by Pam Godwin
Love was supposed to conquer all. The prophecy was supposed to save the future of humanity. I felt completely obliterated by both.
I thought about all of this. Then he and I talked about it endlessly. Agreeing, arguing, we had the same conversations over and over and could never move past the cold hard facts.
Our metaphysical connection was broken.
My fangs and ability to see his veins was lost.
I couldn’t forgive him.
He refused to let me go.
So I ran the halls. I ran to channel the emotional pain, clear my head, and escape the source of my misery. But no matter how far I ran, he was with me, prowling at the edges of my mind. When he was physically near, my body ignited, humming and throbbing with remembered pleasure.
I would always crave him, and though I’d reached a level of civility in our interactions, I wouldn’t, couldn’t have sex with him. He didn’t get to have that part of me. Of course, he could take it, force it, but he didn’t.
Being with him while not being with him was a special kind of hell. I loved him, but I couldn’t forgive him. He loved me and told me a hundred times a day. I was miserable. He was miserable. Something had to give.
One month later, the darkness lifted.
He let me go.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I pressed a trembling hand against the huge door in the parking garage and absorbed the warmth of the steel. Four months ago, I’d left my fathers beneath a dark cold sky in a quest for truth. It seemed only fitting that I would return to them in daylight, sun-kissed and glowing with answers.
Except I had no answers, no cure, no momentous solutions for humanity’s future. I’d fallen so far off my path, I didn’t know who or what I was anymore.
My time with Salem had changed me. My skin was pale. My eyes were bruised. I’d lost my fangs, my hope, and my heart. I would never be the same. I didn’t want to be. That naive girl was dead.
An engine sounded behind me. My transport was ready. I released a ragged breath that felt nothing like relief. Where was I? How far would I have to travel? And the question that hung the heaviest in my mind… Was I strong enough to say goodbye?
When he’d woken me this morning, all he’d said was, “Get dressed and go to the parking garage.” Then he was gone.
I’d arrived a few minutes ago to find my belongings in the truck we’d ridden in from Canada. I’d checked the packs, strapped on my bow and my mother’s dagger, and waited for the comforting sense of completeness. It never came.
Erebus sat in the driver’s seat, observing me dispassionately.
Salem was nowhere to be found.
He’s setting me free.
I’d spent the last month demanding he let me go. Now I was here and instead of shouting at Erebus to speed me away from this doomed place, I was avoiding that truck. Scanning the garage for Salem. Fighting back tears. I couldn’t breathe. All I felt was stomach-cramping pain around a hard knot of this-doesn’t-feel-right.
Michio had told me to follow my gut. My gut trusted Salem four months ago when I left the Canadian camp. He cheated on me, and my gut wanted to give him another chance.
No way. I could never, because… Lessons! Learned!
A loud clank sounded, vibrating through the door. I jerked my hand away from the steel. Hybrid guards unlatched the locks and rolled the interior gate to the side. I shuffled back, eyes wide and breath stuck in my throat.
With a heavy metallic groan, the steel door began to roll skyward, folding back along overhead tracks.
Frozen in shock, I stared at the crack of light along the bottom, watching as the opening grew bigger and brighter. I stole a glance at the truck beside me and found Erebus’ steely blue gaze. No blindfold?
He didn’t move, didn’t blink.
They were going to let me see the location of their home? If I recognized the landscape, I could bring my fathers back. They might not be able to catch Salem, but they would kill his friends and destroy his home.
Protectiveness spiked through me. Despite everything that had happened, I had no interest in retaliation. I would fight anyone who tried to come after him.
I turned back to the rising door. If I knew where he lived, I could come back. Was that why—?
“There was a popular saying in the old world.” The deep rumble of Salem’s timbre rose above the screech of the door.
I spun around and found him standing in the darkness ten feet away. His hands were shoved in the front pockets of his leather pants, his shirt stretched tightly across his defined chest. Elbows tucked against his sides, shoulders forward, he stood stiffly, uncomfortably, a posture so horribly unnatural. So anti-Salem.
