The Survivors: Body & Blood (book 3)

The Beginning

IT WAS A SICKENING ROAR, MORBID AND LOW AND MIXED WITH screams. I flung myself across the square to see what had caused it.

And there was Everett, holding an unchained John to the ground as blood poured out of John's skull. It covered Everett's face.

I wanted to ask: What just happened? But I couldn't. Even as I saw Everett fall to the ground and begin to writhe in pain, an action my mind couldn't explain, I couldn't run to him. Something was calling out to me, drawing me toward John's dying body.

I bent over him, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The blood was hot, red, coming from the back of his head — the occipital lobe? In that moment only minutes ago when Everett had looked at me so intently as I marked the spot on the brain, I thought he was feeling the weight of knowing we might have figured out how to kill me. But maybe he was really just telling me, softly, that if that were the way to kill John, then he would do it. I couldn't process this as I saw John suffer. Sweat burst on his brow as he struggled for each limp breath. His face was red, but his lips were starting to look a strange gray-blue color. I knew he was dying. But more than that, I knew that in this moment he was human.

So there was an interim step between life and death for a Survivor:

Humanity.

Instinct told me to pull out the vial of Fateor I carried and hurriedly put it on his left wrist. He tried to resist — as if he knew what it was and what it did — but his efforts were futile. As I recited the incantation, a single crimson symbol appeared. I recognized it instantly as it was the one in the upper left-hand corner of my five-symbol mark. It faded from red to purple and then to blue as the life came out of him. He was human indeed.

"My father, Lizzie's Ouranos," I said. I worked to keep my voice stoic.

"I wouldn't exactly say father. I did my best to keep my distance," he said. His voice was strained, but his calculated intonation hadn't even escaped him in these dying breaths.

I couldn't help but laugh. "Keep your distance? You tried to have me killed. Destroyed me before I was even born, didn't you? And then my whole life, picking on me, pointing out to everyone what a freak I was. Pushing me. Why? So I would leave and you'd be done with me? Your stupid mistake who got your powers? Who knew this whole time that you were lying to every Survivor? Is that what this was about? Power?"

He limply lifted his newly marked wrist. "It's always about power, child. Your Alexander Raven has shown us that."

"What do you know of Raven?" I asked quickly.

"I know enough," he said. "You and I are not so different. I wondered things too, once. I didn't need two wondering minds in my City. You've only been trouble from the start."

"But I never exposed you. And I did leave. Wasn't that enough for you?" I asked.

"It would never be enough, as long as you were living," he said.

"I hate you."

He did not miss a beat, even struggling, to say, "I assure you no more than I hate you."

I couldn't help it now. My emotion was getting the best of me. Tension was building in my chest, my throat, constraining my airway. I felt the weight of it: The only person I'd spent my life hating — who had always hated me — was my father. It hadn't sunk in yet, even after all this time, but it was threatening to.

"I have a question," I said.

John choked out something between a laugh and a cough, sputtering blood across his mouth in the process. "Don't you always?"

"Why try to get me pregnant then? Why push for me to procreate if your secret would only spread, your mistake only be multiplied?" This had always been the piece that didn't add up.

John smiled in a way that my stomach turn. His grin was lopsided and weak, his mouth and teeth covered in hot-red blood, but his eyes lit up with cold excitement. "The only time any Survivor has ever shown signs of weakness is during pregnancy. I didn't want you to become pregnant so that you would procreate. I wanted you to get pregnant so you'd be easier to kill." Then he laugh-coughed and began to writhe.

I'm not sure what my face looked like then, but it must have been disfigured amalgamation of horror and pain. I stumbled backward, tried to get to my feet. I couldn't face him anymore.

"You think you've won, Sadie-child, but you have not. They'll all hate you more for killing their beloved patriarch. I'll become the hero and you, the sad, washed-up villain. You may not see that today, when they love you so, but I have seen how this crowd can turn on you. Just wait." I dragged away from him, my feet failing me as he cried out, "I'll haunt you, Sadie-child. If not my spirit then my memory will. I'll bring you down, even if I am dead!"

I looked back at the laughing, writhing, sweating, bleeding mass on the ground one more time, and I knew I could live like this no longer.

Not if humanity were an option.

I couldn't meet the eye of anyone in that square, but whether it was for my own reasons or theirs, I couldn't be sure. But it seemed so clear, now more than ever that there would never be a place for me here. That John would haunt me. That Raven would get the best of me. That the only escape would be to disarm myself. Make it so I couldn't fight in any war in a supernatural world. Make it so I had no reason to set foot in this God-forsaken city ever again in my what I hoped would be my short life.

The Winters all hovered over Everett, where I suppose I should have been. He had not gotten back to his feet since he attacked. And I should be worried. But I wasn't. I wasn't even curious.

I heard Anthony's voice. "Sadie, no!"

But I was already gone.

I flashed out to woods miles from the city so I could run. Run to clear my head. Run to feel my heart. Run to find my soul.

I flew across the hilltops. The world disappeared at a speed so fast, the blur of objects around me mirrored the blur of my own thoughts. I ran and I ran, and, unlike the last time I'd fled in this manner, I knew I was not alone. Some of the Winters were on my tail, running at their top speeds. It only fueled me to go farther, faster, harder. I didn't think I could outrun them, and if I teleported somewhere, they would just follow me.

But then I stopped dead in my tracks. Kutoyis, back in Canada, was the other one with teleportation power. We had given it to him just today. There would be no one to catch me.

I teleported instantly and knew I had the head start of a lifetime.