hammered the piece covering my lower half and it broke, freeing me. Lucas helped me to my feet. He spread his hands over my cheeks and brushed my lips with his thumb. “You’re okay,” he whispered, more to himself.

San heaved a massive slab to the side and uncovered Samira. She was trying to get up, her hands struggling to push her body off the ground, her legs jerking and twisted in unnatural angles. She looked like a squashed spider still twitching with life.

Lucas pulled me back from her, and it infuriated me that he might still be trying to protect his ex-girlfriend.

San grabbed Samira’s ankle and dragged her from the rubble. “Hey, this one’s got purple hair,” he said, and then with understanding, “Oh, this one’s got
purple hair
...”

“That’s Samira,” I said, “and she took my family.”

Samira flopped onto her back. Her skin was caked with dust. The wire cut across her neck had healed, but blood ran from her hairline and into her right eye. She hacked and spat a glob of blood onto the snow.

“Hello my dears,” she rasped.

“What the hell have you done with my family?”

With a grunt she pressed down on her abdomen, and I heard her ribs clack back into place. “I must say, Axelia, you’re terrifying as the Divine.”

“How could you do this? I thought we were on the same side.”

“No, love, you’re on the wrong side.”

I made a move for her and Lucas grabbed my arm. “If you don’t tell me what you’ve done to my mom and dad in the next ten seconds, I’m going to peel the skin off your nasty, back-stabbing face and shove it down your throat.”

“I’d like to see that,” San said.

“Axelia,” Samira said, “your family is safe.”

“If you’re lying to me—”

“I’m not lying.”

We’ll see about that.
I shook Lucas off and marched over to her. She put a feeble hand up. “Wait,” she said.

I straddled her and put a hand around her neck. She gasped.

When I looked into her, the images flicked fast. I realized then that I controlled how much I saw and how deep I delved. In my fury I was asking too much of her.

What happened to my family?

Samira was there when the van doors opened. My mother and sister had squirmed their way into the corner of the vehicle and were huddled together, huffing through the bags on their heads. My father had positioned himself protectively in front of them. Samira reached in and grabbed my father. “Shh, it’s okay. You’re going to be okay,” I heard her say. She dragged my father through an empty underground parking garage, into a dank stairwell, and down a hall. I didn’t recognize the halls—just white with black doors on either side. “Just do as we say and you’ll be home with your family soon enough,” she had said.

Disgusted, I dropped Samira. She collapsed, choking. Tears filmed her eyes, but she met my gaze as I hovered over her.

“We don’t have much time,” I told her. “I don’t care why you took them. I only want them back. You’re going to tell me where they are. That building with the underground garage—where is it?”

“How did you—?”

“Tell me where it is.”

“I came here to give you what you want. I came here to bring you to them.”

Lucas stepped in. “What have you done, Samira?” Hurt tainted his voice.

“I’m doing what I’m told,” she said, stumbling as she stood.

“Izo told you to do this?” he said. I assumed Izo was her mate.

“He has a plan and I am doing my part.” She sounded like a robot.

“You’re a pawn,” I retorted.

She dropped her chin and half smiled. “Who is the pawn, Axelia?”

I grabbed her arm and walked her over the rubble. “I’m sick of this,” I said through my teeth. “Take me to my family.”

“As you wish.”

Izo had a white wave of hair. The sides of his head were shaved. He had stern, thick eyebrows and a chiseled face with sunken cheeks that made him look angry, even when he smiled. He was standing on a subway platform, a guitar case on his back, the cuffs of his leather jacket rolled up. The neck on his loose black T-shirt hung low, and he was wearing a necklace that resembled barbed wire.

The station smelled of urine. The posters behind him were in French. As the train pulled in, it blew his musky scent over. He kissed his two fingers—the black polish on his nails was fading and looked like little islands—and walked onto the train.

This memory. This is the last time that Samira saw Izo. This is when he told her to go to Winnipeg to get my family.

As Lucas drove Samira’s jeep, I sat with her in the back seat and probed her memories. I quieted my mind so the images would be clearer.

“How romantic,” she had said when I took her wrist. “But contrary to what Lucas may have told you, I don’t put out for just anyone.”

“Shut up,” I said. “I’m just making sure that you don’t run away.”

She hadn’t lied about anything.

Izo told her that they had to kidnap my family. He didn’t mention the attack on the palace. The photo of my sister that I had seen in the waiter’s mind had been circulated among the rebels to identify her, in case she wasn’t at home with my parents, in case they had to, for example, grab her from school. The rebels must have thought that they’d snatch me from the party and reunite me with my family. Or use their kidnapping against me in some way. But what they were after, Samira didn’t know.

