by eden Hudson
I cried a little bit, too, which slowed me down even more. Especially when I had to get off the road for a while because I was sobbing so hard I couldn’t watch for cars. Thank God for that culvert. If someone had seen me and stopped, I don’t know what I would’ve told them.
Once the crying stopped, I felt numb. It was like the tears had washed all the emotion away. I adjusted my backpack straps, dug my fingers into the long grass, and half-pulled, half-climbed my way back out of the culvert and onto the blacktop. There, I put one foot in front of the other like a zombie tracker.
Can’t stop until I see carnival lights.
When I got to town, I took a left off the main drag toward the square, expecting to see the Armistice Celebration in full swing. As much as I loathed the idea of being around other living creatures right then, I needed to catch a ride to the Dark Mansion and Tempie. She needed me. And she was all I had left.
After a couple blocks, I saw the bank clock blinking the temperature. A cool 92 degrees. Downright frigid compared to the last couple of days. I passed the dark-windowed bakery, a few generic brick storefronts that I hadn’t wasted any time or money in, and the Witches’ Council building, where Jax and I had spent most of the last few days, trying to save Tough.
Tears prickled the back of my eyes thinking about Jax. About Tough afterward, sitting on the couch, staring at that wireless video game controller like the softest touch would shatter him. He had needed me.
No, he needed somewhere to stick it. You were just the most convenient hole.
Movement in the shadows to my left, followed by a metallic rattle. My stomach lurched.
Some guy wearing a black hoodie—with his hood up in the middle of the hottest August on record—and pointing a can of spray paint at the Halo Center for Tourism’s front window.
Definitely nothing suspicious about that.
He saw me staring.
“Get lost, tourist.” His voice teetered in that embarrassing gray area between manhood and puberty.
I rolled my eyes and veered right, toward the lights of the carnival rides and food stands.
Voices echoed off the buildings, filling the square with noise, but something wasn’t right. Something besides graffiti-ing teenagers dressed as conspicuously as possible. I slowed down and hooked my hands in my backpack straps.
The rides weren’t moving. The carnival was deserted. No one milled around the Tilt-a-Whirl or played rigged games on the midway or waited in line at the food stands.
So, where was all that yelling coming from? I turned, searching the square for the source of the sound.
A mob had gathered on the north side, across the street from the Halo Old Town Square marker. Huge work lights, stacks of speakers, and vans with various news logos were all clustered around a podium. Somber-faced fallen angel foot soldiers patrolled the edges of the crowd, and Kathan and Tempie stood together at the front.
Kathan disentangled himself from Tempie. She stood back like a good little arm candy as he took to the podium. He faced the cameras and crowd with grim resolution.
The yelling stopped immediately.
That’s when it finally hit me what was happening. This was a press conference.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” The speakers broadcast Kathan’s deep, rich voice across the square. “By now you’ve heard about the terrorist attack on the Armistice Celebration’s Official Welcome Ceremony this afternoon. This sickening assault was the action of an unstable mind, a single, solitary man obsessed with cleansing Halo of its non-person population. The last holdout from the NP-Human Conflict, Colt Whitney.”
My throat went dry. I wanted to get closer, but something held me rooted to the spot.
“Thankfully, casualties were kept to a minimum by the quick thinking and heroic actions of Officer Rian, who was injured while attempting to protect our guests, and—” Kathan let his expression fall momentarily and lowered his head. Or maybe it was real. Maybe fallen angels could feel pain and loss. From this far away, it was hard to tell for sure. “—and Mikal, my enforcer, my right hand since before time began…my closest friend… Mikal was ripped from this world while attempting to subdue the gunman.”
Moments passed. No one so much as breathed.
Kathan slammed his fist on the podium, and I flinched.
“But we will not yet mourn her loss,” Kathan declared. “Not while the monster who perpetrated this heinous crime is still walking free. Colt Whitney—wherever he is hiding—will be found and made to answer for his crimes. He will be brought to justice.” Kathan glared into each camera in turn. “This is my promise to the citizens of Halo. This is my promise to Mikal. This ends now. Next year, when we gather again, it won’t be in remembrance of an armistice between humans and non-people. It will be to celebrate a true end to hostilities between all races. It will be to mark the beginning of a new era.”
