“All right.” I held up my hand. “Enough.” I really didn’t want to travel down the divinity path with him. Not even a little bit.
“Rachel.”
My mother wanted my attention. I couldn’t give it to her, either.
No one would fault me either way I went. If I were now not able to destroy the cloning machine, everyone would get it. I loved my mother; I’d just gotten her back. My feelings for Chad were so intense I’d been willing to sacrifice everything, even myself, to have him back in the world.
If I could do it they’d talk about my strong decision, the way I’d known right from wrong. Only I didn’t. For once in my life, I had no idea which direction would take me down the right path.
I stared at Isaac Icahn. Whatever he wanted from me, it had to be the wrong thing to do.
Tears filled my eyes. Sometimes hard decisions could be easy, even if I hated myself for having to make them.
I looked at my mother. She nodded to me. I knew she understood and would have done the same thing in my shoes. I believed this because she had been the one to give me my moral compass. Well, she and my father. Right from wrong, yes from no, they all came from her and Dad.
Chad’s gaze sought my own. He smiled at me, nodding, giving me permission. I would have done it without his okay but it felt nice to have it.
I didn’t know if this would be the last time I saw either of them. Perhaps I should have said something, only there were no words worth saying. Instead, I raised my machete and slammed it down on the last untouched batch of wires. The machine stuttered and went silent.
The lights had given the cloning bed an eerie glow and they disappeared. Silence ebbed through the room. I lifted my eyes, scarcely able to let myself really look.
Had anyone fallen to the ground dead? A headache throbbed between my eyes.
My mother still breathed. She looked left and right before nodding at me, a slight smile on her face. Chad remained where he stood. He didn’t even look fazed by the experience.
Icahn also retained his life. He sighed loudly. “This doesn’t mean we won’t suddenly die. It could take some time. I told you, we really don’t know.”
Chad laughed, which startled me. I jumped from the sound. I wasn’t the only one, because all eyes in the room were focused on him.
“No one knows when they’ll die. Even if you’re diagnosed with a horrible illness you could go out and get struck by lightning. It’s called being human. If I collapse on the ground in an hour never to be heard from again, then so be it. My life, my soul—whatever you want to call it—I don’t want it in your hands.”
I loved Chad. I mean, I had known it before. All the things I had done to make sure he was okay had been evidence of it. I’d probably fallen for him at the ice-skating rink in the time before Armageddon.
Right then, however, I fell straight into the I-will-love-you-forever zone and I knew I’d never get to climb out. My heart swelled and my cheeks heated. This was the worst timing and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
“You’re right, Mr. Lyons.” Icahn nodded. “No one knows when they’re going to die. For example, Rachel had no idea her life had come to an end.”
I saw the gun only seconds before he fired it. No one could move fast enough. Bullets flew. That’s what they did and nothing human was going to stop them. The bullet with my name on it headed straight for me.
A growl sounded somewhere in the room. Truth was, I had no idea where Jason had come from. When he had gotten in the room and how long he’d been there didn’t matter.
The only important factor was while I couldn’t do a thing to save myself from a speeding bullet, my Werewolf ex-boyfriend could. He put himself between my certain death and me.
With a roar, he took the hit meant for me and hit the ground. I breathed hard. For a second, I couldn’t move.
“Jason.” I rushed to his side. Blood pooled at his chest, a large, gaping red hole of life force leaving his body. “What are you doing? You’re going to be fine. It didn’t take off your head.” The only way to kill a Werewolf came from chopping its head from its body. Messy, but effective.
He coughed, blood pooling on his lips. “In my Wolf form, yes. In my human body I can die just the same as you.”
My heart stuttered. Jason had taken a bullet for me and it was going to kill him. “Don’t move.”
A large bang sounded behind me. I didn’t look to see what it was. My eyes were only for Jason.
“Not much chance I will.”
“Right.” I pressed my hands down on his chest. “Hold on. We’ll find your father or shift or something.”
“Not gonna happen, pixie-girl.”
His eyes were so blue, so clear, for a second I was transported back to my sixteenth birthday, the night he’d first kissed me. We’d been so young. I’d been so completely naive. Happiness had surrounded us and I’d believed it always would.
“Oh, Jason.”
“Forgive me?” His words had become harder to hear.
“There’s nothing to forgive.” My words were true. I didn’t care about any of it.
“There is and I know it. You’re my mate. I should have done better.”
“Oh, Jason.” Tears ran down my cheeks. “I forgive you. I loved you, you know I did the first time around, and the second, I would have gone off with your pack.”
“I know.” He smiled. I could see the life slipping from his eyes. His blood had stained my hands, the sleeves of my shirt. “You would have ended up with me. I’ve never doubted it. Because only I have ever seen how beautiful you looked in the snow. That day when it came down all over us, when it was like only the two of us existed in the world.”
With his words reminding me of the days we’d spent fleeing Vampires, a time I didn’t let myself visit in my memory very often, Jason slipped from the world. In my arms, but not by my hand. I’d wanted to kill him, so why did I now weep like a baby over his dead body?
***
My name is Rachel Clancy.
