Bad Bloods (30 page)

I lifted the frame and dared to stare at his
face, a face I would never see again, a laugh I’d never hear, a
life that would never live beyond five.

“I’m so sorry.” I heard myself say it, but I
didn’t realize it was me at first.

I hung my head, gripped the table, and
wondered who it was for. Of course the apology was for Blake—for
not saving him or Luke—but it was also for Steven and Catelyn,
their love lost, and Adam too. Maggie was probably dead. So was
Niki and the others. Michele would be too if we lost the
election.

The election.

It didn’t even matter anymore. Too many loved
ones were lost. Too much pain was surrounding me. Too many people
had suffered, and all because I carelessly opened a door.

I stared at the photos again, of Cal and me
when I was young and of Adam and me at the lake. The lake where Cal
trained us. The lake where he gave us our first guns.

My heart leapt into my throat, and I leaned
back, taking the drawer with me. The gun tumbled out and landed on
the floor, right next to where I landed.

Of course the pistol was still there.

I’d thought Adam would have moved it all
those weeks ago—when Serena first figured out we were the Northern
Flock—but he must have put it back.

I grabbed the cold metal and brought it into
my lap. Too many of the weapons had killed the people around me;
too many times I had stared into the barrel and thought it was
over.

Now it could be.

I didn’t have to wonder anymore.

After all I had been through, I didn’t
deserve to wonder, to fear, to hope, or live. I had killed my
younger brother. I had killed Blake. I had killed everyone who had
ever been family to me. I’d even killed other’s families, like
Steven for Catelyn, and Maggie for Adam, and—

I gripped the gun.

I couldn’t handle it anymore. I couldn’t live
anymore.

I was done.

Darkness settled over Vendona’s streets, and I leaned over the
balcony, listening for their dreams, wondering how Stephanie had
entered them, wondering if it was how she escaped this dreadful
city. But I didn’t allow my imagination to wander far for long.

I stepped backward, away from the lamplights
and snow, and closed the balcony doors behind me. I was ready.

When I turned around, Adelio stood before me,
as silent and dark as the night. We nodded at one another, and I
grabbed the orb I found, only pausing for one second. A moment in
time long enough to destroy any plan.

“Can you write a letter for me?” I asked him,
the man from Vendona who pretended to be from somewhere very far
away. It was the one thing we had in common—until recently. Now we
could both say we lost our families to Vendona’s police.

Adelio answered by sitting at Stephanie’s
desk and propping a pen over paper.

“Tell them I’m grateful for everything they
fight for, for showing me how life can be lived, for—” I choked,
“for showing me their love for their daughter.” I swallowed,
gaining my composure, and Adelio’s hand never stopped moving. “But
they should know Stephanie found me too.” Adelio twitched, even
turning around to look back at me, but I gestured to the pen, and
he turned back around. “She came to me in a dream, and that’s how I
found her message.” I laid the orb on the desk, and Adelio glanced
at it. “They need to watch it, and—” I found my hand on Adelio’s
shoulder. “They need to know I’ll be watching them. I’ll be
watching the final election results. But they don’t need to try to
find me again, not even if he loses.” I paused. “Tell him…No. Tell
them…Tell them they’ve already won. No matter what happens, they’ve
won to me.”

The pencil squeaked, the loudest sound
between our silence, until Adelio finished. He laid the writing
utensil down and read it over, but he didn’t face me as he spoke.
“You’re a good person, Serena.”

“Make sure they get this when I’m gone?”

He nodded. “You’re ready then?”

“I’ve been ready for days.”

***

We snuck out the underground garage, and for
the first time since arriving, Adelio told me to sit up front in
the passenger seat instead of in the back. He drove, racing down
empty backstreets with the headlights dimmed. Even then, the
snowflakes caught the beams and passed us like we were flying
through the sky, a million stars away from where we were supposed
to be.

Mr. and Mrs. Henderson would forgive me. They
would have to.

I had to go back to my family, to my flock,
to my home.

“I can’t get too close,” Adelio said,
referring to the plan we concocted while the Hendersons were away,
making speeches on cruelty and betrayal and sacrifice. I was going
home and Adelio was taking me there. Out of everyone I met, I knew
he was the one who understood the most. “You should know though,”
he continued to speak, much to my surprise, “you don’t have to do
this.”

“I do.”

“Whether you go to them or not won’t change
the outcome of anything.”

“I know.”

“You cannot save them any more than you’ve
already tried.”

“That’s why I’m returning.”

My job here was done.

Adelio nodded, an honest man, a hardworking
man, a man I was sad I would never see again.

“Would you go back if you were me?” I asked,
unable to take my eyes off the gate, the one that separated us from
the outskirts. Even then, out of my peripherals, I saw him nod.

“Why do you think I am helping you?”

He’d already helped me so much more than I
could comprehend. When the Hendersons left, he told all the workers
to leave me alone. He sat with me. He continued to watch the news
with me, turning it off when I couldn’t handle it and turning it
back on when I calmed down. He explained terms that I didn’t
understand—like political prisoner, what they were now calling
Michele, and the debates of hate crimes and mandatory sentencing.
Apparently, in many eyes, Michele was the one who committed a crime
just by existing, but even then, they were fighting for her right
to live, something very new to Vendona, and it had to do with
Henderson’s appearance at the Northern Precinct’s Office, a place I
wasn’t even aware of yesterday. Adelio explained why I was unaware.
The name was misleading. It was in the north, but not in the
outskirts. It lined the edge of the Highlands, right at the gate we
were passing. The chaos was how I would escape.

