by J. N. Baker
“Call me a freak one more time, I dare you.” I pulled her away from the wall and slammed her back into it. She cried out. “Please,” I snarled. “I’d love for you to give me a reason to kill you.”
“Get her out of here,” William ordered.
Alec and Ryuu scooped me up by my arms, Jade prying the sword from Tiffany’s neck and out of my white knuckles. I fought them, rage pulsing through my veins. Tiffany fell into Josh’s arms, burrowing her face in his chest. His eyes met mine and I froze. Was that…fear? I stopped struggling, slumping into the guys’ arms. As the men dragged me away, my eyes fell to my feet, watching as they slid defeated across the blood-slickened floor. It wasn’t the best view, but anything was better than seeing that look in Josh’s eyes again.
Everyone on the upper deck of the plane stared at me with wide eyes as Alec and Ryuu towed me through the long aisle on my walk of shame. Hushed whispers filled the cabin, scratching at my ears with words like “unstable” and “mad.” Or maybe they were all in my head. Footsteps trailed behind us, but I didn’t have the courage to look up and see who they belonged to.
The guys tossed me into the galley and only then did I risk looking up. Jade shoved my sword into a trembling Annie’s hands before turning and snapping the curtain shut behind us, blocking out any prying eyes. Before the blue fabric even had a chance to settle, the curtain whipped open once more as a wild-eyed Cody and Josh stormed through.
I dropped my eyes.
“Out,” barked Jade.
“Not a chance, ice queen,” Cody growled.
“Silence!” William demanded. “How long has this been going on?”
Alec hung his head. “She mentioned something about it at the hotel. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t want to believe—”
“Why did you not inform me?” William had Alec by the throat. That worried me. A lot.
“What’s wrong with me?” I whispered. Although, based on William’s outburst, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“Out,” William growled, still holding Alec by the throat. “All of you.”
Cody stepped forward to argue but Jade grabbed him by the scruff and pulled him out of the galley, Josh reluctantly in tow. The subtle fluttering of the curtain told me they didn’t stray too far.
Once only Alec, William, and I remained, William tossed Alec to the floor and then came to crouch beside me. He patted my leg with a large hand. I tried to count the number of times William had touched me in a comforting manner over the six years we’d known each other. I could count them all on one hand. The worry level rose another notch.
“You have been infected with the blood of a Sythen,” William said, his voice laced with sorrow. When he didn’t make eye contact, the worry level reached critical.
Alec groaned, raking his hands over his face as if he were in physical pain. He kicked one of the flight attendant chairs and it bent in half around his foot. “Dammit!” he raged.
“I-I don’t understand,” I breathed.
“It’s like a living parasite, Zoe,” Alec explained. He sucked in a deep breath and let it back out, trying to calm down. It didn’t appear to be working. “Baldric has somehow managed to get it inside you. It crawls into your brain, creating things—hallucinations.”
“Baldric must have somehow infected you,” William added. “Perhaps a dagger laced with the Sythen’s blood. That has always been his trick in the past.”
Roland’s filthy dagger flashed across my mind—the black gunk coating its tip as he’d waved it at me in that empty parking garage back in Santa Cruz. Like it? He’d said. I brought this one special, just for you. I saw red.
“They are extremely crafty creatures,” William continued, standing. “Once their blood is in your system, they become one with your mind. It gives them the power to communicate with you, to make you think that they are there, wherever and whenever they so choose.”
I let his words sink in, running tense fingers through my hair. I winced as the skin on my stomach sealed shut, grabbing the tender flesh. “How do you know so much about this?” I forced myself to ask, staring up at the two men with what I could only assume were wide eyes.
They exchanged a look, unspoken words passing between them. William finally nodded and Alec sat beside me.
“You’re not the first of the Chosen to be infected with Sythen blood,” he said, trying to wrap an arm around me.
I pushed him away. “One of you?”
“Not exactly,” he started. “It happened to a couple of the Chosen who came before you. Landon, centuries ago, and Elizabeth, the one you were chosen to replace. They too experienced such hallucinations. It seems like the general uses the parasite to weaken the person’s sanity until they go completely mad.”
“So,” I hesitated to ask, “what happened to the two of them?”
Both men fell silent. Alec clenched his hands, leaping to his feet and storming back into the cabin. I caught Josh’s eye as the curtain fell back into place.
“They killed themselves.”
I sat in the small galley by myself, listening to the pilot down in the cockpit as he pressed buttons and pushed levers. It was just the white noise I needed. My head pounded and I wondered why the ability to heal didn’t eliminate headaches altogether. Maybe that was God’s little joke to remind us of our human selves. If so, I wasn’t laughing.
No one came to check on me. They were probably all too afraid. I couldn’t really blame them. Still, I half expected Josh to burst through the curtain, guns blazing, ready to avenge his precious Barbie. I did almost kill her. Hell, I begged her to give me a reason to do it. She’d get over it—probably. Not that I really cared. Besides, losing my mind was a legitimate excuse, right?
A large hand grabbed the edge of the curtain, pushing it aside. William slipped into the small room. He stood, motionless, watching me with those unreadable eyes.
