The Lair (15 page)

His hand twitched, like maybe he was about to reach for her, but then he dropped it back to his side.

“McKenna isn’t safe here. And you’re right, we can’t make her stay. How do you think people will react if she bolts?”

Lily hadn’t thought of that yet. If McKenna made a run for it, other people would panic, too. They’d all want to go. It all came back to that house of cards. Yesterday was the earthquake that shook the foundation. McKenna bolting would be the tornado that knocked down the remains.

He dipped his head and kept talking, his voice low pitched and fervent. “But if you go with her, if Ely goes, if it really looks like a scouting mission, then it’s better, right?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” she answered honestly. She couldn’t even think through this logically, because her mind was reeling and her emotions were raw. Carter was her protector. Her anchor. And now he was getting rid of her.

“You could go and be back in just a few days. If you find sanctuary in Canada, you could just stay there. Ely would come back for the rest of us.” Carter sent a look down the hall to Ely. “He’ll keep you safe. He’s the best of the best.”

“Do you trust him?”

Carter looked across the room at where Ely leaned insolently against the wall. “I do. I fought beside him at the school. He’s tough and he’s strong. The fact that he’s lived on his own this long means he knows what he’s doing out there. And Ely, he’s”—Carter broke off and rubbed his hand across the back of his neck—“he’s honorable. If that makes sense. If anyone can keep you safe, he can.”

She looked down the hall to where Ely stood, looking just as arrogant as he had a minute ago. Carter was really going to do this? He was really going to send her off with another guy to go looking for sanctuary in Canada?

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something going on that she didn’t understand. That more was at stake here than just McKenna wanting to leave. More even than them breaking up yesterday. But maybe this was just him distancing himself emotionally from her.

She grabbed Carter’s arm and led him farther down the hall, away from Ely. “This is really what you want? You want me to go?”

She held her breath, waiting for his answer. He glanced at Ely and then his gaze flickered to the room where the mysterious map was spread out on the desk.

Finally he nodded. “Yes. This is what I want. There is bad shit about to go down. I can’t take care of you here.”

“You don’t need to—”

He grabbed her arms, like he was going to shake her, but then he quickly let go and stepped back. “Don’t tell me it’s not my job to take care of you. Don’t say that, because it doesn’t matter. As long as you’re here, it’s my job. As long as you’re here, I’m going to care about whether or not you’re hurt or exposed to the virus or whatever. I can’t not care about that.”

“I’m not asking you not to care. You think I don’t care whether or not you’re hurt? We all have to care about each other. But that doesn’t mean wrapping people up in bubble wrap and sending them away.”

“I’m not wrapping you in bubble wrap.”

“Then trust me to take care of myself!”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that if you fail and you’re exposed to the Tick virus, then I’m the one who has to deal with the consequences. You’ve asked me to kill you if you get exposed. Have you thought about that? About what it would do to me to have to do that? Because I have. Because after what I did yesterday, after I had to deal with all those bodies, I can tell you right now, I can’t do it.”

The raw anguish in his voice tore at her, but it didn’t convince her that this new plan was the right thing, either. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I have the gene and I’m sorry that you’re in this position, but this isn’t my fault. If you don’t want to dig my grave, then don’t do it, but—”

“Dig your grave?” he asked, shaking his head. “Lily, what is it you think we do with bodies that have been exposed?”

“I—” She broke off, thinking. Thinking hard. “I don’t know.” In all the time she’d been here, no one had talked about it. From the revulsion that flickered across Carter’s expression, she could guess it was something horrible. “What do you do to the bodies?”

Carter turned, making his expression impossible to read. “It doesn’t matter.”

In other words, he was trying to protect her. Her mind raced along the path he wouldn’t take her down. “You’d have to make sure the bodies wouldn’t regenerate.” Sebastian had said something about this once, after they’d escaped The Farm. Something about how a stake through the heart would slow them down but to really stop them— “You cut off their heads.”

She sagged against the wall, rubbing her hand over her forehead.

