by Siara Brandt
“You stay here, Penndle,” Nilah told her husband. “We’re going to have to make sure they can get in another door if they have to.”
There were three other doors downstairs. One at the end of each wing of the inn. And there was the big front door.
Penndle looked at his wife as if she had lost her mind. “This is way too dangerous,” he said.
“Let them in, Penndle, if they come to this door.”
He opened his mouth to argue with her.
“Just do it,” Nilah almost screamed at him before she turned and ran down the long corridor.
Penndle stared at the ghoulish faces in the doorway and muttered to himself, “I’m supposed to risk my life? They’d better find another way in.”
When people heard what was going on, they hurried to man the other doors, ready to help where they could. Nilah ran back to Ailin. “There’s a door leading outside from the pool room,” she said breathlessly. “It’s probably for pool maintenance or something.”
Nilah didn’t have to explain further. They needed to let the people outside in whatever door they could safely get to and there was no time to spare.
They had to walk past the dead terrorist in the pool room. He hadn’t moved for hours but it was still unnerving walking past the body. The moonlight was shining on the surface of the water and the dark blood stains were still plainly visible on the floor as they made their way through the silent pool room.
Crack!
Rietta had swung her board. All her terror had been behind the blow. As the board connected with the zombie’s skull, it resounded like a baseball bat scoring a home run.
Rietta was panting heavily as she braced herself for another blow. The zombie had gone down on all fours. It seemed stunned, but it wasn’t finished yet. Josiah immediately hit it with his axe. It slumped to the ground and stayed down.
Athan realized with a sinking heart that there were more of those things than he had been able to see from the car. A lot more. In fact, he wondered now if he wasn’t leading them all to horrible deaths. Whatever their fate was, there was no going back now. There could be no slowing down, either. And no hesitating. To hesitate meant certain death.
“Hurry,” he gritted. “Let’s go.” They couldn’t give up yet. He wouldn’t let them.
He could see the doors of the inn now, and the zombies clustered around them, realized at the same time that they didn’t have a chance of fighting them all off.
A dark shadow detached itself from the fog and staggered straight for them. A crazed giant, a savage, bloodied fiend with arms extended. Another zombie lurched out of the fog behind him.
And then a bigger, faster-moving shadow was running towards them. Not a zombie, but someone he hadn’t been aware of. A man in military fatigues. Athan veered toward the man, leading the others.
“Come on,” he breathed as he ran. “We’re close. So close.”
Eli’s fist pounded on the glass. After all they’d done to get here, the door wasn’t budging as he’d expected it to. He glared fiercely at the man running away from them on the other side of the door and knew they would have to find another way in.
It was chaos. The kids were crying. One of the women screamed when something reached for her. Zombies were snarling and coming at them from all sides and they had to fight their way through every one of them.
Oh, hell, Eli thought as he saw how many there were. The door they were headed for looked like it was a hundred miles away. But another door, a closer one, burst open suddenly and slammed back on its hinges. He hadn’t even known the door was there.
“Here,” someone called out. “This way.”
It was Ailin. He had never been so happy to see anyone in his life.
She waved them on. “Hurry.”
He shot a zombie that rose up from the shadows beside her. His heart lodged in his throat. That had been close. Too close. He would take her to task later for risking her life that way.
After everyone was safety inside, Eli turned and was astonished to see the firefighter dart back outside. He was searching frantically around in the bushes.
What the hell is he doing? Eli wondered. They all needed to get inside. Now.
And then he saw the thing in the bushes bolt and run. It ran right for him. Eli scooped it up in his arms. It was tiny, and Eli frowned against the onslaught of frantic kisses on his chin.
They were still drawing the unwanted attention of zombies from everywhere. Luckily two zombies got caught in some bushes and a third couldn’t find its way around a bench. Everyone was able to make it safely into the inn. But barely.
It had been an intense, emotionally-charged rescue. Still clutching the little dog, Eli was experiencing a completely unexpected, completely unreasonable impulse to grab Ailin and pull her into his arms. In any case, right now he had to take care of something else first. He handed the trembling little dog to one of the kids and headed out of the pool room.
He planted his boots squarely in Penndle’s path. “You son of a bitch. There were terrified kids out there. Why didn’t you let us in?”
“How could I have let you in? Those things would have gotten inside and I didn’t have a weapon. All these people would have been in danger.”
“You didn’t even try. You ran.”
“I had to make a decision. And you got in all right. Why whine about it now?”
Not a muscle moved in Eli’s set jaw. Not even when his fist exploded in Penndle’s sneering face.
Josiah Hunter actually groaned with the sheer pleasure of stretching out on the big, soft double bed. It had to be the most luxurious, most comfortable place on earth. And the pillow under his head was as soft as a cloud.
“Ahhh,” he breathed as he pulled the blanket over him and closed his eyes. After the agony of the kidney stone and sleeping on the wood floor at the Creyvan House, he was looking forward to the best night’s sleep he’d had in days.
