Chapter 21
I rubbed the side of my head and winced as another sharp pain sent my vision into black and white. I couldn’t locate it. Was it a headache inside my skull or the scalp outside of it? Was this because of my next Blessing? What was this one again?
“Cora?”
I couldn’t sense the mother behind me any longer, so I carefully turned around.
Wind tossed the branches of the trees under the dark clouds of twilight.
I stepped out of the shed, not feeling any stronger than I had earlier.
Where had the mothers gone? They’d all been out here, with Cora and Jo right behind me when I’d gotten into my seat.
Had I lost another chunk of time like I had in that cave?
I went to the front door and knocked. Something didn’t feel right.
I jerked my head in one direction, then the other, and spun around to press my back to the door.
I wasn’t sure what I was seeing — or not seeing — on the edges of my awareness.
I knocked again, but it was like everyone had disappeared.
The door was locked when I tried it. I wondered if I should have kicked it in to get inside. Was this one of the trials?
A car whirred over the last of the incline of the dirt road and parked beside mine. It was Diana’s, the one she’d picked me up in when I was still a kid. I hadn’t even realized she still had it. I made it as far as the porch steps before my mom popped out of the car.
“Fallon! We got a problem!”
I ran to her, following to the back of her car. “What’s wrong? Where is—?”
She opened the trunk and took several quick, light steps back. I staggered backwards as well, just as a young girl lunged from the compartment, falling to the ground when I dodged out of her way. Her angry red eyes snapped to mine, and my breathing halted.
Lily. My little sister.
“What—?”
“You have to do it, Fallon,” Diana said behind me.
Lily crawled at me, faster than human, reaching out with hateful grasps and snapping her fanged teeth.
“How could this have happened?” My mind was still so hazy. Even in front of my eyes, these people I’d known almost my whole life didn’t feel real. Diana wrapped my fingers around a stake, and I brushed my thumb over the wood grain.
I didn’t have time to think just yet. I slammed the stake down into Lily’s upper arm. She screamed inhumanly, but she didn’t freeze up. She was supposed to stop moving! That was how it worked.
“Mom?” I cried desperately.
“You have to stake her, Fallon. You have to end this.” Diana held me upright as we backed away together from the angry vampire — from Lily — but we couldn’t go on like that for much longer. “Through the heart. You know how to do it.”
I took the second stake she offered me and held it tight. Lily’s face changed, and she crawled away in sudden, fearful retreat. Tears poured out. She was so frightened, and I still couldn’t make sense of how this had happened.
I’d felt this way four years ago, on my knees in the Hope family’s living room, crying and offering bizarre alternatives to the reality that Derrick was dead.
Denial.
“Please, Fallon, please. You don’t have to kill me. I’ll be good. I’ll be a good vampire. Like your friend!” Lily crawled backwards until she bumped against the back wheel of Diana’s car.
“Fenton? What the hell happened? He was supposed to protect you!” Rage made my hand grip the stake so tight I feared it might explode into splinters. Lily shook her head and continued to beg.
Where were the mothers? This had to be a trick. But what was…?
In one smooth, quick motion, I jammed the stake into Lily’s heart.
Her shocked eyes went gray, and the stake came out smoothly as she crumbled to ash.
I turned on Diana next. Or at least, the creature wearing her skin.
Her face was blank, her body still, and the attack I anticipated didn’t happen.
After too much stillness, I cut through the unnatural silence.
“Who are you?”
* * *
I nearly tripped over my own feet as my momentum stopped mid-step. I caught myself, my boot stomping down hard on the sidewalk. I spun around to take in my surroundings. My mind had gone oddly blank. What was I doing here?
I backed up into the cool metal of a dim streetlamp.
How odd. I was on Roadrunner Drive. Of course I was.
This was where I lived. I rubbed my forehead.
I’d been drinking with Fenton and his friends, and the alcohol must have actually gotten to my head, making me dizzy and forgetful.
We’d fought, too, hadn’t we? He’d yelled at me, and I’d walked away.
I shook off the unease that lingered from that lapse in memory and unlocked my door, steadying my shaking hand with the other to stop my keys from jingling.
I looked over my shoulder back to the street, feeling eyes on me.
The lock clicked open, and I rushed inside.
I slammed the door closed and locked it.
“Fallon.” I slammed my back to the door. Derrick had dragged both syllables of my name out for too long.
“What are you doing in here?” I asked, flipping the light switch. It clicked, but the room remained dark. “You scared me.”