“Jesus, Carter.” She knew he was tough. She knew he was strong and determined. Dedicated to this cause like no one else. But, Jesus, that’s what he had to do? Correction: that’s what he’d been doing. Yesterday.

And that’s what she’d asked him to do to her.

Was it any wonder he didn’t want her to go outside? Any wonder he wanted to send her as far away as he could?

Now that she knew, now that she’d thought it through, she could never ask him to do that.

Leaving Carter would nearly kill her. It would . . . No. She drew in a shuddering breath.

She had watched her sister’s death. This was nothing compared to that. If she could live through that, if she could walk away from the sister she loved more than her own life, then she could do this.

She shut down all her emotions. If she was going to cry, she’d do it later. No way would she beg Carter not to send her away. She’d get through this the same way she’d gotten through everything since the Before. With logic and sheer determination.

“Okay,” she said, pushing herself away from the wall. “The three of us will go together.”

She didn’t particularly like Ely, and she wasn’t entirely sure she trusted him. On the other hand, he could drive and he could fight. And if Carter trusted him, then she could trust him to do what needed to be done. If it ever came to that.

If everything went as planned, by the end of the week McKenna could be tucked away in some Canadian hospital and Lily could be returning to Base Camp to guide everyone else to safety up north. Not a bad bargain.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Mel

Vampires are not like in the movies. But I think I knew that, too. If someone tells my story someday, will they get it as wrong? No number of wrongs makes a right, but the more opinions you get, the closer you can triangulate the truth.

This truth I do know—if it is my emotions that make me human, then I am more human now than I ever was in life. Sometimes I stare at the remnants of the life I once had, awash in my loss. My pink backpack, my stuffed squirrels, my Slinky. I still possess these things but they no longer bring me peace.

I never knew anger until now. It is as keen and sharp as my hunger, and neither has been slaked by blood.

If Sebastian would let me hunt I wouldn’t feel so twitchy, but he won’t even let me out of the car.

There must be more power in words than I ever knew, because my word has bound me as tight as his will. Or maybe it is just fear. I can’t forget what happened in that church parking lot. That I was near death, but that it was him who killed me, before he brought me back. Until I’m ready to kill him myself, I won’t disobey.

Still, I won’t wolf-cub to his alpha. Not entirely.

We are at the kitchen table in an empty house in a city whose name I don’t know. I like this house though, because it smells like cinnamon and moth balls, like my Nanna’s house used to.

Only Sebastian’s presence destroys the illusion.

“Soon you can hunt for yourself, Kitten,” he says one morning when he gets home. He hunts each night while I prowl the empty house mourning my music and the girl I once was.

I say nothing, but keep glugging the blood he’s brought me in a plastic cup.

“You will need to be careful. The behavior of the Ticks is changing. They used to stay close to the Farms, to their food source. Now they wander farther astray. If they caught you alone . . .”

His voice trails off. I know what he’s saying.

If they caught me alone, they might kill me. If they didn’t, I would kill them. A tit for tat that’s worse than tic-tac-toe. Another zero-sum game.

Still, I can’t bring myself to admit he’s right. So I say nothing. Stillness and nothing are what I do best these days.

Finally, he slams his hand down on the table. “Snap out of it, Melanie, stop pouting. It’s been six weeks.”

Six weeks? I’m shocked, because it doesn’t feel that long.

I hide it behind a shrug.

“I don’t remember the last time you spoke. Snap out of it.”

I open my mouth and when I speak my voice sounds unused. “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.”

His lips twitch like maybe he’s amused, but I can’t hear it in his voice. “Nice try, Melanie. But I don’t buy it.”

He’s right, of course. The rhymes don’t come easily anymore. I have to work to find those words. That, too, has been stolen from me, along with my life and my death.

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” I grumble.

“You don’t need to do that anymore,” he says, his voice as toneless as my ears. “That’s not who you are.”

I leap up from the table. I can’t listen to him anymore. I can’t hear him past the fury blaring in my ears. He stands, just watching me.

“That’s who you were,” he says calmly, “when you were human. That’s not who you are anymore.”

