Chapter 24
The drive home to Cibola was a carnival ride through grief, pain, and loss.
Round and round, I was slung from one emotion to the next, sometimes crying so hard I could barely see the dark stretch of highway in front of me, sometimes so angry that I might have split the skin over my knuckles from clenching the steering wheel so hard, and sometimes I’d look over at the peacefully still body beside me and laugh hard enough to taste iron in the back of my throat.
The arrow still lodged in my body throbbed, sometimes enough that I had to breathe deep and focus my vision on the straight line of dark road ahead so I didn’t succumb to the white edges threatening to envelop me.
I needed to get Fenton home before he woke.
If I hadn’t gotten the Hunter Blessings that I had, I would have passed out long ago, perhaps even bled out.
Luckily, I was getting away with only acute pain and dizziness.
No one was outside his apartment building at this time, closer to one than midnight, and even if there had been anyone, I didn’t have the luxury to wait.
I hefted his tall body out of the car and slung his weight onto my uninjured shoulder.
Fenton was heavier than he looked, and my vision blurred and pulsed with each step I took up the steps to his second-floor apartment.
Diana lived here, too, and I could have asked her for help with Fenton, but I didn’t want her to know about him.
I wanted to keep him safe. So I leaned against his door and unlocked it with the key I’d plucked from his front left pocket.
I didn’t bother closing it all the way as I dropped him as far as I could carry him, onto the living room rug.
I cried out in pain and relief. The exertion had made me start bleeding again, and a few drops splattered on Peter’s body and the floor below him, but I didn’t have the energy to clean it up.
I stumbled around his apartment, looking for any signs of his connection to me.
The mothers had been right. I had to make this a clean break.
I had to let him forget me and never remember me again, both to keep everyone involved safer, and to pay anything at all back to the Hunters for my indiscretions.
There were no photos of me anywhere, and if he had any secret possessions of mine, a quick search wasn’t enough for me to find them.
I stood over him, trying to make the most of the bitter knowledge that this would be the last time seeing him, but no meaningful last words came to mind. I’d saved his life tonight, and I’d given up so much for it. I wished I could have felt no regret in the choice.
His still face was peaceful. Youthful. With his eyes and mouth closed, he was the Peter Fenton who had been my first travel guide to the real world.
My best friend and bedmate. A few tears sprinkled over him, joining the drops of blood in some sick parting ritual.
I had to leave if I wanted my scent to clear out of here before he woke up, if that was even possible.
The red journal on his coffee table drew my attention.
I picked it up and flipped through it, spotting my name several times.
I’d have to take it. I hadn’t seen any of the other journals he’d once owned during my search, so I had to hope they’d been lost when he’d been turned.
My mind was an exhausted box of pain and despair, and I would have otherwise been far more careful in searching every crevice of his home to ensure he never caught a loose thread that would lead back to me or my family, but that just wasn’t possible now when every step, breath, and second ticking by hurt.
I put his house key on the coffee table, and I realized with a groan I needed to check his person.
Mostly with one hand, I raided his empty pockets, clenching my teeth against the sharp sting of every movement. All I found was his cell phone.
I took deep, calming breaths as I turned it on and found it unsurprisingly unlocked, no password or PIN or security of any type.
I removed my number from his contacts, then deleted my text messages.
I did a quick search of his photo gallery and found it strangely sparse, and my quick scan found nothing tied to me.
Under the conditions, I’d done the best I could. Peter Fenton wouldn’t remember me.
With the last reserve of my energy, I stood and bowed my head over Peter Fenton’s unmoving body. Should I have said something? Some final words? All that came to mind was curses. Why the hell did you have to come looking for me in the most hostile place in the world to your kind, you idiot?
“I…” I love you? Did I?
What else could have caused me to ruin my life for one single vampire? Much as I’d have liked to blame it on my sense of morality, it had all been too instinctual. I loved him. Didn’t I? And it didn’t matter. If he woke up now, I would be a stranger.
I left his apartment.
The thirty-foot walk to Diana’s apartment felt longer even than the drive back home from the mountains.
I wasn’t sure I was going to have enough stamina left to make it.
I slumped in front of her door, sliding all the way down it, and knocked.
