Bad Bloods (3 page)

He blinked. “Is that what you think?” His
fingers lightly squeezed my shoulders as he pulled me against his
chest. My hand landed on his sternum, but he leaned back to catch
my eyes. “I just kissed you, Serena.”

His words made me blush as much as the actual
kiss did. “I know.”

Before I could look down, he touched my chin
and kept my eyes on his. “Then what’s wrong?”

“What’s not wrong?” I repeated, but when his
face fell, I exhaled my uneasiness. “First of all, the election is
more important than us—”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t be together during
it,” he interrupted, “and second of all?”

“Second of all,” I choked on my thoughts.
“You wouldn’t understand,” I stuttered. “I’ve seen it before.”

“Seen what?”

Even though I didn’t want him to know, Daniel
deserved the truth. “When I touch bad bloods and absorb abilities,
I think I take bits of their soul too.” I closed my eyes to
continue. “Bad bloods always attach themselves to me because of it.
It’s why Charlotte probably—”

“Who’s Charlotte?”

Her russet stare. Her thick drawl. The woman
would never leave my memory. “She’s the one who helped me
escape.”

“And she touched you beforehand?”

I recalled her rough skin skimming mine, her
abilities soaking into my veins. She could tear human skin off in
one swipe. I had used her powers once—to get out of the blood
camp—and a part of me wondered if she had once been in the blood
camp herself. The government might have let her live as an asset, a
forced torturer. For all I knew, she might have been one of the few
that tortured me. But I couldn’t remember. I didn’t want to
remember. Not that.

“She touched me,” I confirmed, but a fluke in
my own memories took hold. Charlotte was helping me escape before
she touched me, and my abilities only worked once with her, right
after the first touch. She wanted to help me before I stole her
soul. My lifelong theory came crashing down.

“What are you remembering right now?” Every
time Daniel spoke, my thoughts cleared.

“She touched me after she decided to help
me,” I added to my confession, “but maybe she knew someone else who
attached themselves to me.”

“Or maybe she saw something in you that you
can’t see yourself.” His expression softened. “Serena,” he
whispered my name. “You can save us, but you need to save yourself
first. Everyone can see that. Even me.”

I shook my head, hard. “You don’t know what
you’re saying. I’m not that person. I’m just Serena, and I’m not
saving anyone. It doesn’t work that way. Vendona doesn’t work that
way.”

“You work that way,” he said. “That’s why you
can save us. That’s why you can change Vendona.”

“I’ve changed it enough.” My only secret was
mine. I had to step back from Daniel to keep ahold of any form of
serenity.

He stayed away like he understood my need for
space. “What are you trying to say?”

I folded my arms. “We have to concentrate on
Henderson winning the election, not whatever
this
—” I
pointed at him and me—“is.”

“Henderson has nothing to do with us.”

“Yes, he does.” I stopped him from saying
something ridiculous. “If Henderson wins, we live. Anything beyond
that is out of our control. I can’t change that.”

“You can—”

“You say that because you
think
you
like me,” I interrupted again, desperately trying to get him to see
the election, to focus on the politics instead of my existence, but
he kept opening his mouth like he would argue, so I shut him down
in the only way I could. “You don’t like me, Daniel. You just think
you do.”

“Oh, Serena.” He stepped forward, raised his
hand, and I flinched, half-expecting him to slap me, but he touched
my hair instead. Held in his touch, the blonde strand glittered in
the street light. He traced every bit of it. “Is that what you
think?”

I stared as my blonde hair trailed over his
calloused fingertips, small strands of gold in the midnight
cover.

“Do you know when I realized I liked you?” he
asked. “It wasn’t when I first touched you. It was just now—right
when you were talking about your parents and the moon. You were
still, yet you sounded like a song, and I was desperate to memorize
the lyrics because I was afraid I would never hear the song again.”
His face tilted, and shadows curled over his eyelashes. “And I knew
if I had a full moon, I’d wish for more time with you, and I
would’ve wished that since the second time I saw you. Not when I
saw you in the alleyway but when you were standing in Cal’s kitchen
with a knife in your hand.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s an odd
time to crush on someone.”

“Do you know why?” he asked, still
serious.

“I’m not Blake.” Despite touching the boy, I
couldn’t read minds now. I absorbed powers for short periods of
time, and even then, using them was nearly impossible for me.
Robert joked I was barely a bad blood at all. I was a bad blood
detector. There was one other person like me, and she was dead
now.

“What you did to me in that kitchen is
exactly what I did to Cal,” Daniel explained. “Many years ago, when
I finally healed up, I went to the kitchen and I grabbed that
knife, and he surprised me just like I surprised you.” He stared at
my hair in his hand as if it were actually the weapon we had
shared. “And Cal told me I could kill him if I wanted to. Said he
deserved it. Said he didn’t even mean to save me. He meant to save
someone else—a little boy I happened to look like, the first kid he
killed during the war.”

Daniel’s recollection cleared up the little
Cal had said in his kitchen before.

“He was having a drunk flashback when he
saved me, and I only chased you down because I thought you might
have been one of my flock members,” Daniel continued. “That’s when
I got it. I got why Cal thought he deserved to die, and I also
understood why he didn’t kill me when he realized his mistake in
saving me.” The pause consumed me. “Cal chose to save me. He chose
to care about me. And that sort of decision stays with you
forever,” he said. “I chose to care about you, and I’ve continued
to choose that every day, and it doesn’t matter to me if you care
about me back. I just want you to be okay—election or not—and I
imagine Charlotte saw what I see in you.” He dropped my hair to
touch my cheek. Then, he stopped touching me altogether. “I chose
to care, but you aren’t capable of not caring, and if any bad blood
is going to survive this, it needs to be you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s the only reason you keep returning.” He
smirked like it was an obvious thing. “You care too much—about
everyone. About me. About Robert. About your flock. And your
unnamed sister. And your parents you haven’t seen in over a decade.
And Charlotte, one woman you know nothing about aside from how she
helped you.” He paused to take a breath. “You think you steal our
souls against our will. I think we willingly hand ours over, so our
stories—our abilities and our lives—can make it to the future
too.”

