Damned if I Don't (The Harker Trilogy Book 2) (19 page)

He bends over and picks up my discarded arm. Pieces are falling into place, even as he starts speaking.

“Did you know that if you bring a body part into the Void, it acts as a reflection of the rest of the body?” He grins at me. “So when you summoned your sword like that, you made my dreams come true. Granted,” he indicates his missing arm. “I didn’t expect you to lob off my arm like that,” he says. “I’ll make short order of that.”

He only grunts. Like a lizard tail, a replacement arm shoots through his stump.

He flexes and unflexes it. “Good as new,” he says, turning his hand palm up, inspecting it.

I think I’m going to be sick.

The wind picks up in the Void, whipping my hair across my face.

“I am the new Progenitor,” Anthony says. “And I reject bringing the Void into my body.” He gestures to the world around us as lightning strikes again. Our environment has taken on a more sinister hue, and Evil permeates my every pore.

“After all,” he adds, “this is the natural state of the universe. And it should be shared with the whole world. Isn’t that right,
Alejandro
?”

Jude cries out next to me. I’m forced to tear my eyes away from Anthony to look at the vampire, crumpled into a ball in pain.

“Jude!” I cry, kneeling next to him.

“Get away from me, Edie,” he says through gritted teeth.

I reach out to touch him, but he shies away from my hand.

“Imagine, every vampire on Earth is doing that right now,” Anthony says amusedly. “Beautiful. It’s bringing the world back to what it should be. Unadulterated chaos. This is what happens when the Progenitor rejects the Void.”

“Fuck you,” I spit at him. My words sound hollow, even to me. He laughs, and strides up to me, grabbing my chin so he can look deep into my eyes and bare my soul.

“Oh, and that reminds me, as I’m ascending,” he says softly. “The Harker was the old Progenitor’s familiar, right? Well, I won’t be having a need for those.”

My eyes widen as I feel the change within my own body. My knees buckle underneath me and he lets me fall to the ground. The strength I’ve grown to rely on for the past five months has left me, and my breathing becomes shallow and haggard. I can feel my pyrokinesis, which always burned so intently inside me, snuffed out like a candle’s flame.
Meghan, Mom, Tessa.
I won’t be able to contact them in the Void.

My head is so heavy. So, so, so heavy. And I can’t even lift it to look at Anthony.

“The one benefit for you,” he says softly, amusement dancing in his voice, “is that you’re now cured of your virus.”

I let out a sob. It hurts so much.
So much
.

“Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted,
Edie
?”

I barely even hear him finish his words. I’m thrown out of the Void and back into reality.

A new reality where chaos is running rampant.

Jude

The hunger is worse than anything I’ve ever felt.

It’s agonizing, like I’m being torn apart from the inside out. This isn’t some run-of the-mill I’ve-let-myself-go-too-long-without-eating phase.

This is something else entirely. Something that won’t be satiated no matter how much blood I drink.

Anthony has won. The Evil of the Void is let loose on this world. And I am a monster.

I blink my eyes several times as I come to in the office where Edie and I entered the Void. Shavings of ice slough off me as I back away from her.

Her eyes open too, a duller shade of hazel than she has had in the past, but no less beautiful. She grimaces in pain as the side of her neck suddenly splits apart, evidence of the wounds Anthony’s inflicted on her in the Void. Bruises begin to purple underneath her skin, spreading across her face.

But the worst thing is the
smell.

I can smell her blood. And unlike when she had the virus, it smells sweet and wonderful. Like the sweetest lemonade on a hot summer’s day. Just one sip of it would take the edge off my hunger. Draining all of it would ease the pain.

I lick my lips.

Fuck.

“Oh my God,” Edie whispers, pressing her hand to her face. She’s crying as she looks over at me, her face devoid of hope (and all of that blood running underneath her skin). I gag and back up.

“Stay away from me,” I force myself to say.

She blinks, confused. “Jude…”

Her hand reaches closer to me. All I want to do is grab it to tell myself that she is real, the same Edie that I fell in love with five months ago. The other part of me, the one that’s fighting to take control is telling me that this is blood that would taste sweeter, only because she trusts me.

“Stay away from me,” I growl. “The Void. It’s
in
me.”

Anthony said that chaos was the natural order of things. The Void’s Evil is manifesting itself as my hunger. At least for now. What would happen if I fought it for long enough?

I don’t think I can.

Thankfully (unfortunately), she stops. “What’s wrong?”

I grit my teeth. “I can’t control it…”

“What?”

“The hunger!” I get to my feet. “I’m going to kill you if you get too close.”

She doesn’t seem to understand! Why the fuck isn’t she understanding!

“No you won’t, Jude…”

“I said get away from me!” I yell. I back up into the corner, trying to get away from her.

