by D. Laine
I wasn’t convinced—not yet—but I did trust Jake. Because Anderson wasn’t here right now, and I really wanted to know what had happened, I nodded for Jake to continue.
“We found you near the Preppers’ camp, under the control of a Watcher,” Jake continued. “And you were right earlier. I did shoot you. With one of these.” He held up the bullet between his fingers. “They’re filled with demon blood. That’s what makes them unique.”
“Demon blood?” I repeated, unsure I had heard him correctly.
Jake nodded. “It forces the Watcher out of the body, like an exorcism. Your Watcher is gone. You’re just . . . you again.”
My Watcher was gone. Jake had told me that a few times already, and it was still difficult for me to wrap my head around. I had been under its control. For how long, I didn’t know. I barely remembered it, and what I did remember came to me in disjointed and unclear flashes. I rolled my head to stare at the ceiling, trying to remember. The muscles in my back pulled and tightened, reminding me of the wound left behind. It was all that remained of my encounter.
“And Lucifer?” I asked tentatively.
“Gone.”
I blew out a relieved breath. Though I had suspected, or had known on a deep level, the details of that were particularly blurry. Bits and pieces came back to me now, when I concentrated hard enough. Most were not pleasant. Many were downright terrifying.
“The survivors in the north are fighting against the Watchers there,” Jake explained. “Little by little, we’re gaining ground. The Watchers are leaving. Tag numbers are decreasing. The demons that got through the gate are being hunted down. The worst is over.”
I flashed him a grin. “So we did it?”
“You did it, man. You took down Lucifer, just like you always bragged that you would.”
“I had some help,” I murmured. “I think.”
While most of my battle with Lucifer remained a big blur, I remembered Thea. She had been there. She had speared those winged demons like a beautiful goddess of death. Lucifer had been just as surprised as I had been to see her there. Her presence had led to his downfall. All I had to do was finish him off, and give him a push. And then . . .
The events that occurred after Lucifer’s fall came rushing back. They were choppy and hazy at best, but what I did see was not something I ever wanted to see again.
I shot up, nearly leaping off the cot. This time, pure terror and adrenaline numbed the pain in my back. Jake tried to force me down, but I somehow found the strength to fight him off.
“Where is she?” I demanded.
“Easy, Dylan,” Jake coaxed. “Calm down, and I will tell you everything.”
“Is she okay?” My voice sounded distant, like someone else spoke the words and I was merely a bystander.
“She’s fine.” He pressed on my shoulders. “Lie down. You were shot, and needed surgery. It’s only been two days. You’re going to tear your stitches open.”
“I don’t care. I need to see her.” I swatted at his hands. Then a terrifying thought occurred to me. What if she didn’t want to see me?
I stared at my hands, not seeing them as they were now, but where they had been forty-eight hours ago—around Thea’s neck. They had nearly killed her. I had nearly killed her. No wonder she wasn’t here right now. I wouldn’t blame her if she never wanted to see me again.
Suddenly, I lost the energy to sit and dropped to the cot with a thud. I didn’t even feel it.
“You should have killed me for what I did, Jake.”
His voice was too calm. Too understanding. “It wasn’t you.”
That didn’t make it right. I still had to live with the knowledge of what my hands had done. She had to live with the memory of what I put her through. That was assuming she really was okay, and Jake wasn’t lying to me right now.
I shifted to look at him. For the first time since I woke up in here, I noticed the dark circles under his eyes. They looked puffy, bloodshot. He promptly shifted his gaze, breaking eye contact, but not before I recognized the signs of a man who had recently struggled with his emotions.
“You’re not lying to me, are you?”
“What?” His eyes shifted to me, away again. “No. Of course not.”
I swallowed hard. “Jake?”
He looked at me, held my gaze. “Thea is fine. She’s sleeping in the next room. It’s the middle of the night. Everyone is asleep.”
