The Farm (34 page)

I stopped in front of Sebastian. He stared down at her, his expression torn between the hunger that had driven him from the van and the wash of Mel’s emotions.

I backhanded him across the cheek to get his attention. It was like slapping a brick wall, but he looked up at me.

“You have to save her.”

He blinked slowly. “Even if I bit her, it probably wouldn’t work. Didn’t he tell you, only one in a hundred turns. Maybe less. Chances of her having the gene—”

“You have to try! You want to anyway. You must want to drain her. So do it!”

“No. Even if she did have the gene, I don’t want to do it. The responsibility—”

“God damn you. You bite her now! You have to do it!” And in that instant, I would have said or done anything to convince him. And I knew the one thing that would. It wasn’t even a lie. “Don’t you get it? She’s your
abductura
. It isn’t me. It never was. It’s her. If you let her die, all of this has been for nothing. You have nothing without her.”

He just stared at me for a moment, but his gaze flickered and I knew he was piecing it together, just as I had back in the church with the Dean. All the times my “powers” had worked. Every damn one of them, Mel had been there. The fight outside the cafeteria. The Dean’s office. The things in the van. Even Carter. He hadn’t loved me because I wanted him to. He’d loved me because she wanted him for me.

And finally, the panic the Dean had felt. He’d been trapped in that room with her for hours before we’d arrived. It was why he’d gone so completely over the edge before we even got there. Because Mel was losing it and he’d caught the brunt of her meltdown.

Sebastian’s gaze came back to mine, his expression cold and resolved. His total lack of emotion matched my own rising panic. Mel had stopped transmitting.

“Then there’s no point. There are no vampire
abducturae
. That’s one of the qualities that the venom blanks out. Even if I could turn her now, there’d be no point. She wouldn’t be an
abductura
anymore. Just another vampire. Another damn mouth to feed.”

Sebastian’s voice held not the slightest drop of warmth or understanding. Not even a hint of compassion. He was implacable. Unswayable. His decision was made.

I crumpled to the ground. It was over. Everything I’d done to protect my sister, and I’d failed. She was dead.

Carter stepped right over me. I watched in numb shock as he grabbed Sebastian by the arms and shook him.

Sebastian must have still been in shock himself, because otherwise he wouldn’t have let Carter do that any more than he would have let me get away with slapping him.

Carter didn’t stop shaking him until the vampire looked up at him.

“You have to do this,” Carter demanded. “After all the things I’ve done for the cause. I’ve lied. I’ve killed. I’ve betrayed for you. All because you said it might make a difference. Now it’s your turn. I don’t care if you want to. I don’t care if you think it won’t work. And if it does work, I don’t even care that it might not make any difference to the resistance. You do this. You have to do this one thing.”

Sebastian just looked at him and asked in a perfectly calm voice, “Why?”

For an instant, Carter seemed taken aback. Then he let go of Sebastian’s arms and stepped back. “Because, damn it, we’re all in this together. This is our fight. All of ours. And you’ve stood on the sidelines, giving orders and making bargains, long enough. It’s time for you to sacrifice, too.”

My breath caught as I watched Sebastian, waiting to see if he’d knock Carter aside and just walk away or if the vampire would take orders from the human.

The wait was interminable. An eternity. And with every second, my sister’s brain was dying.

Then, slowly, as if this were an everyday occurrence, Sebastian circled my sister’s body and knelt down beside her across from me.

He looked at me over her corpse. “There is almost no chance of this working.”

“I know.” But any chance was better than none.

“And if it does, you will owe me more than you can possibly know.”

Before I could answer, Carter’s hand closed on my shoulder. “
I’ll
owe you.”

Sebastian smiled humorlessly. His fangs were fully extended; the sight chilled me. “You already do owe, my boy. You marked the wrong sister.”

Then Sebastian ducked his head. I don’t know what I expected. Him to bite her neck maybe. Or her wrist. Even her thigh.

But her heart was right there and that was what he sank his fangs into. There was the squelch of his teeth sinking into muscle. Then a horrible sucking noise that echoed in my ears.

