Bad Bloods (31 page)

I shook my head. “Don’t say it.”

“Don’t say what?” A familiar voice entered
the room before he did. When I turned to face him, his cheeks
flushed as our eyes met. My gray ones, his green ones—too bright
for a human.

“Daniel.”

He dropped the Diet Coke he was holding and
rushed across the room. I was in his arms before I realized he was
close enough to hold me, his lips pressed against my neck, his hair
soft against my face. He smelled like soap and air, like an ocean
breeze from Eastern—no, Southern—Vendona. I couldn’t wait to tell
him everything I learned, but “You’re alive” is what left my lips
first.

His hands found my face as he leaned back,
and his green eyes moved over every part of me. I thought he’d say,
“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” but instead, he said, “You
shouldn’t be here.”

“I had to be here,” I choked out, reaching up
to grab his wrists, remembering what Adelio had said about love
during difficult times. I had never felt anything like it. “I had
to see you. I had to see everyone. To see—” I could barely fathom
the words. “Who made it?”

His soft smile turned into a hard frown, as
if I reminded him of the dangers I volunteered myself for by
returning. “You were safe with the Hendersons,” he said. “You
should’ve stayed there.”

“I should’ve stayed here all along,” I
argued, finally looking back at the room. It was still too dark to
tell, to find each face among the small crowd. All I could see was
the size of the group. Much too tiny for twenty-four members. Much
too tiny for even twelve.

“Tell her,” Catelyn prompted, her eyes
glistening in the light as she watched us.

Steven was dead. Steven was gone, and I was
standing with Daniel. I reached out to her, my fingers skimming the
scar on her cheek, and she smiled, holding my hand there for a
moment.

“I have you,” she said.

I swallowed back my tears as Daniel dragged
me away, down a familiar hallway to a familiar room to a familiar
bed to sit on. We were surrounded by blue, so much blue I had
almost forgotten the red flickering outside with the snow.

Daniel was quiet, waiting.

“Who died?” I asked, signaling I was as
prepared as I was ever going to be.

He took one breath before he started listing
them off. “Floyd, Niki, Maggie, and Steven.” He explained what he
knew about each one, how Floyd had gone back, how Niki, my
practical enemy, was missing along with the redhead Adam had saved
years ago. Steven’s was the worst to hear, and the details he told
me he couldn’t tell Catelyn. He explained how he lied to her and
told her Steven had spoken beforehand, and I agreed to keep the
lie. She needed it. “Peyton and Huey made it out but didn’t last
long after.” The boy with a missing tooth, the girl who managed to
cut Kally’s hair in her sleep. Daniel told me the stories too.
“Briauna died protecting Tessa.” A new member of the Southern Flock
had saved a Northern Flock girl. “I managed to get Tessa out after
that, but she was the only one I got out.”

My mind raced. So many names had yet to be
mentioned.

“Jake.” For the first time since meeting him,
Daniel had to pause. His Adam’s apple bobbed, as if sobs were
forming in his throat, but no tears came. Not a single one. “He
died in my arms.”

I grabbed his hand, only to feel his fingers
shake. “Is Justan alive?” I asked, knowing he was always at Jake’s
side.

Daniel, to my surprise, nodded. “But Timmy is
gone. So is Kally.” Both of their blond heads flickered in my mind.
“Ryne saw it. He hardly has any memories as it is, and this is what
he sees?” Daniel’s voice rose. “He’s only thirteen. Or, at least, I
think he’s thirteen. But—”

“Daniel,” I stopped him from disappearing
into his thoughts, from falling into a void no one came back from,
but his eyes had dimmed. I was too late after all.

“Robert left before it happened.”

My heart squeezed. Robert and Daniel. They
were brothers. I had almost forgotten the speech, and with a
sickening realization, I knew that was the ambush’s goal.

“They’re saying he turned us in,” Daniel
choked out. “He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.”

I couldn’t say a word. I didn’t even know how
to speak. My Robert was also Daniel’s Robert. The guy I had thought
was a brother to me was Daniel’s actual brother, and now the two
were associated with two ambushes. No. One ambush and one
massacre.

I told Daniel everything I knew.

He stared like he didn’t hear a thing, even
the parts I thought he’d love. “Melody’s okay,” he said instead,
still focused on the list.

Melody was like a daughter to me, too young
to be on the streets, and there had only been a few nights we
hadn’t slept in the same bed. I knew Daniel had someone like that
too, and I recalled the little boy with baby blue eyes, too
innocent of a stare for the ability he had, too small to hold both
flowers and a teddy at the same time.

“Where’s Blake?” I asked.

That was it. Daniel lost it. He fell apart in
my arms, and sobs rocked him as much as I did. His tears pressed
against my sweater—the clothes I had come in—and my own tears fell
too.

Eleven members were dead. Gone forever.
Thirteen had survived. More than half. But it didn’t feel that way.
Vendona had taken so much more than lives. Vendona had taken us
too.

We couldn’t change anything, and in times of
war, people become helpless and vulnerable. That was what we were.
We didn’t stand a chance fighting our way out now. Our fates
resided solely on the final election results. Three days. We had
three days left ‘til then.

The next thing I knew, somebody was shaking me awake gently. I
recognized Calhoun’s one-handed touch before I even opened my eyes.
When I looked at him, he lifted his one hand to his lips, signaling
me to be quiet. My heart leapt into my throat—thinking the officers
had found us—until he gestured to Daniel.

I was in his bed. The fear had caused me to
forget, but everything slowly seeped back into my veins. The
deaths. The stories. The lack of hope. But, for once, Daniel looked
at peace, completely silent and unmoving in his sleep. He wasn’t
having nightmares tonight.

