Shattered

Chapter 72: Strong

Chase's POV:

The second Kaden showed up, I didn't see myself as being any use to anyone. If he couldn't get in that room with Violet, I couldn't either, so I went looking for something else. Violet said all this shit was connected. The vampire attacks, Max, the supernatural world, it was all connected and if that was true...

I pulled out my phone to check the blueprints again. I'd snapped a picture of it one of the times Violet had it out, in case we got separated or in the unlikely event she forgot her way. Max's office was what I wanted, so I went down the endless mazes until I reached the room I was looking for. It wouldn't open, so I shot the lock. Then it opened.

I kicked the door in and hid behind the wall, then peered around to make sure no one was inside. It was empty. I stepped in, looking around the room, my eyes drawn to the wall of monitors that had videos of the vampire attack in Las Vegas frozen on individual faces. I approached them, narrowing my eyes at the screens.

I was starting to suspect something was up. Maybe it was a desperate last attempt of denial that I thought my sister might still be alive or... Whatever the fuck happened to a person when they were a vampire, but now I was even more sure. I thought I recognized some of the faces on the videos but now they were all here in one spot? Yeah... I remembered those girls. I'd uncovered their bodies in Henderson.

I moved away from the monitors, instead going to a desk that had piles of pictures spread out all over it. Pictures of those same girls, all marked with red x's. I gathered them up and went through them. Every page was marked the same at the top. Henderson Vampires. I went through them, seeing one picture of the girls with a white background, matched with a still taken from videos in Vegas. Every picture I flipped through had a red x drawn across their faces until one didn't.

My heart stopped as I stared at the picture of my baby sister. It had to be taken that same day she vanished. She looked young. Exactly how I remembered her, but her expression was dazed, like she was drugged. My hand fisted, crinkling the paper. There was no still of her, no red x. Just a question mark.

They were looking for her. I was right. She was a vampire and they were looking for her.

Violet's POV:

Panic was a horrible thing. It took over every part of you, even the logical parts, and I always panicked with needles. I couldn't help it. It wasn't a conscious decision or action, but I folded in on myself. I could feel the hopelessness of the thirteen year-old me. She shut down. She stopped feeling anything because it was too painful to feel. Her childhood, her innocence, her life, my life... It was all ripped away and it wasn't fucking fair. What kind of fucked up world did we live in that someone could just ruin someone's life like it was nothing? What kind of people lived in the world that were capable of doing such horrendous things and why did they get to live when good people died? It was all disgusting, unfair, horrific, abominable.

I hated them. I hated every person that was even capable of considering an action so awful. I felt all the anger the thirteen-year-old me shut down because she couldn't do anything else, she was just a kid for fuck's sake, she—

No. Wait a second. I was dissociating from it. Removing myself from the equation and thinking of the younger version of myself as a different person because it hurt too much to think of her as part of me. But she was. She was part of me and it wasn't her fault. None of what happened was her fault and it was wrong of me to shove her away like it was. It was wrong of me to shove me away. It wasn't my fault. It was never my fault, I reminded myself. You should've fought back, the angry part of me said. I was just a fucking kid, I snapped back. You shouldn't have froze up, it growled. Freeze responses are normal, I argued. You should've told your mom what was happening, it yelled. I thought I was protecting her and I was a fucking child, I screamed back.