Fate Succumbs (23 page)

“
You made a bow?” I plucked
the string. It was rustic, but it was a bow. A handful of homemade
arrows were still clinched in his hand. “How did you know how to do
this?”

You can’t see a Cole man’s embarrassment by
looking at his cheeks, but if you pay close attention to the back
of his neck, it’s obvious. “I just messed around until I figured it
out. It doesn’t shoot exactly straight, and there’s a good chance
these arrows will just bounce off the side of whatever you’re
shooting instead of actually killing it.”

“
I’ll never know if it’s
the shoddy workmanship or my complete lack of skill.” I took an
arrow, nocked it, shot it at the door, and watched it bounce off
the wall, a full three feet away from my target. “I love it,” I
said, hugging it to my chest.

Since it was Christmas, we didn’t do our
normal chores. Instead, we spent the day eating nuts and taking
turns with the bow. By nightfall, Liam could get it to stick into a
tree, but not the one he was aiming at, and I could hit my target,
but couldn’t ever get it to actually stick.

“
Our powers combined,” Liam
muttered after the third round ended with the exact same
results.

That night we ate a stew Liam whipped up
from a rabbit I trapped two days ago and some cans of vegetables.
It was the best thing we had eaten in weeks, and had plenty left
over for the next few days. Once the sun set, we sat around the
fire and spouted lines from our favorite Christmas movies and
belted out every holiday song known to man, including “Happy
Birthday”.

When we finally went to bed, we lay there
like we always did in the beginning, back-to-back, pretending the
other didn’t exist. But unlike normal, I didn’t almost immediately
drift off to sleep. Instead, I waited until I was sure Liam was out
before I finally let go. The tears were hot as fire as they
streamed down my face, but cooled quickly on my cheeks in the
freezing night air. My heart ached for my family and friends. I
thought of the celebration at Gramma Hagan’s house and wondered if
Charlie was able to be there, or if he was still in the hospital. I
wondered if my parents had gone over to Mrs. Matthews last night,
as was our tradition, or if her hatred for all things Scout
extended to my parents.

I missed the sound of my father’s voice, the
smell of my mother’s perfume. I missed Angel’s unbound enthusiasm
and the way Jase knew what I was thinking without so much as a look
in my direction. I missed my bed and the under-appreciated joy of
central heat.

And then, because I was in the mood to feel
sorry for myself, I let my mind wander to Christmas night a year
ago. It was the night I found out about the secrets Jase and
Charlie hid from me, and the night Alex told me the truth about
Shifters. But those things paled in my mind to the memory of a kiss
beneath the mistletoe.

I don’t know how long I had been crying when
the bed creaked as Liam turned over, but when his arm draped over
me and pulled me towards him, I let the momentum roll me over,
making a conscious decision to turn towards him for the first time.
And while he continued to sleep, I let his shirt soak up all my
tears until there were simply no more left inside me.

Chapter 19

After Christmas, the weather took a turn for
the frigid. Even with our Shifter tolerance and layers upon layers
of clothes, most days we couldn’t venture from the fireplace more
than thirty minutes before worrying about frost bite. And even if
we could tolerate the freezing temperatures, the snow, which
engulfed my entire calf in the smallest of drifts, was hard to
navigate. Thanks to Liam, we had enough wood to make it a few
months, but he still went out when he could to cut more. I think we
both realized what our fate would be if the fire ever went out.

My training continued through those cold,
dark months, but it was different. We didn’t have room in the cabin
to spar, so we focused on strength building and flexibility. We
devised different routines for one another, combining our different
styles of fighting to create what Liam referred to as the Mutt
Method.

The majority of my training, however, wasn’t
physical. Liam knew Shifters from all over the world who had
suffered loss at the hands of the Alphas, and he told me each of
their stories. I heard about beautiful, laughing girls who went
missing out of the blue. Girls with devoted parents and amazing
talents who suffered sudden, tragic accidents. I even heard about
boys like Spence who hadn’t been able to suppress their powers and
avoid unwanted attention. The list of sins the Alpha Pack committed
was mind-boggling, and not limited to ridding itself of future
competition. They eliminated potential threats wherever they saw
them, using their absolute rule to cling to the power they abused
most aggrievedly.

