What in the world? Sylas and I stare at her, stunned.
The grey sky darkens with each second that goes by until it’s jet black, but the glow of torches on the buildings lining the silent street radiates around us. The temperature has descended and more and more cries circle the town as more vampires awaken for the night.
“What do you mean?” I finally ask Maci. Sylas glances at me, his face contorted in confusion. “I thought you weren’t supposed to tell us anything like that?”
“I told you when the time was right I would tell you,” she says with a cheerful, small smile, her red hair blowing in the breeze. “And the time is finally right.”
She turns her attention to Sylas, tipping her head back so she can look at him. “You need to go and get the other Day Takers and bring them here. It’s the only way things will work.”
He’s not looking at her, but at me, gaping incredulously. “What’s she talking about?”
“I’m talking about saving the world,” Maci answers. “So please just get going.”
Sylas gradually turns in her direction, his eyelids lowering as he glares at her. “And how the hell do you know anything?”
“Sylas,” I warn, taking his arm, slightly worried at what he might do. “Maci’s usually right about these things.”
He studies her with wariness. “But she’s just a little kid.”
“A little kid that knows more than you.” Maci glares at him, crossing her arms. “And you need to go now before it’s too late.”
Sylas is shocked because he isn’t used to taking orders. “Are you telling me what to do?” He points at himself, flabbergasted.
“Yeah,” Maci answers with attitude. “And if you know what’s good for you, then you’ll listen.”
Sylas rolls his eyes. “I won’t take orders from a little kid.”
“Will you take them from me then?” I ask because I know Maci has to be right. If she says the Day Takers need to be here, then they need to be here.
Sylas turns to face me, pushing up the sleeves of his jacket, his lean muscles flexing as he crosses them. “Have I ever taken orders from anyone?”
“I’m not giving you orders,” I sigh. “I’m asking you to go.”
He continues to keeps his attention focused on me, and it’s hard not to look away, yet at the same time, not impossible. I maintain his gaze, hoping he’ll cave and realize this isn’t about who gets to give orders.
“Fine,” he relents and then surprises me when he leans over and gives me a quick, though passionate, kiss; stealing the breath right out of my lungs and making my lips swell. When he pulls away, he looks dazed, but I’m not sure if it’s because of the kiss or because he’s taking orders from a child. “I’ll hurry back as fast as I can… but it’s going to take me a while to gather them and bring them back.”
“Do you have to go back to the city?”
“I’m not sure,” he says with a simple shrug as he shuffles towards the stairway. “If they followed the orders I gave Emmy, then they’ll be at the Grates… but you never know with Day Takers since they hate taking orders.” He flashes me a cocky smile.
“Be safe,” I tell him. He gives me a look as if to say ‘no duh’.
“Of course, Juniper,” he says, winking at me when he uses my nickname. “I always am.”
He starts to step down the stairway towards the street, but pauses at the bottom to glance up at me one last time. For a brief second, he looks afraid, and for a fleeting moment, I feel the same way. Then he turns, and I watch him race off at inhuman speed until he vanishes out of the glow of the torches.
I turn my attention back to Maci, feeling my stomach burn, knowing the last time we split that terrible things happened. “So, what do I need to do?”
She points to our right to where the street curves up a shallow hill. “You need to protect Mathew.”
“Just Mathew?” I ask. “What about the rest of the people?”
“Kayla, go find Mathew and talk to him,” she says. “Then you will understand.”
I want to question her more, however I know better than to do so. She’s pretty much been correct with everything that she has told me previously, so after I drop her off at the building, with the woman teaching the children, I hurry off down the street to find Mathew. I make it past the fifth building on the street when I run into Nichelle. There’s a small group of people with her, wearing all black, and they all are armed with a knives, sticks, spears and even a few swords. They look like average people dressed up in fighting gear only creating the illusion that they can fight. I know it’s not real because beneath their armor I can hear their hearts racing with fear.
We’re doomed.
They’re doomed.
When does they’re become a we?
“Mathew said that we were supposed to find you,” Nichelle tells me. Her hair is pulled up in a bun and she has boots on that go up to her knees. There’s this strange black band around her neck with a small metal pouch hooked to it. “Poison,” she says.
I’m confused. “What?”
She points at her neck at the collar and the pouch. “I saw you looking at it and I can tell you’re wondering what it is.” She lifts up a hook on the pouch and beneath it is a pin-size button. “If I get bit, I push this and it injects my veins with poison that will kill me before the virus takes over my body.”
“So you’d rather die than change?” I’ve heard Sylas say this, but it’s surprising to hear humans are the same way, too; that we both feel the same way.
She nods. “Wouldn’t you?”
I nod. “I would.”
There’s a pause where we realize we’re not so different. Then Nichelle clears her throat.
“Anyway, Mathew said you’d show us where each of us needs to be so we can protect the town,” she says with an eye roll. “He thinks you’re going to save the town somehow—that you’re a better fighter than me—but he’s wrong.”
