The Warrior - Initiation Driven Subversive Redemption Justice

by Rebecca Royce

  “I need to go see my father.” I moved away from him. “I need to get set up for this before I say anymore.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  I appreciated him asking, and part of me wanted to slip into his strong embrace and let him handle everything for me. So, instead I shook my head no.

  “I need to talk to him alone. There are things to say we shouldn’t have an audience for.”

  “While my father finishes up with Tiffani, I’m going to take the pack and move them away from here. Not everyone is going to be as nice to us as you and Chad’s father.”

  That made sense. “Good idea. Where will you go?”

  “I thought I’d put us in the clearing where you were going to meet us.”

  “Okay.”

  This felt weird. We stood together outside of Keith’s tent surrounded by the sights and sounds of my home. We weren’t out running for our lives. Vampires weren’t hunting us. We were simply together in public.

  I don’t know if Jason read my mind or if he somehow scented my feelings but he pulled me tightly into his embrace.

  He kissed the top of my head. “I’m going to find a way to make this work.”

  If anyone could, I suspected Jason could. “Okay.”

  I sounded like a children’s doll endlessly repeating the same word over and over. Okay, okay. But Jason didn’t seem to mind. He kissed my forehead.

  “I want to be alone with you.”

  I wanted it, too. So much that it scared me a little. “It might be a long time until we can do that.”

  “I’ll come to your tent tonight. We can sleep together.”

  “Can you come before that?”

  A cold gust of wind hit me in the face and I shivered. I looked up at the sky. Was the weather changing? It was spring. I needed it to get warm. I’d never felt summer above ground and I was more anxious than I could say for it to get here already.

  “When do you need me?”

  “I’m going to hold a meeting, in a little while, with all the people who might be willing to join our little revolution. If you think any of your people might want to come, bring them.”

  Jason ran a hand through his messy blond hair, something I knew he did when he considered something. “My sisters would definitely want in. They’re really mad about Mom. I’ll think about whom else.”

  “Okay.” There I was again. Okay. I really wished I could come up with something more creative to say. How was I supposed to lead this group I hoped to form if I sounded like such a dunce?

  I stepped out of his arms. “I’ll see you in my tent then? For the meeting?”

  He put his hands in his pockets; looking younger than he had since the day I’d first saw him. We’d both been more innocent then and it had only been six months ago. What would we be like six months from now?

  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  I believed him. He wouldn’t miss it because Jason had proven himself to be the kind of guy who showed up in a crisis. He was mine. We would find a way to work this out. It would, I hoped, eventually not be so weird to be with him here.

  I walked toward Keith’s tent intending to turn right and head to my father’s makeshift bar but ended up colliding with Andon instead.

  After I somehow managed not to fall on my face, I took a deep breath to steady myself for his presence. The big problem? Jason looked so much like him. It was hard to stay angry with a person who resembled someone you loved so dearly.

  Plus, he had the added benefit of saving both Tiffani and her son’s life. I would always feel grateful to him for that.

  “Thank you.” I spoke first. It seemed stupid to stand there in an awkward silence and he clearly wasn’t going to act like the grown up here. “You saved Tiffani and her son. I can’t thank you enough for that.”

  “Levi.”

  What? “I’m sorry. I didn’t follow what you said.”

  “The baby’s name is Levi. They decided a few minutes ago.”

  “Levi Endover.” The name felt weird on my tongue and I grinned. Keith and Tiffani had a son named Levi. “Who does he look like?”

  “He has red hair like his father. I’ll be honest, other than that I find that most babies look pretty much the same to me until they get a little bigger.”

  I nodded. I had no experience with newborns. When we’d lived below in Genesis, the newborns and their mothers had been all but sequestered to keep them alive and healthy until they were several months old.

  Andon spoke again. “Tiffani isn’t out of trouble yet, but I’ve instructed the medic on her care and I won’t be far, I don’t think, if she needs me.”

  “Did you”—I could barely speak the words because they grossed me out—“cut her open?”

  His eyes twinkled with mischief like his son’s often did. “Does the idea unsettle you, Rachel?”

  “Yes.” There was no point in hiding it.

  “You can plunge a stake into the chest of a Vampire and cut off the head of a Werewolf but you don’t like thinking of me making a small incision to pull out a baby?”

  I shrugged. “I guess we all have our talents.”

  He laughed, throwing his head back in a loud bout of humor. I hadn’t meant to be funny, which left me standing next to him with my mouth hung open in surprise.

  “Yes, Rachel, we do.”

  I hated the way Andon said my name. It always sounded like he was considering something about me that I didn’t quite understand. If there is one thing about myself that I know after sixteen years it is that I don’t like to be unsure of what is going on.

  “All right then, goodbye.”

  I started to leave and he grabbed my arm. Very deliberately, I looked down at his hand gripping me until he got the hint that I didn’t want his hands on me. It was a veiled threat. I probably wouldn’t ever physically harm Jason’s father. Although lately I’d been coming up with reasons and ways in which I might, at least in my own mind.

  Andon dropped my arm. “Sorry.”

  I nodded. “Was there something else you needed?”