My eyes darted to the partition behind him. I had never had the little boy fantasy of being like Superman until now. If only I had X-ray vision. Then I would know, without a doubt, that Thea was okay and Jake wasn’t lying to me.
I suspected that he was keeping something from me, but I didn’t know what. Or how bad it would break me.
Maybe he was under orders to keep me far away from Thea, and he didn’t know how to tell me. He was probably worried about how I would react. I wanted to tell him I wouldn’t do anything stupid. I would bow out like a man, because I understood. I had tried to kill her.
His next words shouldn’t have filled me with such hopeful expectation as they did. “Do you want me to get her?”
“Nah. She’s sleeping. You should let her sleep.” I tried to wave him off. I knew I failed miserably when Jake stood.
“She’ll be pissed if I don’t wake her,” he told me. “She gave me specific instructions, and quite honestly, I’m a little scared to see what might happen if I don’t follow through.”
“Wait,” I called out to him before he reached the partition. “What are you talking about?”
“She told me to get her when you woke up,” he explained. “I’ll have hell to pay if I don’t.”
I blinked, slowly processing his words. “She wants to see me?”
“Of course.”
“She doesn’t hate me?”
“No, Dylan. She doesn’t hate you.” He held up a finger. “Hold on.”
He slid back the partition and disappeared. Hope merged with eager anticipation when I heard his hushed voice a few yards away, and knew that he was speaking to Thea. I listened intently to the rustling of fabric, then the padding of approaching footsteps. My heart hammered almost painfully in my chest.
She stepped into the faint light, and my pulse stuttered at the sight of her. My chest heaved from my sudden struggle to breath as my gaze traveled over the marks on her neck.
My eyes darted away, but not soon enough. The image of what I had done would be forever burned into my memory. I stared at the ceiling, simply remembering the steps of breathing. In. Out. Repeat.
Then the view above me started to blur, and I realized I was seconds from cracking. Fuck. Assassins didn’t crack. They didn’t cry.
I didn’t cry.
Was I technically still an assassin?
It didn’t matter. I never cried, and I wasn’t about to start.
Then she was there, wrapping her arms around me and sliding onto the cot beside me, whispering in my ear and telling me that it was okay, over and over. If I could have spoken without cracking, I would have told her it wasn’t okay. None of it was okay.
I still couldn’t look at her, but she made me. She put her fingers on my face to make me look at her, and she told me the exact same thing Jake had told me.
“It wasn’t you, Dylan. I know that.”
That didn’t make it any better. “I remember some of it.”
She nodded like she already knew that. “You were there, fighting for control. You didn’t do this.” Her fingers traced the shadows marking her neck.
“If Jake hadn’t—”
She stopped my next words by pressing her lips to mine. “But he did. I’m okay, and it’s all over. We survived it.”
I nodded numbly, slowly accepting her words. That part was sort of amazing.
Against all odds, we had survived. The joy of our victory was dulled only by the loss of Maria and Marcus along the way . . . and Ewing, if I wanted to include him. He had duped us every step of our journey, but he had
been a part of our group. While I wouldn’t mourn his loss, I suspected a few others already were. Particularly one.
It dawned on me then that I didn’t sense Sadie. Considering she had recently discovered who her boyfriend had been, I expected to feel something from her, even if she was asleep. She wasn’t as good as she thought she was at blocking me out. Most of the time, I wished she had learned to do it better. But now?
Now, I got nothing. Not a damn thing. It was as if she wasn’t even there.
I sucked in a sharp breath. “Where’s Sadie?”
Thea’s shoulders tensed. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to. I knew. On a deep, cellular level, I knew. When Thea leaned above me, the truth on her lips, I prepared for the worst. The words still hurt.
“Sadie’s gone,” Thea told me. “She sacrificed herself to shut the gate. She wanted me to tell you that it was okay, that she was okay, and that she loved you.”
The lump in my throat wouldn’t let me form words—not that I had any worth saying at the moment—so I merely nodded. The numbness wouldn’t let me do much more than that.
