Frequency (The Frenzy Series Book 3) (18 page)

I cupped my hands over my face. Tage wasn’t coming out. I couldn’t see anything but fire, flame, and smoke. Oh, but the noise. Metal on metal, crumbling, groaning from the structure itself. It was going to fall. “Tage! Get out of there!” I wanted him to bring Mother, but I couldn’t lose him, too. “Leave her and get out! Tage!”

Porschia?

I turned to find Saul standing behind me. His clothes were torn, he smelled like the burning building, soot was streaked and smeared all over his face, and his light brown hair was black and singed. Only his blue-gray eyes were the same. They reflected the burning building, reminding me of what horrors lay inside.

“What happened here?”

You have no idea what happened in there, Porschia.

“Did you do this?” I screamed. “Was my mother in there?”

His eyes hardened.
She hated you. She would have killed you. She would have made your life a living hell.

“We found a cure, Saul! We could have helped her! But she wasn’t alone in there, was she? How many were there?”

He stepped toward me, putting his face in mine.
She can’t hurt you now!

No. She can’t
, I answered.

I turned my back on him, focusing on the one who might still be saved. “Tage!”

Saul laughed mirthlessly.
Always comes back to him, huh?
He opened his mouth and let out a screech, making me cover my ears and look at him. He’d lost it.

“What the hell happened to you, Saul?”

Pierce happened. The Infection happened. You happened. If I’d just left you alone the day you showed up to volunteer, I wouldn’t be here! I would be safely in the carpentry shop, learning a trade. I would be alive instead of this walking death.
He clawed at his clothing, pulling it away from his sweat-soaked skin.

I backed away from him toward the fire. Looking into the flames, I closed my eyes and willed Tage to come out of the inferno, to come back to me. When I opened them again, I saw movement from within. Tage nearly knocked me down when he sped out of the fire with Roman on his heels. Roman caught his breath, looking from me, to Pierce, and then to Saul. He bared his fangs and pounced on Saul, knocking him to the ground. Saul’s breath left him in an oomph, but it was too late. Roman sank his teeth into his neck and gulped.

“Roman!” I tried to pull him off of Saul but he pushed me away.

Tage pulled me back from the two men.

“Don’t kill him! Please!”

Tage’s grip on me relaxed. “After what he did, you still love him?”

I shook my head no. “It’s not that. I just think that every Infected with a chance deserves it. Just like every night-walker does. They deserve their lives back. Everyone has a chance to be rid of this curse, and so does he.”

Roman pulled his fangs from Saul’s lifeless body. With shaking fingers, I reached for him, easing away from Tage. “Is he dead?”

I fell to my knees, my skin shredding from the impact. I watched Saul’s breathing, shallow but there. And I cried.

“Thank you, Roman.”

Roman sat back on his haunches and wiped his chin. “Thank me for what?” he spat.

“For saving him. I couldn’t have done it.”

Tage crouched next to me. “You said he deserved a chance.”

I nodded. “I did say that, but I couldn’t have mustered the strength to give it to him. Not after this.” I stared at the flames. When the walls finally buckled and caved into the center in a molten heap, Tage shielded me with his body, holding me when the ground shook violently beneath us.

I looked over Tage’s shoulder at Roman, who stared blankly at the two of us. His skin was angry and red, blistered and peeling, but he would heal. “Saul didn’t think this through very well. Fire won’t kill a night-walker. It’ll only piss them off.”

“What about your brother?” I asked.

“What about him?” Roman stared at Pierce, who was unconscious now.

“Are you going to bite him? The vampire venom can heal the Infection.”

Roman threw his head back and stared at the stars that blanketed the earth. He squeezed his eyes shut.

“What is it?” I said, cocking my head to the side.

“I always wondered about that.”

“About what?”

He opened his dark eyes and fixed them on me. “About you. It wasn’t just Infected blood that was injected into your mother while she was pregnant with you.”

“Venom?”

“I never told Pierce. The two probably cancelled each other out.”

“But how did that explain Mother’s mental state? If neither toxin affected her, then why…?” I began incredulously. “Why did Tage’s venom sting me so badly when he first bit me? How did I become a night-walker if my body fought the venom? How could I become Infected, too?
How?
”

Roman blew out an exhausted breath. “I don’t know. I don’t understand what happened with your mother. Some people are just born crazy, Porschia. There is no reason. Maybe the contents of the syringe did nothing. Maybe it never touched you. We have no way to know. But I do know that I’ve regretted that night since it happened. And if you ever need anything from me – need me to bite another person that you can’t, or anything else – it’s yours. Just name it. I’m truly sorry.”

The three of us sat in silence, watching the flames, flanked by the unmoving bodies of Saul and Pierce. Part of me wondered if Mercedes could be tricking us. Could she be attacking Father and Ford right now?

“Roman, go check on Porschia’s family,” Tage ordered, reading my mind.

“Why?”

“Porschia’s worried. You said anything, now go.”

Roman pushed himself up. His skin was already looking paler and the blisters were receding. “I’ll never live that moment of weakness down, will I?”