Kathan surveyed the cameras in silence one more time, then indicated that he would take questions now. The crowd surged forward as if being closer to the podium would make Kathan more likely to call on them.
“Hey, girl.”
The voice snapped me out of my temporary paralysis. I turned.
Finn, the vampire who had lied about helping me find Tempie in exchange for drinking off me—and not from any of the accepted biting places. The dickbag had sucked off of my breast without even asking.
I rolled my eyes and headed for the podium.
“Wait.” Finn caught up to me. “About the other night—I know you’re mad, but what happened… When I feel a connection like that…” His fangs glinted in the carnival lights. I wondered if he bleached them. Probably, if his perfect eyebrows and sculpted stubble were any indication. “I freaked out. I’m sorry, but I haven’t felt something like that since I got made. And, anyway, it’s not like I was great at intimacy before this. But with you, it felt like—like I was alive again. Better than alive. Superhuman.”
I stopped walking. “Do you even know what my name is?”
“Angel,” he said, his voice dropping an octave and gaining some gravel. “Sunlight. Life. Warmth. Everything good and beautiful that I don’t have anymore. That I’ll never have again.”
“So, no, to the name thing?” I started walking again.
Somewhere along the way I’d forgotten what it was like to be in NP towns, to have everyone assessing what they wanted from me and how I could best be persuaded to hand it over.
Tough—he was when I forgot. He’d been the most sincere person I’d met in forever.
Yeah, and look how that ended.
“Just listen!” Finn grabbed my arm and spun me around to face him. He was glaring—not the deep brooding stare he’d affected before, but a furious snarl.
“Get your hands off me or I’ll start praying.” I guess that Vampires 101 lecture with Harper had finally kicked in.
Except I was looking him in the eyes.
Crap. I locked onto at a spot just above his perfect eyebrows before he could mesmerize me. Once bitten…hardy har.
Finn let go and held up his hands to show that he wasn’t a threat. “Tell me what you want. Anything. I’ll do it if you’ll let me drink off you again.”
“That’s what this is about?” I said. “Just go to the cemetery and pick up a vamp-groupie.”
“If you’re going to be a bitch about this, then tell me what you are.”
“What?”
“I’ll leave you alone if you tell me what you are.”
Up at the front of the crowd, Kathan had ended the press conference. He went back to Tempie and took her hand. Together, they headed toward a waiting limo.
“I don’t have time for this.” I broke into a jog.
I made it three steps. Then something smashed into my backpack and knocked me forward. I threw my hands out to break my fall, but ended up skidding on my hands and knees in the grass. I didn’t even have time to wonder what happened.
Someone grabbed my shoulder and flipped me onto my butt.
&n
bsp; “I’ve been cold for three and a half fucking years,” Finn growled. “If you think I’m going to take ‘Fuck off’ for an answer—”
My brain was still struggling to catch up when a blur from my right knocked Finn off his feet.
“Nobody touches my sister.” Tempie stepped in front of me, fists clenched at her side. “Especially not some no-account vampire pretty-boy. We are the Destroyer, the Godkiller, and you had better learn some respect or you will be one of the first assholes up against the wall when the last battle comes.”
I don’t think Finn heard her. He was too busy writhing on the ground, holding the newly concave side of his face.
“Come on, nerd. Let’s go home.” Tempie slipped her hand into mine and helped me to my feet. “And don’t you dare say anything about Mom. I mean our new home, our real home.”
Tiffani
I left the cabin numb. The pain hit a few miles later, halfway across the Hickses’ field. I stopped walking and patted my pockets for cigarettes. Took a shaky breath.
