I stepped back. The question was: if I moved the few loose stones, was the whole damn thing going to come down on my head? I wasn’t an engineer, but I had listened pretty intently to the things the engineering corps said at Genesis. A part of me wished I worked with them regularly rather than being a Warrior, but my life choices hadn’t been my own.
Apparently, when I’d tried to kick the ass of the guys kidnapping me all those years ago, it had served as an audition to be part of Icahn’s Warrior protection squad. Yay me. We’d evolved without Icahn, and hopefully, we would all get to be more someday.
Or at least Chad and Tia’s kids could.
I scratched my head. Making all of that a possibility would be better served if I got dressed, and I wasn’t going to bring the ceiling down on Brynna’s head while she slept. After pulling on my hastily shed clothes, I knelt to wake her. First time for everything, I supposed. Most often I wanted women to sleep through my leaving. Everything about this former Vampire was different, and I didn’t know why.
She had the softest skin. I kissed her lightly, once, then twice, on the cheek. She sighed, her eyes fluttering open. “Um. Hi. I guess I passed out.”
“I did, too, for a little while. But I might be about to kill us, and I thought you might want to be up for it.”
“Oh.” She rubbed her eyes. “Um. Okay.”
Her cheeks turned red, and the feeling of being a tool rushed through me. I’d had incredible sex with this woman, and now I was acting like nothing had happened at all. I grabbed her shirt and handed it to her. I would miss the sight of her naked body, but it was better to converse fully dressed whenever possible.
“That was pretty incredible.” I sat and let her get dressed, averting my eyes so she could have some privacy. “Ah, does the heat always happen when you feed? Every time?”
I might kill someone if it did. Who were these other people she was fucking into unconsciousness? I… Fuck, I’m becoming a caveman. I was in basically what amounted to a cave, and suddenly, I wanted authority over who Brynna did and didn’t sleep with? I had to get my shit together and fast.
She cleared her throat. “No, never before. Mostly it’s been about finding someone to feed off, basically knocking them out to do it, and making sure they were okay before I left. Nothing has been easy or remotely hot before now. Let’s face it, I wanted you before I fed off you. Maybe it was more about that. I think you wanted me, too.”
I wasn’t going to lie. “Pretty badly.”
She rose. “Well, now that we’ve gotten our need for each other out of our system, what’s going on with the ceiling?”
Not yet. Now that I had opened the door to post-coital discussion, we were going to talk. “How did you fix my head?”
She raised her eyebrows slowly. “I didn’t. I’m not the magical healing Vampire girl. Whatever happened with your head had nothing to do with me.”
I could see her then, in my head, the way memories came to me now because of her. She stood on a hillside. I couldn’t see her, only those around her, Vampires traveling downward toward a village full of people. Or at least it was full of people. She wanted to weep. Everyone there would be dead soon. Or made like them.
Brynna didn’t know what she’d done to deserve this existence.
I grabbed her arm. “This isn’t your fault.”
She looked away. “How are you seeing my memories?”
“Just lucky that way, I guess.” I rose. Okay, post-sex chatting was over. She was annoyed I could see what she remembered, yet I still missed some key pieces of information, like what and how she did the things she could. We weren’t going to do be biting or fucking again, although thinking about it made me harden, and now we really should talk about the ceiling.
I pointed up. “The light. See how it’s getting through the two rocks? I’m thinking if I pull them down, we can maybe get out. Or at least you can because of your Vampire super speed and what not?”
She eyed the spot. “I can move fast. I’m not stronger than you, and I can’t particularly jump. This isn’t going to be a superhero thing where I run up the walls. That being said, if you can really get those stones down, I can probably get up there if you hoist me. And then I’ll find something for you to climb up.”
I thought her idea sounded like our best option. I went to my backpack. There were certain things I never took out of it, and rope was one of them. “I’ve never been a cowboy. I have no experience hoisting or lassoing anything. This might take a minute.”
