Evertrue

TWENTY-EIGHT

NOW

The Surface. Salt Lake City.

We ditched the truck by Jack’s car and switched back to his sedan. We didn’t want to risk the truck’s having been reported stolen by its original owner.

Once in the car we all panted, trying to catch our breaths. Jack had a couple of spatters of blood on his cheek and his jacket, but it wasn’t his. It belonged to the creepy ten-Shade bounty hunters.

“Cole, you will not sneak away again,” Jack said. He sounded like a father scolding a child.

“Agreed,” Cole said solemnly from the backseat.

Jack drove us back to the hotel, where he and I collapsed onto the king-size bed and Cole stood at the foot. He held the brown paper package up high by one end and let it spin toward the mattress until the pendant fell out.

It looked exactly like the picture from the internet, but it wasn’t made of metal, as I’d assumed it was. It looked as if it were made of quartz or some other mineral, almost as if it had been formed naturally by the earth. But it was in the shape of a helmet, with little wings on either side.

Cole stared at it as he spoke. “There’s something important knocking at the door of my brain. But I just can’t grasp it.”

I wanted to be patient with him, but we had no time. “Cole, you’ve shared memories with me while feeding me. Flashbacks I don’t think you fully remembered.” Jack probably wouldn’t appreciate this method, but I was desperate. Cole looked at me expectantly. “Maybe if you fed me . . .”

Without hesitation, he grabbed me and kissed me, and something inside my head clicked like a key turning in a lock. I saw a memory quickly come into focus, as if someone were turning a camera lens, but I didn’t have time to interpret it before he pulled away. He smiled.

“I’ve got it,” he said. “I did time with this guy once, inside a Delphinian prison.”

“Delphinian?” I said. “Like the crazy, exiled Everlivings Ashe and Mildred were talking about?”

Cole nodded. “The guy in the cell next to me was named Devon. He was a mercenary. He’d been imprisoned because the Delphinians had stolen something from the woman he loved, and he stole it back. It was a rare artifact. He hid it before he was captured. They tortured him for its location, but he never gave it up. When it seemed obvious”—Cole paused and looked down—“that Devon was going to die, he asked me to retrieve it and take care of it. At the time, I didn’t know it was the Helmet of Hermes. I thought it was just a piece of jewelry.” He lifted his gaze to meet mine. “But when Mildred said the name Devon, things started to click.”

I gave a faint smile. “When were you in this Delphinian prison?”

He looked away. “I’m not sure. But it feels like a long, long time ago.”

I grabbed the pendant and held it up to the light.

Jack was staring at Cole. “Where exactly did you get it? Before it ended up in the storage unit?”

Cole looked at me but answered Jack. “In a locker. Originally in Riomaggiore. Italy. Where Devon had hidden it.”

Something in his expression didn’t seem right. He was smiling, but it didn’t seem to reach any other part of his face, including his lips.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m tired.”

“Lie down,” I said. “Get some rest. I won’t feed on you until you’re rested, okay?”

He nodded and crawled onto the side of the bed, curling away from Jack and me.

After a few moments he was breathing evenly.

“He’s lying,” Jack said.

“Shh,” I said. I got up and motioned for Jack to follow me.

Once the room door was shut behind us, he started in. “He’s lying, Becks. I know it. It all just seems so convenient. What if it’s not this instinctual behaviors theory of the professor’s? If he was lying, that instinct stuff is the perfect cover-up. He can reveal exactly what he wants to reveal and call it instinct.”

I thought for a moment. “I believe he’s telling the truth about the amnesia. But let’s say I’m wrong, and he’s been playing us this entire time. Whether he’s lying or not, there are certain things we know for sure. One is that I need him to survive. The other is that he brought us the Helmet of Hermes. So whether he’s lying or not, he’s given us what we need.”

Jack put his lips together and sighed. I could tell my words were making sense to him.

“Not only that, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what he stands to gain from lying about this. Yes, he’s lied to me in the past. But right now, I’m already dependent on finding someone to feed on. I’m dependent on him. What more could he want?”

“That’s the scary part. I have no doubt he has ulterior motives for pulling this amnesia stunt, and just because we can’t figure out what his ultimate goal is, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.” He shook his head. “Actually, we do know what his ultimate goal is. The throne.”

“The old Cole’s goal was the throne. The new one wants to help us. How much of the old Cole is back? I don’t know.” I took in a deep breath. “But right now, all I have to know is that we have the sickle—our first step to destroying the Everneath—and he holds my life in his hands.” It wasn’t a good position to be in, but my odds were never good in the first place.

Jack looked at me and nodded. I put a hand on either side of his face. “We have everything we need. All the pieces in place. The only thing left is following through with it. And all you need to do is trust this.” I brought his face to mine and pressed my lips against his one cheek, and then the other cheek, and then finally his mouth.

The hotel door swung open, and Cole stuck his head out.

Jack looked at him sideways. “Seriously, you are begging for a beating.”

“Sorry,” he said. He ducked back inside.

We spent the evening with renewed energy for our mission. Jack was up half the night at the computer. I wanted to help him with whatever he was researching, but I needed to feed.