In the end, it had been Jason who had found redemption, not me. Really, what did I have to hold against him? He’d saved my life over and over again. Did I want to have perished when the Vampire virus spread? No. Because of him I had the chance to do all the things I ended up doing, to become the version of me I never would have known without him.
Thought he’d hurt those I loved on occasion, he never hurt me, not physically. And although I believed the world better off without Werewolves, the sweet boy inside of him should have had better.
Icahn escaped, of course. When Micah had wrestled the gun from him, Darren and Deacon had gotten him away.
But I’m not concerned about it. Not when the wolves howl every night over the horizon, saying good-bye to the boy who should have someday been their Alpha. I’m sure Andon knows his son is gone. A reckoning with him now will never be avoided.
Chad sits down next to me. We have no plans and we’re not making any. Keith and Patrick will tell us what to do next. They’re in charge. For now, we’re just young Warriors searching for justice.
I won’t rest until I’ve found some. For all of us.
Justice
The Warrior – Book 5
By
Rebecca Royce
~DEDICATION~
To all the readers who loved Rachel, wrote me about her, and cared about her journey. This is for you.
Prologue
My name is Rachel Clancy.
If you’ve been reading these books, then you already know that. But I feel the need to introduce myself to you every time I start a new one, like you might have just found me, or you’re a stranger I don’t know. Manners dictate the introduction although I suspect I’ll never know your name in return, which is okay. Maybe it’s better I never do.
I haven’t held anything back from you. I’ve not tried to make myself look better or less selfish or more mature. No, I wrote down everything the way I remember it happening. Someone else might remember the eve
nts differently but this is how it happened for me, or at least how I see it when I think about the years between my sixteenth and eighteenth birthdays.
Eighteen would have made me a grown-up in the Before Time, in the days before Dr. Icahn’s experiments nearly ended the entire world. In the time after, sixteen became the year we achieved maturity. Still, for me, since I could remember what my life had been like before, eighteen meant something when I finally got there.
It indicated I had survived, somehow. When I blew out the candles, low-sung lyrics of “Happy Birthday” filling the room, and my mother and father cheering, I couldn’t help but disbelieve I’d actually made it to my birthday. Was this all a dream? Had I died on a field, eaten by a Werewolf, and these thoughts of my eighteenth birthday were imaginings of my dying mind?
Writing these tales, telling them to you, helps me to believe they happened.
But the sad truth is, if you are reading them, then most likely I am dead.
Because I don’t know that I’d give them to anyone in any other set of circumstances.
If you’re reading my books, then it’s possible I never saw year nineteen.
That thought would make me horribly sad if I couldn’t feel in my bones that justice was coming, on her way, down the road—traveling toward us. Those who destroyed humanity will have their reckoning.
Reader, if I didn’t live long enough, I hope it felt really good to see Icahn fall. I hope everyone reveled in it, partied through the night, kissed, and cried out with glee for the way he ended.
Even if I never got to see it.
Chapter One
“My heart. Oh, no. I’m dying.” Chad gripped his chest and fell to the ground at my feet. He twitched dramatically and I sighed. Shaking my head, I turned my back on his display.
I knew why he perpetually pretended to die. My mother, Chad, and the four others we suspected had been cloned—although we didn’t really know who had and hadn’t been since Icahn had evaded capture—liked to joke about the fact they might drop dead at any moment.
Sick and perverse were the two words that came to mind when they acted out on this humor. Chad’s twitching on the ground fell into the roll-my-eyes-and-walk-away category of reactions.
With my back turned to him, he could never see how each and every time he did this my eyes filled with tears.
Chad ran up behind me and grabbed my arm just as I’d managed to wipe my fear away.
“Are you done being a jackass?”
He smiled and nodded. “For now. So, I’ve been thinking about your birthday.”
“It was yesterday.” We’d all celebrated. My parents, Chad, his brother Micah, his parents, his much younger brothers, his sister Tia and her husband Glen, their baby, Keith…in fact, the entire complement of Warriors had turned out to wish me a happy eighteenth. Everyone had been there except Deacon.
My former best friend who’d tried to kill me and who, for some ridiculous reason, I couldn’t seem to write off in my heart. I didn’t love him, not like I did Chad, but best friends were hard to come by. If Deacon ever came back from wherever Icahn had stashed him and gave me a proper apology, I’d probably forgive him. As long as he got down on his miserable hands and knees while he did it.
“Yes, I’m aware. We had cake.”
He pulled me against him before kissing me square on the lips. I melted. After everything Chad and I had been through to be together, and it really had been a lot: his death, his cloning, his memory destruction, which happened to be my fault, along with my ex-now-dead-boyfriend’s, we couldn’t seem to stop touching each other. All the time. It had to be making everyone around us want to gag.
I didn’t care.
Wrapping my arms around Chad, I kissed him like I might not be able to tomorrow. I had certainly learned the hard way. Several times.
He pulled back to look at me. “So, your birthday.”
I sighed, laying my head on his chest. “Yesterday.”
“Right. Well, we got to celebrate with your family and all our friends. But not alone.”