“What she did saved us all,” Thea continued softly. “She died a hero.”
I could have asked for details, like what had happened after I freed them and left them on the top of that hill. How had Sadie found herself in that situation, how had she managed to do it, and why had she chosen to do it? I didn’t ask, because I already knew the answers. Like the rest of my memories from my time under Watcher control, the truth was buried . . . but there.
She had done it because of me. Because of our connection. Because I had been possessed by a Watcher, and she had access to my power. She had died because of me.
Thea seemed to know exactly the direction my thoughts had drifted. She pinched my chin between her fingers, forcing me to look at her, and said, “No. It wasn’t like that. She wanted to do it. I think maybe because of Ewing? Maybe she thought she had something to prove? She wasn’t forced, by you or anyone.”
“But she wouldn’t have been able to do it if she hadn’t been connected to the Watchers. I gave her that power, and she died for it.”
“She sacrificed herself so that the rest of us could live,” Thea amended. “She knew what she was doing, and she was okay with it. She told me so.”
Though Thea’s words helped me to understand Sadie’s mindset, nothing repaired the gaping hole left behind by the loss of my sister. My twin. My other half. I doubted I would ever get over it, but I had to trudge forward, make every day worthy of her sacrifice, and give her reasons to be proud of me.
Thea and I talked for hours after that. About Sadie. About us. Reminiscing about the easier days numbed the pain, but exhaustion lurked on the horizon, casting a shadow on our laughter. Thea succumbed first, leaving me with nothing but my thoughts and memories.
Good thoughts. Good memories, from before everything went bad. I immersed myself in the carefree days of my youth, when my sister annoyed me on a daily basis. . . but I realized it was only because I loved her so damn much.
I stared at the ceiling as a single drop of wetness leaked from the corner of my eye. The unfamiliar sensation slid down my cheek and past my ear before it vanished into oblivion. Long after it was gone, I felt the cool, wet trail it had taken, reminding me of what it symbolized. I felt it until the sandman finally took mercy on me.
I ROSE WITH THE SUN, though the sun rose a hell of a lot faster than I did. Having a bullet hole between the shoulder blades hurt worse than I thought it would. By the time I swung my legs over the side of the cot in a half-assed seated position, I was sweating and panting like a two-pack-a-day smoker.
Thea showed up a few minutes later to help me—thank fuck. She served as more than a physical support to lean on while I attempted to function as a human again. Her presence lightened the heaviness in my chest that I had woken with. I realized it would take more than twelve hours to get to the point I didn’t think about Sadie every five seconds, but I eagerly awaited that day.
For the time being, Thea provided me with a damn good distraction. More than just her presence. She offered me answers, which was good because I had a lot of questions.
Of course, she insisted that I get dressed first. I didn’t complain since she had to help me, and I took the opportunity to get a little inappropriate. No doubt the cocktail of painkillers Doc shot into my ass cheek thirty minutes ago had given me an even looser tongue than usual.
“You ever think about being a nurse?” I slurred as she tugged my jeans up over my hips.
“No. Why?”
“Hmm.” I stared at her fingers while they pulled my zipper up, and wished they were pulling it down instead. “Because you would make a good one.”
Though my upper back was screwed up from the bullet hole my best friend had put there, I quickly discovered that everything from the waist down was in working order. The aching there was of an entirely different kind. The throbbing result was also impossible to hide.
Thea’s hands froze over the snap of my pants. She glanced up at me, eyes wide. “You’re kidding, right?”
“What?” I shrugged. “You’re touching me.”
She laughed. “That’s all it takes?”
"Oh, come on. You've never had the patient with the hot nurse fantasy?” I nodded enthusiastically. “I have. It's a good one. I think we can do it justice.”
“Jesus, Dylan.” She groaned. “You were shot. You had surgery, performed by a man who I think used to sell cars for a living, with instruments used to spay and neuter small animals, and you’re thinking about sex?”