I slid out of the covers and followed Calhoun
out of the room. We didn’t say a word until we reached the door
across the hall. I had never been in the room—I hardly knew it was
there—and I knew why the second Calhoun opened it. When I stepped
inside, an original American flag met me. It was the size of the
far wall, and the top corner—the one with all the stars—was
partially burned.

“Adam got that for me.” Cal closed the door
behind us and locked it. Clearly, this was going to be a private
conversation. “I know he found it in the gangs. Stupid kid.” But
his tone suggested he appreciated it. “There aren’t many of those
left.”

“I don’t even know much about it.”

“That was the goal, wasn’t it?” Cal let out a
breath, half-sigh, half-chuckle. “I don’t know much either, to be
honest. I was nine when the country dissolved.”

“That makes you—”

“Fifty seven.” Almost a decade older than I
thought he was. “But who’s counting?”

I stared at the flag, wondering how many
people were, in fact, counting—keeping track of the years that
passed since their country dissolved, since the Council of the
States was created to help communications between the city-states,
since bad bloods were discovered, since the Separation Movement,
since the ambushes. So much had happened in less than one hundred
years. So much we were fighting.

“How many are there?” I asked, finally facing
the man.

He sat down on a leather chair behind his oak
desk. He even placed his one hand on top, as if he would have
threaded his fingers together if he had his other arm. “Some say a
thousand.” A thousand cities like Vendona. “Some say ten
thousand.”

“Why keep us in the dark? Why keep us from
leaving? Why lie about the directions?”

He smiled. “You learned a lot from Alec,
then.”

“Cal—”

He faced his palm toward me. “Serena, I don’t
have those answers, but if I know anything”—he looked at the
table—“the smaller the crowd, the easier to control.”

“Control?” I spat the word. “They’re letting
the outskirts kill one another. The Highlands…they make a joke out
of us. They have a game, coming in here. They don’t even have red
lights. If I know anything, I know they’re not even scared of us.
They just don’t want us around.”

“They are scared of you,” he said, his voice
shaking, his fingertips turning white as they pressed against the
wood. “Please.” His forehead pointed to the pearl-white chair in
front of him. “Sit.”

I obeyed. He watched. I waited. He did
nothing.

Then, right when I was about to break the
silence, he leaned forward and pulled a TV out of the top part of
his desk. I hadn’t seen anything like it, and I scooted back as he
tilted it to face us both. Cal had more gizmos than I thought.

When he turned it on, four channels in their
own boxes rambled on, drowning one another out as one spoke over
the other. Cal leaned forward and touched one of the interviews,
and his voice was the only one we could hear.

“A witness is saying double the amount of
officers were killed than the bloods. One neighbor said he knew of
the flock and never said a word. He said they were kind people.
Hardworking people. Apparently, the leader, Daniel, even mowed his
lawns in the summer. That neighbor describes Daniel as funny,
intelligent, and all around friendly. It seems we aren’t dealing
with monsters at all. But others say they were terrified to learn
of the flock’s presence.”

A woman being interviewed appeared next,
obviously recorded beforehand. “This is a good neighborhood, a
quiet neighborhood. I let my kids run around and play. Nothing’s
ever happened.” Her eyes flickered to the side, and the camera
followed her. The burned house came into view, and my throat
squeezed. They were pulling a body bag out of the house. “This—this
is horrible. Unspeakable.”

“They could’ve arrested them.” Another
interviewer, this time a man. “This wasn’t necessary.”

Protesters were shown. People from both
sides. Police standing in between them and all around them. And
then Alec and Jane. He was speaking, and she was nodding, but the
reporter spoke above them.

“Their daughter, Stephanie Henderson, was
absent this morning at the precinct’s office. Could it be true that
she is the escapee from the blood camp? It’s difficult to say, but
one thing is certain. If she is, she has sacrificed her safety to
return to her own kind, and that is something we must
acknowledge—”

Cal shut the TV off. I tried to find the
words, but nothing came.

“You did good, Serena.”

I looked at him, still silent, but my bottom
lip shook. Everything was too difficult to process.

“Coming back made you even more human,” he
said.

“You said they were scared of us.” The words
fell out. “That was—that was—”

“Positive.”

I could barely fathom the word.

“As positive as it could be,” he added, “and
that’s a channel widely known for supporting Alec.” His lips bent
down. “The other channels aren’t so kind.”

“Why not show me those?”

“You need to see the hope, the fight,
the—”

“You said they were afraid,” I repeated,
interrupting him again.

He sighed. “They are. They’re afraid of what
will happen if there’s no change.”

I leaned back, soaking in the words. “So,
they’ll give us rights out of the fear more of their own people
will die.” More massacres. More death. More crimes and people on
the streets and kids in their neighborhood that end up being
someone they didn’t actually know.

Cal nodded. “Between Daniel’s neighbor and
you, they’ve learned they are losing more than an enemy. They’re
losing loved ones too.”

“It shouldn’t have taken us to learn that.”
Hundreds of kids had been killed, after all. Dozens left on the
streets, even more to the camps. They hadn’t appeared out of
nowhere. They had families too.

Cal’s jaw tightened. “I know.”

“Then, why—”

“People need a reason to unite,” he
explained, slowly this time. “People need something to point to,
something everyone can point to, something everyone can feel
involved in. While their stories won’t matter, yours does. Daniel’s
does.” He leaned forward, close enough to see the red lines in his
eyes. Crying. “Neither of you can die. Not anymore. Not ever. You
have to stay alive. You have to live with this.”

I swallowed. “I don’t understand.” And it was
true. I didn’t understand why he was telling me this—this obvious
thing—but I did understand that this was the reason he called me
in.

“After this,” he cleared his throat. “If we
win, if you two win, you’ll be the faces of freedom. If you
die…”