She’d think differently if she ever saw me in action.
“You know the town better than me.” I glance around at the unfamiliar structures and alleys around me; I don’t even know where any of them lead to. “You should be in charge of getting everyone into position.”
She nods, satisfied, and then starts to walk away when I snag her by the jacket sleeve and pull her back to me. “Sylas will be coming back sometime... please make sure that people are aware of this. Make sure that nobody attacks him or the people with him.”
“Sylas?” she questions, her brows dipping together. “Who the heck is that?”
“That guy I showed up with earlier,” I answer. “Aiden’s brother.”
“Oh.” She seems hesitant, but then gives in and nods. “All right, I’ll see what I can do… but what are you going to do?”
“I need to find Mathew.” I let go of her sleeve and fetch my knife out of my pocket as vampire cries grow louder around the colony. “Do you know where he is?”
“He went back to his lab.” She points to the left, towards where the street slopes down to a cluster of buildings around a sandy hill.
“Thanks.” I spin around and jog back down the street, hoping that Mathew will be in his lab when I get there. Hoping that I can find out why Maci wants me to talk to him; protect him. Why it has to be me.
When I reach the small square building, I notice there are no longer guards posted in front of the doorway. Everyone in town has been put on high alert and many of them have stepped up to the wall around the colony that was built out of cars. In fact, the wall of broken-down vehicles looks more like a wall of people as they line the top. I wonder how long they’ll have to wait there. How long it’ll be until the abominations will show up. Maybe we’ll end up getting lucky and they won’t show up at all. I doubt it, though, and I know that thinking that way can be dangerous.
It’s eerily quiet when I open the door and step inside the building where I make my way down the dusty hallway with my knife poised out in front of me; always ready, always on guard, focusing one step ahead, focusing on fighting. I have to be. I don’t know when anything’s going to show up.
I hear some movement and rustling towards the back of the hallway, and as I get closer, I see Mathew through the doorway to his lab. He’s wearing a white coat and is holding some vials filled with various colors of liquid, carefully measuring as he pours each one into a large, silver flask.
He glances up from the flask as I enter and startles back with a concerned look on his face. At the same time that he ends up spilling a drop or two of the liquid onto the silver table in front of him.
“Is everything okay?” he asks, setting the empty vials down, his fingers trembling. “Have the Highers’ army arrived already?”
“Not yet.” I cross the room and glace at the jars on the counter filled with an array of liquids. I wonder what is in them. “Sylas went to get the other Day Takers to help us.” I wonder if I should tell him about Maci and her gift. “And Nichelle’s setting up around town, but honestly it could be days before the Highers’ army shows up. Or even weeks, depending on how hard it is for the Highers to reach a decision.”
He sets the flask down onto the table beside the vials. “Well, at least we’ll be ready for them when they get here. And Nichelle is a very good fighter... I’d trust her completely with my life, but she isn’t you, Kayla. I’d feel better if you were the one in charge of the others.”
“That isn’t what I’m supposed to do be doing.” It sort of slips out of me and there’s no taking it back.
“What do you mean by that?” he wonders, resting his weight against the table, his skin dripping with sweat.
I dither, deciding if I should tell him about Maci. He seems trustworthy, yet at the same time, a lot of people do. Then again, Maci said I should talk to him. “Maci told me that I’m supposed to protect you and that I need to talk to you about why I do.”
“Why would Maci tell you that?” he asks.
“Because…” I sit up on the countertop, letting my legs hang over the edge of the corner, and put my knife in my lap. “She can see things before they happen… she told me that I was going to save the world.”
Mathew crosses his arms and his pale eyes flood with curiosity. “I wonder if that was from the experiments.”
“She wasn’t just born that way?”
He shakes his head. “Humans weren’t born with extraordinary gifts, which are why the Highers were so determined to create them.”
I’m not sure if I believe him or not, though, considering he used to be one of the doctors and the cause for all this messing around with humanity. Maybe it was that thought process—that humans had no gifts—that helped their strive to perfection escalate.
He scratches his head. “Did Maci by chance tell you how to save the world? Or how to find the cure even?” he asks, hopeful. It makes me have less hope that he’ll be able to find a cure.
His expression sinks as I shake my head. “She didn’t tell me how to save it… she never gives instructions, just tidbits of information that will lead me to do the right thing. And she told me that I needed to protect you,” I tell him.
He sighs and turns back to the vials on the table. “Yeah, I guess things can’t ever be that easy.”
“No, they really can’t,” I agree, reflecting on my difficult past and everything I’ve gone through to get to this exact point. “But what about you?” I ask. “Did you figure out anything at all yet?”
