The Survivors: Body & Blood (book 3)

Moleskine, pt. 1

WE DROVE TO BOSTON AND GOT A HOTEL ROOM, BOTH OF US TALKING a mile a minute about possible theories. Sadie called Everett and got him started on reaching Pretty-shield and Crow history, which was good because it made him feel involved. He'd apparently already learned that there was a Crow medicine woman who died in the early 20th century named Pretty-sheild. There was a book he read about that was the first-hand telling of Pretty-shield's life. It was rare and out of print, so he was looking for it.

In the meantime, I had Ginny doing a little high tech covert work for me, seeing if she could hack the location of a cell phone. I had a phone number for Sam from the first time we'd hooked up, and it was a total stretch to think she still had that phone, but I had to try.

And then Sadie got tired. The kind of tired that made her admit to needing sleep. So I sat in the corner of a hotel room, the lights off and the TV low to entertain me. Only I wasn't watching it. I was watching her. I hadn't spent a lot of time watching Sadie sleep — maybe only occasionally on planes and other non-creepy places — but I'd watched a lot of other people sleep, and they didn't look like her. Her face was tense, as if in heated conversation with someone. Emotions passed over it. It was as if she were dreaming, but more than dreaming. Living something out in her sleep.

I spun my phone in my hands aimlessly. Should I be worried? I wondered.

Needing someone more used to Sadie's bedtime habits than I was, I called Everett. "Hello?" he said.

"Hey," I whispered. "I have an odd question."

"Shoot," he said.

"Does Sadie ever dream weirdly?"

"What?"

"I mean, when she's asleep. Does she ever . . . look like she's not totally asleep? Or . . . like . . ."

"Are you watching her sleep right now?" he asked, an edge there.

"You told me not to let her out of my sight!" I countered. "Look never mind."

"No, Polly. Wait," he said. "Sorry. I'm glad you're there. And . . . yeah. I know what you mean. It started a few months back. She'd be asleep and then all the sudden she'd go from still and peaceful to looking like she was awake but not."

"Yeah. It's . . . unsettling."

"I know," he said. "I figured it was from the stress."

"It probably is," I said.

"I appreciate you doing my worrying for me."

"What are brothers for?" I asked. "I'm going to let you go so I don't wake her up."

"Talk soon," he said.

But I wasn't satisfied. I got to my feet silently and crept toward the bed. I wondered if I could take an unknowing Sadie, put her fingertips to her head, and pull them away with her thoughts attached? Could you use her power on her? Could I see what she was dreaming?

I got within inches of the bed when she stilled, her face relaxed.

Then her breathing changed to sound like real sleep.

An opportunity missed.

I sighed. I picked up the things she'd left on the nightstand to entertain myself. Back in my chair, I opened her Moleskine notebook to the list of questions. They were all about Raven, presumably derived from her conversation with him in the graveyard.

I saw the note she scribbled today about Hannah's mother, written under a question already written there that read Who was his Penthesilea?

I remembered Penthesilea from my second year of a Classics degree at McGill University in Canada. She was the Amazon queen that Achilles fell in love with only in the moment he killed her. It was his great tragic love story. I actually remembered wondering if this would be my fate as I sat in class back then. It seemed the fate of the warrior, something I'd been groomed to be.

It dawned on me then that it might be wrong to read her notebook. I thought of it as less of a journal and more of a place for keeping notes on her research. But maybe it was personal, too.

But then again, maybe it wasn't a bad idea to know more about Sadie that I currently did. Or about her theories, rather. And her experiences. She was never going to take the time to educate any of us on what she already knew — hadn't she just today given me some new information about the conversation she'd had with Raven months ago? — so why not learn a little more the old-fashioned way?

I flipped to the beginning and started reading. I read quickly for fear that she'd wake up and catch me, but also because I was excited to learn what she'd never tell us.

The first few pages were observations about people, interesting but not useful. There was a page of identifying information for her acquired identity, dated 6/14/08. Given surname: Matthau. Pronounced Ma, like a sound in cat, + th + ow like in cow. JD says to say "like Walter Matthau" if asked. Birthdate: September 17, 1990. Following this was JD's contact information. I assumed he was the one to go to when she needed a new identity, when born-in-1990 would start seeming odd because she always looked twenty.

Then there were memories written in narrative — a story about questions she'd written in a tree once, which Noah had burned, a story about when she started going to the bookstore, a list of the books she'd read that she ultimately abandoned, realizing that she'd read too many to write down, especially if she could remember them all.

There were clinically written accounts of her suicide attempts: Hung self off pipe in hotel room, belt around neck from approx. 8ft. drop. Feet reached ground. Must try from higher height.And Purchased 1970s Mercury for crash testing. Found cliff in Colorado with precarious curves. Drove car off cliff @ approx. 86mph, no seatbelt. No injuries. Car exploded shortly after I crawled out of it. Chilling. Haunting. I flipped past this list, unable to read much more of it.

Then there were detailed accounts in her microscopic handwriting of her travels and discoveries. There were accounts of tribes and tales, their legends and lore. Of what she thought she might be, of what she knew she couldn't be.

Then questions about a war. About powers, Lizzie, Theogony, and Beowulf. About us. About the evolution from human to nosferatu, from witch and nosferatu to vieczy. About so many things.

And then the list of Raven questions. This was the most visited page in the book. Tiny notes and marks filled every empty space. I reread it now, thinking harder. There were questions about a vampiric inbreed more powerful than he was that I was dying to find an answer to. Generic questions about finding him and finding Sam, about powers and war, even about a finale, which I guessed was his take-over-theworld plan. Questions about her parentage and species. "Does that make me some kind of half-human hybrid?" which of course was true and wasn't true. Yes, half human. No, not hybrid, because that meant two species bred together, and that had not happened. In red ink, she'd filled in the word, Chimera, likely after Ginny's surmise that Sadie was really a genetic chimera: one DNA set Survivor, one DNA set human. Then the question about Penthesilea. About Beowulf. About Raven's opposition to mothers.

Then one that really caught my eye. He called me "Pretty Girl." Like nosferatu, like eretica, like Sam. What does it mean?

Narcisa had referred to her as this in her final moments, and I'd written it off. But then, in that stupid McDonald's, Abigail had said it too, hadn't she?

I remembered something else Abigail/Pretty-shield had said. Is he haunting your dreams yet, Sadie? Has he found you there?

Was that what was happening? If so, just how dangerous was that? And how terrifying for her?

Dangerous, I thought, because the rest of what Abigail had said about it was as ominous as could be. You're lucky then. Once that starts, he's close. And the closer he gets, the more you lose yourself. Trust me.

Suddenly I felt panicked that Sadie was asleep. Panicked that she ever slept at all. And close? Did close mean close? As in close by? Was the bastard here somewhere? I could get to him. I could find him.

I could try and kill him.

I got to my feet then stopped myself. What the hell did I think I was doing? He wasn't here. He wasn't following us, not literally. That would be too obvious. And even with my ego, I knew I couldn't take him. I couldn't do anything. Hadn't McDonald's taught me that?

I sat back down and closed the book. Another piece of the puzzle. No closer to the picture it would make.