FORBIDDEN (28 page)

“What did you do?”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. Her skin seemed to shimmer; she was somewhere between being human and being a Hunter. The steely blue hue that Owen had taken on last time I saw him glinted on Angie’s skin as the moonlight hit her, but she didn’t seem dangerous. Was that even possible? Things were so out of control, it was hard to tell. I didn’t lower my guard. She sniffled. “I don’t remember everything. There are gaps in my memory. I don’t know where I was for five hours today. There was blood on my clothes, so I stole some from a store. I’m scared of what I’m becoming, Levi. What am I supposed to do?”

Part of me wanted to feel bad, but I just didn’t know if I could trust her. “You need to go, Angie. You’re not human anymore.”

She looked down at her hands and seemed repulsed by herself. “You think I don’t know that?! You have no idea what this feels like. Then there are times I don’t feel at all. I don’t know how to fix this.”

I sighed. I could understand the not feeling. It was scary at first. “It’s not so bad, not feeling. I was that way for over a hundred years. You get used to it.”

She stomped her foot and sent a ripple through the floorboards from her strength. She noticed my alarm, though, and pulled herself together once more with a deep breath. “I don’t want to get used to it.”

There wasn’t anything I could do right now, even if I wanted to help her. With Clay and Ethan gone, there was no one to watch Hannah and her family. I sighed. “Listen. Tonight at midnight I’ll meet you at the school on the roof. Can you make it?”

There was a moment of silence, but she nodded. “I can do that. Will you help me?”

“If you are genuine, yes. I don’t trust you, and you need to leave here now. If you want help, you need to stay away from Hannah.”

“I need her.”

“Not right now, you don’t. Get out of here before Clay and Ethan come back. Meet me at midnight if you’re serious.”

She was there for a split second, but then the next there was a whoosh and the front door opened and closed. She was quick. Possibly quicker than me. She was dangerous, and I’d just made a deal with the devil in a sense. This was not going to end well.

TWENTY-SIX

Clay and Ethan returned a few hours later and sat in the tree outside Hannah’s bedroom. I’d carried Hannah into her room and put her in bed, then sat at the edge, just thinking over everything that had happened. There was time to kill before meeting Angie in a few hours. The past few days buzzed in my head like a swarm of angry bees. So much had changed in such a short period of time.

Owen was a Hunter. He’d changed Angie into a Hunter. Hannah was more than just a pure soul, but what all that meant was still up in the air. She’d caused me to transition. Clay said she could do that for others, too.

Then the thought struck me. What if she could do that for Ethan? What needed to be done? Just touch him? If so, that wouldn’t be too hard to orchestrate. I’d have to ask Clay when I had a chance.

Around eleven thirty I stuck my head out the window to find Clay and Ethan. They were sitting in the tree outside, talking in low voices. I cleared my throat to get their attention. “I have somewhere I need to go, can you two watch the house for a bit?”

Ethan’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, but Clay nodded without asking any questions. “Sure, go ahead. Will you be long?”

“No, just an hour or so.”

Clay clapped Ethan on the back. “Looks like you and I have to be on top of things for a bit.”

Ethan never took his eyes off me, and I knew he was probably wondering what was going on. He nodded at me and unfurled his wings. “I’ll take the roof, Clay. You stay here.”

As I climbed out the window and went to take off, Clay reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. “You can’t save everyone, Levi. Just remember that.”

His words caught me off guard. He didn’t say anything more, and I didn’t offer any words in return. It was probably best to just avoid giving too much information away. This still felt like a really stupid idea on my part. I took off in silence, hoping to arrive at the school before Angie.

I sat atop the school’s roof for less than ten minutes before I heard Angie’s cautious footsteps behind me. I turned slowly, trying to keep her calm. There was no way to telling what she was capable of. She held her hands up in submission, her mouth turned downward in a frown. “I’m not here to hurt you, Levi.”

“I know that,” I said, hoping it sounded much better than I was feeling. God, feelings. Such a blessing and a curse. I walked toward her. “What did you want me to help you with?”

“Staying human,” she whispered. Her lips quivered, and I saw tears glistening in her eyes as she continued. “I don’t want to lose myself, Levi.”

It was hard to be optimistic. I rubbed the back of my neck. Tonight I was tired. That was a first in a long time. I sighed as I told her the words she didn’t want to hear. “There’s not much I can do about that.”

“You’re still human.”

“Not really,” I admitted. “I hadn’t felt anything but pain for over one hundred years before last week.”

“But you’re feeling now,” argued Angie, her voice rising. “I need to feel. All there is now is blood and hunting and death. That’s not me. This doesn’t make sense. I don’t even understand why the urges I feel are there. I don’t want to do this.”

An icy feeling doused my insides. “Have you killed someone, Angie?”

