Chapter Two
The van skittered around another corner and toward safety as Meghan and Gabe pulled the doors closed. The noise from the outside disappeared, sending them all into a stony silence, their labored breathing the only sound.
Reyna didn’t recognize the woman with brown skin and a bindi on her forehead who turned to the back from the passenger seat.
She rummaged through a black duffle bag and handed warmer clothes to Meghan and Gabe.
She moved toward Reyna, but Gabe put his hand out to stop her.
His eyes shot to Reyna’s and then back. He shook his head as if she were a volcano about to erupt.
The woman shrugged and passed the clothes to Gabe. He walked through the large open area in the back to where Reyna was still seated on the floor, shell-shocked. She tucked her knees to her chest, pulling Beckham’s jacket tighter around her. She wouldn’t relinquish this. No matter what anyone said.
“Hey,” Gabe said, crouching down. “You’re going to get sick if you don’t change into this. You don’t want it all to be for nothing.”
He held out a pair of pants, thick socks, a sweater, and a jacket to match Meghan’s. When she didn’t respond, he put the clothes next to her and went to talk to Meghan, who appeared a minute later with a haunted look in her eyes.
She didn’t try to talk to Reyna. She didn’t try to tell her that things would get better.
She didn’t lie to her. She acted like the nurse that she was trained to be.
She helped Reyna into the pants and socks.
Reyna only protested when Meghan tried to remove Beckham’s jacket. This was all she had left of him.
Tears filled Meghan’s eyes at the sight. She slung the other jacket on top of Beckham’s, rubbed Reyna’s hair gently, and then stepped away. She returned a minute later to bandage her wrist and then left her alone.
The adrenaline of the escape and chase had suddenly left Reyna’s body, leaving her utterly empty. Leaving her with her memories.
Beckham’s broken body. Him falling to the ground. Not moving. Dead.
She felt as broken as he had looked in that moment. Broken and bleeding and empty. Just empty.
Reyna could hear everyone whispering about her. “What happened to her?” the woman asked.
Gabe shook his head. “Beckham…”
“He’s gone?”
Meghan cleared her throat noisily. “Prisha,” she hissed.
“Yeah,” Gabe replied. “He’s gone.”
Tye cursed softly.
Meghan hiccupped around her own tears.
“She saw it?” Prisha murmured.
“Yeah,” Gabe whispered.
“Poor thing.”
But Reyna didn’t feel like a poor thing.
She wasn’t a wounded animal.
She was destroyed. Obliterated. Demolished.
She was as cold as ice and just as frozen. Inside and out.
She had left him behind.
And her entire heart with him.
…
Reyna lost track of how long they drove.
It could have been hours. She had no sense of where they were going. She didn’t bother asking.
Her mind was a merciless place. As much as she wanted to burrow down into her numbness and forget what had just happened, she couldn’t.
She pressed her palms against her eyes and tried to block out the images assaulting her.
But it was no use. She didn’t think she’d ever go a day without seeing them.
Eventually, they pulled off the main roads. The van rumbled to a stop, and they parked inside a garage. The door shut behind them, casting them into darkness. Reyna took a measured breath to still her unease before Gabe hauled the back door open again.
“Come on,” Meghan said, reaching for Reyna’s hand. “Let’s get you inside.”
Reyna let Meghan help her out. She straightened her spine at her friend’s look of pity and then left the truck. Gabe and Meghan followed her to where Prisha stood with Tye. Prisha gestured for them to move toward a back door.
The house they entered was plain, with hardly anything in it. Just some used furniture and a foldout table in the kitchen. It didn’t look like a place where someone lived. Another safe house.
“There are three bedrooms,” Prisha said. “Washington has already taken one. I’m happy to share my own. You can decide who gets the third. I also have a couch and an air mattress.”
“Thank you for getting this set up, Prisha,” Meghan said warmly. “It will only be for a night.”
Prisha waved her hand. “It’s all gone now, isn’t it? You’ll need the space.”
“We don’t want to compromise you,” Tye said. His features were drawn. “It’s enough that the bunker was destroyed. We won’t be able to get inside to see the full damage until the smoke has cleared.”
Reyna’s heart tugged again. The bunker was destroyed.
She had spent the last month living there, in Elle’s headquarters on the outskirts of the city.
Elle had rescued her from Harrington and brought her into the fold.
Her brothers had gotten onto the security team.
