Not to mention, I really, really needed a shower.
I sat down on the floor. A year earlier I might have paced, but these days I was more inclined to save my energy for later battles. I knew there would be more. There always were.
When the door finally opened, I wished it had remained shut. The Turtle entered with my glass of water. He let the heavy door shut tightly behind him. It had been a little while since I’d been down in the underground habitat but I didn’t find it as warm as my memory always made it. Still, I would have sworn the temperature in the room fell two degrees when he came in.
He held out the glass in front of him, and I realized he had no intention of bringing me the drink but wanted me, instead, to come and get it from him. Maybe he was playing a power game with me. Adults sometimes did these kinds of things but mostly the intricacies were lost on me.
I stood up awkwardly. My legs were tired and didn’t feel like moving. Eventually, I stumbled my way over to him and took the liquid he extended to me. It wasn’t until I took a large gulp that it occurred to me that it could be drugged. I stopped drinking and waited. Nothing weird happened, and I decided that the water was probably safe.
“Well, Ms. Clancy. I must say I thought you’d be smarter than this.”
I wiped the last of the water off my lips with my sleeve. Not my most manner-filled move but the guy hadn’t brought me a napkin.
“Smarter than what?”
“Than getting caught. For months, I’ve been watching you, knowing you were conniving. But never in a million years could I have imagined this.”
“What do you think I did exactly?” The room was too small for me to get away from his foul stench.
“You led the others in subversive behavior. You continued to free humans after I told you the camp couldn’t sustain any newcomers, and you endangered yourself and others. No one told you to go out and play vigilante.”
“I don’t think that’s what I did. A vigilante is….”
He waved a hand to silence me. Adults don’t like to be corrected by teenagers. Turtle wasn’t even going to let me finish my thought, apparently.
“I’m not interested in semantics.” Obviously. “I want to talk about how much trouble you’re in.”
“How much trouble could I be in? My father abandoned a bunch of people, got them killed, and quit. If I’m not mistaken, you frequent his illegal bar all the time. No one has died while they’ve been with me.”
“No one except poor Chad Lyons.”
I wondered if it would always hurt to have his death thrown in my face. “Yes, he died when he was out with me, because he had to rescue me.”
I couldn’t deny it. That’s what had happened. I was responsible, one way or another, for Chad’s demise.
“You would think you would have learned your lesson about irresponsible behavior.”
“I took matters into my own hands because of Chad’s death, as a result of it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It would if you would listen to me….” I had a strong feeling that since he wouldn’t let me define vigilante for him, he wasn’t going to let me justify myself.
“I’m not judge and jury, Rachel Clancy.” I hated how he always said my name. Why did he need to utter it so much?
“Then what is it you want from me, sir?” I took two steps to the wall and put my back against it. It wasn’t much but it was distance, a mediocre amount of space between me and the strange little man staring at me as if I was a steak dinner. His eyes traced my form, starting at my feet and moving upward. Goosebumps surfaced on my arms.
“Did I ever tell you that I knew your mother?”
I shook my head. “No.” Why did he bring that up now?
“I’m a very powerful man. I wasn’t when I knew her. I was just a little inhabitant of Genesis, and she was becoming a big, tough Warrior. She had the attention of your father, who was a god back then.”
“I don’t like to think too much about the past. Seems like there’s enough to do now.”
He grinned, which was worse than his stare. “Yes, there is certainly enough to do now.”
“Sir, I’m….”
“These days I’m a powerful man. I can help you. If I want, I can go into the meeting that they’re having about you….”
“They’re having a meeting?”
“Oh yes. Micah is yelling unforgivable things to his father and Deacon has come up with some pretty incredible threats. I can make all of this go away. If I want to.”
My mouth had gone dry. “What could I possibly have that you would want?”
He reached out to touch my arm. “Can’t you imagine?”
I realized then that there were scarier things in the world than monsters. Give me a vampire to kill any day of the week.
“I’d like you to take your hand off my arm.”
The door swung open. “Everything okay in here?”
I’d never been so happy to see Patrick, who held a glass of water in his hand, in my life.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you here, Trumpest.”
“I heard Rachel wanted a glass of water so I brought it up.” He let go of my arm and stepped back. “Are they ready for me upward?”
“I imagine they are.”
Turtle moved around Patrick, who stood still until he left.
“Are you okay? What was he doing?”
I shivered. “I’m not sure. I’m really not. Can I not be alone with him again?”
“You shouldn’t have been now. I’m going to speak to the guards when I leave here.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He handed me the water and I drank it down, confidant that this glass would have nothing wrong with it. My hands shook and Patrick obviously noticed. His frown deepened.
“Has he bothered you before?”
“He just creeps me out. I can’t really explain it.”
“Okay. I’m going to keep an eye on him.” He sighed. “You’re in a serious amount of trouble. You do know that, don’t you? Explosives. Secret missions. Hidden agendas.” He paced. “All of these things are specifically forbidden from Warriors. Have always been.”