The point was clear: Horrible, evil crimes
had occurred for decades, if not centuries. Justice needed to be
served, and that meant killing the Alphas. After weeks of stories,
I thought I was ready for it.

Then, Liam changed tactics.

“
Do I really need visual
aides?” I asked as he handed me a tattered sheet of paper. “I’m
having enough bad dreams as it is.” Which he probably knew from the
noises I woke myself up making. Every day featured a new story, and
every night I saw it unfold in my dreams. I had stared into the
face of more dead little girls than I could handle. I really didn’t
need to add another to their number.

“
Her name is Ananda,” Liam
said, taking the chair opposite me. I tilted the paper towards the
lantern to see the image of a girl with big brown eyes and two
thick black braids. She was sticking out her tongue and pulling up
her nose to make it look like a pig’s snout. The page was folded
down the middle and I flipped it over to another picture. In this
one she was wearing a pink feather boa, a giant green beaded
necklace, and a giant, floppy purple hat.

“
She was a Shifter?”
Knowing the little girl who appeared so full of life in these
pictures was murdered made my stomach hurt.

“
Nope. She’s a
Seer.”

Well, this was new and interesting.

“
She’s still
alive?”

“
Yep.”

“
And not a
Shifter?”

“
Nope.”

Okay…
“So, who is she?”

Liam handed me another piece of paper. There
were several pictures on this one of the girl, people who were
obviously her parents, and another familiar face.

“
I don’t
understand.”

“
Ananda is Sarvarna’s
little sister. They adore one another despite, or maybe because of,
their fifteen year age difference.” He tapped on a picture which
showed an Olan Mills-style family portrait. “When Sarvarna became
Alpha, she insisted her family move into the Den. She eats dinner
with them every night and makes time to either watch a movie or
play board games with them at least once a week.”

The Sarvarna in the pictures didn’t look
like a baby killer. She looked like an average girl with an average
family who she loved. I felt a heavy weight in my chest and told
myself it was just frustration over Liam wasting my time with
this.

“
I’m assuming you have a
point?”

“
The point is for you to
understand who Sarvarna is. She’s a person, Scout, just like us.
She has a family and friends. She feels happiness and pain and
sadness. She’ll bleed when you stab her, and cry when she’s
hurt.”

In my head, I saw Talley’s vision, but in
reverse. The knife was in my hand, and I was sliding it into
Sarvarna’s gut. I saw the blood blossom across her shirt, heard her
screams rip from her throat, and even smelled the tears rolling
down her cheeks.

“
Why are you telling me
this?”

“
Because you need to know.
You need to understand how she truly, honestly thinks she’s doing
the right thing. You need to see her as something other than evil
incarnate, and still want to kill her.”

I scrubbed my hands against my face. Once
upon a time I would have worried about smearing what little makeup
I wore, but I hadn’t worn any in so long I forgot what it felt
like. Since July I had been living out of a single duffle bag. The
selection of clothes may have changed two or three times, but the
maximum number of outfits I had to choose from at any one time was
four, and that was matching different tops with different bottoms.
I've never considered myself a girly girl, but I realized there was
something about putting on a nice outfit and taking the time to
make sure you looked as nice as possible that made you feel more
human, more connected to society. Sitting in a cabin, God only
knows how many miles from civilization, wearing the same
flannel-lined jeans, thermal, and sweater I wore the day before, I
found it hard to remember how the real world worked. Normal people
didn’t have blood stains on the cuffs of their sweater from dinner
preparation. Normal people didn’t train night and day to the point
of obsession. And normal people didn’t look at a picture of a
smiling family and think about how easy it would be to kill one of
them and leave the others to suffer.

