He had dark hair and green eyes that sparkled when he laughed, not something he did very often, making his rare bursts of humor even more precious. I wanted to reach up and smooth back his hair on his head. I wanted to bandage up his wounds. Instead, I did nothing but smile.
He spoke. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
Tia interrupted. “I asked her the same question yesterday, but she insisted she needed one more day of school to prepare for tonight.”
Why did I need to talk? I had Tia to do it for me.
“Anything you don’t know, you’re not going to learn today. You’re going to make yourself tired, too tired to handle yourself up there.”
I looked down at the ground. “I need one more day.”
One more day to be a student, a teenager who could spend at least part of the day thinking about how unfair it was that Tia was flawless while I was so terribly messed up. One more day to look into our teacher Keith’s kind eyes and know he cared whether I lived or died. One more day to wonder what Micah dreamt about during the day while he slept.
“That’s foolish.”
Now he made me mad. I placed my hands on my hips. I might be in love with him, but I didn’t need him lecturing me. In exactly twelve hours, I was going to be riding an elevator, just like the one he’d gotten off of, with the same rights and privileges to protect the Genesis habitat.
“Look, I want one more day.”
He opened his mouth like he was going to say something and then closed it. He smiled instead, a wry smile that made his eyes light up with amusement. He found what I just said funny?
“Have you thought about your tattoo?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Wow, you guys are all really focused on the tattoo.”
Micah looked at his sister. “Did you tell her we wanted to pick it out for her?”
“Yes, I did.” She put her hands on her hips, daring him to complain. I’d seen her mother look at her father the same way. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“We kind of wanted it to be a surprise.”
I shifted to the balls of my feet, feeling very uncomfortable. I hated it when they fought. I don’t have siblings and I know the Lyons fight—regularly. The whole family did. All the time. It didn’t seem to mean much, and mostly it was affectionate. Still, it made me cringe. Nothing could happen to this family. Ever.
So I said the first thing I could think. “The surprise will be if I live to get mine.”
“Yeah, well.” Micah nodded. “Do your best, it’s all any of us can do.”
“Hey,” Tia hit him on the arm, “that’s not what you’re supposed to say. You’re supposed to say she’s going to be fine.”
“It’s Rachel’s first day. She knows what she’s getting into. You don’t.”
The way he answered made my insides feel warm instead of cold. He understood. He actually got what I felt. That made me feel less alone. Maybe it was just the electronic lights intensifying again, but the day seemed less bleak to me.
Tia rolled her eyes. “So, what? You’re all going to be part of the club now, and I’ll be on the outside?”
Micah shook his head as he turned to walk away. He laughed as he called over his shoulder and the sound thrilled me. “Who would want to be in any club you were in, Tia? See you tonight, Rachel.”
“Forget him. He doesn’t want to tell you he’s going to protect you. That’s all.” She grabbed my arm. “All I keep thinking about is after tonight you can move out of your house if you want to. Mom says you can have the extra room in our house or she’ll have Dad get you a room in the Warrior dorms.”
“I can’t leave Dad.”
She squeezed me tighter. “What do you mean? He doesn’t deserve to have you there.”
To me, it had never been a question as to whether or not he deserved to have me or not. I was his daughter. It was simple. At four years old, he’d lived through the Armageddon, and he and my mom created me. Who would feed him if I left? Who would clean up the house? I had to fight the monsters during the night, and then I had to take care of Dad during the day. That was my job. For now. Eventually, I would have to figure out a better way, but today, I couldn’t think past what I had to do.
“Don’t you want to have fun?”
Tia was six months younger than I am. Never before had it felt like such a large amount of time.
Three Warrior students pushed past us, opening the door to the school. They called out their hellos, and we waved back. We were no longer early, we were officially on time. If we lingered on the step of the school any longer, we would be late.
I saw Keith, my favorite teacher, through the window laying out the weapons he would teach us to use today. It was my last chance to learn something. I needed to make it count.
Chapter Two
I took my regular seat in class, two rows from the front and one away from the center. Close enough that I could pay attention easily and not so close that I looked like I wanted the teacher’s attention. Even though I did. I wanted to savor Keith’s praise like the flavor of the one bit of chocolate I’d been given as a child. I wanted to never forget his words like I’d never forgotten the sweetness of that dark bar of heaven.
Tia had two brothers and a father to watch out for her. In my imagination, I had Keith Endover.
He was everything a Warrior was supposed to be: strong, smart, and courageous. He’d come to the Genesis habitat from Scotland two years after I’d started in Warrior training. I’d never heard his accent in real life before. Sometimes we got old television programs or movies broadcast over the network on Friday nights. There was an actor named Sean Connery who made these movies about a character called James Bond. When I first heard Keith speak, all I could think was of that fictional hero.
He’d been recruited to come years after my father left the Warriors, so he’d never served with any member of my family. He’d risked life and limb to get to us from overseas, and the Icahn family had handled the transportation themselves to get him here. I wasn’t sure how old he was but I had a feeling he looked a lot younger than he actually was. The stories he told—they seemed like the tales of a person who had seen a lot of action. There was no way he was still in his twenties; he had to be thirty at least.