“Will it ever die?” I asked, breaking the silence. “Is there a way to get rid of it?” I wondered if I was asking just for the sake of asking. I knew the answer. No. Otherwise the others wouldn’t have gone to such drastic lengths to be free of it.
I wasn’t quite ready to take that step…yet.
“I do not know,” he replied, sitting beside me. I had to admit, I lost a little respect for him. William was supposed to have all the answers. He was supposed to know everything.
I peered out through the sliver of space between the wall and the dividing curtain. Tiffany was tucked perfectly into Josh’s arms. He stroked her hair, resting his chin on her forehead. She nuzzled into him. My heart hitched in my chest and I bit the corner of my lip. What heart?
“I would not get too attached if I were you,” William whispered, his sapphire eyes following mine.
I forced my eyes down. “What are you talking about?”
“I would not get too attached,” he repeated.
“I don’t know what you mean, William,” I said, suddenly feeling a bit breathless. I looked back at Josh, watching his mouth twist up on one side as Cody sat down beside him. “There’s never been anything between Josh and me. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Hmm.”
“There’s nothing there,” I insisted. “I, we…I’m not attached. We went through a lot together when I was still human. He was there for me after what happened. He’s always been there. He’s my best friend.”
“It is said that there are only three ways to kill one of the Chosen,” William said, blessedly changing the subject. “The first and easiest, as you already know, is decapitation. The second is to be stabbed through the heart by another Chosen. This is how Seraphina fell to Baldric’s hands. For all the love he claimed he had for her, we found his knife buried in her chest.
“The third and final way is a voluntary death. It is by our own choice, the choice not to heal. The choice to simply give up. This is how the others were able to kill themselves when they were infected. And…it is also how my Gwen came to meet the Creator.”
There was a sadness in his eyes that was so…human. He had my full attention.
William’s eyes lost focus as if he were no longer sitting in the plane with me—as if he were somewhere else entirely. “When the Great War ended, I found my wife lying in a field covered in her own blood. I still remember it like it was yesterday.
“There was so much blood; it gushed from the wound in her side, down the corners of her parted lips. She looked up at me with tears in her eyes. You have to understand, I had not seen her cry in over a hundred years. She looked so weak, so helpless.
“I yelled for her to heal herself, but she refused. She told me, ‘Beloved, this world has nothing left for me. No one should have to live forever. No one should have to suffer as we do.’ She died in my arms.
“But she was wrong. Whether we like it or not, this is our destiny. We will stay as we are, every day from here until eternity because that is how God intended it to be. Everyone we know and everything we love will crumble and die around us. We are the unchanging—there is no way around it. Trust me, Zoe. Do not get attached.”
The plane lost altitude as it finally made its descent down to Earth. I wasn’t sure how long we’d been in the air. Too damn long. I was back with the group. Jade had even given me my sword back. Tiffany kept her distance, which I didn’t mind the slightest bit. If my outburst was what it took to get her the hell away from me, then so be it.
Annie and Cindy sat at either side of me, trying to strike up conversation for nearly three straight hours. I tried to follow their words but they all seemed to blur together. William and Alec sat directly in front of me, Josh, Tiffany, and Cody behind me, and Ryuu and Jade across the aisle. They had me flanked on all sides. I guess you couldn’t be too careful with the crazy person now, could you?
“Where are we?” Annie asked as the nose of the plane dipped. She leaned to look out the window. Black clouds blocked out the land below.
“Europe,” William replied, getting to his feet. “This is where it all began. And this is where it must end.”
“If our calculations are correct, we should be getting close,” Godfrey announced as he made his way up the stairs from the lower level.
William nodded, keeping his eyes glued to the window as if he could see what lay beyond it. “Very good.”
“I’ll wake the others, boss.” Markus, the foul-mouthed military shift, marched down the aisle, disappearing into the lower level where most of our people slept as peacefully as they could. “Oy! Wake up, you lazy fucks!” I heard him shout from down below. “Gather your shit and prepare to land!” It wasn’t the gentlest of wake-up calls.
Ryuu snickered beside Jade. “Anyways. We suspect that the general’s people will be staying somewhere in northern England, near the Scottish border. There is a castle there on the coast. It would accommodate his large army and the ocean would protect them from one side.” Ryuu’s hand absently rubbed up and down Jade’s inner thigh as he spoke and I choked on my own spit.
Alec caught my eye. He smirked, leaning over the back of his seat until his face was level with mine. “Don’t let her hard exterior fool you,” he whispered. “She may bitch about having a ‘mate,’ but she’s pretty happy with the one she’s got.”
“How far is that from where we are going to be staying?” Annie asked, very clearly trying to ignore Alec. It wasn’t entirely working. At least, that’s what the fiery blush on her cheeks said. She was so easy to read. She didn’t have to use her one-way telepathy to put the words into my head for me to know that she was wondering if she had a ‘mate’ too.
“About three hundred miles,” Alec answered, straightening in his chair. “Ryuu and I have been scouting the land for quite a while. We will be staying in an old, abandoned castle in southern England. It is where the original castle of King Arthur once stood. The current castle needs some work, but we’ll be able to rebuild and start our new lives there. I have been there many times. It is beautiful despite its age.”