Horrified, I scrambled back, crablike, on my hands and feet, but I couldn’t make myself stop looking. Stop searching for signs that it was working.

Sebastian ate and ate. His skin flushed. His own chest rose and fell with rapid exultation. He didn’t pause. Didn’t stop for breath. Maybe he didn’t even need to breathe.

Carter had said the change could happen even if the body was drained completely. It was all about that one gene. If she had it—if we had it—it would work no matter how much he drank. And he must have been starving, despite feeding the day before. I had no idea how long it had been since he’d fed before that.

The sun rose. Carter sank to the ground behind me. McKenna puked. Twice. And then finally retreated to the van and dissolved into tears. I nearly joined her. Surely if it was going to happen, it would have. But I couldn’t make myself leave. Not until I knew for sure.

Then, finally, he sank back on his heels. Her blood covered him. An expression of absolute bliss shuddered across his face. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. When his eyes flickered open, they looked hazy and drugged. So contently full he might have been a newborn baby.

If all human emotion was just a hormone response, then he’d gotten a potent dose of her emotion at death. Her absolute peace with her decision. We’d all been hit with it when she’d transmitted it, but he’d actually drunk it. He’d consumed her loving sacrifice.

After a moment, he fumbled for the shirt she’d taken off to attract the Tick’s attention. He scrubbed his face with the flannel.

I looked from Mel’s broken chest back to him. “Did it work?”

He blinked sleepily. “I have no idea. You check.”

He wasn’t directly responsible for killing my sister, but in that moment, I felt such a profound hatred for him he might as well have done it himself. Had there been any stakes left, I would have buried one in his heart.

“Damn you! Did it work?”

“Lily,” Carter gasped. “Look!”

I followed Carter’s gaze to my sister’s heart. Which twitched. And then beat. And beat again.

“You should close her ribs,” Sebastian murmured. “Straighten them if you can. Make it easier for her. To heal.”

I sank back on my heels, unable to move, but Carter followed Sebastian’s instructions. I had no idea how he did it. I couldn’t even listen to it. I fled at the first crunch of her bones lining back up. I puked out my guts behind the van and then stayed there, bawling, until Carter called to me.

It was fully light when I walked back around the van. The gaping wound in my sister’s chest was already healing. Her ribs rose and fell with gentle breathing. Her skin was just as pale as Sebastian’s had been when I’d first seen him. She looked like she’d been carved from wax. But she breathed. Her heart beat. She was alive or something like it.

Carter and Sebastian stood over her. Facing off about something.

“You need to leave,” Sebastian said when he saw me. The dreamy, drugged quality of his voice was gone.

“We’re not leaving her here with you,” I said automatically. “I know how you feel about making new vampires. It’s repugnant. You despise her already. If you think—”

“Let me clarify. You must leave. All of you. She’ll wake soon and when she does, she’ll need to eat—”

I swallowed my disgust and said, “Then I’ll feed her.”

“No, she’d devour you.” Sebastian pinned me with a stare. “Of course, you, my dear, would simply regenerate as a vampire and then our problems would be double. We know you carry the gene. But Carter and McKenna she would simply murder. None of you want that. Besides, there are plenty of fresh Ticks here. They are not tasty, but they will nourish her.”

I shuddered. Had there been anything in my gut at all, I would have emptied it again. As it was, I merely felt my knees go weak. Still I protested. “I can’t leave her alone with you.”

“And yet you must. Do not fear, my natural repulsion for her will not kick in for five or six moons. I’ll have time to train her. Perhaps in that time she can learn to feed judiciously. If that is the case, I’ll come and find you.”

I wanted to protest, but could find no words. For the first time, I felt the full impact of what I’d done. My sister was now a monster. I had saved her life and destroyed her all at once. It was entirely possible that I would never even be able to see her again.

Carter wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me against his chest. He seemed to know exactly what I was thinking, even though I could never understand it myself.

I don’t even remember climbing into the van, only that sitting on the bench beside me was Mel’s pink backpack. Inside were the last vestiges of the human she’d been. The jacket I’d done so much to procure. Her stuffed squirrel. The last piece of Dubble Bubble from Uncle Rodney’s. Her Slinky.