A lot of the girls thought he was dreamy.
To me, he’d been a lifesaver.
“What is this?” He held up a stake and the students who had been standing up and chatting rushed to their seats.
“Um…a stake.”
The answer came from the Thomas, the guy who always sat next to me. He and I shared a common problem, both of us being outsiders. Me, because my father had quit his position and moved us away, and Thomas because neither of his parents were Warriors, and yet he tested positive for the gene when he’d been born. That was almost unheard of in our particular habitat. Some of the other places, we heard in gossip that travelled the wire from time to time, had more frequent occurrences of the gene showing up in non-Warrior families.
In our group of twelve students, all of us falling between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, Thomas was the only one who hadn’t had at least one parent with the abilities. His family tried to petition the Icahns to keep him from having to be a Warrior.
I hated to admit it and wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Tia, but I was jealous. To have parents who risked becoming outcasts to keep their child out of harm’s way showed total devotion and love. I slid down in my chair. My one parent didn’t even care enough to remain sober. I could die tonight…would likely die…and he hadn’t even said happy birthday.
I wanted to know why it wasn’t possible for two Warrior people to make a baby with no Warrior genes. That’s what I would have preferred. But then again I always wished for things I couldn’t have. I’m just pathetic like that.
These days Thomas worked harder than any of us. I didn’t talk to him very much. Instead of bonding together as outsiders we both agreed, without ever discussing it, not to bring to much attention
to ourselves. He and I hanging out would be way too much attention.
“That’s right,” Keith’s voice boomed in our small classroom, and I sat back in my seat. “It’s a stake.” He held up the wooden device again so we could all look at it. “What do we do with it?”
This was very basic stuff. The kind of information they taught children. Even non-Warrior children knew how to handle a stake.
Tia, who sat on my other side, raised her hand and waited to be called on. “We kill Vampires.”
“That’s right.” Keith’s shaggy strawberry blond hair jostled as he nodded his head. “Why do we kill Vampires? In fact, let’s take this a step further. Why do we kill Werewolves? Why do we kill monsters?”
The room was silent. We all knew the answer to his questions. The history of what had happened to humanity had been drilled into our heads since birth. Why was he doing this now? I shifted slightly in my seat, ran my hands through my hair, drummed my fingers on the table, anything to distract myself. None of it worked. I could not get over the feeling that while he spoke to the class, his questions were specifically for me.
It was my first night. He had to know I had a one-quarter chance of not being seen ever again. But, he’d sent hundreds of students out to the upper world and I couldn’t recall this kind of demonstration before anyone else’s debut. Granted, most people didn’t come in on their “big” day. But he’d never done this the day before either. What was so special about me?
Did he think I was going to die?
“Rachel, do you want to tell us? Why do we fight the monsters?”
“Because they try to kill us.”
Keith shook his head as he sighed loudly. “Yes, they try to kill us. You sound so blasÈ.”
How could he think that? I shook my head, fisting my hands at my side. This was so unfair. I wanted encouragement, not needling. “No, there is nothing blasÈ about it at all.”
He slammed his hand down on the desk. “It’s not just us they’re trying to kill. Forty-six years ago they killed everyone. That was a year before I was born.” My eyes got wide. Keith was forty-five years old?
He pointed at me, the hot dagger of his demand inserting itself into my body. As looked up at the class, he spoke. “Most of your parents weren’t born but her…”—he turned his gaze back to mine—”father was four years old.” He shook his head. “I have to be crazy to do this. They’re going to throw me out. Get up, Rachel.”
I swallowed, fear replacing my anger and threatening to tear up my insides so that I wanted to shriek. I would rather take on five Vampires all by myself, well I thought I would—I’ve never actually done so—than get up in front of this class and do whatever it was Keith wanted at the moment.
Still, I stood up. The teacher had told me to. Keith was the only teacher in the school who didn’t want to be called sir and insisted we used his first name. We learned more with him than anyone else, which was why he got to instruct our final years.
“Come here.” He pointed at the floor in front of him.
I obeyed on feet that weighed twice what they normally did. No one in the class moved an inch. It was unnaturally silent. No one so much as shifted in their seats. This was a different Keith. I had wanted to come today because of the send-off I’d seen him give to the kids who came for their last day of school. It was an easy smile and a nod as he told them to go kick the monsters so hard they became nothing but horror stories again.
This was something else entirely, and I didn’t like it one bit.
“Pick up the stake.” His gaze refused to release mine. It wasn’t a stare, where I noticed the gold flicks in the green, but the kind where your soul battled for independence. Without thought, I reached for the stake. My gaze stilled locked with his. He grabbed it instead. “I’m faster than you are.” I would have sworn he snarled at me.
“It’s not hard to be.” The snarky remark came from the back of the room. Glen Devrees. No one could stand him, and I shouldn’t have cared what he thought considering what today was, but still, the skin on my cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
Keith’s head turned in the direction of Glen’s voice. “Don’t be snide. You couldn’t have beaten me either.” Keith held out the stake to me and after hesitating for a second to see if I could pick out any games he might be playing, I took it from his hand.
