Bad Bloods (9 page)

“A gunshot, I remember.”

I tried to breathe, to calm down, but my head
spun. “Something bad is going to happen, Serena.” I couldn’t lie to
her. Not even once. And the truth made her stand up.

I leapt to my feet and grabbed her hand.
“Wait.”

“Why should I?” she asked, her voice sharp
and loud. I wanted to respond, but I was transfixed. Her blonde
hair shot out in the wind and surrounded her like a bright aura in
paintings I’d only seen in Cal’s books. When she yanked her hand
away from me, I realized she was still holding the ID. It flickered
as it caught the city’s reflection, and I half-expected her to toss
it over the tower’s edge, but she gripped onto it. She repeated her
question, but she looked far away—like a person I couldn’t possibly
reach, like the girl in the alleyway I practically forced to stay
with me, and now, I was trying to force her to go away. That meant
abandoning her flock, her family, during a time that we knew a gun
was going to go off. Someone would probably die, and I asked her to
let it happen for a greater cause we didn’t have a premonition
about.

She spun away. “That’s what I thought.” When
she marched for the exit, I shot forward and slammed the door shut
before she could open it far enough to slip through.

My hands were on either side of her body, her
back pressed against mine, and her hair smelled sweet, like
expensive soap, like she could actually wash the outskirts of
Vendona off her. I laid my forehead on her shoulder because I
couldn’t look at her anymore, not even at the back of her head.

She didn’t budge. “I need to leave, Daniel.”
Each word was taut.

When she tried to open the door again, her
back bumped into my chest, but I kept the exit shut. “I need you to
leave,” I agreed, but in a totally different way. I needed her to
leave with the Hendersons, not to leave and return to the Southern
Flock. “I need you to go with them.”

“No.”

“Serena.”

“I said no.”

I grabbed her shoulders and spun her around.
Her once moonlit eyes were now the dark sides of the moon, but the
ID remained in her hand until she shoved it against my chest.
“Take. It. Back.”

“I—” I shook my head, refusing to take back
her safety ticket out of here, the only winning ticket bad bloods
had to survive the election. Instead, I thought of the last way I
could convince her to go. “I love you.”

I was desperate—so desperate—to see everyone
survive, to see her survive, to know we all meant something, that
our suffering meant something, but Serena was the only one who had
the opportunity to prove it. I had waited to prove it my entire
life, but I never considered my only option would come in the form
of a bad-blooded blonde. And as much as I wanted her in my life, I
had to give her up if any of us were going to live at all. That was
how bad bloods’ lives went. We sacrificed everything to survive,
and anything we didn’t sacrifice ourselves, we lost anyway. I
should’ve seen it coming from the moment I met her. But all I could
say was “I love you.”

“What?” Her glare disappeared, replaced with
a furrowed brow and a shaking head. “No.” She pointed at my chest
and tried to back up even though she was already against the wall.
This time, I stepped away to give her more room, but she didn’t try
to leave. “Don’t you dare.” Her voice shook as much as she did.
“You’re not going to use that against me.”

“Use it against you?” My heart pounded in my
ears. “I mean it, Serena.”

“You can’t,” she said, now pointing at
herself. “You’ve known me two weeks. Two weeks, Daniel. You can’t
love me.”

“If I can die in two weeks, I can love you in
two weeks.”

All the color in her face drained out. The
election was in two weeks. It would decide if Vendona could ramp up
their execution rates on bad bloods, and if Logan II won, I would
surely die. So would my flock. So would Serena’s flock. If I were a
regular human, maybe I wouldn’t love her. I probably wouldn’t have
even met her. But my life was short, and my feelings happened fast.
I wasn’t going to waste the rest of the little time I had
pretending we had the chance to fall in love gradually. We didn’t.
She was it, and she was in front of me, and she could survive, and
that opportunity—her ability to care despite everything—was why I
loved her, and it was exactly what I was also taking advantage of.
I hated myself. But I had to do it. Survival did that to people.
Love did that to people. And I needed her to feel both of those
things to remind her why she needed to do this. Her loved ones
would get to live too.

Her aggressive expression crumbled, and she
touched her face like she could force her glare to remain, but it
didn’t. “Why would you say that?” she asked, covering her eyes with
her jacket’s sleeve and arching her neck to face the sky. The idea
of any of us dying would push her. I knew that much about her.
Maybe she was right. Maybe she did absorb our souls.

“You can save them,” I added, quieter this
time. “No one has to die.”

Her face lowered, and she peeked over her
forearm at me. “Is that what’s supposed to happen?”

“I don’t know.” My shoulders fell. “Michele
doesn’t know either, but I don’t want you around when it happens.”
No one would want Serena to die. She was too valuable as the only
bad blood that knew both the Northern Flock members and the
Southern Flock members, not to mention the blood camp victims. If
she was the only one left, she could share everything, but if she
died, we would all die with her. “I would only blame myself if
something happened to you.”

“You can’t love me.”

“Then give me a chance to in the future,” I
said, finally surrendering as I reached out and grabbed her hand
with the ID in it. “I want to have the chance to love you, to get
to know you, to spend time with you, to see the others meet someone
like you.” I pulled her into a hug, and she buried her face into my
jacket. “I want to live past this, and I want you to live too,” I
whispered against her golden hair. “This is a solution for all of
us. Help Henderson. Please.”

She leaned back, but her hand stayed curled
up in my shirt, her right one against my heart. “And what am I
supposed to say to my flock?” Her voice wavered. “What about my
family?”

“We’ll come up with something.”

“And after the election?” she pressed. “Then
what?”

“You stay with the Hendersons. You’ll have a
life.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want that
life.”