Before Carter could start the engine, I threw open the door and ran back to Sebastian. He stood over Mel’s body, his expression distant. He looked up as I approached. I clutched the bag to my chest for only a second before I pushed it into his hands.

I couldn’t stay to watch his response. I needed Mel to have this last remnant of her life. I needed her to have the things that had made her Mel.

Other than that, I don’t remember leaving my sister in the care of a monster. Leaving her to wake as a newly formed vampire, all alone, without me. With only Sebastian to offer an explanation of what I’d done. In our entire existence, we’d never been apart for longer than two weeks. Now we faced at least six months apart. And more than time and distance would separate us from now on. We had been identical all our lives, until the moment I’d had her turned into a vampire.

I don’t know if I was in shock or if I slept. At some point, I blinked and sat up, finding myself in the passenger seat of the van. I stretched and looked around. Carter drove. McKenna sat in the far back on the bench she’d once shared with Joe. Still and quiet. Shell-shocked and broken. She looked like I felt. Crushed by despair.

Carter looked over at me when I woke, but he didn’t speak. He seemed to know that I had no words left inside me. Nothing left but grief and pain. For a long time, he simply drove. We all seemed to need the silence. The time to mourn the members of our party who were no longer with us. It seemed impossible that it had been only a few days since we’d left the Farm. Less than a week since Carter had come back into my life. He now seemed like he was a part of me. Like an arm or a leg. Something I could function without if I absolutely had to, but I sure as hell didn’t want to have to try.

Just as the sky started to darken in the east, the highway turned away the setting sun and the Detroit skyline rose out of the darkness around us. Canada was literally right around the corner. Without Mel, getting there no longer seemed so important.

I must have sighed or made some other noise to give me away, because Carter turned and looked at me for the first time in hours.

“We’re almost there.”

“Yeah. I know.” I glanced to the back of the van and saw that McKenna had fallen asleep, her head propped up on the hoodie Joe’d left in the van. Her nose all but buried in the last thing she’d ever have that smelled like the guy she’d loved. I suddenly realized I had nothing of my sister. Nothing except my memories and the face we shared.

To distract myself from that thought, I shifted in my seat and looked at him. “So after Canada, what then?”

I was amazed at how calm my voice sounded. Only a trace of huskiness betrayed the way I’d cried for hours.

Carter glanced at me. “I’m staying with you in Canada.” His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “If you’ll let me.”

I was surprised. Not by his offer so much as my reaction to it. I would have thought I’d be too shell-shocked to feel anything. Instead, his words felt like a punch to a bone-deep bruise. “That’s not what I want.”

Canada had always been about keeping Mel safe. That fantasy was dead to me now.

His jaw tightened and he gave the steering wheel a little twist. “Then I’ll get you and McKenna settled. Somewhere safe. Then I’ll head back to base camp.”

“Why don’t
we
get her settled someplace safe and then head back to base camp together?”

His head whipped around and he stared at me. “You don’t mean that.”

I hadn’t intended to say it. Hadn’t really thought it through, but I did mean it. “Yeah. I do.”

“Lil, you said it yourself. You’re not an
abductura
.”

“I know. But neither are you. You don’t have any special gift, but you’ve been fighting this war. Hell, you’ve been leading the rebellion yourself and all you’ve had is the sheer dogged determination not to let them beat down humanity. If you can fight in this war, then so can I.”

“But it’s not what you want.”

I gritted my teeth, swallowing back my grief. No, it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted my sister back. I wanted her safe and by my side. I’d been so ready to die to keep her safe, it never occurred to me that she’d be ready to do the same for me.

“No,” I finally said. “It might not be what I wanted, but this is my fight now. I did so many things to keep Mel safe, and none of it did any good. I ran from the fight, but the fight chased me down and then beat me into the ground. I’m not running anymore.”

We rode in silence for a few more minutes. It took me that long to realize he might misinterpret my words. “Carter, about me going with you . . . that’s not about us.” He shot me a glance and suddenly I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “I mean, I don’t expect . .
 
.”