 “No, not yet. Owen wants me to.”

“Who does he want you to kill?”

Angie’s head dropped. “Hannah.”

So there it was. Of course I knew it before she’d even answered, but there was something unnerving about hearing Hannah’s best friend admit she was struggling not to murder her. I held back the shiver that ran down my spine. “I don’t know how to help you, Ang. I’m not a Hunter, I’m a Guard. We don’t run in the same circles.”

“But you feel! Just help me feel. Maybe then I can control the feelings that Owen is trying to tell me are just part of life now.”

I sighed. Maybe since I was transitioning, I could help her after all. I extended my hand tentatively. Angie took it. “Can you feel that?”

“No. Well I mean I know I’m holding your hand, but there’s no feeling attached to it like there should be.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. Come with me.”

I jumped off the roof and Angie followed. We ran away from Londonderry, ran away from the small town where the horrors had begun. A little while later we saw the bright lights of Columbus illuminating the sky, even at this late hour. Part of me questioned my sanity. “Stay close to me, Angie.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, as to block out the cold. “I smell them.”

“Smell who?”

“Souls. Good ones, bad ones, it doesn’t matter. I want them. Levi, this place has too many souls. Why did you bring me here?”

I took a breath. “You want to feel, right?”

“Yes.”

“You want to be human, right?”

Angie huffed in frustration. “I’ve already told you that!”

“Then you need to be able to deny feeding on these humans’ souls. Deny the urge to kill them. It’s against what you’re designed to do. It might make you realize if you’ll be able to feel or not.”

She stood still, eyeing me in shock. “You want me to get close to a human and not kill them?”

My mouth felt dry as I confirmed her fears. “That’s exactly what I want you to do.”

“I don’t even know what I’m capable of!”

That made two of us. I knew we were treading in dangerous waters, but I had no clue how to fix her. The only thing I knew was when I faced what I didn’t want to do – interacting with Hannah – I felt. Maybe it would work for her, too. Otherwise I was going to get into a lot of trouble with Clay and Ethan later. There were so many ways this could backfire, but for some reason, I felt like it could work.

I put my hand on her back, hoping it was more reassuring to her than it was for me. “Let’s go. You can do this.”

Angie closed her eyes and sighed. “Where are we going?”

I led her into an alleyway, where there were two men leaving a desolated bar. They stumbled out, laughing gruffly and exchanging drinks from a bottle covered in a brown paper bag. Angie shivered and moaned. “I can feel them.”

“You feel their souls. That’s the Hunter in you. What you need to do is turn that off. You want to find your humanity. The only way that’ll happen is if you can deny the urge you’re feeling.”

Angie was rocking back and forth on her heels, fighting to stay in place. I put my hands on her shoulders to keep her in place. “But I
need
them. I’m hungry. Look at them, they’ll never be missed!”

“That’s not the point, Angie. The point is – ”

But I never got to explain my point. In the blink of an eye, Angie whipped her head toward me and her crimson eyes held the same flames that flickered behind Owen’s. “I need them!”

She grabbed my arm and flipped me over her shoulder and onto the ground in a millisecond. I felt the wind blow my hair back as she closed the distance between her and the drunken men.

What had I been thinking? That she’d suddenly grow a conscience? I jumped up and sprinted to the end of the alleyway where the men had disappeared around the corner. Angie must be on them by now.

“Get off me!” I heard Angie screech.

Who had gotten to her? Who possessed the ability to stop her? I ran toward the audible scuffle to find the men in a lump by a trashcan, but still alive. Ethan was on top of Angie, wrestling her to the ground. “No can do, Angie. You’re really not supposed to be sucking the life out of random folks, no matter how stinky or drunk they are. Sucks, I know, but it’s just not in your cards,” Ethan grunted as he pinned her arms to the ground and looked at me. “Levi, care to help or explain what you two were doing? Either would be better than you just standing there like a lump.”

After the initial shock of seeing Ethan here, I regained the ability to move. I ran over and grabbed her feet, then the two of us took off with Angie thrashing against our grips. When we arrived back in Londonderry, Clay was on top of Hannah’s roof waiting for us. He had a look of amusement mixed with frustration on his face. I couldn’t look at him; it felt like I’d let him down. “Back from your experiment with a Hunter, Levi?”

There wasn’t much to say to that even if I could have mustered any words. Struggling against Angie took all my focus. How Ethan had pinned her, I’d never know. Maybe it was because he was older than me. He looked at Clay. “What do you want to do with her?”

Clay shrugged. “We should just eliminate her.”

Ethan blanched. “She’s my Call!”

“No, she’s not. She’s a Hunter. And if she’s your Call, why weren’t you the one sneaking around to meet her and try to help her?”