Bad Bloods (25 page)

That was the night the Western Flock was
ambushed. That was the night my officer father had sobbed at the
table. That was the night I heard gunshots from the front porch and
saw Robert running toward me, covered in blood.

Was it Luke’s blood? Daniel’s?

I held back my vomit as I recalled how Robert
told Daniel about the night we met. Did Daniel know? Had they
figured it out?

Of course they had.

The way Daniel saw my parents’ street, the
way he paled when I told him Robert was like a brother to me, the
way I had forced them to meet again.

I could barely see or hear past my thoughts
until Jane tapped the back of my hand, hurriedly over and over,
almost as if her goal was to cut my skin with her nails.

“Keep it together,” she whispered.

I sucked in a breath, but a whimper escaped
me. Robert, Daniel, and Luke were brothers, and the reason they
hated one another was the Western Flock ambush. I had tried to fix
something I had no right to fix. I had no right to know any of them
at all.

“The popular belief is that the Northern
Flock and the Southern Flock are not worth saving when they’d kill
one another without us present,” Alec continued, softly this time.
“But the truth is they are not the ones filled with hate. They are
the ones destroyed by our hatred, and it is our hatred that has
separated these groups of young people.”

Henderson breathed deeply and stood tall, as
if all the silent souls of Vendona had filled him with strength.
“What better fuel for hatred than society? It is up to us to fuel
our society with something stronger than hatred. Something as
strong as time.”

He clicked his remote to reveal all the faces
again. Abigail. Nicholas. The pigtailed girl. And the
rainbow-haired girl next to the black-haired one. Montana and Ida.
I knew their names too.

“We must lead society with love.”

Applause erupted through the hundred floors
of the Trident building, and the walls and floors shook as much as
my hands. I did not wait. I stood and ran. I ran as fast as I
could, and I even allowed my heels to fall off as I did so. I ran
and ran and ran, past the people, past the hallways, past the
million rooms and dim lights. I was running again, and all I could
see was the blood camp. The jail. Except this was shinier. And this
place hummed with electricity.

I wasn’t in jail at all. I was in the
execution room.

“Serena.”

My eyes pried open at the sound of her voice,
and even though I expected to see Charlotte, I saw Jane. She stood
in the doorway like she could block whatever else was out there,
but I saw the cameras. I saw the people.

She stepped inside and shut the door behind
her. All the sound died out.

I looked down at myself, only to realize I
was sitting, holding my knees to my chest like a child would to a
teddy bear, and my makeup was smeared against my dress. “How—” I
took a breath. “How long have I been in here?”

My mind had gone blank.

“Only a few minutes,” she said slowly,
approaching me like I was a person and not an animal. I expected
her to do the opposite.

I stared at her. “Why didn’t you warn
me?”

She finally stopped in her spot. “I
couldn’t.” She paused. “My dear—”

“Don’t,” I said, pressing my forehead against
the mess on my knees. “Don’t call me that.”

“Serena.”

I looked up at her, only taking a second to
wipe whatever was on my face away. It must not have worked, because
she pulled a towelette out of her purse for me to see. “May I?”

I didn’t nod, but she came over anyway and
touched my chin with care. She began to clean the makeup away and
even hummed for a moment. I wondered if Stephanie—wherever she
was—spoke about her mother and songs the way I spoke about my
mother and stories.

“No one ever told me,” I whispered.

Jane finished my left cheek. “I know.”

“Why—” I sucked in a breath. “Does no one
trust me?”

“Oh, my.” Her shoulders fell. “Darling, when
someone doesn’t love you properly, it’s rarely about you. It’s
about them.” She forced a shaky smile. “I am sure you have secrets
as well.”

Daniel couldn’t tell me and neither could
Robert, for the same reasons I couldn’t tell them what I knew.

I lifted my wrist and stared at the dangling
silver in front of me. “I forced them to see one another again.
They’re together right now. Because of me,” I choked on my words.
“If I had known—”

“You just love them both and want them to get
along. You’re guilty of nothing.”

“Jane,” I whispered her name, and she
silenced, ready to listen to me tell my secret for the first time.
“I’m guilty of so much.”

It
was dark by eight, but the Trident building was lit up, and a
purple glare burned over all of Vendona. I allowed myself to linger
outside while the newscasters built up to the speeches. Everyone
else allowed me to be alone as well.

“Daniel.” Blake was by my side before I even
realized he’d opened the door. I grabbed him, stood up, and swung
him around. His giggles echoed, even after I set him down on his
feet.

“Don’t tell Michele I did that.”

“I won’t,” he promised, letting a cough
escape him.

I patted his head. “Aren’t you supposed to be
in bed now?”

He rolled his blue eyes in a way that
reminded me of Vi. He must have been mimicking her. “I’m
going.”

“Good. I’ll follow you in.”

And I did. Blake opened the door even wider,
using all of his weight to move it, and then he ran upstairs, only
looking back to shoot me his famous grin. Then, he was off to
bed.

“He seems to be feeling better,” Vi
commented, slinking out of the shadows. It was the first time I’d
seen her all day. Ever since Robert arrived and left, she’d been
scarce.

“He is,” I agreed, giving her the once-over.
“Where have you been?”

“I’ve been getting better too.” She smiled.
An unusual sight at a more unusual time. The speeches would happen
any moment, and then, the votes would come in. It would all be over
soon.

I sucked in a breath and faced the rest of
the flock, but no one paid me any mind. Their eyes—no matter how
young they were—fixated on the single TV screen. Adam moved it into
the living room that morning, and no one had left it since. Not
even him. He was seated up front with Tessa in his lap, Briauna
next to them. Even Michele and Ryne took a break from cooking to
watch the speeches. Kally didn’t try to start a fight with him, and
Peyton didn’t try to start something with her. Catelyn and Steven
held hands, and Melody held onto toys Ron had shared with her. So
many faces with so many backgrounds, all waiting for one speech.
The cat was even present.

