Eat the Ones You Love (The Thirteen Book 2) (2 page)

“You said I’d only be like this for a little while,” he said, his voice so full of desperation that Jenny wanted to cry. “You said it was temporary. I can’t control it. This isn’t me anymore, Jen.”

“Remember?” said Jenny. “I said the exact same thing about myself and you didn’t give up on me.”

“That was different,” said Declan. “You were good to begin with.”

“So are you.”

“You didn’t know me before,” he said. He took another step back, toward the woods. “You don’t know what I was capable of, even when I was alive. It’s time to end this, Jen.”

“No,” she said. “You just have to be patient, Declan. Please.”

He looked at her for a long time before he finally spoke again. “I’m sorry,” he said. Then he turned and ran into the trees. Jenny started to go after him, but Trix held her arm tight.

“Fuck this drama,” said Trix. “Do you fucking see what’s happening here, cheerleader?”

Jenny turned to see the Heathens all standing around the dead man’s tent. They were all staring at her. A woman was crying. She was relieved when Zeke walked through the crowd and came toward them.

“Are you okay?” said Jenny.

“His name was Van,” said Zeke. “He was a nice kid. I didn’t
see
it, I’m sorry.”

Jenny first met Zeke when he was living with the Righteous. He was called a prophet because he could see things. Abel, one of The Thirteen who was
 
sent to kill Sully, and later became Jenny's friend, said Zeke never stopped seeing things. Zeke's mind was a twenty-four-hour unrelenting film reel of what might come to pass.
 

But Jenny couldn't help but think of Abel when she looked at Zeke. Abel had introduced them a lifetime ago, and when Zeke met her eyes she often thought of her friend, dying on the floor, a tear falling down his cheek, finally able to cry when it was too late.

Jenny sniffed and looked away. It wouldn't do anyone any good to think of the dead right now.

“What are they all going to do?” she said.
 

“Everyone’s scared, Jen,” Zeke said.

“They should be,” said Trix. “We fucking told them what we were.”

“I know,” said Zeke. “They wouldn’t hear it before. They just wanted to follow The Thirteen for a while. You know what the Heathens think of you. You’re legends.”

“We’re fucking dead,” said Trix, throwing a glance at Jenny. “Except for this freak. It’s like bringing home a fucking wolf and getting pissed when it eats your whole family.”

“They’re going to leave,” said Zeke.
 

“What about you?” said Jenny.

“I’m staying,” he said.

“Did you not hear a fucking word I just said?” said Trix.

“I heard you,” he said. “But you’re not going to hurt me.”

“How do you know?” said Jenny. “Zeke, it’s too dangerous. You don’t see everything.”

“I see enough,” he said. “And I’ve seen myself surviving.”

“Things change,” said Trix.

Zeke shrugged. “I have to risk it. What else am I going to do? Go back to the Righteous?”

“At least you’d be safe there,” said Jenny.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Zeke. “My step-father was a powerful man. To the Righteous, killing him was the equivalent of killing Jesus.”

“Finch was kind of murdery for Jesus, wasn’t he?” said Trix.
 

Jenny swallowed hard at the thought of Zeke's stepfather, the former Righteous leader, Daniel Finch. It was Daniel who had allowed Sully to cut her open, to torture her for days. And if Daniel had his way, Jenny would have been nailed to a post and left to die. Daniel was responsible for the deaths of anyone he saw as unworthy, including Jenny's friend, Lily, whose unborn child had been eaten by rotters after she'd been crucified. Zeke had saved Jenny from the hands of Sully and his step-father by alerting the Heathens – including Declan – to where she was, but not before Sully had tortured her. Jenny had quickly become friends with Zeke, accepting his eccentricities, just as he accepted hers.
 

Jenny looked at the crowd. They were still staring at Jenny and Trix, a few whispering, casting fearful glances their way.

Jenny sighed. “Okay. Stay, but I can’t protect you all the time.”

“Understood.”

“Dumbass,” said Trix.
 

“Probably,” said Zeke. “But you have to stay away from Expo. That much I know. It would be real bad to turn up there. Every lost Heathen would want to follow you, and every possible outcome is bloody. Trust me on this.”

“So we stay away from Expo,” said Jenny.

“Where the fuck are we going to get fuel, then?” said Trix.