She scrunched up her nose. “I think you’d be served best by trying to simply get it up and over. Then we kind of tug on both sides?”
Her suggestion sounded as good as anything else I might try. I threw the rope up, and it fell down on my head. I kept my face blank even as I winced inside. There was nothing like letting the best sex of your life see how much of an incompetent jackass you really were.
I set about to try again.
It took four hours to get the rope where I needed it. I held on to one side, and Brynna took the other. By the time I’d done it, I was dizzy. We needed to bring down the rock, but I needed a second.
Brynna ran to my pack and pulled out one of the packages of dried meat I’d brought along. It didn’t taste good. The days of jerky were long over. God, I missed grocery stores. Yet, it would do.
She handed it to me. “You lost blood. And you might still be concussed.”
I took a bite from the package. “You need to eat, too.” I handed her half, and she took it. We stood there, chewing the hard dried meat, and she was right, my dizziness subsided.
“Thanks.” She swallowed her last piece.
“Really gross, right?” The only thing that would improve it would be some beer. I was fresh out of alcohol. Or maybe everything tasted fine with beer because the beer was so all consuming. I shook my head. No need to dwell.
She winked at me. “Favorite food from back then?”
Good question. “Pizza. Of course.”
Brynna rolled her eyes. “Oh, of course. I forgot. I was talking to a guy. You would say pizza. With all the food in the world you remember pizza.”
She took one end of the rope. I took the other. “When we pull, jump back as fast as you can.” I wanted to remind her before we went any further with this insanity. “There is nothing wrong with pizza. New York pizza was almost as good as Jersey pizza.”
Brynna put a hand on her hip. “I am faster than you. The Vampire thing. And Jersey pizza couldn’t touch New York pizza.”
We tugged together, and I could feel the rock move ever so slightly. Okay, this wasn’t going to be a one-two-three thing. It was going to take some time. “So what does a sophisticated New Yorker think about eating from the old days?”
“That’s the thing. One small benefit of being a Vampire was I didn’t have to only think about it. I could remember the food. If I wanted to, I could travel back to Gotham Grill and eat risotto again. I could taste the truffles. I could… I could visit other people’s food memories. Like… your mother’s pot roast.”
For a second, I stopped breathing, and then I couldn’t hold back my laughter. Bland. Chewy. I used to flush it down the toilet, which I once clogged in the attempt and then got punished for doing. “Oh gross. I don’t miss that.”
Her face fell. “Chad loved it.”
“Yeah, Chad’s a kiss ass even in his memory.” I loved my brother to death, but I wouldn’t want his taste buds if he liked that pot roast. “Come on, let’s pull.”
We did. Over and over, until it was clear the rock was coming down. One more yank, and it happened. I darted backward, and fortunately, my idea worked. It also didn’t bring the rest of the ceiling with it, although with the amount of dust it kicked up, it might as well have.
“You okay?” Brynna stood right in front of me, swatting away the dust-filled air with her hand.
“That moving fast thing you do is weird and kind of cool at the same time. Yes, I’m fine.” I looked up. “Big enough
hole to get through now.”
She ran a hand through her hair. “Right. Okay. Hoist me up.”
I put my hands together, she stepped on them, and up she went. Brynna pulled herself up. “That’s some impressive upper body strength.”
“Right, well I’ve been a Vampire for hundreds of years. We lost a lot of things, but not muscle mass.”
She pushed her head to the edge of the hole. “I’ll be back to get you out. Hold steady.”
It wasn’t like I had anywhere to go. “Yeah, I’ll do my best with that. Hey, Brynna, risotto? You were rich, too? Smart, beautiful, New Yorker, and rich?”
Her grin was slow. “I was the complete picture, wasn’t I? None of that matters anymore. I’m some freak of nature that came back from being a Vampire to find nothing in the world for her at all. Don’t get into trouble while I’m gone.”