Why won’t she understand? Why
can’t
she understand how painful this is? How much her life essence will help?

It won’t help. Not at all.

She’s fully human. And cured. Like we’ve been working towards for the past five months. Only this isn’t how we pictured it.

Anthony has won. And I am a monster.

“Jude,” she whispers. “Let me help you.”

“You can’t,” I tell her. I swallow, saying the only thing that comes to my scattered mind. “I am Alejandro. And I am a monster. And I will kill all humans who come near me.”

“Jude—”

My teeth snap at her outstretched hand. That gets her attention and she backs up, fear in her eyes. Yes, be afraid of me, that will save your life
(be afraid of me, it will taste better when I drain you dry).

I try to shake the thoughts from my head. It doesn’t work

“Don’t come looking for me,” I tell her, noticing a loose ceiling tile above.

And before she can say anything else, I jump through the hole, moving through the ceiling to get out of there. While there hadn’t been the explosion that Edie had planned for, she’d been wise to evacuate this wing.

It means that I can get out without running into another human and their blood. When I emerge from the duct work, it’s nighttime, and I keep running for as long as my legs with take me, until the hunger becomes too much and I have to stop to feed. I kill the first human I see, and I drain him dry.

I can’t help it.

I’m a monster.

But
she
is human.

And that’s all I can take solace in right now.

Edie

“Harker? Is it safe to come in yet?”

I lift my tearstained face as Captain Coolly sticks his head in from the doorway. “Yes,” I tell him. “It’s safe.”

Jude has already removed himself.

I am numb.

“You’re bleeding,” Coolly tells me lamely, pointing to the wound in my neck.

Funny, I’d completely forgotten about that, with all of the other hurt swirling in my body. I don’t answer him as I get up from the floor, surprised that my legs still work after everything.

After I failed everyone.

“Where’s your buddy?” he asks, looking around the space. “The vampire?”

“Gone.”

Coolly regards me for a second, but doesn’t press the issue. I could kiss him for that.

“We have a situation,” he tells me.

“What?” What could it be now?

He pulls his walkie talkie off his belt and turns the volume up. A cacophony of voices crackle through the speaker, every one yelling for help. My headache accentuates every cry, every scream.

“Those are my officers out there,” he tells me. “They’ve been trying to stop a rabid mob from killing people for the past ten minutes. That’s about a half hour since we left you in here to ‘take care’ of things.”

He lets me hear more of the transmissions. Men, women, disbelief and screams, all mingle into his walkie talkie symphony of death.

“It sounds like it’s hundreds upon hundreds of vampires!” Coolly says, made desperate by my lack of a response. “Not only that, the news has just reported that there’s been an earthquake in Indonesia, a volcano in Iceland erupted, and there’s a wildfire out in California.
In the past ten minutes!
”

I shudder.

“Is that because of what you did?” he presses.

I clench my hand. “There’s nothing I can do.”

Coolly’s eyes bulge at that. “What?”

“I can’t stop it.”

“But you
could
?”

I don’t know. I have no idea if I ever could stop the apocalypse from happening. I don’t know why I ever tried such an exercise in futility. That’s what my entire life has been. Futile.

At the moment, all I can think about is the one thing I have control over. Being there while someone I love passes on.

“Is Graeme still alive?” I ask.

***

The ever-present
whoosh
of the breathing machine is the metronome to the last moments of Graeme’s life. I hold his hand in my own, squeezing it. I can’t take my eyes off him.

I can’t believe this is happening.

Graeme may have married my sister, but it was never meant to end this way for him. Out of everyone I know, he’s the one person who I could count on to be there for me. Now he’s slipping away.

I’m so sorry
.

Time ticks by so slowly and so quickly at the same time. I pray for him and I pray for the world, the state it’s in now. Even as I’m sitting next to his bed, I can see the number of injuries and bodies being brought into the emergency room.

Anthony unleashed chaos on the world. And this is just the beginning.

Meghan. Mom. Why aren’t you here with me?

I know the logistics of why they aren’t here. I can feel the weakness in my bones and muscles. I’m no longer the Harker. I can’t pass into the Void anymore, or conjure up fire. I can’t see ghosts.

I hope you’re here
, I tell them.

I can almost imagine Mom’s feathery touch on my back, and Meghan standing next to Graeme’s bed, waiting for her love to join her in death.

I don’t cry. When all is said and done, I don’t have any more tears left to shed. Taking away my powers has strengthened the walls around my heart. All I can do is observe.

Amelia. You have to save Amelia. For Graeme.

The problem with that is I have no idea where she is. She could be in Atlanta or in San Antonio, or anywhere else, really. I don’t think that there’s any hope of Anthony giving her back to me. He’s already gotten what he wants out of me. I think that three-year-olds don’t factor into his religious vision of a chaotic world.