“We’ll figure it out,” said Jenny. She turned to look at the Heathens. “I’m sorry,” she said louder, for the crowd. “He didn’t do it on purpose. You knew when you started following us that we were dangerous. I’m very sorry your friend is dead, I really am. You have to understand what we are, though.”

“You’re just rotters,” said a woman with dark dreads. “You’re not the cure at all. You’re just killers, like all the other rotters.”

“Maybe,” said Jenny. “But we never claimed to be anything else.”

“He just killed that boy,” said the woman. “Just walked over and ripped him apart.”

“Bitch, what the fuck did you expect him to do?” said Trix. “You’re all just meat. We never asked you to start following us. Go the fuck home.” Trix turned and walked back across the creek, holding both hands up as she went, flipping everyone off.

“Fuck this shit,” said a guy with a hastily shaved head. “There’s an Expo in Boulder. We can be there in an hour. Let’s take a vote.”

Jenny didn’t stay to hear what they decided. She already knew.
 

“Come on, Zeke,” she said, walking toward the creek. “You can sleep in my tent. You’ll be safe.”

Zeke followed, but didn’t speak. Jenny liked that about him. He was quiet when she didn’t feel like talking. He was easy to be around even when she was feeling her worst.

When they got to the small clearing, Zeke looked at the one small tent and looked back at Jenny. Trix sat by a roaring fire, snorting in derision when she saw Zeke.
 

“Fucking suicide,” she said.

“There’s only one tent,” he said.

“Dead people don’t sleep, bitch,” said Trix.

Jenny shrugged. “She grows on you.”

“Where are you going to sleep?” said Zeke. “You’re alive now.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Jenny, trying for a smile. She felt her shoulders sag. “I don’t really sleep as much as rest. I’d do anything to sleep. To really sleep.”

“Do you still…”

“What?” said Jenny. “Do I still think about ripping the meat off of everyone I see? Do I still dream about warm blood running down my throat? Do I still want to kill all the time?”

“Well…yeah,” said Zeke.

“Yeah, of course I do,” said Jenny. “But I can control it.”

“How do you know you’re safe?”

Jenny looked at Trix. “Hey, Trix, do you want to eat me?”

“Fuck no,” said Trix. “You still smell like a dead bitch.”

“I’m safe,” said Jenny. “Get some sleep.”

“What are you going to do?” said Zeke.

“I’ve got to find an Undead with a death wish.”

“You’re going to look for Declan?”

“You got any insight for me?” said Jenny. “I don’t know how to help him.”

Zeke shook his head. “I don’t know, Jen. It’s a little fuzzy when it comes to him, to be perfectly honest. I don’t know why, but I can rarely see Declan clearly.”

Jenny nodded. “Okay. Sleep tight.”

“Be careful,” he said.
 

“Don’t worry about me,” said Jenny. “I’m bulletproof, remember?”

Zeke was snoring minutes after zipping up the sleeping bag. Jenny crossed over to Trix.

“He’s never going to be the same,” Trix said. There was an odd softness to her voice that was unlike her. “You can’t fix him, Jenny.”

“None of us are the same,” said Jenny. “But I have to try.”

“I know,” she said. “We’ve lost too much.”

“Watch over the Prophet,” said Jenny. “He’s the only one who knows where we’re going.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

Jenny left Trix staring into the fire. She had to find Declan. Because without Declan, she was just a freak made by her grandfather in a lab. Without Declan, the whole world could burn, for all she cared.

TWO

“Declan?” Jenny stopped, mid-step. Someone was standing among the trees. She squinted and the figure turned and started to walk away. It wasn’t Declan. It was someone taller and thinner. Jenny walked after him.

“Hey!” she said, and something scurried away in the bushes.

The man —she was sure it was a man — stopped and turned to look at her. His hair was sticking up on end. A cloud passed and the moon shone down, filtered through the pine needles. And she saw his face. Even from a distance, she knew his face.

“Casey? Oh my God, Casey?”
 

He looked back at her and shook his head. He looked so sad. He raised his arm and pointed over towards a group of trees. Jenny turned to see what he was pointing at. And when she looked back he was gone.

“Casey!” she said, running to the place he had been standing. “Casey, please.”
 

There was no sign of him. Jenny looked down where he’d been pointing and saw Declan, standing with his back to her. Jenny could practically taste the blood that saturated his pants and matted his hair. Her stomach growled.
 

