I gave him the same silent treatment he’d often given me…until his thumb grazed one of my injuries and I whimpered.
Everything about him softened in an instant. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.” His voice broke there at the end. “So. Yeah. There’s no out for you now. You’re stuck with us.”
How ominous he suddenly sounded. “There was an out for Justin.”
“Yeah, and look where that got us.” Cole stood, strode to a cart with all kinds of things scattered on top and wheeled it over. “We won’t make the same mistake twice. If you’re not for us, you’re for them, and with your ability to see the Blood Lines in the spirit realm, we can’t let you be for them.”
All right, so we’d jumped from ominous to straight-up threatening. “You would get rid of me?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I wouldn’t, no.”
Clearly, others would. “Gotta say, so far I’m not liking the sound of my new team.” I hadn’t made a formal decision to rejoin the group, but with the words, I realized the decision had been made. Indisputably, I couldn’t do this on my own.
He cleaned up my newest set of wounds. “You’ll come to love them. They’re the ones who will guard your back.”
And I’d be responsible for guarding theirs. “So no one else can see the Blood Lines while in spirit form?”
“No one currently living, but a few years ago, there was a guy who could. He’s the one who led my dad and his friends.”
I thought about the journal I’d found. Maybe this former leader was the one who’d written it. “Did he like to write things in code?”
Cole blinked down at me, frowned. “Why would you ask something like that?”
“Uh, I’ll tell you later,” I said. “Maybe. If I ever trust you again.”
His mouth opened and closed as if he wanted to press me for more, but in the end he merely nodded. “Fair enough. And because I know how much you love details, I’ll tell you—without being asked—that no one was ever able to figure out why he could do it when no one else could.”
“What happened to him?” I asked, then pursed my lips in irritation. Several times he’d mentioned my curious nature. I had to get control of my tongue.
“He died during an attack and that was that.” He finished cleaning my wounds and wrapped bandages around both of my wrists.
There were only two known cases of people with that ability, then. The journal had mentioned we should all wield all abilities, if only we would yield to the power inside of us. Maybe this guy and I were the only ones who had yielded.
“You were bitten repeatedly and deeply,” Cole said, “but the antidote finally neutralized the toxin. You’ll be tired for the next few days, not as strong or as fast, but you should recover completely.”
He said that as if there’d been a chance the antidote wouldn’t work, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Relief that I’d made it or dread that I could have died. “Have you— I mean, you’ve been bitten before, I’m sure.”
“More times than I can count. The longer the zombies are alive, for lack of a better word, the smarter they become. They learn how to circumvent our traps—though never the Blood Lines. They work together. They ambush. They track.”
That phrasing caught my attention. I had been tracked. Bridezilla and her Groom of Doom had appeared in the forest beyond my backyard many nights, then again at Reeve’s. Obviously, they’d singled me out.
“So, these Blood Lines…” I prompted, without asking.
“You want to know more about them?”
I nodded.
There was a sparkle in his eyes as he said, “They create an energy that causes objects to solidify in the spirit realm, preventing the zombies from ghosting through them. That energy also gives off a scent the zombies find offensive, which is why we launder our clothes in a diluted mix of the chemicals. Only thing it doesn’t make manifest is a human body.”
Fascinating. “I want some.”
“After I’ve taught you how to properly use it.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
Hard to argue with that, but oh, I wanted to. “Does your dad fight?” Well, dang. Another question.
“No. He developed an allergy to the antidote and has to hang back.”
Something in his tone had me thinking we’d all develop an allergy one day, but I wasn’t going to worry about that now. “So what happens next?”
The look Cole gave me was as comforting as a blanket woven from shards of broken glass. “You’ll go home and rest. You’ll decide on the lies you’re going to feed your grandparents. And as soon as you’re healed, your training will begin.”
13
Knock, Knock, Says the Evil