My fingers clasped the wooden weapon with the practice drilled into me thousands of times by multiple instructions. The weight in my hands felt familiar, and the roughness of the wood made me hold the device tighter. It was deceptively simple, and if I wasn’t careful I could end up poking myself, even though I hadn’t done so in years. The point side faced outwards. It was a plunge and pull weapon. If I wanted to kill a Vampire, I took a step forward, pushed the stake through the monster’s chest and pulled back.
I had to keep my hand tight around the stake the whole time. It wouldn’t do to drop my weapons or lose them unless I wanted to spend every day with a knife and a slab of wood carving more. Keith’s particular weapon was smooth and polished. It had been a gift from his wife, Tiffani, who was also one of our teachers. She took care of the young Warriors just starting their training. She was, of course, roll-your-eyes gorgeous. Together they should have been put on the cover of a book to show perfect human specimens.
Keith didn’t fight anymore, and neither did Tiffani. I guess they’d earned the right not to. It kind of bothered me to think that if I wasn’t fighting or pregnant, than I’d have to be teaching someone how to fight. Was this the best the world had to offer me? I mean Keith had to travel, secretly, by a boat across the Atlantic Ocean to find an open teaching position for a Warrior. It wasn’t like these jobs were easy to come by. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe I missed some kind of bloodthirsty mentality I should have developed by now.
“Stake me.”
I felt my eyes get huge. “What?”
“Have you gone deaf, Rachel? I said stake me.”
I looked at Tia, hoping she would be able to indicate to me what I should do. She shook her head, her eyes wide with alarm.
“Don’t look at Tia, she’s not going up there with you tonight. Even if she were, she couldn’t keep you alive.”
He’d said stake him. As I stepped forward, I turned in a sudden circle to duck behind him. I lunged forward and raised my arm. His strong hand shot out and grabbed me by the wrist. I screamed. What was he going to do to me? Fear of Keith became a real thing, an actual entity that lived and breathed inside of me. He had never manhandled any of us like this before. Why was he doing this to me?
Keith turned me around until I was face down on the desk. He used his body weight to pin me. I gasped as I struggled to be free of him. Away, my senses screamed. I needed to get away.
“You can’t. This was a test you couldn’t win.”
He let go of me. I shot backwards, tripping over my own feet and banging into the blackboard that was attached to the wall. I didn’t care about the physical pain it caused, not when the entire group had watched me take one humiliating move after another.
I was breathing hard and still not sure why he had felt the need to do that if it was “a test I couldn’t win.” I’d trusted him, but came to this class to find my feet and feel self-confident. He had just destroyed me. Tears burned the back of my eyes, and I blinked them away. My face was hot, my teeth chattering, and the brightness brought on by Micah’s understanding earlier completely fled the building. There was no question now. I was as good as dead when I went above ground in eleven and half hours. For some reason I couldn’t understand, Keith felt the need to demonstrate that fact in front of everyone.
Tears I’d only moments earlier repressed threatened again, but I didn’t dare let them fall. That would be too humiliating. If you learned anything in Warrior school, it was to never let them see they’d caused you pain. I was a redhead. If I blushed, you saw it. I couldn’t control my complexion. But tears I could keep to myself.
“I’m forty-fiv
e years old and I’m taller, faster, and stronger than you are.” He looked directly at me. “I always will be.” As he turned his attention back to the class, he spoke again. “It begs the question, right? Why then do we send you up there? Why send women at all? Why send short men? Why send teenagers?”
He picked up the stake I had dropped in the struggle and ran his hand over it. “We do it because even though someone like Rachel Clancy will never take me in a fair fight, she can and will take down the Undead and Werewolves almost every time she encounters them.” He stalked over to Tia’s desk and banged on it making her jump. “Why is that?”
Tia stammered. “Um…our genes. We’re genetically predetermined to know how to fight them.”
“Wrong.” He shook his head and walked over to the blackboard. He spoke aloud the words as he wrote them. “Ability plus training equals knowhow.” He turned around. “You’ve all heard me say this a million times. Have you listened? If everyone who had the genes had survived Armageddon, more people would be Warriors now.” He shrugged. “They didn’t know how to win. A lot of people had the ability, but they didn’t have the technique.” He turned back to me. “Go get a nap in my office, Rachel. We need you to know your stuff tonight.”
I still felt stunned and my feet acted like they were glued to the floor. He wanted me to sleep after he’d knocked down any confidence I might have had in myself before coming to class? I should rest up for my upcoming death?
“I’m not tired.”
He narrowed his eyes. “If you don’t go and sleep, I’m going to make you swallow a sleeping pill.”
“That will make me groggy.” I was grasping at straws. I knew it. If I went to bed, the time would come too quickly. I needed these moments if they were going to be my last.
“If you’re groggy, then I’ll inject you with a stimulant to wake you up. Either way, you’re going to sleep now.”
I bit down on my lip as I walked from the room to his office down the hall. I couldn’t even look at Tia. I was humiliated. I was also terrified. I couldn’t deal with either of those things at the moment.
The Warrior Page 2
