The Survivors: Body & Blood (book 3)

Human

I SAT THERE TOO LONG, AND I THOUGHT TOO HARD. ON THE WAY home, I passed so many drunk girls stumbling out of bars and talking loudly with their friends that all I wanted to be was alone.

I wasn't familiar with this feeling. Was it dismay? Depression? I had been a lot of things in my life, felt a lot of things. But none of them made me seek isolation.

Sadie had her issues. Suddenly, I had mine.

I went to Ben and Noah's hotel room and turned on the TV. I stood there. I paced. Then I ate food from the minibar and watched reruns of Downton Abbey, which Ginny had got me hooked on. I drank a Coke out of a little glass bottle, and ate salt and vinegar potato chips because the salt and brine made me think of the thing I really loved to consume. Then I called the front desk and asked if they could bring more of both. I made a mental note to pay Sadie back for these indulgent expenditures.

Then my phone rang.

It was Kutoyis.

He never called me. And what was I supposed to say? Sam had claimed to have killed Sky, and I didn't want to tell him until we confirmed that. So I waited too long to say something.

"Hello?" he said. "Mark?"

"Hi," I said.

"I just saw Red Eye. He said Everett left with Ginny. None of them answered their phones. Is everything okay?" he asked. He sounded panicked.

"He's here with us," I said, and took another swig of the sugary stuff.

"Why am I not there?" he asked. I couldn't find it anywhere within me to match his alarm.

"Relax, champ. They just came for the night. Ginny is already on her way back or her way . . . somewhere. She's taking Noah and Ben to acclimate to playing human a bit better. And I'm sure Everett will be back in a few hours. He can flash in and out, remember?"

"Yeah, thanks to me!" he yelled. "Those powers came from my clan, from my fucking children to help your fucking cause. Now everyone thinks they can cut me out of the loop?" His anger prompted me to mute the TV, sit up straight, and focus on this conversation.

"Dude, it's not like that."

"You think you're so smart. So cool. Sadie's little sidekick, huh? Well I should be there with her. She's my sister. You don't know anything about this. It isn't your fight. It's mine!" he raged.

"Seriously, why are you so angry? If you know Sadie at all like you claim to, you know this is her M.O. She travels light. Don't take it personally. You also have a very important job to do. I'm merely assisting Sadie. You're leading the whole damned battalion."

"You're such a prick," he said.

Um, okay. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me. Always want the glory. Always want the girl. I should be with her and Everett should be with her, but you? You're nothing. You steal from Warrior, now you steal from Gold Heart, and you try to steal from me?"

"You're out of line, Blood," I said, unwilling to lose my calm. So this was the famous temper Everett talked about. How stirred up was he to pick this fight from a trillion miles away.

"All you've ever done is try to screw me and the people around me. You better hope I don't find another teleportation power like Ev's, or I'll be there in a heartbeat."

"You don't have a heartbeat," I said, because sometimes I'm a smartass.

"Yeah, well, at least I'm not a half-dead murdering asshole like you. Your days are numbered," he said. It sounded like he was losing some part of his mind.

"I'll be on the lookout for that," I said, still not taking his bait.

"You tell Sadie to call me. Tell her to remember where she came from. We should be in this together."

I laughed. "I'll be sure to do that. Goodnight, Kutoyis."

"Fuck you." He hung up.

When my brain decided it didn't care or couldn't figure out why an ally had just called to scream at me, I picked up the remote, unmuted the TV, and stopped thinking about it.

Then it rang again. It was Cole.

I had zero idea if Sadie and Cole talked. I didn't know if she had cut him out, or if she had kept her promise to keep him in the loop. He texted me from time to time, and I always answered. I knew he was still in pieces, like any human with a Savior-on-a-White-Horse complex would have been when faced with the reality of damsel-Sadie's life.

"Hey," I said, mustering a friendly energy into my voice. "Long time no talk. What's up?"

"Sadie's not answering her phone. What are you guys doing in England?"

"How do you know we're here?" I asked.

"She tweeted earlier, and she had the geo-locate function on."

"You follow her on Twitter?" I asked. I thought of all the grossly romantic and flirtatious conversations Sadie and Everett had on Twitter. He was watching that? Wasn't that like a knife to the chest?

"I wouldn't say follow so much as stalk," he said.

"Do you ever worry your life is a bit too Sadie-centric?" I asked.

He gave a long sigh. "Why are you in England?"

Poor kid. I wondered if he regretted the life choices that got him to this point, tracking down a girl he never really had, via her boyfriend's brother's cell phone. "Tomb town," I said. "She tell you about that? The neighborhood, let's say, with all the bodies in it?"

"She might have mentioned it. My head's a little full of the details. I'm not great at sorting them out," he said.

"Well, we got a lead. Someone we needed was here, and we were here for a little throwdown."

"Is everyone okay?" he asked.

"Totally fine," I said. "The bad guys brought a knife to a gun fight."

"You fight with guns?" he asked, an emotion I couldn't read in his tone.

"No, dude, it's just an expression. Anything else I can help you with?"

"Is it going to be over soon?"

Ha! "Honestly? I don't think I know what "over' will look like, or if it will ever come," I said.

"I thought you guys could see the future," he argued.

"Well, that's proving less reliable than we thought," I laughed. A sad laugh. "This is getting harder," he admitted. "I wish I was there." "Well, too bad you're not one of us," I said sarcastically.

Then there was some immense sadness in his voice when he said, "Yeah. Too bad."

Jeez, how deep in was he? "Cole, you want my advice?"

"I guess."

I sighed. "You live in a city with ten million people, most of whom are human. Go find another girl. Fall in love. Live your life. Move to the suburbs, get married, have kids, coach the soccer team, and have the little life you want."

"You don't know what I want," he said, and he sounded honestly offended.

I didn't care. I saw through it. "Yeah. I do. And you'll never have it with her. Stop thinking you will. Quit before she breaks you anymore. She breaks everyone. It's what she does."

"That can't be true," he said. Defiantly.

"I don't know what kind of spell she has you under, but I'm going to say this as your friend: Quit while you're ahead. Or at least not . . . Any further behind."

"I love her, Mark."

"I see that, dude. Let's hope you can find a way to stop."