“Then you can slowly disappear again,” I
suggested. “Stephanie hasn’t been seen for years. It isn’t rare for
rich people to travel outside of Vendona.” I paused before adding,
“I’m sure Henderson has a plan.”

“We should know the whole plan before we move
forward.”

“We don’t have that kind of time.” We never
did.

“How many weeks?”

“Days,” I corrected. “They’ll pick you up in
four days.” She started to shuffle away again, but I touched her
face to catch her eyes. “It’s the only way we might win this.”

She looked past me—right at the city—and I
half-expected her to disappear, to become the ghost she thought she
was, but then she saw me again. “I’ll do it,” she said, her gaze
ablaze with the reflection of the Highlands. “Under one
condition.”

It had only
been a few hours since I left Daniel standing in Shadow Alley, him
to return to his flock, me to return to mine. But my flock wouldn’t
be mine forever. And I had always known that—deep in my bad blood
veins—but I hadn’t truly realized it until I was staring at my old
face, safely immortalized by a fake ID.

The paperwork remained clutched in my hands,
despite the fact that Daniel had stolen it from Calhoun. I coaxed
him into allowing me to take it to Robert as proof, and he
relented, even though I had already asked him for one more favor in
return for my replacing Stephanie. One favor I was surprised he
agreed to. One favor I now had to get Robert to agree to.

How I had thought about my one condition, I
didn’t know, but I knew it was right. My gut had desired it from
the beginning. And now, I had twenty-four hours to get a note back
to Daniel’s house, confirming or denying Robert’s role. Still, the
fact I was going through with it—taking Stephanie’s place, standing
by Henderson’s side, mocking the policemen who arrested me,
fighting the city that tortured me—churned my stomach with both
fear and delight. I calmed myself by thinking of Daniel’s eyes, how
the Highlands disappeared when he looked at me. How everything
disappeared.

Damn the way he had control of me.

Shivers ran up my spine as I stared at my
house, a house I wouldn’t be in for much longer if my plan worked
out. And my plans hardly ever did. It was the reason I’d spent an
extra hour wandering the streets aimlessly.

My heart pounded as I opened the front door
and stepped inside. I already knew what awaited me. When I saw the
lights were on, I knew Robert had realized I was missing—again. I
left the house against his orders, after all. I expected him. I
always did. But I hadn’t expected the entire flock to be waiting.
Quite the welcome home party.

Robert stood at the front of the pack. “Close
the door.”

I pressed my back against the cool wood, and
it slowly creaked shut. I snaked my hand behind me, locking the
front door and sliding the ID into my jeans pocket. My eyes studied
the room with quick precision. Huey with Timmy. Jake with Justan.
Briauna on the couch with the cat. Ami hovering near her, clutching
an invisible Melody. Steven sat on the stairs, one hand on
Catelyn’s shoulders, and when I looked at Catelyn, her cheeks
flushed.

“You told?” I guessed.

“I’m sorry—” She tried to stand up, but
Steven held her down. He never wanted her to get involved. Part of
him denied she already was.

Robert stomped his right foot to get my
attention. “I trusted you not to leave right now.” His voice
rumbled like he was preventing himself from screaming. His brown
hair stuck up like he already had.

I took a breath before choosing my words. “I
had to.”

“You
had
to return to your
parents?”

My brow furrowed, and I realized my mistake.
Catelyn had lied—saying I left to see my parents instead of
Daniel—but Robert knew me better than anyone did. I twitched. That
was all it took.

Robert looked between Catelyn and me, his
narrowed eyes widening and his brow loosening. His intense demeanor
shifted as his shoulders fell, and when he looked at me, he leaned
back as if he suddenly lost his vision and couldn’t see me clearly.
“Who’d you go meet?” His deep voice was calm, too calm. I knew him
well enough to know what
calm
meant. It only happened when
he thought he’d lose control of his powers.

I swallowed. “I went to see my family.”

His gaze searched mine, and even though I
knew he could hear my lies, he sighed. Maybe he wanted to believe
me. Either way, I wanted to speak with him alone.

He pressed the space on either side of his
nose and shut his eyes. “Being your parents barely constitutes a
family,” he muttered as some of the kids inched toward the basement
door. “We’re your family; they abandoned you.”

It was the way he said it—so confident, so
practiced and scripted. It was the line we told every one of our
bad bloods whenever they tried to leave, and we said it because it
was true. Normally. It wasn’t true for me. Robert said it to me to
unite us, but I couldn’t be united anymore. We wouldn’t survive
that way.

“I ran away.” The words slipped out of me
with ease, and Robert straightened up, partially raising his hand
as if he were close enough to slap it over my mouth to silence me.
But he wasn’t. “I only ran away because I met you, remember?”

His face flushed, and the room began to warm
up. “You came on your own freewill.”

“I was five, Robert.” I spread my fingers out
so he could see them. “Five,” I repeated. “I didn’t have
freewill.”

The room grew hotter. One kid whined, but
Robert’s glare was on me. “So now I kidnapped you, too?”

I didn’t yell back. He didn’t kidnap me. I
knew that. I would’ve run away another day if I hadn’t met him that
night. But he did take me, and he never acknowledged it and I
hadn’t either. The conversation was a long time coming.

“What do you think your family would’ve done
once they found out you were a bad blood?” he snapped under the
years of silence. “Your father was a cop.”

He was the only person I had told other than
Daniel, but I had told Daniel another detail I had never told
Robert. “They already knew.” As I said it, he stepped back like I
had hit him. I stepped after him. “And they leave me presents on
their doorstep. And I have a sister. And I would know her name if I
could read their letters.”