I watch Graeme.

“I’ll find her,” I promise him, even though I don’t know how I’ll do it. “I’ll get Amelia back.”

Graeme Michael Harker, beloved husband, father, and friend, passes on in his dreams.

Edie

Carl wakes up from his coma three days later.

I’m there for it, along with twenty other strangers crammed into his tiny hospital room. We just have a curtain that cordons us off from the rest of the room, from all of the other injured patients.

“Hey,” I say softly. I take his hand and give it a squeeze. “How are you feeling?”

He groans and blinks confusedly at me. “Like shit.”

I chuckle mirthlessly. He has no idea.

His gaze moves around the hospital room, as if he’s trying to figure out things for himself. “What happened?”

Where to start? I guess at the beginning.

“We had carbon monoxide poisoning at the hotel,” I tell him. “We had to drag you out. You almost died.”

“I did?” His eyes grow to round saucers at my statement. “And here I thought it was a bad hangover. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I lie.

I let a beat pass, wondering if I should tell him everything. Or if I should wait and let him discover it for himself.

He ruins that thought for me, and I inwardly grimace.

“Where’s Jude?”

I still. “He’s not here.”

Carl gives me a hard look. “What happened?”

I hesitate, just for a moment. “Graeme was brought to the hospital too,” I tell Carl. “He died.”

Carl doesn’t say anything.

“Do you want to hear the rest of it now?” I ask, afraid of his answer.

He closes his eyes and nods. “Yeah.” He sounds scared to hear it, and I debate whether or not he
actually
wants to know.

I shudder, thinking about my words as I say them aloud. “Zhi and Maria are dead too,” I tell him. “I don’t know what happened to Amelia.” Admitting that hurts me somewhere deep inside, and I quash it back. “And I don’t know if Zhi’s grandmother was killed or not, but…” My voice breaks. “…Anthony killed the Progenitor. And he ascended to be the Progenitor himself. And…”

He waits for me to continue., but I
can’t
. I can’t tell him how I’ve let everyone down. I can’t bring myself to tell him that I’m responsible for the beginning of the end.

“What happened, Edie?” he finally asks, his voice hardened, too much for an eighteen-year-old. Then again, the entire world has grown up in the past three days.

Instead of answering, I take out my phone and hand it to him, playing a live telecast of the news. It’s been going on for three days now. The news is filled with nightmares, from volcanoes erupting, to earthquakes, to tsunamis, to hurricanes. Natural disasters that humans are powerless against.

Not only that, there is a group of people emerging at nighttime to feed and kill humans. The media is calling it a rabies virus that has gone out of control, and has turned normal human beings into cannibalistic bloodsuckers. They labeled it “The Vampire Strain.”

We both know what it truly is. The vampires that have been living parallel to human society for thousands of years have come out of hiding, to satisfy their hungry that never seems to end. Some try to reason with their victims. Others just act like insane animals.

Coupled with what feels like the end of the world, everyone is afraid. Even me.

Lorne woke up yesterday, and once he saw what was happening, he asked me to retrieve his laptop from the Paramount so he can see the reaction on the V Boards. They have been blowing up with more questions than answers, and they’re all wondering where the Harker is. I’ve read their messages, but I haven’t had the heart yet to tell them that there is no Harker left.

Only Edie. A normal human girl who’s missing an arm.

“Holy fuck,” Carl says after a few minutes of watching the news, seeing the buildings burn, the terror, the screaming. The news outlets have given up on trying to censor everything.

Like Anthony wanted, it’s chaos.

“So is it, like, the apocalypse?”

His question actually makes me chuckle. “Not quite. The entire world is in a state of emergency, and you have to evacuate if something is headed your way. Atlanta’s been spared from that, thank God.”

“How long will that last?” Carl asks.

“I don’t know. Evacuation is hard when most places have enacted martial law to combat the vampire strain. We’re not supposed to be out in the streets after dark.”

Carl continues watching the phone, transfixed by events.

“Jude’s out there, too,” I add softly. My heart breaks at the thought of his wild eyes and how hurt he looked.  “He couldn’t stand to be near me at all.”

Carl flicks his eyes to me. “And you?”

“Me?”

“Are you still…sick?”

I shake myself. “I’m no longer the Harker. And I’m no longer sick.”

He gets a sad smile on his face. “At least we have that,” he says softly.

“Yeah, but I don’t have powers anymore.”

“No,” Carl says. “But you’re alive. And that’s all that matters.”

I watch him for a few moments while he’s watching the phone, before he turns it off and looks away, that long, hard look in his eyes.

I know exactly what that gaze is.

“We’ll figure something out,” he says after a time.

I don’t have the heart to tell him that we no longer have the means to do anything.