“A real castle?” Tiffany’s eyes lit up.
Jade stared at her and I waited for a witty retort or smartass comment. “It’s too easy,” Jade grumbled and disappointment consumed me.
“If it’s going to take that much work, why don’t we stay somewhere else? Aren’t there, like, a bunch of other creepy old castles in Europe?” Cindy asked. “Plus, do we really, like, want to be living right next door to the bad guy?”
“I would not expect you to understand, human,” William said, shooting a look at Cindy that said she needed to learn her place and fast. “It is the place where it all began. It is closest to the heart of who and what we are. We will be strongest there.”
“Plus, it has a fresh water source and plenty of land to expand,” Ryuu’s raspy voice added. He flashed Cindy a wink. “And it’s surrounded by a small area of woodlands, which will provide decent hunting. Outside that, there is good farming ground in the area.”
An explosion somewhere below us rattled the aircraft. We bolted for the windows, pressing our faces against the cold glass to see what was happening. Small explosions rang out across the land, fires smoldering the remnants of the once beautiful countryside. Black clouds engulfed the plane as we plummeted toward the earth. Flames began licking at the walls of the plane, heating up the metal casing until even I had to step back.
And then the Boeing 747-8 touched ground. Maybe “touched” wasn’t the right word for it. It smacked down with such force that those not strapped in sailed through the air before smashing back into their seats. Hundreds of screams filled the massive tin can as the plane skipped across the earth like a pebble on a pond. The lights flickered on and off and we skidded to a stop on uneven ground.
Moans and cries rang out throughout the entire plane. I struggled to climb to my feet, tripping over fallen bags and groaning bodies. When the lights powered back on, Cody and Cindy were tangled in each other’s arms, Cody’s tongue halfway down her throat. My eyes bugged out of my head and my jaw hit the floor.
It took them a good thirty seconds to realize that the lights were back on and that we hadn’t plummeted to our deaths. Maybe it was some sort of “I-don’t-want-to-die-alone” thing. I hoped that was the case. Although, Cody was quite the man whore and, well, Cindy wanted to be his whore. He rose to his feet, flashing me his crooked grin.
“What the…” Josh was as much at a loss for words as I was.
“Don’t judge me, dude,” Cody grumbled.
“All the judgment, man. All of it.”
I held my hand out to a very flushed Cindy, which she clung to, pulling herself up. Her eyes were glossy and her lips swollen. She flashed me a dazed smile and I rolled my eyes, pointing her in the direction of the exit. I guess it was only a matter of time, what with the minimal number of single women to choose from in this new hell we were living in and all. I just hoped I’d never have to hear about the god-awful scene ever again. Yeah, right. Talk about wishful thinking.
Still, it was nice to know that some things never changed.
There was a feeling of urgency throughout our group as we unloaded the plane. Some feared that the aircraft might explode. Others were worried that the ground might crumble out from under it. Either way, we weren’t in a position to take any chances. We needed to get the weapons, supplies, and food off as soon as humanly possible. Good thing half of us weren’t actually “human.”
I found that it wasn’t hard to spot the vampires in our group. They walked through the darkness with such grace and elegance, unlike their human counterparts who, even with the torchlight, stumbled over rocks and fallen branches hidden beneath the cover of night. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about working with bloodsuckers, especially seeing how many of them there were.
“Come on, you sons of bitches! What are you, a bunch of pansies? I want this bird emptied in T-minus five!” Markus barked. He stood as stiff as a board, hands tucked neatly behind his back, head held high. “Did I stutter? Move it! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! Quit
your damn lollygagging! Don’t give me any lip, bloodsucker, move it!”
“Looks like someone’s enjoying himself,” I mumbled.
“He’s not so bad once you get to know him,” Alec said as he stepped beside me, taking the large wooden crate from my arms.
“What, like Jade? Will he grow on me too?”
“I was right, wasn’t I?” Alec smirked and I pursed my lips, snatching the crate back out of his hands and storming off. I’d never speak those words aloud. Besides, the verdict was still out.
A thick layer of fog settled over the land, concealing the forest floor as I weaved in and out of the tall trees. A row of torches had been set out to light the way from the plane to the castle walls, flames fluttering in a stale breeze. It was much darker than it had been back in the States. Maybe it was late, or maybe the clouds just hung lower in the sky. One thing I knew for sure, the endless night was finally upon us.
As I reached the other side of the forest, my mouth hung open. In a world so full of horrors, the castle was absolutely, unequivocally beautiful. Only two-thirds of it remained and still it was perfect. Lush ivy covered the cobblestone walls, coiling around giant columns and rusted railings. Who knew what secrets lay within those walls just waiting to be discovered? I had this strange feeling in the pit of my stomach, like I was right where I belonged. I was finally home.
Hundreds of people—people who did not travel with us from Nevada—scurried about the castle grounds, hard at work on the rebuild. They’d done a great job thus far. More than half of the roof and three of the five lookout towers had already been restored to their previous glory. Around the back of the castle, dozens of large tents were scattered across the land, providing temporary shelter for our people. It looked like everything was falling into place.