Sunlight and heat spilled in behind me, slowly climbing up the backs of my legs. As much as I wanted to see the view outside, I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
“According to the saying…” He watched the yellow glow stretch across the concrete and reach for his boots. “If you love her, set her free. If she comes back to you, she’s your captive forever. Restraints optional.”
My chest squeezed, my lips twitching between a smile and a full-on sob. “That’s not how the saying goes.”
“Close enough.” He retreated a few steps, chased back by the creeping light. His gaze locked on mine. “I’ll wait for you.”
Longing and bitterness surged through me, my chin trembling with a battle of emotions. “I’m not coming back, Salem.”
He nodded, a jerky movement taut with pain, his eyes aglow beneath dark brows. “I’ll wait forever.”
Please, don’t mean that. I couldn’t bear it.
The door finished its climb, forcing him to slip deeper into the garage, enveloped by shadows. The heat on my back beckoned me, making it easier to turn away from him.
Golden sand scattered a dirt ramp. I ran toward it, raced into the blinding light, and gasped. The sun blasted my vision and smothered my skin in heat. The sensation was so overwhelming I wobbled with wheezing breaths. It. Was. Amazing. I stood there for long moments, absorbing the fresh air and lifting my face to the glorious blue sky.
The sun sat high over an endless desert. A few concrete towers rose up around me like jagged pikes in the sand. The landscape, the dry heat, the mountain range in the distance—all of it was familiar. My heart banged against my ribs. Was it just my hopeful imagination or…?
I pivoted to the garage and stumbled back, my gaze tipping up, up, up at a massive wall of broken concrete. The structure sat atop Salem’s underground home, its distinctive curved shape and ginormous size a known marker in the ruins of Las Vegas.
No fucking way. I was only forty miles from home!
I looked at my surroundings with new eyes and recognized some of the crumbled piles of concrete. When the last of the humans abandoned this arid city twenty years ago, the desert took back what belonged to it. The monolith towering above me was one of the few ruins that still looked like a building. The front of it did anyway, which was punched with square holes—the glassless windows of what had once been a luxury hotel. The entire backside was missing, as well as huge chunks from the upper stories. It looked as though the hand of Eve had reached down from the heavens and snapped off random pieces.
With my back to the distant smudge of mountains, I faced east, the direction of Hoover Dam and my family.
Four months ago, Salem had taken me from Canada and brought me home. All this time, I’d been home.
With a lump in my throat, I ran back into the garage and found him where I’d left him. Shoulders stiff, hands in his pockets, he watched me approach with liquid fire in his eyes.
“Why did you build here?” I stopped just outside arm’s reach and mirrored his pose.
“The city was abandoned, and there are miles of underground tunnels.”
“That’s not the only reason.”
“No.” A muscle in his cheek bounced. “I needed to be near you.”
The cruel things he’d done to me had left permanent scars. But
this, the gut-wrenching injustice of leaving a man I would love for the rest of my life, was an infected wound that would never heal.
I couldn’t stop myself from walking to him. His arms opened, and I kept walking until I was crushed against his chest, held tightly in his embrace, and breathing air that would never smell this good again.
It wasn’t the scent of deceit. It was fiercely genuine. He’d smelled like snow in a blizzard. The aroma of pine needle tea and a wood-burning hearth. It was laughter, dreams, a gentle hand in my hair, a spark in my chest. It was the smell of his deep sigh when he kissed my neck. It was love. Selfless love. Strong. Warm. And it was in me, in every breath.
With a burst of hope, I focused internally, searching for the connection that had once hummed between us.
Silent. Dead. It wasn’t coming back.
I wrapped my arms around him, breathed him in, and memorized every rock-hard edge of his torso, the sturdy strength in his spine, and the feel of his jaw resting on my head. And I cried. Loud, shoulder-shaking, sniveling tears of bitter anguish. I cried so hard I couldn’t form a coherent word. But I didn’t need to.
