The Vault (A Farm Novel) (28 page)

LILY

Mel and I find the vials of the cure downstairs, stored in a refrigerator full of blood and dangerous chemicals. I recognize it because I remember the bottle that Carter used in Huntsville. I remember seeing it discarded on the floor of my cell. This one is identical. We find a syringe in a first-aid kit in the downstairs bathroom. The room isn’t big enough for both of us and the dog, so Mel tells Chuy to wait out in the living room. I wish there was somewhere else we could put him because I’m afraid he’ll give us away, but she doesn’t seem worried.

I have to use the stretchy rubber bandages to tie off her arm before I can dose her.

“I’m surprised you can do all this,” Mel says, watching me work. “Do you remember it from when Carter dosed you?”

“No. I’m just going by what I’ve seen on TV.” I don’t want to think about the memories I do have from my time as a Tick.

“Do you remember very much?”

“No,” I lie, poking at her arm with my fingertip to find a vein.

“Do you think I will?”

I stop prodding her arm and look up at her, studying her face. The face of my twin. I never felt like she looked like me until now.

And yet we still look different. It’s not like keeping up appearances has been a top priority, but I am aware that I’m looking pretty bedraggled. My hair is shaggier, because two days ago I was a wild creature running through the desert and I’ve only finger-combed my hair since then. I feel like I have a mile of dirt coating my body. My clothes don’t fit well because they aren’t really my clothes. They’re clothes that Carter got me from somewhere after the whole Tick thing and I don’t even want to think about what happened to my old clothes. I know how bad I look. And I know that Mel doesn’t.

Somehow being a vampire agrees with her. Her short, chopped hair accentuates her delicate jaw. Her skin seems to glow. And her eyes . . . God, her eyes.

In all the years we lived together . . . In all the years she was my sister and my best friend and the best parts of me . . . In all those years, she never once looked me right in the eyes like she’s doing now. Of course, her eyes aren’t human eyes. They are vampire eyes. Her pupils are scalloped around the edges, like a chameleon’s. They are both beautiful and creepy as hell, but they are still hers and they’re focused directly on me.

And it breaks my heart that after I give her this shot, she may never do that again.

And then I realize that she’s waiting for me to answer. That she thinks I’m not answering because I can’t tell her the truth.

I set down the syringe and I grab her hand. “Do you want to remember?”

She thinks for a second and I can almost see tears pooling in those eyes. “I want to remember some of it. And I want to forget some of it.”

I give her hand a squeeze. “Okay, then. You decided. You pick right now which parts of it you want to remember and which parts you want to forget. And you file away the good parts in your mind. You make yourself remember all the things that happened that were good and you set aside anything that wasn’t.” She nods, pressing her lips together, like she’s trying not to cry. “All you ever wanted was a choice, right? So this is your chance to decide. You’re in control of this, okay?”

She nods once more and my heart breaks all over again, because right now, in this moment, she is more and less my sister than she’s ever been. And this person, this person she is now, is someone I’ll never really get to know. I can know who she was and who she’ll be, but this person will be gone forever.

I drop her hand and pull her into my arms, squeezing her tight. I don’t want to let go. Ever.

Before I can make myself let go, there’s a knock on the door.

“Lily, are you in there?” Carter asks.

I pull back. Mel’s eyes are wide and worried.

“Yes.”

She looks at the needle. “Do it now,” she whispers.

I don’t have time to think. Don’t have time to mourn. I pick up the needle and grab her arm. Even as I’m sliding the tip through the whisper-thin skin at the inside of her elbow, I hear Sebastian coming up behind Carter.

“Are they in there?” He practically roars the question.

He knows.

I push down the plunger on the needle.

From outside the bathroom, it sounds like all hell is breaking loose. Carter and Sebastian are yelling. Furniture crashes and shatters. I block it all out.

I pull the syringe from Mel’s arm and let it fall to the floor. Mel sucks in a deep breath, clutching her arm. I catch her as she goes limp.

A moment later, the door slams open and the chaos from outside pours into the room. It rages around me, but I can’t make myself respond. I can’t make myself talk. I can’t even let myself cry. All I can do is hold my sister and cling to the memories that I’m deciding to keep, because they are precious and too few and they may have to last me forever.