She looked around again for her brother, but he was gone. Not gone, Casey was dead. It was impossible for him to be here. Sully had cut him open and filled him with metal and wires. Jenny had buried him. Her brother was definitely, without a doubt, dead.

“I’m going crazy,” she said. She closed her eyes and took a breath. She was just sleep-deprived. She was so incredibly tired that it felt like torture to be awake. These days she was always awake and hungry. Becoming a Living again hadn’t changed her hunger, and occasionally she still felt the familiar rage as when she first became Undead, the intensity of it oddly comforting. Without the anger, she just felt a hollow grief most of the time. Trix had become something of a friend, but she wasn’t exactly the warm and cozy type. Declan had been the only person who kept her going, and she felt herself losing him. Casey was gone, she knew that. And he was the only family she was willing to claim, so Declan was all she had left.
 

Jenny shook her head. A hallucination. That was all. She walked toward Declan. He was standing perfectly still, and when the moonlight shone on him, Jenny could see the blood dried and crackling on the back of his neck.

“Declan?”

He turned slowly and it seemed to Jenny that he looked more like himself than he had since that night. The night he died. Jenny couldn’t think of it without feeling as though the breath had been knocked out of her. Feeding Declan her own flesh had brought him back to her, but at what cost? He was still a rotter, and nothing she said or did was going to fix it. She didn’t blame Declan for hating her. She hated herself for what had happened. But maybe, sometime soon, he would change back the same way she did. His heart would start pumping, his lungs would draw breath, and they could be
themselves
again. Jenny watched Declan’s face, holding her breath.

Declan leaned into the moonlight and Jenny saw that his eyes were still white. Dead man’s eyes. She let out her breath and felt her shoulders sag. His skin was rosier, but she knew in a matter of hours it would go back to chalky white. He motioned her over and she stepped up to the edge of the cliff, which, she now saw, was a sheer drop into darkness. It made her dizzy to look down.
 

“What are you doing here?” she said gently.
 

“They’re all dead,” he said, staring into the canyon. “There’s a cabin, can you see it? But they’re dead. Frozen to death last winter, maybe. I don’t smell any rotters.” He glanced at her. “Any
other
rotters anyway.”

“Declan, step away from the edge.”

He turned to look at her. “I’m not going to jump, Jen. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“But you want to,” Jenny said.

He lifted one bare and filthy foot and let it hover over the edge. Just a shift of weight and he would be gone. But he pulled it back and stepped away. Jenny choked back a sob and turned so he wouldn't see.
 

“It wouldn’t kill me anyway,” said Declan. “I’d just be broken until there was nothing left of me. Isn’t that right?”

“That’s right,” she said. She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t let him see her weak like this. “Do what you want, Declan,” she managed, a thickness in her throat. “I’m not going to stop you. Not anymore.” She took five steps toward camp before she felt cold fingers grasping her arm.

“Jen, please,” he said. “I can’t stand it if you don’t look at me. Is it so fucking bad that you can’t even look at me anymore?”

Jenny turned and, pulling him down, she pressed her lips to his. He was cold and tasted of meat, and it took everything Jenny had to not lick the blood from his face. She pulled away and looked at him.
 

“I don’t care what you are,” she said. “Just like you didn’t care what I was. Remember, Declan? You said you didn’t know how to be without me.”

“Yeah, well, this is different,” he said weakly. “I’m not even myself anymore.”

“Do you think it was any different for me?” said Jenny. “I shut you out for so long. I hid myself away from you but you found me and made me see. Don’t you get that it’s the same? It’s exactly the fucking same and if you can’t understand that, maybe I was wrong about you.”

When Jenny turned, when she became Undead, she hid herself away from Declan, unwilling to let him see her. Afraid that she would kill him. He found her and convinced her not to run, convinced her that they could still be together, convinced her that she wasn't as different as she thought. They were each other's salvation, always had been. But it wasn't so simple.
 

“I killed someone tonight,” he said. He took her hand and looked down at it. “Just a kid. I was at the creek and I could smell them, all the Living. And then I was just there, tearing him apart, swallowing his…” Declan pursed his lips together. “It wasn’t right, Jen. I don’t want to be this thing. I’m out of control. What if I hurt you?”