“
How do you do it?” My
voice was muffled by my hands, which were still pressed against my
face.

“
How do I do
what?”

I let my hands fall away and took a deep
breath. “Push it all out of your head. How do you kill someone and
not let it kill you?”

Liam’s face went blank, and his tone was
lifeless. “How many people do you think I’ve killed, Scout?”

“
I don’t know. How many
people have you killed, Liam?”

He sat perfectly still, save the clenching
of his right hand. “One.”

“
One?” But that would mean…
“The first time you killed someone was that night by the lake? When
you killed Hashim?”

“
What? You thought I was a
serial killer or something?”

I flinched at the anger in his voice and
immediately felt horrible. Of course I hadn’t thought he was a
serial killer, but for some reason I assumed he had killed others.
Why was that? And why did I suddenly feel as though I had been
unfair to the boy sitting across the table?

Instead of addressing the issue of me being
an assuming ass, I turned the conversation back to my original
topic. “Do you still think about it? About what happened? About
him?” When Liam didn’t respond, I pushed on. “I can make it through
most days without thinking about him now, but in the beginning,
when we were doing nothing but driving around for days on end, I
couldn’t get Travis's face out of my head. I know I did what I had
to do, but I still feel guilty.” That didn’t seem strong enough a
word, or really encompass the chaos of emotions just uttering his
name caused. “Sometimes I’ll get this queasy feeling in my stomach
and not know why. Then, I’ll realize that I was thinking about
something that reminded me of him. Like sometimes, right before a
snow storm, the sky will turn the same color as his eyes. And even
though I’m not actually thinking, ‘Hey, that sky is the same color
of Travis’s eyes,’ I get the achy, queasy feeling anyway and have
to work out why it’s there.”

Liam’s face still didn’t betray any emotion,
but his shoulders relaxed a fraction of an inch. “I can hear him
scream. It was just a short burst of sound, but it’s like the
vibrations are trapped in my ear, constantly bouncing around,
making it where I’m unable to escape the last noise he ever
made.”

The flickering light from the lamp caught a
sheen of moisture on his eyes. I swallowed hard and dug my
fingernails into my palm to keep from breaking apart.

“
What if I can’t do it?” I
trailed a finger over the picture of Sarvarna and Ananda. “What if
I do it, but I can’t live with myself after?”

The silence stretched out forever. Just when
I thought the conversation was over, Liam spoke.

“
I keep thinking about his
family. He was married. Had two kids.” Unable to look at his face
while he spoke, I watched the flickering shadow thrown on the wall
by the lantern. “Maybe he deserved to die, maybe he didn’t. But
this is war, and he was a solider for the other team, so I killed
him like I was supposed to. And I’m okay with that part, but his
family…” The shadow rubbed the back of its head. “Those kids don’t
deserve to grow up without a dad. His wife doesn’t deserve to be a
widow. This isn’t their war, but they’re the ones who have to live
with what I’ve done.”

God, I had never even thought about whether
or not Travis had a family. I didn’t think he had kids or anything,
but surely he had parents. It’s not like he could have sprung fully
formed from Stefan’s head or anything.

“
I can’t do it.” My hands
were shaking, and I thought I might have to make a mad dash to the
outhouse to regurgitate my tuna fish dinner. “I can’t kill her,
Liam. I just… I can’t.”

He moved around the table to stand in front
of me. “Look at me.” I stared at my shaking hands instead, certain
I could see blood embedded in the fingernails. “Scout, look at
me.”

I felt the tears fall as I tilted my head
up. “I can’t, Liam. I can’t.”

Grey eyes held mine. “You can.” He steadied
my hands in his own. “You will. You have to.”

“
Why? Why me?” It wasn’t
fair. I didn’t ask for any of this. “Why do I have to do
it?”

His gaze was gentle, as was the squeezing of
my hands. “Because no one else can.”

“
You’re not going to give
me some crappy line about it being my destiny or fate or
whatever?”