At some point, Carter must calm Sebastian down. At some point, he comes and takes Mel from my arms. At some point, I let him. And then Carter holds me while I cry. And then finally, when my tears are gone and the memories are tucked into my mind, I pull myself out of Carter’s arms and I go upstairs to the office by the entrance. I collect the Slinky from the shelf and the pea coat from the rack by the door. And then I go to the bedroom where Sebastian has laid out Mel. She is sleeping. Chuy is beside her on the bed, his chin resting on his paws. I lay the coat on her chest and I climb into the bed on her other side. I stay there all night, passing the Slinky from one hand to the other, taking what comfort I can from its soft slunk, slunk, slunk
.

CARTER

I’ve never seen anyone lose their shit the way Sebastian lost his shit when he realized what Mel and Lily had done. For several terrifying minutes, I couldn’t control him and I was certain he would kill us all. And that there was nothing I could do to stop it. That this was it.

After everything I’d done to get us there. After all the sacrifices I’d made to keep Lily alive, after all the people who’d died to get the cure, Sebastian was going to kill us all and the cure would disappear with us.

That fear, all-consuming, overwhelming, soul-swallowing, magnified his own despair. I felt it like a feedback loop I couldn’t break out of.

But then, somehow, some shred of calm snuck in. Some shard of peace and logic and serenity crept into my subconscious and through me to Sebastian. By the time he broke the door down, he was actually almost composed.

He scooped Mel up and carried her off while I held a sobbing Lily. She was so upset it took nearly a half hour to get the whole story out of her. By the time she was done talking, she was just done. She disappeared for a minute and then returned with a Slinky—where had she gotten that?— and a coat. She found the bedroom where Sebastian had laid Mel down and she climbed in bed with Mel. It didn’t take her long to fall asleep. After that, I alternated between monitoring the security system and checking in on Mel and Lily.

I didn’t know what to say to Sebastian. So I just stood nearby, waiting for him to talk. Except he didn’t. He just sat by her bed, watching her, as silent and as still as Chuy.

I moved closer, got right in his line of vision so he couldn’t ignore me.

“This isn’t helping.”

I got nothing from him.

“I’ve been watching the security system.”

Finally he looked up but said nothing.

“It’s holding Sabrina at bay. For now. But we can’t stay in here forever. Even if Sabrina doesn’t figure out how to sabotage the air filtration system, Lily and I need food.”

And Mel would, too, when she woke up. If she woke up. But I couldn’t bring myself to say that aloud.

Sebastian still said nothing, but at least he was listening now. Showing some flicker of interest.

“You know why she did this, right? She did it so that you could take that stake out of your chest. So that you would be at full strength when you fight Sabrina. She did it because she knew you would have the best shot of any of us at beating her. Don’t waste this. We’ve got to get that stake out of your heart and we’ve got to do it now or we’re all dead. You know I’m right.”

“So that’s the role I get to play? The wounded warrior who sacrifices himself for the woman he loves?”

“I don’t know. She is the woman you love, isn’t she?”

He made a sound that was halfway between a strangled sob and a laugh. Then finally, he stood, slowly unbuttoned his shirt, and started unwinding the bandage around his chest. I went off to the bathroom to look for—I don’t know—some Bactine or something. By the time I got back, his shirt and the yards of bandage were in a blood-soaked pile on the floor. I walked in just in time to see him wrench the jagged spike of wood from his chest. He doubled over in pain as the stake came out. It was maybe six inches long and covered in so much blood it was stained red. This was no stake. This wasn’t a piece of smooth maple, honed to a point. This was a crude hunk of one-inch pine. Yeah, it was broken at an angle, so there was sort of a point to it, but for the most part it had been jammed into his ribs. It splintered on the way in, leaving slivers of wood behind. It had broken bones. The hole in his chest was almost two inches across and the blood that pumped out of it was already tinged pink with pus. I dashed across the room and caught him just before he collapsed on the floor.

Even though he hadn’t made a sound pulling the stake out, Lily woke up. Hell, I probably made more noise than he had.

“What’s hap—” Then she saw him. She took it all in: the blood, the stake, the wound. She hopped off the bed and ran for the bathroom. A second later, I heard the sounds of her puking. If I hadn’t been supporting Sebastian’s weight, I might have puked, too. She was back by the time I’d moved him to a bed in another room. “What do you need?”