“You invited me in.” There was no warmth or love in Derrick’s voice. He didn’t move closer. The light from the window outlined his left side. Something was wrong.
My hand was already wrapped around one stake, and I dropped my keys to grab a second one.
“Oh, Fallon. You wouldn’t, would you? We can be together forever now. You’ve missed me, haven’t you? Please, let me give you this gift, and we can leave everything behind. It can just be you and me. Forever.”
He took slow, predatory steps forward between each sentence, and a soft sob escaped between my parted lips. I had missed him. I’d missed him so much. Because…
I gasped. Derrick was dead. I lunged forward and jammed a stake into his heart, and the stark overhead light came back on, just in time for me to see the betrayal turn to gray as he burned to ash. My legs crumpled under me.
This was the trial…
The metal floor pinched the skin below my kneecaps, and I breathed in comforting, familiar air, warmed by the shafts of sunlight that were cutting in through the old barn’s roof. I kept my head tilted back as I lowered my hips onto a cool feeling of pure ecstasy, so good it ached.
“Fallon, my goddess, perfection, Jesus Christ and Zeus and Buddha and whoever the fuck else, God, I love you.” The prayer was murmured against my throat. Two strong arms held my bare body to Fenton’s chest, and I arched backwards, drifting away into the distraction.
“Can I bite you, Fallon? Can I make you like me? Please?” Fenton’s lips worshiped my neck. He was pulsing into me so perfectly, and yeah, I wanted him to bite me again. But I didn’t want him to turn me. Was it just his usual love talk, or had something changed?
My head had never been so heavy. The muscles in my neck strained to lift it so I could look into his eyes. Just inches from my own, I studied them.
And screamed. I pushed myself off and got as far away from him as I could, until my back dug into the rotting wood of the barn. No, this wasn’t right. Where had Derrick gone? And Diana?
I held both sides of my head and shouted, “Stop this!” I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to wake up from this nightmare. I wouldn’t do this. I wouldn’t let them take any of this from me. Not my memories. Not the people I loved.
I opened my eyes to glare at Fenton. He’d stilled, naked and blank on the metal loft of a barn that was wrong.
This wasn’t real, and I wasn’t going to take any more of it.
* * *
The direct center of my vision went gray, then darkened and spread. I winced at the sensation of blindness, and when I opened my eyes again, I was staring at a dark circle painted on the back of the shed wall.
I whipped my upper body around, and Cora regarded me with the same stone expression Fenton had been wearing, and Diana before him, where they’d existed entirely in my own head.
“It was a trick!” Even knowing that, my heart still pounded like I’d just woken from a nightmare.
“It was a trial.”
“You went into my memories? Could you— Did you see it all?” I stood from the chair and barely had the restraint to keep myself from charging at her.
“Not memories, no. That which dreams are made of, with whispers to guide your subconscious. You’re adept at recognizing the inconsistency of dreams. You snapped yourself out of it after only a few short cycles. That last one…”
“What?” I cut her off. “Does that mean I’ve failed?”
Cora pressed her lips into a firm line and took a beat to measure her words. “Fallon, I understand that was jarring for you, but you’ll watch your attitude. If you can’t handle a trial of your character, how can you hope to receive your Blessing?”
“What? I’m a Hunter. It’s my destiny, isn’t it?” I spat, and the anger was making me sarcastic.
“Now, now, that’s not a word we ever taught you to associate with the Blessing.
It’s no destiny. It’s a choice. It always has been.
You know that, because you’ve lived it.” Cora studied me, and I withdrew, containing the fire of my anger.
“We all have secrets. Perhaps you more than others? Is that why the trial bothered you?”
I shook my head and wrapped my arms around myself. My vision blurred as I retreated into my own mind.
“Reflect, Fallon. What had you so frightened?”
Every muscle in my body was drawn tight, but I tried to do as she asked. I was embarrassed at having been emotional in front of my family.
“I…lost control.”
Cora watched me with her round eyes. She’d always been the warmest of the mothers, perhaps because she was always different, being the witch of the family. “Do you wish to continue the trials?”
“That wasn’t just a resounding failure?” I asked, then an even more fretful question came to mind. “Do I have to do that one again?”
“No, dear. I don’t suspect I could fool you again, anyway. Take a rest, and we’ll move on to the next one tomorrow.”
Perhaps Cora had been embarrassed for me, too, because she left quickly.
I stood in place for a long time, replaying the images that had been conjured into my head.
I was closer than I ever imagined to breaking, and so I consciously started the routine of putting myself back together, first with a much-needed shower.