I waited until she was gone to really obsess over what she’d said. It shouldn’t not matter who we were before. I refused to believe the first seventeen years of my life were a waste. All those people I knew back then weren’t nothing simply because all of this had happened.
A surge of anger I couldn’t control and didn’t see coming moved through me, and I punched the wall. I yelled out as pain shot up my arm. Yeah, that was a jackass thing to do. I’d broken my hand. Oh what the fuck was wrong with me?
I walked around, shaking it every time it hurt, which was a lot, until I’d paced the room several times. I stared up the hole. Brynna wasn’t back. Fuck me. Had she left me down here? I bent over to breathe through my pain. I could take a whole lot. I’d been shot once. Stabbed. All in the name of Genesis. Why did my hand hurt so much?
It would be just my luck. Meet the Vampire girl. Have sex with her. Abandoned by the same hot Vampire in a cavern. Thus ended the great Micah Lyons. I…
“Hey.” She poked her head down. “Move back. I found a ladder. They have everything down here. I think they thought they might have to live here some time. Anyway, ladder. I’ll lower it. Took me half a second. Why do you look like that?”
I forced myself to calm. “Like what?”
She scowled at me. “Micah.”
“Fine, I broke my hand.” She didn’t need to hear the rest of it. “Lower the ladder.”
I backed away, and she lowered it. Although every move I made with my hand hurt, I still managed the climb. Thank goodness it was more legs than hands to get up, but I was sweating by the time I reached the top.
She stared at my hand. “You really did hurt yourself. It’s swollen. What did you do in the few minutes I was away?”
“I hit the wall.” I walked past her. Where were we?
It was a broken hallway. The ceiling had come down a lot of places, not just on us. Where were my people? I looked left and right.
She put her hands on her hips. “Why did you hit the wall?”
“It needed hitting.” I walked to where I thought my family would be. The floor moved slightly beneath me, and I backed off. I didn’t want to bring any more down on top of them. “There?”
She shook her head. “They’re not there. If they’re there, they’re not alive. No heartbeats.”
I swallowed. No. There wasn’t a world without Chad, Deacon, Glen, and my father in it. I couldn’t lose all of them all at once. “They got out.”
“I hope so.” She nodded.
At least she wasn’t arguing. If I wanted to be in delusion about my family, then I could be. No, fuck it. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t leave their bodies down there to rot. I had to know one way or another. “We have to get down there.”
“Right.”
She had such a strange, twisted look on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Of course we have to go down there and see. I mean, of course we do.”
That didn’t tell me anything. “And?”
“I almost asked if you wanted to find out about Icahn first. That thought startled me. Maybe I’m not human anymore. I mean, if I still had a family I’d want to know if they were alive. I’d want to… What is wrong with me? I’m not… human anymore. I must be some kind of sociopath and…”
I tugged her to me. “Okay, you had a shitty thought. I have them all the time. I broke my hand because I pounded on the wall thinking you’d taken off and left me to rot down there by myself. Nothing is as it should be anymore. The worst of humanity is constantly on display. You didn’t ask it and you recognized the problem. Conscience. Doesn’t that indicate you’re not a sociopath?”
“I guess.”
I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation, but I did like holding her in my arms. She fit there perfectly. “Do you feel sorry for me that my family might be dead down there?” Pain flared at the mere suggestion, but I suppressed it. Ruthless. I dealt in hypotheticals only. They weren’t dead. Nope, not dead.
“I do. I feel awful. I also feel like we should move on this scientist thing.”
Fine, she had a right to her reasons as she did to her secrets. Like my head suddenly getting better. But okay, I had some of my own, too.
I released her. Anxiety made my jaw tick. I had to do something, and I had to do it now. I ran a hand through my hair. She wanted to talk about the scientists now? Fuck. “Maybe you’ve been alone too long, or maybe you were always narcissistic and you’re just figuring that out now.”
I moved away from her. How was I going to get down there?
“Maybe I was.”
