They had bought the gym thanks to Chalen’s $276,457.
Ahlan had presented the cash to the group after he and Ahmare had gone up to Caldwell to move out about two weeks after the drama was over. And when Ahmare had suggested she and Nexi go in on a gym that focused on self-defense for vampire females, the Shadow had thought that was a great idea. After all, vampires could dematerialize from all over. And there were a lot of females who didn’t feel safe in the world after the raids.
Ahmare and Nexi were going to change that, and even Wrath and the Brotherhood had come down and inspected things, excited about the good work they were going to do.
Ahmare went to the cupboard and took out—
“Oreos?” Nexi said. “Oreos.”
“You hate kale and you know it,” she said to her partner. “And this is a celebration.”
Ahmare opened the package and slid the tray full of chocolate-and-vanilla goodness out. She offered them to Nexi and Ahlan and Rudie. When she came up to her Theo, his smile was wide, but his eyes were serious.
He knew about the why of this, and it was not just because Oreos were awesome. She’d told him about Nexi and the blowtorch, the seconds only to spare, the almost not-out.
Her life saved by Nabisco, as it were.
They’d talked a lot about the past over the months since they’d moved into Nexi’s safe house, both the events of those fateful three nights that had started with her first contact with Chalen, and the things that had come before, her family, his mahmen, the raids, the colony.
What he had done to his father outside their room.
They were both healing, and so were the others. There was a lot more distance to cover, but happiness was a great antiseptic to the wounds inside the soul, and there were all kinds of goodness and support inside that mountain house where they all lived.
Putting her cookie out, she said, “Cheers, to us.”
“To us,” they all murmured, Oreos meeting in the center as if they were glasses.
And then everyone ate theirs their own way. Theo and Ahmare were twist-and-splitters. Nexi ate hers in three bites. Ahlan put his in his piehole on a oner. And Rudie bit the top of his cookie off, using his fangs like they were surgical knives.
It didn’t matter how you ate your cookie, after all.
As long as you had family to share it with.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With so many thanks to readers far and wide. Thank you also to Meg Ruley and everyone at JRA, and with so much gratitude to Lauren McKenna and Jennifer Bergstrom and everyone at Gallery Books and Simon & Schuster!
As always, with thanks to Team Waud and my family, both of blood and adoption.
Oh, and this wouldn’t have been possible without the talents and dedication of WriterDog!
Don’t miss
The Savior
Coming April 2019 from Gallery Books!
THE SAVIOR
DARIUS’S OLD HOUSE. The federal mansion in the wealthy part of Caldwell that Murhder could remember coming to before everything had changed for him.
As he stood across the street from the gracious home, he told himself to get a move on. Walk to the front door. Knock to announce his presence—although surely the Brothers were staring out at him now because the inside of the stately Wayne Manor was pitchblack. The forethought made some part of him wake up that was, for once, not bad news. He could remember being strategic like that. No lights inside meant they could be stacked ten deep in front of any piece of glass and no one could see them, know their numbers, assess their weaponry.
He had to wonder if some were not outside, too. They would be careful to stay downwind so he couldn’t sense them, and they would be silent as snow falling if they shifted positions.
Murhder had not brought an overcoat. A jacket. Even a pullover. And not because North Carolina was so much warmer. The oversight, coupled with the fact that he didn’t even own a parka, seemed a revealing symptom of his mental disease.
Moving his hand to his back pocket, he felt for the three letters that he’d brought with him. Those mattered. Not so much the FedEx envelope that the King was so hot and bothered about. That was carelessly tucked under one arm—he’d left without it and nearly hadn’t gone back. Wrath was expecting the documents, however, and knowing the way the last pure bred vampire on the earth operated, there would be no letting that one go.
Murhder fully intended to get what he needed and never see any of them again.
Forcing himself to step off the curb, he—
The facility was about the horizontal, rather than the vertical, and from Murhder’s hillside hideout, he memorized the interconnected buildings, with their central core and radiating spokes. No windows except for the entrance, and even there the glass was tinted and kept to a minimum. Parking lot was mostly empty, what cars there were congregating close to the way in.
There was no one walking around outside.