I faced the wall again, not wanting to reveal how much that hurt, or how much I wanted to spin around, knock him over and let him see how much of a demon I really was. My throat burned, but I swallowed the tears and the anger, burying it under cold indifference. I’d known, eventually, it would come to this.
Crouching slightly, I leaped for the top of the wall, finding cracks and handholds to scale the fifteen feet of rusty metal and iron. Landing on the other side, I jumped as gunshots rang out behind me, four in rapid succession, from Zeke’s pistol. I whirled to see a handful of bullet holes in a square of sheet metal, several yards from where I stood. Zeke hadn’t been aiming for me, only making sure Jeb knew he drove me off. That he hadn’t let the vampire go without a fight.
The fields stretched out before me, and beyond them, the dark woods beckoned. Behind me, I heard Zeke pause for a long moment, then his footsteps walked away, back to Jebbadiah and his family, where he belonged.
I began walking as well, away from the fence and the humans and the safe haven that was only a lie. I imagined myself and Zeke, the gap between us widening as we drew farther and farther away, each of us vanishing into our own world where the other could not survive. By the time I neared the edge of the woods, where the rabids and the demons and the other horrors waited, the chasm had become so vast I couldn’t see the other side anymore.
Part IV
Wanderer
Chapter 18
They were waiting at the edge of the woods, blank eyes shining through the rain, watching me with the unblinking stare of death. Four of them, including the woman in the tattered dress, crouched among the trees and dripping branches of the forest. I watched them, and they did the same, none of us moving; five statues in the darkness, water streaming down our pale skin, trickling off the blade in my hand.
And we waited. Monsters in the night, sizing each other up. The storm flickered around us, reflecting in the rabids’ eyes, revealing the deadness behind them, but none of us so much as flinched.
Then the woman in the dress hissed softly, showing jagged fangs, and backed away, retreating from me into the darkness. After a moment, the other rabids did the same, creeping back without a fight, recognizing another predator.
I watched them, feeling cold and detached, watched as they eased around me and slipped out of the woods toward the compound I’d just left. I wasn’t prey. I was a corpse, a creature whose heart didn’t race, who didn’t breathe or sweat or smell of fear. I was dead.
Just like them.
You are a vampire, Kanin had told me, so long ago it seemed. You are a wolf to their sheep—stronger, faster, more savage than they could ever be. They are food, Allison Sekemoto. And deep down, your demon will always see them as such.
Lightning flashed through the trees. The Archer compound stood behind me over the fields, outlined by weak fires that smoldered in the storm. Fewer people would be manning those platforms now, their frail human vision blinded by rain and smoke.
“You’re a vampire,” Stick whispered, his eyes huge and terrified. “A vampire.”
The rabids reached the edge of the trees and stopped, four pale, motionless killers, staring at the compound on the hill. I wondered how many more rabids lurked in the darkness just beyond the fields, watching their prey with the patience of the dead. If Jebbadiah led his people away from the compound tonight, they could walk right into an ambush. Even if they managed to kill them or drive them off, someone would probably die.
So what? Sheathing my sword, I turned my back on the rabids, on the people still hiding behind the wall. I’d tried to fit in, and they had driven me away. Let them be slaughtered by rabids, what did I care? I was Vampire, and humans were no longer my concern.
“This is the last favor I’ll grant,” Zeke said, his voice cold and hard. “If I see you again, I’ll kill you.”
My chest felt tight. Of all the lies and treachery and knives in the back, his hurt the worst. It was different from Stick’s betrayal; though we had been friends for years and years, I’d known, deep down, that Stick was using me. That he was more than capable of selling me out if something better came along. Zeke was different. He did things because he truly cared, not because he expected anything in return. It was such an alien philosophy. On the streets, in the Fringe, it didn’t matter where you were—it was every human for himself. I’d learned that nothing was free, and everyone had an angle. It was just how things were.
Except Zeke. Zeke had treated me like a human, like an equal. He’d stood up for me, helped me, given me things as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He cared, because it was his nature.
Which made it all the more painful to find out he’d lied when he’d said I could trust him, when his eyes had gone hard and cold, and he’d turned on me as if I was a monster.