Ravenous (Book 1 The Ravening Series) (15 page)

   Even Aiden had shed a few tears, he
’d tried to keep them hidden from us, but I had seen them. I had not cried. I was fairly certain that I would not cry, not now, not in front of my siblings. Someone had to stay strong, and just like with my father, it would be me. I didn’t meet Cade’s gaze, I could feel it on me, burning into my back, but I would not look at him. Bret kept his arm around me, seeking to give me comfort even though I didn’t want it. He didn’t seem to understand that though, and I had given up shrugging his arm off. What was the point?

   “Why did the building collapse like that?” Abby moaned. “What caused it?”

   A muscle in my cheek jumped, my jaw ached from clenching it so tightly. I didn’t know what had caused it, but it had been big, it had been brutal, and it was going to come for us. Of that much I was certain. It would continue to hunt for survivors. It would be unrelenting and ruthless in its pursuit. It apparently hadn’t known that we were in the store, but I was certain that once it got a bead on us, it was not going to stop in its desire for blood, in its desire to drain us dry.

   I closed my eyes, my hands fisted at my sides. Whatever the
aliens were doing, whatever they were intent on they were really beginning to piss me off!

   “Bethany.” I forced my eyes open. Bret was
watching me with wide eyed worry. “Are you ok?”

  
I wanted to be a better person for him, wanted to be the person he thought I was. I wanted to be kinder, more understanding, and more patient. I wanted to be happier, more giving, and more faithful. I wanted to show some sort of emotion, other than fury right now, but I couldn’t. I was none of those things, yet Bret was certain that I was. I hated to disappoint him, but I didn’t know how to be anything different. I had tried to be that person for him for the past few months, I truly had, but it was impossible for me. I thought that if he understood things would be different between us, but he didn’t, and they weren’t.

   In fact I was fairly certain he wouldn’t want anything to do with the person I truly was, because he was just too good to understand that person
, and the darkness that resided within me. I was a survivor, I was a fighter, and I was
hard
. It was the first time I admitted that fact to myself, but it was true. I was cold and I was hard. I had thought that it was the death of my father that had caused me to be this way, but I was slowly beginning to realize that I was wrong. Jenna had more than likely lost her family, yet she was comforting Abby. Bret had more than likely lost his parents and yet he was still caring and good.

   Yes, I had watched my father die. Yes, I had been young and defenseless. But we were defenseless now, and yet I still sensed more humanity in them than
I did in myself. What was
wrong
with me? Why couldn’t I be like them?

   My gaze finally went to Cade. For the first time I was able to look at him. The duffel bag with the guns was slung over his shoulder, his hand rested against the st
rap. Cade was a wealth of mystery and confusion to me that I wasn’t sure I would ever understand. Yet, as his dark eyes landed upon me, I knew, with unfailing certainty that he understood me completely. He saw inside of me and
knew
what kind of person I was.

  
He saw my many flaws, and for some strange reason he didn’t mind them. He saw the depths of my imperfections, the intensity of my coldness, and he understood it. I was suddenly struck by the realization that I didn’t know what was worse. Being completely understood and accepted for my many defects, or constantly trying to prove that I did not have them, that I was a better person than I actually was.

   Was it better to be accepted for being an awful human being, or to have someone believe that
I was something better than I was?

   Cade’s eyes
narrowed, his head tilted to the side. Displeasure flashed across his features, his hand tightened on the strap around his chest. The moonlight hit his onyx eyes turning them nearly blue in the bright light.

  
“Bethany?” 

  “I’m fine,” I responded as I turned my attention back to Bret.

  
“Maybe we should stop.”
   “We need to keep moving.”
   “Keep moving where?” Jenna asked; her voice soft and forlorn.

  
“Somewhere.” Though I had no idea where. I just knew that we could not sit still. If we stopped we were sitting ducks.

   “Somewhere is not an answer!” she retorted sharply. “We need to have somewhere to go; just roaming aimlessly around is doing nothing for any of us! We need to find somewhere safe to hide!”

   “Oh, and since you know where all of those places are, why don’t you just tell us where to go!” I snapped back.

   Jenna glared at me, her delicate jaw clenched tight as her pretty eyes narrowed.
“Ok, easy, we should probably come up with some kind of plan,” Bret interjected calmly. “We need to find shelter.”

   “I’m not going inside again,” I responded at once.

   They all looked at me in surprise, even Cade seemed slightly taken aback. “Bethy…”

   “No Aiden. If you guys would like to find shelter, that is f
ine, but there is no way in
hell
I am going inside again. Not right now anyway,” I amended when I saw their distraught faces. I was not going inside again anytime soon, quite possibly never again, judging by the way I felt right now.

   “Well we have to find some place to hide!”
   Jenna’s whining tone was grating on my last nerve. I understood that she was frightened, but I had never had a vast storage of patience (yet another fault of mine), and I found that I had even less now. My nerve endings felt flayed, they felt as if someone was constantly taking a match to them. I was hurt, I was frightened too, but most of all I was angry and she was irritating that anger right now.

  
“And we will,” Cade assured Jenna touching her arm briefly, reassuringly. I looked quickly away, unable to take the sight of them right now as unreasonable jealousy tore through me. They were both so beautiful, so perfect. “But for now, we have to keep moving.”
   “The old lighthouse, only teens go there anymore. It will be safe,” Jenna said softly.