At least Samira had said, “We aren’t going to hurt the humans, are we?”

“No,” Izo had replied.

Samira worried about him. Izo had only recently been promoted in the ranks. Many leaders had died in Taren’s raids. Izo’s new position had changed him. Made him distant. Secretive. And Izo and Samira were no longer on the periphery. They were in the action. I knew this because Samira had confided in a fellow rebel, who told her not to worry.

The waiter appeared briefly in her memory bank, in a video chat. He was talking to Izo, apparently giving him orders. I wondered what had happened to him. I wanted to see him again, so I could kill him.

Samira’s memories also proved to me that she had kept my family safe. They were still tied up, left on chairs in an empty room. In darkness she had briefly removed the bags on their heads to feed them water. To hear them begging to be let go was soul-destroying. But to my relief my sister told Samira about her diabetes and Samira sent another rebel for insulin.
Thank God.
Samira had given her a shot that evening.

I released Samira’s arm and she tucked it under her jacket. I could see that she was rubbing her wrist.

“How do you know you’re doing the right thing?” I said to her. “He didn’t even tell you what the ultimate plan was.”

“I know what the plan is,” she lied. Another rebel told her earlier in the night that “something was going down.” When she called Izo on his cell phone, asking for details, he said that the Divine was in town and that I would be looking for my loved ones. “Go get her,” he told her.

“Regardless,” Samira said, “if this helps bring down the Monarchy, then I’m all in.”

“At the expense of your friends?” Lucas said.

“This has nothing to do with you,” she said. “You can stop the car and leave at any point.”

“If it has to do with Zee, then it has everything to do with me,” he said.

“Ha! Mere months ago, you were calling me, desperate to get away from the Monarchy. And now you’re in bed with the enemy.”

“Zee’s not your enemy.”

“The Divine is the embodiment of the Monarchy.” Her voice was saturated with bitterness and disdain.

“Sam,” he said. It irritated me to hear him call her that. “You’re more than a cause.”

“Lucas. This is the same argument we had when I broke up with you. The cause is everything. Without it we have no meaning. You’re content to let the Monarchy dictate how we should live. They rob us of our freedom, our sense of selves. You’re a drone. You’re a robot. You’re dead.”

“We are dead,” San said.

“No, vampire. Under the Monarchy, you are truly dead. What are you, anyway? A soldier? A bodyguard? I was turned to be a custodian of vampire artifacts. A glorified cleaning lady. And nothing else. Forever. I did what I was told. I loved who they told me to love. I went where they told me to go. That is not a life. But I have a life now.”

“And you’re using this life to hurt those you care about,” I said. “How do you know this isn’t a trap? What are they going to do to us when we arrive? Do you even know? Do you care?”

She grew somber at my accusations. She didn’t know what was to become of us. She met Lucas’s eyes in the rearview mirror. At least she did care about him. But maybe not enough.

“I’m doing the right thing,” she said.

San turned back to look at her. “You keep telling yourself that.”

“I’ve seen what the rebels have done,” I said. “They torture and kill innocent vampires.”

“A few need to suffer so that the masses can be freed,” she replied. “The Monarchy tortures and kills its own ‘children’ every day.”

“You don’t have to do this, Samira,” I said. “You’re good. You’re not the villain here.”

She cocked her head and gave me the most curious look. “Silly girl. Don’t you realize? You, Axelia, are the villain in this story. You have all the power and you’re using it wrong.”

I can’t win. I was the bad guy before I was named the Divine. Now Uther says I’m the savior, yet Samira says I’m still the bad guy.

“I’m just trying to protect everyone,” I said.

“You’re protecting the wrong vampires. You will see. I swear it.”

Samira turned away from me, rested her head against the pane, and blew a puff of air against the glass. Her breath added no fog. She was as cold as ice.

When we arrived at a nondescript, low-rise brown brick building on the edge of the city, Samira told us to drive down an unlit ramp and into an underground parking garage.

She wouldn’t make eye contact with any of us, which worried me. Within twenty minutes she had gone from hostile to distant.

As we crossed the garage, I grabbed her sleeve. “If this is a trap, you’re going to be sorry.”

“I’m already sorry,” she replied, ripping her arm from me.

She pulled open an orange door to reveal a bank of elevators. She glanced at a camera hanging from the ceiling and pushed the “up” button.

We stepped inside an elevator. My reflection in the mirrored walls startled me. The dirt and blood had dried all over me to create a stony crust. Only my eyes glowed like lit embers against my dusty charcoal skin. I looked neither human nor vampire.