The Lair

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Carter

I couldn’t wait to get back to my room, just to have a moment alone. To get out of these damn serial-killer clothes and to breathe in air that didn’t smell like blood. When you do something like bury the dead, the stench of blood clings to your nose and the sight of it is seared on your retinas, so that every time you close your eyes, you see it again. For days. Weeks, sometimes.

I’d never paid much attention in English class, but ever since Sebastian first taught us how to prep bodies after we fought off the Ticks who overran the Elite Military Academy, I’d thought a lot about Lady MacBeth and how the sight of all that blood drove her crazy. After a few hours of hacking bodies to pieces, I knew how she felt. Like I’d never be clean again.

Normally, I couldn’t walk through the main cavern without twenty different people stopping me. Not today.

The Elites all knew what Merc and I had done. They knew to steer clear of either of us. The Greens followed their lead. So Merc and I walked through the cavern in silence. At some point, he disappeared into his room and I walked on to mine, glad to be completely alone.

I shut the door behind me and immediately changed into clean clothes. None of our clothes were washing-machine clean, but anything was better than the jeans I’d had on. I wanted to burn the damn things, but who knew when I’d find another pair that fit. I pulled on socks, too, first rubbing my toes between my palms. They’d lost all sensation in the cold and now that they were warming up, they burned like hell.

What did frostbite look like? Would I know it if I had it? And what the hell would it matter if I did? Having all my toes wouldn’t do shit to keep my people alive.

I pushed myself to my feet, my mind racing, my anger and despair threatening to pull me under. How the hell was I supposed to do this? How was I supposed to lead this rebellion against these crazy odds? Without even Sebastian around? He was badass in a fight, and all vampires had a sort of spidery sense that let them know when other vampires or Ticks were around. If he had been here today, things would have been different.

Sitting on the shelf right at eye level was that row of superhero bobbleheads. The damn things were taunting me, with their overly cheerful faces and silly bobbing heads. Superheroes in movies made it look so damn easy. Rally the forces, kill the bad guys, save the world. Why didn’t movies or video games show how it really was? Why didn’t they show the hopelessness, the failure? The grief? Or maybe it was just that I wasn’t a superhero.

I felt another wave of anger at the injustice of it all and I swung out an arm, swiping all the bobbleheads off the shelf. They flew through the air to land in an arc on the floor. One of the superhero heads snapped off its head and rolled across the floor. The irony was the last straw. I stomped over to my punching bag. Violence may not solve everything, but it sure as hell cleared my head.

I don’t know how long I pounded away on the bag, only that when I heard a noise behind me, I whirled around to see Ely Estaban standing in my doorway. Ely had been with us at Elite. He came by Base Camp occasionally, but he never stayed long.

Ely gave a head bob. “Que passo, vato?”

Ely tried to play it cool, but I threw my arms around him and gave him a hug, because it was damn good to see him. It had been months since he’d been back to Base Camp. I hadn’t had any idea if he was even still alive. “Jesus, Ely, when did you get here?”

His arms tightened around me for only an instant before he pulled away. The lines of his face were hard with tension. And it was in his tone, too, when he spoke. “No one told you?”

“No.” But I hadn’t really talked to anyone.

“A few hours before the Ticks.”

He didn’t look at me when he said it, but shoved his hands deep in his pockets. Ely always kept to himself, but he had his reasons and he was one of the best guys I knew.

Most of the guys from Elite were troubled kids of rich parents who didn’t know what to do with their pain-in-the-ass offspring. Ely and a few others had been different. They’d been scholarship kids at the academy by court mandate. Ely’s parents hadn’t shipped him off because they didn’t know what to do with him. They’d sent him there because it was the last option they had that didn’t involve him being tried as an adult and then serving a prison term. They would have done anything for him.

When he broke into a Farm, he was in and out quick, because all he cared about was whether or not his siblings were there. We only saw him every month or so and he’d hit multiple Farms between visits. I didn’t ask if he’d found one of his sisters or his brother this time. If he had, he wouldn’t look this grim and edgy. Ely had always been a badass. Today, he looked like a badass who wanted to rip something apart with his bare hands. Instead, I just gave his arm a squeeze.

“I’m glad you’re here.” Only then did I notice that he didn’t have his dog with him. Right after the academy had fallen, Ely found a chow-mix mutt. The thing started following him around and he’d been traveling with it ever since. “Did you leave Chuy out in the cavern?”

Ely’s expression hardened “Nah. Chuy . . .” He just shook his head and I knew enough to let it alone. “I picked up six Greens from the Farm in San Angelo.”

Which should have been something to be happy about, but Ely didn’t look thrilled.

He was shaking his head and at first I thought maybe he was going to circle back to his dog, but instead he said, “I’m sorry, man.”

“For what?”

“I think the Ticks followed us here.” Ely didn’t quite meet my gaze as he pushed his hair back off his face. “We came up through the mountains north of here and worked our way back down. I thought we’d lost them.” He sat down on the arm of the sofa, ducking his head. “If I’d known they were still back there, if I’d had any idea at all, we would have kept on driving.”