“Not on your life,” I answered.

He smiled slightly. “Be right back.” As Roman sped away he blended with the darkness. He was part of it, or it was part of him. I wondered when that metamorphosis had happened. When he turned, or before? Was he always this version of Roman?

I wasn’t always this version of Porschia. Most of me was glad. Frenzy seemed to be over, for the most part. Since I woke up from the poisoned daydreams, I felt more like me than I ever had. I felt like the me I wanted to be, no longer wanting to escape my own life or reality. I just wanted to be whatever I was. A freak? A hybrid? Doubly cursed? Whatever.

Tage slung an arm around my shoulders and pulled me into him, and then reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a piece of willow bark. It was warm to the touch. I laughed. “You have
got
to be kidding.”

“Nope. Chew your bark. We don’t know if you’re out of the woods yet.”

“I think I’m out of Frenzy.”

Tage scoffed. “You’re a woman. Should one little thing piss you off, you’ll go back into it again.”

I smacked him and popped the piece of bark into my mouth, chewing dramatically. It wasn’t as bad warm as it was fresh and cool. The bitterness was replaced with a sweetness.

“You know you like the bark,” Tage crooned. “All women like my wood.”

Giggling, I shook my head. “You’re awful.”

“I’m sexy.”

“You
think
you’re sexy.”

Tage smiled and pulled me closer. “Admit it. Me running into that building was hot.”

“You were definitely hot, Tage. You still are.” I nodded toward the steaming pieces of leather on his shoulders. With a proud grin he patted the battle scars lovingly, like old friends reacquainted.

Saul moaned and grabbed his throat.

“Great. And... Loverboy’s back.”

“Please don’t call him that again.”

“Kitten, don’t patronize me. If you’re gonna run back to him the second he loses the sick gray pallor and gets the raspy voice back, I’m going to be pissed. I’m warning you now.”

“I won’t. I can barely stand to look at him.” It was true. I stared at Tage, at the sky and the flame, but couldn’t bring myself to look at Saul. Or Pierce, for that matter. They were two of the same kind of evil in my eyes now.

“I’m a hypocrite. I killed Dara. Why do I feel so angry with him?”

“Because you were protecting others – namely him – from Dara. He just ignited an entire building of people for a cause he claimed was just, but what he did can’t be justified. It’s not right, regardless of the reasoning behind it.”

“The fact that he reasoned it at all proves I didn’t know him very well.”

Tage sighed. “It could be the Infection.”

“He hasn’t been Infected for very long.”

“It could affect him differently than the others.”

I pushed myself up off the ground. “Why are you defending him?” I shouted before throwing my hands up and walking toward Blackwater.

“Why aren’t you?” he yelled back. Tage jogged to catch up, grabbing my arm and turning me around. “Hey, I’m not defending him. I just want to make sure you think this through.”

“Why do you even care?”

His eyes bored into mine. “Because I care about
you
. Now come on. The Infected will handle Saul and Pierce.”

He stalked away toward Blackwater, leaving me to stand in his wake. I could smell the smoke that still clung to his jacket all the way back to the flood wall. My hands pulled my tired body up each frigid rung until I stood on top of the wall, at the divide between two worlds. In the distance, the falls thundered. The normal citizens of Blackwater were asleep. All windows were dark and there was no motion except for one house: my childhood home.

Roman climbed up the opposite side of the wall and I moved over to give him room. “She’s fine. Your father and brother are fine. She’s eating, talking, and her coloring is getting better. For what it’s worth, she smells different. I know only time will tell, but I think she’s fine now. She’s human.”

“Isn’t it weird that the venom of a night-walker can heal an Infected person?”

Roman squeezed his head and began to teeter. “Roman?” I stepped toward him. He swayed and almost fell backward off the wall, city-side. “What’s wrong?”

“I feel weird.”

“Tage?” I called out. “I need you!” I didn’t know if he would come. I’d upset him. Steadying Roman’s weight, I noticed he was feeling heavier and heavier. “Tage,” I croaked.

“Move him over,” he replied from the ground. “I’m coming up.”

Roman’s eyes lolled back into his head. “Something’s really wrong!” His body went slack and I tried to balance us both.

Tage took Roman from me, gathering him onto his shoulders like he was carrying a bear carcass. He scaled down the wall slowly but stealthily. “You need to eat,” he yelled up at me.

“Bark?”

“Smartass.”

I climbed down, meeting Tage at the ground. The soil smelled rich and softly squished underfoot. The tiny trails of the last snowfall of Winter still clung to the edge of the wall’s bottom. “Meet me at the house. I’ll get him situated.”

I nodded and watched him run away before slowly walking to the back of my house, to the kitchen window. A candle flickered in the window, warming the scene. Mercedes, Father, and Ford sat around the kitchen table, talking and laughing. Mercedes swiped tears from her cheeks. She looked up and saw me.

“Porschia?”

I raised a hand. Father stood up, followed by Ford. They came to the back door, but I was already gone.