The heavy metal surface was cool on my burning, sweaty cheek, and the whiteness that had been dancing around the edges of my vision came even closer, wrapping around me like a blanket.
I knocked once more, soft as a baby bird flying into it by mistake, before I slipped into the white void like it was a tub of warm water.
* * *
“The hell happened to you, kiddo?”
I’d come up for air in different surroundings, somewhere indoors but too blurry to make any sense of. My mom was with me. She was taking care of me. My hand was heavy when it went to prod the pain in my shoulder, curious as to whether the arrow was still in there or not.
“Stop that.”
Mom slapped my hand away, and that was that. My head slumped.
“Got shot,” I said. “Hunters.”
Scissors hissed through fabric, biting over and over, making me sick.
I screamed at the sharp pain that I couldn’t even locate in a specific part of my body.
Everything hurt. I’d become the wound. I gagged around fabric stuffed into my mouth, and I saw stars when Diana pulled the wood out of my body with a dry tug.
Everything disappeared around me again, and her voice grew distant.
I woke up again later with a sickening start.
I was sweating, and tender, and my dry mouth tasted of vomit.
I was alive, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to be.
It was all too much, every sound, touch, and image that pummeled my senses, and worse, every emotion that rubbed inside my raw heart.
Diana scrubbed bristles over a spot on her floor, and I could feel the repetitive scratching sounds up and down my spine.
She dunked it in a bucket of water, and the rasps started again.
“I’m sorry.” I was too weak to wail, and I was thankful for it. I couldn’t take much more humiliation.
“Hush,” Diana said, next to my ear and far away. “You’ll be healed soon enough.”
I rolled my shoulder, and it barely hurt. It was only everything else that was searing with pain now.
“I failed, Mom.” I cried like I always wanted to, but couldn’t, as a child. The total defeat was a familiar comfort. It felt like the weeks after Derrick’s death. I’d failed again. Fallon Hunter, the constant and inevitable failure. I counted them up, each one tattooed on my soul.
“What happened?” She was always cool and unflappable. Of all the attributes I’d inherited from Diana, I hadn’t gotten that. I fell to pieces all too often.
“I promised them I’d be a Hunter. I would do what I had to do. And then a vampire came, and it was my friend. My Peter. The idiot came to the Hunter Land!”
I sobbed into my hands, curling towards the back of the couch. The fabric was rough against my bare skin.
“Oh, baby,” Diana said, not comforting, but understanding, at least. “Your vampire boyfriend crashed your trials?”
“He wasn’t even my boyfriend.” As if that was the main issue.
“They kill him?”
I wanted to scream and fold in on myself until I disappeared. “I didn’t let them. I acted like…” A lovesick schoolgirl? I’d never actually been one of those. An idiot was a better description. A traitor. “I really fucked up this time, Mom.”
She snorted. I followed her with my senses as she moved around her home.
“I ruined my life for this,” I groaned as a fresh wave of pain washed over me. “I quit my job!” I lost Fenton. I had to shove that one down again.
“You can get a new one.” Diana’s gentle, matter-of-fact tone was comforting.
“They hate me now. The Hunters. I betrayed everything they stand for.”
“Well…”
I’d caused such a mess. As much as it felt good to break apart, that part of me that was forged into a Hunter wasn’t allowing me to indulge for much longer.
I wiped my face and did breathing exercises to calm the chaos in my chest. I wasn’t ready yet, but I forced myself to sit.
My shoulder was clean and bandaged, and there was no evidence left of Diana’s effort.
The scraps of my shirt were gone, and there were no bloody stains left behind on any surfaces.
“Thank you, Mom,” I said shamefully. “I need to apologize. I imposed so much on you. I’m such a mess, and I’ve made it your problem.”
Diana smirked from the kitchen. A kettle squealed, and she shoved the last of a snack into her mouth so she could tend to it.
“Hey, take all the time you need to feel sorry for yourself. Grab some food, take a shower, crash on the couch for a few days. But pity parties gotta come to an end sometime.” There was no judgment from Diana, even in the face of her tough love.
She brought a steaming mug of tea to the side table, and I watched the liquid darken as it steeped.
“Are you disappointed in me?”