The Survivors: Body & Blood (book 3)

This Fire, pt. 1

SADIE AND EVERETT WERE BUSY SAYING GOODBYE, AND I CHOSE NOT to hear it. Instead, I took Noah and Ginny to feed. I had talked to our vieczy group before our outing and told them we were after powers, not people. Because everyone obliged, I thought I'd let them get it out of their system one last time before we all hit the road.

Ginny and I took Noah, found someone, and let him do his thing. Then we took him back to the hotel. Then Ginny and I went, and it was her turn. Gin had a sordid history with L.A. It was a place where she'd gotten in trouble a few times, killing someone she'd left a bar with, for example. We'd been down here a few times since, and she always ended up carrying a drunk girl out of a lesbian bar, and a few hours later, the chick would end up dead.

It didn't take hours to kill a person. Not the way we did it.

I was the only one who knew this about her (also the only one to know a sketch that looked mysteriously similar to her had more than once ended up on the news the next day), and thus I was the only one who knew how much it messed her up to do it. I think she was reliving Clara every frickin' time, and I couldn't for the life of me understand why. I drew a line between people I hooked up with and people I killed. Ginny lived in a gray area.

I hated that this was what I was thinking of in our last hours together before the Great Separation. It reminded me of how far she'd come and how far she hadn't. When I thought about these little indiscretions, I knew I shouldn't be leaving her. She still needed me. And even more apparently, she shouldn't be the one in charge of our bloodthirsty, uncontrollable big brother. I'm pretty sure the last time Everett went on his own for blood was New Orleans. And that was an incident none of us cared to repeat.

So I worried fiercely. Was I making a mistake in going with Sadie and leaving those two on their own?

No. No. I steeled myself. We had to do what we'd planned.

Besides, I was the strong one. They turned it into jokes and made fun of my general way of life, but it didn't change facts. I could turn that stupid bloodlust to a nothing feeling if the right mix of other feelings distracted me. I could unlink that particularly lethal urge from all other urges.

. . . like I did later that night when a particularly attractive girl was cleaning up at the hotel bar. She was human, sure, but I was well fed and generally calm in the balmy late-summer night, and/or needing a way to escape my own mind, so she seemed fair game. After showering to get any blood, dirt, or other crime scene remnants off of me, I made my way back down to the bar. Which I knew was closed.

"I'm sorry, we're closed," she said as I entered the semi-enclosed area. She kept her eyes to her work.

"Oh really?" I said, slipping into a booth on the other side of the place. "Bummer. And here I was ready for a night cap."

She laughed, still not looking in my direction. "Nightcap? It's nearly 6 a.m."

"Some of us have later nights than others. Surely you understand. You're here wiping down bar counters, and I'd fare to guess this is the end of your night, not the beginning of your morning," I said, and I added the charm. The Charm. The one a girl hears in a boy's voice, and it isn't a cheesy pick up line, and it doesn't involve telling a girl she's beautiful in the first seven seconds of knowing her, and it doesn't involve anything definable in the least. It's just charm. Strangeness and charm. That's what gets them. Every time.

She looked up. It wasn't ever what I said. It was the way I said it.

"You have a point," she said.

I got to my feet. "Well, sorry to bother you. I guess I just travel so much I get spoiled by 24-hour establishments. I can fend for myself in the minibar. You have a good night, cher." Cher.The familiar colloquialism I picked up — in er, New Orleans — that some people understood and some people didn't, but somehow the meaning was clear: A casual, less demeaning/condescending/pick-something version of "sweetheart" or something like it. And it always worked.

I turned and headed for the door.

"Wait," she said. I smiled and then exhaled, regaining the cool before I turned around. Game on. "You can stay. If you want. I could use the company."

Hook. Line. Sinker.

A FEW HOURS LATER, I HEARD THE OTHERS' VOICES FILTERING THROUGH THE walls of my room, and I knew it was time for my reprieve to end. It was time for me to be Mark Winter: protector, brother, warrior, friend, babysitter, etc., and no longer the boy on top of the girl.

When she left, I took a real shower. The kind that makes even the stoniest muscles feel just that much softer. I relished in the steam, and I found myself standing there, thinking. A lot.

I knew that what we were doing today was changing the game. We were not searching for rogue Survivors. We were not hoping that we could prevent a single war with a single family in a single place. We were going after a man — a thing? — who threatened everyone walking this Earth with a heartbeat. And the rest of us.

There was a knock on my door. I figured it was Ginny. I threw a towel around my waist and answered it.

I opened it to Sadie. "Feeling too cool for clothes?" she asked, a playful smile on her face.

"I thought you were Ginny. What's up?"

"They're about to leave," she said. "Figure we should have one last huddle."

"Huddle?"

"Just come to my room," she said lightly, and left.

There was something about her. I couldn't shake it every time I was in front of her. I couldn't understand how such striking beauty, such over the top awkwardness, such debilitating stiffness, and yet this ridiculous air of ease could come together in a person and make them seem . . . alluring. Mysterious. Puzzling.

Her oneness was so obvious. It killed me. It killed every one of us.

In her room, Sadie gave a speech, the way she did. She asked us to trust her. She had confidence when no one else did. And it was great. No one worried about her anymore. No one thought the old Sadie — the one who would kill herself if given the chance — even existed anymore. And that was great. She did an excellent job of making it seem like there was nothing to doubt.

So was it bad of me or smart of me to doubt her when she gave these speeches? To doubt that she was all magically capital-B Better. Sane. I didn't doubt her ability, her focus, or anything else. I just doubted that, if the chips were down, she wouldn't do what she had originally set out to.

As we all said our goodbyes, I hugged Ginny tight and realized we'd be okay apart. She might need me, but the Strong Sadie, all shiny and new? She needed someone who understood healing is a process, not a thing that happens to you in a moment. She needed someone who knew that the kamikaze was still under there. Yeah, Strong Sadie needed someone who would protect her.

From the real Sadie.