“You have a room together, I see.”
It didn’t really matter to Tessa that Mace and Regina were sharing a room. She was just grateful that they had all made it safely to the inn. Still, she didn’t want to let Mace off that easily.
“You must have been in a hurry,” she said. “So much of a hurry that you couldn’t even stop to see if we needed help.”
Mace had stiffened, but he didn’t say anything.
She looked straight at him. “The bus was on its side, Mace. Those kids could have been injured. They could have been bleeding to death for all you knew.”
“I didn’t know if anyone was even on the bus,” Mace tried to defend himself.
“If you didn’t know, why didn’t you check? It would have been the decent thing to do.”
She shook her head. “You’ll always come first, Mace. At the expense of everyone else.”
Tessa turned away from him and went into her room. She was exhausted. Too exhausted to think about it anymore.
Ailin was helping get the kids settled. They had been through a lot and they were exhausted. But they were safe now. As safe as could be expected. There wasn’t much in the way of food or drinks to give them, but most people offered to donate something.
As Ailin tucked the little dog under the blankets between Caleb and Bobby, she scolded him softly. “I’ve been worrying myself sick over you, you know.”
Completely oblivious to the trouble he had caused, the dog seemed perfectly content lying there between the two children. He even wiggled his way up till his head was on the pillow and the blanket was up to his chin, just like the children. In no time at all, the three of them were fast asleep.
Chapter 20
_______________
Edmina’s eyes were unnaturally bright the next morning. She was downstairs even before Ailin came down. She sat drumming her nails on the arm of the chair she was perched on, looking positively predatory. Ailin had the feeling her sister had been waiting for her for a while. Eli wasn’t around, so Ailin suspected her sister wanted to corner her before
Eli did show up.
“Where’s your knight in shining armor?” Edmina asked in a low voice that bordered on sarcasm.
“Upstairs.”
Of course he was upstairs, Ailin thought to herself. Where else would he be? But she did kind of like the thought of Eli as a knight in shining armor. After all, he had led the rescue of those people last night. Not to mention all he had done for her.
“You certainly are a late riser this morning,” Edmina commented. She leaned slightly forward, reminding Ailin of a snake about to strike.
“Yes,” Ailin said. “There was a lot going on last night.”
Edmina just stared at her with an owlish expression. She blinked slowly. Sitting motionless in the other chair, Bevanne didn’t say a word.
Ailin sighed. “If you’ve got something to say, Edmina, why don’t you just spit it out?”
“You’re right. There have been enough lies between us.”
Ailin was thoroughly confused. “What lies are you talking about?”
“You deserve to know the truth, Ailin.”
“The truth about what?”
Edmina quirked a brow, relishing something.
“I didn’t get much sleep last night, so I don’t have the energy for games, Edmina. If you don’t want to tell me- ”
“But I do want to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“The secret that I have been keeping.”
Maybe Edmina wanted to confess that she’d regularly hidden Ailin’s dolls when they were younger. Or that she’d stolen the key to Ailin’s journal so that she could read it secretly. No big deal. Ailin already knew about those things. And plenty more.
“Are you sure this is the time for this?” Ailin asked her sister. “Especially after all we’ve been through?”
“It’s time,” Edmina assured her. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but the mother you think is yours- ” she paused for effect. “Isn’t.”
Ailin didn’t know what to say. This was not at all what she had expected.
“Haven’t you ever suspected?” Edmina asked with a look of blinking, wide-eyed innocence. “It’s why you don’t look like the rest of us. It’s why you never really- fit in,”
“And you’ve just found this out?” Ailin asked.
“No, I’ve always known.”
Ailin didn’t even try to hide her surprise. “Who else knows?”
“Everyone.”
“As in?”
“The whole family.”
That must have included Bevanne, too. Ailin looked at her sister-in-law. Bevanne didn’t seemed the slightest bit fazed.
“Why are you telling me this now?” Ailin wanted to know.
“Because you have a right to know. Your real mother, if you want to know,” she went on. “Is our Aunt Catherine.”
Another surprise. A huge one.
“It’s hard to think she’s kept that secret from you all these years,” Edmina went on. “Of course, in light of what happened . . . ” Edmina shrugged a silk-clad shoulder. “It’s easy to see why everyone wanted the whole sordid affair to be forgotten.”
“Catherine was already married at the time, so technically you wouldn’t have been illegitimate. The problem was that she got pregnant by another man. To this day, no one knows his real identity, but they thought he might have been a sailor that was hanging around at the time. What matters is that he left town and abandoned her. Or she broke it off when she found out she was pregnant. No one really knows for sure.
“Anyway, Catherine didn’t handle it all very well. In fact, one day she took a knife and said she was going to cut the baby out of her stomach. It was some kind of dramatic play for sympathy, I’m sure. Unless she really was over the edge at the time as some people suggested. Eventually she came to her senses and agreed to have her sister, our mother, take the baby, you, and raise it.
