The Hidden (The Hidden Trilogy) (35 page)

She reached out and grabbed my arm. “No, I’m glad you did.”

My eyes narrowed as I turned to face her. “You can’t be serious.”

She threw her legs over the edge of the mattress, keeping me locked in her hands as she anchored me to the bed. “I am.” She swallowed. “Thomas, I want to know
everything
about your past… Even the bad parts.” 

I knelt down in front of her, wrapping my arms around her waist. She parted her legs so I could get closer, and I rested my forehead against her chest. I didn’t know what I did to deserve Emily, but I thanked my lucky stars every day that she was in my life. I couldn’t lose her now.

My eyes squeezed shut as I clutched her. “I don’t want you to think less of me.”

She ran her fingers through my hair, resting her cheek against the top of my head. “I won’t.”

I frowned. “That’s easy for you to say now. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

She placed her hands on the sides of my face, gently tilting it up. “Then tell me.” 

Chapter Fifty-Five

The door to Isaac’s office was open. I peered in and saw him sitting at his desk, hunched over a stack of paperwork. I knocked twice on the heavy wooden door, the sound splintering through the silence of the room. Over the years, I’d seen a few people make the mistake of simply entering whenever his door was ajar, taking it as an invitation to all. That was a mistake you only made once.

I cleared my throat. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

He glanced up from the papers in his hand before nodding to the empty chair across from his desk. “Sit.”

I did as I was told, silently padding across the Persian carpet before I sat down, the leather chair squeaking from my weight. 

He sighed and set the papers down, running his hand through his wavy chestnut hair. “I’m going to be honest with you, Thomas–things aren’t going so well.”

I held back the frown threatening to spread and instead said, “I don’t understand, sir. We just took out a camp last night. Got twelve of ’em.” 

Twelve was a pretty big haul. Normally, we were lucky to get seven. Twelve was also a pretty
hard
haul. Those fuckers put up a fight like you cannot imagine. And they fought dirty. It took all the strength of my men, all
twenty
of them, to take them out. We were damn lucky not to have any casualties, either. 

“It’s just not enough. If we want to win this, we have to start being more aggressive.”

How much more aggressive could it get? As it was, I was already on the job eleven and a half months out of the year, constantly travelling to different cities and countries, trying to follow up on leads and taking out as many camps as my men and I could. 

I shifted, an uncomfortable feeling creeping up on me, and asked, “What did you have in mind?”

He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “We need to start targeting
all
of them. Not just the males.”

I sat in stunned silence for a moment. I cleared my throat as my brows drew together. “And by ‘all’ you mean…?”

“Women and children, of course.” He said it so casually, so dismissively, like it was absolutely nothing to start targeting them, like it was the logical next step in our fight against them. It sent a chill down my spine.

I shifted again, unsure of what to say. 

For the past three centuries or so, the males had lived separately from women and children, in order to hide and protect them from us. Males usually lived in small groups on the outskirts of big cities. There had long been rumors that their women and children were nomadic, moving from city to city to live among humans. It was probably the one place they were safe, since they knew we wouldn’t go after them in such a public area. And if there was one thing all of The Hidden agreed on, it was to keep humans out of our business. So what the hell was Isaac thinking? “But the humans–”

“Is there a
problem
, son?” His brown eyes narrowed on me, daring me to argue. From my time spent with Isaac, I knew you didn’t disobey him. Not if you wanted to live.

My jaw clenched. “No, sir.”

He smiled slowly. “Good. We wouldn’t want to lose our best man, now would we?”

Emily gaped at me while I spoke, trying to keep the look of horror off her face. She didn’t quite succeed. “Did you…do it?”

I shook my head. “I couldn’t.”

We paused outside the large two-story house in upstate New York. It was dark and quiet inside. I turned to the two men with me, lowering my voice. “We have a report of two inside. A woman and a male child.”

They nodded.

“Keep it neat and quiet.” The area was supposedly ripe with enemies, and I didn’t want to alert the others of our presence before we were ready to descend.

I gripped the handle of the kitchen door and turned. It opened without protest, which didn’t surprise me, because there was no point in locking our doors. Humans couldn’t harm us. Other Hidden could, but a locked door wouldn’t be able to stop them from entering. 

“Hans, you and I’ll take the upstairs. Rodriguez, you got the first floor.” The tall, blond German and the shorter, tanned-skinned Latino nodded.

We silently made our way through the house. I tried not to look at the family portraits hanging on the walls or the smiling faces framed above the fireplace. We climbed the stairs and stopped at the landing on top. I motioned for Hans to take the closed door in front of us, while I made my way to the one down the hall.

Please don’t let this be the kid’s room…

I pushed the door open slowly, immediately taking in the space-themed bedroom, complete with planets and rockets hanging from the ceiling and glowing stars plastered along the dark walls. A plastic Saturn nightlight softly illuminated the room, and I saw a twin-sized bed pushed up against the far wall, with a small sleeping form tucked under the covers. 

Fuck.

My heart sputtered as my breathing sped, and a lump formed in my throat. Somehow, I managed to take the few steps over to his bed, but it wasn’t without great effort. My feet suddenly felt like they weighed several hundred pounds. 

Rising and falling rapidly, my chest heaved as I stared down at this tiny, vulnerable boy as he lay there, fast asleep. His brown hair stuck up in patches, mussed up from his pillow. Long, dark eyelashes fluttered against his fair skin, his eyes darting behind his eyelids. He was dreaming. 