“I’m always thinking about sex.” I flashed her my patented grin. It didn’t work.
“You are also so very high.” She shook head, and finished buttoning my pants.
“I feel good,” I argued automatically before relenting. “Maybe I’m a little high, but it still sounds like a good idea to me.”
I glimpsed the trace of a grin on her lips. “Take it up with Doc, because I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be doing anything strenuous for a few weeks.”
“A few weeks? Oh, hell no. I’m never going to make it. Once I can move, we’re going to replay this scenario—only with the clothes coming off.”
The partition snapped open behind me. “That’s nice. I really wanted to hear that.”
“Jake.” I tipped my chin over my shoulder. “Impeccable timing, as always.”
“I brought someone I figured you would want to talk to,” he told me.
Right. Because I was supposed to be getting some answers this morning. At that reminder, I whipped around. Well, I tried to. It probably looked more like a hobble, and I was forced to hold on to the cot for balance. Seeing Lieutenant Anderson, I instantly sobered.
He stood at the entrance beside Jake, a thin smile on his face as he looked from Thea to me. “The man of the hour.”
Anderson nodded at me, and I didn’t know how to respond. Would it be wrong to demand he just start talking? Because that was all I really wanted him to do. I didn’t need meaningless chit-chat.
“You have questions,” he said, walking farther into the room. “I will do my best to answer them.”
I glanced at Thea, then Jake. “They already told me some . . .”
Mostly, that the Dugway Proving Grounds organization had known about us, and what we were, for a long time. Apparently, not everyone had been fooled by the agency’s cover stories. Shortly after they learned about Spence’s true identity and motives, they began a counter-movement. Their focus was to identify and locate all vessels created by the Watchers to keep them from being used by the agency. They began studying the enemy, took blood, and ultimately found a way to stop them through experimentation. Dugway came up with the idea of using demon blood against the Watchers. Dugway found Calvin and offered him a way out. Dugway organized the Preppers from the vessels they had “rescued.”
Which meant the authorities at Dugway had also murdered my parents.
Jake
and Thea had insisted that Anderson explain the rest to me. So that was what I asked him to do now. Explain it. Because someone needed to be held accountable, and I needed to know who that someone was.
“My commander was a ruthless son of a bitch,” Anderson started. “Commander Blythe was his name. He served in the Army for twenty years before this assignment crossed his desk. He was promised a position with the DoD, an easy retirement, the works. He was willing to do anything to see it through. That included the murder of unsuspecting, innocent people.”
I squared my shoulders, not happy with that explanation. “No one knew what he was orchestrating? No one thought to oversee his operations?”
“I wouldn’t say no one knew.” Anderson shook his head. “But he was also it. Everything was covert, and no one in the public eye wanted to know the details. They let him do what he saw fit.”
“They let him run black operations?”
“Worse, I’m afraid. When entire families are murdered in their beds simply for being born with a specific gene that had been passed down to their children . . .” Anderson broke off with a sharp shake of his head. “The government looked the other way.”
“So no one tried to stop him,” I concluded.
“There were some of us that didn’t agree with Blythe’s tactics. We just didn’t know how to stop it. Not with the kind of power he had been given.”
Thea had drifted closer to Jake while Anderson spoke, and I nodded in their direction. “Their parents? They didn’t die in an accident, did they?”
“Not likely.” Anderson’s gaze dropped to the floor.
“This Blythe guy? He’s dead?”
“Yes.” Anderson looked up. “He died in the attack on our base. I saw his body.”
“Good.” I was happy to hear karma had found this asshole. Jury was still out on Anderson. He sounded sincere, and I believed him, but he had still been a part of it.
“Dylan . . .” Thea stepped forward, forcing my wilting gaze away from Anderson. “He knew my dad. Not my father, but the man who raised me.”
“Who? Him?” I jabbed a finger at Anderson.