“So your real birth certificate, Ailin, should read Father Unknown. And technically you’re an Atherton in name only.”
It was a lot to process. If Edmina was telling her the truth, and Ailin had no reason to think that she wasn’t.
It had never been a secret that Edmina had always wanted to be an only child. She had come right out and said it. Many times. But until now, Ailin had never understood what drove her. And the look in her Aunt Catherine’s - her mother’s - eyes made sense to her now. Every time she looked at Ailin she must have been reminded of everything she probably wanted to forget. Because eventually Catherine had gone on the have two other children, which, Ailin realized, would be her half-brothers and not her cousins as she had believed all her life.
“I’m sorry you had to hear all this.”
But Ailin could see that Edmina wasn’t sorry at all.
“After a lifetime, to suddenly not know who you are or where you belong. To learn that you had been cast aside
like- ”
“Edmina,” Ailin cut her off sharply. “There’s nothing we can do to change any of that now.”
Ailin saw that Edmina looked surprised. And maybe disappointed. What had she expected? That she would fall apart at the news?
“You mean you’re all right with all this?”
“What can I do about it at this point? It’s done, Edmina. It doesn’t really change anything. Despite what you think, it doesn’t change who I am.” But there was one last question Ailin had to ask. “What does our mother have to say about all this?”
Ailin didn’t know what was going through Edmina’s mind at that moment, but she saw the rapid changes in her eyes.
“She finally agreed that you should know.”
Agreed.
“But she didn’t come to tell me herself. She sent you. Or did you offer to come yourself?”
“It wasn’t easy for Mina to come down here and tell you this- ”
“Bevanne,” Ailin stopped her. “This is between Mina and me.” She looked back at Edmina. “But I think this was easy. I think you couldn’t wait to tell me. Am I right, Edmina.”
Edmina’s glare was so filled with hate that Ailin was taken aback or a moment.
“You were spoiled. From the very first moment they brought you into the house. Poor little abandoned baby. Poor little Ailin. You should be grateful that you were even taken in. It changed everything.”
“Yes, I’m grateful,” Ailin told her. “And I’m also grateful that I finally know the truth. It answers a lot of the questions I have always had.”
Edmina stood up from her chair after Ailin did. “Ailin.”
But Ailin was already on her way up to her room.
Behind her, Edmina called, “Ailin, don’t walk away from me.”
Penndle leaned forward to make his point. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Nilah. There is no law any more. We can’t be arrested. We can’t go to jail. No matter what we do.”
“There is still a difference between right and wrong,” Nilah informed him, staring for a moment at his red, swollen nose.
She had moved out of the room that she had been sharing with him, but he had cornered her as she was coming out of her new room and he had pushed his way past her. She hadn’t wanted to make a scene in the hallway. There had been enough trouble already and she wasn’t up to another embarrassing scene. So she had told him she would give him five minutes to have his say. And then he was going to have to leave.
“Right and wrong according to who?”
“To whom,” she corrected absently, wondering what it was he wanted from her now.
“To whom. Whatever.”
Penndle paced back and forth a few times and then came to an abrupt halt in front of her. “We can take whatever we find along the way. Even if we decided to steal a better car to get back to the kids, there’s no one to stop us.” He looked at her more closely. “What? Now you don’t care if you ever see them again?”
“What’s bothering you?”
Ailin blew out a shaky breath. She hadn’t even begun to process all that Edmina had tol
d her. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to share it with Eli, even though he seemed more than willing to listen to her.
“You were downstairs. Did you run into your sister?”
She shrugged one shoulder. She didn’t say no, so he assumed that’s just what had happened.
”I don’t believe for a minute that that went well,” he said as he watched her cross the room.
She tried to change the subject. “I wonder if those poor kids are awake yet. They’ve been through so much.”
“Yeah.”
“That little boy, Bobby?” she went on. “He was asking for his parents last night. It about broke my heart.”
“I hope we find a way to reunite them,” Eli said. “So, what did your sister have to say?”
Chapter 21
_______________
It was early morning and Athan’s frowning reflection was captured in the glass for a moment before he turned from the window. With a frustrated sigh he dragged his hand through his hair, his frown deepening as he sat down again and looked at the man sitting across from him. He articulated what they were both thinking.
“I don’t even know if those kids have parents anymore. They could be dead or alive. Or worse. It’s possible we may never know what happened to them.”
“Hard as it is, we’ve got to keep our emotions under control,” Eli said.
Hard to do? Hell, at the moment it seemed damned near impossible for Athan. He’d seen a lot out there. He’d held it together this long, but he didn’t know how much longer he could continue to do that. He sighed and closed his eyes, but he couldn’t get the disturbing images out of his head.
“When’s the last time you slept?” Eli asked.
Athan shook his head and waved his hand dismissively. The truth was, he’d barely slept at all these past few days. He’d been up most of the night and he was beyond exhausted, but sleep was the last thing on his mind. Protecting his family was his one driving thought. That included the two little boys who had no one else to take care of them at the moment.