I bit back a curse as I fought the urge to punch him. Even though it wasn’t his fault. Even though this kind of shit could happen to anyone.

“When was the last time you were out there?” Ely asked.

“I’ve been on regular food raids, but it’s been about six weeks since anyone from here went much beyond the valley. Why?”

“Things are bad out there.”

“You think I don’t know that things are bad? Trust me. I know.”

My tone must have irritated him, because he stood up and his gaze sharpened.

“No. You know what things were like two months ago. They’re worse now.”

Worse than six weeks ago? Worse than when everyone I had sworn to protect, everyone who had trusted me to keep them safe, had been in mortal danger? I had promised Lily I would do anything to protect Mel. And I’d failed. Miserably.

Did I think things were worse out there than that? Hell, no.

“Look, I get it,” I said, trying to shake off that crushing sense of failure. “Things are bad. They’re going to be bad for a long time. I can’t imagine them getting better. What do you want me to do about it?”

“That’s your answer? ‘What do you expect me to do about it?’ Way to man up.” Ely gave me a look filled with disgust.

I let his disappointment roll off me. I was used to that look. It was the one I saw every time I looked in the mirror. That was the one upside of the collapse of civilization: fewer mirrors.

I started to walk past Ely, but he gave my shoulder a hard shove. Surprised, I spun to face him.

“What the hell?” I demanded.

“You’re supposed to be the leader of this rebellion.”

“So?”

“So pull your shit together.”

I smirked. “Thanks, that’s helpful.”

“I’m serious.”

“I get it.”

“No, you don’t, or you would be out there right now pulling people out of Farms. Bad shit’s going down and you—”

“You think I don’t know that?” I snapped. “You think I don’t know how bad it is out there? Because I do.”

“Then stop having this pity party for yourself, get off your ass, and get out there and save some fucking lives.”

“You think I don’t want to save lives? I do. But let’s be honest here. Let’s look at the facts. Of the last four people I pulled out of a Farm, two of them didn’t make it. I don’t exactly have a brilliant track record right now. I’m not going to pull people out of Farms just so they can be slaughtered by the Ticks on the outside. Hell, I buried thirteen people today. People who were here, at Base Camp. Where they should have been safe. I can’t rescue people I have no way to protect.”

“What about the people who are about to age out? What about them?”

“We don’t know, do we? Let’s face it. There is so much we don’t even have a way to learn. We know kids age out of the program. We know they leave the Farms sometime after they turn eighteen. But we don’t know jack about what actually happens to them.”

“Come on, Carter, you can’t buy that bullshit. You don’t honestly think those kids just get set free.”

“No, I don’t. But I don’t know for sure, do I? No one does. For all we know, those kids get pulled out of the Farms and shipped off to Tahiti, where they lounge on the beach all day. For all we know, we’re not rescuing them. We’re pulling them from safety for no reason other than the fact that we don’t want to be out here alone.”

I stopped abruptly when I realized I was yelling. When I realized that Ely was looking at me like I’d lost my shit. Like I’d gone, officially, bat-crap crazy.

The seconds ticked by while I just stood there, sucking air into my lungs, trying to calm the hell down.

“Is that what you’re waiting for? Some kind of proof of what goes down in the Farms? Some kind of guarantee that the Farms are evil?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what I want. I want proof. I know it’s irrational. I know it’s impossible. But especially after what happened here today, that’s what I want.”

Ely just stared at me for a long moment in silence. Then he nodded. “Okay.”

He turned and left the room.

Alone in my room, I swung another punch at the weighted bag. The bag was mounted in place to the ceiling and the floor; no matter how hard you hit it, the thing barely moved. It was exactly like this fight against the Ticks. No matter what I threw at it, no matter what angle I came at it from, the thing didn’t budge. It hurt me like hell. My knuckles were bloody and bruised from hitting it, but the bag always settled back in to the same position. You could never win a fight against a punching bag. It just wasn’t possible.

On the other hand, when you needed to hit something, you might as well take the punch.

Right now, I really wanted to punch Ely. Not because he was a good sparring partner, but because I absolutely wanted to beat the crap out of him.

I knew my need for proof was all kinds of wrong. I knew this situation was seriously effed up. I knew that without Ely pointing it out to me. I knew that without Ely walking away from me in disgust. Hell, I was disgusted with myself. I knew all that. Having him know it, too, sucked.

I didn’t want to make any more mistakes. I didn’t want to endanger any more innocent people. But beneath all that noble stuff was the crushing guilt. I had put Lily and Mel in danger. And no matter what I had told myself at the time about how noble my goals were, I had to live with the truth. I’d put them in danger for one simple reason: I wanted Lily with me.

Yes, I had believed she was the abductura. Yes, I had believed that together she and I could save the world. But underneath the noblest of intentions was the plain and simple fact that I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted Lily to be safe. I wanted her where I could protect her.

And my need to protect her had gotten Joe killed. It had deprived McKenna’s baby of a father. It had gotten Mel turned into a vampire. It was a screwup of massive and irreversible proportions. A screwup I didn’t know how to undo.