I barely paid attention to her reply. I’d been kidding, sort of. I bent over and looked down. If they were dead, then it didn’t matter if I brought down the ceiling. “No heartbeat?”
“None.”
Okay. I bypassed her and picked up a piece of broken floor. It hurt my hand to hold it. I didn’t care. Pain meant I was alive. I chucked the floor to the side. I did it again. And again. And again, until the floor gave out and a bigger hole opened. Rotted plaster and stone. That’s all this was. How many hundreds of years had it stood until today? Why today of all days?
I stared down in the hall. It was dark save for the fluorescent lights illuminated from up here. Reminded of a conversation I’d had not too long ago—was it really only the day before?—I leapt down into the room. I was already broken. How much worse could it get?
“Micah,” Brynna called to me. “Are you crazy?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
There were no evidence of bodies, but there was a hole in the side wall someone had dug out. I let out a breath I’d held. No bodies and a way out, in the opposite direction of where I had been. They weren’t dead. They were probably going for help to get to me. “They’re not here. They got out.”
“Okay, I’m jumping down.”
She was what? “Be careful, I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“Well, I’d say catch me, big guy, but you broke your hand. I wouldn’t want you to break the other one.”
She landed steadier than I had. Brynna possessed an incredible grace about her. “Did you ever dance or something?”
“No.” She walked past me toward the hole. “Guess we crawl? Should I assume we’re not doing the stop Doctor Icahn from being re-cloned thing?”
Much as I admired how her ass looked in her pants while she poked her head through the hole, I wasn’t going any farther until she and I shared some truth. “Why do you want to find him so badly? Before we brought it up, you were on a different mission. What is going on?”
“I think what I want and what you want are probably at the same place.”
Now we were getting somewhere. “Which would be what?”
“The list of Vampires they think they could save. I want to find them. They have locations listed. They’re guarding it like it’s national secrets. Once I know the locations of Vampires who can be changed, I’ll go find them. I will know who the Vampire is by name. It won’t be Vampire in green, it’ll be Hudson.
I supposed I followed her logic so far. “And then what?”
“And then I bring
them to Margot, and she saves them.”
I sighed. This was where she lost me. The doctor seemed fairly competent. She’d saved Deacon’s life. But I didn’t know about Vampire changing. Her family had held her captive. Why on earth would Brynna think Margot had answers? “You think Margot can do that?”
“If you think she can’t, you’re not paying close enough attention. She’s a survivor like me. If she put her head down and pretended to not be the one who figured out how to save me, she’s lying to you.” She pointed at the hole. “I can’t be the only one. There have to be others. She’s going to fix them.”
The idea that Margot had been feigning being simply an adequate doctor for months didn’t sit well with me. I hated liars. Couldn’t we all tell each other the truth for half a second?
“And when she saves the others, you’re going to, what, ride off into the sunset as former Vamps, stopping to knock out unsuspecting humans or Wolves or whatever to feed off them when you’re so compelled?”
Her gaze locked on me. I’d hit a nerve. Good, I’d been trying to. My dislike of liars extended to lying to myself. The last thing I wanted was her leaving with others like her. No idea why, but… fuck it. I didn’t want her to leave with anyone.
She pointed at me. “You know what? Go screw yourself. I thought we could help each other. I thought maybe you were the nice guy I saw glimpses of and the one who made me…” Her voice trailed off. “Forget it. Find it yourself. But don’t wait too long. The bogeyman Isaac Icahn might be coming. Guess what, Lyons, in terms of people out there to be afraid of? He’s the least of your problems.”
Brynna disappeared through the hole, vanishing in the blink of an eye. I sighed, and stared at the ground. Why the hell do I do that? If I wanted to keep embracing my policy of honesty, I had to be brutal. I’m terrified about my family. Now she wants to leave. Then she tells me Margot has been lying to us, and I have to worry about her and the rest of damn Genesis.
“Damn it.” I crawled into the hole.