Chapter 20

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The sun was rising.
Gerard and I ran for the forest, trying to buy a little more time, gain a little more distance from the horrors we had uncovered.
"Almost there..." he breathed, "Have to sleep in the ground."
We broke through the tree line and stopped.
"It's easy. It's instinct. Watch me." and he knelt and began to tunnel with his hands into the dirt. He looked up at me desperately, "Go. Do it now. You'll know."
I knelt, too, hesitating. Did I even need to breathe? I dropped the gun I had been carrying, covering it with leaves. Nobody would find it. My fingers dug into the earth and I knew, absolutely, what I must do.
It was blindingly fast, the digging, the dive headfirst into the ground, the earth moving almost on its own to swallow me safely in her cool embrace. I was suspended there, not needing air, feeling almost... at home.
These realizations came to me moments before my eyes closed, and I fell into the deep sleep of the undead.

****
We had gone alone to Portland, just to scout ahead. We had stopped a caravan of corrections officers transporting prisoners to the camp.
The prisoners were given the vans to get away. The drained bodies of the corrupt officers were now decomposing in the trees.
We stopped Frank's borrowed Jeep just outside of Cathedral Park, a few miles into the forest to hide it. Under other circumstances, this would have been a beautiful place.
And then we saw the human bodies strung up in the line of arches.
It was just after 3am, and we didn't have much time to get a good idea of what we would be up against - or if we would even stand a chance to try. We stealthily crept through the arches, looking for any survivors.
There were none.
I had to turn my eyes from the bloated human faces. I couldn't bear to see so many innocent people hanging from their wrists, ankles, and necks - twisted like crude marionettes. Flies and gnats buzzed around in thick swarms.
If I could have been sick, I would have. All it could do was serve as fuel to stoke my anger.
We continued to move, cat-like in the shadows. Something felt wrong to me. If there was truly a huge coven here, with a feeding camp and a place to send humans out all over the coast... where was it?
I looked at Gerard as we walked, his face intense, as though asking himself the same question.
A moment later, we heard the unmistakable click and whir of a UV gun coming to life above us. I looked up, both of us skittering back away as a woman's voice said coldly, "Don't move."
We both froze, watching her jump from her vantage point on a tree branch, and land lithely on her feet. She had the gun trained on us, but she wasn't human. She was a vampire.
Corrupt humans trading victims and weapons for little luxuries. I wondered if they had a priest locked away here somewhere to bless a store of holy water.
She moved closer, her face intent on us. Her long, shining dreadlocks were tied back from her face. Her skin was dark, but her brown eyes had the same brightness to them that Gerard's did. That mine did.
A mark of what we were.
"What are you doing here?" She snapped, creeping closer, her leather boots creaking a little as she did.
Gerard's hands were up, showing he was unarmed, "My mate and I were just looking for the camp. We're on our way down to Los Angeles. We were hoping to trade for a victim and a place to spend the day before we move on. We're both quite thirsty."
"Bullshit." She hissed, "You're one of those fuckers that gutted the Tacoma camp. I saw you."
My stomach dropped. They'd left a survivor.
He paused, trying to feel a way towards another lie, "We came to work things out with Sable..." he began, but I watched her finger slide to the trigger.
She was going to kill him.
In that moment, I understood fully what it meant to have the strength and speed of all of my creators in me.
My anger exploded into a blurred series of movements. No one could have flown as fast as I did to her, slamming the barrel of the gun down to the ground. The UV bullets fractured the concrete as I wrenched the gun from her hands, using only a fraction of my strength. I felt the sting against my body as the UV bullets in the ground shone against my bare hands. I aimed the gun at her, backing away toward Gerard. I didn't even spare a glance to him, my eyes trained so intensely on the woman.
It took less than a second. I could feel Gerard's surprise, and it was mirrored in the woman's face.
I wanted nothing more than to empty this gun into her. This evil, cruel person who had been less than a second from turning Gerard to ashes, was guilty of so much more than that slight against us. She was one of them.
Her hands raised a little, stepping back from the UV light shining from the hole in the ground as well. She blinked against the glow, saying softly, "Let's talk. I have information you can use. I'll run, if you let me g-"
One short burst from the weapon that I held hit her in the chest. She gasped, her eyes wide as the points of light began to burn her from the inside. A ring of ash appeared around each tiny hole, growing larger. She tried to draw breath, and fell to her knees.
Gerard grabbed my hand as she began to crumble. He yanked me back the way we had come, running as fast as we could. It was too much to hope that nobody had not heard gunfire twice in the silence.
"Jesus, Rae," he breathed as we sped back through the macabre arches of Cathedral Park, "That was... cold-blooded."
I glanced at him, the gun still clutched in my hands as we sighted the tree line, "She was going to shoot you." I said, incredulous that he would criticize me for killing her. Would he rather I'd just let her?
He grinned at me as we sped further on. His voice was husky as he said softly, "It was a compliment."
I suddenly felt myself grinning back, tipping him a wink. As always, he seemed completely unaffected by danger. I felt as though I'd never loved him more.
The sky brightened. We pushed ourselves harder. There would be no time to run the three miles or so to the Jeep, and less time to deal with the way my body was suddenly burning for him. It would have to wait.
The eastern sky was now purple.

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