Chapter 14
There are no antidotes at Camp Sunnyside.
Of course there fucking aren’t.
Deep down, I already expected that. Somewhere beneath the panic and the blood and the fact that I’m slumped at a picnic table at the pavilion wearing nothing but my bra beneath Rory’s jacket, I think I had to know that antidotes are so rare, there was no way the settlement would have any to spare for Maverick.
That doesn’t mean I accept it. “Check again. The trading post… Annie has everything. She has to have a couple tucked away.”
“There aren’t any, Holden,” Veronica says, her voice gentle. She’s standing in front of me, my back wedged against the table itself, my fingers clasped in my lap as my boots hit the asphalt.
I hate that she’s being so careful around me.
I hate that everyone gathered around me is watching me, expecting that I’m about to break.
I hate that I couldn’t even find the strength to get up after the first time she admitted there weren’t any antidotes, and that Chase lifted me up in his arms, carrying me bridal-style the entire way back to camp.
He wanted to bring me right to our cabin.
To put me in the shower, scrub me down, hold me close, and make sure that I was okay.
But Veronica… she’s the leader, and when she instructed him to bring me to the pavilion, settling me down near one of the torches posted nearby, before telling David to run and get her sister… no of us could refuse.
Perry is most likely dead. Eileen is dead; I killed her myself. Maverick is out there. Whether he’s dying or Turning, the leader of Camp Sunnyside needs details about what happened. As for the woman that Veronica is… she is determined to understand just what happened to Maverick.
I know she has a thing for him. Anyone with eyes can see that, but her loyalty is to the rebels who look to her for leadership, and I don’t blame her.
I want to help. But I’m sitting here, and blood is drying on my hands.
Maverick’s blood. Some of it got on my bare stomach, too, and there’s a smear across Rory’s jacket from when Chase helped me put it back on so that I wasn’t standing there with my tits out.
I’m not sure whose idea it was to cover me up.
I know I used my tank top to burn Eileen Foster.
Everything after that is a little fuzzy.
Except Maverick’s eyes. No way I can forget Maverick’s black eyes.
The gun, too. After Chase swooped me up, I pleaded with him to grab the gun, too. I saw David trying to grab it. No. It’s not his. It belongs to Mav, and when we find him and he’s okay, I’m going to give it back to him.
Chase got it before David could. The retired Marine looked like he was about to argue, though Veronica put a stop to it before he could say a word.
Now there’s six of us at the picnic table. Veronica is standing in front of me while I sit on the middle of one of the benches. Chase is beside me, close enough that his thigh presses against mine. Delilah is seated on my other side, listening quietly, keeping a few inches between us.
I’ve already told her everything that happened, from my boneheaded idea to see if I could check to see if there were any lurkers nearby in an attempt to find Eileen and Perry to how both Maverick and Chase caught up with me.
Veronica already knew what happened with Eileen—Chase gave her a rundown when he went to ask for an antidote—but then I had to explain what happened while I was alone with Maverick.
I made sure she knew that he didn’t hurt me. That his eyes were black, but when he could’ve bit me, he didn’t. Chase is holding onto Mav’s gun for me, and I mumble my way through talking about how he was about to put a bullet through his skull before I stopped him.
Then, of course, I asked again about the antidotes only for Veronica to remind me that Camp Sunnyside is out.
She turns to David. While Chase and Delilah are sitting with me, both David and Aaron hang back, perched next to the edge of the picnic table while I speak to Veronica.
He straightens. “Vee?”
“I want three teams. You lead one. Aaron, another. Wake up Kira ‘cause I know she’s off tonight. Find two hunters for each of you and see if you can track Maverick down. I want him found.”
David nods.
Veronica’s not done. “If he’s still human, bring him back.”
“And if he’s Turned?”
A shiver skitters down my spine. I know what she’s going to say even before she says it.
“If he’s Turned, kill him.”
I jolt in place. Chase leans into me, his hand on my thigh.
“No,” I say. “You can’t kill him.”
Everyone but Chase ignores my outburst.
“Burn him out there,” Veronica adds. “Don’t bring a lurker anywhere near camp.”
“Understood.”
I push myself to my feet. Fuck. I moved too quickly, and not even Chase’s grip on my thigh kept me in place. I surge up, then stumble when it seems like the whole damn world tilts on me.
“If they’re going,” I announce, “I’m going with them.”