His pales eyes light up as he picks up a glass vial and holds it up to the light. There is a purple liquid inside the vial that reflects through the glass. “Not yet.” He lowers the vial. “But in the papers Aiden left behind, Monarch made several references to how you seemed not to be immune to the original virus in the beginning… that your body reacted to the virus just like everyone else, which means that somewhere along the lines, that changed; you became immune.” He places the vial back down on the counter. “So I think the answers might start with you.”
I already knew that. I hop off the counter and walk over to him. “So, wait a minute. Are saying that he purposefully injected me with the virus to see if I would turn into a vampire? And then what? I’d turn? How the hell did he change me back?”
“That’s the answer we need.” He gives me a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, Kayla. He was determined to find a way to create perfection and he didn’t care about those he was hurting. Or killing.” He pauses. “He did try to make up for it—tried to reverse the damage he’d done.” Mathew starts organizing the vials in rows.
I’m burning in my own anger. Monarch had changed me into a vampire at one point. I was once one of those disgusting monsters crying out at night; hungry and looking to eat flesh and blood. Just like Sylas before he changed.
I swallow my emotions down because I know that I have to—or maybe it’s how I’ve been programmed. “Mathew, there’s something I have to tell you.” I watch as he sorts through vials, reading the label on them. I hope that I can trust him. “Something important.”
He glances up at me with a concerned look on his face. “Kayla, what is it… you look a little ill.”
I touch my cheek to my hand, wondering what ill looks like on me. “I feel fine, except I need to tell you something… I just need to know that I can trust you.”
He nods, standing up as straight as his crooked back will allow him to. “You can trust me with your life. I promise.”
I absorb his truth, feeling a little better. “Back when I went to get the papers and Sylas was there… well, he wasn’t there as himself but a… but an abomination…”
He holds up his hands. “Wait, Sylas was an abomination?”
I reluctantly nod. “He was, but then he bit me and well…” I trail off as Mathew’s eyes widen.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he asks in disbelief, dropping the vial he’s holding onto the floor. It shatters at our feet and scatters into fragments around us.
“Because... I wasn’t sure I could trust you,” I say. It’s my initial instinct to mistrust, to keep things to myself, to put walls up. “And besides, it doesn’t make any sense. He didn’t turn back into a human… he turned back into a Day Taker. Plus, he’s bit me before and it didn’t do anything at all to him; just made me pass out.”
Mathew deliberates what I’ve said, fiddling with the button on his coat. “What were you when he bit you the first time?”
I shrug. “Whatever you want to consider me before I was a Day Walker,” I say. “A soldier… I’m not sure.”
“But you were a Day Walker when he bit you the second time?”
I nod, the wheels in my head turning. “Do you think that’s what did it? Do you think my Day Walker blood has something to do with the cure?”
His eyes are as wide as I’ve ever seen before, and without even answering, he whisks over to a cabinet door, his excitement giving him a boost of energy. He opens the door and takes out a syringe. There’s a stool next to him and he pats it for me to sit down.
“Why?”
He pauses, uncertain. “If it’s all right with you, I’d like to draw some of your blood and study it.”
I pull out the stool and sit down on it. “You think studying it will help you figure out a cure?”
“We’re about to find out.” He pulls the cap off the syringe. “Roll up your sleeve,” he instructs. I sigh, but obey, rolling up my sleeve. He presses the needle into my skin, into a vein. It pinches and I watch as the syringe fills up with my blood. When the syringe is full, he removes the needle.
“So now what?” I ask. “How do you study blood?”
He points at this strange looking object over on the counter with a tube attached to it that angles to a platform. “You study blood through that,” he says, rolling up his sleeve. “But that’s not what I’m doing.”
Before I have time to think, he aims the needle at his forearm and plunges it into his vein. My eyes widen as I leap from the stool and reach out to stop him. “You don’t know if that is safe!” I exclaim, my fingers snagging the rolled up sleeve of his jacket.
He turns out of my reach and nudges my hand away with his elbow. If I wanted to, I could take him out, but it wouldn’t do any good. He’s already put some of my blood into his veins.
“What if it doesn’t work on you?” I say, stepping back and shaking my head. “What if it only worked on Sylas because he was a Day Taker? Or what if it turns you into a Day Taker or an abomination? There are so many possibilities, Mathew.”
“I know that, but that’s how all of this started. Risks where taken. Lives were sacrificed.” He continues injecting himself with my blood. “Whatever happens doesn’t matter… I can either do this or turn or die. I have to try something else.”
Sacrifices need to be made. You must understand that, Kayla.
Shaking my head, I sit back down on the stool. “Well, I’m killing you if you turn.”
He glances up at me with a ghost smile. “Fair enough.”
It grows silent as he takes the needle out of his skin then sets it down on the countertop. I hold my knife and keep my eyes locked on him, ready to slice his chest open if I have to.
He pumps his fist a few times, staring at his arm, waiting for something to happen, I guess.
After some time goes by, I ask, “What do we do now?”
“Now,” he says simply, “we wait to see if I turn human or if you have to kill me.”