I whirl back toward him. My voice comes out drenched in my fury. “That is who I’ll
always
be!”

Instead of answering, he just stares at me. I hate the look in his eyes as much as I hate him.

Because I know he’s right. I can feel it in my bones. In my every cell. I’m not Mel anymore. Not that human girl. Not that autistic girl. Not that living, breathing, music-savant, indigo girl. I’m not her.

She died in that parking lot. I have her memories. I have part of her body, but I have very little else from her. My stomach. My taste buds. My ears. My mind. They are all different. Unique. Inhuman.

Even my anger is my own.

She was never this angry.

Pouty, difficult, temper-tantrum throwing. Yes. Resentful. Yes. Indignant, prickly, fearful. Yes.

But this burning anger? This all-consuming fury? These are all Melanie. They are not what I want. I want hope and music and my sister. Instead I have this.

Perhaps this anger is what makes me a vampire. Maybe this fuels my thirst. Makes me a killer.

I still can’t imagine killing another human to feed myself, but maybe the anger is what would push me over the edge. Maybe all vampires are this angry.

“Listen to yourself,” Sebastian says, his voice as seductive as the gleaming coils of a Slinky. “Your rhymes are so slow and labored now, I can practically hear you struggling to come up with them. But when you’re too angry to think before you speak that’s not what comes out at all.”

“I’m always angry.”

He stands and walks over to me. “Of course you are. No one likes being helpless. No one likes having a sacrifice like the one you made for your sister thrown back in her face.”

He runs a hand up and down my arm in a gesture that I guess is supposed to be soothing, but I can’t stop looking at his hand. It’s weird being touched. I used to hate being touched. By anyone. Now, I haven’t been touched since that first day. The sensation is pleasant. Not needle pricks, like how being touched used to feel.

Still, I don’t like
him
touching me. It’s disingenuous. He doesn’t want to touch me. Vampires, by nature, aren’t touchers. There’s no snuggling in vampirism. I wrench my arm out from under his hand and flick my hand to backslap him.

He grabs my wrist before my hand makes contact, a smile oozing across his face.

“Very good,” he murmurs.

I don’t know what surprises me more: the fact that I tried to slap him or that he anticipated it. That it pleased him.

I jerk my hand away and back up. I clasp my arm close to my body, shielding it from his touch with my other arm. “What do you want?”

“I want you to snap out of it. To be yourself. As you are, not this ridiculous shadow of yourself.”

Again the hatred boils inside of me. “There’s nothing ridiculous about who I was.”

“The ridiculous thing is that you’re still pretending to be her. She’s dead. Why are you fighting me so hard on this?”

“I’m not fighting you. I’m fighting
this
.”

“Why?” he demanded. “Why are you fighting what you’ve become?”

I just stare at him blankly, unable—or maybe unwilling—to force this into words.

“At the risk of overstating this, there are people who would give anything to have the kind of power you refuse to even acknowledge you have. You should be ecstatic to—”

“Why? Why should
I
be ecstatic? Because of what I was before? Because I was autistic? Turn the poor autistic girl, give her the ability to talk, and she’ll be over the moon.”

Sebastian rocks back. “Ah. I see.”

His knowing look annoys me and I want to stop talking, to stop giving him the satisfaction, but now that I’ve started, I can’t stop. The words are pouring out of me. “You think I should be grateful, just because I was autistic? That I should be thrilled with who I am now? But I’m not. Because I was fine before. That girl I was? She was just fine.”

“And if you accept who you are now, that would mean admitting she, that girl you were, wasn’t okay.”

“I
was
okay,” I say firmly

“I knew you then, when you were on the Farm. I saw how frustrated you were when people didn’t listen to you. When they ignored you. Were you really okay then?”

“I was fine,” I say again stubbornly.

“Yes, you were. You were smart and observant. You fought harder than most humans do. There’s nothing wrong with who you were. But that’s not who you’ve
always
been, is it?”

He doesn’t wait for me to answer, which is okay, because I have nothing to say.