He stroked my hair, his chest heaving in a way I’d never felt before.
“Go,” he whispered, and it sounded like Stay. Then louder, harsher. “Go!”
I untangled my body from his, and his hands went back in his pockets, every inch of him curled in and rigid.
He did this to us. Turn away. Start walking. Don’t look in his eyes. Don’t—
I looked up and found those translucent depths saturated with moisture, so stark and ravaged I felt his agony down to my bones and deeper still. I longed to kiss him. I ached to stay. I wanted to choose the trampled, abused, pathetic version of myself over empty, soulless, and no longer living.
But staying meant giving up on humanity. There was nothing left here to save us. Out there, I still had my soldiers, my fists, and my arrows. Out there, I could channel the anguish into a greater purpose.
I forced my legs to move, sobbing as I stepped into the light where he couldn’t chase me. By the time I reached the passenger door of the waiting truck, I was weeping violently. The sun itself couldn’t penetrate the tears in my eyes. They were a downpour of raindrops against a cloudy sky, heavy, angry, and uncountable.
Sliding into the passenger seat, I shut the door and caught his reflection in the side mirror. He prowled restlessly along the edge of the sunlit floor, hands in his hair, glaring at the band of light. Trapped like a caged lion.
“Go,” I said to Erebus. Before I change my mind.
He hit the gas and drove up the ramp and into the sun. I swiped at my tears, eyes on the mirror, watching with unbearable heartache as Salem fell to his knees at the shadowed edge of his darkness. He’d deliberately sent me off during the day. He couldn’t run after me, and I would be safely tucked within the walls of Hoover Dam before the sun set.
As we drove away, the steel door began to lower, and an explosive crash vibrated from within the garage. A horrible roar followed, and I looked away, gripped the edge of the seat, and cried some more.
The desert stretched out around us, but I didn’t see it. Couldn’t see anything past my wretchedness.
The Viking beside me kept his fangs shut and eyes on the sand.
Eventually, I pulled myself together, dried my face, and turned to him. “What’s stopping you from killing me?”
“Salem’s public claiming protected you in our home. Now…knowing how important you are to him, I would never hurt him in that way.” His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “None of us would.”
“That’s…” I shook my head. “That’s pretty serious loyalty.”
“All those feral hybrids you take down with your arrows?” He shot me a glare. “They have fears, hopes, dreams. They feel everything a human feels, but they’re trapped. Enslaved by a mental harness. Imagine that. Imagine feeling and thinking while having an infection in your brain that overrides your actions. Your father, the doctor, he knows. He was imprisoned by the same mental programming. Your mother helped him break free. That’s what Salem did for us. He freed us.”
I swallowed and stared blankly at the windshield. “If I don’t kill them, they’ll wipe out the human race. Fighting is the only way I know.”
“Find another way.”
“Find a way that doesn’t involve defending our lives?” I asked incredulously.
“Salem got us this far.” He gestured between us, as if to indicate that we could share space without killing each other. “But I’m still a slave to these.” He flashed his fangs. “Still haunted by the kind of urges that keeps a man awake at night.”
I shivered. “But you have the bloodlust under control, right?”
“Mostly.” He shifted his bulky weight in the seat. “Try not to cut yourself or…bleed in any way for the next two hours.”
My breath caught. That was why Salem didn’t let me leave his room when I had my period. I knew the scent of blood affected him. But the others? Holy shit. Seventy-plus hybrids in an enclosed space frothing and foaming at the mouth for my blood? That blood? I fought down nausea and shoved away the thought.
We drove through the remains of the day in silence. The ride from Vegas to the dam was a short breath compared to how long I’d been traveling. The journey that had taken me to Canada, the mansion, and Salem’s home had lasted a year.
It’d been a year since I’d seen Shea, slept in my own bed, and visited my mother’s garden.
