Diary of the Unbroken (BOOK #4)

End of the Road

William

            The radio blared the oncoming night's forecast. I leaned back into the driver's seat, growing impatient. Jane had gone into the gas station nearly twenty minutes ago and still hadn't come out. I promised myself two more minutes, and if she wasn't back by then, I would go look for her.

            But seconds later, she came walking back to the car from around the back of the gas station, carrying a white paper bag.

            "Did you get lost?" I asked her as she pulled herself into the passenger's seat.

            She dropped the bag onto the center console. "Human food."

            "McDonald's?" I raised an eyebrow, though the smell of it was enticing. Blame that on my more human instincts thanks to my Hunter genes. "I thought you hated this kind of stuff."

            She dug into the bag, wrinkling her nose. "I do."

            I opened my mouth to ask more, but then I remembered an incident she shared while on our adventure. She once mentioned Luke dragging her to some diner in Newberry. I knew she left him without a goodbye, and I knew how she felt about missing him.

            She nibbled on a fry. "What's our next destination?"

            I glanced down at the map. The eastern seaboard laid out in front of me, red circles around destinations and red X's through others. A month had passed since we left Newberry, and so far, we'd gotten nowhere.

            "Good question."

            She narrowed her eyes at me. "So you've spent twenty minutes out here doing nothing?"

            "I'm down on leads, Jane," I told her, burying a hand in my hair. "Maybe we should just--"

            "Don't you dare say give up," she snapped. "We have risked way to much by going on this mission. Surely there's something we haven't seen yet. What about Charlotte? What about the Hunters' old base?"

            I shook my head. "The Originals cleared it out. You know there's nothing there."

            "Fine," she huffed, throwing her hands up in the hair. "We give up. We go back to Newberry and wait there like sitting ducks--waiting for whatever the Originals are planning next.  I'm sorry, William, but I can't do that. I can't go back empty handed. I just can't."

            I paused from staring at the map and looked back to her. "This is all about the cure isn't it? You want it so bad--because of Christopher and Luke. Don't you see, Jane? This is so much more than a personal vendetta."

            Her eyebrows furrowed in growing fury. "It's not just personal, William. A cure could save us all--a cure done right. It's not just to rid theworld of vampires. It's to rid ourselves of this life--the things that plagues us. We can stop worrying about hurting people. We can stop worrying over the sun taking the best of us and  our dimming blood supply. We could live and die just as humans."

            My chest strained as the old me broke through. The me stricken with depression over the fact that everything I touched died. Then, I'd only given into my true vampire self in order to further myself from those dark thoughts, but sometimes I still found myself huddled in the corner covered in blood and thinking of the possibility of ridding myself of this life.