Cole woke up frequently, distressed and in a cold sweat. He wouldn’t tell me what his dreams were about, but when I fed on him throughout the night, all I saw were jumbled pictures of dark, chilling images of screams that would come to life and turn into terrifying monsters. They reached inside my head and tried to steal my brain.

The images scared me, and I had to keep pulling back from Cole’s face.

In the morning I woke with a feeling of dread. I wasn’t sure if it came from the nightmares or from the enormity of our task. Jack made coffee for us. We sat down across from each other at the table.

Jack took my hand. “It’s going to work, Becks.”

I shrugged. “Even if it does . . . the chances of us destroying the network and escaping before the lockdown are about that of a snowball in the Ring of Fire; and even if it does work, what do we do then?” My lower lip trembled. “We’d still have to destroy the vault of hearts. And somehow we’d have to destroy every Everliving’s heart. And the Everneath would be on lockdown.”

Jack came to my side and held me. “Shh. It’s going to be okay. If getting rid of the network and eliminating the bond between the Shades is the first step in destroying the Everneath, then we do it and go on faith that the next step will present itself.”

“Faith?” The word popped out before I could think about it. “Faith in what? A higher power? The gods? The universe?”

My voice cracked at the end, and I realized what this whole thing had done to my faith, if I’d had any to begin with. I realized that the thought of a higher being in charge of all this made me angry.

Jack took my hand in his. “Do you want to try? Or do you want to give up?”

“It all seems so futile,” I said.

He pulled me toward him, crushing me against his chest. “Right now, the other options are that you take me to the Feed, or you become queen.”

“What?”

“I’m saying that if we run out of time and the only options are you dying or taking me to the Feed, you take me to the Feed.”

“Hell, no,” I said. “There is no way, literally no way in hell, I will feed on you.”

“Then we’d better try to destroy the Everneath,” Jack said. “Otherwise, we’ll be facing an epic showdown, and I’m bigger and stronger than you are.” The edge of his lips curled up and his eyes twinkled, but I knew that underneath it all, the threat was real. He would do everything he could to force me to feed on him.

Then I looked at Cole. The old Cole would’ve done anything to force me to turn into a full-fledged Everliving.

And hell, maybe he was the old Cole.

I was surrounded by a roomful of people who would both, to varying degrees, fight to make me an Everliving.

I frowned and started blinking uncontrollably. This whole thing wasn’t about bringing down the Everneath. It was about me trying to survive. Maybe I’d let myself believe that it was about saving the lives of countless potential Forfeits, but wasn’t it really just about saving myself?

Without me, there was no need, really, to destroy the Everneath. Forfeits weren’t exactly innocent. When it came down to it, they all had to choose to go to the Feed.

Without me, the old Cole would not be trying so hard for the throne. At least, he’d only be trying in the sense that he’d be looking for the next Forfeit.

Without me, nobody would be risking his life. In fact, this whole thing had started because I’d tried to run away from my own pain. It had started because I’d thought only of myself.

“Becks?” Jack said hesitantly. He glanced at Cole. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Don’t do it.”

“Do what?” Cole and I both said at the same time.

“Can’t you see it in her eyes?” Jack said. “She’s running.”

Cole looked from my face to the spot where I was sitting on the bed, obviously taking it literally. “No, she’s not. She’s standing still.”

Jack ignored him. “Don’t do it, Becks.”

“Without me, you would both be fine,” I said.

“No,” he said. “I would never be fine. Ever again. And if you run, I will catch you. And if I can’t, I will try to take the Everneath down single-handedly.”

Cole finally looked as if he’d caught up. “And I’ll help him,” he said.

Jack glanced at Cole, and though he didn’t quite smile, the frown he gave Cole wasn’t as deep as it usually was.

I couldn’t think of anything to say. Would they really still try to take it down?

What if I were no longer alive?

If I were dead, there would be no point in Jack’s trying so crazily to take it down.

I closed my eyes and shook my head, shaking the thought away with it. I knew my own strength. There was no way I could ever take my own life. Unless . . . unless I was saving someone else’s.

“Becks, listen to me,” Jack said, grabbing my shoulders. “I won’t try to make you take me to the Feed. I promise. Just don’t give up. However this turns out, I will be monumentally messed up if you disappear on me now. If we put up a fight and we lose . . . well, we’ll have to live with it. But if I lose you here because you run . . . there would be no recovering for me.”

I nodded. Again, I knew exactly how that would feel. When Jack jumped into the Tunnels for me . . . and I didn’t have the option of fighting for his life . . . it was a feeling I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

I nodded my head. “Okay. But promise me, if this doesn’t work out . . . I cannot feed on another human being. I won’t. I’ll spend a century holding my breath. I. Will. Not. Feed. On. You.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay. Then we’re agreed. We’ll fight to take down the Everneath. We’ll give our last breath fighting.”

I nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Now let’s go destroy the network.”

Jack let out a sigh. “I told the professor our plan. His first reaction was, Wait, you’re only taking three people to destroy the network? You’ll need an army. So I got to thinking we need at least one more person. And I have someone in mind.”