“Yes, under Icahn. We follow his rules to this day and he still gets to manage us even though we’ve ousted him. Genesis has to make our own decisions. If we’d fought back, maybe Chad wouldn’t be dead. We wouldn’t have had to get in that car and go if we had been hitting the vampires where they live back then. I’m tired of only defending, of always being the victim.”
Patrick stopped pacing somewhere in the middle of my speech. “You poor child, why did you stop coming by when he died?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Hadn’t he been listening? Did anyone?
“Everything.” Patrick took my hand in his but it didn’t bother me, not like Turtle had. If anything, it felt sort of comforting in the rough calluses on the pads of his fingers. They were strong hands, capable ones that had kept Genesis safe since he’d been sixteen years old.
“I stopped coming because I killed your son. Why would you want me around? How could I look at you and Carol, see your pain, and know I caused it? Why would I force you to endure my presence?”
Damn my tears. When would they stop? When would it be enough?
“We never blamed you. How could we blame you for what was not your fault and never could be? Chad died defending you and then you took care to see that he stopped suffering when he became a vampire. You did it so I didn’t have to. I’m grateful to you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Rachel, you will believe me eventually. Unfortunately, I can’t talk about just this now. I have to tell you what is going to happen to you.”
“Okay.” I let go of him. “But listen. It’s important. No one else should be punished. It was all my own idea. They just listened and followed me. I don’t know why people do….”
“When Tia told me what was happening, I wanted not to believe h
er.”
“Tia?” Oh, that made this much worse. I hadn’t told her anything. How had she heard, and why had she run to her father?
Without warning my vampire alert went off in my body. I groaned and steadied myself before I fell. “Vampires.”
Patrick looked left and right like he could see them through the walls. “Where?”
“Here.”
A loud boom sounded before the walls came down. I screamed and Patrick pulled me to him. I don’t know what happened then because everything went black around me. Or maybe I just passed out. I don’t know.
Chapter Sixteen
I was shaken awake. My head pounded so hard I couldn’t open my eyes more than a slit. Then I wished I hadn’t. Staring down at me was a person I’d hoped to die without ever speaking to again: Noah Icahn. Not the main leader, Isaac, but just as bad, Isaac’s son.
Keith had killed Noah’s brother Liam right in front of my eyes a year earlier during the riot when Isaac and his followers fled Genesis. Well, every one of them except Liam. He’d died on the floor after muttering about Isaac keeping humanity alive. I wasn’t interested then, and I hadn’t grown any more invested in his story now.
“I expect you’re going to pass out again. You have quite a head injury.”
I groaned. His assessment was probably accurate. There was no point in arguing. Most likely, I would pass out any second.
“I just wanted you to know I had you. I want you to understand that we’ve won.”
They’d always won. How could they have thought otherwise? Somehow, they’d destroyed mankind and kept us all underground and unaware for thirty years. The best any of us could do was try to survive in the world they’d left us. Why wasn’t it enough? Why were they always after me?
Patrick. My eyes filled with tears. He had to be dead. Another Lyon’s death for me to carry. The Lyons family must rue the day they met me.
I closed my eyes. Noah had been right. There was no way I could stay awake, not with the amount of pain throbbing in my head.
When I woke up again, it was in a bed located in a room I’d never seen before. Most of the time when I was whacked around until I was unconscious I found myself tied up in strange dank places with no light.
I sat up slowly. I’d been hit on the head enough to know there would be dizziness following any abrupt movements. After a few minutes, I’d managed to get into an upright position. The effort had been significant. Whatever injuries I’d incurred weren’t small. There was no way I could run away on my own, and I had no idea where I was anyway.
What had happened to Patrick when everything had exploded? There had been vampires. Had he died in the blast or had the fangs taken him out? I closed my eyes and rested my head in my hands. I liked neither thought.
The last few days had been too much for me. I was used to constant action; the fear of death was almost null inside of me now. How could I fear it when I faced it so constantly? But between the explosions that had stranded me in the vampire lairs, Deacon and Micah’s secret agenda, and now this, I wasn’t sure I could take any more.
I coughed, and it hurt my ribs. I opened my eyes. When I’d been a child, I’d hoped that if I could close my eyes I could reach out to Tia and her family. Like if I just thought about them hard enough they would hear me in my mind. They would come and rescue me from whatever danger I perceived myself to be in.
It hadn’t worked then and it wasn’t going to work now.
No matter how much I called for Tia, she never came to my house and took me away from my father.
But I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about all the people I wished were around.
Micah. He was always a man with a plan. He’d find us a way out of here. Keith. He was always so sure of things. He’d know how to survive this. If he was even speaking to me. Chad. Well, that was impossible. I missed looking up and seeing Chad, only two years older than me but somehow worldly and in charge.
Jason. I laughed at the thought. Which Jason did I want? The one who had carried me through the snow or the psycho wolf that wanted my blood? Sweet Jason would be as useless in this situation as me unless he could shift to kill someone. Psycho Jason would just take off my head.