“Holden—”
Veronica cuts Chase off with a firm, “No, you’re not. Look at you. I’m sorry, but you can barely stand.”
“I’m fine.”
“Holden… you’re covered in blood, you’re shaking in place, and you’re standing in front of me in a bra.”
Shit. I glance down and see that Rory’s jacket has fallen open. Glaring at my tits, I quickly tug the leather jacket closed.
“Veronica—”
“I said no.”
And there it is. Not anger, but absolute authority. For a heartbeat, I don’t see the flirty brunette who rescued us from Manhattan or the woman who jokes with Maverick and pretends half the shit she does isn’t deadly serious.
I see Dad. Jack Holden would make the same exact decisions that Veronica is making now.
If one of his sensors had been found just outside of the Grave half-dressed and covered in blood after watching someone get bitten, he would’ve planted their ass somewhere safe while sending hunters to do the dangerous work.
And if the bitten survivor Turned? He would’ve ordered them killed.
Because that’s what leaders do. They make the decision that keeps everyone else alive, even when the person they’re sacrificing matters.
Fuck. “Find him,” I whisper, turning to look at David and Aaron. “Don’t let him have to suffer on his own.”
I’ve only heard Aaron speak, like, three times ever in the last month. So when he nods and says, “You have my word,” I have to believe him.
I have to.
It isn’t until David and Aaron have jogged away, ready to implement the plan that Veronica came up with that Delilah finally joins the conversation.
“I’m sorry you had to watch that happen,” she begins, turning slightly so that she’s looking at me now instead of Veronica.
“The absolute hunger being a side effect of PP-56 going wrong is the worst part of seeing what my colleagues and I were forced to create. If I could change anything…” Her voice trails to a close.
She shakes her head, adjusting the sunglasses she’s wearing despite it being well after dark. “Tell me again about the eyes.”
Instead of doing so, I tap Chase on his thigh.
The way he’s humming again, primed to lift me up and carry me away…
I know that he’s torn between hiding me from the rest of the world and going to find Maverick himself.
The two of them might have had their moments while we were traveling together, but at the end of the day, Chase was right.
I think of Maverick as an old brother figure, just like the one I lost, and it’s killing me that I might be losing another one.
He’d rescue Mav from the other hunters if only because he knows that that is what I want, but at the same time, he can’t bring himself to leave me when I’m this fucking fragile.
And isn’t that a terrible word for it? Fragile.
But that’s how I feel. Like an empty glass bottle that shatters when it hits the ground, it won’t take much to break me.
I blow out a breath of air, trying to compose myself. Turning to Chase, knowing I have his complete attention, I motion for him to hand me the gun.
He does. Carefully, he places it against my open palm.
I show it to the McLean twins. “I’ll tell you about the eyes,” I say, “if someone can explain to me how Maverick got his gun back.”
I don’t know shit about firearms. I was bluffing when I turned Maverick’s own weapon on him after I discovered he had tried to steal my antidote. He was close enough that I probably could’ve shot him. If the kickback was a bitch, though, I might’ve torn my whole damn arm off, I don’t know.
So is this the same gun as before? I have no idea. Still, it could be, and my gut is telling me that it is.
Delilah confirms it.
“I had the opportunity to retrieve one thing from the storage room at the NRI,” she says.
“I know how much it meant to Maverick to be a good cop in a field of so many rotten apples. That gun is the last thing he has from before the Turning. I couldn’t bring Lindsay back to him, but I stole the gun. ”
That’s exactly what I figured. And now I know that this is the same gun, I know there’s only one bullet left. I’ll have to remember that.
I pass it back to Chase because I trust him to hold onto it until we can return it to Maverick. He accepts it wordlessly before I turn to Delilah. “You want to know about his eyes?”
“Yes.”
Okay. If they think it might help… “It was the strangest thing. I know he always has that black rim around the outer circle every time it goes dark out, but I was looking at him right before Eileen appeared. They weren’t that bad.
I swear, they weren’t. But after she bit him…
” I shudder. “They were black. Lurker black.”
Like his entire pupil and sclera had been colored in with marker.
Veronica and Delilah exchange a look.
“What?” I ask.
Delilah purses her lips. “I have a theory.”
“You gonna share it with the rest of the class?” asks Chase when it doesn’t seem like she’s going to say anything else past that.
It’s been so long since he said anything, hearing his hoarse voice actually startles me. I turn to him, doing a double-take when I see his expression.