“More bandages. Towels. A magnifying glass and tweezers. Hell, maybe pliers.”

She nodded and disappeared, leaving me alone with Sebastian. Until she got back, there was nothing I could do but stare in horror at this wound.

This is what he’d done to himself to stay by Mel’s side. This was the pain he’d been in for her.

God, I felt like an ass for asking if he loved her.

LILY

I don’t have the stomach to watch Carter cleaning Sebastian’s wounds. All that blood brings up memories that will haunt me forever.

I want to shut the door on that part of my mind. To close myself off from it. But unlike the solid steel door on the vault, no part of my mind can be completely shut off. The memories and doubts seep in around the doorframe.

Moving helps chase them away. Action.

So I keep moving, wandering through the living room and then scavenging in the kitchen a bit. There’s no real food. No human food. Not that that’s particularly surprising. So I find a granola bar in one of my bags. It’s crumbly and stale, but I scarf it down anyway. I’m licking crumbs off the package when Carter finds me in the galley kitchen.

“We need to talk,” he says, sounding stern. I know this voice. It’s his Leader of the Rebellion voice. It’s the voice he doesn’t bring out unless something serious is going down.

Fear tiptoes down my back. He was up in Sebastian’s office just now—where the security monitors are.

“What’s up?” I ask, bracing myself for even more bad news. What it could be, I can’t imagine. What could be worse than we’re-trapped-in-an-underground-vault-with-a-scary-ass-vampire-on-the-other-side-of-the-door?

He moves to stand just across the counter from me. His expression is so tense—so serious—I want the comfort of his arms around me before I have to hear whatever he’s going to say, but he doesn’t open his arms to me and so I don’t move toward him.

Instead, he braces his palms on the six-foot expanse of granite countertop that separates us and ducks his head, like he can’t even look at me when he delivers this news. Which is maybe my tenth clue that this is bad, but my first that it’s actually about me. And all I can think is that this must be about the cure he delivered back in Huntsville. Maybe that it doesn’t actually work. Or that it’s only temporary. Or that it will kill me in the end. Because that’s the one thing worse than scary vampires at our gates: me a Tick again. Me human just long enough to inject my sister with a serum that will ultimately kill her. Yeah. Either of those two things would be worse.

Suddenly I’m glad he’s not looking at me, because then he won’t see the way I’m holding my breath, because if I have no air in my lungs, I can’t sob.

Still looking at the counter between his hands, he says, “When we were at El Corazon, after you’d been sedated, Roberto told me something. Something that hadn’t even occurred to me.” He looks at me then, with his head still ducked, so it’s almost like he’s looking at me from under his lashes.

“What?” I whisper.
Just tell me!
I scream in my head.

“I’m an
abductura
.”

For a moment—for a long moment—I don’t even comprehend his words. It’s so not what I expected to hear that it’s like he’s actually spoken some other language that I can’t understand.

“You’re a . . .” The sentence started as a question, but I finish it as a statement. “Ooooh. You’re an
abductura
.”

“Yes.” He looks up at me again, almost hesitantly, like he’s waiting for the backlash.

“You’re an
abductura
,” I repeat stupidly. And then with more confidence. “Of course you’re an
abductura
.” This was his horrible news? This? I actually chuckle in relief. I am practically giddy. “Gosh, how did I not see that?”

“I’m an
abductura
. Doesn’t that bother you?”

He sounds so . . . offended I almost have to smile. I can’t even look at him for a solid minute.

Then I just shake my head. “It bothers me that I didn’t figure it out. Does that count?”

He makes a low grumbling noise—almost like a growl—as he pushes himself away from the counter to pace the length of the kitchen. “That’s not what I mean. I’m being serious.”

“Well, I’m being serious, too.” I follow, not letting him get too far away from me, not letting him put too much space between us. I rise up on my tippy toes and cup his jaw in my hands. “If I’m going to pride myself on being smart, then I need to step up my game, because I should have seen this coming. Sebastian started Elite Military Academy because he knew that kids like you—rebellious, strong-willed, smart kids—were statistically more likely to be
abducturae,
and that’s where he found you, befriended you, and took you under his wing. You are incredibly charismatic and a natural leader. Honestly, I do not know why I didn’t see it before.”

“Would you please take this seriously!”