My heart pounded once, like it would never
pound again, before it squeezed and fought through the electric
pain. My hands curled into fists as I leaned back against the
nearest wall. I closed my eyes to take a couple of breaths, and
everything that had happened to me in the past few months flooded
through me.

I was forcibly taken off the streets and
tortured. I was saved, not once but twice. And I was still alive,
still able to fight back, still allowed to see a future that would
hopefully be better than my past. We had one week until the full
moon would happen and two weeks before the election would take
place. If only they happened on the same day, I could wish we would
win, but we would have to make it without wishes. If I believed in
anything—anything at all—it was the ability of getting to December.
But we had to do it together. The Northern Flock and the Southern
Flock had to be together, not through my abilities, but actually
together. Daniel was simply blind to it, and I had to find a
miracle to make him see.

“Why didn’t you kill Cal?” I finally
asked.

Daniel blinked, startled. “Huh?”

“Why didn’t you kill Cal that day he said you
could?” I reworded my question.

Daniel scratched his head. “Well, for one, I
was still pretty weak. For two, he was much bigger and older than
me, but I think the main reason was”—his upper lip twitched as his
gaze lightened—“I saw a goodness in him, a goodness I hadn’t seen
in a long time. And we have too much hate around us to let even a
little good die.”

I smiled, and for once, it was a sincere
smile. “I get that,” I said, thinking of the day we had spoken in
Cal’s kitchen. Daniel was the first person who ever said the words
“trust” and “friendship” to me. And when he smiled back at me, I
felt like he was the first person to ever smile. Maybe Daniel was
right about the souls or maybe I was right, but either way, we had
a connection, and our connection had a purpose that went beyond our
abilities. It even went beyond us. It had to be for survival.

“We’ll find a way,” I promised. “We’ll help
each other through this, opposite flocks or not. We’ll survive
this.”

Daniel nodded. “But speaking of flocks,” he
sighed, “I should get to mine. Damage control.”

“I need to get back to mine too,” I agreed,
wondering how I’d explain myself this time. “Goodbye for now?”

“I don’t say goodbye—”

“Unless I think it’s final,” I finished his
catchphrase. “Where’d you learn that saying anyway?”

He shot me a grin. “Maybe I’ll tell you next
time I see you.”

“Why do I doubt you will?”

His grin only disappeared so he could lean
forward and kiss me again. He lingered, closer this time, and when
he pulled away, the cold November wind rushed in between us with
his words, “It’ll be okay.”

And they were the best three words to
hear.

I grabbed the
doorknob to Calhoun’s small apartment, and for the first time in my
life, I hesitated to open the door. I was in for it. The entire
flock might not have witnessed Floyd’s aggression, but I ran after
Serena—instead of staying behind to explain myself—and that was
worth denunciation. Still, I forced myself to go inside, and I
prepared for an onslaught of questions and demands. To my surprise,
no one said a word.

In my flock’s silence, I walked to the fridge
and took out a Diet Coke. Squished side-by-side on the two old
couches—with the rest squeezed somewhere in between—eleven of my
peers waited. Even Floyd was patient. Cal was the only absent one,
but I knew he was nearby, ready to intervene if need be.

I popped the can’s tab open and took a long
drink before I spoke. “She’s the one who escaped the camp,” I
finally confirmed, “and I did save her, but I originally went after
her thinking it might have been one of you.”

“None of us were missing that day,” Floyd
pointed out. “None of us have ever gone missing.”

“I know,” I said. “But instincts took over,
and I did what I thought was the right thing to do.” I took another
sip to maintain my calm demeanor. “Vendona didn’t give me an hour
to make a decision. I had to make it right away, and I did, and I
don’t regret it.”

Floyd’s eyebrows rose to his hairline, like
they were capable of stretching in inhuman ways too. “You would
risk your flock again if given the chance?”

I nodded.

Maggie twisted one of her red curls around
her forefinger. “She’s one of
them
, isn’t she?” The redhead
didn’t have to explain.

“She’s in the Southern Flock, yes.”

“I thought you hated them,” Tessa squeaked.
Even the kids were a part of the discussion.

I had to lean against the island to keep
myself standing. “I never said that.” I cleared my throat. “I know
you all hear the news, how Vendona talks about the flocks’
relations with one another, but it’s…complicated,” I paused to
collect my thoughts. “We’re remaining separated, and Serena is
staying with them. She won’t be joining us.”

“So she’s gone?” Floyd asked. “For good?”

I swallowed my nerves. “No.”

This time, he stood, attempting to tower over
me even from a short distance. “What are you thinking, keeping her
around?”

“I have my reasons.” I managed to speak
without clenching my teeth.

“Are you dating her?” he accused.

I didn’t deny it.

Floyd threw his hands up in the air. “I knew
it,” his voice rumbled, low like spring thunder. “You need to step
down. You’ve lost your focus. You—”

“Oh, shut up already.”

The entire room obeyed like the sharp voice
belonged to the leader, but it wasn’t mine. It was Vi, and she
stood next to Adam in the corner, glaring at Floyd like he was an
officer instead of a fellow bad blood.