For the Hopeless

Chapter 24: Determination

"How did you know that we could do this?" Samara asked as she knelt beside the corpse, her hands hovering over its face. The man's eyes were wide open, his mouth hanging open in the same horrified way, but the girl didn't seem remotely bothered by it. Even the blood that still oozed in little spurts from the deep tears in his neck and torso didn't seem to faze her. Bailey smirked as Tawny shuddered again at the thought passing through Bailey's mind, but she made no comment to the sweet little telepath.

"That you could extract information from the minds of dead corpses?" the devil asked, and Samara nodded without looking up at her. "Just a lucky guess, really." Well, technically, it came from the same source that all of her information about the supernatural came from: centuries of experience. But who would want to hear about all that?

Samara looked up at her now, a knowing smirk on her face. "I'm sure you make those a lot."

"I wouldn't say a lot, per se," Bailey chuckled. "Just every now and again. When it's convenient." She crossed her arms over her chest, and she realized how nice it was to not feel the weight of the wings on her back. It was nice to be clothed, too, even if it was just a pair of old jeans that she was just now gaining enough weight to fill and a T-shirt that fit just the same. And to have her own pale white skin back...

Samara laughed softly, but turned her attention to the corpse beneath her fingers. The glow of her eyes increased, the rich amethyst reflecting brightly on the man's fair skin, and her body went still as the corpse began to move. It was only his lips, opening and closing as if he were gasping for air, but Tawny still shivered beside Bailey, and she felt the girl move closer to her. She slipped an arm around her small shoulders and pulled her closer still, finding the warmth of her friend, of her love, at her side to be of immeasurable comfort to her, and she wasn't even afraid.

"What do you want to know?" Samara asked in a gravelly voice, her face drawn beneath the strain of controlling the corpse.

"Where are his allies?" Bailey answered, all thoughts of comfort gone from her mind. The sensation of Tawny at her side vanished; there was only the mission. "Where is their headquarters? Where can I go to end this?" She vaguely felt Tawny's body stiffen, but it barely registered.

"You don't think you're going by yourself, do you?" she asked, but Samara spoke over her.

"Washington D.C. Where else?" Samara answered, more than a hint of bitterness to her tone. Whatever she was seeing in this man's mind – or whatever she was hearing or feeling or whatever – was doing plenty to infuriate her. The strain on her face melted into raw determination, and Bailey smiled to herself. Samara was a girl after her own heart.

"We should've seen that coming, I guess," she said, still smiling, though her eyes had focused on a point in the distance. "Are there any other clusters of humans and Traitors in the city?"

Samara was silent for a moment, but she soon answered, "Not beyond a few stragglers. The men you just wiped out were the last large group, and it seems that they were actually preparing to leave for the national headquarters."

"Do we know exactly where that is?" Bailey asked, her smile vanishing to leave her face the unmoving visage of a porcelain statue.

"Yes," came the answer, clipped and rough. "If there's anything else you want to know, ask now and ask fast," the girl went on, the words tumbling out of her mouth in a jumble. "This is starting to hurt. I can't hold on for much longer." Her hands began to tremble violently over the man's face, where his lips still worked furiously as he struggled to speak or breathe or whatever it was that zombies needed to do most.

"Does he know where any other sects of humans are?" Bailey asked swiftly, rambling almost as quickly as Samara had. She needed as much information as possible. She needed to hunt down every one of these bastards that she could and wipe them from the face of the Earth. "Where they're hiding any captured Novie, performing any human training, anything?"