As we drove closer to the building, flashing
lights exploded from one end to the next, and I recognized the
hundreds of cameras recording every second. Michele was in that
building, as were the Hendersons, and I was leaving her behind to
face her sentence. Most were predicting a sentence anyway, not an
execution, and it would be based on the level of her abilities and
how many years she hadn’t turned herself in, and she’d only be
sentenced after the election was over. For now, she was still a
political foothold, not a person, but that meant she could still be
saved.

The debate was mind-boggling.

“What will happen?” I asked, and my breath
fogged up the passenger window, blurring out the golden
building.

“Alec will find a way,” Adelio said with
conviction. “Michele will live through this.” How well she lived
was another conversation.

“How many others do you think…”
are
alive?
I couldn’t finish it.

“Miss Serena,” Adelio said my name clearer
than anyone else had. “You must prepare yourself for the
worst.”

I shook my head. My love for them wouldn’t
allow me to picture the worst. “Every second of every day I still
love them, and I won’t believe they are dead until I see it for
myself.” It was why I had to go. It was why I had no choice.

Adelio came to a squeaky stop in the shadows,
right outside the bright building. “Even if they are dead, you can
still love them,” he said, unlocking the doors. “I still love my
family.”

Adelio, the man who lost everything.

“The Hendersons still love their daughter
too,” he remarked, shooting a shaky smile. “I’m sure they love you
too—as you, not as their daughter.” He used my own words against
me.

“They barely know me.”

“Love doesn’t always require you to know
someone for long, especially during difficult times.”

I remembered Daniel’s declaration, only two
weeks after I met him, and my fingers curled up to meet the
bracelet he gave me only a few weeks before. It seemed so long ago,
almost impossible, like a dream.

“Stay safe, Serena,” he said, eyeing the
darkness, “and visit us again.”

All I could do was nod, and then I opened the
door to vanish.

***

The hardest part was breaching security
undetected. I didn’t touch the gate as I ran up and down the length
of the structure, careful to stay in the shadows as I surveyed
every cranny. I knew it could be done. The Highland kids made a
game of it, after all, and I found a spot I was sure they used.
Erosion—either from weather or from games—had dug out a sinkhole
far beneath the metal. The other side was an army crawl away.

When I got through, I kept myself from
running as fast—and as loudly—as I could. Instead, I breathed and
jogged along the grass, letting my lungs adjust to the burn of the
cold wind before I picked up the pace and darted through town.

The cops weren’t difficult to avoid. In fact,
they were easier than usual, and I wondered if the ambush had them
too scared to face us. One even saw me. I was sure of it. But he
turned the other way and searched the sky where no one could be. I
still didn’t allow myself to get too comfortable.

I stuck to the side streets, to the alleyways
and shadowed lanes, to the tucked away storage spaces and water
drains. I stopped at each intersection, listening for prowlers, and
I found myself relieved when I didn’t run into a single one. I only
hesitated when I saw Debary’s Lane. My father. My mother. Even my
little sister.

I wondered if they were watching the news. I
wondered if they wondered about me. And then I hid my wonders
away.

I kept running, slowing down to a walk as I
approached the street I came for. Cal’s apartment lights were
turned off, just like everyone else’s, and red lights flickered on
and off, rotating from brick to brick in the dead of night.

Out here in the outskirts, the snowflakes
didn’t glitter; they reflected red like falling blood. Our city had
made the sky bleed. I shuddered at the thought.

When I found myself at the top of the stairs,
I sucked in a breath, not knowing what I would face, and I
knocked.

The apartment was silent.

I knocked again, hoping, even praying, no one
in the flocks would shoot me out of the fear the cops had found
them again. I half-expected them to kill me when they opened the
door, and I wasn’t completely wrong. Cal held a gun in his only
hand. He almost dropped it when he saw me.

“Serena.”

At the sound of my name, another face
appeared. A face that brought tears to my eyes.

“Serena.” Catelyn leapt up to wrap her arms
around me, but Calhoun grabbed her collared sweater to hold her
back. It looked too big to be hers.

“Inside,” he directed, and somehow, I managed
to obey him, knowing I wouldn’t have such a reunion with
everyone.

When Cal shut the door, my eyes adjusted to
the dimly lit room. A single candle allowed me to survey the
shadows enough to recognize a few people were sprawled about. One
child raised her face from the couch to see who had come. The
little girl was Tessa, if I remembered correctly. She was right
next to Adam.

“How’d you get here?” Catelyn asked, her
whisper boarding on a loud scream. She was about to lose
control.

“I had to be here,” I said, unable to let her
go. I kept my hand wrapped around hers. My sister. She was alive.
“Where’s Melody?”

“She’s okay,” Catelyn confirmed, but her
voice said something else. “Steven—” Her eyes welled up, and I
pulled her into a hug, holding her as she started to sob.

Calhoun even patted her back, trying to shush
her, reminding her that others needed to sleep so they could get
better.

But they shouldn’t have had to heal on their
own.

Daniel could heal people.

I found Cal’s eyes in the darkness, just as
black and dim. “Who else is okay?”

His gaze flicked away, so I stared at
Catelyn. She didn’t look at me either.

I tried to survey the room, the people
covered in blankets, but Cal stopped me. “Why don’t you sit
down?”

I had to hear the names. But, for the first
time, I fought the idea of confirming death. I just wanted to run.
“I’ll stand,” I decided instead.

Cal laid his single hand on my shoulder,
rendering me small. “Serena,” he’d never said my name so quietly
before, not when he met me, not when he threatened me, not when he
took me home.