   “Nothing is safe anymore,” Abby whispered.

   Jenna’s lower lip trembled, her arm tightened around Abby’s shoulder. “It will be safer than the woods.”
   “You really believe that a lighthouse, used to call in ships, set out on a Jetty that can be seen across the bay, is safer than the woods?” I asked incredulously.

   “I don’t hear you coming up with any ideas!” she practically wailed.

   “Our old tree house.”
   We all turned to Aiden. “What?” Bret asked.

   “Our old tree house,” Aiden responded excitedly
, his brown eyes bright. “Our old house is on Cranberry Isle, the area has been built up over the past few years, but it’s still relatively private. Even more private is the tree house that Bethy and I built with our father when we were younger…”

   “You want us to hide in a tree house!?” Jenna nearly screeched.

   I sighed loudly as I rolled my eyes. She was going to be my undoing, my snapping point, the end of my small tether on sanity. I was certain of it. I just wasn’t sure if it was because she was driving me crazy, or because Cade was trying to console her so much. A day ago the stupid ass had been kissing me, and being so kind and understanding that he had made me cry for the first time in years. Now, just a day later, he was all over Jenna.

  
I had a
boyfriend
, I reminded myself fiercely.
Bret
was my boyfriend. To Cade, I had just been something to play with something to string along, and now it seemed he had set his sights on the far more beautiful, and pristine, Jenna Howe. I wasn’t jealous of her, not at all. I couldn’t be jealous of her small interaction with Cade when her interest in Bret, and
their
history, had never bothered me. That made absolutely no sense.

   I was angry at myself for believing there was some strange connection between
Cade and myself. I was angry at myself for having so many doubts about Bret, a man that loved me and would
never
do to me what I had done to him. I had been vulnerable when I’d kissed Cade, I’d let him, but I knew better now. Now that I knew what he was really like, I would never allow such a thing to happen again.

   I wanted to believe everything that I was telling myself, but the awful truth was that I
was
jealous, and Cade had not taken anything from me that I had not willingly given to him. I could try and convince myself that what I felt for Cade was wrong and that he was a user, but I was not one to lie to myself. I never had been; I never would be. And I didn’t believe that Cade had just been toying with me. I didn’t know him well, but I knew that wasn’t the kind of man he was. He was too straightforward for that.

   “It’s a little bit more than a tree house,” Aiden said softly.

   “I’m not dying in a tree house,” Jenna retorted.

   “
We spent a lot of time on it; it’s more than a tree house,” Aiden insisted. “It’s actually pretty well equipped for a tree house.”
   “We haven’t been there in years Aiden, you can’t possibly know what condition it’s still in,” I reminded him.

   He shifted uncomfortably. “I’ve been there recently.”

   I started slightly, my mouth parted in surprise. Aiden and I didn’t tell each other
every
thing, but we shared more, and were closer than most siblings. We looked out for, loved, and protected Abby, but the two of us were closer in age, bonded by more shared experiences, and truly liked each other now that we were older. Going to the tree house didn’t sound like something Aiden would do, he was not a nostalgic person, and it definitely seemed like something he would have told me about.

   I didn’t know if I was more stunned, or more hurt, that he hadn’t.
I didn’t ask when, or why, he didn’t seem to want to elaborate.  

  
“It will be a good place to hide out for tomorrow. We can come up with a better plan then.”

  
“Cranberry isle is a good three miles away,” Jenna mumbled.

   “Then we had better get
moving,” Bret said softly. He slipped his hand into mine, squeezing it gently.
  

CHAPTER 10

   It was a tree house, and I still refused to go inside it. I sat against the tree, my knees drawn up to my chest, surrounded only by the forest. There was a small stream about thirty feet away, I couldn’t see it, but I knew its location from childhood memories. The sound of running water was like gentle music in the oddly still woods. Birds were not singing; there were no squirrels running amongst the trees. I did not hear any forest creatures moving about. I was terrified that the alien’s magic ability to freeze things had somehow extended to them. How could we stop them if they were able to pull off such a colossal attack?

  
I could only hope that it was our presence that had scared the animals away, or that they still had not awakened in the early morning hours. I rested my forehead on my knees, trying not to think about it, trying hard to just block everything out but it was almost impossible. Aiden had been right; the tree house was in good shape, excellent even. I didn’t think it was the new home owners that had kept it in such good condition, Aiden and I had not disclosed its location when we moved from Cranberry isle. This was
our
tree house; neither of us could stand the thought of anyone else playing amongst its walls.

   Abby had been too young for
the tree house at the time, she had come out here with us once, but I highly doubted she had remembered how to get here on her own. Abby was many things, but adventurous and handy were not amongst her vast list of attributes. That left only Aiden to keep up the maintenance, and he had done a wonderful job of it. I just couldn’t believe that he had kept it from me all of these years, but then there was plenty that I had kept from him also.

   I lifted my head, gazing up at the wooden structure thirty feet above my head. It was nestled in the crook of
four massive branches in a large maple. There were three ways to escape the structure, and two ways to enter it. A long metal ladder stretched from the ground up to a hole against the trunk of the tree. The hole was usually left open, but it could be closed and the ladder thrown away if such a thing was required, or wanted. We had thrown it aside often as children, when we had been escaping the imaginary creatures chasing us. It was not lost on me the complete circle that our lives had completed from then, until now.