When the speech started, I focused on one
person. Serena. I knew the story that would be told. Nothing would
be new to me. But she was. Everything about her appeared new, down
to her blonde hair now appearing golden in the Trident’s extreme
lighting. She held herself, not like a bad blood, but like a
person, and she blended with Jane flawlessly. The two held hands as
Alec spoke.

The photo flickered from person to person,
but to me, they were more than faces. Nicholas wasn’t just his
teeth and his abilities. He was the boy who taught me to never say
goodbye, a boy who lost his twin sister, a twin sister that didn’t
even make the picture. Abigail had been a mother, teaching Robert
and I how to help others control their powers. She even taught us
how flocks came to be. Ida—with the rainbow hair—had been the one
to find us. She found everyone. And Emery had loved Luke more than
anyone, aside from me.

But there were so many more who didn’t get
names during the speech, and I tried to remember them all as I
searched their faces. Jewel could make anything glitter. Hence her
name. She didn’t remember her real one. Hank and Taipa, the only
two bad bloods I knew of who could only use their powers if they
were together. Montana, the closest bad blood to a vampire I’d ever
known—even above Vi—and Dessie, her girlfriend who happened to have
the abilities to turn water into blood. She would’ve been great for
blood transplants at the hospitals, and a part of me wished Alec
Henderson had used Dessie instead of me when it came to comparing
doctors with bad bloods.

The last three were the hardest to remember,
but their names trickled in, like whispers you could barely hear.
Keegan, Mabli, and Victor. I didn’t remember anything else about
them, but I had seen Victor get killed. No one in Vendona would
ever know that. Only Robert and I would, as we already did, and
when Henderson explained why, the entire flock froze.

Brothers.

I couldn’t deny how Robert and I knew one
another now. My only secret would never be a secret again, and
strangely, I felt relieved. After all this time, no one had to
press me for information ever again. It was simply understood.

The election speech ended, and Adam leaned
over to turn the TV off. We were enveloped in silence, and only a
few dared to turn around and meet my eyes.

“I guess it’s time for dinner,” Adam said,
standing up and stretching. Unlike many of the others, he knew. As
far I could guess, Maggie did too, but she was pale—as if Adam had
spared a few details. Niki wasn’t bothered at all. But Catelyn and
Steven were staring, reading all the older kids, and even some of
the younger ones, as if they couldn’t believe we held secrets from
one another.

“Brothers?” Catelyn was the one to ask first.
“Robert’s your brother?”

“You were in the—” Before Steven could say
the Western Flock, Catelyn hit him.

I shrugged at both of their questions. I
didn’t particularly feel like explaining myself to eighteen
bewildered people. Those that didn’t already know. In total, there
were twenty-two of us now. And a million people in Vendona knew my
story.

“Let’s discuss this over dinner,” Michele
said, gesturing toward the kitchen like she had the ability to calm
everyone down rather than freak everyone out with visions of the
future. When everyone obeyed, I wondered if we had far more
abilities than our powers.

“Thanks,” I muttered to her, and she winked,
one of her eyes waning yellow. “More visions?”

“Nothing new,” she said, but her frown told
me something else.

I glanced around, making sure Niki was
nowhere near us with her bad blood ears. “Why didn’t you tell me
there was more than one gunshot?”

Her eyes widened. “What—”

“When you yelled at Robert,” I clarified.
“You said gunshots, not gunshot.”

Michele’s lips bent down. “I was referring to
what happened to you back then.” Her cheeks burned. “He brought it
up first, telling you about healing sick kids.”

The part Henderson hadn’t mentioned about my
story. Luke had been ill. That was why I couldn’t heal him. Illness
was my weakness. When someone was sick, it was harder—nearly
impossible—to help that person, and I almost always got the illness
myself. Illness would be the death of me. That was why I hadn’t
tried to save Luke. In order to save myself, I had refused.
Survival had taken over me, not Robert, but I understood why
Henderson hadn’t been completely honest about everything. It was
much less poetic. When my actions killed Luke, Robert still saved
my life. Then, he left me to deal with it. I was lucky I survived
past that.

“Will you tell them the rest?” she asked.

“After dinner.”

She nodded and followed the rest of the group
into the kitchen. I used her white hair like a beacon, and I made
my way down a line of food that should’ve lasted us weeks. Meats,
cheeses, and even fruit lined the countertops. We were actually
going to have sandwiches with all the ingredients sandwiches were
supposed to have.

I grabbed a plate and loaded it up with
everything healthy before handing it to one of the Southern Flock
kids—Justan, I think—and found myself smiling as he handed his
plate to Jake. One after the other, kids passed the plates and
shared one another’s food. Some even giggled, but Melody laughed. I
wondered if she was named after her laugh, a song among voices.

“All right, everyone,” Michele said and
ushered the crowd again. “To the table.”

Everyone followed, and we managed to fit most
of the group at the only table in the house. I took Robert’s old
chair, and Adam took mine. Catelyn sat on my left, and Steven sat
next to her, his back facing the large bay window. As expected,
Maggie sat on Adam’s free side, with Ami between her and Floyd.
Niki found her spot after him, and Michelle found herself opposite
of me. The rest of the kids found themselves in the conjoined
living room, shouting over the hallway to us at the table.

As I watched over the younger ones, Vi and
Ryne moved around them, like two protective shadows, and Kally’s
blonde bob could be found in the middle like a lighthouse in the
mist of waves. Their names blended—Ron, Timmy, Tessa, Jake, Justan,
Briauna, Melody, Peyton, and Huey—and I could remember every single
one of them, even their powers.