But as the rocky landscape of home emerged on the horizon, I felt emptier, colder. Meaningless. I glanced at the side mirror, and a hollow echo of my former self stared back.
This isn’t the way.
“Stop the truck,” I whispered.
“No. I was instructed to take you directly—”
“Stop the truck! I just…” I closed my eyes and rubbed my head. “I need to think.”
He slowed to an idling stop.
Just over those cliffs, a thirty-minute drive along a winding road, and I would be home. I would return to the fighting, the struggling, the endless cycle of pointless hell. The Resistance barely kept current generations alive. An army of arrows wasn’t the solution for the future of our species.
Find another way.
“You’re going back to him,” he said matter-of-factly.
“No. Shh.”
A sigh billowed beside me, followed by the silence of the engine.
Keeping my eyes shut, I forced myself to relax in the seat and just breathe. In. Out. I’m missing something crucial. What is my purpose?
Annie’s ghost had predicted the creatures would evolve. My mother exterminated the aphids. The spiders were the next wave of evolved creatures, but their infertility wiped them out. Annie’s prophecy referred to the hybrids.
I wasn’t fearless and powerful like my mother. I couldn’t wipe them out with a thought. I was human—a stupid girl who couldn’t hold on to her fangs or protect her own heart. I might’ve had a rebellious spirit once, but I’d never been brave enough, strong enough to be called a savior.
Maybe I wasn’t meant to fight with arrows and fangs. Maybe I wasn’t meant to fight at all.
I opened my eyes and studied the rugged lines of Erebus’ face. I’d hunted and killed his kind my entire life. It was what I’d been bred to do, and it hadn’t brought mankind any closer to salvation.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Erebus narrowed his eyes.
Find another way.
I’d never tried to learn what it was to be a hybrid.
I’d never shown mercy.
What if I was meant to save his kind?
The prophecy said my mother wouldn’t be able to save future generations from the infection, but her daughter could.
Without mankind, the hybrids were the future generations.
My heart raced. Was that it? Was that the answer? They were the ones I was supposed to save?
Adrenaline charged through my blood and quickene
d my breaths. I yanked on the door handle and jumped out.
“Wait.” Erebus followed suit and stomped around the front bumper. “Get back in the truck.”
I held up a finger and wrapped an arm around the empty drum of my chest.
The surrounding desert stretched toward the massive cliffs in the east. A gray sky cast the barren landscape in monstrous shadows as it pushed the sun into the horizon behind me.
Nothing but darkness ahead. Daylight would return, but if I climbed back in that truck, if I let him drive me home, I would be heading backwards, starting over from the beginning. The fighting. The resisting. The death. Only this time, I was a hollow shell of the person I was before.
The answer, the future, was not at Hoover Dam. Salem was right. I was running. But the solution wasn’t with him either. Had I stayed, I would’ve eventually been seduced by his presence. I would’ve submitted to the ache in my heart and forgiven him in my weakness.
I needed to forgive myself. My manipulations had hurt him as much as he’d hurt me. I needed to forgive myself for putting my agendas and my heart before his. I needed to forgive myself for not figuring out the connection between my fangs and his veins. I needed to forgive myself for loving him despite it all.
For once in my goddamn life, I needed to do something right and through that, find absolution.
“If you don’t get back in the truck,” Erebus said, taking an assertive step toward me, “I will force you. We’re out in the open, and there are always hybrids in this area.”
I knew that, but I wasn’t returning to that truck.
“You used to hunt me.” My boots crunched the sand as I walked toward the bleak horizon. “Was that an instinctual thing?”
“You lead an anti-hybrid army hellbent on exterminating us. The instinct to kill you is a practical thing.”
“Is?” I glanced at him over my shoulder. “You still want me dead?”
“Get in the truck.” He thrust a rigid finger at the door.
“You told me to find another way.”
“The longer we stand out here with your scent fumigating the air, the more dangerous this little rest stop becomes.” He scanned the darkness, the lines on his face growing tighter. “We’ll talk in the car.”