  “I did something six months ago. I made a decision.”

  I didn’t need him to tell me what that was. I was acutely aware of it. He’d separated Jason and me. He’d done it on purpose. Even if his reasons had been sound, he’d hurt me in a way that had changed me permanently. My whole body tensed as he spoke. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what he said. I wasn’t sure I could handle it.

  Still, it was one of those things that happens where you have no choice but to stand still and take whatever is coming. There is no other choice.

  “I did what I did because I thought I could spare Jason the pain that will come with loving you.”

  I opened my mouth, horrified about what he’d said, but no sound would come out. I couldn’t utter a word in response.

  He continued. “Whether you like it or not, you are not going to be an easy person for Jason to have in his life. None of this is going to be simple. The people here, unless I am greatly mistaken, are not all going to welcome us with open arms even though we just saved them from a Wolf attack.”

  “I don’t know how any of them will respond. I never would have imagined Patrick shaking Jason’s hand.”

  He nodded. “I thought there was still time to stop the mating, to stop Jason’s wolf from fully choosing you. I hoped he would get over you and that his wolf would turn its attention to one of the female pack members.”

  “What about what Jason and I wanted? You lied to him and you left me in Vampire facility underground completely alone.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Well, at least he wasn’t going to try to deny it.

  “And I’d do it again.”

  I gasped. This wasn’t the apology I’d expected. Not even close. I wondered if Jason had known this was what his father wanted to say to me.

  “You’d do it again?”

  “I’m a father to Jason, Luna, and Autumn. Their mother, as you felt justified in informi
ng them recently, is now a member of the Undead. I have to parent them alone as I also attempt to keep my pack alive in the midst of this hell we now call life. I will lie, cheat, steal, and kill to keep my children safe. Even from their own hearts.”

  I swallowed as I tried to digest his words. On one hand, I understood—sort of. I wished more than once that my father was the sort of man who would do anything for me. I could respect that kind of love. But on the other hand, I wanted to claw out his eyes.

  I raised my chin and tried to pretend I was proud. I tried to pretend I was beautiful, talented, funny, and unique. I tried to pretend that nothing intimidated me.

  “And yet here you are, Andon. Here you are and Jason and I found each other again.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. Here I am.”

  I didn’t have anything else to say so I turned on my heel and did my best to walk, not run, far away from him.

  Chapter Twenty

  I went from one parental extreme to another. Standing in the door of my father’s tent—which wasn’t so much a home anymore as a bar—I regarded him quietly. He hadn’t seen me yet as he hummed to himself moving several stools around to set up for the evening hours.

  In all of the years that I’d known him, I’d never seen him as happy as he seemed in that moment. Dad looked truly content these days. No one asked him to fight. No one reminded him of his shame. He no longer had my impending Warrior-hood to worry about since I’d passed that six months earlier. No, he could absolutely abuse his body in total privacy by drinking with his customers and no one thought anything wrong with it.

  No one but me, and I wasn’t around much.

  It pained my heart to know I was about to do what I was going to do. Whatever else he was—some people called him a traitor, he was certainly a drunk—he was my father and it melted my insides that in his strange way he’d finally found the kind of happiness he’d never known since my mother died by running his bar and not thinking about Warrior stuff.

  “On my sixteenth birthday I waited half-an-hour to see if you would wake up from your drunken stupor.”

  My father, Harold, jumped a foot in the air and grabbed his chest as he regarded me.

  “Rachel, honey, you terrified me. When did you get here?”

  I shrugged as I walked forward into the room. I could have done a tap dance and he wouldn’t have noticed. He tended to forget I existed unless I went missing for large periods of time.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, I missed it. What did you say?”

  I’m told at one time he was quite handsome. Now, his blond hair was all but completely grey and his eyes were constantly bloodshot. His face looked bloated and his long aristocratic nose shaded a constant red.

  “I said that I waited for half-an-hour for you to wake up on my sixteenth birthday.”

  He looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t wake up and then I got there too late. You’d already been put in the elevator.”

  Yes, that had been quite the scene. It had shaken me to the core and that had been a really bad thing considering I was going Upward for the first time to fight for my life.

  “We need to talk, Dad.” I walked until I stood right in front of him. Another father might pull his teenager daughter into his arms and hold her just because that was something they did. Not mine, never mine, and right now that was fine.

  “What is it, Rachel?”

  “I need you to teach me.”

  He laughed. “What could I possibly teach you?”

  “I need you to teach me to do the forbidden skill.”

  My father’s eyes narrowed. “Absolutely not.”

  “No?” I pounded on the table next to us. “No isn’t an acceptable answer here, Dad. I’m not going to be fighting back anymore. There are those of us who have had enough. I have had more than enough and I’ve only been doing it for six months. I won’t lose anyone else to this game they’re playing. No more. You’re going to teach me to blow things up or I will find a way to do it myself.”

  “Rachel, what you’re talking about is forbidden.”

  “By who?” I shouted now and I didn’t care. “All of the rules we follow, all of the ways we train, all of the techniques we use, they’re all Isaac Icahn’s rules. He is the enemy. I don’t know why everyone over the age of thirty refuses to see the truth right in front of their faces. We can’t win this, ever, if we don’t change the rules to fit us.”