Deacon. Yes. I nodded. I would have liked his presence. We worked well together. I cared about him. He’d be tough, protective, and a little bit of a knight in shining armor. So why had I believed he was giving me to the vampires and the werewolves? Well, because he’d wanted me to. I was going to have to work on my issues with him, if I ever got to see him again.
I stood up on unsteady feet. It had helped to think about the people I cared about. Tia would have to be dealt with if I ever got back as well. She couldn’t, apparently, keep her mouth shut, which was of little surprise to me.
“Hello?” I called aloud to the empty room, surprised I was alone.
The door swung open. A man stepped inside who I’d seen around a lot growing up in Genesis. His name was Darren, and he’d been one of Icahn’s private Warriors. When Icahn and his ilk had fled from Genesis upon discovery of their involvement in Armageddon, he’d gone with them.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and hairy. He had dark, long hair.
“Nice to see you, Rachel. Look how much you’ve grown up in the last year.” He grinned as if he’d returned from an innocent yearlong mission, instead of betraying all of us.
I didn’t like him grinning at me. Maybe it was the Turtle’s recent foray into disgustingness, but I really didn’t think that older men should be looking at me at all unless I’d had near-paternal relationships with them since childhood. Maybe I’d eventually get over this feeling, but for now it was what I wanted.
When I didn’t answer, he kept talking. “How’s that head feeling? Noah said you got knocked around pretty badly when the wall exploded.”
“Well.” I sighed. I could pretend to be pleasant or I could give in to the eventual rudeness that was bound to occur between Darren and myself. We weren’t friends. Had never been friends. He was too old to be called my contemporary and too young to be one of those adults who condescended to teenagers as if we could talk about his good old days. “He blew up the wall so I guess he would know just how hurt I am.”
“Sure. Can you walk or do you need help?”
I blinked, trying to clear my head. This was ridiculous. Darren and I stood around talking like this was a normal situation. I was a captive. They’d blown up a wall to get to me. Where were the raging wolves and the blood-lusting vampires? I didn’t need friendly. If this was a kidnapping, Icahn could at least do me the courtesy of sticking to the kidnapping rules.
“Aren’t you going to drag me out of here kicking and screaming?”
He leaned his head to the left like he couldn’t understand what I’d just said. “Why would I do that? You’re family now.”
“I’m what?” I took a step toward him. “Say again?”
“Oh, well, Dr. Icahn’s going to explain it all to you. Do me a favor. When you’re thinking about whom you want to take, think about me, would you? You’re certainly old enough now.”
“Old enough?” I wished I could think of more constructive things to say than to repeat his own words back to him, but I had to try to make sense of what he said.
He took my arm. “It will all be clear now that you’ve been rescued.”
This was too bizarre, and it was only self-preservation that kept me from saying so. Noah had shaken me awake to tell me he’d won. That was the truth I knew to be so despite all this weirdness.
Darren helped me walk a distance through a small house and outside. It took me only a few seconds to realize I was in a habitat. I’d never been in one other than Genesis. It looked very similar, only the ceilings were slightly higher and the fake-sun lights were brighter.
Even though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t speak to Darren again, I couldn’t help the question that popped out of my mouth. “Where is this place?”
“Redemption.”
Well, that didn’t help me. I didn’t know of a habitat called Redemption and we’d had to memorize them all for school when we were five years old.
“Has it been renamed?”
Darren nodded. “Yes.”
He wasn’t going to be more explanatory, so I decided to look around for clues instead of beating my head against his silent brick wall. If we had more sunlight coming in, it probably meant that wherever we were had more natural sunlight outside. Or not. Maybe they just wanted more sunlight here.
I wasn’t any kind of detective and only noticed the people forming outside to stare at me. They watched me in bunches, pointing, and whispering behind their hands as I was escorted by.
“What’s the matter? Never seen a girl who’s been kidnapped, abused, and dragged against her will before?”
No one answered me except for Darren, who snorted out of his nose. “You didn’t used to be this way. You were such a quiet child.”
“Yeah, well, when your father is amusing the entire habitat with his drunken indulgences you learn to shut up and not make a sound.”
“So what happened? Did Harold finally quit drinking?”
“No.” I sighed, wondering why I continued to talk to Darren as if we knew each other. Well, I supposed it was better than having no one to speak to at all. The vampires and their eerie silence did nothing to liven up any horrible situation. “He opened a bar.”
Darren made that snorting noise again, and I almost suggested he should go find a medic. That couldn’t be good, and I hoped it wasn’t catching.
“I’ll have to see if I can stop by his bar before we destroy the beacon of Hell that is Genesis.”
And just like that, all of my making-the-best-out-of-this-situation attitude fled the scene. It didn’t matter because I was shoved through the door of the main bureau hall. The closer we’d gotten to the main enclave, the less gentle Darren became. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to be as nice to me as he’d been earlier, or maybe he was just getting excited. I had no idea what constituted a good time for him. Roughing me up could be the highlight of his week.
After passing through several rooms that looked like offices filled with people typing and filing, I arrived at a conference table. Darren pulled the chair out from behind me and I sat in it.