I leaned back to look at him. “What did you have in mind?”
The habitat alarm blared to life, ending whatever discussion we might have had about any particular topic he wanted to talk about. There had been a time when I hadn’t wanted to speak about what he wanted to bring up. I hadn’t wanted to consider any new element to our relationship at all. It seemed too scary.
But lately? I didn’t mind the look he got in his eyes when moving forward came up as a discussion.
Now, however, we had to find out what threat had caused the alarm to sound. I hadn’t gotten the physical discomfort that meant monsters were nearby. Humans were the most likely guilty party.
“If this is Deacon’s cronies again, I’m going to stab them through their worthless hearts.”
I swallowed away the pain hearing his name brought me. Six months and I wasn’t over what was—and was not—Deacon’s betrayal. He’d had his mind erased in order to forget me. It wasn’t really his fault his memories hadn’t returned when Chad’s and the others’ had. The real question was why the others remembered at all.
But his actions since then? The constant violence and leading an uprising against us on Icahn’s behalf? Yeah, for that I could call foul.
“I hate the daytime attacks. It was bad enough when the Werewolves could start a fight in the sunlight. Now? It’s three times as bad. The Wolves and the humans during the day plus the Vampires and the Werewolves and the humans at night. We never get a break.”
“Which is exactly why they think we’re going to fall apart.” Chad pulled his machete off his back as we headed for the elevator. Machetes took out humans and Wolves alike. The blades even slowed down a Vampire. Lately, they’d been Chad’s weapons of choice.
“Right.” I tried to stay positive like the other Warriors. They all seemed so certain we would ultimately prevail in our battles. Sometimes, I didn’t feel quite so sure.
Not that I’d ever tell them. Doom and gloom wouldn’t help anything.
Chad was on duty, but not me. Technically, I should be sleeping because I had to face an evening run with the Vamps. But ever since I’d lived Upward I hadn’t been able to sleep during daytime hours unless they drugged me up, which I hated. In the event of a surge, all Warriors had to be on duty. Sleepiness would just lead me to death.
“Be careful up there.” I kissed him straight on the lips. “There’s no coming back anymore.”
He squeezed my cheeks in his hands. “It’s better, beautiful. One life. One chance to get it all right.”
This had become a routine for us. I reminded him of his mortality and he took the chance to make me feel better for having destroyed the cloning machines. I’d done it even knowing Chad could drop dead at any time. There had been no other choice I’d felt I could make. But it created a permanence to death once more.
If Chad died, I couldn’t bring him back to my arms again.
I waited while he rode the elevator Upward until the dial showed he’d reached the top. Maybe it would be a minor skirmish or none at all. False alarms did happen.
Sighing, I hugged myself. The habitat, miles underground, maintained a steady temperature to keep us comfortable. But I felt cold. If I didn’t know where everyone I loved was—if I wasn’t certain they were fine—then it often felt like I couldn’t breathe.
Chad would be with the others on duty, a large group, and they all took care of each other. I knew because I’d been there with them. The Warriors had become such a cohesive group of fighters we could all practically hear each other’s thoughts—if we fought monsters.
Going up against regular humans, which happened more and more, put someone like me at a disadvantage. I didn’t have the size or the strength to beat down a man bigger than me, which was why I’d been delegated solely to monster-fighting.
I turned my back on the elevators. Maybe I’d find my parents. I knew what Chad wanted even though he hadn’t gotten to say the words
aloud. He wanted both of us to move out of our parents’ homes and move in together. Heck, if I gave him the chance, he’d probably propose.
And if he did, I’d say yes. Eighteen would have been too young in the Before Time. Now we had no choice to delay happiness. We might go Upward and never come down.
The elevator dinged and a shout caught my attention when the doors opened.
I whirled around. “Chad?” I didn’t know who had yelled but my head always went to him first these days.
Instead of Chad coming out, it was Micah, his younger brother and my close friend. He was being hauled through by Glen, Chad and Micah’s brother-in-law. Glen had married Tia when she’d gotten pregnant. She’d fallen apart as a Warrior and had made a decision that being a mother was preferable to fighting. At the time, she’d been my closest friend and even though we’d mended fences, these days we didn’t understand each other very well.
I didn’t trust her one hundred percent of the time, but if I was going to have any kind of future with Chad, it was going to have to work. They were family.
Glen bellowed as he dragged Micah forward.
I rushed to them. “Are you hurt?”
Even as I asked the question, I could see blood seeping through a makeshift field bandage on Micah’s shoulder.
With a shove, he pushed Glen off him. “It’s a flesh wound and he’s hollering like a banshee.”
“Flesh wounds can fester.” I shook my head. “You need to get it looked at.”
We lived in what essentially amounted to pre-Civil War times in terms of medicine. Despite this, Dr. Icahn had built machines using technology so sophisticated I couldn’t have understood it even when I lived in a techy time.
“I will, but Glen here is carrying on like I’m about to die. I’m not. It’s even clotting. I’m not going to pass out.”
“Good.” I patted his other shoulder. “Who is up there? Humans?”
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