I relished seeing them. It was a small blow to have struck against them, but I’d take each and every win I could get right now.
Eventually, I would have to give in and take my meds. I needed to keep my temperature down and ensure I had every chance of surviving this. But I only ever took half of what they left for me. If I took nothing, they’d just inject me with it anyway. They weren’t going to let me die unless there was nothing they could do to stop it. I was their little vaccine farm after all.
I pressed my face against my knees, picturing each of my Night Keepers as they hunted for me. Saint and his dark soul, plotting the cruellest of fates for my enemies; Kyan thirsting for blood with vengeance written into his flesh as if it were inked there alongside his tattoos; Blake preparing to fight for me with all the strength he’d built from his pain and suffering; Monroe waiting to charge in and save me like a dark knight with fury and justice in his heart.
So help everyone in this building when they came for me. The four horsemen were going to collect their queen. And when they arrived, there would be blood to pay.
I held out a while longer before I took half my pain meds and stuffed the rest under the mattress. I curled up beneath the blanket on the bed and shivered myself into sleep as the sedative dragged me away. It wasn’t all bad. In the darkness, I always seemed to return to one place. A time when life was simple and good and nothing bad ever happened. So at least there I could escape this agony, for a little while.
“What’s the point of this?” I huffed as I tried to climb up onto the lowest branch of a large tree. Jess was already high up in the canopy, her whoops of excitement occasionally carrying back to me.
“It’s to make you strong,” Dad called from the ground as I managed to heave myself up onto the next branch. Jess was thirteen and had stronger arms than me. I still had beanstalks that could barely hold my weight, let alone drag me up a stupid tree.
“Why do I have to be strong?” I groaned as my palm rubbed against a spiky knot and I gave up, dropping down to sit with my back to the trunk and pouting at my dad.
He pushed his glasses up his nose before folding his muscular arms. “Because you never know what life is going to throw at you, Tater-tot. You need to prepare for every outcome so you can weather anything. You have to be ready to fight, just in case you ever need to.”
“Well, if I didn’t climb trees then there wouldn’t be anything to weather. What if I fall?” I tossed at him. I was in a bad mood today. We were staying on a farm and there was a rooster who always made a horrible noise at stupid o’clock. I’d give him a cock-a-doodle-doo to remember if I got my hands on him.
“What’s the alternative, kiddo? Are you gonna stay at home hiding from life forever?”
“That’s the safest thing to do, isn’t it?” I insisted. Sometimes I got so tired of moving around the country, never staying anywhere too long, never having fun that didn’t involve being stuck in the middle of nowhere. I liked campfires and scavenger hunts, but I also liked sleeping ‘til noon and hanging out with Elle Tompkins.
Okay, so maybe I wasn’t just mad about the rooster. Dad had made us move again. I’d known it was coming. But I’d really, really liked the last place in Virginia. And Elle had been cool. She enjoyed dancing and singing and had promised to teach me a routine we could do together. I’d been dumb enough to think I could convince Dad to finally stay in one place. But he’d said no again and again. I just hadn’t wanted to hear it. Now I was up a tree on a drizzly day in nowheresville and I’d never see Elle again. It sucked.
“Life can’t be lived in one place, kiddo,” Dad said with a taut frown on his brow.
“Why not? I liked the last town, why can’t we live there like normal people?” I pushed my lower lip out.
“I don’t mean physically, I mean everything is always changing, you’ll always be moving forward, time will keep passing, stuff