Brian had married his fiancé, Laura, before he had been captured on a raid.
Drew and Laura had been at the bunker while she had left to kill Harrington. A lot of good that had done.
She couldn’t even think about all the other people who had been in the bunker when Harrington had bombed it.
“How many are accounted for?” Prisha asked.
Tye shook his head. “We haven’t heard from any other safe houses. Communications are down. We probably won’t hear until tomorrow.”
Which meant they wouldn’t have word on Drew and Laura until tomorrow either. Reyna sighed.
Meghan put an arm around her shoulder. “Why don’t we get you into the shower and clean you up? Then I think you should rest. You can have the other bedroom.”
“I’m fine. I’ll take the couch,” Reyna said.
Meghan reached out to her, but Gabe grabbed her arm. “Let her go.”
A moment later, Reyna glanced over at them and saw that Meghan collapsed into Gabe’s shoulder, her own muffled tears loud enough for Reyna to hear. Gabe escorted her from the room.
Reyna pulled Beckham’s jacket tighter around herself. She could see that the others grieved as well, worried about what happened to the rebellion. They all suffered greatly for what Harrington did.
One error had cost them everything. Not just Beckham but the entire rebellion.
All the people that they had known for years. She might have lost Beckham, but they lost everything. Maybe they all needed to be alone tonight.
She curled up on the empty sofa, Beckham’s jacket her only blanket. It still smelled like him. What would it be like when it no longer held that smell? When his jacket was as lifeless as his body?
She choked on the sob that was stuck in her throat and the dam broke. Tears fell down her cheeks. They blurred her vision and superheated her skin. She felt like she could vomit. She couldn’t breathe. She was hyperventilating. Her chest hurt. There was a hole where Beckham had been.
She’d gotten away. She’d survived. There were important things left to accomplish. But right now, all she felt was grief.
Beckham was really gone.
And she had to find a way to live with that.
…
Beep, beep, beep.
Reyna awoke in a burst of fear and desperation.
For a second, she didn’t remember where she was.
It was as if she was put back into that prison cell beneath Visage, where she lived as a blood bag for that monster Harrington.
She could distinctly remember lying there, an IV in her arm and the familiar sound of the heart rate monitor beeping noisily after she had been kidnapped.
Visage had appeared to the outside world as a benevolent company that saved them in the midst of the great recession.
Vampires came out of the darkness with the invention of the blood type cure, which was less a cure and more a Band-Aid.
Vampires drank from specific humans that matched their blood type, and it curbed their baser tendencies.
It created “men” like Harrington and Roland.
Reyna had only recently found out that much of what she had thought she had known was a lie.
Some vampires were already predisposed to higher cognitive function.
Harrington and the three vampire lords he’d recruited—Cassandra, Roland, and Beckham—had engineered the recession for the purpose of starting Visage. To take over the world.
And they were winning.
Now only Harrington and Roland remained. Beckham had killed Cassandra. And Beckham…
Reyna opened her eyes to dispel the lingering feeling of unease. She was in a quaint little house on the outskirts of the city. She wasn’t at Visage. She wasn’t still kidnapped. Everything was all right.
Except, it wasn’t.
Beckham was…dead.
“You’re up,” a voice said behind her.
Reyna shot to her feet and whirled around.
She was still wrapped in Beckham’s jacket.
Roger Washington stood in jeans and a high-neck sweater.
She had never seen him look so normal. He was the vampire doctor who had invented the blood type cure in the first place.
He’d worked with Harrington for years before turning coat and helping Elle.
He had determined that she and Beckham were a perfect blood match. A once-in-a-lifetime pair whose blood matched the other’s blood composition, the equivalent to a soul mate.
“I’m up,” she said softly.
“I’m so thrilled that you made it out. I was asleep when you came in last night and missed everything,” Washington said.
Reyna sank back into the couch. “Do you have any word on what happened with the bunker?”
Washington shook his head as he poured himself some coffee.
He held the pot up to her in offering. She nodded.
“Unfortunately, I know no more than you do. Sydney sent me out of the bunker to separate all of Elle’s high command as a precaution, so I was already here when I got word.
” He crossed the living room and handed her the coffee.
She took a long sip, shuddering against the bitterness. “How did last night go?”
“It was a disaster.”
“I’m sorry for that, Reyna.”
Sorry. He was sorry. Washington couldn’t have changed the outcome, but it still rankled her.