Christ…

My chest tightened, the lump in my throat growing progressively worse until it felt achy and dry. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. He was just a kid. How was I supposed to–

A woman’s scream shattered the stillness and quiet of the night, the sounds of breaking glass and heavy thudding ensuing, jolting the boy awake. His sleepy eyes grew wide when he saw me looming over his bed. He scampered back, running into the wall behind him as he held his shaking arms over his face in a defensive position. “P-please,” he choked out, his body trembling with the force of his sobs. “Don’t hurt me.”

Another scream from his mother. More glass breaking. 

“Mom!” He scurried off his bed, trying to run past me. I reflexively grabbed for him, getting the collar of his shirt in my fist. He looked up at me with wide green eyes, shiny tears spilling down his cheeks. “Please!” he cried, trying to break free from my iron grip.

I knew my orders. I knew what I was supposed to do. What I
had
to do. There’d be no returning to my post if I failed in this–no returning to my family, either. I’d be a disgrace. Shamed beyond redemption and forced into exile. My entire life depended on this mission. Failing was not an option.

I tightened my grip on his collar, bringing him up to me. His eyes grew wide, full of terror anew. My free hand grasped his small, delicate neck. He whimpered, trying to claw at my hand. 

All I needed to do was squeeze. Just the tiniest bit of pressure and his neck would break, then this would all be over. I could do that. Hell, I
had
to do that. 

So why can’t I?

His bottom lip trembled as he stared up at me. “Please,” he begged again. 

Fuck!

I scowled and let him go, dropping him to the floor with a quiet thud. He picked himself up quickly and ran out of the room.

Goddamn it! What the fuck was my problem? I had him in my hands and I fucking hesitated! 

Turning, I picked up his small desk and threw it across the room, the wood violently splintering apart as it collided with the wall, gouging a hole in the sheetrock. My head snapped up at the sound of the boy’s scream. I barreled out of the bedroom, stopping in my tracks when I saw his limp body in Rodriguez’s hand. He dropped him on the floor, discarding his body like it was nothing more than an old newspaper. 

“Nobody downstairs, but I caught this one trying to make a run for it,” Rodriguez said, nudging the boy’s body with his boot. 

His lifeless green eyes stared up at me, and I felt all the air rush out of my lungs. 

“You okay?” Rodriguez asked me. “You don’t look so good.”

I ran my shaky fingers through my hair, trying to take a steadying breath. “Yeah, ’course. Is everything…?”

“We’re secure here. Hans ran around the block to help Murphy and O’Brien. They got a mother over there with three daughters, all of ’em teenagers.” He snickered. “They’re puttin’ up one helluva fight.”

I nodded dumbly. Rodriguez didn’t know I’d failed.

It was
my
fault that kid died. I didn’t know what I was thinking, just letting him go like that.
Of course
one of the others would get him.
That was what we were there for. I might as well have killed him myself.

On the other hand, I had to remind myself that he wasn’t just a kid. I had to think of what he’d grow into. What
all
of them grew into.
 

Killers.

When he matured, he would’ve turned into one of
them
. There’s no telling how many humans he would’ve killed, how much innocent blood would be on his hands. So in a way, countless lives were saved with this child’s death.
 

Perfect Catch-22, huh?

Emily had placed her hand over her mouth while I talked, tears silently spilling down her cheeks. “Oh my god,” she breathed. “Thomas, that’s awful. What’d you do?”

My jaw clenched. “I left that night and never went back.”

Wiping my tears, I asked, “Is that when you started living with humans?”

Thomas nodded. “After I abandoned my post, I figured living among humans would be…easier. I hadn’t been living with them long when I got drafted.

“I thought humans would be nicer to each other. I thought I’d have a different life–finally have some sense of normalcy–but it turned out I’d just traded one war for another…” His eyes glazed over as he stared off at some unseen point before blinking and turning his attention back to me. “When I got back from Vietnam, I’d lost my faith in the world. I didn’t want to live with my kind, didn’t want to live with humans, so I holed myself up in a cottage in the woods, away from the whole world. I lived like that for over twenty-five years…until that day I came across you in the woods.”

The details of that day were fuzzy, my five-year-old brain unable to commit everything to memory. I
did
remember Thomas’s dirty, disheveled appearance, though. And him saying that he lived alone in the woods.

My eyes locked onto his. “You’re saying that
I
somehow made you rejoin humanity?”

“Your simple act of kindness that day showed me there was still something pure and good in the world, when I thought there was only hate and bloodshed.”

I never realized what an impact I’d had on his life. I fumbled for words, floored by his admission.

The corners of his mouth lifted as he shrugged. “You’re my fate.” He said it so simply, so matter-of-factly. 

“You really believe that, don’t you? In fate?”

He sat up, his face growing animated. “Think about it: I was born more than two and a half centuries before you. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve died before your great, great grandparents were even born. But for whatever reason, I am what I am, and I’m still here.” He cupped the side of my face, his thumb grazing my cheek. “We were destined to be together. That’s why we found our way back to each other.”

Thomas was so emphatic, it was hard to deny him. And when he explained it like that, it certainly did seem like there was something bigger at play.

Closing the gap between us, I pressed my lips to his, kissing him with everything I had. I loved this man. There was nothing I would not do for him.
Nothing
.