  My father sunk down into the chair. “Let someone else do it.”

  “Oh, Dad.” I wished I could cry but I had no tears left for my father. “I can’t do that. I’m not built like you. Some day if I have a daughter, I’ll be awake when she gets up on her sixteenth birthday. I won’t let someone else see her off that morning.”

  My father wept outright. Big, gulping sobs as he covered his face with his hands. I stared at him as I tried to figure out how I felt about the fact that he could cry like that and seemingly not feel any shame for it. Patrick Lyons was already pulling himself together and not crying publically over the death of his first-born. Yet my father felt compelled to weep because I wanted him to teach me to make a bomb.

  I bent down until I was at his eye level. “Dad? If you do this for me, I won’t ever ask you to participate again. Do you understand? This will be the last time, the last thing you ever have to do for me.”

  He raised his eyes to mine. I knew he loved me—as much as a broken man who’d never been put back together correctly could—and I wasn’t surprised when he nodded his head.

  “Tomorrow afternoon, when you get up, I’ll be here. We’ll start then, okay?”

  He touched my hand. “We should have run away. When your mother died—and I screwed up—I should have taken you and run away from Genesis. Somewhere far away.”

  The idea was appalling and it made my stomach ache. I’d only grown up at all because of the Lyons interference. If he’d taken me away, I’d probably be dead.

  “I know you did the best you could.”

  And in the end, that was all any of us could do, wasn’t it?

  ***

  I trudged with my hands in my pockets toward my tent. That had gone the way I expected it to. Now, I had to make it work. It was going to require more than just me announcing that we were going to form a society to blow up the monsters to actually accomplish anything. Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to lead it by myself. If everyone had a particular talent, then we could all contribute. I hoped.

  The sun was setting, which meant that soon it would be time to go out and fight. With Keith occupied with his new baby, it was not the time to change things. We were going to have to do this slowly, efficiently.

  I walked into the tent not sure how many people would be in there. Maybe it would just be Jason, but what I saw astounded me. Every Warrior I knew under the age of nineteen stood waiting for me. Joining me seemed to be all of the young Wolves from Jason’s pack. I was flabbergasted and it wasn’t until Deacon cleared his throat that I realized my mouth hung open like a landed fish.

  I closed it and wiped my sweaty hands on my pants. All eyes were on me as I stepped further inside. There was barely enough room to stand in my small tent.

  “Hi. Everyone.” I cleared my throat, feeling really inept. Why had I done this again? My heart rate picked up and I looked for Jason across the tent. He smiled and nodded at me.

  “I see you’re all here. I didn’t expect so many of you, and I guess I’m little bit thrown.”

  Glen, Tia’s boyfriend who had gotten her pregnant, spoke. “Micah said you have a plan for destroying the Undead. I’m always interested in hearing about that.”

  I really didn’t like him. I never had, and it was all I could do not to roll my eyes.

  “Right, well, first let me say how pleased I am that you’ve all come together for this.”

  I motioned at the large group.

  Micah spoke first. “They rescued us out there and you’ve to
ld us a million times that they aren’t like the other Wolves. We’ve decided to believe you.”

  “I’m not convinced, but since I’m in the minority here for now I’m going along. If they pull anything…” Deacon stared right at Jason when he spoke. “I’ll take off their heads.”

  “You’re cute, even if you have a nasty mouth.”

  I choked at Autumn’s statement and it quickly turned into a laugh. Soon the whole group cracked up, which I preferred to the strained silence.

  “Here’s the thing, guys.” When I could speak, I continued. “It can’t go on like this. They’re going to kill us all. We have with us a group of Werewolves who woke up. That means it’s possible to do so. I’m not saying the Undead can be saved. That’s too late, they’re dead, but the Werewolves lived among humans a long time and no one knew. No one got hurt. I think our goal has to be to destroy the Undead and then capture Icahn. He’ll know how to save the Wolves, if it’s possible.”

  I shuddered as I thought about Payne. He might be under some kind of ‘spell’ like Jason’s pack had been, not realizing what he did, but I had a feeling that Wolf liked his situation. If he had a choice, I suspected he wouldn’t want to be awoken. He really seemed to get off on the torture.

  “Did you ask your Dad?” Micah pulled me out of my thoughts.

  I nodded. “Tomorrow Dad will start to show me how to do it.”

  “How do you what?” Glen again. Out of everyone, why did he have to be the most vocal? Shouldn’t he be back in his tent taking care of his pregnant girlfriend or something?

  “Dad is going to teach me how to make bombs.”

  I expected the silence that filled the room, and I raised my hand to indicate I wanted to continue before they all lost their minds.

  “Icahn didn’t want us to know how to do that. He made it a rule. It makes so much sense now that we know he was never on our side. There is almost no one left alive who knows how to produce explosives, except for my father, and as of tomorrow, me. If anyone has a problem with it, they can leave here and not participate any further.”

  Micah spoke first. “I think we should all know how to do it. Do you think Harold would teach all of us?”