That was a mistake. I smelled Colt everywhere. This was his footpath I was following, an as-the-crow-flies line through the sun-scorched hay toward Halo. His scent had faded over the past month and a half while he was with Mikal, but the super-smeller picked it out of the dirt, out of the oldest weeds and grass, right out of the damn air. Gun oil, tattoo ink, sweat, heat, sunlight.
The raw scratch of his voice echoed in my head, “You’re the last person I want to remember.”
A month ago, if you’d asked me, I would have said nothing could hurt like the day I found out Mikal had enthralled Colt. Fifteen years ago, I would’ve said nothing could hurt like the day Tough stumbled into my bakery, bleeding from his eyebrow, and asked me to please call his daddy because the angel hurt Mommy. Thirty years ago, I would’ve said losing Shannon to Danny. And fifty years ago, I would’ve said finding out I was the reason Aaron and I couldn’t conceive, losing my husband to his very fertile secretary, and having my family shun me because of the divorce.
When you’ve been a vampire for as long as I have, you begin to get perspective that most humans don’t live long enough to see. You start to realize that there’s always going to be something that hurts worse.
If it had just been the territorial vamp reaction of hearing Colt say that he loved Mikal and didn’t even want to remember me, I could have handled it. I had been suppressing emotion since long before I’d gotten made. Vamp instincts weren’t much different.
But Colt had gotten under my skin. Known exactly which buttons to push. So much like Shannon and yet so different. Shannon had found a sweet boy her own age to fall in love with and marry. Colt had just kept following me around like a lovesick puppy, smiling those self-conscious smiles, making those dry jokes, letting me lean against him for warmth.
I fought the urge to scream, bit my tongue. Vamp venom leaked into my mouth for a few seconds before the healing closed the wound.
Two days ago I’d been resigned to the fact that Tough was going to have to kill Colt to save him from Mikal. I’d known Tough wouldn’t have time to make Colt a vampire before Mikal killed them both, but I had convinced myself I was okay with that. Anything to get Colt away from that bitch. Anything to stop the hell she was putting him through and put an end to his suffering.
I laughed and swiped at my eyes. I should’ve known Colt was too damn stubborn to stay dead.
Truth was it was my fault for getting my hopes up, for thinking this resurrection would be my second chance, that Colt coming back from the dead was a sign. By now I should have known that there were no second chances.
But for five years, I had listened to his heart race whenever he saw me. Felt his muscles tighten like whipcords whenever I touched him. Smelled the endorphins and arousal and relief whenever we were together. I never made a move. Convinced myself there were too many things wrong with it. Even if my having been in love with his mother wasn’t enough, Colt was still young enough to be my great-grandson. He still loved God and believed in the holy war that Danny had convinced Colt they’d been chosen to fight.
Colt should have found someone his own age, some good, sweet girl who would make him happy. Someone who shared his faith and his passion and who would’ve gotten him help when he started to fall apart. Someone who deserved him.
Colt shouldn’t have wanted me. Five years I’d told myself that. Now he didn’t. I’d gotten my wish.
I laughed again. This was the most I’d laughed in more than a month. It hurt like hell.
Ryder
“Sunshine?” I squatted down on the bedroom floor.
Colt hugged his head down tighter to his knees and kept on rocking back and forth.
“Please, God, make it go away, please—” He sounded like somebody had taken a grinder to his throat. But that’s what you get when you spend all day screaming and all night talking to yourself.
The only light in the cabin was coming off the flaming sword laying on the floor next to him. The Sword of Judgment. He had sent Mikal to Hell, so he got to keep her steel. Kind of made sense in a life’s-one-big-video-game sort of way. But not in a keep-sharp-incendiaries-away-from-nutcases kind of way.
“We don’t got time for your mental breakdown bullshit right now, Sunshine,” I said.
It was a miracle an army of fallen angel foot soldiers hadn’t burnt the cabin to the ground yet. Or blown it to hell. Kathan would probably get a chubby at the symmetry of blowing up the crazy holy soldier who’d blown up half his compound and sent his second-in-command to Hell, all while ruining that fancy Armistice Celebration welcome party.