“I am. I just don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to be pissed.” He whirls back around. “Obviously you haven’t thought this through, because you should be mad. You should be furious!”

“Well, I’m not.” I can’t do anything except shrug. “Why exactly should I be furious?”

“Because I love you.”

My breath flutters around in my chest, because—holy crap—that’s the first time he’s told me that in a long time. I just wish he hadn’t hurled it, like an accusation. Or maybe
confession
was a better term. Somehow, loving me pisses him off. I’m just not sure why. “I love you, too,” I admit. “You know that, right?”

“Exactly,” he says in that same terse, angry voice. “I love you. I have the ability to mold your emotional experience. Therefore you love me. You love me because I
make
you feel that way. For all we know, you don’t actually give a damn about me at all.”

“When you say it like that, it sounds like
you
should be mad at
me
, not the other way around.” But he isn’t mad at me. I can tell that. He’s mad at himself, and frustrated with me for not understanding why.

“Don’t you get it? I made you fall in love with me. I never gave you a choice.”

“No. I don’t get it,” I tell him. “I don’t understand. In all the months we’ve been together, I never felt like I was forced into anything. I just felt lucky, because you’re the smartest, strongest person I know. And I get to be with you. That’s not anything I’m going to complain about.”

“Even if you don’t have a choice?”

I try to see it from his point of view, try to understand his logic. And, yes, I get it. When he’d first come looking for me after the Tick-pocalypse, he thought I was the
abductura
. He thought I had the power to control his emotions and it had made him feel powerless. He hated it.

Again, I walk over to him and wrap my arms around his waist. I feel the familiar tingle of excitement at being so close to him. I relish it, because when I’d turned—when I’d been a Tick—I thought I’d lost it forever. I thought I’d never feel that way again.

It still scares me, because Carter has pushed me away before. When he got freaked out by the idea that he might not be able to protect me, when he thought being apart from him was in my best interest, he’d pushed until I’d left. Or I’d run. I wasn’t really sure anymore who I blamed for that. It didn’t matter. What matters now is that we are back together and I’m not going to let anything—even his doubts—get between us again.

“I do understand why this bothers you. No one wants to be in a one-sided relationship. But you’re thinking about this the wrong way. You’re forgetting all the very real reasons I have for loving you.”

I lean back and look at him, taking in the signs of exhaustion around his eyes that somehow only make them look bluer.

When I first met him, I was drawn to his charisma and—yeah, sure—his hotness. But I didn’t know him. I didn’t have any real reason to want to be with him. But now? Now that I really know him?

“Yes, I do love you purely because you love me, but not in the way you think. Mel and I were on that Farm and might not have made it out if you hadn’t come for us. You searched Farm after Farm until you found us.”

His back and shoulders are covered in scars. Places where he’d had tracking chips inserted subcutaneously and then later sliced out. One for each Farm he’d broken into and out of while looking for me.

I slide my hand up under the hem of his shirt and trace the lean muscles of his back until my fingers find them.

His eyes flicker closed at my touch, but then open again when I say, “You put yourself at risk over and over again. For me. You never gave up on me. Even after I turned into a Tick, you still fought for me. You found the cure. You saved me. Carter—” My voice breaks, and for a second, I almost can’t go on. “And, yeah, when I’m with you, I can feel how much you love me, but maybe I need that. I’m a naturally cynical person. I was abandoned by my father and emotionally shut out by my mother. I don’t know, maybe if I couldn’t feel how much you love me, maybe I’d have trouble believing it myself.”

I don’t know if I’ve convinced him, but he drops his forehead to mine, just resting against me for a moment before breathing out a slow, tired breath. His breath smells slightly spicy from the gum he’s been chewing. He feels warm and solid beneath my hands. And good.

Then his mouth is on mine and he’s kissing me. A deep, soul-searing kiss that I feel from my skin all the way to my bones and in every cell in between. His hands are holding me so close, like he can’t bear to let me go, like he needs me as desperately as I need him. Maybe there are more things we should talk about, but for now, this is enough. Even though just kissing him will never be enough. But, in this moment, it almost is.

It’s almost enough to block out the memories from my time as a Tick. There are things I know I’ll never share with him. Things that will haunt my thoughts and terrorize my dreams. Maybe forever. But I have no intention of letting those nightmares destroy this. Because I could get lost in them or I could get lost in this. And I choose this moment.