They threw the vamp in the back of the pickup and Jael surrendered her weapons to Seth so she wouldn’t look like she’d wandered off the set of The Hunger Games. He slid behind the steering wheel and started the engine. Brianna would follow in Seth’s car and bring him back when they’d taken care of things. Shadow walked around the wreckage one more time, looking for the phone the vamp had been texting on before Jael staked him. He bent over a dark thatch of grass, squinting in the dim light.
“I found it.”
“Bring it here,” Seth called through the splintered window of the pickup truck.
Shadow hurried over. “Looks like he didn’t get a chance to press send.”
“What does it say?” Jael asked.
Seth scrolled down the text. He read the words aloud. “The book of the shunned is getting shorter. My sister and her husband have been found. The chosen one is their seed.”
“What? His sister?” Jael stepped to the bed of the truck and stared at the face of the young man who had tried to kill her. Could this be the uncle her mother had mentioned? The teenage brother she regretted leaving behind that dark night at the barn? What was his name…Jacob?
Brown hair grew long over the collar of his suit coat and hung over his forehead in a shaggy mess. His flesh was starting to stink as years of rotting caught up with him. As with other vampires she’d staked, she noticed his features had softened in death, the angry mask replaced with humanity once again. The beginnings of a beard grew along his chin like fuzz on a peach. The early morning light revealed something else as well. He had her mother’s mouth – full lips turned slightly up at the corners. It made people think she was smiling at them even when she wasn’t. Everybody always smiled back.
Jael turned away and closed her eyes against the tears that threatened to fall. She’d never see that look on her mother’s face again. She drew a deep breath. There wasn’t time for mourning now. She would grieve in her own way, later.
The sound of sirens in the distance set them in motion again. Seth sent her a look that said it all. She nodded and stepped back from the truck. He pulled away with Brianna following close behind in the Toyota.
Shadow moved to stand at Jael’s side and put an arm around her. She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, resisting the urge to run back to the wreckage and sit beside her parents. Seth warned her not to watch when the firemen extracted their bodies, but to remember them as they were before the accident.
Before the accident… As though what happened was unavoidable. If only she’d sent them home after they brought her the weapons instead of using them as decoys. If only she’d listened to Seth’s advice and not encouraged her parents to return to town after leaving the last time. If only…
She felt something break inside. The flimsy, artificial dam she’d erected at short notice wasn’t enough to hold back the flood of emotion pouring out of her heart at this moment. The strength in her legs gave out first and she started to fall, but Shad tightened his hold and pulled her into his arms.
“Just cry, Jael. Let it out,” he said, smoothing her hair. “It’s all you can do right now. Cry.”
She wondered how he knew about grief, about loss. He always seemed so strong and sure. She was suddenly cold. So cold it felt like pin pricks on her skin. He tugged her toward the side of the road and out of the way of emergency vehicles. Her sobs were lost in the shrill of sirens, slamming doors, and raised voices. An ambulance with blue and red writing on the side, lights flashing, blurred together in her mind with the arrival of a police car and fire truck.
Jael sank deeper into the flood where she was safe, where memories were soft and fuzzy... her mom’s smile curved up, laughing at something her dad said, and then they sat in the swing outside, her dad’s arm wrapped around her mom’s shoulders, kissing when they thought she wasn’t looking…
“Jael? Jael, can you hear me?” She heard Shadow’s voice as though he were speaking from the end of a long tunnel.
“She’s in shock, son,” a woman responded. “We need to take her to the hospital. She’ll be all right. It’s just precautionary.”
“Jael?” he said again, louder this time.
Jael lifted her eyelids. They felt as heavy as lead sheets. Shadow stared down at her, black hair falling forward, his mouth grim. She felt movement and turned her head. A strange woman sat on the other side of her, preparing an injection of some kind. Why was she in an ambulance?
“Mom? Dad?” she mumbled.
Shadow leaned close and whispered. “It’s all right. I’m here.”