I’d already tried shaking Colt. Smacking him. Yelling at him. I hated to kick a guy in the sack, but if there was a chance that might snap him out of it…
“Listen up, Sunshine,” I said. “You got ten seconds to pull your shit together. After that, I’m going to ring your bells with my boot.”
Nothing.
I took my Copenhagen out and got a dip. Tapped the can for a little while, then put it back in my pocket. Spit in my spit bottle. I even made a lap around the bedroom—while making sure to avoid stepping on the flaming sword.
I stopped pacing and looked at Colt.
“Fuck!” I yelled. “I told you this would happen! Why don’t you ever fucking listen to me?”
Because bullheadedness runs in our family like cancer. That’s why.
I scrubbed my hands across my face. “What’s the point of even having me around if you’re not going to listen?”
But I was pretty sure I knew the answer to that one, too.
Here’s how I think it went down: I was chilling in Heaven with Jesus and Mom and Dad and Sissy, maybe talking to some pretty little country thang died in a hunting accident or four-wheeler rollover—something sexy like that—when I heard Colt clicking for me.
Back in elementary school, me and Colt figured out how to click our tongues just right so that the sound would carry about a mile—or at the very least, down the hall from the sixth grade classroom to the fourth grade classroom during standardized testing. Which, as it turns out, will get your ass in trouble. But the clicking came in handy later on when we figured out how to use it to keep track of each other during battles. It doesn’t waste breath yelling and it can call your buddy to you without warning a fallen angel that you’re about to double-team him.
Anyway, I figure Colt clicked for me and I heard him up in Heaven and God was like, “Yeah, go help your brother. Git ‘er done.”
If that’s how it went down, I don’t blame Colt. He was trying like hell to hold his ground, but Mikal just kept breaking him down. He couldn’t handle it by himself.
What I do blame Colt for is the part where he decided he needed to go back into the Dark Mansion to bust Tough out. I told Colt if he went back in there, he’d never be right in the head again. You just get one brain and that has to last you your whole life. Colt had enough cracks in his brain before Mikal started fucking with it. Going back to her—sending her to Hel
l—that pulverized whatever jagged little pieces of sanity he had left.
I waved my spit bottle in the general direction of the Dark Mansion.
“Kathan’s going to come down hard on you for taking Mikal out,” I said. “Tough, that dumbass, who knows what kind of stupid shit he’s getting into? And, oh yeah, the end of the world’s coming and you have to keep the forces of evil from winning the last battle. The whole world and all of Heaven’s depending on you, Sunshine. You think just because you’re crazy you get to quit? Well, I got news for you—you don’t. Get your shit together. You ain’t done yet.”
Colt went still and quit talking to himself.
“Did you just hear me, Sunshine?” I shoved off the bed and dropped to my knees in front of him. “Can you—”
Something screeched outside. Sounded like feedback from a PA system.
“COLT WHITNEY.” Rian—fallen angel foot soldier and the next worst thing Halo had to a corrupt backwoods sheriff. “COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS OVER YOUR HEAD OR WE WILL BLOW THIS CABIN APART WITH YOU INSIDE.”
I grabbed Colt’s arm and dragged him toward the bedroom window. “Come on, Sunshine. Time to haul ass.”
Colt pulled away from me long enough to grab Mikal’s fiery sword off the floor. Wouldn’t want to forget the crazy guy’s sharp object.
“I’LL GIVE YOU TEN SECONDS, WHITNEY,” Rian said. “ONE. TWO. TEN.”
I smashed the glass out of the bedroom window. Damn thing always sticks in the heat, anyway.
“READY OR NOT, HERE WE COME.”
More glass shattered out in the living room and kitchen. A bunch of heavy, metallic-sounding shit hit the floor, bounced, and rolled. Nothing quite as effective as the sound of ordnance dropping to put some hustle in your get-along.
Colt climbed through the window. He cut his arm up pretty good on the way out, but it didn’t slow him down. He hit the ground running and sprinted for the trees. Would’ve been a great plan if he hadn’t been carrying a bright, burning target in his hand.
